studia metrica et poetica sisu 7_2.indd annika mikkel, rütmilised lauselõpud 14. sajandi ladinakeelsetes ning itaalia rahvakeelsetes proosateostes (phd dissertation, 197 pages with appendix, university of tartu press) satu grünthal*1 annika mikkel’s doctoral thesis, rütmilised lauselõpud 14. sajandi ladinakeelsetes ning itaalia rahvakeelsetes proosateostes (rhythmic clausulae in the 14th-century latin and italian vernacular prose texts), published and defended in estonian, discusses prose rhythm in 14th-century latin and italian vernacular (lingua volgare) prose, especially in the works of dante alighieri (1265−1321). mikkel uses the comparative-statistical analysis as her research method. as a comparative data to the works of dante, mikkel also analyses texts from other authors, stretching back from the 14th to the 16th century, including giovanni boccaccio, franco sacchetti, giovanni villani, pietro bembo and niccolò machiavelli. in ancient rhetoric, the term ‘prose rhythm’ was used to indicate rhythmical units mostly at the end of sentences and clauses, which in classical prose were called clausulae. th e rhythm of classical prose was based on the quantity of syllables. over centuries, the system of clausulae was simplifi ed and word stress became signifi cant in addition to quantity. prose rhythm in which the quantity as well as word stress were signifi cant was also called cursus mixtus. th is, in turn, developed into medieval latin prose rhythm, called cursus, which was purely based on word stress. th e use of cursus was most popular in latin prose, but it could also be found in medieval italian prose. in the late middle ages, four diff erent rhythmic patterns had developed and were in use: cursus planus, cursus velox, cursus tardus and cursus trispondaicus. mikkel analyses the types and amounts of cursus that occur in latin and italian vernacular prose, and she also examines the use of word boundaries both in latin and vernacular cursus. th e size of data she has used is impressive, comprising altogether more than 11,000 clausulae, leaving the reader with no doubts about its suffi ciency. th e statistical analysis of the data, carried out with * author’s address: satu grünthal, university of helsinki, siltavuorenpenger 3a – pl 9, 00014, helsinki, finland; email: satu.grunthal@helsinki.fi . https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.08 studia metrica et poetica 7.2, 2020, 178–180 179annika mikkel, rütmilised lauselõpud excellent precision, is not only the core of the whole thesis but also mikkel’s most important contribution to latin and italian studies. prose rhythm has so far been studied only in the case of danteʼs and boccaccioʼs latin texts, while no systematic statistical analysis of them has been conducted in earlier studies. all results of the statistical analysis are presented in tables in the appendix. mikkel’s doctoral thesis begins with a short introduction, followed by a more detailed presentation of the history and development of the cursus as well as the theoretical background and the methodology of the study. th e second chapter focuses on dante’s work, which is the main target of the study, and the following chapters discuss the other authors, boccaccio, sacchetti, villani, bembo and machiavelli. chapter 8 presents the results of the analysis and brings them together in a comparative discussion. possibilities for later studies are also briefl y discussed. annika mikkel’s dissertation is positioned in the strong estonian tradition of rhythmical and metrical studies, where the importance of statistical analysis of metre is also prominent. her statistical analysis of the data comprises four stages: a) prosodic analysis, b) input of the prosodic analysis results into a database, c) statistical analysis of the data, and d) comparative analysis of the data. she also discusses the problems that arise in latin and italian vernacular prosodic analysis. in addition to the estonian tradition of rhythmical and metrical studies, mikkel’s thesis follows a specifi c path among metrical studies in general, namely that of prose rhythm studies. according to mikkel, prose rhythm can be studied either in a large or in a more narrow perspective. th e large defi nition of prose rhythm means constructing sentences and their parts in a rhythmically harmonic manner, but her own dissertation, which focuses on the rhythm of clausulae at the end of linguistic phrases, makes use of the more narrow defi nition of the word. she also brings up the question whether the use of cursus can be seen as a conscious choice of the author or a random incident, or due to the phonological nature of the language. th rough her statistical analysis, she succeeds in showing certain authorand work-specifi c diff erences in the use of cursus. at least to a certain extent, intentional usage of cursus forms can be observed in dante’s texts, especially in certain chapters of diff erent books. th e fi eld of prose rhythm studies is challenging, and not inhabited by many. although mikkel’s work concentrates on a very specifi c type of prose, it is a welcome contribution to the discussion and development of prose rhythm studies as a whole. annika mikkel’s doctoral thesis is an important contribution to the studies of latin and italian vernacular prose rhythm, and the originality of the study lies in its focus, material and method. th e research hypotheses are presented 180 satu grünthal clearly, and the results of the large comparative statistical analysis are discussed in detail. th e overall structure of the dissertation suits the aims of the study well, and the work gives well argued answers to the research questions presented at the beginning – partly by raising new interesting questions and possibilities for further study. mikkel’s thesis bibliography comprises research on estonian and international classica l philology and metrical studies until the present day and in fi ve diff erent languages: italian, english, estonian, french and german. unfortunately, such multilingual and cross-cultural competence, which was earlier regarded as a self-evident ability of all new doctors in the humanities, can no longer be taken for granted. ain kaalep ain kaalep (04.06.1926–09.06.2020) mihhail lotman* ain kaalep was not a poetry scholar; although he received a diploma in the field of fennougristics at the university of tartu, stricto sensu, he was not a scholar at all. in the estonian humanities, particularly poetics, kaalep was a kind of cultural hero who, defeating the old system, established new templates and rules for estonian poetry and poetics. during the 1950s and 1960s kaalep was the only estonian author who was engaged in versification theory – his work bridged interwar estonian poetics and the rebirth of estonian versification studies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. kaalep left a significant imprint on the research of estonian verse. his studies were the most important contributions to the field of estonian poetics before his disciple jaak põldmäe’s (especially põldmäe 1978; see also gasparov, lotman, rudnev, tarlinskaja 2017). kaalep’s university studies began in 1943 and ended in 1956. shortly after entering the university, he volunteered for the finnish army and fought in the continuation war.1 from 1946–1947 he was imprisoned for this. after his release kaalep was banned from continuing his university studies for several years. before the second world war, the field of humanities – including linguistics, poetics and poetry itself – was rapidly evolving in estonia. the soviet occupation meant, among other things, a disruption of culture. many cultural figures emigrated, others were repressed, and the remainder were forced into silence or conformity with the new ideological and aesthetic order. although this new order permitted revolutionary “accentual” verse in the style of mayakovsky, but for the most part, the new meant the old: the realist canon of the 19th century was reaffirmed, which in verse meant the predominance of the syllabic-accentual system. the “progressive” turned out to be monotonous traditionalism. ain kaalep was one of the few figures determined to carry on cultural continuity in estonia, and he was the only one who accomplished this in poetic, * author’s address: mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail.lotman@gmail.com. 1 kaalep belonged among the so-called finnish boys, an infantry regiment 200 composed mostly of estonian volunteers. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 146–151 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.07 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.07 148 mihhail lotman translation and scholarly work. like the modernists of the early 20th century, he fought against the hegemony of syllabic-accentual verse, but the context had changed: for the modernists, the fight against syllabic-accentual monotony was foremost a fight against the german tradition in estonian poetic culture. in soviet estonia, however, syllabic-accentual versification meant the reorientation to 19th-century romantic and realist poetry, both estonian and russian. in addition, it must be noted that a campaign against cosmopolitanism and “grovelling before the west” began in the soviet union at the end of the 1940s. this was the context in which ain kaalep began his fight, manifested in his poetic and translated works as well as in his poetological and philological journal articles and essays. a cosmopolitan, whose ideal was goethe (with his west-eastern diwan), kaalep worked to make estonia open to global culture. under the political and social conditions in the soviet union, one could of course speak only of poetry, and kaalep did indeed begin with prosody. however, this field was politicised as well. the problem of free verse was especially acute; it was treated as a western and decadent form and also appeared suspicious on ethical and aesthetic grounds. it only became possible to openly polemise on the subject of free verse at the beginning of the 1970s. the most important soviet literary journal – voprosy literatury – dedicated a forum to free verse in 1972. arguments in support of free verse were permitted, yet the more famous russian authors partaking in the discussion were against free verse for one reason or another (voprosy literatury 1972). while kaalep spoke out in defence of free verse as early as the end of the 1950s (kaalep 1959a), in 1969 he had a chance to present his arguments, in russian, in a prestigious collection of papers from across the soviet union (kaalep 1969b). kaalep chose a risky strategy in his article, arguing that, while free verse may be a form of western poetry, the foreign origin of the metre is an advantage. the foreign can be progressive, whereas the traditional can be reactionary, he argues, and presents roman epic verse as an example: when livius andronicus translated homer into traditional saturnian verse, which “differs significantly from hexameter”, the work found few admirers (kaalep 1969b: 78–79). translation into a separate, familiar verse form did not go on to create a tradition. quintus ennius, however, tried to convey not only the content, but also the verse form of the epic poems. despite numerous mistakes, his hexameter formed the basis of a tradition that gave raise to the poetry of virgil and ovid. kaalep gave this example to demonstrate the progressive character of domesticating a foreign form. kaalep relates another story to the rooting of syllabic-accentual verse in estonian poetry. paul fleming, student and friend of martin opitz, arrived in tallinn in 1635 and established a circle of estophile poets who wrote original 149ain kaalep (04.06.1926–09.06.2020) poems according to opitz’s system, i.e. using verse feet and rhyme. they also translated church songs with this method, but these songs were not published until decades later, in 1656. when the new collection of church songs was finally printed, the foreword explained that the translators had been suspected of using the new verse form to smuggle a new religion into estonia. “a heavy ideological accusation – and only over the matter of a new, as yet unknown system of versification!” (kaalep 1969b: 82–83). kaalep was clearly alluding to his contemporary context and the prevailing ideological accusations against using western verse metres; syllabic-accentual verse, heavily favoured by soviet literary science, itself had western origins, not just in estonian poetry, but also in the russian poetic tradition. kaalep reminds readers that trediakovskylomonosov’s reform, like fleming’s, was conducted on the basis of opitz’s templates. in the contemporary realm, kaalep also points out that free verse is used not only by western decadents, but also communists, including bertolt brecht, pablo neruda and nâzım hikmet. ain kaalep was a poet and translator, but also one of the leading theorists of poetry translation. kaalep’s primary merit in the field of estonian versification studies is related to the theory of systems of versification. unlike his predecessors, he connected the problem of verse systems with linguistic, specifically phonological structures (kaalep 1959b, 1959c). he tried to prove that, since quantity is an important phonological factor in the estonian language, the quantitative system of versification can be used not only in ancient verse metres, but also in modern originals. kaalep categorized five systems of versification that appear in estonian verse both in theory and in practice: quantitative, syllabic, syllabic-accentual, accentual, and free verse. he was the first – and not only in estonia – who began to talk about free verse not just as an infringer of norms, but as a separate system of versification (kaalep 1959c, 1969b, see also lotman, lotman 2018: 59). kaalep’s position on the quantitative system of versification must be treated in context of polemics over the possibilities of quantitative verse that arose in estonia in the first half of the 20th century. the central question of quantitative versification was largely related to the evolvement of phonetic studies, which described quantity as inextricably linked to the phonemic structure of the estonian language. a laboratory of experimental phonetics was established in tartu. the working group evolved into a school of phonetic scholars, the most famous of whom was ilse lehiste, who later emigrated to the west. first the quantitative basis for estonian runic verse was discovered (the quantitative structure of finnish kalevalamitta had already been noticed earlier), then a question arose: if the estonian language is characterised by quantity contrast, as in classical languages, why not translate ancient verse into an authentic 150 mihhail lotman form? it turned out, however, that the quantitative principle of estonian runic verse is fundamentally different from those of ancient verse, and secondly, the estonian system of three syllabic durations poses a separate issue for translators. theorists developed different types of quantitative verse in response to this quandary. classical philologist ervin roos (roos 1938) proposed an original solution. independently from nikolai trubetzkoy and roman jakobson, he formulated the principle of proportionality, according to which the quantitative value of a syllable only becomes apparent in a syntagmatic context. while school grammars considered all monosyllabic words to be of the third duration, i.e. overlong, roos regarded monosyllabic words as ancipitia (roman jakobson had an analogous viewpoint in the case of stress: a stressed syllable is only stressed when it is syntagmatically contrasted with unstressed syllables). on the other hand, translators and poets solved the problem of quantifying estonian verse differently than roos. there were two main approaches. the first was to take quantity contrast into account only in stressed syllables, as in runic verse. this was the method of ants oras and august annist, who also wrote original texts in runic verse metre. the second approach, championed by poets and translators like gustav suits, derived the principle that quantity contrast could be attributed to every syllable from ancient verse. as in classical languages, they posited, a syllable is long when it is closed. this was the tradition kaalep himself continued, both in his translations and in his original poetry. unlike other authors, he also offered theoretical justifications to his verse practices (annist, kaalep 1963, kaalep 1969a, 1969b, 1972). ain kaalep was not an academic scholar. for him, verse science was foremost a tool for understanding verse in practice, and he tried to realise different theoretical models of verse in his original poetry. in addition to his original work, kaalep translated from german, spanish, french, portuguese, turkish, ukrainian, greek, latin and other languages. while he often used free verse in his original work, in his translated poetry he always conveyed not only the original metre, but also the system of versification. thus, one encounters syllabic, syllabic-accentual, accentual-syllabic (dolnik-type), as well as different quantitative metres in his translations. he has enriched estonian verse with different compositions and strophic forms, whereby he followed his great example goethe and used not only european, but also eastern forms, including ghazals and other complicated patterns. 151ain kaalep (04.06.1926–09.06.2020) references annist, august; kaalep, ain 1963. veel eesti heksameetri kvantiteedist. in: keel ja kirjandus 2, 99–101. gasparov, mikhail; lotman, mihhail; rudnev, pyotr; tarlinskaja, marina 2017. approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe. in: studia metrica et poetica 4(1), 130–149. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.06 kaalep, ain 1959a. teoreetilisi märkmeid vabavärsist. in: keel ja kirjandus 5, 257–273. [reprinted with additions: laosson, max (ed.) 1961. kirjanduse radadelt. artikleid ja arvustusi 1959. tallinn: eesti riiklik kirjastus, 152–174]. kaalep, ain 1959b. rütm, värss, värsisüsteem. in: noorus 6, 41–42. kaalep, ain 1959c. eesti keele fonoloogilise struktuuri ja eesti värsiõpetuse suhetest. in: emakeele seltsi aastaraamat 1958 iv, 110–126. tallinn: eesti riiklik kirjastus. kaalep, ain 1961. rütmiprobleemidest luuletõlkes. in: keel ja kirjandus 10, 597–603. kaalep, ain 1969a. august annisti ajajärk eesti heksameetri ajaloos. (70. sünnipäeva puhul). in: keel ja kirjandus 1, 32–35. kaalep, ain 1969b. opyt ekviritmicheskogo perevoda poezii na estonskij jazyk. masterstvo perevoda 6, 78–88. kaalep, ain 1972. august annist ja homorütmiline luuletõlge. in: looming 7, 1202– 1206. lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2018. eesti silbilis-rõhulise rütmika jooni: neliktrohheus ja -jamb 19. sajandi teisel poolel – 20. sajandi alguses. tallinn: eesti kirjanduse sihtasutus. põldmäe, jaak 1978. eesti värsiõpetus. tallinn: eesti raamat. roos, ervin 1938. eestikeelse kvantiteeriva heksameetri süsteem (akadeemilise kirjandusühingu toimetised xii). tartu: akadeemiline kirjandusühing. voprosy literatury 1972. ot chego ne svoboden svobodnyj stikh? 2, 124–160. sergei kormilov (a photo by vera polilova) sergei kormilov (06.06.1951–20.06.2020) anastasia belousova, igor pilshchikov, vera polilova* sergei ivanovich kormilov was born in moscow and spent the entirety of his academic career at moscow state university. he obtained a degree in russian literature there in 1974, completed his candidate (ph.d.) dissertation in 1978, and then started teaching in the department of soviet literature. the topic of his dissertation was the principle of historicism in fiction and russian historical fiction of the 1860s, but his research interests ranged widely, from the role of social and historical realia in prose fiction to the study of prosody. he completed his habilitation in 1993 and was appointed professor the next year. his unpublished habilitation thesis, the marginal systems of russian versification, appeared in an abridged version as a monograph (kormilov 1995). other portions of the second thesis were published as separate articles. the full list of his publications, comprising more than 600 items, includes papers on almost all major 19thand 20th-century russian poets, playwrights and novelists, among them derzhavin, pushkin, lermontov, gogol, fet, ostrovsky, turgenev, lev tolstoy, chekhov, briusov, tsvetaeva, and akhmatova. his outwardly successful university career, however, did not satisfy him. according to kormilov himself, it was flawed from the start, when, after he had studied at the department of literary theory for many years and completed his dissertation there, he was denied a permanent position in the department. he spent the rest of his life and career at the department of soviet literature (later renamed the department of newest russian literature and contemporary literary process), where he read several courses on post-revolutionary literary criticism. “i am the only professor [...] of [the philological] faculty, who teaches something other than what he was born to teach. [...] * authors’ addresses: anastasia belousova, universidad nacional de colombia, carrera 30 no. 45-03, facultad de ciencias humanas, edif. 224, of. 3048, bogotá d.c., colombia, e-mail: abelousova@unal.edu.co; igor pilshchikov, university of california, los angeles, department of slavic, east european and eurasian languages and cultures, 320 kaplan hall, ucla, los angeles, ca 90095; tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee; vera polilova, institute of world culture, lomonosov moscow state university, 1–51 leninskie gory, room 854, moscow 119991, russia, e-mail: vera.polilova@ gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 138–145 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.06 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.06 140 anastasia belousova, igor pilshchikov, vera polilova i feel i have not fulfilled even half of what i could have done”, he said in an interview (kormilov 2011: 342). kormilov’s first contribution to the field of verse studies, “stanza as an element of verse form” (kormilov 1974) appeared in a collection of student papers but is often cited by poetry scholars even today. his next paper on prosody, “on the history of russian free verse”, coauthored with vadim baevsky, leonard ibraev and vyacheslav sapogov (1975) became, together with aleksandr zhovtis’s works, a touchstone for many further studies of russian vers libre. it should be noted here that, in the russian tradition, vers libre remained an atypical poetic form for a very long time, and its critical discussion, known as “the soviet debate on free verse” (of which the aforementioned article was a part), started as late as the 1970s (trunin 2012). simultaneously, kormilov began to study other unusual literary forms, such as metrical prose, monostichs and “lapidary verse” (i.e. epigraphic texts with an undetermined metrical status) – the forms that he would later refer to as “marginal systems of versification”. kormilov distinguished between “mainstream and self-sufficient” versification systems and “marginal” versification systems. the marginal systems are situated “at the intersection of very different [literary] forms” or even between “different spheres of literature and culture” (kormilov 1995: 4). according to kormilov, such forms emerge at the intersection of 1) various mainstream systems of versification, 2) verse form and authorial intention, 3) the prosodic and extra-prosodic features of a given text, 4) verse and prose, 5) poetry and non-poetry, 6) the metro-rhythmic pattern of the text and the means of its phonetic and visual realization. therefore, the type of a versification system, be it mainstream or marginal, is determined by its relationship with various forms of verse and prose in a given historical period (ibid.). for kormilov a system’s “marginal” character was depended on the context, not any immanent quality of the national poetic tradition: in certain contexts, a text structure is perceived as poetic, but in others it is not. in a famous example, kormilov argued that karamzin’s epitaph “pokójsia, mílyj prákh, do rádostnogo útra!” [‘rest peacefully, dear ashes, until the joyous morning!’] is considered an iambic monostich because it is presented as an epigraphic poem, whereas the communist slogan “idéi lénina zhivút i pobezhdájut!” [‘lenin’s ideas live and triumph!’] is not, despite its iambic qualities, because the production of the agitation and propaganda division of the communist party’s central committee was not contextually poetical. dmitry kuzmin has described kormilov’s theory as “a theory of contextually determined poeticality” (kuzmin 2016: 383, cf. 19). another scholar, maksim shapir, praised the innovativeness of the concept of marginal systems, 141sergei kormilov (06.06.1951–20.06.2020) but criticized kormilov’s proposed typology and the vagueness of its principles. the phenomena kormilov collected, he argued, are too diverse to be captured under one umbrella term that embraces everything from various types of rhythmically organized prose (i.e. non-verse) to widespread (i.e. nonmarginal) poetic forms, such as vers libre (shapir 2000: 80–81). nevertheless, the significance of kormilov’s introduction of rich, varied and provocative material into academic parlance is uncontested and has been widely acclaimed. mikhail gasparov’s review of kormilov’s book was appropriately titled “expanding the field” (gasparov 1996). “the novelty of the material is refreshingly good”, the reviewer concluded (ibid.: 145). kormilov discovered what is now accepted to be the first russian original (untranslated) poem written in heterometric unrhymed verse (feodor glinka’s “k sinemu nebu” [‘to the blue sky’, 1830]; see baevsky, ibraev, kormilov and sapogov 1975: 90; kormilov 1995: 124; 2011: 349), as well as many other early specimens of translated and original vers libre. kormilov promoted the study of the monostich as a verse form, assembling and analyzing a collection of 200 russian monostichs by 36 authors. not only did he dramatically enlarge the empirical basis of the research (kuzmin 2016: 5–6), but showed that monostichs are poetic phenomena in their own right, rather than just a collection of curious oddities, as vladimir markov’s pioneering study might suggest (markov 1963). furthermore, kormilov published on lermontov’s deviations from accentual-syllabic prosody (kormilov 1982), fet’s non-classical verse forms (kormilov 2004), the versification experiments of silver age russian poets (kormilov 1994, 2018), the history of the russian sonnet (kormilov 1993a, 1997, 1999, 2015a), and the poetics of individual authors and works. he also gathered a huge collection of 18th-, 19thand 20th-century metrical prose, including forms oriented towards binary, ternary and dolnik verse (kormilov 1990; 1992, 1995: 86–117; 2009). in his research, kormilov vied to include the works of all authors from the most to the least known – and the least known first of all. he disapproved of what he called the habit for “aristocratism in literary studies” (kormilov 1995: 5, 142), a view that brought kormilov into proximity with his older colleague mikhail gasparov. in his review of kormilov’s 1995 monograph, gasparov called the study the result of “egyptian labor” , marvelling that one scholar had collected so much material; it was as if “he worked as ten people” (gasparov 1996: 141, 144). kormilov’s interest in borderline poetic phenomena and liminal manifestations of verse also connected him with his younger colleague maksim shapir. kormilov devoted special articles to these scholars, 142 anastasia belousova, igor pilshchikov, vera polilova both of whom he survived, and compared their research methodologies (see kormilov 2012a and 2012b). over the last decade, kormilov published a cycle of articles on the formal features of russian translations of chinese and korean poetry (kormilov, amanova 2013a, 2013b, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2015, 2017), continued his studies of rhyme and stanza (kormilov 2015a, 2015b), and laboriously reviewed new literature on prosody and poetics. sergei ivanovich was known to his colleagues not only as a versologist and literary scholar but also as a passionate local historian of moscow, the moscow region, and other russian cities and towns. in this role, he organized and guided many tours for participants in academic conferences, including russia’s largest conference on versification, slavic verse. kormilov’s in-depth and minute knowledge of everyday history (biographies, genealogies, evolution of civil and military ranks, decorations, uniforms, architectural details, houses and streets, etc.) made him a tour guide like no other. this talent expressed itself not only in numerous articles that offer a vast social-historical commentary to russian classical literature, but also in his metrical studies. to cite a particularly colorful topic, one of his essays is titled “publications of the russian necropoleis of the late 19thand early 20th century and their importance as sources for the history of verse” (kormilov 1993b). kormilov’s erudition was nothing short of incredible. his indefatigable and profound interest in the most peculiar facts of cultural history was the most flamboyant feature of his personality and allowed him to enrich the study of russian literature and russian verse. he was a bright and original scholar, and we remember his lectures and conversations with gratitude. references baevsky, vadim solomonovich; ibraev, leonard ivanovich; kormilov, sergei ivanovich; sapogov, vyacheslav aleksandrovich 1975. k istorii russkogo svobodnogo stikha. in: russkaia literatura 3, 89–102. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. rasshirenie polja (review of: kormilov, sergei ivanovich. marginal’nye sistemy russkogo stikhoslozhenija. moskva, 1995). in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 2, 141–145. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1974. strofika kak element stikhotvornoj formy. in: filologija: sbornik studencheskikh i aspirantskikh nauchnykh rabot 3. moskva: izdatel’stvo moskovskogo universiteta, 101–118. 143sergei kormilov (06.06.1951–20.06.2020) kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1982. neklassicheskij stikh lermontova: diskussionnye problemy ritmologii. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 4, 11–21. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1990. russkaja metrizovannaja proza (prozostikh) kontsa xviii–xix veka. in: russkaia literatura 4, 31–44. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1992. russkaja metrizovannaja proza 1900-kh godov. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 51(4), 27–39. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1993a. nekotorye problemy sovremennoj teorii soneta. in: filologicheskie nauki 3, 32–41. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1993b. izdanija rossijskikh nekropolej rubezha xix–xx vekov i ikh rol’ kak istochnikov po istorii stikha. in: vremja djagileva. universalii serebrjanogo veka. (tret’i djagilevskie chtenija: materialy 1). perm’: permskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, obshchestvo ljubitelej baleta “arabesk”, 184–194. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1994. eksperimental’nyj stikh serebrjanogo veka. in: voprosy literatury 6, 339–348. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1995. marginal’nye sistemy russkogo stikhoslozhenija. moskva: izdatel’stvo moskovskogo universiteta. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1997. sonety georgija ivanova. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 2, 38–49. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 1999. sonety n. s. gumileva. in: filologicheskie nauki 4, 11–19. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2004. neklassicheskij stikh v lirike a. a. feta i klassichnost’ ego metricheskogo soznanija. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh vii: lingvistika i struktura stikha. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 75–89. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2009. russkaja metrizovannaja proza serebrjanogo veka. in: prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh viii: stikh, jazyk, smysl. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur, 42–68. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2011. [interview]. in: [konurbaev, marklen erikovich] (ed.), filologicheskij fakul’tet v litsakh: o pragmatizme, bystrotechnom vremeni i vechnykh tsennostyakh. moskva: [lomonosov moscow state university], 338–360. https://www.academia.edu/14556071/, http://issuu.com/marklen/docs/pragmatizm__1_ https://www.academia.edu/14556071/ http://issuu.com/marklen/docs/pragmatizm__1_ 144 anastasia belousova, igor pilshchikov, vera polilova kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2012a. nauchnoe i literaturnoe nasledie mikhaila leonovicha gasparova. in: gracheva, galina gavrilovna; orlitsky, yuri borisovich; ustinov, andrey borisovich (eds.), mikhail leonovich gasparov, 1935–2005 (materialy k biobibliografii uchenykh. literatura i jazyk 33). moskva: nauka, 6–46. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2012b. shapir o gasparove. in: philologica 9, 390–404. https://rvb.ru/philologica/09pdf/09kormilov.pdf kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2015a. eksperimental’nye sonety konstantina vasil’eva. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 2, 108–117. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2015b. stanovlenie lermontovskoj rifmy v poemakh 1828 goda. in: okhotnikova, valentina il’inichna (ed.), o proze. o poezii. o slave: sbornik nauchnykh statej. pskov: pskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 91–97. kormilov, sergei ivanovich 2018. igrovye momenty v stikhe rannej mariny tsvetaevoj. in: khachikyan, elena ivanovna; balasheva, elena anatol’evna; kargashin igor’ alekseevich (eds.), literatura kak igra i mistifikatsija: materialy shestykh mezhdunarodnykh nauchnykh chtenij “kaluga na literaturnoj karte rossii”. kaluga: kaluzhskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 87–98. kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2013a. metrika, rifma i strofika v russkikh perevodakh iz korejskoj poezii (a. a. akhmatova, a. l. zhovtis, g. b. jaroslavtsev). stat’ja pervaja. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 5, 92–115. kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2013b. metrika, rifma i strofika v russkikh perevodakh iz korejskoj poezii (a. a. akhmatova, a. l. zhovtis, g. b. jaroslavtsev). stat’ja vtoraja. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 6, 75–93. kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2014a. metrika, rifma i strofika v russkikh perevodakh iz korejskoj poezii (a. a. akhmatova, a l. zhovtis, g. b. jaroslavtsev). stat’ja tret’ja. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 1, 59–77. kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2014b. stikh russkikh perevodov iz korejskoj poezii (1950–1980-e gody). moskva: novoe vremja. kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2014с. o stikhe perevodov anny akhmatovoj iz kitajskoj poezii. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 2, 62–93. kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2015. stikh russkikh perevodov 1970-kh godov iz korejskoj poezii. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 74(2), 12–27. https://rvb.ru/philologica/09pdf/09kormilov.pdf 145sergei kormilov (06.06.1951–20.06.2020) kormilov, sergei ivanovich; amanova, gulistan abdirazakovna 2017. korejskie sidzho sredi stikhotvornykh tverdykh form mirovoj poezii. in: zbornik matice srpske za slavistiku / matica srpska journal of slavic studies 92, 747–768. kuzmin, dmitry vladimirovich 2016. russkij monostikh: ocherk istorii i teorii. moskva: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. shapir, maksim il’ich 2000. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. book 1. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. trunin, mikhail vladimirovich 2012. iz istorii polemiki o predel’noj dline stroki v svobodnom stikhe (d. a. prigov i jaan kross). in: russkaia literatura 1, 218–230. markov, vladimir fedorovich 1963. traktat ob odnostroke. in: vozdushnye puti: almanakh 3. new york: rausen bros., 245–254. studia metrica et poetica sisu 7_2.indd kiril taranovsky and his greatest work mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov*1 th e name kiril taranovsky (1911–1993) has much less acclaim outside the slavic world than it deserves. even his book on mandelshtam, which was published in english in 1976, mainly attracted the attention of slavists as the fi rst systematic description of the poetics of an author whose works are so famously diffi cult to understand. but the methods of contextual and subtextual analysis that taranovsky developed, and his insights on literary theory, are no less signifi cant (see levinton, timenchik 1978). taranovsky’s fi ndings are important for the theory of intertextuality and can serve as a link between literary studies and linguistic pragmatics (lotman 1984). in one key aspect, taranovsky’s approach diff ers from that adopted in western literary criticism: not only the theme of a work (its subject matter, setting, imagery, etc.) but any component of its structure, including the verse structure, can be treated as a subtext. on the one hand, taranovsky continues the traditions of russian formalism; on the other hand, he draws on his own research into the structure and semantics of russian verse. by the time taranovsky undertook his research on mandelshtam’s poetics, he had not only done an enormous amount of work in describing poetic rhythm (taranovsky 1953, 1955/1956) but he had also outlined a new fi eld in russian verse theory: the semantics of poetic meter (taranovsky 1963) and rhythm (taranovsky 1966). his contribution to slavic studies was testifi ed by a collection of essays dedicated to him in honor of his 60th birthday, with items from 51 colleagues and former students (see jakobson, schooneveld, worth 1973). kirill fedorovich taranovsky was born in yuriev, now tartu in estonia; his father, a jurist, was a professor of law at the university of tartu. th e revolution put an end to this comfortable life, however, and the family emigrated through the crimea and turkey to the balkans. taranovsky spent his youth in serbia and was deeply integrated into the culture of the country; in particular, he translated russian classics into serbian. he earned a degree in slavic languages from the university of belgrade in 1936 and then defended his doctoral thesis * authors’ addresses: mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail.lotman@gmail.com; igor pilshchikov, university of california, los angeles, department of slavic, east european and eurasian languages and cultures, 320 kaplan hall, ucla, los angeles, ca 90095; tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.06 studia metrica et poetica 7.2, 2020, 110–117 111kiril taranovsky and his greatest work there, written under the supervision of the famous slavist aleksandar belić, in 1941. it formed the foundation of his greatest work, ruski dvodelni ritmovi (russian binary meters). th is book had a complicated fate due to the second world war; a bomb hit the printing house where the book was being prepared for publication and the entire print run was destroyed. it took more than a decade to restore the text and the book only saw the light of day as late as 1953. as taranovsky himself told one of the authors of this note, the delay had some positive eff ects, since over the years he was able not only to supplement his original material, but also to connect it with the ideas of nikolai trubetzkoy and roman jakobson. taranovsky’s study consists of two parts. th e main bulk of the book is the second part, which contains a description of the rhythm of russian binary meters in its historical development. jakobson and trubetzkoy defined russian meters in terms of binary oppositions (lotman 2013), but taranovsky proposed a more refi ned approach based on statistical data. jakobson distinguished between rhythmical constants (the basis of meter), rhythmical tendencies (the basis of rhythmical impulse) and the autonomous elements of rhythm (jakobson 1979 [1930]), whereas taranovsky discerns metrical constants (compulsory stress on the last strong position in the verse line), dominants (absence of verbal stress on weak positions), and rhythmic tendencies (stress on strong positions). th ese concepts have become well established in poetics and are now used to describe both russian and non-russian verse (lotman, lotman 2018). th e second part of taranovsky’s book is immeasurably richer in statistical material than the fi rst part, which, however, contains more theoretical insights and off ers a more multifaceted model for describing verse than the simplifi ed and reductionist version of the same model implemented in the second part. th us, as michael wachtel pointed out, “the more famous second part (on [...] the evolution of rhythmic patterning in various meters) does not fully take into account the observations of the fi rst part (on accentuation in russian verse). in particular, two elements are missing from the second part: the role of hypermetrical stress and the relative strength of stresses on strong syllables. taranovsky recognized these phenomena, but they are nowhere refl ected in his statistical data and conclusions” (wachtel 2015: 192–193).1 to this we can add the statistics of word-boundaries: they are discussed in part one, but only the constant word-boundaries (caesurae, or “medians”, as taranovsky calls 1 abstract in russian. th e english text is quoted from https://www.sciencegate.app/doi/ abs/10.30851/59.2.001 (accessed january 5, 2021). 112 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov them, following georgy shengeli) are taken in consideration in part two. th e statistics of word-boundaries are included in the appendices but not interpreted in the main text – perhaps because taranovsky was unable to identify any meaningful tendencies. taranovsky’s connection to jakobson went beyond scholarly engagement; the two met in prague in the 1930s and maintained a long-term friendship that stretched through the 1960s when both scholars were professors at harvard university’s department of slavic languages and literatures. in 1973, jakobson was one of the editors of the taranovsky festschrift . aft er russian binary meters was published in 1953, jakobson reviewed his future colleague’s work favorably: th e author of this book, an outstanding slavic philologist, has made important contributions to the study of slavic versifi cation. [...] th e new monograph is devoted to the russian binary meters, trochee and iamb: the fi rst part deals with their invariable foundations, while the second carefully traces the rise and evolution of these verse forms within the last two centuries, with a generous use of statistical calculations. [...] taranovsky’s study exhaustively treats the role of the word-stress in the russian binary meters throughout the last two centuries of their evolution [...] such a focusing on one problem enables the author to detect the cardinal rhythmical peculiarities of diff erent epochs, poetic schools, individual poets and poems [...] taranovsky’s book thoroughly reveals the manifold play of the word-stress in russian binary meters (jakobson 1955: 644–646). aft er a few considerations regarding phrase-accent, jakobson concluded his review with a call for further elaboration: “now it is from him that we expect also the next chapter, a syntactic phonology of these verse forms” (1955: 646). such a book was never written either by taranovsky or anyone else. mikhail gasparov, representing the next generation of outstanding scholars of verse aft er taranovsky, gave the following concise contextualization of russian binary meters: in order to appreciate the signifi cance of k. f. taranovsky’s principal work, we must recall the state of russian versifi cation scholarship in the 1930s, when the fi rst wave of verse studies, initiated by andrei belyi, subsided. on the one hand, there existed statistical studies of the rhythm of particular meters used by individual authors, exemplary in accuracy but very few in number (mainly the works of b. tomashevsky). on the other hand, there existed a general concept of the phonological basis of russian verse meters, developed by r. jakobson and n. trubetzkoy, which was not, however, tested on suffi ciently large statistical 113kiril taranovsky and his greatest work material. taranovsky’s book bridged the gap between these two achievements of russian poetics. what tomashevsky did for a few dozen thousand 4and 5-iambic lines of pushkin and his contemporaries, taranovsky did for 300,000 lines of all the iambic and trochaic meters from lomonosov to fet. as a result of this titanic work, it became possible to give concrete statistical meaning to the concepts of rhythmic constants, dominants and tendencies introduced by jakobson and trubetzkoy. it also became possible to formulate two basic laws of the rhythm of russian binary meters, the law of regressive accentual dissimilation (alternation of strong and weak feet from the end of the line to the beginning) and the law of the ascending rhythmic tilt (stabilization of the fi rst ictus aft er the fi rst temps faible in the verse line). th is was a solution to the problem of meter and rhythm that twentieth-century russian verse theory was persistently faced with. all modern studies of the rhythm of russian binary meters cannot but proceed from the concepts established by jakobson and trubetzkoy, and from the laws established by taranovsky (gasparov 1971: 545). in his review of russian binary meters, jakobson insisted that “taranovsky’s laws” and their dynamics are “due to the interaction of the structural properties of russian verse and may hardly be explained by the mechanical infl uence of other meters, folklore or foreign models” (jakobson 1955: 646). th is was a principally novel approach to the evolution of verse, albeit one that continued in the tradition of russian verse studies as pioneered by andrei belyi (1910) and developed by georgy shengeli (1923) and boris tomashevsky (1929). in his groundbreaking studies, andrei belyi established that the main factor of the rhythm of russian iambs is the presence or absence of stress on strong positions: the eighteenthand nineteenth-century rhythms are fundamentally diff erent from each other. when belyi arrived at this conclusion, he deliberately abstracted from the other phonic features of verse that he also identifi ed. th is narrow focus on the (un)stressedness of strong positions became an object of criticism: valery briusov (1910) reproached belyi for not taking into account extra-schematic stresses and word-boundaries, and viktor zhirmunsky (1925: 90–95) critiqued him for not diff erentiating stresses by their strength. later vadim baevsky (1968, 1969), as well as andrei kolmogorov and aleksandr prokhorov (1968) tried to formalize the diff erentiation of stresses according to their strength, but these attempts did not result in either a typology of rhythmical forms or an analysis of the evolution of rhythm. gasparov preferred to return to the tradition of shengeli, tomashevsky and taranovsky. taranovsky’s work is still in common use today. even researchers such as sergei liapin (see his article in this issue of studia metrica et poetica), who develop a fundamentally diff erent concept of the evolution of russian rhythm, 114 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov have to constantly compare their results with those of taranovsky’s classic study. at the opening of the international conference slavic verse in moscow in 1995, mikhail gasparov maintained that the major issues in describing russian rhythm have already been solved: “th e four traditional areas of verse studies – meter, rhythm, rhyme, and stanza – are already so well developed that no new revolutions are expected in the near future”; “the research methodology has already been established, and all that is needed is time and capable graduate students” (gasparov 1996: 5). th e studies of the next generation of verse theorists (fi rst and foremost, liapin; see also golovastikov 2010) show that this is not at all undisputable and we will have much to revise and reconsider from taranovsky’s conclusions. however, we have every reason to believe that the rhythmic patterns described by taranovsky have even more general signifi cance. th ey are manifested on the phrasal (jakobson 1955) and stanzaic level (gasparov 1989, lotman 2014, scherr 2017), and even in the rhythm of non-russian poetic traditions (lotman 2019). taranovsky’s book, written in serbian, was for a long time available only to the limited number of slavists who could cope with language diffi culties while reading it. th is classic work was only published in russian fairly recently (taranovsky 2010). th e english translation by walter vickery and lawrence feinberg, the fi rst part of which is now placed before readers, was made much earlier but has never before seen the light of day. professor feinberg describes the history of this translation in the foreword to this publication. walter n. vickery (1921–1995) was a british and american scholar of russian literary history and russian verse. he authored literary biographies of pushkin (1970) and lermontov (1995, published posthumously), and a study of pushkin’s duel and death (th e death of a poet, 1968). remarkably, his research papers on pushkin were published both in america and in russia, a rather rare case in pushkin scholarship. vickery’s studies of russian verse include the rhythm of pushkin’s iambic pentameter without caesura (in the international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics, 1971), russian iambic hexameter and its relation to french alexandrine verse (in american contributions to the seventh international congress of slavists, 1973), the stanzaic structure of pushkin’s “recollections in tsarskoe selo” and “th e monument” (in the taranovsky festschrift , 1973), and the attributive adjectives in lermontov’s poetry (in russian verse th eory, 1989). together with edward stankiewicz he edited and wrote an introduction to the anglophone edition of viktor zhirmunsky’s introduction to metrics: th e th eory of verse (1966). 115kiril taranovsky and his greatest work references baevsky, vadim solomonovich 1968. ob eksperimental’nom issledovanii russkogo stikha al’ternirujushchego ritma. in: metody eksperimental’nogo analiza rechi: tezisy dokladov k respublikanskomu simpoziumu... (21–23 ijunja 1968 g.). minsk: mgpiiya, 16–22. baevsky, vadim solomonovich 1969. stikh al’ternirujushchego ritma v svete auditorskogo eksperimenta. in: petrosov, konstantin grigor’evich (ed.), russkaja sovetskaja poezija i stikhovedenie. moskva: mopi imeni n. k. krupskoj, 244–250. belyi, andrei 1910. simvolizm: kniga statej. moskva: musaget. briusov, valery yakovlevich 1910. ob odnom voprose ritma (po povodu knigi andreja belogo “simvolizm”). in: apollon 11, 52–60. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1971. k 60-letiju k. f. taranovskogo. in: uchenye zapiski tartuskogo universitetata 284 (trudy po znakovym sistemam / works on semiotics / tööd semiootika alalt v). tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus, 545–546. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1989. strofi cheskij ritm v russkom 4-stopnom jambe i khoree. in: scherr, barry p.; worth, dean s. (eds.), russian verse th eory: proceedings of the 1987 conference at ucla. columbus, ohio: slavica, 133–147. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. lingvistika stikha. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh: stikhovedenie, lingvistika i poetika: materialy mezhdunarodnoj konferentsii, 19–23 ijunja 1995 g. moskva: nauka, 5–17. jakobson, roman 1955. review of taranovsky, kiril. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga, 1953. in: word 11(4), 644–647. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1955.11659582 [republished as “russian binary meters” in: jakobson, roman 1979. selected writings. vol. 5: on verse, its masters and explorers. th e hague, paris: mouton, 167–169.] jakobson, roman 1979 [1930]. on translation of verse. in: jakobson, roman. selected writings. vol. 5: on verse, its masters and explorers. th e hague, paris: mouton, 131–134. jakobson, roman; schooneveld, cornelis h. van; worth, dean s. (eds.) 1973. slavic poetics: essays in honor of kiril taranovsky. th e hague, paris: mouton. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1968. k osnovam russkoj klassicheskoj metriki. in: meylakh, boris solomonovich (ed.), sodruzhestvo nauk i tajny tvorchestva. moskva: iskusstvo, 397–432. 116 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov levinton, georgy akhillovich; timenchik, roman davidovich 1978. kniga k. f. taranovskogo o poezii o. e. mandel’shtama. in: russian literature 6(2), 197–211. liapin, sergei evgen’evich 2020. russian iambic tetrameter: th e evolution of its rhythmic structure. in: studia metrica et poetica 7(2), 7–22. lotman, mihhail 1984. semantika konteksta i podteksta v poezii mandel’shtama. in: international journal of slavic linguistic and poetics 29, 133−142. lotman, mihhail 2013. formalizm i strukturalizm v stikhovedcheskikh shtudijakh romana jakobsona. in: russkij formalizm (1913–2013): mezhdunarodnyj kongress k 100-letiju russkoj formal’noj shkoly. moskva, 25–29 avgusta 2013: tezisy dokladov. moskva: institut slavjanovedenija ran, 223–225. lotman, mihhail 2014. ritmicheskaja struktura oneginskoj strofy i problemy strofi cheskogo ritma. in: scherr, barry p.; bailey, james; johnson, vida t. (eds.), poetry and poetics: a centennial tribute to kiril taranovsky. bloomington, ind.: slavica, 61−89. lotman, mihhail 2019. th e semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics: vladimir nabokov’s and jurgis baltrušaitis’s binary tetrameters from a typological perspective. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 74–101. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.03 lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2018. eesti silbilis-rõhulise rütmika jooni: neliktrohheus ja -jamb 19. sajandi teisel poolel ja 20. sajandi alguses. tallinn: eksa. scherr, barry p. 2017. analyzing stanza rhythm in russian poetry: a brief history and future directions. in: akimova, marina vjacheslavovna; tarlinskaja, marina (eds.), m. l. gasparovu-stikhovedu in memoriam. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 117–137. shengeli, georgy arkadievich 1923. traktat o russkom stikhe. chast’ 1: organicheskaja metrika. izdanie 2-e, pererabotannoe. moskva, petrograd: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1955/1956. ruski četvorostopni jamb u prvim dvema decenijama xx veka. in: južnoslovenski fi lolog 21(1/4), 15–43. 117kiril taranovsky and his greatest work taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1963. o vzaimootnoshenii stikhotvornogo ritma i tematiki. in: american contributions to the fift h international congress of slavists: sofi a, september 1963. vol. 1: literary contributions. th e hague: mouton & co., 287–332. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1966. chetyrekhstopnyj jamb andreja belogo. in: international journal of slavic linguistic and poetics 10, 127–147. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1976. essays on mandel’štam. cambridge, mass., and london: harvard university press. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 2010. russkie dvuslozhnye razmery. stat’i o stikhe. son’kin, viktor valentinovich (tr.). moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1929. o stikhe. leningrad: priboj. wachtel, michael 2015. charts, graphs, and meaning: kiril taranovsky and the study of russian versifi cation. in: slavic and east european journal 59(2), 178–193. https://doi.org/10.30851/59.2.001 zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha. leningrad: academia. a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation alfred behrmann* abstract: the paper examines the epigrams included in michael hamburger’s translations of hölderlin’s work, focusing on the observance of metrical rules and offering alternatives where they have not been complied with, taking care to change as little as possible. keywords: hölderlin, epigram, prosody, literary translation in matters of prosody one has to be punctilious, which is not the same as petty or fussy. careful attention is called for no tably in very short poems where the slightest blemish immediately strikes the ear of any connoisseur. jean-paul jacobs in conversation i pound’s esteem for yeats (‘the greatest living poet in english’) did not stop him from improving some of that poet’s lines. may one not, then, expect forgiveness if one suggests some changes in the work of so accomplished a translator of german verse into english as michael hamburger? here is hölderlin’s sophokles viele versuchten umsonst das freudigste freudig zu sagen hier spricht endlich es mir, hier in der trauer sich aus. * author’s address: alfred behrmann, free university berlin, ferdinandstraße 22, d-12209 berlin, germany; email: lesal.behrmann@gmx.de. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 34–46 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.02 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.02 35a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation sophocles many have tried, but in vain, with joy to express the most joyful; here at last, in grave sadness, wholly i find it expressed.1 suggested alternative: many have tried in vain to put forth with joy the most joyful; here in sadness at last, wholly i find it expressed. of the variants proposed only one is essential; it concerns the pentameter: the observance of its specific mark, the clash of two stresses (arses) at the caesura, in the middle of the line: x́ x (x) x́ x (x) x́ | x́ x x x́ x x x́ in hamburger’s version the first half of the line (hemistich) ends with an unstressed syllable (thesis): [sád]nĕss instead of a stressed one that would clash with wholly. the remedy is easy: at last and sadness change places. the other variants are put forward for stylistic reasons. they are, in order: (1) the omission of but from the hexameter. it lacks a warrant in the german, and without it the translation has more of the simplicity and even flow of the original. (2) the replacing of express with ‘put forth.’ it avoids a repetition in close proximity: expressed in the second line. (3) the shifting of with joy towards the end of the verse. it brings joy and joyful more closely together, echoing the german and adding to the contrast with sadness in the next line. (4) lastly, another omission: that of grave from grave sadness, proposed, again, to keep faith with the straightforwardness of the german. this excision is more difficult to defend than the first. it might be argued that unqualified sadness is too weak to render trauer, which denotes a deeper sentiment than mere sadness (traurigkeit). true – so true that other options should be considered. there is ‘mourning’ – the dictionary equivalent of trauer – for ‘sadness.’ it carries the same semantic weight as grave sadness and is, on that score, admissible, as is, for the same reason, ‘deep grief,’ which would allow adherence to hamburger’s word order: ‘here at last in deep grief...’ the question raised by my version as given above is this, can one admit the objection to unqualified ‘sadness’ and still prefer the omission of grave? if one does, one opts for style 1 hölderlin 2004: 108; here are also the following four distichs. hölderlin’s texts in this book (also used in the present pages) are mainly based on friedrich beissner’s edition (beissner 1943–1977). 36 alfred behrmann at the expense of exact semantic equivalence – a dilemma ineluctable in the translation of poems.2 sophocles is one of five distichs forming the second of two groups of epigrams in hamburger’s translation. surprisingly, all five of their pentameters are faulty; surprisingly because their blemishes are absent (or all but absent) from other distichs: those of the elegies. arguably, the epigrams belong to an earlier stage of the sixty-years’ labour that the author spent on his english versions and lack the benefit of revision bestowed on later work.3 it seems worthwhile to look at the other four epigrams in an attempt, not to find fault but to find out what might be done, by a minimum of change, to redress the violation of any of the three rules that govern the formation of correct pentameters. they are: (1) the fixed number of syllables (12 to 14 according to the type of foot – dactyl or trochee – chosen for the first two positions); (2) the obligatory caesura (hephthemimeres) in the middle of the line where two stressed syllables (ictus) clash; and (3) the immutable structure of the line’s second half: x́ x x x́ x x x́. πρὸς ῾εαυτὸν lern im leben die kunst, im kunstwerk lerne das leben, siehst du das eine recht, siehst du das andere auch. πρὸς ῾εαυτὸν living, in life, learn your art, in art works learn about living; if the one you see clearly, aright, likewise the other you’ll see. living, in life, learn your art, in art works learn about living; seeing aright the one, likewise the other you’ll see. 2 an impressive example of considerations of form overriding those of ‘content’ occurs in ‘auden’s last poem’ by harald hartung: no manuscript was found of the haiku auden is said to have scrapped it it had two syllables too many. (hartung 2010: 24) 3 the five epigrams of the first group (hölderlin 2004: 61) support this impression: three of their hexameters and one pentameter are too long by one foot. 37a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation here, in hamburger’s version, the required clash of two stresses at the centre has been observed, but the first hemistich has outgrown its size; instead of the maximum 7 syllables it has 9. this seems easy to right: by dropping clearly, whose lack of a counterpart in the original marks it out for deletion. the trouble is, that even with clearly gone, the hemistich does not pass muster because the metre is disturbed. the cutting results in a sequence of four trochees, i.e. four stresses: íf the óne you sée aríght where only three comply with the rule. this again is easy to mend: by replacing the conjunctional clause (if you see...) with a participle construction (‘seeing...’). der zürnende dichter fürchtet den dichter nicht, wenn er edel zürnet, sein buchstab tödtet, aber es macht geister lebendig der geist. the angry poet never fear the poet when nobly he rages; his letter kills, but his spirit to spirits gives new vigour, new life. never fear the poet when nobly he rages; his letter kills, but his spirit imparts vigour to spirits, new life. there are two things wrong here with the pentameter. the caesura, instead of falling behind the third stress, falls behind the syllable following it; and the second hemistich, whose structure is rigorously fixed (ẋxx ẋxx ẋ), is short by one syllable after the first stress. both faults are easy to mend. die scherzhaften immer spielt ihr und scherzt? ihr müßt! o freunde! mir geht diß in die seele, denn diß müssen verzweifelte nur. the jokers always you trifle and joke? you have to? o friends, how my very soul responds to your plight: no one has to but those in despair. always you trifle and joke? you m u s t ? o friends, how it hurts my soul, for nobody must, no one but those in despair. here, the caesura falls correctly, but the second hemistich is too long by two syllabes (9 instead of 7), which gives it a fourth ictus or arsis: nó one hás to but thóse in despáir. 38 alfred behrmann apart from bringing the pentameter in line with the rules, the change undoes the amplification of hölderlin’s mir geht diß / in die seele in the translator’s my very / soul responds to your plight. the act of shrinking removes the word plight: a notion linked to the poet’s perspective, not the jokers’, who seem to be happy enough with their compulsive urge. if hölderlin trusts the reader to see a plight in it, one might as well leave it at that. there is another point here that invites reflection. why, in the english, is the exclamation mark after ihr müßt replaced with a question mark: you have to? obviously both punctuations intimate the same: the poet’s response to the answer he has received from the jokers – his half-incredulous repetition of their words. so strong is the emphasis on müßt that hölderlin spaced it. his exclamation mark is there to redouble the stress: not a sign of carelessness in the author who forgot to mark the words as a question (a job that is left to the context). the translator mistakenly thought there was something to put right here: another instance supporting the assumption that these epigrams were translated by an author not yet on top of his burgeoning adventure. (thus he failed to take over the spacing of m ü ß t from his chief source – the große stuttgarter ausgabe – into his german text.) in compliance with my principle of ‘minimum change’ i retained his question mark. wurzel alles übels einig zu seyn, ist göttlich und gut; woher ist die sucht denn unter den menschen, daß nur einer und eines nur sei? the root of all evil being at one is godlike and good, but human, too human, the mania which insists there is only the one, one country, one truth and one way. being at one is godlike and good, but whence among men this urge to allow but the one, one in all beings and ways? owing to its high degree of condensation and its ‘open’ semantics – relying on suggestion rather than exact denotation – this last epigram of the group is clearly the hardest to translate, which should arouse some indulgence in the reader who expects a strict translation and instead is given a paraphrase: more interpretation than scrupulous rendering of the text under the restricting conditions of metered speech. metric anomalies abound. the trouble starts with a hexameter that isn’t one; extra syllables wedged in between the fourth and fifth foot (áll human) blow it up into a heptameter. no less irregular the pentameter. its first half has 39a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation four feet for the canonical three; the second starts with a supernumerary thesis (one), which deprives the verse of is hallmark, the clash of stresses at the centre, and blurs the symmetry of its structure. a likely objection to the alternative suggested is, that ‘urge’ (trieb, drang) is too weak a replacement for mania (sucht), which, of course, is true. called for, however, was a monosyllable, one that at least comes close to mania in meaning – a debatable choice, admittedly, like any choice between semantic and metric considerations. what has happened here is obvious. the translator, confronted with two tasks, both formidable and rarely compatible – the rendering of meaning and the preserving of metre –, has tackled the first and all but given up on the second or, at least, allowed himself great liberties in handling it. one sees him trying to make sense of, or rather draw a maximum of explicitness from, a distich highly charged with meaning but meaning left largely implied. his success can best be gauged by the paraphrase test, and hamburger, to be sure, comes off well in it. i for one can find no fault with the result of his ‘unfolding’ of the implicit. for what is the one (einer) and one (eines) if not one person (who may well be a god) and one way of life postulated as unique and binding norms? the terms – the one, one – are loose enough to suggest a wide range of items such as ruler, ruled, and rules or hamburger’s country, truth, and way, i.e. the political, religious, and social institutions of a society. to specify these facets with any claim to completeness or exactness is neither possible within the narrow bounds of the distich nor covered by the poet’s authority. in a letter to his brother karl of june 4, 1799, the year from which the epigram presumably dates, hölderlin, speaking of ‘people’ (‘die menschen’) in terms no more specific than those of the epigram, writes: ‘not so much that they are as they are but that they hold what they are to be the only norm [‘das einzige’] and will not admit anything else, that is the evil.’ since the poet kept his statement general, i tried in my suggested version to specify as little as possible (‘beings and ways’), unable as i was to avoid specification altogether. behind the question, how plausible are hamburger’s specifications of the unspecified? emerges another: is he, as a translator, entitled to undertake them? by making implications or mere possibilities explicit, he passes from rendering the original in another tongue to its interpretation. whether this is legitimate or philological abuse has long been debated among theorists of translation. here is no room for a lengthy discussion of this knotty issue. only this much should be said, for clarity’s sake, with regard to the present case. certain elements of interpretation are never absent from translation, simply because they are not absent from perception. anyone who reads with a view to grasping the essence of what he reads interprets, and no two readers reading the same work in the same edition perceive the same in their reading because 40 alfred behrmann their perceptions are differently oriented and conditioned. else there would be no squabble over the right way to understand a poem. and a translator is a reader who sets down in a different medium what he perceives in the original – what he p e r c e i v e s in it, not what he wants it to say. that is a difference at which we may stop, for there is no evidence of michael hamburger’s wanting to say a thing that hölderlin would have refused to acknowledge.4 the cardinal problem then, which needs addressing once more, is that of metre. what explains the adherence to a strict pattern, that of the classical distich, vis-à-vis a cavalier treatment of its rules? was the translator satisfied, at least initially, with a relaxed view of metrical minutiae? it seems fit to hold his practice against the background of his declared intentions. in his preface (of 2003) he writes: i had decided that i must retain his [hölderlin’s] adaptation of classical forms in my versions, much more refractory though these forms have proved in english [...] than in german [...].5 [m]any of my versions could have been made to run more smoothly and acceptably for english-language ears; but the exoticism of these metres [...] struck me as indispensable in his case.6 with the modesty so characteristic of this fine man he goes on to say: it’s enough for me if these versions of mine remain accessories to the originals that face them in this book – or substitutes, as close to these as i could make them not only in sense [...] but in movement, structure, breath and tone, for readers with no access at all to the german texts.7 4 that translation implies interpretation (in the sense outlined) suggests affinity between their purposes. so much of what peter szondi says about the latter applies to the former that mere quotation will bear out the analogy: ‘no commentary on a poem, no critical examination of its style may aim at a description of the poem that could be considered by itself. [...] this is obvious particularly in the extreme case of the hermetic poem. here interpretations are keys. but it cannot be their business to face the poem with its deciphered image. for although the hermetic poem, too, wants to be understood and often cannot be understood without a key, it must be understood, in the act of deciphering, as an encyphered poem since only as such is it the poem that it is. it is a lock that time after time snaps shut; its elucidation must not attempt to break it open’ (szondi 1970: 12). 5 hölderlin 2004. 6 hölderlin 2004. 7 hölderlin 2004. 41a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation giving equal weight to both these aspects, he conforms to the basic principle of all good translation, notably that of poetry in classical metres. i would like this present note to be seen as an exposition of, or rather, in view of its brevity, a glimpse into, the jumble of quandaries awaiting the grappler with this intriguing and off-putting business. the poems and translations quoted, however few and short, and their limited technical discussion may yet lead on to some reflections on poetry, which includes translation if the translator aims at poetry, not a crib, digest, or paraphrase. an author who wants to write a poem in strict form such as elegiac distichs or french alexandrines has to rely on other promptings than those of emotion, intuition, and spontaneity. once he has accepted the rules, writes valéry, he can no longer say everything; and in order to say anything, it is no longer enough to conceive it strongly, to be full of it and drunk with it, nor to give off at some mystic moment a figure which has been almost completed in our absence. [...] [h]e must labor [...,] pursue words that do not always exist and chimeric coincidences [...]. (valéry 1958: 16) he has to hope, that is, for the slender chance of finding words that answer different, mutually independent requirements: semantic, grammatical, metric, rhythmic, stylistic, phonetic, etc.8 more often than not the sought-for qualities, complete in an ideal word, are not found together in a real word, and the poet, having to make the best of it, determines how many and which of these ‘should-be’s’ are de rigueur.9 8 a concrete example is furnished by valéry: ‘the poet in search of a word that shall be: feminine disyllabic containing p or f ending in a mute syllable synonym of fracture, disruption and not learned, not rare – 6 requirements – at least. syntax, music, prosody, sense, and sensitivity.’ (valéry 1993: 196 f ) 9 how much the author’s plight is a poetic plight becomes apparent where no constraints of metre or rhyme impinge on his work: in a prose translation of poetry. their non-interference is bought at the price of their non-co-operation, and that is a high price. in a conversation about joachim wohlleben’s prose translation of hafiz’s poems (hafiz 2004) michael hamburger placed that undertaking at the opposite end to his own on the scale of modes available to translators. what else should one expect of a poet? 42 alfred behrmann the translator, too, is challenged by this ever-present dilemma. aware that he cannot furnish a complete equivalent of the text before him, he sets up an order of importance among its features so as to mark out the least dispensable one(s) for preservation. here exactly lies the crux of both the translator’s and the translator’s critic’s job, for there is no unquestioned criterion for correct priorities among demands, often jarring and irreconcilable, fixed for translation by diverse authorities. and more than that, conflicting claims are not just a matter for lawgiving schools, each with its own set of ideals and abstract tenets: they are acutely felt by the individual translator who has qualms about his decision in this case or that, who sometimes revokes it and often admits the justness of objections raised (or to be raised) to his choice, even advancing them in occasional footnotes. i hope that in the light of these last remarks the alternatives to some of the text in michael hamburger’s translation will be seen for what they are: suggestions put forward, tentatively, for consideration. he was too generous a person and, as his frequent revisions attest, too much aware of the precarious nature of translation, to take them for anything else. as he wrote in his preface to the third edition (1989):10 “no translation, as such, can be definitive.’11 ii it may not be amiss to cast a glance at those other epigrams in michael hamburger’s translation whose shape gives rise to critical reflection. they are: guter rath hast du verstand und ein herz, so zeige nur eines von beiden, beides verdammen sie dir, zeigest du beides zugleich. good advice you’ve a head and a heart? reveal only one of them, i say; if you reveal both at once, doubly they’ll damn you, for both.12 you’ve a head and a heart? take care to show one of them only; if you reveal both at once, doubly they’ll damn you, for both. 10 hölderlin 2004. 11 in other words, a translation can be definitive only as the work of an individual author who declares it his ultimate version since nothing that he could do to it would be an improvement. 12 hölderlin 2004. 43a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation there’s something wrong here with hamburger’s hexameter: not a technical fault but one of emphasis. not only does he introduce an i into it that is absent from the german, he loads it with a semantic weight, or should one say he allows it to attract that weight, owing to the impossibility to leave it unstressed: only as an arsis can it support the hexameter’s final formula: the adonian (x́ x x x́ x́). the proposed alternative leaves the main stress on ‘one’, unchallenged by another stress, as in the german. i am still not happy with this amendment. it pushes the word ‘show’ into a thesis-position for which it is somewhat too heavy so that the reader (at a first reading) may put the same stress on it as on ‘one’ and so upset the metre. to avoid this pitfall, the reader needs a clear conception of the line’s prosodic build-up. relying on such a reader is the weak excuse for acquiescing in my makeshift version. wondering what may account for the translator’s introduction of the ‘poetic i’ in his version, one finds a hint in a note of friedrich beissner’s: “it is not improbable that this epigram, like “die vortreflichen” and ‘die beschreibende poësie” [...], has arisen from the deep annoyance at schillers’s renewed rejection of [hölderlin’s] poems “diotima” and “an die guten rathgeber” in his letter of november 24, 1796 schiller had wisely suggested to eschew philosophical topics, i.e. not to show reason in lyrical poems and to keep close to the sensual world, faithfully reporting the given fact’ (beissner 1943–1977: 541). however that may be, hölderlin has chosen to keep his ‘i’ out of his verses, a decision that should be respected. die vortreflichen lieben brüder! versucht es nur nicht, vortreflich zu werden ehrt das schiksaal und tragts, stümper auf erden zu seyn denn ist einmal der kopf voran, so folget der schweif auch und die klassische zeit deutscher poëten ist aus. the excellent dearest brothers, whatever you do, never try to be excellent writers; honour fate, and accept that it’s human to bungle your trade. for if once the head ventures forth, the tail will certainly follow, and our classical age, germans, is over for good. dearest brothers, don’t ever strive to be excellent writers; honour fate and accept bungling your trade as your lot: once the head ventures forth, the tail will certainly follow, and our classical age, germans, is over for good. 44 alfred behrmann the purport of this double distich, though not expressly stated, is clear; the reader arrives at it by conclusion.13 there are writers whose generality cannot hope to achieve distinction by mastering their craft. that is left to the head – those possessed of genius – whom the tail of adherents will follow, and that singular event will seal the age of classical german poetry. (prophetic words.) the flaws in hamburger’s version: both hexameters are really heptameters; likewise, the first pentameter’s second half is too long by one foot. in all three cases the excessive length is easy to check by ridding the lines of dispensable matter. die beschreibende poësie wißt! apoll ist der gott der zeitungsschreiber geworden und sein mann ist, wer ihm treulich das factum erzählt. descriptive poetry latest news: apollo’s become the god of journalists, press men, and his blue-eyed boy he who reports all the facts. latest news: apollo’s become the journalists’ god now, and his blue-eyed boy he who reports all the facts. here, too, the english first line has grown into a heptameter – the most frequent departure from the metric norm in hamburger’s versions: a fact that seems to confirm the surmise that the epigrams went into english at an early stage of the translator’s practice and were left to stand as they had emerged from a phase of trial and experimentation. iii modern-language verse in ancient metres attracts scant attention, even from philologists including those that go by the name of prosodists. small wonder at a time when nobody cares to venture so much as a definition of this mysterious thing, a verse. 13 of several annotated editions i looked up, none devotes a separate commentary to this epigram; only two refer to a different entry that mentions it in passing. obviously, it is not thought to need explaining. cf. schmidt 1969: 305; lüders 1989: 122. 45a note on some of hölderlin’s epigrams in english translation here, the rendering of classical distichs in present-day english could be no more than adumbrated, with attention focused on the observance of the most basic rules of the metric pattern. i conclude by hinting at one or two of the features that were left undiscussed but require attention in any closer inspection of the matter. there are problems inherent in the substitution of stress (weight) for length (duration) in the build-up of the verse line, which involves the replacing of most ancient spondees (−́ −̀) with modern trochees (x́ x), or the position of varying caesuras as a means of shaping the verses’ rhythmic profile. in his preface quoted above michael hamburger speaks of the much stronger resistence to the adaptation of classical forms in english than in german. it may be partly explained by an abundance of monosyllables and other short words in english not to be found in german. now very short words, even stressed ones, are easier to put into a thesis-position where they hold their own against the arses in their neighbourhood than are unwieldier ones – something to be observed in shakespeare’s blank verse, a flexible form adaptable to a variety of stylistic modes, admitting a fair amount of freedom for the interplay of metre and rhythm, and allowing almost any deviation from the abstract scheme14 so long as this scheme is not lost in the listener’s ear. there is little affinity between this freedom and the more rigid pattern of classical forms, whose contours have to stand out more sharply and steadily if they are not to be blurred by too much looseness (brought on, for instance, by extra syllables or entire feet). a transfer of the former – the standard, as it were, in english – to the latter is fraught with hazard; it may easily produce an uncomfortable feeling in english ears as when they hear a line like this from a distich in hamburger’s english: you’ve a head and a heart? reveal only one of them, i say where and, in thesis-position, bears a heavier stress than the surrounding arses, head and heart. together with the colloquial contraction you’ve at the beginning and the somewhat precarious i towards the end, this trait explains what the translator means by a different version that ‘could have been made to run more smoothly and acceptably for english-language ears’ than the strict one he chose. 14 such as stress shift (anaclasis), (multiple) stress clash, disyllabic theses, or hypermetric and missing syllables. 46 alfred behrmann so much about the epigrams, a tiny section of the translator’s imposing work. to do justice to his achievement requires a comprehensive and detailed examination of its entire body. it would be a meritorious undertaking not only as a tribute to the translator but equally as an elucidation of hölderlin’s poetry through the prism of a different linguistic medium, for nothing demands more minute attention to a poet’s craft than rewriting his lines in another tongue and in a metre that exacts utmost precision and economy, while expected to show no signs of constraint. hölderlin excels in his mastery of the craft, and translation serves to demonstrate that excellence by revealing the limited success at trying to equal it in a foreign version. references beissner, friedrich (ed.) 1943–1977. hölderlin. sämtliche werke (große stuttgarter ausgabe). stuttgart: w. kohlhammer. hafiz 2004. die ghaselen des hafiz. neu in deutsche prosa übersetzt, mit einleitung und lesehilfen von joachim wohlleben. würzburg: königshausen & neumann. hölderlin, friedrich 2004. poems and fragments. translated by michael hamburger. fourth bilingual edition with a preface, introduction and notes. london: anvil press poetry. hartung, harald 2010. wintermalerei. gedichte. göttingen: wallstein. lüders, detlev (ed.) 1989. friedrich hölderlin. sämtliche gedichte. vol. 2. wiesbaden: aula-verlag. schmidt, jochen (ed.) 1969. friedrich hölderlin. gedichte. frankfurt a. m.: insel verlag. szondi, peter 1970. hölderlin-studien. mit einem traktat über philologische erkenntnis. frankfurt a. m.: suhrkamp. valéry, paul 1958. the art of poetry. transl. by denise folliot. with an introduction by t.s. eliot. in: mathews, jackson (ed.), the collected works of paul valéry. vol. 7. london: routledge & kegan paul. valéry, paul 1993. cahiers/hefte. ed. by hartmut köhler and jürgen schmidtradefeldt. vol. 6. frankfurt a. m.: s. fischer. the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon in lesbian poetry anni arukask* abstract: the works of sappho and alcaeus, 7th–6th century bc lyric poets from the island of lesbos, represent the aeolic tradition of ancient greek poetry. in this paper, two metrical structures of this tradition, that both have two quantity-free positions (anceps, brevis in longo), are analysed and compared with regard to the quantitative tendencies of these positions. the first metrical structure, the sapphic hendecasyllable, was used by both poets; the other, aiolikon, is not attested in alcaeus’s work. the analysed corpus consists of all the survived lines in these meters. due to the fragmentary nature of the material, the statistical analysis is presented in two sets to add and include the data of the sapphic and alcaic lines about which there is a suspicion that they may be in these meters, and also to differentiate dubious data from the undubious. in addition, the statistical data of the quantitative tendencies of the undubious lines is also expressed with generative models. in general, all the free positions, except the ancipites of sappho’s aiolikon, display a preference for heavy syllables and the preference is more pronounced in the brevis in longo position, especially when it comes to aiolikon. comparing the hendecasyllables, alcaeus tends to have more heavy syllables than sappho. aiolikon’s free positions exhibit the biggest quantitative contrast. keywords: sapphic hendecasyllable, aiolikon, anceps, brevis in longo, comparativestatistical method, generative models, meter, lyric poetry, sappho, alcaeus, ancient greek poetry introduction the aim of the paper is, firstly, to present and compare the quantitative tendencies in the anceps and brevis in longo positions of two metrical structures in the poetry of sappho and alcaeus, two lesbian singers of the 7–6th century bc, and, secondly, to demonstrate, on the basis of these new data, the generative * author’s address: anni arukask, university of tartu, lossi 3, 51003, tartu, estonia; email: anni.arukask@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 97–113 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.04 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.04 98 anni arukask models of these verse forms. the two verse forms in question are the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon.1 in sappho’s corpus, the whole alexandrian first book (frr. 1–42 v) is in the sapphic stanza (of which the hendecasyllable forms a part), and fragments in aiolikon are placed into the fourth volume (frr. 58–91 v), which is the first non-monometrical book (cf. page 1955: 114–115; lidov 2009: 107; liberman 2007: 49). there might be a few lines in the sapphic stanza among fragments without a book classification2 (cf. voigt 1971: 15). as these two are the most prevalent metrical forms in her preserved corpus, they were chosen for the analysis. alcaeus has 11–22 fragments in sapphic stanzas (cf. voigt 1971: 21), while in sappho’s case, at least 40 such fragments have survived. in aiolikon, we have 4–12 sapphic fragments. as there is no firm evidence that alcaeus ever used that meter (cf. lidov 2009: 105), only sapphic lines are included in this number. the full numbers of the fragments in question are presented in such an indefinite manner because the meter of only some of them can be determined with certainty. alcaeus’s corpus consists of about 400 fragments. among its 11–22 sapphic fragments, 10 certainly (61 lines) and 7 probably (22 lines) sapphic fragments with hendecasyllables could be analysed. in the same vein, sappho’s corpus has 34 analysable fragments of sapphic stanza with 384 certainly (from 33 fragments) and 11 probably (from 8 fragments) hendecasyllabic lines. in regard to aiolikon, there are 4 certain (32 lines) and 7 probable (26 lines) fragments. the following charts depict the occurrence of the sapphic stanza and aiolikon in sappho’s preserved corpus (frr. 1–168c voigt, 1384 lines from 176 fragments). chart 1 shows that about 42% of the lines in the corpus cannot be analysed metrically when only the lines for which the metrical value can be determined with certainty are considered. the sapphic stanza covers about 38% of the corpus and aiolikon 3%. all other meters amount roughly to 18%. chart 2 adds the lines for which a probable meter can be assigned. under these conditions, the sapphic stanza and aiolikon cover about 38% and 8% of the corpus respectively, other meters take 24% and about 30% is left undetermined. 1 the meter was called aiolikon by the 2nd-century ad alexandrian philologist hephaestion, referring to the fact that it was used by an aeolic poet sappho, whom he names as its frequent user. he classified it as an ionic and describes it as an acatalectic double tetrameter (to be more exact, three ionics with a trochee at the end). (hephaestion enchiridion de metris 11.5) 2 unclassified fragments begin from fr. 118 on. 99the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... sapphic stanza aiolikon other undetermined 38% 8% 24% 30% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% sap phic stanza aioli kon other und etermined chart 2. metrical distribution of the lines in sappho’s preserved corpus between the sapphic stanza, aiolikon, everything else, and undetermined meter when both the lines with a surely determined metrical value and lines with a probable metrical value are taken into account. sapphic stanza aiolikon other undetermined 38% 3% 18% 42% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% sap phic stanza aioli kon other und etermined chart 1. metrical distribution of the lines in sappho’s preserved corpus between the sapphic stanza, aiolikon, everything else, and undetermined meter when only lines with a surely determined metrical value are taken into account. 100 anni arukask both these metrical structures are examples of the archaic nature of the aeolic poetic tradition which – among ancient greek poetic traditions – is the closest to the reconstructed indo-european verse in which quantities are regulated only towards the end of the verse and are free towards the beginning (vd. meillet 1923). aeolic metrical structures have a fixed number of syllables in a period (no contractions or resolutions), they are for the most part easily divided into cola, and often the first two positions are free in respect to quantity, although their realisation as two light syllables is rare (the aeolic base). as the rhythm in the aeolic base is thusly limited, west prefers to mark it with symbols ○ ○, not × ×. the cola are asymmetric and cannot be divided into feet3 (west 1982: 29–30; 1987: 32–33). different authors have used different cola as the basis of their descriptions of aeolic forms. among dietmar korzeniewski’s three base cola, the one most fitting for these two meters is the hipponactean (hi) 4 (korzeniewski 1968: 129). at the same time, for martin west, the iamb is very important in relation to forming new cola by means of extension.5 there also exists a way of forming new cola by means of expansion6 (west 1982: 31–32). the first of these lesbian metrical structures, the sapphic hendecasyllable, which was used by both poets, can be described as an acephalic hipponactean (“⋏” in the abbreviated colon name stands for acephalia) that has been extended with a cretic (cr) in the beginning (korzeniewski 1968: 129); or, in west’s terminology, a hagesichorean7 that is prefixed with an acatalectic iamb (west 1982: 32). the fourth position of the line is anceps,8 and the last position is brevis in longo.9 3 however, marc dominicy has made a solid attempt to reconstruct the composition and metrical structure of a large number of aeolic lines with his new metrical grammar in which the cola are analysed into feet (vd. dominicy 1994). 4 5 forming a new colon by means of extension means that another colon (some variant of an iamb) is suffixed or prefixed at a colon’s borders. 6 forming a new colon by means of expansion means that a colon is amplified by the repetition of another, smaller colon (usually a dactyl or choriamb) one to three times in the middle of that colon. 7 8 anceps is a metrical position with unregulated quantity which therefore can be realised as either light or heavy (west 1982: 18; 1987: 5). it is never placed beside another anceps, with the exception of the aeolic base and anaclasis (maas 1962: 29). 9 the last position of a line is always free and unregulated (either heavy or light, an anceps), 101the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... cr ⋏hi or ⋏ia ha for the lesbians, however, the hendecasyllable is never an independent meter, as it always appears as a part of the sapphic stanza. the sapphic stanza is a realisation of a quite common10 aaa verse-form; i.e., the last line is an amplification of the pattern present in the preceding lines (west 1982: 32–33): in the third line, the hendecasyllable has been amplified with an adonic ( ). the stanza is composed of periods that all have feminine or pendant endings. lesbian authors hardly ever combine lines with endings of a different nature; i.e. all endings tend to be either masculine or feminine (lidov 2009: 106). ancient colometry and also many modern editions tend to treat the last line as consisting of an 11-syllable and 5-syllable adonic part that separates into two lines after the 11th position, where caesura is frequent (west 1982: 33). this has resulted in the verse being perceived as a 4-line stanza by the ancient romans and as well as other european traditions (cf. west 1982: 33), but in the 19th century, theoreticians started to argue that aaa strophe types should not be analysed and divided in that way.11 the other metrical structure, the aiolikon, which to our knowledge was never used by alcaeus, is usually described as an acephalic hipponactean with a double choriambic (c) expansion (lidov 2009: 104, 105; ferrari 2010: 19, 118). the first position (anceps) and the last position (brevis in longo) of the line are free of fixed quantity. but some rhythmic patterns create an expectation for a heavy syllable. when that position actually realises as light, that syllable is brevis in longo or syllaba brevis in elemento longo. the additional time would be filled with a following pause (cf. quintilianus 9.4.93) (west 1982: 4–5; 1987: 4). for simplicity’s sake, the line-final position will always be called brevis in longo in this article. 10 the verse form might be considered common just because many sapphic and alcaic stanzas have been preserved. 11 the first to raise the question were the german classical philologists gottfried hermann (1816: 687) and heinrich ludolf ahrens (1868: 581). the first to comment specifically on the sapphic and alcaic stanzas was otto crusius (1888). 102 anni arukask ⋏hi2c in addition, aiolikon is a stichic form – i.e., one that is used invariably in all lines throughout a poem – that is often marked down in dyads (cf. p. oxy. 1787 frr. 3, 5, 34). on the other hand, chris golston and thomas riad, who applied the fresher, language-based methods of generative metrics on greek lyric poetry, find that it serves better to express lyric meters with simpler basic units than through cumbersome cola.12 according to their approach, the basic units are dactylic and trochaic, which are respectively marked by violations of linguistic constraints noclash and nolapse,13 as these constraints are ranked low in greek phonology. in their scheme for the sapphic hendecasyllable, “t” stands for a trochee and “d” for a dactyl (golston, riad 2005: 105, 77). tdt the aiolikon would probably be expressed as follows: σ tantandt in the scheme, “σ” symbolises an extrametical position and “tan” stands for an anaclastic trochee. however, golston and riad claim that choriambs, expressed here through tan, are typologically bizarre and problematic. they have analysed the cola with choriambic sequences as ones with dactylic cores (vd. golston, riad 2005: 110). 12 the multitude of analytic primes is said to result in less explanatory power of the system, many parallel acceptable ways to express the meters that can make the verse forms look unnecessarily complicated, and, additionally, the cola can only be used to analyse lyric poets ( vd. golston, riad 2005: 111–113). 13 noclash is defined as ‘prominent syllables are not adjacent’ and nolapse as ‘unprominent moras/syllables must not be adjacent’. also, trochaic and iambic are regarded as the same type of basic unit, both violating nolapse. other analytically necessary constraints that are less often violated are exhaustativity (resulting in extrametricality), binarity (resulting in catalexis) and alignment (resulting in anaclasis). exahustativity is defined as ‘every foot is directly dominated by a prosodic word’ (vd. golston, riad 2005: 97, 101; 113; 104). 103the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... methods as it would be intuitively expected that a particular quantity tends to dominate in the ambivalent positions of anceps and brevis in longo, the quantitative tendencies of the aiolikon and the sapphic hendecasyllable were analysed in this regard using the comparative-statistical method. for the sapphic hendecasyllable, the analysis included and did not differentiate the so-called third lines of the sapphic stanza and the pure hendecasyllabic ones14 to make the data comparable with those of the subsequent users of this meter. in the case of sappho’s poetry, the sample consisted of 170 anceps positions and 151 brevis in longo positions from the lines in fragments that voigt identifies as sapphic stanzas and also from newer fragmentary finds associated with dirk obbink.15 when the whole fragment was preserved well enough to provide sufficient semantical context, the editors’ guesses were trusted, taken into consideration and analysed. an alternative sample had 8 anceps and 3 brevis in longo positions added (the full sample sizes were therefore 178 & 154) that could not be determined with certainty or were from fragments that voigt only suspects to be in the meter. the fragments for which voigt offers an alternative meter were not included. voigt’s alcaic hendecasyllabic corpus was analysed with the same guidelines, and the sample consisted of 56 anceps and 21 brevis in longo positions. the alternative alcaic sample with dubious positions added consisted of 15 and 10 more positions (71 & 31). the same principles were also applied to sappho’s aiolikon, where the samples consisted of 21 anceps and 27 brevis in longo positions, and additionally, 31 anceps and 12 brevis in longo positions (52 & 39). fragment 59 was placed into the latter sample because – although it was preserved on the same supposedly monometrical papyrus as the older find of aiolikon fragment 58 (cf. boedeker 2009: 71–72) – its few syllables do not give enough grounds to be sure that it is in aiolikon. for quantitative analysis, a syllable filling the positions in question was considered heavy if it included a diphthong, long vowel (by nature) or closing consonant(s) (incl. muta cum liquida) (by position). all open syllables with a short vowel were considered light (cf. smyth 1920: 35–36; maas 1962: 75–76). in addition, it should be noted that in the ancient greek language, word borders 14 however, joan silva barris has analysed the quantities of the 11th syllables of the lines of the sapphic stanza. according to his results, the percentage of light syllables is 35–36% in the third line, while in the initial lines, it is nearly 40% (barris 2011: 122). 15 vd. burris, fish, obbink 2014; obbink 2009, and obbink 2014. 104 anni arukask are not necessarily syllable borders, and there is no prosodic continuity between periods. therefore, the quantity of a period-final syllable is determined without taking the beginning of the next period into account (cf. west 1982: 4), which makes a period-final syllable with a word-ending single consonant always heavy, while when it comes to a mid-period position, a short vowel needs to be followed by at least two consequent consonants to be scanned as a heavy syllable. considering all that, it is simply more probable for heavy syllables to occur in the period-final position more often than at the beginning and in the middle. in addition, because of the peculiarities of greek script, it is also much more likely to identify heavy syllables in especially fragmentary passages in which the semantics become incredibly vague and also grammar and morphology become unanalysable. therefore, the results are naturally biased towards heavy syllables. the samples were quite small due to the fragmentary nature of the material. therefore, one cannot derive general metrical laws from the results. instead, metrical tendencies can be presented and indicated. results and discussion chart 3 depicts the occurrence of heavy syllables in sappho’s sapphic hendeca syllables. the position of anceps was filled with a heavy syllable in 68.24% and with a light syllable in 31.76% of the occurrences. in brevis in longo, the occurrence of a heavy syllable was 80.79%, and for light syllables, it was 19.21%. therefore, heavy syllables tend to be clearly favoured in these positions. chart 4 depicts the occurrence of heavy syllables according to additional analysis of sappho’s hendecasyllables with dubious positions added. with the dubia added, sappho’s hendecasyllabic anceps and brevis in longo positions exhibited a slightly greater preference for heavy syllables. the anceps was heavy in 69.1% and light in 30.9% of the cases, while the occurrence of brevis in longo was 81.17% heavy and 18.83% light. to illustrate, fragment 16 begins with a line in which there are heavy syllables in both free positions, and this could be called a more typical variety. ο]ἰ μὲν ἰππήων στρότον, οἰ δὲ πέσδων, (sappho 16.1 v) later in the poem, there are lines with both a heavy and light syllable. lines 17 and 19 have a heavy syllable in the first free position; line 18 has a heavy syllable at the end. 105the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... lk 9/105 68.24% 80.79% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% anceps brevis in longo chart 3. the occurrence of heavy syllables in sappho’s sapphic hendecasyllables in the positions of anceps and brevis in longo. lk 9/105 69.10% 81.17% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% anceps brevis in longo chart 4. the occurrence of heavy syllables in sappho’s sapphic hendecasyllables in the positions of anceps and brevis in longo with dubious lines included. 106 anni arukask τᾶ]ς <κε> βολλοίμαν ἔρατόν τε βᾶμα κἀμάρυχμα λάμπρον ἴδην προσώπω ἢ τὰ λύδων ἄρματα κἀν ὄπλοισι (sappho 16.17–19 v). nevertheless, in the same poem, a line of the least typical variety has been constructed. καλλ[ίποι]σ’ ἔβα ‘ς τροΐαν πλέοι[σα (sappho 16.9 v) chart 5 demonstrates the quantitative preferences of alcaeus in the free positions of his sapphic hendecasyllables that could be analysed with certainty. lk 10/106 83.93% 90.48% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% anceps brevis in longo chart 5. the occurrence of heavy syllables in alcaeus’s sapphic hendecasyllables in the positions of anceps and brevis in longo. alcaeus’s quantitative preferences are even more biased towards heavy syllables than sappho’s. the occurrence of heavy syllables was 83.93% and 90.48% in the position of anceps and brevis in longo respectively, leaving 16.07% and 9.52% for light syllables. chart 6 shows the occurrence of heavy syllables in alcaeus’s sapphic hendecasyllables when dubious data was added. 107the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... lk 11/107 82.61% 90.32% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% anceps brevis in longo chart 6. the occurrence of heavy syllables in alcaeus’s sapphic hendecasyllables in the positions of anceps and brevis in longo with dubious lines included. the analysable dubious data lowered the prevalence of heavy syllables in alcaeus’s hendecasyllabic anceps and brevis in longo positions. however, the difference is so slight that his more pronounced preference for heavy syllables – compared to sappho – remains virtually without change. anceps positions were filled with a heavy syllable in 82.61% and with a light syllable in 17.39% of the cases. brevis in longo had a heavy syllable in 90.32% of the occurrences and a light one in 9.68%. nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that the modern alcaic corpus has fewer than 10 well-preserved strophes of sapphic stanza, while a noticeably wider and more analysable selection of poetry in the meter has been preserved from sappho. ancient scholars have expressed conflicting opinions on who the original user or creator of the sapphic stanza was, and both alcaeus and sappho have been named (vd. hephaestion enchiridion de metris 14.1; marius victorinus ars grammatica in grammatici latini 6.161). here we see two more typical lines with only heavy-syllabled free positions, followed by a less typical one where only the first position is heavy: οἲ κὰτ εὔρηαν χ[θόνα] καὶ θάλασσαν παῖσαν ἔρχεσθ’ ὠ[κυπό]δων ἐπ’ ἴππων, ῤήα δ’ ἀνθρώποι[ς] θα[ν]άτω ῤύεσθε (alcaeus 34.5–7 v) 108 anni arukask fragment 361, next to which voigt places the word fortasse [strophe sapphica], consists of the following rare line of free positions filled with a light syllable: αἰ δέ κ’ ᾄμμι ζεῦς τελέση νόημα. chart 7 illustrates the occurrence of heavy syllables in the anceps and brevis in longo positions in sappho’s poetry that are definitely in aiolikon. the samples of aiolikon were the smallest. as pointed out above, only 3% (or 8% with dubious lines) of the 1384-line sapphic corpus are in this meter. lk 12/108 23.81% 96.30% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% anceps brevis in longo chart 7. the occurrence of heavy syllables in sappho’s aiolikon in the positions of anceps and brevis in longo. the analysis of well-preserved aiolikon showed that, in just 23.81% of the cases, the anceps was occupied by a heavy syllable. as light syllables occurred 76.19% of the times, light syllables are noticeably preferred. in the position of brevis in longo, the occurrence of heavy syllables was 96.3% and 3.7% for light syllables. thus, in this position, there is a clear and vivid preference for heavy syllables, and the contrast between the beginning and the end of a verse could have been striking. chart 8 depicts sappho’s quantitative preferences in free positions, with the verses that might be in aiolikon added. 109the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... lk 13/109 46.15% 84.62% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% anceps brevis in longo chart 8. the occurrence of heavy syllables sappho’s poetry in the positions of anceps and brevis in longo with the lines possibly in aiolikon included. adding dubia raised the occurrence of heavy syllables in the position of anceps significantly, but the position still exhibits a clear preference for light syllables, which occurred in 53.85% of the cases, leaving 46.15% to the occurrence of heavy syllables. in the position of brevis in longo, however, heavy syllables are still favoured, with a rate of occurrence of 84.62%, leaving 15.38% to light syllables. compared to the sapphic hendecasyllable of both aeolic authors, the aiolikon tends to display a significantly greater number of light syllables in the position of anceps. when it comes to brevis in longo, the data is more similar to alcaeus’s hendecasyllable in the final position if only positions that are definitely in the meter are taken into account, but they are more similar to sappho’s hendecasyllabic brevis in longo if we also consider dubia. nevertheless, a dyad of typical aiolika would look as follows. the first syllable of both lines is light, while the last one is heavy. τὰ <μἔν> στεναχίσδω θαμέως· ἀλλὰ τί κεν ποείην; ἀγήραον ἄνθρωπον ἔοντ’ οὐ δύνατον γένεσθαι (sappho 58.17–18 v)16 fully atypical lines have not reached us. 16 all the lines from fragment 58 v are quoted accoring to obbink (2009: 14). 110 anni arukask here we have its preceding dyad with only light syllables: βάρυς δέ μ’ ὀ [θ]ῦμος πεπόηται, γόνα δ’ [ο]ὐ φέροισι, τὰ δή πότα λαίψηρ’ ἔον ὄρχησθ’ ἴσα νεβρίοισι (sappho 5x8.15–16 v) despite this, most free positions from 4 fully preserved lines of fragment 81 are heavy, with only the anceps of 81.4 being light. σὺ δὲ στεφάνοις, ὦ δίκα, πέρθεσθ› ἐράτοις φόβαισιν ὄρπακας ἀνήτω συν<α>έρραισ΄ ἀπάλαισι χέρσιν· εὐάνθεα †γὰρ πέλεται† καὶ χάριτες μάκαιρα<ι> μᾶλλον †προτόρην†, ἀστεφανώτοισι δ΄ ἀπυστρέφονται. (sappho 81.4–7 v) based on these data, we can specify the metrical model of both meters using the generative approach. in the following schemes, s signifies the strong positions, w weak positions, x anceps positions, and & signs are metrical delimitators. the schemes cover only the tendencies of non-dubia. a. sappho’s sapphic hendecasyllable &swsx1swwswsx2& the scheme is realized with the following rules: 1) s is filled with one heavy syllable. 2) w is filled with one light syllable. 3) x1 is filled with one heavy syllable 68% of the time and the rest of the time with one light syllable. 4) x2 is filled with one heavy syllable 81% of the time and the rest of the time with one light syllable. b. alcaeus’s sapphic hendecasyllable &swsx1swwswsx2& 1) s is filled with one heavy syllable. 2) w is filled with one light syllable. 3) x1 is filled with one heavy syllable 84% of the time and the rest of the time with one light syllable. 4) x2 is filled with one heavy syllable 90% of the time and the rest of the time with one light syllable. 111the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... c. aiolikon &x1swwsswwsswwswsx2& 1) s is filled with one heavy syllable. 2) w is filled with one light syllable. 3) x1 is filled with one heavy syllable 24% of the time and the rest of the time with one light syllable. 4) x2 is filled with one heavy syllable 96% of the time and the rest of the time with one light syllable. conclusion all in all, the comparative-statistical analysis showed that sappho’s sapphic hendecasyllables exhibit a smaller percentage of heavy syllables in the quantity-free positions of anceps or brevis in longo than alcaeus’s hendecasyllables. nevertheless, in the preserved and analysable poetry of both authors, heavy syllables prevailed in these positions even when dubious occurrences were added. for sappho, 68.24% of anceps and 80.79% brevis in longo positions were heavy; with dubia included, the percentages were slightly larger: 69.10% and 81.17%, respectively. in alcaeus’s case, the positions in question were 83.93% and 90.48% heavy; with dubia included: 82.61% and 90.32%. in sappho’s aiolikon, on the other hand, the occurrence of light syllables was very apparent in the position of anceps (23.81% of heavy syllables, but 46.15% with dubia included). in brevis in longo, the heavy syllables still prevailed (96.30%; with dubia included, 84.62%). the fact that the so-called third lines of the sapphic stanza were included in the analysis makes the data comparable with the use of the sapphic hendecasyllable by subsequent creators, allowing us to see if and where these tendencies have prevailed or how they have changed. for further research, the tendencies of the later aiolikon could also be studied from this perspective. in addition, the positions of anceps and brevis in longo of the meters in question could be compared with their counterparts in other greek verse forms, even author by author.17 17 this research was supported by estonian research council grant no. put1231. the author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for all the feedback and suggestions. 112 anni arukask references ahrens, heinrich ludolf 1868. de theocriti carmine aeolico tertio nuper invento. hannover: typis culemannianis. ahrens, heinrich ludolf 1868. das alkmanische partheneion des papyrus. in: philologus 27(2), 241–285. https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-1868-0202 barris, joan silva 2011. metre and rhythm in greek verse (wiener studien. beiheft 35) wien: verlag der österreichischen akademie der wissenschaften. boedeker, deborah 2009. no way out?: aging in the new (and old) sappho. in: greene, ellen; skinner marilyn b. (eds.), the new sappho on old age. washington: harvard university press, 71–83. burris, simon; fish, jeffrey; obbink, dirk 2014. new fragments of book 1 of sappho. in: zeitschrift für papyrologie und epigraphik 189, 1–28. crusius, otto 1888. stesichorus und die epodische composition in der griechischen lyrik. in: commentationes ribbeckianae, leipzig: b. g. teubneri, 1–22. dominicy, mark 1994. une grammaire des côla éoliens. in: projet arc “typologie textuelle et théorie de la signification”, rapport de recherches n° 2. https://difusion. ulb.ac.be/vufind/record/ulb-dipot:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/130851/holdings (accessed december 13, 2019). ferrari, franco 2010. sappho’s gift: the poet and her community. ann arbor: michigan classical press. golston, chris; riad, tomas 2005. the phonology of greek lyric meter. in: journal of linguistics 41(1), 77–115. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226704003068 hermann, gottfried 1816. elementa doctrinae metricae. leipzig: fleischer. korzeniewski, dietmar 1968. griechische metrik. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. liberman, gauthier 2007. l’édition alexandrine de sappho. in: bastianini, guido; casanova, angelo (eds.), studi e testi di papirologia 9, 41–65. lidov, joel 2009. the meter and metrical style of the new poem. in: greene, ellen; skinner marilyn b. (eds.), the new sappho on old age. washington: harvard university press, 103–117. maas, paul 1962. greek metre. oxford: clarendon press. meillet, antoine 1923. les origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs. paris: les presses universitaires de france. https://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/record/ulb-dipot:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/130851/holdings https://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/record/ulb-dipot:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/130851/holdings https://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/record/ulb-dipot:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/130851/holdings 113the metrical structure of the sapphic hendecasyllable and sappho’s aiolikon ... obbink, dirk 2009. sappho fragments 58–59: text, apparatus criticus, and translation. in: greene, ellen; skinner marilyn b. (eds.), the new sappho on old age. washington: harvard university press, 7–16. obbink, dirk 2014. two new poems by sappho. in: zeitschrift für papyrologie und epigraphik 189, 32–49. page, denys 1955. sappho and alcaeus: an introduction to the study of ancient lesbian poetry. oxford: clarendon press. smyth, herbert weir 1920. a greek grammar for colleges. new york [etc.]: american book company. voigt, eva-maria (ed.) 1971. sappho et alcaeus. fragmenta. amsterdam: polak & van gennep. west, martin litchfield 1982. greek metre. oxford: clarendon press. west, martin litchfield 1987. introduction to greek metre. oxford: clarendon press. metrics and versification in poetry and song: the 14th nordic conference on metrics, 13–15 september, 2018, stockholm, sweden sissel furuseth*1 for more than thirty years, the nordic society for metrical studies (nordmetrik) has arranged conferences across sweden, finland, norway, denmark, and iceland, at fourteen different venues so far. the last installment of the nordmetrik conference series – metrics and versification in poetry and song – was co-organized by stockholm university and the swedish academy with professor tomas riad as the prime mover. for three days in mid-september, seventy scholars from five continents, from a wide range of disciplines, gathered in stockholm to elucidate the complexities of metrics and versification. the call for papers took as its starting point that “metrics and versification constitute a natural meeting point for several disciplines including linguistics, literary studies, musicology, cognitive poetics, philology, linguistic anthropology, folklore, aesthetics, and more”. as the conference unfolded it confirmed the premise of the call. metrics is certainly a field of study shared by scholars with quite diverse affiliations. obviously, such an interdisciplinary meeting point also bears some evidence of being an epistemic battlefield, but in the very battle we also find the true value of interdisciplinary gatherings: scientific notions that stand testing from peers outside one’s own field of expertise are more solid and reliable than notions never questioned from outsiders. it is not an easy task, however, to organize a conference with such diverse approaches as were the case in stockholm, but metrics and versification in poetry and song was sensibly focused on the language/music interface. in the paper sessions the problem of text-setting, i. e. the alignment of text to music, was addressed by a number of excellent researchers, such as kristin hanson (händel), rosalía rodríguez-vázquez (galician folk songs), teresa proto and farida van eer (dutch rap), jacqueline pattison ekgren (norwegian stev), heini arjava (finnish songs), timothée premat (medieval french song poetry), and * author’s address: sissel furuseth, niels henrik abels vei 36, henrik wergelands hus, 0313 oslo, norway. e-mail: sissel.furuseth@iln.uio.no. studia metrica et poetica 5.2, 2018, 110–112 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.05 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.05 111metrics and versification in poetry and song david paterson (rewriting japanese lyrics in english), illustrating how a field of research can be diversified and concentrated at the same time. we have seen it before: music connects people. researchers from musico logy, ethnography and folklore (such as linda barwick, mahesh radhakrishnan, eevaliisa bastman and kati kallio, and frog) seem to take on the role as mediators between more disparate positions such as quantitative metrics on the one hand and cognitive poetics on the other. this is probably due to the power of the empirical events which are in the focus of attention in research where the examples almost speak for themselves, whereas metrical studies at a more abstract level tend to create epistemic conflicts, between generativists and cognitivists, for instance, or between diachronic and synchronic oriented researchers. the keynote lectures pinpointed the central coordinates within the field of metrical studies, even though the most marked differences between quantitative and qualitative approaches became visible in the paper sessions. the first lecture, given by sissel furuseth, professor of nordic literature at the university of oslo, showed how the music of the norwegian composer edvard grieg is embedded in a single poem written by the swedish nobel prize winner tomas tranströmer (“en konstnär i norr”), and was thus an example of how critical interpretations of single texts still play a crucial role for literary scholars standing in the hermeneutical tradition. in the second plenary session, francois dell and romain benini from cnrs paris and université paris-sorbonne, respectively, explained the relationship between grammatical structure and metrical structure in the alexandrine couplets of jean racine. reporting on two components of concordance, cohesion and congruence, they showed that the grammatical constituents that play a central role in concordance are those of prosodic structure, although reference to syntactic structure cannot be completely avoided. thus, the dell and benini lecture contributed to a major topic in metrical studies today, namely the interest in the interplay of prosody and syntax. myfany turpin from the sydney conservatorium of music delivered the third plenary lecture in which she applied linguistic theory, speech act theory and anthropological perspectives addressing the question “why should interpretive difficulty be a feature in poetry and song?”, that is, in central australian aboriginal song. generous with examples from field work studies she made the lecture a magical journey, letting the audience experience the multi-functional character of indigenous song and their place specific performances. whereas the three first plenary lectures were held at the stockholm university campus in frescati, the saturday keynote was located in the distinguished hall of the swedish academy in old town stockholm. patrik bye, associate professor of english language and linguistics at the nord university 112 sissel furuseth in bodø (norway), presented an intriguing argument on the relation between meter, end-stopping and enjambment based on a big corpus of more than 100 english poems, over 4000 verse lines, written between year 1500 and 2000. his main conclusion was that tetrameter lines have weaker boundaries than trimester lines and permit greater variation. with reference to jakobson and kiparsky, bye built his argument basically on prosodic factors, while the question how print culture has influenced on enjambment was not in the focus of attention. most of the papers were thematically and methodically grouped around the four plenary talks, some of them focusing on single literary works (from a wide specter of languages), some of them more linguistically oriented with claims on general application, some of them analyzing actual performances of song, and some of them doing statistical analyses of big corpora. however, while none of the plenary lectures spoke up for radical forms of machine reading, some of the papers were more ambitious in that respect. igor pilshchikov and vera polilova from the lomonosov moscow state university presented a new online information system on comparative poetics as a tool for studying the history of russian and european verse. one of the most important functional capabilities of this digital system is full-text lexical search and specialized attribute search focused on the prosodic (metrical) features of the poetic text. the database is still under construction, but even at this stage it looks very promising with regard to future metrical research across languages. undoubtedly, the growth of digital humanities has been a blessing for metrical studies the last couple of decades, giving impetus to a new interest in typology as well. when nordmetrik arranged its first conference in gothenburg, sweden, september 1987, all in all 27 scholars gathered under the heading metrik idag (metrics today). twenty of the participants back in 1987 (nearly 75%) lived and worked in sweden, three in finland, two in norway, one came from denmark, and one from iceland. all the papers were presented in the variety of scandinavian languages and dialects represented at the conference, except from the icelandic contribution (kristjan arnason from reykjavik was allowed to present his research english). now, three decades later, the situation is markedly changed. in 2018, it goes without saying that the conference language of nordmetrik is english. at the 14th nordic conference on metrics in stockholm nearly seventy scholars participated, but only four of the papers were presented by swedes. we had the pleasure to listen to researchers from australia, russia, colombia, estonia, the czech republic, france, spain, germany, usa, the netherlands, portugal, and japan. the nordic society for metrical studies is certainly interwoven with a continuously expanding international network of scholars. this expansion is highly appreciated. bashkir verse from the turkic perspective boris orekhov*1 abstract: the article discusses the statistically identified properties of bashkir versification in comparison with the existing descriptions of other turkic versification systems. the focus is on imparisyllabic forms, predominant meters, and peculiarities of rhyme. the study allows concluding that bashkir uzun-kyuy (a regular alteration of 10and 9-syllable lines) is unique and its equivalents are not found in other turkic poetic traditions except the tartar tradition, with which bashkir verse has common roots. the frequency of bashkir 9-syllable verse is also unusual as compared with poetry in other turkic languages. octosyllabic lines, which are often used together with 7-syllable verse, are common for various turkic systems and can also be found in bashkir poetry, most prominently in kyska-kyuy (a regular alteration of 8and 7-syllable lines). more data is needed to judge to what extent the rhythm of bashkir verse is comparable with the verse rhythm in other turkic poetic traditions. keywords: bashkir verse, turkic versification, syllabic verse introduction the bashkir language belongs to the turkic language family. its speakers reside in the volga region and southern urals in the russian federation. the number of speakers was estimated to be one million people in the 2010s, and the ethnic group itself is the title nation of a region within the russian federation, the republic of bashkortostan. the bashkir language is cognate with the tartar language; however, standard literary bashkir has a number of peculiarities as to its phonetics and vocabulary. for example, such phonemes as /ð/ and /θ/ are region-specific. active cultural and linguistic separation of the bashkir people (cf. anderson 1991) started after the russian revolution. before the 1920s, the bashkirs and tartars had a common book culture based on the volga turki literary language. similarly to the central asian turks (uzbek, turkmen, kyrghyz, and other peoples), bashkirs and tartars have been dependent on the arabic-persian * author’s address: boris orekhov, faculty of humanities, hse university, 11 pokrovsky bulvar, moscow 109028, russia. e-mail: nevmenandr@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 32–44 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.02 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.02 33bashkir verse from the turkic perspective cultural influence since the middle ages. this influence manifested itself in the borrowings of generic and stanzaic forms of traditional oriental poetics and in the formation of a very peculiar system of versification known as turkic aruz (köprülü 1964). it penetrated into the turkic world through old uzbek literature and represents a variant of persian aruz, i. e. a versification system based on a regular alternation of long and short syllables. this system was originally created for the arabic language, but due to the arab cultural expansion it gained wider circulation. turkic aruz is interesting because the old uzbek language from which this system was formed did not have a phonological opposition of long and short vowels. this remarkable fact refutes the idea endorsed by common sense that a versification system based on features not available in the language is impossible. the turkic aruz is based on several conventional assumptions: both a closed syllable and a syllable in a word of persian origin that is long in the persian language are considered “long” syllables. however, in the 1920s the influence of aruz on the developing bashkir literature plummeted (iskandarova 2013), and poetry switched to another form of versification, namely to syllabic verse. aruz acquired a reputation of “reactionary” verse associated with the tsarist regime. although different in pace, this process was parallel to the evolution of other turkic literary forms that fell under soviet influence. in the 1960s, aruz was most commonly used in azerbaijani poetry (dzhafar 1968). the bashkir versification system of the last century was syllable-based. the same principle (syllabics) was applied in folklore songs – the evidence thereof is found thanks to polish turkologist тadeusz kowalski (1921). he made notes from among the kazan tartars, but found no significant difference between bashkir and tartar verse. the same principle evidently applies in both folkloric and authorial poetry. furthermore, we compare the peculiarities of bashkir versification with other turkic traditions. there are two circumstances relevant to our study. first, although not as intense as russian verse studies, the study of turkic verse continued to develop throughout the soviet time. viktor zhirmunsky, a prominent scholar of russian verse, who studied poetry in turkic languages (zhirmunsky 1964, 1968), utilized russian verse theory utilized the frame of reference for his research, greatly influenced other researchers of turkic versification systems. starting from the 1950s, poetry scholars’ systematic works made possible the description of versification trends in kazakh, uighur, turkmen, kyrghyz, chuvash, yakut, tuvan, and other languages. a 1991 monograph retrospectively stated that “turkic versification was mostly flourishing in the 1960s” (toburokov 1991: 4). therefore, we have the opportunity to compare the 34 boris orekhov descriptions of turkic verse systems made by twentieth-century turkologists and what we observe in bashkir verse. second, bashkir verse has been thoroughly studied including within a reference manual on bashkir verse (khösäjenov 2003), a monograph chapter (fazylova 2017: 98–120), and as subject of various research papers (kaskinova 2007; fajzullina 2010; iskandarova 2013). most recently, in 2019 a monograph was published in which the corpus and statistical methods developed in the studies of russian poetry were used to describe the entire tradition of bashkir syllabic verse (orekhov 2019a). the practice of linguistic typology more commonly made a comparison of incognate languages than comparison of the cognates, unless the aim was a historical reconstruction. research sampling implicitly includes the idea that in closely related languages there are too many common elements which prevent us from seeing the diversity actually present in the world of languages. however, intragenetic typology is also often used in linguistics (majid et al. 2007; koptjevskaja-tamm et al. 2010; rakhilina, reznikova 2013; majid et al. 2015). our aim is not to reconstruct proto-turkic verse (an attempt was made in korsh 1909). at the same time, as shown below, comparative turkic metrics reveal a high level of distinctiveness of various turkic verse systems. imparisyllabic forms in turkic syllabic verse the key forms that specify the bashkir versification system are uzun-kyuy (bashkir: оҙон көй; russian: узун-кюй) and kyska-kyuy (bashkir: ҡыҫҡа көй; russian: кыска-кюй). both are imparisyllabic forms of folk origin (orekhov 2019b) and are also found in tartar folk songs (smirnova 2010). uzun-kyuy, a regular alternation of 10and 9-syllable lines (its name is translated as “drawling strains”), and kyska-kyuy, a regular alteration of 8and 7-syllable lines (“short strains”), together cover about half the corpus of bashkir poetry. the scholarly wisdom is that isosyllabic text structures are typical of syllabic poetry. it seems so obvious that isosyllabism is sometimes equated with syllabic verse (polivanov 1973: 105; kholshevnikov 2004: 12). however, it has already been pointed out that compatibility and commensurability of certain lines does not mean their equality (see, for example, iljushin 2004: 17). let us observe these forms in turkic verse systems. we shall move centrifugally from the poetic traditions that are culturally close to the bashkir tradition to the more distant cultures. therefore, we should first consider central asian turks and then complement our observations with the material of siberian 35bashkir verse from the turkic perspective turkic cultures that were beyond the arabian and persian cultural influence. the commonality with the first group can be determined by direct interaction. as for the other group, however, the commonality can be explained through both the reflexes of the proto-turkic forms and the typological parallels caused by the similarity of these languages. as early as the 1960s, it was observed that “the principle of isosyllabism is not limited to the establishment of common commensurability of poetic lines” (akhmetov 1964: 25). in kazakh folklore, an alteration of 7and 8-syllable lines was observed, i. e. the kazakh equivalent of bashkir kyska-kyuy. at the same time, in the 1970s, under the obvious influence of a simplistic understanding of syllabics, a step back was made, and kazakh poetry scholars started to conjecture about strictly parisyllabic lines (utesheva 1979: 10). it is not impossible that isosyllabic texts are more typical of authorial poetry, whereas imparisyllabic structures are characteristic of folk tradition. kyrghyz poetry also demonstrates a non-obligatory character of isosyllabic structures in syllabic verse (rysaliev 1965: 38), and the alteration of 7and 8-syllable lines is considered a meter (rysaliev 1965: 45). later, researchers following the example of the statistical study of russian verse found regular meters in 90.48% of lines (shapovalov 1986: 39). one of these meters is a combination of 7and 8-syllable lines, which is quite common in kyrghyz poetry and comprises 29.13% of lines (shapovalov 1986: 41). scholars have also identified 7and 8-syllable lines in uighur verse (khamraev 1963: 107). scholars of siberian turkic versification often mention imparisyllabic lines as a common feature of syllabic verse. that said, khakas authorial poetry has the same proportion of imparisyllabic and isosyllabic texts (trojakov 1964: 34), and “an alteration of 7and 8-syllable in such lines is quite common” in khakas poetry (ungvitskaja 1952: 11). an alteration of 7and 8-syllable lines is also found in tuva folklore (toguj-ool 1953; dongak 1999: 6). however, the parisyllabic texts dominate and account for 90% of all the analyzed texts. by the 1980s, yakut poetry has had 67% to 87% of texts written in “nearly isosyllabic” lines (tobukorov 1985: 25). correspondingly, other texts do not fall under this description and are considered imparisyllabic. therefore, imparisyllabism is an established feature of turkic syllabics. at the same time, this feature is mostly exemplified by the texts, in which 7and 8-syllable lines alternate. this poetic form is found in the native cultures of populations distanced from each other both geographically and culturally. forms analogous to kyska-kyuy are found in kazakh, kyrghyz, uighur, khakas, and tuvan poetic traditions. however, scholars never mention any form similar to bashkir uzun-kyuy (a regular alteration of 10and 9-syllablic lines), and it is highly likely that this form is specific to the bashkir versification system. 36 boris orekhov turkic syllabic verse metrics the most frequent lines in bashkir poetry have 9, 10, 8 and 7 syllables. taken together, they comprise more than 80% of all lines in the corpus (orekhov 2019a: 94–95). among the leaders, the 9-syllable lines are most frequent (28.198%). this situation is ensured by the widespread uzun-kyuy form and a significant number of isosyllabic poems. it is worth saying that there has been no systematic calculation of the prevalence of particular line lengths in other turkic traditions. nevertheless, some turkologists have described their literary experience and identified what they thought to be the most frequent meters. in the 1950s, chuvash poetry was predominantly written in 7-syllable lines (ivanov 1958: 8). the semantics of this meter had social and national overtones because “the 7-syllable meter, which is also found in the folklore repertoire of all ethnic groups of the chuvash people was a sui generis symbol of consolidation and the unity of the nation” (rodionov 1992: 146). in general, the system of chuvash verse is built on the opposition between short lines (7or 8-syllable) and long lines (11-syllable) (rodionov 1980: 13). it is remarkable that the lengths of 9 and 10 syllables, which are actively exploited in bashkir poetry, are neither found in chuvash versification, nor favoured in most of the other turkic poetic systems. scholars claim that the lines of 6, 8 and 11 syllables are the most widespread in kazakh poetry (utesheva 1979). the 11-syllable meter is considered the most typical for kazakh verse (akhmetov 1964). this situation is similar to that observed in chuvash poetry with only one exception: in kazakh, the shortest meter is hexasyllabic, and not heptasyllabic, as in bashkir. in the kyrghyz system of versification, 7and 11-syllable meters are predominant (rysaliev 1965: 41, 50), whereas 8and 9-syllable lines, never found in folklore, emerged in authorial poetry at a later stage (rysaliev 1965: 46). later studies revealed that 11-syllable verse came into existence as late as the 1920s, while earlier kyrghyz poetry was not familiar with this meter (shapovalov1986: 32). the following observations have been made about azerbaijani verse: the 11-syllable meter is widespread in folklore (aliev 1966); most lyric songs use 7-, 8and 11-syllable lines (aliev 1976: 12). furthermore, in authorial poetry, 7-syllable lines are the most frequent (allakhjarov 2011: 102). in turkmen verse, 11-syllable lines dominate (redzhepov 1969: 57; bekmuradov 1980: 3), and the next most frequent meter is octosyllabic (abdullaev 1983: 21). in the work of turkmenistan’s most important poet, makhtumkuli, 37bashkir verse from the turkic perspective 7-syllable meter is the third most frequent (bekmuradov 1990: 38). a significant frequency of the 14-syllable meter is also specific to the turkmen verse system. for uighur verse, 7-, 8and 11-syllable meters are the most common (khamraev 1963: 107), but in the 1980s, uighur poetry witnessed an increase in the popularity of the 10-syllable meter (khamraev 1988: 60), which is an infrequent guest in other turkic poetic cultures except the bashkir tradition. the situation is somewhat different in the siberian region. the most common yakut meter is heptasyllabic (vasil’ev 1965). in altai poetry, in addition to the 7and 8-syllable meters, the presence of the 9-, 10-, 11and 12-syllable meters is also noticeable (katashev 1972: 7). such innovations as 13and 14-syllable meters did not gain popularity (ibid.). the most popular meter in the tuvan poetry is octosyllabic. in different periods, it comprised from 32% to 75% of lines, while dodecasyllables comprised between 22% and 38% (dongak 1999: 157). therefore, in comparison with siberian turks, the turkic peoples greater influenced by the arabic-persian culture more actively use the 11-syllable meter, which is not very popular in siberia. at the same time, dividing poetic traditions into those that prefer 7-syllables (kyrghyz, yakut) and those that prefer 8-syllables (kazakh, tuvan) has no regional basis. the majority (chuvash, turkmen, altai poetries) actively use both 7and 8-syllable lines together. as we can see, the predominant use of 9-syllable meters in bashkir verse is unique among turkic versifications. in other turkic traditions, this meter is either absent among the common meters or is less frequent than others (altai, kyrghyz). the same applies to the presence of 10-syllable meter among the predominant meters of bashkir poetry. decasyllables, to a certain extent, are noticeable (but are not the most frequent) only in altai and uighur versifications. as was already mentioned in the previous section, the high frequency of 9and 10-syllable lines in bashkir poetry is predetermined by the popularity of the uzun-kyuy form. rhythmic peculiarities the rhythm of bashkir syllabic verse has some features that become visible to the researcher only through calculations. whereas the meter of syllabic verse is its length calculated in syllables, its rhythm is determined by the structure of a line which consists of words of different lengths. the intuition that the words that make up a line are an important feature of turkic syllabic verse is quite common. it is even expressed in the traditional terminology of turkic 38 boris orekhov poetics: turak, ‘rhythmic group’; vazn (arabic: wazn; russian: вазн), ‘a variant of the line with a certain configuration of word-boundaries’ (khamraev 1969). one of the features of bashkir rhythm is the basis for the hypothesis of parity counting (orekhov 2019a: 136–139). a corpus-based statistical study has revealed that in bashkir poetic texts even-syllable words are significantly more frequent than in prosaic texts. furthermore, in the even-syllable lines, there are uneven distributions of forms that contain only even-syllable words and the forms that contain both evenand odd-syllable words: the even-syllable lines that contain odd-syllable words are significantly less frequent in the corpus. the most frequent forms of even-syllable lines consist only of even-syllable words. the probability of the occurrence of a two-syllable word in the initial position in a line is roughly equal to the probability of its occurrence in a poetic text in general, but the probability of the occurrence of a three-syllable word at the beginning of a line is lower than the probability of the occurrence of a three-syllable word in a text. two odd-length words in a line usually follow one another, thus forming even-length aggregate blocks. that said, the distribution of odd-syllable words is not random, and a distant placement of two odd-length words is very rare. the hypothesis of parity counting claims that, when constructing a line of poetry, a bashkir poet uses, first of all, words of even lengths (2 and 4 syllables). and, that only in the odd-syllable lines (7-, 9-, and 11-syllable lines), are odd-syllable words added at the very end, when the basic structure of the line has already been formed. the preference of even numbers over odd numbers by the human perception mechanisms is well known in psychology. in 1990, the so-called odd effect was discovered (hines 1990): participants would find it harder to decide if they are dealing with an even or odd number if the number was odd. furthermore, participants would find it harder to identify the class of the number if the number is odd. hines suggested the reason for that effect was a linguistic compound of the experiment because participants had to identify even and odd numbers using the words even and odd which, in english (the mother tongue of the participants), are charged with other meanings and additional associations. however, later there were other studies that gave a different explanation of this phenomenon (nuerk et al. 2004). in general, psychologists are inclined to state that the reason lies in the linguistic markedness of response codes (marc) rather than in the quantity itself, as was also demonstrated through trials (huber et al. 2014). but, perhaps, there is also a class of counting problems with which it is more convenient to cope with even numbers our cognitive mechanisms. the fundamental difference between 39bashkir verse from the turkic perspective even and odd numbers was much talked about during the study of brain asymmetry, projecting open effects on the mechanisms of culture (ivanov 1978). it is not known if we can extrapolate the hypothesis of parity counting to other turkic syllabic traditions. certain observations made by turkologists speak to a greater extent in favor of the fact that we are dealing with a unique feature of bashkir verse. a turkmen poetic text consists mainly of monosyllabic and disyllabic words. three-syllable and four-syllable words rarely appear in poetry and are mainly verb forms, which, according to the researcher, “are of little use in the language of poetry and song” (redzhepov 1969: 56). in ancient times, the 11-syllable verse was canonized in form 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 (each digit denotes a word of the corresponding length in syllables), but other representations of it became possible over time, i.e. 4 + 3 + 4, 4 + 4 + 3, 3 + 4 + 4 or 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 (redzhepov 1969: 58). thus, in turkmen verse, there is no significant difference between words of even and odd length, as well as between the meter of a line ending in words of even and odd length. a review of the verse material of the turkic peoples of siberia (toburokov 1991) also does not show those pronounced signs that bashkir verse demonstrates. but tuvan data still illustrate the predominance of four-syllable over three-syllable words (dongak 1999: 69), which is not characteristic of the altai and khakas texts (toburokov 1985: 93). at the same time, in yakut poetry, “the three-syllable lexical unit is, as it were, the main rhythmic unit of the oyunsky syllabic verse” (vasil’ev 1965: 85). the rhythm of the 9-syllable meter in bashkir verse has a special property that we have christened bolotov’s rule. the moscow linguist sergey bolotov was first to discover this pattern in the bashkir material and during the discussion of my paper shared his finding: in the absolute majority of 9-syllable lines we find a mandatory word-boundary after the 6th syllable, that is, a 9-syllable verse has a line ending “+ 3” or “+ 1 + 2” or “+ 2 + 1”, where the number is the syllabic length of the word(s) at the end of the line. this statement is true for 95.65% of all 9-syllable lines. the most frequent rhythmic schemes of a 9-syllable line in the bashkir versification are the following: 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 (һанап беҙҙең аҡҡан ваҡытты... [‘counting our time elapsed...’], шамил анаҡ, “таштар менән һөйләшеү”), 27.26% of all 9-syllable lines; 4 + 2 + 3 (юлдаштары бала сағымдың... [‘satellites of my childhood...’], рәми ғарипов, “таныш күгәрсендәр”), 17.78%; 40 boris orekhov 1 + 3 + 2 + 3 (һин ленинға биргән антыңды... [‘a promise that you gave to lenin...’], рәми ғарипов “мәңге бергә”), 10.48%. similar observations have been exemplified by the kazakh material. abay (1845–1904), canonized as a classical author of kazakh poetry, used a rhythmic version of the 11-syllable meter with a 4-syllable ending. in the soviet era, another version of this meter came into use with an ending in three syllables (akhmetov 1964: 312). this observation allows us to conclude that the syllabic length of the line ending is an important feature of verse for the bearers of the tradition. at the same time, it is necessary to emphasize that this is not a complete structural analog of the clausula in european versification systems. the turkic line ending cannot be described as a chain of syllables after the last stressed syllable: in turkic languages, the dynamic accent is very weak and almost always falls on the last syllable. conclusion scholars of turkic verse provided ample descriptions of their data. although the turkologists tend to avoid statistical methods, their studies make it possible to trace both common and distinctive features of turkic meters and, partially, rhythms. the most productive approach is to compare a complete statistical description of bashkir verse with other turkic versification systems to single out the unique features of the bashkir system – in particular, the use of uzun-kyuy, a regular alteration of 10and 9-syllable lines. unlike another traditional bashkir form, kyska-kyuy (a regular alteration of 8and 7-syllabic lines), which is active in other turkic traditions, uzun-kyuy is not typical to turkic verse. in the broader context of typology, it is also uncommon for syllabics to use such an alteration, since syllabic verse usually shows preference toward isosyllabic structures. the domination of uzun-kyuy results in the highest proportion of 9-syllable lines among lines of varied syllabic lengths. in turkic verse systems, lines of this length are rarely found among the frequently used meters, and it is not predominant in any of the traditions described above. on the contrary, 11-syllable lines more commonly found in other turkic systems are rather rare in bashkir poetry. academic description of turkic verse rhythm is still at an embryonic stage; progress in this field awaits both empirical and theoretical advances. however, 41bashkir verse from the turkic perspective we can already confirm that such features of bashkir verse as parity counting and bolotov’s rule are either not prominent or perhaps even completely absent in other turkic traditions.1 references abdullaev, dovran 1983. narodnye osnovy stikhoslozhenija v poezii makhtumkuli. ashkhabad: ylym. akhmetov, zakij akhmetovich 1964. kazakhskoe stikhoslozhenie (problemy razvitija stikha v dorevoljutsionnoj i sovremennoj poezii). alma-ata: nauka. allakhjarov, kamil gusejnovich 2011. genezis, stanovlenie i puti evoljutsii arzerbajdzhanskogo stikhoslozhenija. kirov: izdatel’stvo vjatggu. aliev, sabir halil 1966. formy klassicheskoj azerbajdzhanskoj poezii. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. baku. aliev, magomed iradzh ogly 1976. formy i vidy azerbajdzhanskoj narodnoj poezii. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. baku. anderson, benedict 1991. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. revised and extended edition. london, new york: verso. bekmuradov, akhmet 1980. osnovnye tendentsii razvitija stikhoslozhenija v turkmenskoj sovetskoj poezii. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. ashkhabad. bekmuradov, ahmet 1990. poeticheskoe masterstvo mahtumkuli fragi. doctoral dissertation, synopsis. ashkhabad. dzhafar, akrem 1968. teoreticheskie osnovy aruza i azerbajdzhanskij aruz (v sravnenii s arabskim, persidskim, tadzhikskim, turetskim i uzbekskim aruzami). doctoral dissertation, synopsis. baku: izdatel’stvo akademii nauk azerbajdzhanskoj ssr. dongak, uran aldyn-oolovna 1999. tuvinskoe stikhoslozhenie. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation. kyzyl. fajzullina, ajgul’ bilalovna 2010. traditsii vostochnoj literatury v bashkirskoj poezii xix ‒ nachala xx veka. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. ufa. 1 the work has been supported by the ministry of science and higher education of the russian federation within agreement no 075-15-2020-793. 42 boris orekhov fazylova, florida salimovna 2017. nravstvenno-eticheskie problemy v sovremennoj bashkirskoj poezii (ii polovina xx ‒ nachalo xxi veka). ufa: bashkirskaja entsiklopedija. hines, terence m. 1990. an odd effect: lengthened reaction times for judgments about odd digits. in: memory & cognition 18, 40‒46. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03202644 huber, stefan et al 2014. embodied markedness of parity? examining handedness effects on parity judgments in: psychological research 79 (6), 963‒977. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-014-0626-9 ivanov, nikolaj ivanovich 1958. chuvashskoe stikhoslozhenie i ego osobennosti. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. cheboksary. ivanov, vyacheslav vsevolodovich 1978. chet i nechet: asimmetrija mozga i znakovykh sistem. moskva: sovetskoe radio. iljushin, aleksandr anatol’evich 2004. russkoe stikhoslozhenie. moskva: vysshaja shkola. iskandarova, svetlana ajratovna 2013. evoljutsija metricheskogo i sillabicheskogo stikhoslozhenija v bashkirskoj poezii nachala xx vekа. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. ufa. kaskinova, gul’nur nurimanovna 2007. voprosy strukturnoj poetiki v sovremennoj bashkirskoj poezii. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. ufa. katashev, stepan mihajlovich 1972. osnovy altajskogo stikhoslozhenija. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. moskva. khamraev, maratbek karimovich 1963. osnovy tjurkskogo stikhoslozhenija (na materiale ujgurskoj klassicheskoj i sovremennoj pojezii). alma-ata: izdatel’stvo akademii nauk kazakhskoj ssr. khamraev, maratbek karimovich 1988. plamja zhizni (o sisteme stikhoslozhenija tjurkojazychnykh narodov). tashkent: izdatel’stvo literatury i iskusstva imeni gafura guljama. kholshevnikov, vladislav evgen’evich 2004. osnovy stikhovedenija: russkoe stihoslozhenie. sankt-peterburg: filologicheskij fakul’tet spbgu; moskva: izdatel’skij centr “akademija”. khösäjenov, ghajsa 2003. bashqort shighyry. shighriät һüźlege. ufa: ghilem. koptjevskaja-tamm, maria; divjak, dagmar; rakhilina, ekaterina vladimirovna 2010. aquamotion verbs in slavic and germanic: a case study in lexical typology. in: victoria hasko, renee perelmutter (eds.). new approaches to slavic verbs of motion (studies in language companion series 115). amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins, 315–341. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.115.18kop 43bashkir verse from the turkic perspective korsh, fedor 1909. drevnejshij narodnyj stikh turetskikh plemen. in: zapiski vostochnago otdelenija imperatorskago russkogo arhologicheskago obshchestva 19(2/3), 139‒167. kowalski, тadeusz 1921. ze studiów nad formą poezji ludów tureckich. krakow: nakł. polskiej akademji umiejętności. köprülü, mehmet fuad. 1964. la metrique ‘arūż dans la poesie turque. in: philologiae turcicae fundamenta ii. wiesbaden: franz steiner, 252‒266. majid, asifa; gullberg, marianne; van staden, miriam; bowerman, melissa 2007. how similar are semantic categories in closely related languages? a comparison of cutting and breaking in four germanic languages. in: cognitive linguistics 18(2), 179–194. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog.2007.007 majid, asifa; jordan, fiona; dunn, michael 2015. semantic systems in closely related languages. in: language sciences 49, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.11.002 nuerk, hans-christoph; iversen, wiebke; willmes klaus 2004. notational modulation of the snarc and the marc (linguistic markedness of response codes) effect. in: the quarterly journal of experimental psychology. section a: human experimental psychology 57(5), 835‒863. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724980343000512 orekhov, boris 2019a. bashkirskij stikh xx veka. korpusnoe issledovanie. sanktpeterburg: aleteija. orekhov, boris 2019b. metr otrezkov dlinnee stroki v bashkirskom sillabicheskom stikhe. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 78(2), 41–50. polivanov, evgenij dmitrievich 1973. o prieme alliteratsii v kirgizskoj pojezii v svjazi s poeticheskoj tekhnikoj i jazykovymi faktorami drugih “altajskih” narodnostej. in: problemy vostochnogo stikhoslozhenija. moskva: nauka. glavnaja redaktsija vostochnoj literatury, 100‒106. rakhilina, ekaterina vladimirovna; reznikova, tatjana isidorovna 2013. frejmovyj podkhod k leksicheskoj tipologii. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 3–31. redzhepov, rahman 1969. liricheskoe soderzhanie i iskusstvo stikha. doctoral dissertation, synopsis. ashkhabad. rodionov, vitalij grigor’evich 1980. chuvashskoe i tjurkskoe stikhoslozhenie: uchebnoe posobie. cheboksary: izdatel’stvo chuvashskogo universiteta. rodionov, vitalij grigor’evich 1992. chuvashskij stikh. problemy stanovlenija i razvitija. cheboksary: chuvashskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. 44 boris orekhov rysaliev, kulan 1965. kirgizskoe stikhoslozhenie. doctoral dissertation, synopsis. frunze. shapovalov, vjacheslav ivanovich 1986. kirgizskaja stihotvornaja kul’tura i problemy perevoda. frunze: kyrgyzstan. smirnova, elena mikhajlovna 2010. ritmicheskij stroj muzykal’no-poeticheskogo fol’klora tatar-musul’man volgo-ural’ja. doctoral dissertation, synopsis. sanktpeterburg. toburokov, nikolaj nikolaevich 1985. jakutskij stikh. yakutsk: jakutskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. toburokov, nikolaj nikolaevich 1991. problemy sravnitel’nogo stikhovedenija (na materiale sovetskoj poezii tjurkojazychnyh narodov sibiri). yakutsk: nauka. toguj-ool, akeksandr s. 1953. opyt issledovanija tuvinskogo stikhoslozhenija. in: uchenye zapiski tuvinskogo nauchno-issledovatel’skogo instituta jazyka, literatury i istorii 1. kyzyl: tuvinskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 93‒110. trojakov, petr anisimovich 1964. k voprosu o khakasskom stikhoslozhenii. in: uchenye zapiski khakasskogo nauchno-issledovatel’skogo instituta jazyka, literatury i istorii. serija fol’kloristiki 10. abakan: krasnojarskoe knizhnoe izdatel’vo, khakasskoe otdelenie, 26‒43. ungvitskaja, marija andreevna 1952. khakasskoe stikhoslozhenie. candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. мoskva. ungvitskaja, marija andreevna 1955. k voprosu o hakasskom stihoslozhenii. in: uchenye zapiski abakanskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta 1. abakan, 130–143. utesheva, evgenija adilovna 1979. ritmiko-intonacionnaja struktura kazakhskogo liricheskogo stikha (eksperimental’no-foneticheskoe issledovanie). candidate (ph.d.) dissertation, synopsis. alma-ata. vasil’ev, georgij mitrofanovich 1965. jakutskoe stikhoslozhenie. yakutsk: jakutskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. zhirmunskij, viktor maksimovich 1964. ritmiko-semanticheskij parallelizm kak osnova drevnetjurkskogo narodnogo epicheskogo stikha in: voprosy jazykoznanija 4, 3‒24. zhirmunskij, viktor maksimovich 1968. o nekotoryh problemakh teorii tjurkskogo narodnogo stikha. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 23‒42. on the character of georgian verse tamar lomidze*1 abstract. research on the character of georgian verse started in 1731. since that time, some researchers have described georgian verse as syllabic, while others have said that it is syllabotonic. the dispute about the character of georgian verse became particularly acute in the 20th century. the main text the participants in the dispute analysed was a prominent piece of georgian poetry of the 12th century – the knight in the panther’s skin by shota rustaveli. it consists of 16-syllable monorhymical quatrains that have a special name in georgian – shairi. there are two varieties of shairi – the so-called high shairi (4 4 4 4) and low shairi (5 3 5 3). the high shairi was the main issue of the dispute. the researchers who regarded georgian verse as belonging to the syllabotonic system divided high shairi into trochaic feet, while the supporters of the syllabic theory denied the presence of metric trochaic stress in high shairi, believing that the penultimate syllables can be stressed only in two-syllable words but not in words with multiple syllables (due to the dactylic accentuation typical in the modern georgian language). since natural dactylic stress (found in low shairi) reflects the accentuation norms of the language of the later period (including those of modern georgian), we assume that metric stress in high shairi, which is no longer found in modern georgian speech, could be a reflection of the natural accentuation of the comparatively earlier period in the development of the georgian language. checking this hypothesis by relying on relevant linguistic literature, we reconstructed the archaic movable and phonologically relevant stress in the rhymed words in the knight in the panther’s skin. we found that metric stresses of both high and low shairi in this epic poem are actually archaic linguistic stresses. this conclusion differs from the views expressed in concepts developed earlier. it enables us to take a fresh look at the metrics and rhymes of the knight in the panther’s skin as well as the main principles and specific features of georgian verse in general. keywords: versification, metric accentuation, syllabotonic verse, shairi the history of georgian verse is quite long. the most recent research (silagadze 1997) confirmed the earlier assumption that in georgia in the pre-christian era (before the 4th century ad), there was “old secular literature, which had such powerful traditions and deep roots that christian literature introduced * author’s address: tamar lomidze, school of arts and sciences, ilia state university, kakutsa cholokashvili ave 3/5, tbilisi 0162, georgia. email: tamar_lomidze@iliauni.edu.ge. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 45–57 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.03 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.03 46 tamar lomidze later failed to eradicate it and completely hinder its development” (ingorokva 1938: 6). georgian literary texts of that era are not extant. ancient examples of georgian poetry (starting from the 7th century ad; kekelidze 1951: 559) consist of numerous translated (from greek) and original ecclesiastic texts that belong to the syllabic system in terms of versification. they are verses written in the so-called form of iambico and “an imitation of a non-georgian phenomenon”1 (silagadze 1997: 44). iambico is a poem in five lines, each containing 12 syllables with caesuras after the fifth syllable. secular poetry started to develop in georgia from the 11th and 12th centuries. the new literary georgian language took shape in the same period, while old georgian was used only in ecclesiastic literature (gigineishvili 1952: 502; chikobava 1952: 364). laudatory poems such as tamariani by chakhrukhadze and abdulmesiani by ioane shavteli were written in the new language in this period. the knight in the panther’s skin by shota rustaveli was also written in the 12th century. it has been recognised as an unmatched benchmark example of georgian poetry. the versification of the knight in the panther’s skin2 was regarded as mandatory for georgian poems until the 18th century. when speaking about the nature of georgian verse, researchers necessarily analysed the specific features of the versification of this epic poem. researchers have expressed different views about georgian verse over the past three centuries since research on the topic started in 1731. some thought that georgian verse is syllabic and others believed that it is syllabotonic. the dispute about the character of georgian verse became particularly acute in the 20th century. the prominent scientists akaki gatserelia and giorgi tsereteli were the major participants in the dispute. why did this dispute continue for such a long time? why is dual interpretation of georgian verse possible? why can it be regarded as syllabic on the one hand and syllabotonic on the other? the supporters of the syllabic theory probably relied on the weakness of stress and how it is devoid of phonological 1 byzantine spiritual literature. 2 the knight in the panther’s skin consists of 16-syllable monorhymical quatrains (the only exception is one 20-syllable quatrain) that have a special name in georgian – shairi. each stanza has four rhymed words in the clausulas. the rhyme is exact, that is, the stressed vowels and the syllables in the clausulas are always completely identical. silagadze notes that shairi is an arabic word, but “in arabic, this word is not a term related to versification. what is most important, arabic-language verse lines have no forms (metres and so forth), which would be similar with the georgian form at least to a certain extent” (silagadze 2018: 11). the so-called high shairi (4 4 4 4) and low shairi (5 3 5 3) are varieties of shairi. 47on the character of georgian verse value in georgian. in addition, isosyllabism was characteristic of georgian verse in its classical period (until the 18th century), which was yet another proof for the followers of the syllabic theory. however, the georgian stress, which is almost inaudible in speech, becomes stronger in verses (gatserelia 1953: 133). based on this, the supporters of the syllabotonic theory maintained that, in addition to the equal number of syllables in every line, stress also plays an essential role in georgian verse, which is typical for syllabotonic versification. however, researchers admitted that stress in georgian words is weak; therefore, it is difficult to find a stressed syllable in a word. they nevertheless attempted to establish its place in words. in particular, some scholars assert that the penultimate syllable is stressed in two-syllable words and the third from the last syllable in words with three and more syllables; they include nikolai marr, giorgi akhvlediani, sergi zhghenti, giorgi tsereteli, izabella tevdoradze, akaki gatserelia, and togo gudava. in this sense, “the georgian stress is fixed, but it cannot be regarded as a typical fixed stress” (gatserelia 1953: 134). the same researchers believe that georgian stress is movable, as it changes places if the number of syllables and grammatical forms change. m´argalits – dative singular; marg´aliti3 – nominative singular; margal´itebi – nominative plural (gatserelia 1953: 123). thus, “the georgian language is dactylic and this principle is the spine of our speech” (gatserelia 1953: 123). akaki gatserelia asserts that georgian verse belongs to the syllabotonic system of versification. he distinguishes between dactylic and trochaic feet in georgian verses. for example, he presents the following structure of the high shairi in the knight in the panther’s skin: შავი/ ცხენი / სადა : ვითა / ჰყვა ლო:მსა და / ვითა /გმირსა4 shavi/ tskheni / sada : vita / hq’va lo:msa da / vita /gmirsa ′◡ ′◡ ′ ◡ ′◡ ′ ◡ ′ ◡ ′◡ ′◡ 3 margaliti – a pearl in georgian. 4 slashes mark the end of feet when they coincide with word boundaries, and colons are used when there is no such coincidence. 48 tamar lomidze low shairi consists of trochees and dactyls: რომელმან/ შექმნა/ სამყარო / ძალითა/ მით ძლი: ერითა romelman / shekmna/ samq’aro / dzalita / mit dzli: erita ′◡ ◡ ′ ◡ ′ ◡ ◡ ′ ◡ ◡ ′◡ ′◡ ◡ gatserelia’s monograph georgian classical verse (1953) had a significant impact on the development of the study of georgian verse. in 1973, giorgi tsereteli published “the metre and rhyme in the knight in the panther’s skin”. he regards georgian verse as syllabic. he calls the half line of high shairi symmetrical (4 4) and the half line of low shairi (5 3 or 3 5) asymmetrical. according to tsereteli, lines in the knight in the panther’s skin are divided into segments,5 not feet. in his view, it is inadmissible to divide high shairi into trochaic feet: “all native speakers of georgian can feel that such a distribution of stresses in words is unnatural and unacceptable for their language. [...] a stress on the penultimate syllable is admissible in two-syllable words [...] but not in invented fictitious ‘feet’ that are part of four-syllable segments” (tsereteli 1973: 24–25). in other words, since the metric stresses of high shairi do not correspond to the dactylic accents of the modern georgian language, tsereteli rejected the opinion that georgian verse is syllabotonic. tsereteli did not criticise the metric accentuation of low shairi because such (dactylic) stress is characteristic of modern georgian.6 in his view, no specific poetical stresses appear in georgian verse, and the only factor that is decisive is the isosyllabism of verse lines. he explains that “stress is fixed and falls on the penultimate syllables in two-syllable words, the third syllable from the end in three-syllable and in four-syllable words. however, according to some studies, the third and fourth syllables are pronounced with the same stresses. according to the same data, the third, fourth, and fifth syllables also bear the same stresses in five-syllable words” (tsereteli 1973: 38). according to giorgi tsereteli, the number of stresses in a line of a poem is equal to the number of words. this opinion makes it clear that he did not regard poetical and prosaic speech as different from each other in prosodic terms, at 5 he implies segments of a poem’s lines between caesuras, for example, segments of high shairi – 4 4 4 4 – and low shairi – 5 3 5 3. 6 it should also be noted that in tsereteli’s opinion, the so-called principle of section aurea is embodied in low shairi because the small segment (3) in its half line is in the same correlation with the big segment (5) as the big segment (5) is correlated with the whole (8) (tsereteli 1973: 14). 49on the character of georgian verse any rate.7 he did not take into account that language and verse are two different systems, although it is true that language is the foundation of verse. tsereteli also examined rhymes in the knight in the panther’s skin and noted that “since two-syllable words in georgian tend to have a stress on the penultimate syllable and the number of rhymes made of two-syllable words is almost 40% (39.8%), one gets the impression that rhymes in high shairi are ‘trochaic’. however, this is a ‘trochaic trend’, not the structural foundation of verse” (tsereteli 1973: 58). similarly, “since three-syllable words usually bear the stress on the third last syllable, one gets the impression at the level of intuition here too that the rhymes in low shairi are ‘dactylic’ [...]. the endings of lines in low shairi accidentally become similar to ‘dactylic rhymes’, creating the ‘dactylic trend’, but essentially [...] this is no dactyl” (tsereteli 1973: 62). a little later, arabic specialist apolon silagadze shaped a completely different theory. he produced a convincing substantiation, showing that georgian verse does not belong to any known system of versification. in general, it is not the syllabic or syllabotonic nature of georgian verse that determines its specific features but a universal principle, characteristic of georgian verse at all stages of its development. this principle is the so-called principle of binary section.8 in georgian verse, apolon silagadze singles out the smallest units called segments. for example, low shairi consists of four segments: 5 + 3 + 5 + 3, but neither 5 nor 3 are rhythmically independent units. (it is not enough to say that a 5-complex segment occurs in low shairi. it should be pointed out that low shairi consists of the 5 + 3 + 5 + 3 sequence of segments). a segment is a non-binary and non-rhythmic unit that builds a superior rhythmic and binary unit (binomial), but itself does not have a binary structure. silagadze formulates the following rule of verse segmentation: the smallest rhythmic unit should be considered an element of a verse line that can build a complete rhythmic unit. such a rhythmic element is a binomial, which can construct a line, a double verse and a stanza. each of them has a binary structure. the structural rules for these rhythmic units are follows: 1. units have a binary structure: n + k. 2. the second component should not be longer than the first: n≥ k. 7 “poetical and speech readings do not exist separately. they coincide with each other,” according to another researcher in georgian verse, akaki khintibidze. he was a supporter of tsereteli’s theory (khintibidze 366). 8 the size of this paper makes it impossible to describe this extremely interesting theory, which offers an effectively exhaustive analysis of the specific features of georgian verse. 50 tamar lomidze 3. each binomial has a main variant and an alternant, in which the rhythmic boundary is moved back to the left by two syllables: n + k ⇔ (n – 2) + ( k + 2), where n ≥ k, n = 3, 4, 5; k = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. for example, in low shairi there are binomials: 5 + 3 and 3 + 5. in general, the binary rhythmic units of georgian verse have the following structural characteristics: 1. rhythmic boundary; 2. length; 3. configuration of stresses. of these, the main structural factor is the rhythmic boundary, which emerges between the two components of the rhythmic units of all levels (binomial, line, double verse, stanza) (silagadze 1987). of course, silagadze took into account the discussions under way in the second half of the 20th century between gatserelia and tsereteli that were aimed at clarifying the nature of georgian verse. silagadze did not deny the existence of the “organised distribution of rhythmic stresses”9 in georgian verse but noted that such a distribution of stresses is a “concomitant sign, not structural (rhyme-creating)” (silagadze 1987: 127). at the same time, according to silagadze, the “distribution of stresses has a local and auxiliary function that is materialised in certain conditions” (silagadze 1987: 129). it should be noted here that unlike apolon silagadze, who analysed all stages of the development of georgian verse (from the 7th to 20th century), akaki gatserelia attempted to determine the nature of georgian verse on the basis of examining the stage of its development in the period, when it was characterised by the “organised distribution of rhythmic stresses”. as regards tsereteli, he analysed only the knight in the panther’s skin. both scholars wrongly believed that their conclusions reflected the nature of georgian verse in general. in the current study, we attempted to clarify the problem of the nature of georgian verse in the context in which gatserelia and tsereteli examined it. in particular, we examined the correlation of metric and natural stresses in the knight in the panther’s skin and its rhymed words in particular.10 of course, we had a special focus on high shairi. * * * 9 specific features of syllabotonic verse are implied here. 10 we analysed only the rhyme words in the knight in the panther’s skin because it is technically very difficult to analyse the whole text of the poem. in addition, even gatserelia did not call into question the place of stresses in rhyme words. 51on the character of georgian verse what is the origin of the trochaic stress that can be found only in verses (high shairi)? why does dactylic stress that is barely felt in the standard georgian language become stronger in low shairi? it is admissible to presume that the stress existed as a linguistic stress extant in the shape of metric stress in east georgian folkloric verse11 (which uses low shairi) on the one hand and on the other in west georgian, specifically megrelian verse, which uses only high shairi.12 as mentioned above, the knight in the panther’s skin uses both types of shairi. the question was often asked whether the alternation of different kinds of shairi in the knight in the panther’s skin could be due to some special reason. for example, “references were made to slowing down or speeding up the tempo (the former in low shairi and the latter in high shairi), evasion of rhythmic monotony, and sometimes the factor of the content” (khintibidze 2009: 148). we express below a different theory on reasons for the use of both high and low shairi in the knight in the panther’s skin. clausulas in the rhyming words of low shairi consist of three syllables, and they are dactylic. correspondingly, metric accents in these words coincide with modern natural accents because it is believed that stress is dactylic in the words that consist of three or more syllables; i.e., it falls on the third from the last syllable. თამარს ვაქებდეთ მეფესა, სისხლისა ცრემლ-დათხეული, ვთქვენი ქებანი ვისნი მე, არ ავად გამორჩეული. მელნად ვიხმარე გიშრის ტბა და კალმად მე ნა რხეული, ვინცა ისმინოს, დაესვას ლახვარი გულსა ხეული. ´tamars ´vakebdet ´mepesa, ´siskhlisa ´tsreml-datkh´euli, ´vtkveni ´kebani ´visni me, ´ar avad ´gamorch´euli. ´melnad ´vikhmare ´gishris t’ba ´da kalmad ´me na rkh´euli, ´vintsa ´isminos, ´daesvas ´lakhvari ´gulsa kh´euli. by shedding tears of blood we praise our king and i’ll say at the start: i think myself far from the least of those who’ve played a praising part. a lake of ebony i used as ink, my reed was like a dart. whoever hears the lines i have written, a spear will pierce his heart!13 11 the standard georgian language took shape on its basis. 12 compare silagadze 2014. 13 translated by lyn coffin. 52 tamar lomidze the situation is different in high shairi, in which clausulas are trochaic and consist of two syllables. in such words, metric trochaic stresses in multi-syllable words do not coincide with the dactylic stresses characteristic of the modern georgian language (which, as we know, giorgi tsereteli found very surprising). let us look at a strophe from the knight in the panther’s skin: მე, რუსთველი, ხელობითა ვიქმ საქმესა ამა დარი: ვის ჰმორჩილობს ჯარი სპათა, მისთვის ვხელობ, მისთვის მკვდარი; დავუძლურდი, მიჯნურთათვის კვლა წამალი არსით არი, ანუ მომცეს განკურნება, ანუ მიწა მე სამარი. ´me, rustv´eli kh´elob´ita, ´vikm sakm´esa ´ama d´ari: ´vis hmorch´ilobs ´jari ´sp’ata, ´mistvis ´vkhelob, ´mistvis mk’vd´ari; ´davudzl´urdi, ´mijnurt´atvis ´k’vla ts’am´ali ´arsit ´ari, ´anu ´momtses ´gank’urn´eba, ´anu ´mits’a ´me sam´ari. i, rustaveli, did this deed half-crazed by the presence i crave. the ruler whom whole armies obey is the reason that i rave. no cure or remedy exists for the illness my loving gave: the one i love must ease my pain, or this earth will soon be my grave.14 it is necessary to note the difference between the metric stresses of high and low shairi compared to the stresses in the modern language: the metric stresses are on every second syllable in high shairi,15 while the metric stresses in low shairi coincide with the natural accentuation of the modern georgian language. if the natural dactylic stress (found in low shairi) reflects the more recent norms of accentuation in the georgian language (although, as said above, they are almost inaudible in ordinary speech), it is possible to presume that the metric stress in high shairi, which is no longer audible in modern georgian speech, can correspond to the natural accentuation in the georgian language in an earlier period. 14 translated by lyn coffin. 15 this is characteristic of megrelian verse (megrelian is one of the kartvelian languages). in addition, research has confirmed that megrelian verse “reflects the most ancient stage [...] of the development of georgian verse” (silagadze 2014: 116). 53on the character of georgian verse arnold chikobava noted that old georgian shows significant differences from modern georgian speech in the distribution of stresses. in his opinion: 1. both the last and first (second or third from the end) syllables could be stressed in old georgian. 2. the stress was intensive and dynamic. 3. the stress was not fixed, it was movable. 4. the loss of vowels was intrinsically linked to the stress. (chikobava 1942: 298) in addition, “the contraction of word stems under the influence of the vowel in suffixes was usual for georgian: the historical implication of the phenomenon is probably linked to the fact that the relevant suffix bore the stress. “mkhevl-´is-a, megobr-´is-a, masts’avlebl-´is-a should have followed the model of dzm-´is-a (dzma is the stem – t.l.), dgh-´is-a (dghe is the stem – t.l.), dzvl-´is-a (dzvali is the stem – t.l.)” (chikobava 1942: 196). modern georgians, who observe dactylic accentuation when speaking, read the examples used by chikobava in the following manner: mkh´evl-is-a, meg´obr-is-a, masts’avl´ebl-is-a. movable and dynamic stress that has a phonological value is supposed to have been characteristic not only for the old georgian language (before the 11th and 12th centuries), but also at much earlier stages of development. it was characteristic of the proto-kartvelian language. this linguistic phenomenon is a postulate of the monograph by tamaz gamkrelidze and givi machavariani system of sonants and ablaut in kartvelian languages: “admitting the existence at an early stage of the development of common kartvelian of movable dynamic stress, which led to the weakening and loss of unstressed vowels can be one of the explanations of the possible reasons for the syncopation of vowels [...] stress [...] had a phonological value” (gamkrelidze, machavariani 1965: 370). the same authors note that the forms of georgian verbs differed in various vocalisations of verbal stems and suffixes. if a verbal stem was pleophonic, it was followed by a zero-vowel suffix (cvc-c) and vice versa, zero-vowel stems were always followed by pleophinic suffixes (cc-vc) (gamkrelidze, machavariani 1965: 183). taking into account the opinions of these authors and arnold chikobava, the stress was to fall on verbal stems in the first case 54 tamar lomidze and on suffixes in the second case, “which led to the weakening and loss of unstressed vowels”.16 sometimes, verbal stems had long vowels. “the most important structural feature of this type of verbs was that in aorist, stems did not move to the zero (reduced) grade of vocalisation, although the pleophonic e suffix followed them” (gamkrelidze, machavariani 1965: 240). we think it would be correct to presume that the verbs of this group would retain the stress on the stem. for example, the same authors said that in aorist,17 the -en suffix of the direct object (or subject) in plural led to the syncopation of vowels in stems: v-k’al´en → v-k’l-´en (“i killed them”), which is a cc-vc form. indeed, we find such verbs in the rhyming words of the knight in the panther’s skin: gardav-vl-´en-i-t, mov-k’l´en-i-t, moa-skh-´en-i-t, movert’q’-´en-i-t, gave-khrml-´en-i-t, shevh-k’ivl-´en-i-t, where metric stress falls on the same place as archaic stress.18 in the poem, we also find a rhyming word da-khots-en-i-t, where the vowel in the stem is not lost, but according to the authors of system of sonants, because the vowel is long (gamkrelidze, machavariani 1965: 245), it is not syncopated. in the text of the poem, we also find words with the zero-vowel -en suffix and the pleophonic verbal stems. correspondingly, metric (trochaic) stress falls on the stems. presumably, archaic natural stress also fell on the stems: gaa-d´id-n-es, dah-r´id-n-es, aa-chk´ar-n-es, and m-i-kh´ots-n-es, amo-gv-ts’q’v´id-n-es, migv-i-q’v´an-n-es, da-gva-gv´an-n-es, she-i-q’´arn-es, ts’a-i-k’´id-n-es, e-taq’v´an-n-es, mo-e-khv´iv-n-es, mi-e-g´eb-n-es, ga-a-mq’´ar-n-a, da-a-ts’q’n ´ar-n-a, mi-u-q’´ar-n-a, she-u-khv´iv-n-a, a-t’k’´iv-n-a, shemo-st’´ir-n-a, da-gv-i-dzv´ir-n-a, da-gv-i-ch’´ir-n-a... low shairi also shows coincidence of metric (dactylic) and archaic natural stresses in the forms of aorist. although verbal stems and suffixes in cases, where the -en suffix is found in rhyming words, seem to be fully voiced, the vowels in the stems of these verbs were long (gamkrelidze, machavariani 1965: 240-262), so they were not syncopated, for example: 16 sometimes, verbal stems had long vowels. “the most important structural feature of this type of verbs was that in aorist, stems did not move to the zero (reduced) grade of vocalisation, although the pleophonic e suffix followed them” (gamkrelidze, machavariani 1965: 240). we think it would be correct to presume that the verbs of this group would retain the stress on the stem. 17 interestingly, forms of aorist are most frequent in verbs used as rhyming words in high shairi. 18 it may seem that the i vowel in the last syllable contradicts our opinion. however, it should be born in mind that kivilis the stem in the verbal form of shevh-kivl-´en-it. 55on the character of georgian verse mo-i-j´ar-en-i-t, ga-v-i-kh´ar-en-i-t, she-v-i-q’´ar-en-i-t, mo-i-gv´ar-en-i-t, ga-v-i-ts´ad-en-i-t, da-v-e-r´id-en-i-t, da-v-i-b´ad-en-i-t, da-e-mz´ad-en-i-t, shemo-m-gv´ar-en-i-t, ga-v-i-zr´akh-en-i-t, and so forth. aorist is an ancient verbal form in georgian and it is not surprising that archaic forms of accentuation can be extant in both high and low shairi. we will not quote other verbal forms here that are used in high and low shairi. this requires a vast linguistic analysis since the verbal forms are highly varied. that analysis can be found in our monograph, georgian verse: structure and semantics (2021). in addition, we believe that the analysis of the aorist verbal forms is quite convincing in this paper. in general, the conclusions drawn from the analysis of accentuation peculiarities of the knight in the panther’s skin are as follows. high shairi always shows coincidence of metric and archaic natural stresses in verbal forms. the same is often true for masdars and participles. these stresses mostly fall on different syllables in nouns (lomidze 2021). in low shairi, metric and natural stresses coincide in the verbal forms of aorist and the present tense and often in masdars and participles. they do not coincide in nouns (ibid.).19 modern standard georgian retains dactylic accentuation, but as is known, the stress has lost its phonological value and is very weak. it is noteworthy that the adepts of both the syllabotonic and syllabic theories were fully aware of the fact that the old and modern georgian accentuations were different. for example, gatserelia noted: “the opinion has been expressed in special linguistic literature that stress could be movable in old georgian. this issue is important in terms of studying georgian stress historically [...]. at the time, when syllabotonic verse emerged and developed, stress was already fixed in the standard georgian language. georgian syllabotonic verse found word stress falling on the same place it falls now” (gatserelia 1953: 112). gatserelia defended this position to the end, although dactylic stresses of the modern georgian language cannot be found in high shairi with its trochaic feet. as regards giorgi tsereteli, he was the author of the foreword to system of sonants by tamaz gamkrelidze and givi machavariani. he was familiar with the authors’ opinion on archaic georgian stress and indicated this in his own book when he referred to “the georgian language proper, not protokartvelian, which some researchers presume to be different” (tsereteli 1973: 106). however, he seems not to be familiar (or not to agree) with chikobava’s 19 it should be taken into account that the most ancient extant copy of the knight in the panther’s skin is of the 16th century. it is not ruled out that scribes changed some words in the text of the poem during the four centuries. 56 tamar lomidze works, which say that archaic movable georgian stress that had a phonological value retained its features not only in proto-kartvelian, but also later, in the old georgian language. at any rate, neither gatserelia nor tsereteli presumed that the specific features of high shairi in the knight in the panther’s skin could have been due to the use of archaic stress. it is also important that for a couple of exceptions, there are no cases in the knight in the panther’s skin in which the same lexical unit is used in the same grammatical form as a rhyming word in high or low shairi bearing different metrical stresses – trochaic in one case and dactylic in another. in our opinion, this is yet another proof in favour of the hypothesis, which says that in rustaveli’s poem, metric accentuation mostly coincides with natural or archaic accentuation (characteristic of high shairi) or more recent accentuation characteristic of low shairi. however, the analysis we carried out has shown that dactylic stresses of low shairi also coincide with archaic stresses, and they cannot be regarded as fixed stresses in the sense in which this term is used regarding the modern georgian language. what conclusions can be drawn from the aforesaid? let us recall that in giorgi tsereteli’s opinion, the knight in the panther’s skin is an example of syllabic verse. this opinion does not seem to go contrary to our conclusions, because metric stresses (in high and low shairi) are indeed linguistic stresses in words. thus, tsereteli’s theory seems to be confirmed. however, tsereteli could not see any difference between the accentuations of high and low shairi. he believed that high shairi did not differ from low shairi in terms of accentuation. the conclusions we drew is only in partial harmony with gatserelia’s theory. this theory says that the versification of the knight in the panther’s skin is syllabotonic and is characterised by specific verse stresses. gatserelia did not presume that the so-called syllabotonic metric stress could be archaic natural stress, but the principle of division of high shairi lines in the knight in the panther’s skin (on the basis of “metric trochaic stress” according to gatserelia’s theory and on the basis of natural archaic stress according to our research) is correct in gatserelia’s theory. thus, we conclude that neither akaki gatserelia’s nor giorgi tsereteli’s theories can clarify the specific features of the development of georgian verse in the period when it was characterised by the “organised distribution of stresses” that is “actualised in certain conditions” (silagadze 1987: 128). our conclusions do not contradict apolon silagadze’s theory. this auxiliary function seems to have been not so insignificant since the “certain conditions” continued for centuries and played an essential role in the history of georgian verse. 57on the character of georgian verse references chikobava, arnold 1942. makhvilis sak’itkhisatvis dzvel kartulshi. in: sakartvelos ssr metsnierebata ak’ademiis moambe 3(3), 296–303. chikobava, arnold 1952. enatmetsnierebis shesavali. tbilisi: tbilisis universit’et’is gamomtsemloba. gamq’relidze, tamaz; mach’avariani, givi 1965. sonant’ta sist’ema da ablaut’i kartvelur enebshi. tbilisi: metsniereba. gats’erelia, ak’ak’i 1953. kartuli k’lasik’uri leksi. tbilisi: sabch’ota mts’erali. gigineishvili, ivane 1952. ertiani kartuli salit’erat’uro enis sak’itkhebi. in: iberiulk’avk’asiuri enatmetsniereba iii. tbilisi: georgian academy of sciences press, 500–514. ingoroq’va, pavle 1938. rustavelis ep’okis salit’erat’uro memk’vidreoba. in: rustavelis saiubileo k’rebuli. tbilisi: sakhelgami, 4–46. k’ek’elidze, k’orneli 1951. dzveli kartuli lit’erat’uris ist’oria. tbilisi: tbilisis universit’et’is gamomtsemloba. khintibidze, ak’ak’i 2009. kartuli leksis ist’oria da teoria. tbilisi: tbilisis univerisit’et’is gamomtsemloba. lomidze, tamar, 2021 kartuli leksi: st’rukt’ura da semant’ik’a. tbilisi: shota rustavelis sakhelobis kartuli lit’erat’uris inst’it’ut’i. silagadze, ap’olon 1987. leksmtsodneobiti analizis p’rintsip’ebis shesakheb. tbilisi: tbilisis universit’et’is gamomtsemloba. silagadze, ap’olon 1997. dzveli kartuli leksi da kartuli p’oeziis udzvelesi sapekhuris p’roblema. tbilisi: tbilisis universit’et’is gamomtsemloba. silagadze, ap’olon 2014. megruli leksi. tbilisi: universali. silagadze, ap’olon 2018. kartuli mq’ari salekso pormebis aghmosavluri ts’q’aroebi. in: evrop’uli da aghmosavluri mq’ari salekso pormebi kartul p’oeziashi, i. tbilisi: meridiani, 9–31. ts’ereteli, giorgi 1973. met’ri da ritma “vepkhist’q’aosanshi”. tbilisi: metsniereba. plotting poetry 3. conference report david j. birnbaum, anne-sophie bories, thomas n. haider, mari sarv* 1 plotting poetry (and poetics) 3 / machiner la poésie (et la poétique) 3, the third convocation of an international group of scholars who share an interest in the machine-assisted exploration of poetry and poetics, met on 26–27 september 2019 in nancy at the atilf (analyse et traitement informatique de la langue française) laboratory, part of the université de lorraine and of the cnrs (centre national de la recherche scientifique). the nancy meeting, which follows earlier ones in basel (2017) and berlin (2018), was organized by anne-sophie bories (university of basel) and véronique montémont (université de lorraine) and included twenty presentations in english and in french. the program and other materials from all three meetings to date are available on the plotting poetry website at https://plottingpoetry.wordpress.com/. the first presentation of the conference, ophir münz-manor’s “hebrew liturgical poetry from late antiquity: preliminary computational explorations”, reported on the author’s experience of revisiting with digital tools (the catma toolkit, which formed the focus of jan-christoph meister’s keynote address the following day) the quantitative research he had undertaken manually some fifteen years earlier in the context of his phd dissertation. münz-manor’s object of study was a corpus of some 220 texts (about 50,000 words) of hebrew liturgical poetry (piyyut), and his focus was on the use of figurative language (especially metaphor, but also simile, synecdoche, personification, and metonymy) in those texts, which turned out to be surprisingly marginal (only slightly more than half as dense as in psalms). reanalyzing his original dissertation data with catma yielded some results that mirrored those obtained with manual methods, others that refuted earlier conclusions, and still others that were new and that would not have been available without the use of computational tools and methods. * authors’ addresses: david j. birnbaum, university of pittsburgh, 1228 cathedral of learning, pittsburgh, pa 15260, usa, e-mail: djbpitt@pitt.edu; anne-sophie bories, university of basel, maiengasse 51, 4056 basel, schweiz, e-mail: a.bories@unibas.ch; thomas n. haider, max planck institute for empirical aesthetics, frankfurt and university of stuttgart, grüneburgweg 14, 60322 frankfurt am main; e-mail: thomas.haider@ae.mpg.de; mari sarv, estonian literary museum, vanemuise 42, tartu, 51003, e-mail: mari@haldjas.folklore.ee. studia metrica et poetica 6.2, 2019, 150–161 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.05 https://plottingpoetry.wordpress.com/ https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.05 151plotting poetry 3. conference report helena bermúdez sabel and pablo ruiz fabo, in their “discovering spanish sonnets: a close/distant reading experience” (coauthored with clara martínez cantón, who was not able to be present in person), introduced the diachronic spanish sonnet corpus (disco). this corpus, which at the time of the conference included more than 4,000 sonnets spanning five centuries and drawn from canonical and non-canonical european and latin american writers, offers, in conformity with fair data principles, open access to full tei xml, plain text, and rdfa information through resources hosted on github and zenodo. mediated access to information in the corpus is also provided through the discover front end, a web interface that offers predictive faceted searching and, in a digital workstation format, interactive textual and graphic reports about formal poetic features at user-controlled levels of granularity. discover is designed to support navigation between poem and corpus views and between close and distant reading, which the presenters illustrated by moving from an individual poem to a close view of rhyme pairs, then to specific rhymes that occur elsewhere in the corpus, then to subsetting those results according to metadata, and then, completing the circle, to other poems that contain the new rhyming words. beyond the study of spanish sonnets, and beyond the study of poetry more broadly, the open access disco corpus and the feature-rich, user-friendly discover front end exemplify an effective and economical way to repurpose the same data by offering alternative modes of access. on the one hand, the project meets the needs of technologically adept humanities researchers by offering access to raw data that is available for reuse. on the other hand, discover provides exploratory tools that enable researchers without coding expertise nonetheless to navigate structural, linguistic, and metadata features of the corpus in sophisticated interactive ways. mari sarv’s “exploring variation in estonian folk songs: language, meter, topics, genres” reported about the analytical exploration of a corpus of approximately 100,000 estonian runosongs, a formally distinctive type of finnic folk poetry characterized by trochaic meter, alliteration and parallelism, a stichic form without rhymes and couplets, and common motifs, themes, and poetic formulae. while unified by these formal and thematic consistencies, the corpus exhibits variation in meter, word forms, and content in ways that are sensitive to, although not fully coextensive with, dialect areas (especially in the north). archaisms and dialect features make it impossible to parse the texts using tools developed for and trained on the standard language, but sarv’s presentation demonstrated how the analysis of poetic features (especially meter and alliteration) and the use of unlemmatized word forms (in stylometry and topic modeling) have nonetheless already produced new knowledge about patterns of variation in the estonian folk song tradition. one outcome of this 152 david j. birnbaum, anne-sophie bories, thomas n. haider, mari sarv analysis has been the successful use of corpus data (specifically, most frequent words) to document regional differences, e.g., a preference for communicative terms (hello, thank you) on the islands, a preference for terms for relatives (in wedding songs) in the west, etc. quantitative analysis also reveals regional differences in vocabulary within the same semantic or thematic sphere, so that, for example, among kinship terms father, mother predominate in the north, while brother, boy, girl are more common in the south. beyond what these studies reveal about distributional patterns in the estonian folk tradition, though, they demonstrate that quantitative methods can help identify meaningful formal and thematic patterns even when applied to dialectally varied data that is not amenable to normalization with tools developed for standard-language texts. éliane delente’s “le traitement automatique du rythme régulier. un cas particulier: l’enjambement” (“automated processing of regular rythm, and the special case of enjambment”) opened by asking “to what extent is the automated processing of enjambment in french versified discourse possible?” delente grounded her engagement with this question by first explicating how a poet’s use of enjambment is influenced by a diversity of features, some metrical (e.g., verse length and structure, stanza type) and others historical (e.g., time period, author, reader). furthermore, although enjambment is traditionally understood as overlap between formal metrical properties (e.g., lines) and formal syntactic ones (e.g., sentences, phrases, or clauses), it also has semantic, pragmatic, and discourse aspects. on the discourse level, for example, listeners cannot process an entire poem, or even stanza, at once, and instead consume it in perceived metrical units, which are governed by expectations based on individual subjective knowledge, experience, and sophistication, on the one hand, and, on the other, also by formal features that might be amenable to automated detection. delente categorizes metrical units as complete vs. incomplete and as effective vs. retrospective, which provides a formal apparatus to describe, for example, situations where a first line appears metrically complete because it is syntactically complete… until its continuation in the next line causes a reassessment (retrospective) that reveals it to be enjambed (much as the ellipsis does in this sentence!). while delente concludes that enjambment is too varied and too complex for its detection to be fully automated, she proposes that corpora built from the hemistich up with information about relationships between adjacent metrical units would provide a more sophisticated resource for training and analysis than the simple dichotomy of end-stopped and run-on lines that has traditionally characterized the discussion of enjambment. 153plotting poetry 3. conference report in their “rules-based and machine-learning approaches to identifying russian rhyme”, david j. birnbaum and elise thorsen reported on recent developments in their ongoing project of identifying rhyme, with particular attention to inexact rhyme, in russian verse. because one goal of the project is to distinguish where similar, but not identical, sounds function as a rhyme and where the same sounds do not, the project analyzes rhyme in the context of an individual poem, without attempting to construct a global list of rhyme pairs or sets across the language. the conference presentation demonstrated the use of unsupervised learning (hierarchical agglomerative clustering) to identify the line endings that were closest phonetically within a poem, decomposing those line endings into segments and then phonetic distinctive features in order to explore and discuss rhyme behavior at a more granular level than words. while last year’s presentation of an earlier stage of this research at plotting poetry 2018 (berlin) had decomposed the line into syllables, and the syllables into onset, nucleus, and coda, this year’s presentation offered evidence that decomposing syllable structure in this way may complicate the identification of rhyme, and a simpler decomposition into vowels and consonant clusters (irrespective of syllable boundaries and onset/coda distinctions) is more effective for recognizing heterosyllabic consonant correspondences that nonetheless contribute to rhyme. petr plecháč’s “yet another fresh confirmation of mr. spedding’s division of the play of henry viii” introduced a new way of assessing the attribution of individual scenes (or parts of scenes) of shakespeare’s henry viii to shakespeare or to john fletcher. that fletcher participated in the authorship of henry viii, first suggested by james spedding in 1850, is by now widely accepted in shakespeare studies. the hypothesis has been tested repeatedly with stylometric methods using a variety of features, to which plecháč contributed new evidence in the form of the distribution of stresses within each line. plecháč applies a support vector machine as a classifier, rhythmic types of lines (identified automatically using methods developed by ryan heuser for the stanford university trans-historical poetry project), and other plays of fletcher and shakespeare as a training corpus, and he uses a rolling delta technique (developed by maciej eder in 2015) to explore authorship without dependency on formal scene divisions. plecháč’s analysis produced almost perfect identification for works known to be by shakespeare or fletcher, and the results of classifying portions of henry viii by rhythmic line type, by 500 most frequent words, and by a combination of the two sets of mutually independent features all conform closely to spedding’s 1850 attributions. the first keynote of the conference, by anne bandry-scubbi, was entitled “zooming in, zooming out: 30 years of corpus stylistics bricolage”. the title’s 154 david j. birnbaum, anne-sophie bories, thomas n. haider, mari sarv code-switching to the french bricolage (do-it-yourself and makeshift) aptly illustrates the author’s tool-switching habits and her goal-driven, undogmatic, and versatile application of a wide range of computation methods. reviewing her own history of corpus studies of eighteenth-century english literature, bandry-scubbi recounted how, beginning with magnetic tape, she experimented with many successive methods and perspectives (frequency counts, concordances, hyperbase, txm, and others), and how she reused data from other teams, explored traces of authorial gender or writing strategies, and tried to pinpoint the representative and distinctive features of a canon. drawing on and integrating traditional and novel methods, close and distant reading, and famous works and less well-known ones, bandry-scubbi retold a career of actively addressing the open-ended question of the hermeneutic benefit of computational and statistical approaches to literary phenomena. the starting point for chris mustazza’s “in search of the sermonic: hearing sonic genre in poetry recordings” was james weldon johnson’s 1927 god’s trombones, a collection of sermon-poems modeled on the speech sounds of african-american preachers of the early twentieth century, recordings of which, in johnson’s own voice, are available in the pennsound archive. mustazza applied quantitative methods to model the pitch, tempo, and other sonic properties of these “sermonic poems” alongside those of actual sermons, with the goal of exploring whether it is possible to identify how specific acoustic features contribute to the sermonic quality of the poetry. this, in turn, invites broader inquiries about the hermeneutic use of sonic features for corpus exploration, e.g., whether it is possible to use digital methods to distinguish modernist poetry modeled not only on sermons, but also on political speeches or comedy acts. ultimately, the association of formal acoustic properties with poem types raises the question of whether it is possible to employ digital methods to identify sonic genres and classify audio recordings automatically. valérie beaudouin’s “rap et métrique” (“rap and meter”) begins by observing that since its advent in african american musical culture of the 1970s, rap has undergone transformations and adaptations as it has spread around the globe. much as the diffusion of the sonnet from its origin in southern italy across europe and beyond introduced local accommodations to the particularities of new host languages, rap in different territories exhibits differences in text, in music, and in theme. these differences invite us to ask whether it is possible to model varieties of rap – with particular attention to french and francophone rap – as a confluence of speech flow and musical rhythm. beaudouin’s research repurposes a suite of tools first developed to study the meter and rhythm of seventeenth-century french verse (corneille, racine, 155plotting poetry 3. conference report molière), specifically metrometer (which converts orthography to phonetic representation, with stress, word boundaries, syllabification, and part-ofspeech tagging) and rimarium (which analyzes rhyme using graph methods, clustered by final metrical vowel, post-tonic consonants, and grammatical endings). the goal in introducing these formal annotations is to look for relationships between formal poetic features and semantic content, e.g., do we find different rhythmic structures in clusters around such different semantic environments as “love” and “death”? but lines in rap are not like alexandrine verses (line length in rap is highly variable and there is no regular internal caesura), although they also are not free verse (there is no systematic avoidance of rhyme and caesura); end rhyme is not systematic, but internal rhyme is rich. beaudouin concludes by suggesting that a rap corpus that is suitable for data mining should include both metrical features (placement of rhyming syllables, placement of accented syllables, degree of correspondence between syntactic units and measures, number of syllables per beat) and performative features (legato vs. staccato, degree of articulation of consonants, extent to which the onset of any syllable is earlier or later than the beat). insofar as, in rap, an increase in tempo could accommodate an increase in the number of syllables within the same metrical space, when trying to make sense of rap it is important to start not from properties of the text, as one might with classical french verse, but from the meter and the general musical structure, including performative features. in his “hayford’s duplicates: operationalizing a literary theory of herman melville’s moby-dick”, jonathan armoza employed digital methods to interrogate a hypothesis by harrison hayford, an editor of melville’s writings, who in his “unnecessary duplicates” proposed that moby-dick was assembled (“cobbled together”) from the three primary draft stages, none of which survives in manuscript form. hayford’s theory arose from a quest to explain duplicate and vestigial settings, events and characters, and his argumentation relies on stylistic evidence, inductive reasoning, and melville’s personal letters. the three stages hayford proposes are: 1) a sea narrative, without ahab, queequeg, or bulkington, where “savages” are background, and not individuated; 2) bulkington as teacher, comrade, and also truth-seeker (a stage for which little textual evidence remains); and 3) melville splits bulkington into queequeg (mentor and friend) and ahab (truth-seeker). once queequeg, a “savage”, has become a central character in stage 3, melville injects phrases like “my particular friend queequeg” and “my dear comrade and twin-brother”, etc. hayford sees these phrases, which follow a part-of speech pattern of possessive + adj(s) + noun(s) or proper-noun, as clumsy insertions, a hypothesis 156 david j. birnbaum, anne-sophie bories, thomas n. haider, mari sarv that might be tested by examining the distribution of the pattern across the text of the novel. armoza examines hayford’s theory through a prism of nonnegative matrix factorization (nmf), a filtering method that has been applied productively to extracting latent information in the analysis of sparse data in non-literary domains. in the case of moby-dick, armoza’s analysis concentrates on latent part-of-speech patterns in the novel. for example, if we examine sentences where queequeg is mentioned explicitly as comrade, harpooner, or both, nmf supports the hypothesis that there was a change in part-of-speech profiles between stage 1 and stage 3, especially with respect to pronouns. moby-dick is not, to be sure, written in verse, but to the extent that armoza’s report confirms the ability of nmf to identify latent linguistic patterns in the novel, it invites us next to explore whether the method can also be applied productively to the analysis of linguistic patterns in verse texts. steffen eger and thomas haider reported on projects related to “controlling style in machine-generated poetry”, co-authored with jörg wöckener, tristan miller, and luise borek, who were unable to be present in person. more specifically, they explored the poetry generation capabilities of recurrent neural network language models (rnnlm) for german and english verse. in one investigation they tuned a gpt-2 transformer architecture on 74,000 german poems and generated metrical lines (iambic pentameter) with a generateand-filter approach. this approach yields coherent prose and metrical lines, constrained only by mistakes of the metrical model, although the generateand-filter approach also has several shortcomings. they also reported on experiments in conditioning a rnn with sentiment polarity lexica, and on alliteration and rhyme, to produce a smarter model, instead of having to filter for features or alter the model architecture. the results were encouraging for sentiment, but the system failed to learn phonetic features, for reasons that the authors are inclined to attribute to the volume of data and the difficulty of engineering appropriate models. finally, the authors reported on their current efforts to annotate poetry with fine-grained aesthetic emotions, with the eventual goal of conditioning poetry generation on this annotation. in his “poetic program, typographic system”, rémi forte introduced a “call for applications” poster he had produced for the atelier national de recherche typographique, which he employed as the framework for a poetological account of the use of typography to support the creative organization of information. the methods forte demonstrated were grounded in kenneth goldsmith’s “uncreative writing”, and specifically in the observation that “we are faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead we must learn to negotiate the vast 157plotting poetry 3. conference report quantity that exists”. at the intersection of poetic writing and graphic design, the poster’s excessively long text and its dense, monotonous layout are structured around the text of the actual call for applications, interrupted by the inclusion of text fragments found online through searching for the call’s keywords. the poster was then typeset according to typographic methods based on karl gerstner’s designing programmes (1964). this presentation explored issues of subjectivity in constrained productions, efficiently engaging in dialog with issues of data availability, personal interpretation, and systematic protocols in the other presentations. in his “ngram-driven word-level recombination: exploring a search space of metrically valid verse”, pablo gervas reflected on the importance of meaning, content, and thematic cohesion in computer-generated poetry. the method he presented departs from traditional approaches to the algorithmic construction of verse, which have often relied on the articulation and recombination of smaller existing poetry units into new verse, often producing pleasing results while failing to achieve a voice distinct from the originals used. gervas’s innovative approach combines the rule-based analysis of possible word combinations with a word-chaining approach based on an n-gram model trained from a corpus. once such mechanisms are in place, the procedure can be extended beyond the recombination of poems into other poems, involving, for example, also the recombination of texts of any kind into poems. this paper poses the crucial question of the uniqueness of a poet’s voice, and of the complex contradiction inherent in the notion of a turing test for poetry generators, since being indistinguishable from other poems is precisely what a human poet might seek to avoid. natalie houston’s “distant reading the semantic field of english poetry” explored the horizon of expectation described by hans robert jauss in “literary history as a challenge to literary theory” – the framework of ideas, assumptions, and culturally encoded meaning that readers bring to a work of literature at a given historical moment. rhyme dictionaries describe as well as prescribe rhyming practices, dictating what is perfect and what allowable rhyme, and houston explored this topic through the hundred most common rhyme words in british nineteenth-century poetry, some of which functioned mainly as rhyme words and are not used elsewhere in the poems. the horizon of expectation that nineteenth-century english readers brought to their reading of poetry was necessarily different from that which readers today bring to the same texts. conventional rhyme patterns, rhyme words, and rhyme sounds of english poetry constrained the words used in poetry and thus shaped its semantic field. although a complete victorian reading experience cannot be reconstituted, this historically inflected method for a distant reading of the 158 david j. birnbaum, anne-sophie bories, thomas n. haider, mari sarv structures of rhyme, repetition, and enjambment in a corpus of 80,000 english poems (1835–1899) operationalizes nineteenth-century poetic theory and criticism. such a computational distant reading of a large historical corpus sheds light on this semantic field at a scale impossible with human reading alone, enriching historical reading practices to better evaluate which nineteenthcentury poems are truly typical and which are truly unique. benjamin krautter and janis pagel presented a report on joint work with nils reiter and markus willand on “identifying character types in german drama”, which sought to determine automatically the role type (e.g., tender father, comical old man, etc.) of 262 characters drawn from 46 plays in the german portion of the dracor corpus. the identification begins by using information drawn from second sources to annotate the characters. the authors then automatically classify these roles with a gradient boosting machine, based on metrics that are commonly used to determine character centrality, such as textual statistics (token/utterance counts, type/token ratio), network metrics (degree centrality), as well as topic models. while the method cannot accurately classify all types with confidence, certain type pairs, such as aristocrat ~ servant or father ~ daughter are more easily distinguished. jan-christoph meister, in his keynote lecture “from qualitative to quantitative analysis of poetry and back”, engaged with the trope of the methodological divide that is often assumed to separate qualitative and quantitative methodology. starting from an observation that poetry enables new ways of seeing the familiar through deviations from ordinary language (cf. jakobson’s poetic function), meister set out to explore whether computer-assisted access to poetry has any meaningful connection with the human experience of poetry. based on ast (1808) and dilthey (1874), meister introduced the methodological principles of the hermeneutic circle, which is iterative, rather than linear, and grounded in intersubjectivity (no single authoritative interpretation) and reflexivity (awareness of subjectivity, historical context, inexplicit contingent factors, etc.). where traditional hermeneutics focuses primarily on close reading, new methods in text mining and natural language processing focus on distant reading that trades hermeneutic interpretation for statistical generalizability, even at the expense of historicity, genre-specificity, and other contextual detail. the context nonetheless remains hermeneutic because specificity may be no less important than generalizability for the humanities, as meister illustrated through a historical misunderstanding of the biological origin (in goethe) of vladimir propp’s use of the term morphology to characterize his structuralist folk tale methodology. one grand challenge for digital humanities, then, is modeling the phenomenological-empirical continuum of understanding. to explore the continuum 159plotting poetry 3. conference report between qualitative and quantitative methodology, meister proposed manual annotation that is modeled around the hermeneutic cycle and that promotes ambiguity. as a way of working toward this type of approach he introduced the annotation platform catma (https://www.catma.de), which is designed to enable the hermeneutic (undogmatic – thus the zoologically punning name) within a digital, taxonomy-based approach to text and corpora. the solution for the stated methodological problems then becomes the parameterization of context, that is, to make explicit the conceptual framework via meta-annotation, so that subjective context serves as a fruitful hermeneutic parameter. insofar as we can model subjective interpretive text annotation algorithmically, we can begin to bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative methods of digital text and corpus analysis. this perspective, then, suggests a strategy of moving between quantitative and qualitative analysis via annotation schemes. guillermo gonzález pascual’s presentation on “exploring stylistic consistency in antonio machado’s early and forgotten poems” examined the oeuvre of a poet associated with modernism, symbolism, and romanticism. the principal goal of the study was to ascertain why some poems from machado’s 1903 book “soledades” were omitted from his collected poems of 1907, whether they form a stylistically consistent group, and how they differ from the rest of his work. after starting with an overview using voyant on the early texts of machado that were included in and omitted from his collected poems, gonzález applied maciej eder’s rolling delta method, producing bar-chart visualizations based on features that included word count, part-of-speech distribution, and topic modeling. these methods of distant reading revealed that the main topics in both books were largely the same, but there were slight differences in the use of some lexical elements characteristic of the literary movement of modernismo, such as “abril”, “noche”, “luna”, and “sueño”. the stylometric analysis of the poems showed that, indeed, a part of the poems left out from the collected volume of 1907 were stylometrically consistent. the analysis also showed that one poem that should have been left out as characteristic of modernismo was nonetheless included in the collected poems. clémence jacquot’s “enjeux de l’annotation stylistique des motifs romanesques pour interroger la poétique des textes romanesque” (“stylistic annotation of fiction traits to explore the poetics of fiction texts”) presented a classification of close subgenres of novels through the analysis of motifs. this report was part of the phraséorom anr-dfg project, exploring a vast digitized corpus of novels of the second half of the twentieth century in english, french, and german, and bringing together specialists in linguistics, computer science, and stylistics. this annotation endeavor, through a statistical 160 david j. birnbaum, anne-sophie bories, thomas n. haider, mari sarv analysis of fiction genres, makes it possible to identify and define phraseological and discursive units, or features, in order to describe and analyze the literary language of contemporary novels. the stylistic annotation of features is a delicate undertaking, as it challenges the traditional units and relevance levels of stylistic analysis: it tends to describe and, ultimately, to offer a prototype for modeling discursive functions specific to each recurring lexical-syntactic construction, statistically extracted from the corpus. the linguistic characterization of fiction is based on distinguishing para-literary sub-genres: crime fiction, historical, sentimental, sci-fi and fantasy, and a sub-corpus of “general” literature, defined by editorial criteria. the presentation argued that literary language is characterized by the statistically significant overrepresentation of lexemes (keywords), co-occurrences, and phraseologisms, and it focused first on presenting methods for the stylistic annotation of traits, and then on exploring the theoretical and epistemological negotiations at stake when questioning the utility of such annotation for the computer-assisted reading of fiction. the presentation on “poeticisms and common poetic discourse in the digital ‘russian live stylistic dictionary’”, by georgy vekshin and marina lemesheva (coauthored with egor maksimov, who was not able to be present), identified two main communicative intentions: to seem and to be, reflected in different aspects of linguistic expression. the presenters demonstrated a web service that identifies stylistic connotations of words and phrases in their multidimensionality and historical instability, with particular attention to poeticisms as features of poetic discourse. words are categorized for features like colloquial, administrative, ideological, scientific, poetic, and religious properties, which are thought to be language-independent and universal. for example, the russian word vdokhnovenie ‘inspiration’ (etymologically a church slavonicism) is recognized as neutral, while its cognate and orthographically almost identical vdokhnoven’e ‘illumination’ is poetic. the presentation also explored the segmentation of communicative space (sociocultural framing) and basic types of pragmatics and communicative codes, observing, for example, that russian tends to isolate state and power as values and codes in language. in the live stylistic dictionary, pragmatics supplies strategies, operations, and devices for text, and a combination of multiple topics and contexts can contribute to a search query (called styleset), which returns output according to eighteen primitives, passed through machine learning to yield stylistically homogeneous texts as output. as a whole, the conference discussed the three major literary macro-genres: fiction (armoza on moby dick), drama (krautter et al. on dracor, plecháč on shakespeare), and, of course, poetry. the presentations about poetry ranged 161plotting poetry 3. conference report over a variety of formal features, including rhyme (birnbaum and thorsen, houston), metrical form (beaudouin on the alexandrine), and enjambement (bermúdez and ruiz, delente). the approaches to these texts, in turn, ranged over topics including authorship analysis (plecháč on shakespeare), analysis of variation (sarv on finnic folk texts), and automated poetry generation (gervas, eger and haider). and while most presentations, as has long been common in computational textual scholarship, operated with written texts, mustazza’s report on sermonic language stood out by virtue of its willingness to engage with the less well-developed but no less promising domain of audio analysis of poetic diction. frontiers in comparative metrics iv, 16–17 september 2022, tallinn, estonia frontiers in comparative metrics iv 16–17 september 2022, tallinn, estonia mikhail trunin*1 on 16–17 september 2022, the conference frontiers in comparative metrics took place for the fourth time at tallinn university. funding for the conference was provided by the university of tartu (grant phvlc21924) and estonian research council (grant prg319); while preparation and support was of organizing committee members: mihhail lotman, professor emeritus of tallinn university and, currently, visiting professor at the university of tartu; maria-kristiina lotman, associate professor of the university of tartu; igor pilshchikov, research professor at tallinn university and professor at the university of california, los angeles; and mikhail trunin, researcher in tallinn university and the author of this report. originally, the conference was to take place in december 2020. however, due to the covid-19 pandemic, it had to be postponed twice: first, to december 2021; and then, due to a second viral surge, to september 2022. the first conference in this series occurred in 2008, and was dedicated to memory of mikhail gasparov (1935–2005), a key figure in russian verse studies; the second, in 2014, was in memory of prominent polish scholar of verse lucylla pszczołowska (1924–2010); while the third conference was held in 2017 to commemorate the 75th birthday of eminent estonian scholar jaak põldmäe (1942–1979), the founder of scientific estonian verse theory (see pilshchikov 2014; novikov, arukask 2017). the original plan for the fourth conference was to be dedicated to the legacy of marina krasnoperova (1941– 2010), a distinguished russian verse scholar. a mathematician and linguist by education, krasnoperova devised a novel approach to the problems of verse analysis and created a theory of reconstructive simulation of versification, which allows to describe the typology of mechanisms of versification in different languages. that conference series, however, was negatively affected, not only by the pandemic, but also by the criminal war unleashed by russia in ukraine in february 2022. by decision of the academic senates of the universities of tartu and tallinn, all cultural and scientific contacts with the * author’s address: tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, 10120 tallinn, estonia; email: mikhail@tlu.ee https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.06 studia metrica et poetica 9.2, 2022, 147–160 mailto:mikhail@tlu.ee https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.06 148 mikhail trunin russian federation were suspended. and as a result, the conference had no named dedication, and was held without participants from russia. mihhail lotman spoke about the past and present contexts of the frontiers in his opening address. he acknowledged the criminal actions of the russian government and army, and explained that due to their behaviour, collegial relationships with residents of russia and employees of russian academic institutions have, unfortunately, become toxic. at the same time, we are aware that there are many top-class scholars in russia who do not support russian aggression in ukraine. all the conference participants agreed, and expressed their hope that the situation would soon change, and russian scholars would again become accepted internationally. both conference days started, and closed, with keynote plenary lectures. the first was delivered by frog, from the university of helsinki, and was entitled “problems in the aurality of medieval written oral poetry: toward a theory of manuscript performance”. the speaker remarked that contemporary research on the metrics and poetics of oral poetry customarily begins by considering it as performed and heard rather than viewing it exclusively as abstracted linguistic text. research on medieval texts has tended to focus on: 1) oral performance traditions in the background of the written documents; 2) the sound, situations or manner of articulation in which the written text or their oral counterparts would have been performed; and 3) how copyists’ knowledge of an oral tradition could impact on written transmission. the fact that medieval written texts were often intended for public rather than private reading is widely recognized, yet there has been almost no consideration of how this relates to the written texts themselves. subsequently, frog focused on the pragmatics of public reading and the dynamics of oral-literary interaction. in the paper presented, examples from old norse poetry and so-called eddic poetry were considered. then the discussion was extended to other forms of oral-derived poetry and poetry that operated at the intersection of orality and literacy. the manuscripts of medieval iceland were first viewed in terms of their general challenges posed to a reader, and considered in relation to scribal errors in copying texts that illustrate such challenges. then consideration was given to the abbreviation practices specific to this poetry that make demands on its readers to learn and remember, at very least, the recurring poetic passages. finally, passages that include metrically problematic lines and passages were considered, not from the perspective of the poem as a written text, but in terms of the oral performance of the poem and its reception, and of the assessment of that performance by an audience. taken together, these factors predict variation between the written text and what is performed, which provides a 149frontiers in comparative metrics iv foundation for theorizing manuscript performance as social practice. that problematic passages were preserved in copying the poems and are for the most part also uncorrected by owners of the manuscripts, leads us again to consider how these relate to manuscript use. to outline a complementary theory of how these written texts were conceived by the people who used them, frog introduced the term “text ideology”, which describes the concept of what texts “are” as things in the world. here, the text ideology of poems combines with the principles for a predictive model of variation in manuscript performance. the result is a preliminary theory of manuscript performance, based on tradition-specific factors of written texts and their usage, combined with the knowledge and contemporary text ideology of the person or a group engaging with those texts. this theory predicts that lines and groups of lines that were not metrically well-formed in medieval manuscripts would, contingent on the knowledge (competence) of the reader and that reader’s text ideology, most likely be revised into well-formed lines in the course of manuscript performance. mihhail lotman discussed the problem of secondary meter. he considered verse forms where not one metrical scheme but two are realized in a text. the focus of the paper was on the interference of the two meters and the emergence of new hybrid forms. in russian versification, these are, first and foremost, russian analogues of classical (greco-roman) meters. on one hand, they attempt to implement the schemes of the classical meters, but on the other, they are permeated by a simpler verse meter that is more easily recognisable to a russian reader (listener). another example are russian paeons; being quaternary meters, they clearly betray the substrate of a binary meter. there also exist other verse forms whose structure is governed by two metrical schemes, for example, mayakovsky’s free iambs and trochees in the metrical context of his accentual verse. the first conference session was concluded with the presentation by jeanlouis aroui (paris 8 university), “musical beats and intonational phrases in french and english traditional songs”. traditional french songs are characterized by a special dialect, whose words or phrases are described as “feminine” or “masculine”. a feminine expression ends phonetically with a post-tonic syllable. in that case, the last syllable’s nucleus is always a schwa. a masculine expression ends phonetically with a tonic syllable. the nucleus of this syllable cannot be a schwa. it has been argued that, in traditional french songs, the stress-to-beat matching is strictly constrained for a “line ending”, i.e. an intonational phrase ending: if the phrase is masculine, its last syllable cannot match a weaker beat that the penultimate syllable; however, if the phrase is feminine, its last syllable must match a weaker beat that the penultimate syllable. the 150 mikhail trunin only exception would be in case of a melisma: then the last two syllables are on strong beats. however, the speaker showed that an intonational phrase with a feminine ending may have its last two syllables on strong beats, even without a melisma. in english, a feminine ending is post-tonic as well, and a masculine ending is tonic. the only difference with french is that a specific word or phrase cannot be freely feminine or masculine (in french, a word like vie may be pronounced as [ˈvi.ə] or [ˈvi]). in the last part of the presentation, aroui offered the generalization explaining the stress-to-beat matching concerning the end of an intonational phrase in both french and english. the second session, which was mostly devoted to the automated analysis of big data sets, was opened with a paper by mirella de sisto (tilburg university), “the development of a poetic tradition. automatic annotation of a dutch renaissance poetry corpus”. this paper introduced a scansion machine which was used to annotate a dutch renaissance poetry corpus and described the analysis of its resulting data. the automatically generated annotations allowed to delineate a detailed picture of the development of early-stage dutch iambic pentameter and alexandrine, and to investigate a number of theoretical questions related to them. the annotations derived from automatic scansion were also used to compare the dutch corpus with the archivio metrico italiano, an annotated corpus of italian renaissance poetry. the purpose of the study was to investigate the development of the same poetic form in two different traditions. the metrical analysis was elaborated by calculating the deviation percentage from a perfect line in each work of the two corpora. by comparing the italian and the dutch corpus, it is possible to observe the divergences in the evolution of the two poetic forms and to define their phases. on the one hand, the dutch corpus shows how dutch meter went from being an unstable form to a fixed and strongly regular one. on the other hand, the italian corpus only underwent minor changes and preserved its original form. a similar tool can potentially be adapted to other poetic traditions, both written in other languages and/or from different historical periods. éliane delente and stéphane ferrari (both from normandy university) made a zoom presentation of “automated processing of relationships between meaning and rhythm in french metrical poetry”. the presenters stated that the most common approach to studying the relationships between rhythm and meaning in french poetry – both in theoretical works and in automated processing – consists in aligning the syntactical and metrical structures to identify what is usually called enjambment. the speakers attempted to show that considering the sole syntactic boundary at the end of the line brings limited, sometime even disputable results. they used a large tei corpus malherbǝ (crisco) to build an exploratory corpus by automatically extracting 151frontiers in comparative metrics iv groups of two alexandrines using xquery on boileau and chénier’s works. in a second step, a case-by-case examination made it possible to obtain a more restricted corpus with lines in which rhythm and meaning could possibly be mismatched. the observation focused on the metrical expressions: their beginning, their end, and their internal consistency. this method of processing – metrical expression after metrical expression – was an attempt to integrate the mental processing time, which is the specific reader’s expectation, in the analysis itself. the last presentation of the session, “freedom bound” by johnny edström (stockholm university), was devoted to a detailed cognitive analysis of four poems written by edith södergran in metrical verse. södergran is generally regarded as one of the most important adopters of modernist free verse in swedish. however, her metrical verse has garnered less attention. the speaker aimed to fill this lacuna and to provide a close reading of södergran’s four poems: “nocturne”, “du som aldrig gått ur ditt trädgårdsland” (you who never left your garden country), “o himmelska klarhet” (o heavenly clarity), and “ankomst till hades” (arrival in hades). analysing the structure of the poems the researcher used the metrical theories of reuven tsur and richard cureton, together with the cognitive theories of george lakoff and mark johnson. edström introduced two main schemas: balance and power. the balance of the body is metaphorically mapped to the balance of the metrical structure, where distribution of stresses represents a body in controlled balance, while the speed of the rhythm is mapped to the force of the body in movement. all the poems show more or less obvious play between balanced and unbalanced rhythms, and the later ones reflect the dramatic depictions of religious imagery and life after death. the study ultimately shows that södergran used traditional metrical verse in order to produce interesting experiences of uncertainty and unbalance. robert kolár (institute of czech literature of the czech academy of sciences), in co-operation with ksenia tveryanovich, discussed the problems of translation and meaning of verse forms. they undertook a metrical analysis of more than 130 russian translations of four czech poets who worked at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (karel toman, fráňa šrámek, viktor dyk, and františek gellner), looking for the motivations for structural or functional equivalents. they also compared the general profiles of mentioned poets in russia based on the metrics of translations with their profiles in their homeland. in the comparison, differences between the russian and czech metrical system were taken into account, as well as differences between the russian and czech verse theories, first and foremost their different concepts of free verse and different labelling – for example dolnik, a specific russian version of german strict stress-meter. 152 mikhail trunin jesús m. saavedra carballido, from the university of santiago de compostela, devoted his paper, “across the whale road”, to the problems of verse translations of the old english verse epic beowulf into several iberian romance languages: spanish, galician-portuguese and catalan. translators have sometimes offered prose versions, thus renouncing the verse of the original, with its four-ictus lines divided into two halves of varying syllabic lengths. among those who have attempted verse translations, a few have resorted to a kind of free verse that can be difficult to distinguish from chopped-up prose. most, however, have chosen kinds of metrical verse that, apart from the usual licence of varying clausulae, regulate the number of syllables in ways that are quite alien to the original: some translations are based on unified ten-position lines in which stresses are irregularly distributed; others, on lines divided by internal extrametricality, with each half featuring two ictuses, a noticeable ternary rhythm and optional headlessness, or on divided lines in which each half has exactly five positions. despite the allowed variations, all of these metrical versions impose a degree of formal rigidity that is absent from the old english epic meter. the speaker expressed bewilderment about the fact that no translator, at least as far as galician-portuguese and spanish are concerned, has ever exploited the possibilities afforded by the loose, dolnik-type meter known in both languages since the middle ages. the advantages of this meter seem obvious: to begin with, it can present itself as, among other things, a divided line whose internal extrametricality increases the translator’s freedom; moreover, the possibility of combining a precise number of ictuses with internal syllabic fluctuation brings it closer to the original. lastly, it is flexible enough to permit more literal translation than strict meters. grigori utgof’s (tallinn university) presentation was announced as a combination of a formal description of several poems by one of the most important contemporary russian authors, maria stepanova, with an overview of the poet’s strategies towards quoting her predecessors. however, the speaker only had enough time to introduce stepanova to the public and read aloud a few poems and their translations made by sasha dugdale. the audience was free to draw their own conclusions about the meaning of the form in the works of stepanova. her poems are excellent, both in the original and in translation. the first day of the conference ended with a keynote lecture delivered via zoom by barry scherr, a professor of dartmouth college (hanover, nh), and named “metrical ambiguity”. in most instances the meter of a russian poem becomes clear virtually from the start, after a single line or just a few lines. in others, such as works employing logaoedic meters or compound meters, it may be necessary to look at a couple of stanzas or even the entire poem before a firm determination of the meter can be made. however, there are also poems 153frontiers in comparative metrics iv for which the author is clearly providing a metrical structure to the verse lines, but the work nonetheless resists easy classification. most often this phenomenon results from situations in which the poem bears some resemblance to more than one metrical type but does not precisely match the norms for either one. more rarely, a poem seems to fit under a specific metrical category but breaks one or two key rules for that meter, leading to the sense that it might be equally possible to classify the work differently. in his paper the speaker examined several instances of metrical ambiguity in russian verse and concluded that such poems should be treated as a distinct category when establishing the metrical repertoire of a given poet. the second day of the conference was opened with a plenary keynote lecture delivered by igor pilshchikov: “russian quantitative formalism of the 1910– 1930s as a forerunner of digital humanities”. the speaker approached russian formalist theory from the perspective of the digital humanities and corpusbased computational study of verse. in 2011, franco moretti and his co-authors from the stanford literary lab called their research method “quantitative formalism” in contrast to old, russian formalism, which, in their opinion, was “qualitative”. however, the thesis of quantitative formalism’s novelty is only partially true. to demonstrate this, the author focused on the approaches to quantitative poetics developed by boris tomashevsky (1890–1957) and boris yarkho (1889–1942), and showed how their methodologies can be applied in the present-day digital corpora. both tomashevsky and yarkho were members of the moscow linguistic circle, cofounded by roman jakobson in 1915. tomashevsky pioneered a statistical method of his own invention that compares empirical indicators of verse rhythm with a theoretical model. later the mathematician andrei kolmogorov introduced important corrections to tomashevsky’s methodology. meanwhile, in the contemporary computational corpus-based research of verse, the study of rhythm is the weakest link. while the automated recognition of most meters is now available and used in poetic corpora, the study of rhythm requires a lot of manual markup that takes a lot of time and effort, particularly for the languages with a free stress, such as russian. the diachronic changes create additional complications, such as, for example, the shifts in the position of stress in russian polysyllables compared to their stress in the language of the 18th and 19th centuries. there are no large rhythmically disambiguated corpora, and the comparative rhythmics of the meters of poems written in different languages has never been extensively studied with computer support. tomashevsky undertook the first study of this kind in 1919 (published in 1923), and in the preand early computer era his approach was substantially developed in the studies of marina tarlinskaja and mikhail gasparov. 154 mikhail trunin yarkho used statistics for researching almost all aspects of the language of poetry and belles-lettres, motivated by a total quantification of poetics. the presenter drew special attention to yarkho’s then-novel approach of comparing many texts using a limited number of features. this is nothing else but an early example of “distant reading”, a term coined by moretti many decades later. only a few features suggested in yarkho’s works are used in contemporary digital corpora of russian and european drama, such as the dracor project (https://dracor.org/). of particular interest today is yarkho’s late book, methodology of exact literary studies, in which he shows how the study of literature can benefit from applications of basic statistical methods and how these data can explain certain features of literary structures or their evolution. the next presentation, entitled “simulating history of poetic forms in a jar: role of imitation, chance and inequality in the emergence of association between poetic meter and meaning”, was made by artjoms šeļa (institute of polish language of the polish academy of sciences and university of tartu), one of the most prolific among contemporary digital humanists. the association between a poetic form and semantics – also known as “the semantic halo of meter” – remains one of the fundamental problems in verse studies. there is a growing body of recent work that shows that persistent relationship between meter and meaning in different poetic traditions is formally detectable across large and cross-cultural corpora of accentual-syllabic verse. however, we are yet to have a satisfactory answer to the main question: why must this relationship form and how does it persist in time? there are many possible explanations: from mnemonic capacities of metrical forms, or specific literary conventions, to educational practices and literary canon that selects lucky few texts which are then imitated by a disproportionate amount of aspiring poets. unfortunately, a historical corpus of poetic texts does not hold these answers in itself; also impossible are experiments: we cannot simply “switch off ” one variable – e.g. memory or canonicity – and look at how poets will produce poetry in a controlled setting for generations. the last remaining path is simulations and formal modelling: to understand an observable effect of a complex system (the “halo”) we must first understand simple interactions that might lead to it. the speaker presented a series of simple agent-based models that explicate and test basic assumptions about the relationship between time, form and meaning on the level of generations of individual poems. while the effect of different moving parts of these models can drastically differ, they show at least two important premises for the persistent form and meaning relationship: 1) small preference of a new poem to copy meaning within the observable past of the same meter; and 2) unequal popularity of metrical forms which create formally different poem pools of variable sizes. in other words, https://dracor.org/ 155frontiers in comparative metrics iv the halo effect activates when memory works together with chance. this kind of simulations, while not providing any definitive answers, can hopefully push us to refine theories about complex historical processes. the last paper of the morning session, “european eclogue: genre and meter (from theocritus to brodsky)”, was given via zoom by anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo, and paula ruiz (all the co-authors represent the national university of colombia / universidad nacional de colombia). eclogue, or idyll, is one of the most important genres of european poetry. it was created by theocritus, transferred to latin soil by virgil, flourished in the poetry of the renaissance and has survived to the present. however, to give an exact definition of this kind of poetry is not so simple. problems arise in part due to the fact that this form in the history of european poetry allows for variability of metric parameters while maintaining a number of semantic constants. though in classical poetry eclogue was written in hexameters, new european poetry did not find a single equivalent to this form, which has caused a certain genre uncertainty. the paper discussed european variants of the transfer of the genre and form of eclogue in translations and original poems. particular attention was paid to terza rima as a meter of pastoral poetry (examples are boccaccio’s poems and sannazaro’s “arcadia”) and the reasons for the appearance of such a metric equivalent. another european equivalent was the alexandrine verse used by french poets (fontenelle) and their russian followers (sumarokov, muravyov). finally, the paper focused on joseph brodsky’s experiments in search of the tonic equivalent. an analysis of the history of eclogue from the point of view of meter and genre allowed the presenters to turn to the fundamental aspects of comparative metrics, the specificity of poetic forms in translation and semantics of meter and rhythm. the next session discussed germanic and finno-ugric folklore verse and some reincarnations of the latter in contemporary estonian popular poetry. the first presentation, “a rough analysis of geographical variation of finnic runosong meter on the basis of large data”, was prepared by a group of scholars: mari sarv from estonian literary museum and her colleagues from the university of helsinki, maciej janicki, kati kallio, and eetu mäkelä. finnic common runosong tradition characterized by trochaic tetrametric verse lines, alliteration and parallelism were documented extensively in previous centuries. majority of runosong texts stored in estonian and finnish archives have been reworked into databases during last decades, and recently brought together into a joint database in the framework of the filter project sponsored by the finnish academy. the digital accessibility of this vast material allowed the researchers to delve into various aspects of variation within this tradition with the help of computing. at the same time, extreme linguistic 156 mikhail trunin variation, archaic language mode, and biases in the material complicate the analysis. despite of the scholarly interest in the runosong meter (so-called kalevala-meter) in general, its variation in the northern finnic songs had remained unstudied. the research questions, and methods for solving them derive from mari sarv’s research on metrical variation of estonian runosongs based on limited text samples from each estonian parish. the quantitative vs. accentual nature of the verse lines in each region was estimated based on rough syllabification of the whole body of material, the average length of the syllables, and the percentage of verse structures typical of so-called broken lines (where placement of stressed syllables violates the trochaic rhythm). sarv’s previous study had shown how in estonia, through the innovation in prosodic structure of the language, the quantitative basis of meter became gradually replaced by the accentual one. the results of the new research showed similar tendencies in the whole finnic area in the direction from north-east towards south-west. the paper by janika oras (estonian literary museum) “on a metric dialect of the southern border of the finnic runosong area: versification in seto singing tradition” introduced one example of the metric variability in oral poetic tradition – seto runosong meter as a peculiar regional version of the common finnic verse meter. the seto region is located on the southern border of the finnic runosong tradition area. the presenter, with a group of co-operators, which includes mari sarv, žanna pärtlas, sulev iva, and andreas kalkun, has statistically analysed the structure of seto verses based on sound recordings of performances, in an attempt to understand the principles of versification characteristic of the local tradition. the analysis has comprised three different structural levels: the musical rhythm structure of the performance that is tightly connected to the song text; the structure of the octosyllabic main line in the performance (without repetitions, additional syllables and addressing formulas/refrains); and the generalized or deeper level of the verse structure (without taking into account the most variable part of the performance). the seto song meter shares similarities with but also has considerable differences from other metric dialects of finnic runosong, including the tradition of the neighbouring and linguistically very similar southeast-estonia. there are also differences within seto region which can be understood as three versions of the local meter of the older runosong style. these different versions of the meter are connected to three categories of songs: 1) the main corpus of runosongs with a stable line length; 2) the group of refrain songs with a varying line length; and 3) the choral laments with a varying line length. with the paper “a living oral tradition with viking roots: norwegian nystev features found in old norse skaldic poem málsháttakvæði” presented by jacqueline ekgren, founder and head of ekgren institute of music in oslo, 157frontiers in comparative metrics iv the discussion moved from finno-ugric topics to old germanic. the paper introduced the norwegian nystev, “new stev”, one-stanza four-line folk poetry performed solo in a living oral tradition called kveding, “between singing and saying”. in 1914, researcher ivar mortensson-egnund published a short essay proposing a strong connection between the living oral tradition of norwegian nystev, and málsháttakvæði, an old norse thirteenth century “proverb poem”, found in codex regius which also contains snorri’s edda. among the 30 eightline stanzas in málsháttakvæði, one finds 14 instances of four-lines sharing the distinctive features of nystev. mortensson-egnund’s essay lacks sources, but deserves closer scrutiny. the speaker reviewed relevant research, and presented additional common features. málsháttakvæði and nystev are both accentual poetry, with four stresses per line. málsháttakvæði has situational verse, a major feature of nystev. moreover, despite the differences in language, the 14 instances of nystev pattern in málsháttakvæði can be performed in nystev kveding style with any nystev melody (as it was demonstrated by the presenter). one may wonder if the nystev pattern in málsháttakvæði was the poet’s innovation, or an example of older folk poetry. a common assumption of nystev originating in the 1600s may be revised: the findings of the presenter support that the nystev pattern could be at least as old as thirteenth century málsháttakvæði. the session ended with a paper on contemporary estonian pop culture. in her paper “sound devices in estonian instagram poetry”, rebekka lotman (university of tartu and tallinn university) stated that during the second half of the 20th century end rhymes started to disappear from estonian poetry. in elitist poetry these effects were used mainly (with some exceptions) with a comic function (for example, in parodies), as they were perceived as an outdated artistic device. however, in the last decade, rhyming has started to emerge again in two popular types of poetry, which both have brought it back to a wider audience: firstly, in oral rap poetry, and secondly, in instagram poetry, mostly in the works by popular author lauri räpp. the speaker analyzed the sound patterns in estonian instagram poetry: what kind of word and sound repetitions are used, and what is the occurrence of different kinds of end rhymes (full rhyme, and various types of deviations from it) as well as alliteration and assonance. the outcome was compared with the results of studies on sound devices in the previous periods of estonian poetry. the next session was devoted to the incarnations of greco-roman culture in later historical periods. kristi viiding (under and tuglas literature centre of the estonian academy of science) and maria-kristiina lotman discussed the dactylic hexameter in livonian humanist poetry: their paper presented the comparative analysis of the versification of the poetry by daniel 158 mikhail trunin hermann (1539–1601) and david hilchen (1561–1610), both humanistically educated authors and influential political figures of their times. during the period of 1585–1600 in riga these two authors were closely acquainted and hermann’s dedicatory poem to hilchen reveals their friendly relationship. while hermann was an active poet during his entire life and the image of a poet was an important part of his persona, hilchen was first and foremost a politician and a lawyer for whom writing poetry was a diversion from his other obligations. in his lifetime, hermann prepared three volumes of his collected works (published posthumously in riga in 1614–1615), while hilchen’s extant poems were collected and edited only this year. in the paper the rhythmical and prosodical structure of the dactylic hexameter of both authors were studied and the results was compared to the data of ancient latin poetry. the analysis demonstrated the prosodic and rhythmic variety of the hexameter of both authors and revealed the main rhythmic tendencies and basic rhythmic patterns of their verse, as well as the commonalities and peculiarities in comparison with classical latin hexameter. quasi-hexameter in the work of contemporary russophone estonian poet p. i. filimonov (a nom de plume) was the topic of mikhail trunin’s paper. he analysed a poem entitled “hellenic elegy, ordinal number unknown” («какая-то по счету эллинская элегия»). it consists of 14 metrical lines and two concluding lines written in free verse. this poem attracts attention with its classical antique colouring. the paper examined what its verse meter is, and how it is related to the previous tradition at the level of form and semantics. the first part of the paper considered the rhythmic structure of the poem. out of the 14 metrical lines, only two are written in classical hexameter; all the others are various derivatives of this meter. the main field of experiments for p. i. filimonov is the anacrusis: its length varies from zero to two syllables. at the same time, clausulae are a stronghold of tradition. the second part of the paper presented p. i. filimonov’s interest in classical antiquity as a sign of the poetic style that has developed in the russian poetic language since the early 19th century. it has been continually reinterpreted since then, but has not lost its significance until now. to test the viability of (quasi)hexameter, p. i. filimonov collides it with vers libre at the end of his poem. in conclusion, the question was posed: can semantics be the anchor that makes a poetic text quasi-hexametric? the example of p. i. filimonov’s poem shows that even a minimal shade of the antique colouring forces us to read the poem against the background of both the revisited classical antiquity and modern experiments with classical hexameter. but if a quasi-hexametrical rhythm enhances this shade, the impression intensifies. therein lies a significant difference between classical hexameter and other poetic forms. 159frontiers in comparative metrics iv “cursus in dante’s and boccaccio’s latin prose” by annika mikkel (university of tartu) was the last paper of the session. the term “prose rhythm” is used in ancient rhetoric to indicate rhythmical units at the end of sentences and clauses which in classic prose were called clausulae. the rhythm of classic prose was based on the quantity of syllables. over centuries, the system of clausulae was simplified and, in addition to quantity, word stress became relevant. medieval latin prose rhythm was based on word stress and it was called cursus. there were four rhythmic patterns in the late middle ages: cursus planus, cursus velox, cursus tardus and cursus trispondaicus. the aim of the presentation was to study the occurrence of cursus in dante’s and boccaccio’s latin prose using the method of comparative-statistical analysis. to achieve this goal, the presenter analysed the following texts: de monarchia, de vulgari eloquentia, questio de aqua et terra and epistole by dante; and de mulieribus claris and de casibus virorum illustrium by boccaccio. the conference ended with a lecture delivered via zoom by honorary speaker marina tarlinskaja, professor emerita in the university of washington, entitled “a lover’s complaint: not shakespeare”. outlining shakespeare’s canon is one of the most important problems of literary studies. the poem “a lover’s complaint” is still a mystery: was it written by shakespeare or somebody else? and what is its date? until the 1960s its attribution to shakespeare was doubtful, but in the 1960s two scholars independent of each other, kenneth muir and macdonald p. jackson, analysing the poem’s vocabulary, firmly attributed it to shakespeare; nowadays this poem is included into all complete editions of shakespeare. however, nobody had studied its rhythmic and metrical particulars. the speaker has been studying this poem since 2004, and according to her rhythmical analysis, the poem was not written in the 1600s as jackson believes to this day, but in the early 1590s, and not by shakespeare. if the poem is dated to, say, 1592–1593, shakespeare wrote his own “complaint” at this time – it is named “the rape of lucrece”. the rhythmical style of “a lover’s complaint” makes the presenter think that it was composed by an older poet who used an old-fashioned way of stressing, word boundaries distribution and other rhythmical features of a poetic text. the programme and abstracts are available on the webpage of the conference1. science does not stop even in cramped circumstances, when the universe is unstable and often turns to people with its disgusting side. verse studies reconcile a little with reality and sometimes give us a hope.2 1 https://www.tlu.ee/en/frontiersincomparativemetricsiv 2 this report was written with the support of the estonian research council (prg319). https://www.tlu.ee/en/frontiersincomparativemetricsiv 160 mikhail trunin references novikov, kadri; arukask, anni 2017. frontiers in comparative metrics iii, 29–30 september 2017, tallinn, estonia. in: studia metrica et poetica 4(2): 144–152. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.07 pilshchikov, igor 2014. frontiers in comparative metrics 2, in memoriam lucyllae pszczołowskae (april 19–20, 2014, tallinn university, estonia). in: studia metrica et poetica 1(2): 144–157. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.07 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.07 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.07 “the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar marina akimova* abstract: the author explores various compositional levels of the russian modernist author mikhail kuzmin’s long poem “the trout breaks the ice”. the levels are: (1) the grammatical tenses vs. the astronomical time (non-finite verb forms (imperative) are also assumed to indicate time); (2) the meters of this polymetric poem; (3) realistic vs. symbolic and (4) static vs. dynamic narrative modes. the analysis is done by the chapter, and the data are summarized in five tables. it turned out that certain features regularly co-occur, thus supporting the complex composition of the poem. in particular, the present tense and time regularly mark the realistic and static chapters written in various meters, whereas the past tense and time are specific to the realistic and dynamic chapters written in iambic pentameter. the article sheds new light on the compositional structure of kuzmin’s poem and the general principles of poetic composition. keywords: grammar of poetry, tense and time, metrical semantics, poetic composition mikhail kuzmin’s longer poem “the trout breaks the ice” (“форель разбивает лёд”, 1927) has provoked numerous comments and interpretations (see a summary in panova 2012: 112–115). however, the verse structure of the whole text in its relation to the grammar of poetic language – and, in particular, to the composition and distribution of the verb forms – has never been a matter of special attention (compare the definitions of the meters of the poem in relations to their semantics in panova 2012: 122–126; the description of the meters in kuzmin’s poem was made by m. l. gasparov, but it was published later: gasparov 2015: 310). meanwhile, grammatical tenses seem to be of considerable importance for kuzmin, especially in “the trout”.1 there are at least two indications of that importance. the first indication is the use of a verb in the present tense in the title, while in the russian poetry of the nineteenth century titles * author’s address: marina akimova, institute of world culture, lomonosov moscow state university, 1–51 leninskie gory, room 854, moscow 119991, russia. e-mail: aquimova@mail.ru. 1 compare other observations on verb forms in kuzmin’s poetry: malmstad 1989; berson 2000. studia metrica et poetica 8.1, 2021, 99–116 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.03 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.03 100 marina akimova containing verbs are very rare.2 verbs in the titles began to appear at the very end of the nineteenth century and – even more frequently – in the first quarter of the twentieth century. they appeared mostly in the first person singular, the past tense and the imperative,3 e.g.: “скажи” (“tell”, viktor gofman, 1902–1904), “я люблю другого” (“i love another man”, valery bryusov, 1896), “не пришел на свиданье” (“he did not come to the date”, aleksandr blok, 1908). poets also began to create titles with an overt subject and the predicate in a personal verb form, e.g.: “корабли идут” (“the ships are going”, blok, 1904), “весы качнулись” (“the balance swung”, bryusov, 1905), “лепестки оживают” (“petals come to life”, igor severyanin, 1908), “скорбь воскрешает” (“the grief revives”, maria moravskaya, 1915), “цех ест академию” (“the guild [of poets] is devouring the academy [of poets]”, vladimir pyast, 1909–1916). in kuzmin’s poetry, except “the trout”, there are only six (!) more examples of verb forms in the titles: 1) “плод зреет” (“the fruit is ripening”), a cycle of lyrical poems (1915–1917), 2) “пушкин едет на дуэль” (“pushkin is riding to the duel”, 1927, dubia), and headers of four short poems inside the cycle “панорама с выносками” (“a panorama with footnotes”, 1926) from the book the trout breaks the ice (1929)4: 3) “мечты пристыжают действительность” (“the dreams shame the reality”), 4) “уединение питает страсти” (“the solitude nourishes passions”), 5) “темные улицы рождают темные чувства” (“dark streets generate dark feelings”), and 6) “добрые чувства побеждают время и пространство” (“kind feelings conquer time and space”). 2 the exceptions are the headers that describe or summarize a poem and its addressee (e.g. “надпись на день коронования ее величества 1754 года, где добродетели ее прекрасной и великой горе уподобляются” [“an inscription written on the occasion of the coronation day of her majesty, 1754, in which her virtues are compared to a beautiful and great mountain”], mihail lomonosov, 1754; “к матери, которая сама воспитывает детей своих” [“to a mother who brings up her children herself ”, gavriil derzhavin, 1807), and incipits (i.e. headers that contain the first line of the poem). 3 i am truly grateful to boris orekhov who prepared a special programme that makes it possible to work with the poetic sub-corpus of the russian national corpus (ruscorpora.ru) and collect all examples of verbs in the poetic titles. 4 not to be confused with the eponymous poem, which opens this book. 101“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar all these titles contain the third person present verb forms and consist of a grammatical subject and a predicate, similarly to “the trout breaks the ice”.5 the second point that should be taken into consideration as we approach the grammatical composition of the poem is the repetition of the whole title phrase throughout the text. appearing in some places on different levels of the development of the plot, the sentence about the fish becomes the main motif of this poem, because it is a narrative poem about a trout that breaks up, or is breaking up, ice. in the table below we see how the title sentence is used in the episodes of “the trout”. table 1. the words from the title in the chapters of the poem first introduction a) ударь, форель, проворней! = strike faster, trout! b) форель разбивает лед. = the trout breaks the ice. a) imperative b) present second introduction 1 a) ...как будто рыба бьет хвостом о лед. = ...as if a fish is beating on ice with its tail. b) как сильно рыба двинула хвостом! = how powerfully the fish had moved its tail! a) present (in comparison) b) past (single movement) 2 3 5 notice the proverbial or sentential nature of kuzmin’s titles containing verbs in the present tense: here the imperfective aspect adds to the present tense the semantic component of ‘being out of time’ (see paducheva 1996: 25; cf. bondarko 1971: 69–71), of generalization and of a rule. in the context of such titles, the phrase “форель разбивает лед” (“the trout breaks the ice”) means that it “always” happens, rather than it is happening “at the present moment”. compare the proverbial character of the poet leonid trefolev’s titles: “на бедного макара и шишки валятся” (“all the cones are falling on poor makar”, 1872; the meaning of the proverb is ‘troubles always befall an unlucky person’), “на то и щука в море, чтоб карась не дремал” (“the pike is in the sea to keep the carp awake”, 1877; the proverb’s meaning is ‘dangers keep people on the alert’). this manner might be a throw-back to the playwright alexander ostrovsky’s practice of giving proverbial titles to his famous plays: на всякого мудреца довольно простоты (‘even a wise man stumbles’), бедность не порок (‘poverty is no sin’). another meaning of the imperfective aspect of the present tense that may be implied by kuzmin’s title is “the habitual present”, which is generally used for repeated actions. here it refers to the events of a particular season of the year (this subject deserves a special study). 102 marina akimova 4 5 6 7 серебряная бьется форель, форель, форель!.. = the silver [fish] is thrashing – the trout, trout, trout!.. present continuous 8 ...и бьюсь, как рыба! = i exert myself in vain (like a fish)! present (in idiom) 9 10 а) в воде форель вилась меланхолично и мелодично била о стекло. = in the water the trout was gyrating melancholically and melodiously beating the glass. b) она пробьет его, не сомневайтесь. = it [the trout] will break it through, don’t doubt. c) а рыба бьет тихонько о стекло... = and the fish is beating the glass softly... d) а рыба бьет, и бьет, и бьет, и бьет. and the fish is beating, and beating, and beating. a) past continuous b) future c) present continuous d) present continuous 11 форель, я вижу, разбивает лед. = the trout is breaking the ice, as i see present continuous 12 то моя форель последний разбивает звонко лед. = that is my trout which is sonorously breaking the last ice. present continuous conclusion я верю, что лед разбить возможно для форели. = i trust that it is possible for a trout to break ice. present in the main sentence and a modal verb in the subordinate clause the verb разбивать (‘to break’) varies in the tense forms (present, past, future), in the mood (indicative and imperative), in grammatical forms (personal forms, infinitive and reflexive forms) and in its morphemic composition, with prefixes: раз-, про-, and with a zero prefix. the phrase форель разбивает 103“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar лед varies also lexically: the verb двинуть (‘to move forcibly’) can be understood as a synonym of the verb бить (‘to hit’). it also varies in terms of the syntactic construction in which it is used: it may occur either in independent sentences or in subordinate clauses. it expresses several grammatical meanings of tense, aspect and modality. importantly, in the “conclusion” kuzmin reveals a second grammatical meaning of разбивать, which in russian has perhaps a component of modality, so that the sentence форель разбивает лед means not only ‘the trout is breaking/breaks the ice’, but also ‘the trout is able to break the ice’ (the same meaning is expressed in the finale of the poem: ...что лед разбить возможно для форели ‘...that it is possible for the trout to break the ice’). two key words of this sentence, форель (trout) and разбивает (breaks), are repeated in two instances: “серебряная бьется / форель, форель, форель” (‘the silver fish is thrashing / the trout, trout, trout’) и “а рыба бьет, и бьет, и бьет, и бьет’ (‘and the fish is beating, and beating, and beating’). such a variation of the motif makes it a leitmotif, in a musical sense of the term associated with richard wagner, who coined it. this is why i find it productive to compare the elaboration of the themes in “the trout” with music technique (compare malmstad, shmakov 1976: 146–147, 151, 154–155; shmakov 1989: 34–35 et passim; b. gasparov 1989: 93–95, 97; dmitriev 2016: 136–144). similarly to a piece of music, the trout-motif runs through the whole text accumulating predicates and motifs of actions. as one can easily notice, the main verb разбивать ‘break’ is mostly used in the present tense. furthermore, there is an increased use of this verb in the second half of the poem. the verb occurs most frequently (four cases) in the “tenth stroke” – the climax of the lyrical plot. after that, in the eleventh and twelfth “strokes”, the trout-sentences appear only in the present tense, reinforced by the authorial “i see” and the possessive pronoun my (“my trout”), as if the poet wants to convince the audience that the story about the trout did actually happen, that it is real and true. the dynamics of the key verb in the poem seems to partially correspond to the use of other verb forms throughout the poem. to prove or disprove this hypothesis, i will analyze the distribution in the poem of the tense forms of verbs other than разбивать. i will also try to find a correlation between grammar and other domains of poetic form in the text. the principles of the analysis of the verb system are as follows. in order to find a link between grammar and verse, i had to define one predominant tense in each chapter, or “stroke” (удар), as they are called by kuzmin. there are, of course, other poems by kuzmin (and not only by kuzmin) where it is impossible to decide which tense predominates: tenses may vary, so all their occurrences can be of equal importance and in equal number. such is the use 104 marina akimova of tense forms, for example, in some fragments of “lazarus” (1928), particularly episode four (“edith”). there is a quick change of tenses in “the sixth stroke” of “the trout”. however, in most episodes it is possible to single out the predominant tense. to formalize the analysis, i will formulate four rules. rule 1. in complicated cases, where there are few or no tense indications, i used the criterion of a “point of reference”, that is, the position of the observer in the narration. as the whole poem is written in the first person singular, one can easily grasp the point in time from which the storyteller sees the action. the narrator can describe the situation as going on in the present or in the past, as “close” to him or as “distant” from him, and this point de vue does not normally change throughout the chapter.6 rule 2. while defining the predominant tense, we disregard verbs in subordinate clauses. rule 3 requires that we disregard verbs in direct speech if the utterances occupy a relatively short space in the text (no more than 25% of the lines). rule 4 describes the peculiar features of the russian tense system. in russian, each of the three tenses, past, present and future, has a variety of meanings, which also depend on the aspect of the verb. in fact, there are quite numerous meanings of tenses defined in different ways (in the standard grammar, the functional grammar, and the semantics and logics of grammar; see bondarko 1971; shvedova 1980: 583–611 [§§ 1386–1454], 626–634 [§§ 1490– 1515]; bondarko 1990: 11–24; paducheva 1996: esp. 10 sq., 286 sq.; krasukhin 1997; knyazev 1997; panova 2000). for the aims of this research it is not necessary to use such detailed systems of describing the russian verb. i used only two narrow meanings of the past and present tenses: the russian equivalents of the english present perfect and of the english present continuous. the meaning of the english present perfect is expressed in russian by the form of the past tense of the verb in the perfective aspect as well as lexically, syntactically and contextually. if such an instance of the past form occurred, i marked it as an equivalent to the english present perfect, and i counted this verb with other cases of the present. let us take an example. the “second introduction” begins with the following lines: 6 as we deal with a work of fiction and not with everyday speech, we cannot interpret any reference to action as a real “moment of speech”, that is, to the actual moment when kuzmin composed the poem. we are talking here about the references inside the plan de l’histoire (émile benveniste), inside that “epic tunc” (yuri s. maslov), where the fictional “i” and his dramatis personae are situated (see bondarko 1990: 11–12). thus, the distinction between the present and past in the poem coincides with the distinction between “synchronic and retrospective points of reference”, as described in paducheva 1996: 12–15. 105“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar непрошеные гости сошлись ко мне на чай... (= unexpected guests have come to have tea with me...) here the verb сошлись is in the past form, but it has the meaning of present perfect: ‘... guests have come to me’. other verbs in this fragment are either in the present, or in the equivalent of the english present perfect.7 that is why i consider the predominant tense here to be the present.8 imperative mood has also been interpreted as referring to the present.9 the russian equivalent of the english present continuous has the same semantic element of an action that lasts at the moment of speech, which follows from the context.10 thus, the semantic feature “present” follows either from the grammatical form of the 7 in russian, the perfective meaning is one of the regularly expressed additional meanings of the past tense of the verbs in the perfective aspect (совершенный вид). in such cases the action itself refers to the past, but the results of this action refer to the later time, present or future. viktor v. vinogradov noticed that there are numerous examples where “the idea of a present result or a condition definitely overweighs the thought about an action performed in the past” (vinogradov 1947: 565, quoted in bondarko 1971: 96). in a narrow context verbs in the past tense with a perfective meaning may stand next to verbs in the present (bondarko 1971: 95–97). i relied on these and other distinctive signs of the perfective meaning, as defined by bondarko (1971: 97–98) and paducheva (1996: 54, 57–58, 86–87, 294–295), to identify the meaning of the past tense verb forms in “the trout”. 8 relating his real dream that underlies “the second introduction”, kuzmin mostly uses present: “the room is new, big but very solitary [...] i am alone. however, the silence is full of sounds. the doors are extremely small and far. music. suddenly – lots of mice and litovkin, a ballet dancer who had cut his throat, and now, as a lilliputian, is playing the flute, and the mice are dancing. i am looking at them with an interest and a sort of fear. there is a knocking at the door. [...] this is a guest. [the guest is] unfamiliar; i remember something, vaguely. [...] there is something i do not like, something that fills me with fear and disgust” (quoted in bogomolov 1995: 176–177). in this fragment, the “present of narration” with its specific meaning is realized (on настоящее изложения see bondarko 1971: 72–73). 9 russian imperative has no morphologic category of tense, but the action expressed by a verb in the imperative refers either to the future or to the present (like in: закрой окно ‘close the window’ or работай дальше ‘go on working, continue to work’). at the same time the basic semantics of expressing and performing the will (волеизъявление, see bondarko 1990: 199–200) with different modalities (desire, advice, prohibition, etc.) is firmly connected to a given communicative situation (ibid.: 92), that is, to “now”. 10 in the russian descriptive grammar this regular type of meaning is mostly called the “actual present” (настоящее актуальное). it has two main semantic elements: a definite time point and the attribution to the present. if imperfective aspect is used, it acquires the semantics of a process (see bondarko 1971: 65). 106 marina akimova verb in the present tense, or from the meaning of the present which is not expressed grammatically but is revealed in the context. “the trout” is divided into 12 poems-chapters preceded by two poetic “introductions” and followed by a “conclusion”. the table below presents the distribution of tense forms in the chapters. only the predominant tense is indicated. table 2. the distribution of verbal tense forms in the chapters first introduction present second introduction present 1 past 2 present 3 present 4 present 5 past 6 present 7 present 8 past 9 present 10 past 11 present 12 present conclusion present at the first glance most of the chapters refer to the present as the “main” tense. however, the semantics of the present tense varies. somewhere it is analogous to the english present indefinite used for everyday events or for habitual actions. in some cases it is analogous to the english present continuous; this ongoing present is used when something very important for the whole story is happening. the author brings himself and the reader to the center of the event described in the utterance. we find it in the “second stroke”, which is very dramatic, featuring horse-riding, shots, and a mysterious castle, where blood is flowing and the blood oath ritual is reminiscent of a murder (paperno 1989: 67–68). we also find the ongoing present in the “tenth” and in the “eleventh stroke”, where the story’s climax is located. the “tenth stroke” begins in the past, as a distant narration, but after a while the author transfers himself and the reader into the past that changes into the present, so that in the “eleventh 107“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar stroke” the resurrection of a drowned man is happening in front of our eyes. we hear what they are talking about, and their replies are all in the equivalent of present continuous, for they are commenting on the immediate present moment: – ты дышишь? ты живешь? не призрак ты? – я – первенец зеленой пустоты. – are you breathing? are you living? are you not an apparition? – i am the first born of the green void. – я слышу сердца стук, теплеет кровь... – i can hear the heart beating, the blood is getting warm... – румяней щеки, исчезает тлен... – таинственный свершается обмен... – the cheeks are getting rosy, the decay is disappearing... – a mysterious exchange is taking place... – плотнеет выветрившаяся ткань... – the weathered, worn out tissue is getting dense... – всхожу на следующую ступень! – i am stepping onto the next rung! the last – twelfth – “stroke” manifests the triumph of the present: the partners are together at the moment of speaking, and this is the only chapter where there is no other tense form. here we encounter one of the basic features of kuzmin’s artistic vision: his great concern about the present. this point of his aesthetic theory was described by john malmstad, who wrote that it is “not the past or future” that “always concerns kuzmin”, but “the absolute unrepeatable uniqueness of the present” (malmstad 1989: 135). we can see now that the present of the title phrase, varying in different chapters, performs two functions at once: it both represents an independent theme of the present (which perhaps symbolizes the truth) and serves as a contrast to, and later leads to, the tense forms of other verbs. in the “first stroke”, it is a contrast to the general past of the fragment, and it also anticipates the present of the “second”, the “third” and the “forth strokes”. in the “tenth stroke”, the present of the lines “and the fish is beating the glass softly” and “and the fish is beating, and beating, and beating” rushes into the narrative in the past, turns it into the present and then, in the next fragment, transfers the narration to the final – victorious – present. 108 marina akimova from the versification point of view, kuzmin’s poem is a polymetric composition, each chapter, or “stroke” of which is written in a different meter. verse forms change from one chapter to the next, and, like in classical examples of russian polymetry, the very fact of this change is relevant.11 kuzmin uses polymetricity to tell the story, so he follows the tradition that goes back to the poetry of nikolai nekrasov (and perhaps to even earlier poetry). nekrasov’s memorable combination of polymetry with the changes in plot and narrative style contributed a lot to the formation of this tradition (rudnev 1971: 216). kuzmin’s orientation toward the music polymetry is also possible but we need more evidence to confirm this hypothesis. almost every poem in the 1929 book (the trout breaks the ice) is polymetric. therefore, the narrative polymetry in the text under consideration is typical of the russian poetic tradition, as well as of kuzmin’s 1929 book. this is not an extraordinary set of meters: there are only two cases of non-classical meters, the rest is iamb, which is abundant, and trochee, which appears only twice, closer to the end of the poem. it is worth noting that unrhymed iambic pentameter appears five times, and it always accompanies a narration about some events in the past, the main story of the poem. this function of iambic pentameter is found in kuzmin’s other polymetric compositions, for example in one of the earliest “харикл из милета” (“charicles from miletus”, 1904), in “новый гуль” (“the new hull”, 1924) and in the epic poem “лазарь” (“lazarus”, 1928). if we now correlate meters with verb forms, we discover that unrhymed iambic pentameter always correlates with the past tense, whereas iambic trimeter in both cases correlates with the present tense. two fragments in iambic trimeter, “second introduction” and “the seventh stroke”, correlate not only metrically, but also by the number of lines (24), the theme of a bathing/drowned man, and some oppositions: interior (room) vs. exterior (nature); “faded” eyes vs. “offended” eyes; the “gloss” of shabby clothes vs. the glimmering “mica” of the naked body; memory (память) vs. recollections (воспоминание); dorian vs. narcissus. not only “the second introduction”, but also “the seventh stroke” reads as lyrics for schubert’s romance “die forelle” (cf. shmakov 1989: 35). the latter, and not the former, could be a better parallel to the content of schubert’s piece, to the lyrics of ch. f. d. schubart. 11 the meter of a fragment does not change in the next fragment only twice (“strokes” 3–4 and 10–11). indeed, meter in the narrow sense of the term (iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter) does not change in the following fragment, while the line endings, rhymes and strophes do change. in this way, the author achieves different acoustic impressions of the adjacent chapters. 109“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar everything mentioned above may prove the hypothesis that the co-occurrence of time and meter in these two fragments is not accidental. table 3. meters used in “the trout” first introduction syllabic verse (7 syllables per line) or isosyllabic dolnik (trimeter), unrhymed12 second introduction iambic trimeter, quatrains, half-rhymed xaxa (alternation of feminine and masculine endings, feminine lines unrhymed) 1 iambic pentameter, unrhymed 2 logaoedic verse (two anapaestic feet + an iamb in the same line; isomorphic to dolnik trimeter), sixains (6-line-stanzas), aaxbbx (masculine lines unrhymed) 3 iambic tetrameter, quatrains, cross-rhymed abab (alternation of masculine and feminine endings) 4 iambic tetrameter, huitains (8-line-stanzas) with sporadic rhymes, masculine endings 5 iambic pentameter, unrhymed 6, subtitled “a ballad” iambic tetrameter regularly alternating with trimeter, crossrhymed abab (masculine endings) 7 iambic trimeter, half-rhymed xaxa (alternation of feminine and masculine endings, feminine lines unrhymed) 8 iambic pentameter, unrhymed 9 trochaic pentameter abab + the concluding lines aa + a septaine (7-line-stanza) of iambic tetrameter, monorhyme aaaaaaa (masculine endings) 12 there is a controversy in defining the meter of “the first introduction”. it is very close to dolnik if we admit missing syllables between ictuses and a variety of ictuses per line (2, 3, 4) or extra stressed syllable in a line. actually, only two (adjacent) lines violate the metrical pattern of a dolnik trimeter: “chem krúche szhimáeshsja – / zvúk rézche, vozvrát drúzhby”. in the first line there are two metrical stresses instead of three, and in the second line a syllable is omitted between adjacent ictuses, creating a zero inter-ictic interval (vozvrát drúzhby); the first word (zvúk) could be regarded as bearing an extrametrical stress. m. l. gasparov described it as an example of dolnik trimeter with violations (gasparov 2015: 310). although james bailey believed that the absence of a syllable between stresses is a rare (and therefore admissible) exception (bailey 2004: 311; cf. 1981: 116), the interpretation of the meter of “the first introduction” as dolnik seems to be overcomplicated. it is easier and more natural to interpret isosyllabic lines with arbitrary placement of stresses as syllabic verse. 110 marina akimova 10 iambic pentameter, unrhymed 11 iambic pentameter, rhymed couplets with masculine endings 12 trochaic tetrameter, quatrains, cross-rhymed abab (alternation of feminine and masculine endings) conclusion iambic pentameter, unrhymed “the trout” is among those of kuzmin’s polymetric poems where the grammatical tense, or set of tenses, changes with the change of the meter. apart from “the trout” it occurs in such poems as “charicles from miletus”, “lazarus”, “зеркальным золотом вращаясь...” (1923), and “встала заря над прорубью...” (1923). at the same time quite often, in his polymetric compositions of the 1920s, kuzmin prefers not to change the time setting with the change of the meter, and in these cases he works mostly with the present tense (“в осеннюю рваную стужу”, 1923; “ко мне, скорее, теодор и конрад...”, 1924; “пальцы дней”, 1925; “панорама с выносками”, 1926; “для августа”, 1927). against the background of the 1929 book of poems, the trout breaks the ice, the eponymous poem and with “lazarus” – the two narrative poems at the beginning and at the end of the book – stand out with their successive change of tenses in every chapter. yet it is still not quite possible to affirm that the change of tenses depends on the change of meters, or vice versa; probably, other features played their role. to see their possible influence, two more parameters dealing with the idea of time were included into the analytical description of the poem. these are the symbolic vs. realistic planes of a fragment, and its static vs. dynamic character. scholars have previously written about an interrelation of two visions in “the trout”: poetry of objects/things vs. mysticism and religion, plot-building elements (images) vs. symbolic, mysterious and mythological images (malmstad, shmakov 1976: 133, 161–164), objective vs. subjective existence, classic vs. barbaric, the real vs. the occult, physical vs. ideal, the word as a thing vs. the word as a symbol (слово-вещь vs. слово-символ, see b. gasparov 1989: 106, 110), this world vs. the other world (paperno 1989: 61, 70; cf. babayeva 1996: 129–131). i describe these oppositions as realizations of one dichotomy: realistic vs. symbolic planes. they may be combined in one chapter; however i think it possible to interpret different chapters as more or less symbolic or more or less realistic. i consider to be “realistic” every fragment that tells the main story as if it were true. in such fragments we find a narrator with his “i” and in his ordinary world. all the rest is “symbolic”, including the trout-theme. 111“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar table 4. symbolic and realistic planes of the poem first introduction symbolic second introduction realistic 1 realistic 2 symbolic 3 realistic 4 realistic 5 realistic 6 symbolic 7 symbolic 8 realistic 9 realistic + symbolic 10 realistic / symbolic 11 realistic / symbolic 12 realistic conclusion realistic one more parameter that could be related to the verb forms is the distinction between static and dynamic scenes. there are chapters in “the trout” where nothing new is really happening. the situation remains the same in the last lines of a metrical fragment compared to the first line of the same fragment. i call such chapters static. dynamic chapters are those that develop the plot and tell a story. the situation changes from the first lines of a fragment to its last lines. the distribution of static and dynamic fragments throughout the poem is presented in the table below. 112 marina akimova table 5. static and dynamic chapters of the poem first introduction static second introduction static 1 dynamic 2 dynamic 3 static 4 dynamic (an event at the end) 5 dynamic 6 dynamic (a ballad) 7 static 8 dynamic 9 static 10 dynamic 11 dynamic 12 static conclusion static the static principle may have come to “the trout” from the theatricality of the poem. the stage-settings and the exposition of the play do not move the action on but only present the actors, the situation and the plot. it is worth pointing out that in one of the draft versions of the poem the “first” and the “second” introductions were called “the first bow” and “the second bow”, referring to theatrical bows (although a walkdown is usually a final bow); and “the conclusion” was initially called “the exit”, i.e. ‘a walkdown’ or ‘a curtain call’. many chapters of the poem begin with a kind of stage settings: there are details of a landscape or of an interior, names of dramatis personae and their typical occupations, descriptions of situations; and only in the second half or at the end of a chapter the author tells us something new that is happening. the static elements also correspond to the author’s intentions “to depict twelve months” (“двенадцать месяцев изобразить”), but the desire to tell the story violates this intention; as kuzmin says, “everything is mixed up”. accordingly, dynamic and static episodes alternate. table 6 below combines all the features together. 113“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar table 6. distinctive features of the chapters of the poem chapter length (number of lines) meter sym(bolic) vs. real(istic) static vs. dynamic tense 1st intro 12 7-syllabic (dolnik trimeter?) sym static present 2nd intro 24 iambic trimeter real dynamic present 1 44 iambic pentameter, unrhymed real dynamic past 2 36 logaoedic verse(dolnik trimeter?) sym dynamic present 3 20 iambic tetrameter real static present 4 24 iambic tetrameter real dynamic present 5 21 iambic pentameter, unrhymed real dynamic present/ past 6 (a ballad) 92 iambic tetrameter + trimeter (regular alternation) sym dynamic present/past 7 24 iambic trimeter sym static present 8 49 iambic pentameter, unrhymed real dynamic past 9 29 trochaic pentameter + iambic tetrameter real + sym. static present 10 89 iambic pentameter, unrhymed real / sym dynamic past/ present 11 16 iambic pentameter real / sym dynamic present 12 28 trochaic tetrameter real dynamic present conclusion 16 iambic pentameter, unrhymed real static present first and foremost, we see a correlation between different layers of the text poetics. 1) [green]. the past tense and the narration in most cases correlate not only with iambic pentameter, as we have already found out, but also with the realistic plane and dynamic scenes (ch. 1, 5, 8, 10). 2) [purple]. the present tense regularly occurs in the realistic and static chapters (the second introduction, ch. 3, 9, 12). 114 marina akimova 3) [blue]. symbolic chapters tend to be dynamic and to be narrated in the present (ch. 2, 6, 10, 11). 4) [yellow]. there are two more symbolic fragments, also in the present, but static (the first introduction, ch. 7). fragment 9 is in its major part realistic, so it could be marked as having the already occurred combination of features, “realistic – static – present”. secondly, there is a remarkable alternation of chapters as combinations of distinctive features. the blue lines always follow the green ones, that is, the plot unfolds first as a story about real past events, and then continues as a symbolic scene in the present. twice the third set of features (no color) precedes the “green” and “blue”. it means that at first the narrator presents realistic events in the present, after that he looks back and again presents “real” events, but in the past, and finally gives them a symbolic interpretation. if we consider “the ninth stroke” to be mostly realistic, and if we believe that the “purple” chapters initiate the compositional “rhythm”, then we would receive three equal sequences of combinations of features: “realistic – static – present” scenes are followed, first, by realistic-dynamic narration of past events, and then continued by a “symbolic – dynamic – present” state of affairs. however, it would be disputable to include the fragment from the introduction into the contents of the main story. it is tempting to interpret these three, or even four, steps in the development of the plot as corresponding to three or four seasons, remembering about kuzmin’s initial intention “to depict 12 months”, but this subject requires special investigation. therefore, the interrelation of different features and their more or less regular repetition may prove several points: 1) the features chosen for the analysis are not fortuitous, but distinctive indeed. 2) tense forms correlate not only with the meters but also with other domains of poetic form. 3) tense forms, the meter, the characters of the narration form the compositional structure of the whole text.13 13 this publication was supported by russian science foundation grant 17-18-01701. it is my pleasure to thank lada panova, igor pilshchikov and marina tarlinskaja for their remarks and advice while reading the manuscript version of this article. 115“the trout breaks the ice” by mikhail kuzmin: verse and grammar references babayeva, elizaveta eduardovna 1996. kapriznymi putjami (opyt prochtenija poemy m. kuzmina “forel’ razbivaet led”). in: poetika. stilistika. jazyk i kul’tura: pamjati tat’jany grigor’evny vinokur. moskva: nauka, 128–134. bailey, james 1981. the russian three-stress dol’nik with zero anacrusis. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 23, 113–131. bailey, james 2004. izbrannye stat’i po russkomu literaturnomu stikhu. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. berson, yana 2000. aspektual’no-temporal’nye osobennosti poeticheskogo teksta (“vrazhdebnoe more” m. kuzmina). in: russkaja filologija 11, sbornik nauchnykh rabot molodykh filologov. tartu: university of tartu press, 82–87. bogomolov, nikolai alekseevich 1995. mikhail kuzmin: stat’i i materialy. moskva: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. bondarko, aleksandr vladimirovich 1971. vid i vremja russkogo glagola (znachenie i upotreblenie). moskva: prosveshchenie. bondarko, aleksandr vladimirovich (ed.) 1990. teorija funktsional’noj grammatiki: temporal’nost’. modal’nost’. leningrad: nauka. dmitriev, pavel vyacheslavovich 2016. m. kuzmin: razyskanija i kommentarii. sankt peterburg: renommée. gasparov, boris mikhailovich. 1989. eshche raz o prekrasnoj jasnosti: estetika kuzmina v zerkale ee simvolicheskogo voploshchenija v poeme “forel’ razbivaet led”. in: malmstad, john e. (ed.), studies in the life and works of mixail kuzmin. (wiener slawistischer almanach, sonderband 24). wien: gesellschaft zur förderung slawistischer studien, 83–114. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2015. metricheskij spravochnik. in: gik, anna vladimirovna. konkordans k stikhotvorenijam m. kuzmina. vol.  4. moskva: rukopisnye pamjatniki drevnej rusi, 216–323. knyazev, yuri pavlovich 1997. nastojashchee vremja: semantika i pragmatika. in: arutyunova, nina davidovna; yanko, tatiana evgenievna (eds), logicheskij analiz jazyka: jazyk i vremja. moskva: indrik, 131–138. krasukhin, konstantin gennadievich 1997. tri modeli indoevropejskogo vremeni. na materiale leksiki i grammatiki. in: arutyunova, nina davidovna; yanko, tatiana evgenievna (eds), logicheskij analiz jazyka: jazyk i vremja. moskva: indrik, 62–77. 116 marina akimova malmstad, john e. 1989. “you must remember this”: memory’s shorthand in a late poem of kuzmin. in: malmstad, john e. (ed.), studies in the life and works of mixail kuzmin. (wiener slawistischer almanach, sonderband 24). wien: gesellschaft zur förderung slawistischer studien, 115–140. malmstad, john e.; shmakov, gennady 1976. kuzmin’s “the trout breaking through the ice”. in: gibian, george; tjalsma, h. william (eds.), russian modernism: culture and the avant-garde, 1900–1930. ithaca, london: cornell university press, 132–164. paducheva, elena viktorovna 1996. semanticheskie issledovanija. semantika vremeni i vida v russkom jazyke. semantika narrativa. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. panova, lada gennadievna 2000. poeticheskaja grammatika vremeni. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 59(4), 27–35. panova, lada gennadievna 2012. “forel’ razbivaet led” (1927): dialektika ljubvi. in: sed’maja mezhdunarodnaja letnjaja shkola po russkoj literature: stat’i i materialy. second edition, revised and enlarged. sankt peterburg: svoe izdatel’stvo, 112–130. paperno, irina aronovna 1989. dvojnichestvo i ljubovnyj treugol’nik: poeticheskij mif kuzmina i ego pushkinskaja proektsija. in: malmstad, john e. (ed.), studies in the life and works of mixail kuzmin. (wiener slawistischer almanach, sonderband 24). wien: gesellschaft zur förderung slawistischer studien, 57–82. rudnev, petr aleksandrovich 1971. opyt opisanija i semanticheskoj interpretatsii polimetricheskoj struktury poemy a. bloka “dvenadtsat’”. in: uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 266 (trudy po russkoj i slavjanskoj filologii 15), 195–221. shmakov, gennady 1989. mikhail kuzmin i richard wagner. in: malmstad, john e. (ed.), studies in the life and works of mixail kuzmin. (wiener slawistischer almanach, sonderband 24). wien: gesellschaft zur förderung slawistischer studien, 31–45. shvedova, natalia yulievna, et al. (eds.) 1980. russkaja grammatika. vol. 1: fonetika. fonologija. udarenie. intonatsija. vvedenie v morfemiku. slovoobrazovanie. morfologija. moskva: nauka. vinogradov, viktor vladimirovich 1947. russkij jazyk (grammaticheskoe uchenie o slove). moskva, leningrad: uchpedgiz. enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles reuven tsur, chen gafni*1 abstract: this study submits to empirical investigation an old idea of tsur’s regarding the effect of enjambment on the perceived subtleness of irony in a poetic passage. we submitted two versions of a milton passage to over 50 participants with “background in literary studies”, ranging from undergraduates to tenured professors, asking them to rate the perceived subtleness of irony and forthrightness of expression. we received four incompatible combinations of relative subtleness and forthrightness in the two passages. two of the combinations were logically reasonable (though resulting from opposite performances), and two were internally inconsistent. an analysis of these results revealed two sources of this discrepancy: enjambments can be performed in three different ways, and participants respond not to abstract enjambments, but to performed enjambments; and they act upon partly overlapping definitions of irony. assuming different performances of the enjambment, both logically acceptable response patterns support our hypothesis. yet, a large part of the responses in this study were incoherent to some extent. this highlights the difficulty in collecting subjective interpretations of complex aesthetic events. we discuss this methodological issue at length. keywords: enjambment; performance; irony; wit; emotion; cognitive poetics introduction this paper has been extracted from a wider work in progress on sound– emotion interaction in poetry, in which we explore, among other things, what are the proper methods to investigate the perceived qualities of sound in poetry. one of our main arguments is that emotional and ironic qualities in poetry cannot be reduced to a semantic analysis; rather, they emerge from the interaction of sound structure (versification), syntactic structure and meaning. we demonstrate our claim by analysing the effect of lineation on the perceived qualities of text. * authors’ addresses: reuven tsur, tel aviv university, tel aviv 69978, israel. e-mail: tsurxx@tauex.tau.ac.il; chen gafni, bar-ilan university 901 ramat-gan 5290002, israel. e-mail: chen.gafni@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 5.2, 2018, 7–28 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.01 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.01 8 reuven tsur, chen gafni theoretical background the current study can be phrased in the terms of several theoretical frameworks. we use the term “qualities” in a gestaltist sense to refer to properties directly perceptible by the senses. accordingly, emotional and ironic qualities are “regional qualities” of poetic passages, that is, qualities of the whole passage, but not of its parts (beardsley, 1958: 83–88). in wayne booth’s (1961: 3) terms, we are interested in emotion or irony by way of showing rather than mere telling: in literature, you cannot avoid telling, but in some instances, the text also displays the perceptual structure of an emotion or irony. to bring this distinction out, music, which has no semantic component, does display emotional qualities; in ronald hepburn’s (1968) terms, when we say “this music is sad”, we report that we have detected a structural resemblance between the music and some emotion. thus, for instance, in paradise lost divergent structures may confer an emotional quality upon milton’s concrete story-telling or his attempts to “justify the ways of god to men”. the methodological approach in the present academic climate, the prevalent method to explore sound–emotion interaction in poetry is to have recourse to stimulus–response (s–r) questionnaires with great numbers of “subjects” and statistical analysis of their results, imported from the social sciences. the ultimate goal of this approach is to make general claims at the population level, ignoring occasional, idiosyncratic responses. by contrast, we claim that, in the humanities and arts, such methodology is not always appropriate; by focusing on the population level and relying exclusively on quantitative measures, one may overlook more fine-grained patterns, which may be important and interesting on their own. in addition, analysing open-ended responses to complex aesthetic events can shed light on the cognitive processes within the individual, while examining quantitative measures can only tell us something about the result of these processes. in the present discussion, we start out with a theoretical description of the texts and, based on introspection supported by gestalt theory, we made predictions as to the perceived quality of the passage. after running it in a seminar situation, we submitted the texts to “empirical” s–r test with a battery of over fifty participants. unexpectedly, we obtained a welter of incompatible answers, from which we attempt here to reconstruct the process by which those answers had been reached. 9enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles three ways to perform enjambment many scholars and critics take enjambment as a given of the text, irrespective of how you perform it. they frequently ignore that participants respond to a performed enjambment, and that participants who perform the enjambment differently respond to different aesthetic objects. there is also some uncertainty about how enjambments can be performed. the received view (formulated by seymour chatman 1965) is that, having only one voice, a performer cannot convey two intonation contours at the same time; in case of conflicting intonation contours the vocal performer must choose one contour with its related meanings – of the sentence or the verse line – and suppress the other. in his writings, tsur proposes a third option: to see whether one can imagine or secure a performance that would simultaneously preserve in perception both the versification and the syntactic units. we argue that this may be achieved by having recourse to conflicting acoustic cues for continuation and discontinuation. in ordinary speech, we usually cue sentence ending by redundant acoustic cues: pause, falling intonation contour and slowing down the last word or speech sounds; when syntactic and versification units conflict, we use the same cues in opposition to one another.1 consider three recorded performances of the lines 1. who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. his state is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, from milton’s “on his blindness” sonnet. the sentence “his state/ is kingly” is run on from one line to the next one. in harmony with chatman, one performer (barrett) preserves syntactic continuity and suppresses the line ending (listen2). two other performers, on the contrary, indicate discontinuity at the 1 tsur (1977: 134 and passim) put forward this conception speculatively. all the experts in instrumental phonetics said at the time that it could not be tested instrumentally. but tom barney (1990), without having heard of tsur’s work, found a workaround, proving its feasibility. tsur (1998; 2012) applied barney’s method to his comprehensive theory of poetic rhythm; later he published his first instrumental manipulation of performed enjambment according to these principles (tsur 2000). a conception of “non-disambiguating intonation contours” had been proposed by katherine loesch (1965), attacked by chatman (1966), with a rejoinder by loesch (1966). the fourth edition of the princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics (greene 2012) still puts forward chatman’s view of enjambment as the view, though it mentions loesch (but not tsur or barney) in the references of the entry. 2 sound files are available online at https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.01. http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9658 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.01 10 reuven tsur, chen gafni line ending by a pause and low intonation, suppressing syntactic continuity (listen to anonymous’ and leon mire’s readings of this sentence).3 tsur (2012: 397–398) electronically manipulates the first performance, the one displaying syntactic continuity, so as to indicate, at the same time, discontinuity without a pause, by prolonging “state” and manipulating its intonation; he submitted “thousand” to the same manipulations, to indicate caesura (listen to the manipulated version). the result indicates that at least one performance may be secured in which continuity and discontinuity can be perceived at the same time. tsur calls such a performance a “rhythmical performance”. figure 1. wave plot and f0 plot of “his state” excised from the genuine and the doctored versions of “his state is kingly” listen to the readings reflected in figure 1. the first (genuine) token of “state” is relatively short and bears a low, near-horizontal intonation contour. the second (doctored) token of “state” is longer, and bears a rising-falling intonation contour (tsur 2012: 397–400). enjambment and shift of meaning scholars and critics are mostly interested in instances of enjambment where it effects shift of meaning in one way or other. our view is that enjambment affects, first and foremost, the gestalt quality of the passage and only in the 3 recorded readings of “on his blindness”: (1) sean barrett: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0rrfiemyj0. (2) anonymous: http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-20t03_34_02-08_00. (3) leon mire: http://ecaudio.umwblogs.org/milton-on-his-blindness-read-by-leon-mire/. http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9659 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9660 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9661 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9662 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0rrfiemyj0 http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-20t03_34_02-08_00 http://ecaudio.umwblogs.org/milton-on-his-blindness-read-by-leon-mire/ 11enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles minority of cases it affects meaning. here we explore an instance where enjambment is supposed to affect not the ostensible meaning, but the perceived quality of irony. in the foregoing example (“his state / is kingly”), enjambment does not bring about a shift of meaning, only weakens the gestalt of the utterance, enhancing its emotional quality. in the ensuing example, we shall consider how enjambment may produce a shift of meaning and how performance may affect the perceived quality of that shift of meaning. we shall do this through an exchange between natalie gerber and reuven tsur regarding three lines in james wright’s poem “a blessing”. in her paper “intonation and the conventions of free verse”, natalie gerber (2015) comments on wright’s final three lines: ‘suddenly i realize / that if i stepped out of my body i would break / into blossom’ (22–24). [...] [b]y placing the line ending between ‘i would break’ and ‘into blossom,’ wright interrupts our expectation that we read ‘break into’ as a phrasal verb, with a conventional meaning. instead we are invited to hear a pause, reading ‘i would break’ and ‘into blossom’ as two intonational phrases and thus entertaining two semantic possibilities at once: that the speaker shatters, a meaning that goes with his stepping out of his body, and that he unexpectedly blossoms. with reference to this ambiguity tsur (gerber, smith 2015: 209) observes that his interest lies in the question how such an enjambment should be performed. suppose we “hear a pause, reading ‘i would break’ and ‘into blossom’ as two intonational phrases and thus entertaining two semantic possibilities at once”. wit is the phenomenological quality of the sudden shift of mental set. thus, in such a performance the sudden switch of meanings might have witty overtones. this would be, perhaps, in congruence with some interpretations of the poem. tsur asks, however, whether one can imagine or secure a performance in which the two meanings blend more smoothly, that would suggest some more earnest attitude, in case someone endorses a different interpretation. the cosy atmosphere of the poem may indeed support such an interpretation. according to the present conception, one could pronounce the enjambment by having recourse to one intonational phrase, with no measurable pause between the two verse lines, suggesting at the same time discontinuity by lengthening the word ‘break’ and over-articulating the stop release of [k]. thus, performing the two phrases of the enjambment as two intonational phrases with a pause between them is incompatible with the cosy atmosphere of the poem; it requires what we called a “rhythmical performance”. 12 reuven tsur, chen gafni milton vs. milton – “other things being equal” in the ensuing discussion, we are considering two texts in which all “other things are equal”; in fact, identical: a passage by milton and its version with rearranged lineation. we focus two of our principles on these two passages. first, the performance of poetry is a problem-solving activity; participants may perform the same excerpt in different ways, thus providing different solutions to the same problems arising in a poem. but by that, they, in fact, respond, to different aesthetic objects, with different perceptual qualities. for instance, pausing at the line ending in an enjambment may suggest some assertive attitude as wit. by contrast, cuing discontinuity by more evasive vocal devices may suggest some more fine-textured attitude, as irony or emotions. in milton’s paradise lost, for instance, it usually lends some emotional force to “the great argument”, but sometimes subtleness to its irony. secondly, to use wayne booth’s distinction, emotions and attitudes can be conveyed by way of telling, namely by the meaning of words, or by way of showing, namely using poetic structures to generate some psychological atmosphere (that may, in turn, be individuated by the meaning of words, as specific emotions or attitudes as perceived qualities). the ultimate evidence for the impact of poetic structure on psychological atmospheres would be a comparison between the following two excerpts. they are literally identical and differ only in their poetic structure: in one, syntactic units run over line boundaries, in the other they end at line boundaries. 2. but wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose? is pain to them less pain, less to be fled, or thou than they less hardy to endure? courageous chief, the first in flight from pain, had’st thou alleg’d to thy deserted host this cause of flight, thou surely had’st not come sole fugitive. (paradise lost iv. 917–923) 3. but wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose? is pain to them less pain, less to be fled, or thou than they less hardy to endure? courageous chief, the first in flight from pain, had’st thou alleg’d to thy deserted host this cause of flight, thou surely had’st not come sole fugitive. 13enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles excerpt 2 consists of a series of “straddled lines”. these are sentences run-on from one line to another which themselves, when isolated, form an iambic pentameter line. the initial run-on lines of excerpt 2 are rearranged (by james whaler (1956: 20–21)) into end-stopped lines in excerpt 3. this rearrangement affects the perceived quality of the passage. excerpt 2 is perceived as fluid, whereas excerpt 3 as more stable. when the syntactic unit and the verse line coincide, they reinforce each other’s shape, yielding “strong gestalts”. when the syntactic unit is run on from one line to another, they blur each other, yielding “weak gestalts”. gestalt psychologists have produced empirical evidence that strong gestalts are typically perceived as rational, non-emotional, whereas weak gestalts typically display an emotional quality. leonard b. meyer, who applies gestalt theory to music, that is, sequences of sounds without a semantic component, accounts for the association of weak and strong gestalts with emotional and intellectual qualities as follows. “because good shape is intelligible in this sense, it creates a psychological atmosphere of certainty, security, and patent purpose, in which the listener feels a sense of control and power as well as a sense of specific tendency and definite direction” (meyer 1956: 160). the opposite applies to weak shapes and emotional qualities. we shall have to explain how such psychological atmospheres interact with meanings in poetry. we have noted, for instance, that the divergent structure in excerpt 2 seems to affect not only emotional qualities, but irony too, rendering it subtler. meyer’s formulation may account for this effect too, precisely because it refers to a general psychological atmosphere individuated here as irony by the meaning of words, rather than directly to a specific attitude. the ironic attitude typically involves some kind of pretended ignorance, pretending to have no specific intentions. the “psychological atmosphere of patent purpose” inspired by the stronger gestalts in excerpt 3 subverts, therefore, the tone of elusive ignorance in irony. weak gestalts, divergent structures, may enhance, then, quite diverse attitudes. rather than indicating an iconic relationship between sound and meaning, divergent structures generate “a psychological atmosphere of uncertainty, lack of patent purpose and definite direction”, concreted by various kinds of contents in a variety of more specific emotions and attitudes. this conspicuously applies to irony as well. the vast majority of our respondents agreed that the different lineation does affect the passages’ perceived qualities. however, there was less consensus regarding the nature of the qualities. milton explicitly suggests that the passage is ironical or even sarcastic. the archangel gabriel meets satan on his way to the garden of eden, to whom 14 reuven tsur, chen gafni he speaks “disdainfully half smiling”. tsur asked students in a seminar situation at the university of sussex, back in 1971: “is irony equally subtle in the two passages?” some students could discern no significant difference. but the rest were in agreement that irony seems to be ‘somehow subtler’ in excerpt 2. how can we explain this? semantically and syntactically, the two passages are identical. here we have tried to replicate these results in a more formal way, by asking participants to fill a questionnaire. as will be seen, the results were far from unanimous. we shall have to account for the different kinds of answers with one theoretical battery; and we shall also have to account, with the same theoretical battery, for the fairly unanimous results in the seminar situation, on the one hand, and the four radically different kinds of answers in the written questionnaire, on the other hand. the empirical study in our empirical study, we presented excerpts 2 and 3 to our respondents with the following instructions: the following two excerpts are versions of paradise lost iv. 917–923 and are literally identical; they differ in the correspondence of the syntactic units with the versification units. the archangel gabriel meets satan on his way to the garden of eden, to whom he says “disdainfully half smiling”: [excerpts 2–3]. read aloud the two passages, then consider the following claims and rate how much you agree with each of them (1 star = i completely disagree, 5 stars = i completely agree): 1. in excerpt 2 irony is subtler than in excerpt 3. 2. in excerpt 3 irony is subtler than in excerpt 2. 3. excerpt 2 is more forthright than excerpt 3. 4. excerpt 3 is more forthright than excerpt 2. 5. lineation does not affect the ironic quality of the passages. 6. lineation does not affect the forthright quality of the passages. in addition to evaluating the above claims, participants were also given the opportunity to leave comments on the exercise. we hoped that such comments would provide more detailed information about the participants’ thought processes. 15enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles procedure the task was a part of a larger online study on the perceived qualities of sound patterns in poetry. the experiment was run on the qualtrics platform (https:// www.qualtrics.com). participants fifty-three participants completed the survey (age: mean: 40, range: 19–78; 32 women). all but two were native speakers of english and were residents of several countries, mainly the united states, canada, and israel. they had variable background in english poetry, from novice (high school or introductory university level) to expert (professors of literature specializing in english poetry). the distribution of literary experience of the participants is shown in table 1. table 1. level of literary training level of literary training participants no formal training at university level 1 basic university training (ba students majoring in english literature, english teachers with no degree in literature) 9 ba level & ma students 18 ma level & phd students 11 phd 14 participants were recruited via university mailing lists and the psyart forum. they were awarded an electronic gift card on the amount of 20gb for amazon. results we begin by analysing the claims concerning the effect of lineation on the quality of the excerpts. figure 2 shows the distribution of responses to claim 5 (“lineation does not affect the ironic quality of the passages”) and figure 3 shows the distribution of responses to claim 6 (“lineation does not affect the forthright quality of the passages”). as can be seen, the overwhelming majority 16 reuven tsur, chen gafni of participants rated claims 5–6 as 1 or 2 (median: 1), that is, they tend to agree that lineation does affect the ironic or forthright quality of the passage, in line with our hypothesis. figure 2. the effect of lineation on the ironic quality of the passage figure 3. the effect of lineation on the forthright quality of the passage next, we analyse the judgements on the relative qualities of excerpts 2 and 3. table 2 summarises the median ratings for each of the four claims. the median ratings are compared to the expected ratings according to our hypothesis. 17enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles table 2. relative qualities of excerpts 2 and 3 claim median expected 1 (“in excerpt 2 irony is subtler than in excerpt 3”) 3 5 2 (“in excerpt 3 irony is subtler than in excerpt 2”) 2 1 3 (“excerpt 2 is more forthright than excerpt 3”) 2 1 4 (“excerpt 3 is more forthright than excerpt 2”) 4 5 in general, the median ratings were in the expected direction (i. e. towards the low or high end of the scale) but not as absolute. in what follows, we will account for this pattern of results. table 3 summarises the results of pairwise spearman correlations among claims 1–4. the table specifies the correlation coefficient (spearman’s ρ), its p-value, and the expected coefficient (+1 for synonymous claims, –1 for opposing claims). table 3. pairwise spearman correlations among claims 1–4. p-values indicate the probability of obtaining the correlation by chance. * = the correlation is significantly different from zero claim a claim b spearman’s ρ expected p 1 2 –0.61 –1 9.8·10–7 * 1 3 –0.08 –1 0.56 1 4 0.30 1 0.03 * 2 3 0.12 1 0.40 2 4 –0.12 –1 0.40 3 4 -0.69 –1 1.0·10–8 * as expected, claims 1 and 2 were significantly (negatively) correlated, and so were claims 3 and 4, since the claims in both pairs were contradictory (though the correlations were not perfect). also, claims 1 and 4 were significantly (positively) correlated, but the correlation was much weaker. this result was expected too, since in our conception, irony and forthrightness are antonyms. the rest of the combinations were not significant (1 + 3, 2 + 3, 2 + 4), as if “subtle” and “forthright” were unrelated in meaning (if they were regarded as synonyms, we would expect to find significant correlations in the opposite directions). these results were rather surprising and we will attempt to account for them by examining the coherence of the responses of individual participants. 18 reuven tsur, chen gafni given that claims 1 and 2 are contradictory and claims 3 and 4 are contradictory, we do not expect participants to assign similar ratings to claims in each pair. we can suspect that participants who did make such fallacies either did not understand the claims, were unable to evaluate their truthfulness, or chose a wrong value by mistake. one participant (a tenured professor of literature) commented on this task “i don’t know what ‘forthright’ means in the last exercise”. accordingly, she assigned a rating of “1” to both claims 3 and 4, confirming that incoherent judgments in this task may result from misunderstanding. such judgments should probably be excluded from the analysis since they do not represent a true evaluation of the claims, as defined in the task. note that since the claims in each pair (1 + 2, 3 + 4) are contradictory, we would expect, theoretically, that their ratings would be at the extreme opposites of the scale (1 vs. 5). however, we also accept judgments that show a weaker contrast (e. g., 2 vs. 4), which might suggest lack of certainty, or a general tendency to avoid the extreme points of the scale (bishop, herron 2015). these possible factors can also account for the mild median ratings of the claims observed in table 2. in total, 8 participants gave a high rating or a low rating to both claim 1 and claim 2 or both claim 3 and claim 4 (one participant was incoherent in both pairs). interpreting responses at the mid-point of the scale (“3”) is more difficult. recall that the rating scale in the experiment was defined as “1 star = i completely disagree, 5 stars = i completely agree”, while the mid-point was not labelled (though it probably should have been; see nadler, weston, voyles 2015). “3” ratings can probably be understood as representing a lack of opinion, or lack of ability to evaluate the claim. in total, six participants gave a “3” rating to one claim and an extreme rating to its antonym (four participants did that in both pairs of opposing claims). we also consider such responses incoherent since they suggest that a participant was certain about the truthfulness of a claim but was uncertain about the truthfulness of its antonym. in addition, some participants gave a “3” to rating to a pair of contradictory claims. we interpret such responses as an indication that the participant was unable to decide which claim was the correct one. two participants demonstrated this pattern with respect to claims 1 and 2, and another two participants did the same with claims 3 and 4. note that each of these participants provided decisive responses for the claims in the other pair. this suggests that, for them, the subtlety of irony and the forthrightness of the text were unrelated in meaning. after excluding the “incoherent” and uncertain responses, we were left with responses of 35 participants. of them, 17 participants consistently claimed that irony in excerpt 2 was subtler than in excerpt 3 and that excerpt 3 was 19enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles more forthright than excerpt 2 (we call this pattern of responses “combination 1”). five participants were consistent in the opposite direction (hereinafter, “combination 2”). the remaining 13 participants provided seemingly inconsistent judgments. four of them judged irony to be subtler in excerpt 2 and at the same time that excerpt 2 was more forthright. the remaining nine participants judged excerpt 3 as containing subtler irony and being more forthright at the same time. to summarize, 22 participants provided consistent responses. 17 of them followed “combination 1”, which is in accordance with our initial intuition. but, as will be seen, assuming different performances, the opposite responses pattern (“combination 2”) also support our hypothesis. nevertheless, the responses given by the majority of the participants in the study (31) suggest that they either (a) did not understand the statements they were asked to evaluate; or, (b) were unable to evaluate their truthfulness (e. g., did not detect a difference in the subtlety of the irony in the two excerpts); or, (c) had different conceptions of “irony” and “forthrightness” than the ones we relied on. discussion nearly a third4 of the participants in the study judged that “in excerpt 2 irony is subtler than in excerpt 3 and excerpt 3 is more forthright than excerpt 2”. this is consistent with our initial hypothesis. on the other hand, five participants had the opposite interpretation. both participant groups included individuals with extensive background in english literature, so it would be difficult to dismiss the responses by the smaller group as reflecting incompetence or misunderstanding of the task. we would like to suggest that these seemingly inconsistent results foreground an interesting fact: that milton’s genuine passage is heavily enjambed, and that the performance of enjambments is not at all self-evident. our exercise with excerpt 1 may help to account for the applicability of both combinations 1 and 2 as adequate answers in our experiment. in suggesting that irony is more elusive in excerpt 2 than in 3, we assumed a “rhythmical performance”, in which continuity and discontinuity may simultaneously be perceived. what does such a performance sound like in excerpt 2, as opposed to excerpt 3? this comparison has been discussed in greater detail, with recorded 4 or, 49% after excluding the contradictory and indecisive responses. 20 reuven tsur, chen gafni performances, by tsur (2012: 239–252). excerpts 4 and 5 have been extracted from excerpts 2 and 3, respectively. listen to these excerpts read by jh, a graduate student of linguistics and modern english literature at lancaster university, who proved to be a masterful performer of rhythmic complexities in poetry. 4. but wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose? 5. but wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose? note the word “thee” in the two readings. in the reading of excerpt 4, the listening ear discerns continuity and discontinuity at its boundary at the same time, just as demanded by the syntax and lineation. in the reading of excerpt 5, the listening ear discerns continuity without discontinuity, as fit to its place in mid-line and mid-phrase. there is no measurable pause between “thee” and “came” in either reading. one may easily discern the means by which this difference is generated. the duration of “thee” is much longer in the reading of excerpt 4 than of 5; and one hears a conspicuous rising-falling intonation contour on “thee” in the former, as opposed to an almost flat intonation curve in the latter. a look at the graphs supports this impression. note that the duration of “thee” is almost twice as long in figure 4 as in figure 5; the duration of /ð/ over three times as long (prolongation in this case indicates lack of progression). note also that the pitch contour of the vowel of “thee” in excerpt 5 is less obtruding (peak: 143 hz, minimum: 115 hz). in except 4 the maximum pitch is about the same (147 hz) but the minimum is 67 hz (that is, almost three times greater interval). note, again, that in this case, enjambment does not necessarily contribute an additional meaning (as it does in wright’s poem, above); it merely weakens the gestalt of the utterance, generating a psychological atmosphere of uncertainty, lack of definite directions and patent purpose. http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9663 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9663 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9665 http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9666 21enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles figure 4. waveform and intonation contour of “with thee came not” excised from a reading of excerpt 4 by jh figure 5. waveform and intonation contour of “with thee came not” excised from a reading of excerpt 5 by jh but, it would appear that in excerpt 2 a considerable number of performers would follow chatman, indicating discontinuity at the line ending and, by the same token, suppressing syntactic continuity. in this case, the sequel – if contradictory – may appear as a surprise, generating forthright wit. 22 reuven tsur, chen gafni the discussion of the enjambment in wright’s poem, “that if i stepped out of my body i would break / into blossom” may highlight the effects reported in combinations 1 and 2. in addressing satan as “courageous chief, / the first in flight from pain”, the two phrases can be cued by separate intonation contours with a pause between them, in a way that presents the second, contradictory phrase as a surprise, generating forthright wit; in view of this, excerpt 3 would appear less forthright, expressing subtler irony. alternatively, in excerpt 2 the two phrases can be performed as one intonational phrase, indicating discontinuity by less obtrusive means, so as to render the contradiction elusive irony. what wit and irony have in common is contradictory implications; they differ in their degree of conspicuity. the aforementioned performances sharpen or tone down, respectively, the conspicuity of the contradiction. briefly, respondents who offered combination 2 may have performed the two phrases in excerpt 2 with emphatically separate intonation contours. the different answers based on combinations 1 and 2 became possible owing to two uncertainties involved. according to the foregoing analysis, there are three different ways to perform an enjambment, with different perceived qualities; and the border line between “wit” and “irony” is rather fuzzy (at any rate, many literary scholars use the two terms interchangeably). the goal of the foregoing discussion was to account for the consistently opposite response patterns (i. e. combinations 1 and 2). yet, thirteen of the participants (37%)5 provided a third response pattern (hereinafter, combinations 3 & 4), suggesting that, for them, “subtle” and “forthright” were synonymous in this context. participants in both groups seemed to have relied on the dictionary meaning of “irony”, but failed to distinguish “irony” from “wit”. the hypothesized difference between the groups is in the way they performed the enjambment. participants who judged excerpt 3 to be both more forthright and subtler seem to have paused at the line endings in excerpt 2. on the other hand, participants who judged excerpt 2 to be both more forthright and subtler seem to have performed excerpt 2 with mitigated cues for discontinuity. some people seem to believe that irony at its best is blatant; we had a different conception in mind when putting the question. to sum up. theoretically, we found four possible combinations of “subtleness” statements and “forthrightness” statements. assuming different performances, both combination 1 and its straightforward reverse (combination 2) support our research hypothesis. excluding responses that are downright contradictory (18), these two options together represent 63% of the 5 after excluding the 18 contradictory and indecisive responses. 23enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles “votes”, with judgments based on combination 1, presupposing a “rhythmical performance”, forming the majority (49%). yet, a good deal of 37% of the judgments contradict our research hypothesis. we found good reasons to suppose that this was due to a different understanding of “irony” or “forthright”. finally, why did we receive fairly unanimous responses in the seminar situation and systematically different responses in the questionnaire task in response to the same texts? there are many significant differences between the two conditions, but the most significant one is this. in the seminar situation, the tutor reads out the two texts before collecting impressions from students, whereas in filling out the questionnaire, each participant must produce his or her performance, having a choice between three possible kinds of solution. consequently, all participants in the seminar situation responded to one defined, contrasted pair of performances. on the other hand, in the questionnaire situation, each participant responded to a potentially different contrasted pair of performances. in addition to shedding light on the perceived effect of lineation, the present article also makes a methodological contribution. one of the gravest problems in an empirical study of the present kind is the problem of communication between experimenter and participants. to ensure clear, unambiguous communication, many empirical studies in the aesthetic domain confine themselves to rather simple, trivial issues. with increasing complexity of the questions involved, the difficulty of unambiguous communication increases as well. if the experimenter explains very clearly his question, he may suggest the expected answer too. if he tries to refrain from this, participants are prone to misconstrue the question, and answer a different question from the intended one. one conspicuous instance of this we encountered in relation to the subtleness of irony in the two versions of milton’s text in excerpts 2 and 3. a person who does not understand the word “irony” or “forthright” cannot answer the questions. dictionaries define irony as the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite. when the archangel addresses satan as “courageous chief ”, he means the exact opposite (“the first in flight from pain”). “irony” means, originally, simulated ignorance: the ironist pretends to know nothing, not even that what he says is ironical. hence, his intended meaning is not merely opposite to the explicit meaning, but typically elusive too (dictionaries mention “simulated ignorance” only as etymology, not as part of the meaning). the more elusive the intended meaning, the subtler the irony. in this sense, irony is diagonally opposed to “forthright, outspoken”. we thought that as much would be evident to respondents who have “background in literary studies”. we were mistaken. 24 reuven tsur, chen gafni while the above-mentioned problem could be potentially solved by providing definitions of the key terms, the following problem is more difficult to handle. to ensure that all participants respond to the same performances, with controlled differences between the two versions, we ought to record a continuous reading of the passage inserting pauses at end-stopped lines and other cues for discontinuation, without a pause, at the enjambments. since, however, most participants have no or little practice in discerning such vocal differences, we ought to generate one or more such pairs of texts to have participants practice before being exposed to the target texts. in this case, however, we could be accused of “putting the expected answer into their mouth”. to summarise, the large number of incoherent responses have a methodological significance since they demonstrate the difficulty in testing responses to complex aesthetic events. while a more careful planning might have been able to minimize the number of “irrelevant” responses, there is no foolproof way to completely prevent experimenter-subject miscommunication in such experiments. we found in our empirical studies that participants’ comments often provide invaluable information that can complement or shed light on the quantitative results. in this case, a comment from one participant confirmed that, at least, some of the incoherent responses reflect misunderstanding of the questionnaire. we believe that open-ended comments from participants should be an integral component in studies of this kind. in addition, it might be helpful to include specific questions to infer whether participants had trouble understanding what they were expected to do. this is important especially for collecting subjective impressions when some participants might simply fail to reach a state-of-mind that allows them to engage in the task. theoretical conclusions wellek and warren (1949: 152–153) conceive of a poem as of a stratified system of norms that is the potential cause of experience: linguists such as the geneva school and the prague linguistic circle carefully distinguish between langue and parole, the system of language and the individual speech-act; and this distinction corresponds to that between the individual experience of the poem and the poem as such. in other words, the poem is ontologically incomplete, and much depends on how one realizes it in an actual performance. in our case, the syntactic units and the versification units in an enjambment are given; but they leave 25enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles the reader with a margin of freedom as to how to perform the poem (vocally, subvocally, or mentally): by indicating continuation, discontinuation or both at the line ending. according to chatman, in a mental performance all possibilities are open, but in a vocal performance, the performer must choose between two partial, unsatisfactory solutions. we have proposed a third, “rhythmical” performance that obviates the need to choose. in the case of enjambment and irony, the perceptual quality crucially depends on how the participant performs the enjambment. briefly, if you perform the poem in such and such a way, then you may perceive such and such qualities; if you perform it in some alternative way, then you perceive some other qualities. in this way, incompatible responses can be accounted for by the same hypothesis in a principled manner. obtaining different perceived qualities when applying alternative cognitive strategies to a poem does not imply that “anything goes”. on the contrary, rather. it has precedent in algebra, where, as every seventh-grade student knows, in the solution of second-degree equations one gets two different, equally correct results, according to whether one applies plus or minus where the formula says ± before √ (every square root has two values: +x and –x). the researcher will have to prefer one combination to another, if at all, on theoretical grounds. if s/he believes, for instance, that one must perform an enjambment in such a way that both the syntactic structure and the versification structure should be simultaneously perceptible, s/he will prefer one kind of solution; if s/he believes with chatman that only two (incomplete) ways to perform an enjambment are possible, s/he may prefer some other solution. at this point, one must invoke morris weitz (1962), who says that the role of theory in aesthetics is to make a crucial recommendation what to look for and how to look at it in art. if a literary scholar is not aware that a “rhythmical performance” of an enjambment is possible, s/he may make one kind of decision; if s/he encounters in a piece of criticism a crucial recommendation according to which a rhythmical performance is possible, s/he may change his or her way of looking at the text. a closer look at our conduct in the present article will suggest another important aspect, in contrast to much contemporary scholarship. quantitative stimulus-response studies must be only a second, confirmatory stage in aesthetic inquiry. it must be preceded by some more theoretical method of establishing the perceptual quality of an aesthetic object. one must, for instance, offer some plausible hypothesis to relate possible perceived qualities to poetic structures – based on a description of the structure of the poem, conflicting perceived qualities reported by competent readers, and the findings 26 reuven tsur, chen gafni of such disciplines as psychology, linguistics, ecology, philosophy of language, etc. it is the hypothesis that accounts for the greatest amount of information, at the most fine-grained level, based on the best-established findings of the relevant disciplines that must be preferred (cf. margolis 1962). to conclude. the above definition of irony entails that of the four possible combinations only judgments based on combinations 1 and 2 can be true. assuming two different performances, judgments based on both combinations 1 and 2 support our hypothesis. recalling tsur’s and gerber’s exchange on wright’s enjambment, combination 1 presupposes a performance relying on conflicting cues without a pause, combination 2 presupposes a performance relying on straightforward pause, suppressing continuity. since enjambment suggests continuation and discontinuation at the same time, a performance relying on conflicting cues without a pause does more justice to the text than a performance relying on straightforward pause, suppressing continuity. as the results show, indeed, judgments based on combination 1 are the majority; but, as we said, we consider judgments based on combination 2 too as supporting our hypothesis. judgments based on combinations 3 and 4 are logically possible only if one acts upon a partial definition of irony, namely, “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite”, with no implications of “pretended ignorance”. the two judgments (combinations 1–2) that support our hypothesis, form 63% of the (non-contradictory, decisive) received judgments. the aesthetic quality of a piece of poetry cannot be decided in a democratic way: the quality that receives the greatest number of votes forms the government. we predicted on theoretical grounds that judgments based on combination 1 would best reflect the aesthetic nature of the texts. indeed, out of all logical combinations, this was the favoured option by far (49% of the four response patterns). but it can form only a minority government. recalling the performances of excerpt 1, a performance relying on conflicting cues without a pause is less easily available than a performance relying on straightforward pause, suppressing continuity; so, it is most remarkable that we received over twice as many judgments based on the former than on the latter. the simple reason is that, as we have said, this is the performance that does most justice to the text. our results suggest that those participants whose answers supported our hypothesis resorted to straightforward pause in enjambment only when the other performance was not available for some reason (most performers who intuitively have recourse to conflicting cues without a pause are not explicitly aware of this possibility; “it just sounds all right”).6 6 this research was supported by the israel science foundation (grant no. 228/11). 27enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles references barney, tom 1990. the forms of enjambment. unpublished m. a. thesis, university of lancaster. beardsley, monroe c. 1958. aesthetics, problems in the philosophy of criticism. new york and burlingame, ca: harcourt, brace & world. bishop, phillip a.; herron, robert l. 2015. use and misuse of the likert item responses and other ordinal measures. in: international journal of exercise science 8(3), 297–302. booth, wayne c. 1961. the rhetoric of fiction. chicago: the university of chicago press. chatman, seymour 1965. a theory of meter. the hague: mouton. chatman, seymour 1966. intonational fallacy. in: quarterly journal of speech 52(3), 283–286. gerber, natalie 2015. intonation and the conventions of free verse. in: style 49(1), 8–34. gerber, natalie; smith, david nowell 2015. a conversation with reuven tsur on intonation and prosody. in: thinking verse v: 172–212. http://www.thinkingverse.org/issue05/tsurinterviewintonation.pdf. greene, roland. 2012. the princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. princeton university press. hepburn, ronald w. 1968. emotions and emotional qualities: some attempts at analysis. in: osborne, harold (ed.), aesthetics in the modern world, london: thames and hudson, 81–93. loesch, katharine t. 1965. literary ambiguity and oral performance. in: quarterly journal of speech 51(3), 258–267. loesch, katharine t. 1966. reply to mr. chatman. in: quarterly journal of speech 52(3), 286–289. margolis, joseph 1962. the logic of interpretation. in: margolis, joseph (ed.), philosophy looks at the arts: contemporary readings in aesthetics. new york: scribner, 108–120. meyer, leonard b. 1956. emotion and meaning in music. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. 28 reuven tsur, chen gafni nadler, joel t.; weston, rebecca; voyles, elora c. 2015. stuck in the middle: the use and interpretation of mid-points in items on questionnaires. in: journal of general psychology 142(2), 71–89. tsur, reuven 1977. a perception-oriented theory of metre. tel aviv: the porter institute for poetics and semiotics. tsur, reuven 1998. poetic rhythm: structure and performance – an empirical study in cognitive poetics. bern: peter lang. tsur, reuven 2000. the performance of enjambments, perceived effects, and experimental manipulations. in: psyart: a hyperlink journal for the psychological study of the arts. http://psyartjournal.com/article/show/tsur-the_performance_ of_enjambments_perceived tsur, reuven 2012. poetic rhythm: structure and performance: an empirical study in cognitive poetics. brighton and portland: sussex academic press. weitz, morris 1962. the role of theory in aesthetics. in: margolis, joseph (ed.), philosophy looks at the arts: contemporary readings in aesthetics. new york: scribner, 48–59. wellek, rené; warren, austin 1949. theory of literature. new york: harcourt, brace & co. whaler, james 1956. counterpoint and symbol: an inquiry into the rhythm of milton’s epic style (anglistica 6). copenhagen: rosenkilde. http://psyartjournal.com/article/show/tsur-the_performance_ of_enjambments_perceived studia metrica et poetica sisu 7_2.indd movement and balance a comment on derek attridge’s moving words eva lilja* abstract: th is paper discusses some central problems that occur within cognitive versifi cation studies. derek attridge’s moving words (2013) comments on richard cureton’s concept of temporalities. attridge understands poetic rhythm as movement. he draws the conclusion that movement and repetition are, in principle, contradictory because, in a way, repetition looks backwards and stops the movement. th is turns out to be a complicated statement, as repetition seems to be the only poetic device that is common in poetry all over the world. however, it may be possible to understand the relationship between movement and repetition with the help of reuven tsur’s concept of back-structuring. th is shows how verse rhythm is spatialised as well as has the ability to move in time. th is is possible because of gestalt borders that close the sequences. additionally, cureton’s fourth thematic temporality is useful to solve the confl ict. temporality is a complex reality, and poetic rhythm also has the ability to stand still. keywords: attridge, closure, cureton, movement, repetition, temporality, tsur introduction with the entrance of cognitive poetics, versifi cation studies have become a central issue in literary studies, a discipline where basic questions of aesthetics and artistic language can be studied. th ere are a couple of scholars who should be especially honoured for this breakthrough. reuven tsur was fi rst with his poetic rhythm and toward a th eory of cognitive poetics.1 richard cureton took another perspective in his rhythmic phrasing in english verse. from a more traditional starting point, aft er his classic th e rhythms of english poetry, derek attridge incorporated cognitive fi ndings, little by little, into his system, thus stabilizing it. another starting point is mikhail gasparov’s a history of european versifi cation, which adds a broad historical perspective to contemporary versifi cation studies. * author’s address: eva lilja, department of literature, history of ideas, and religion, university of gothenburg, box 200, se 405 30 göteborg, sweden, email: eva.lilja@lir.gu.se. 1 tsur’s very fi rst outline of cognitive versifi cation studies takes place in tsur 1977.  https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.05 studia metrica et poetica 7.2, 2020, 90–108 91movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words in this article, i will comment on a passage in attridge’s moving words (2013). in his second chapter (2013: 31–49), he refers to cureton’s idea of different levels of rhythm in a poem, which is what cureton calls temporalities. attridge is especially interested in the second and the third temporality, which are grouping and prolongation, respectively (the fi rst temporality concerns metre). he discusses how they relate to repetition, which is another general device in poems. a basic idea in attridge’s work – as well as in cureton’s – is that a poem could be understood as movement in time (attridge 2013: 5, 31). attridge starts by saying that, in principle, movement and repetition are contradictory (2013: 39). with the help of reuven tsur’s poetics, i will harmonise this confl ict. my main perspective will be gestalt and closure. most of attridge’s examples are in metred verse. however, i will look at his ideas from the perspective of modernist free verse. free verse may be defi ned as pronounced phrases combined with elaborate pauses. th e division of the text into short lines creates the most salient pause with the line break. free verse uses the same devices as traditional verse (e.g. rhymes) but without any general pattern. modernist versifi cation developed rhythms from diff erent ancient cultures including old greek poetry and eddaic forms. biblical poetry could be added to the list. a fourth starting point for free versifi cation was the avant-garde movement of the twentieth century, which off ered a productive fi eld of rhythmic experiments. free verse presents complications in method for the metrist who cannot go on counting iambs. th is might be a reason why they have overlooked the free forms for about a century. however, a new version of gestalt psychology can come to our help. background before going into the confl ict between movement and its borders, i will specify the concept of rhythm in poetry. i have combined cureton’s temporalities with gasparov’s verse systems into some principles of rhythm, which are three historical ways for words to move.2 a verse system must rely on a certain rhythmical principle with the addition of a set of rules. however, principles of rhythm cover also all other art forms that use the concept of rhythm, like music and architecture. i distinguish three principles of aesthetic rhythm, 2 hereby i worked together with my late colleague lena hopsch at chalmers university of technology, gothenburg, sweden. 92 eva lilja serial rhythm, sequential rhythm and dynamic rhythm – that is three basic sets of gestalt qualities: • serial rhythm – th e tactus or beat in measured music and poetry, which is to be found in the accentsyllabic poetry from the renaissance until the modernist breakthrough. • sequential rhythm – th e sequence of the phrase, which is to be found in the accentual versifi cation in old norse poetry and the germanic middle ages as well as in free versifi cation, in music and in the surfaces of a painting, or the parts of a sculpture. • dynamic rhythm – th e forces and directions in twoand three-dimensional artefacts and the temporal intensifi cation towards a focus in music and poetry. with these three kinds of rhythm in mind i will introduce a couple of main points made by attridge, cureton and tsur, who are the fathers of cognitive versifi cation studies. an important purpose of this article is to make their respective versifi cation theories speak with one another. attridge’s most important contribution to versifi cation studies is his handling of the four-beat line that uses sequential rhythm, which is the patterned sequence of a phrase (hopsch, lilja, e. 2007). th e sequential accentual rhythm dominated in england up to ca 1100 (attridge 2012: 3, gasparov 1996). as to versifi cation rule, the line should have four prominences and be divided by a caesura in 2 + 2 stresses. th e line is kept together with the help of alliteration. by calling attention to this old and new form, attridge has freed versifi cation studies from the permanent constraint of metre. my own fi eld of study is the versifi cation of modernist free verse, and this is oft en a variety of the old four-beat line. i have already mentioned cureton’s temporalities – fi rst alternation or pulse, then grouping in the phrase, and, fi nally, the prolongation that directs the line. th ey are equivalent with what i have named serial rhythm, sequential rhythm and dynamic rhythm. however, cureton has a fourth one – the thematic rhythm. th e fi rst three levels that are covered in cureton’s book, go together with a hierachical system, where pulse is the smallest entity, phrase comes next, and the prolongation covers at least one line. all levels have their directions and their main stresses, and the defi nitive rhythm of a line will be a combination of rhythms from diff erent levels.3 3 cureton’s notations of each level apart make the result diffi cult to grasp. in my rhythm 93movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words however, cureton also constructs a fourth rhythmic possibility, the thematic temporality. aft er publishing his book, he obviously observed that his three temporalities were insuffi cient to describe the rhythm of a poem. th e fourth temporality is about spatialised rhythm. repetitions connect certain points in the rhythmic fl ow, and relate them to each other. th is shapes a kind of eternal now (cureton 1994a, 1994b; larsson 1999: 99f.). for modernist poetry, this fourth temporality – the thematic rhythm – is especially important. th e fi rst three levels move – the fi rst one, metre, makes a short cyclical movement, the phrase of the second one centres, and the third one goes up to and out from a distinct focus (cureton 1992). but the fourth one rests. with the help of repetitions time is spatialised (hopsch, lilja, e. 2017: 424). over centuries, the very word “rhythm” has been used for spatial as well as temporal art forms (lilja, e. 2016). th e pulse or metre of the fi rst temporality can be found also in the antique peristyle. th e poetic phrase has an equivalent in the arms and legs of the statue, and the directions of a prolongation can also be recognised also in a piece of architecture. what about the forth temporality? th e tight rope walker moves forward at the same time as she/ he stands in the middle of a dynamic play of forces, that keep directions in balance. cureton’s fourth temporality means that a temporal form may also stand still, or balance.4 th e very patriarch of cognitive versifi cation studies, reuven tsur, has had a vast amount of research production during decades. patiently, he uncovers layer aft er layer in a poem’s production of meaning. every extra signifi cation has its own technical explanation. structures of emotion go with the structures of sounds, right down to tiny phonological diff erences. what have been called intuitions are explained here in frequences and other acoustic details, which present diff erent kinds of precategorial information (tsur 2012a, 2012b). poetic conventions are shaped and constrained by the natural capacities and limitations of the human brain (tsur 2017: 158). tsur emphasises the importance of the gestalt in poems, and he modernises the old gestalt psychology for this purpose. th e gestalt observations of old times were in need of new and reliable theory. tsur confi rmed the observations through fi ndings in neurology combined with phonology. th e gestalt turned notations i have taken all levels into account at the same time for practical reasons, considering various possibilities of interpretation. a notation of the levels one by one is confusing, something that also has been remarked according to cureton’s thorough analyses. 4 from this intermedia perspective follows that also analyses of free and metrical verse can use the same tools (hopsch, lilja e. 2017). 94 eva lilja out to be a useful methodological tool that works just as well in both free and metred verse. gestalts may of course be of diff erent sizes, but one of them is the phrase – cureton’s second temporality – which tsur prefers to name a “breath group”. he uses miller’s fi nding of the so-called “magic seven”, which is based on the fact that short-term memory can hold about seven items, or syllables, at a time. th is is also the extent of an ordinary phrase, a short line or a half line (miller 1970). when transferred into time, the short-term memory holds about ten syllables for approximately three seconds (pöppel 2004). what goes within this limit of seconds or items will be apprehended as one instant. another basic device in tsur’s versifi cation studies is rapid and slow categorisation. th e reader will be invited by the text to read it quickly or slowly. in rapid categorisation the forms are transparent and easy to get hold of, while other poems may need more eff ort to be enjoyable. tsur calls these more diffi cult texts divergent – information points in diff erent directions – but rapid categorisation emanates from convergent texts, where form devices and contents harmonise. slow categorisation creates time for a deeper understanding of the text for the reader (tsur 2008: 59, 83, 100). tsur also points at the so-called back-structuring (tsur 2012a: 302–303). th ink of listening to a piece of music. th e full melody will not show up until we have heard the very last tone, but aft er that one knows very well how it goes. music – and poetry – works in time and we have to wait for the closure before we fully apprehend the temporal gestalt. on a lower level, this is also true for phrases and fi gures. in temporal gestalts, the form is grasped backwards. during listening, one waits for a boundary and the internal order of the form emerges aft erwards when the gestalt becomes closed. suddenly one has perceived its form and, in the same moment, patterned it (smith 1968: 2). th e temporal course includes a spatial understanding that is caused by gestalt pressure. back-structuring in perceptual processes, like reading, infl uences the interpretation. th e whole phrase will be reinterpreted in arrears. th e gestalt is only acknowledged when it is closed. th e same goes for the larger gestalt of the whole poem. th e forward factual time is unsettled and replaced with the periodic time pattern. in his verse history 1996 gasparov established the european systems of versifi cation. in northern europe and northern america, we must take into account four or fi ve of them. old norse and medieval forms use the accentual system of versifi cation. aft er that comes a period of accentsyllabic verse, and during the last century free verse has dominated the development of poetry. in addition, the syllabic system of french poetry has been seminal here, and 95movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words of course we must consider the quantitative system of versifi cation of classical antiquity even if our own languages resist that kind of accent. the problem tsur’s version of gestalt psychology is a necessary tool for cognitive versifi cation studies. it is in line with cureton’s temporalities and attridge’s analyses. any gestalt has a closure, and one aim here is to discuss how to achieve that closure in poems. when writing his moving words, attridge obviously has not noticed cureton’s articles about the fourth temporality. attridge’s chapter two, “meaning in movement. phrasing and repetition”, takes cureton’s second and third temporality as a starting point for a discussion of diff erent kinds of repetition.5 according to attridge, the words in a poem should be moving, but repetitions make them stand still, he says. a repetition halts the movement, and the phrase will not be closed (2013: 40, 43). and of course, this will also aff ect meaning. what kind of movement is attridge thinking of ? a prolongation works with meaning – its focus must be the semantically most important word of that passage. and of course, the semantic level emphasises some syllables and represses others in the sound structure of a poem. but when talking about verse rhythm, we usually refer to something else – the play between stressed and unstressed elements in a rhythm. th ese are related to meaning, but exist at the language level. in his second chapter, attridge concentrates on semantic meaning. however, poetry has usually been described as an art form where the sound structure plays the most important role. moving words are directed towards (and from) focuses of meaning but also to-and-fro stress focuses. cureton’s temporalities fl uctuate between form aspects and semantics. his fi rst temporality is only concerned about sound, the second one needs sound and meaning, while the third one concentrates on meaning. attridge says that repetitions may have an anti-closural eff ect (2013: 39). for closure, attridge refers to barbara herrnstein smith’s discussion in poetic closure (1968: 155–66). according to her, serial repetitions – of that kind one 5 th e serial pulse level of the fi rst temporality seems to be less interesting for attridge. however, even ordinary speech has kind of alternation at the bottom of the sound structure. th is due to a strive for an eveness in the gestalt. th is alternation is thing other than the tactus of premodernist verse, and in free versifi cation the second level, the sequential rhythm of the phrase, is dominant. 96 eva lilja will fi nd in accentsyllabic versifi cation – work in an anti-closural manner, and attridge defi nes repeated words and expressions as equivalent to these types of repetition in verse. however, according to smith, free unsystematic versifi cation uses repetition as a means of closure. mainly, free and metred poetry use the same formal devices with the diff erence that free verse does not accept any rules. however, there is a diff erence between the two verse systems in that pauses mostly are more crucial in free verse.6 th is may be a way to explain why repetitions should behave diff erently in free and metred verse. attridge’s problem is the question of how movement with repetition can be combined – a repetition that could make the line static according to his fi ndings (2013: 39). th e poem moves forward but the repetition causes the motion to cease. according to attridge, repetition has an odd status in poetic movement and refers to repeated words and expressions, but not to diff erent kinds of rhyming (2013: 41). repeated words should be “contentless” (2013: 48), but so-called “expressive repetitions” may intensify the text, and new signifi cation may rise from the change in position that will be the result of a repetition (2013: 49). with the help of some examples, he discusses how different kinds of repetition can create meaning in a poem. roman jakobson was also interested in repetitions. his famous theory of equivalence states that the repeated element is defi ning for poetry (attridge 2013: 38; jakobson 1960). i personally have found that repetition is the only device that seems to be common in poetry all over the world within diff erent verse systems. jakobson says that in a rhyming pair, the repeated occasion points back at the fi rst one. however, jakobson never explains why rhyme words, or equivalent elements, are connected. he refers to some vague associations. here, we have now got an explanation thanks to tsur’s work with gestalt theory in poetry. th e equivalence, or the repeated approximate element, exemplifi es the gestalt law of similarity. a gestalt is closed when the repeated element returns. attridge’s example of rhymed poetry is borrowed from blake, “a poison tree”, here line 9–10: … and it grew both day and night till it bore an apple bright – … 6 for various observations about rhythm in free verse i refer to my forthcoming publication rhythm in modernist poetry. 97movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words time of diff erent kinds th e confl ict between movement and balance might look more distinct with the help of a refl ection over time. moving words are moving in time, and temporality is a main idea in cureton’s poetics. rhythm consists of motion, and poetic motion takes place in time. however, a moving body moves both in time and space (hopsch, lilja, e. 2017, attridge 2013: 40). th ere are diff erent kinds of time. first of all, we have time according to the watch that measures time invariably and scientifi cally. in this timescape entropy guarantees a beginning and an end of the world. th e direction must always point forwards. however, when looking around in nature, time seems to be more periodic – spring returns every year and new children are born when old people die. th e society manipulates time, hastens it and intensifi es it by creating weeks of seven days, vacation periods, christmas, et cetera – here time is more of a social construct. psychological time appears to be rather diff erent from clock time. in the mind, time might stand still or just disappear in a rather bumpy course. th e reading process needs both factual and psychological time. cureton talks about psychological time, how time functions in the reading process (cureton 1992: 427). however, reading a poem is a psychological occurrence that is in need of factual reading time. what we should remember here is that these two time aspects behave quite diff erently even if they may cooperate with each other. reading a poem will take a couple of factual minutes. in the psychological reading process, however, one will shape that time according to the rhythmical construction and the semantic information. focus points are decided just as directions and tempo are and, in this inner world, time has the possibility to stand still if needed, which is something that cureton also refers to with his fourth temporality as well as at other levels of his system. th e verse line moves in factual time but might keep still in the reader’s inner time. modernist poetry, however, will need more factual time than poems did a century ago. modernism has developed a new type of poetry reading, which is known as spatial reading. it is rather impossible to take in a whole poem in only one reading – a modernist text is too complex for that. th e reader has to walk around in the poem, so to speak, and look at the previous line again before going back to the very beginning in order to repeat the point of departure and thereby discover an expressive paronomasia that connects two segments, as well as other repetitions. aft er this process, one can understand the text in its entirety (cureton 1992: 427). th is process questions the 98 eva lilja directionality of time when it establishes the poem as a room of its own where the reader walks around (attridge 2013: 40). attridge focuses cureton’s second and third temporalities – grouping and prolongation. in a prolongation, the parts are directed to the focus point, and these directions are a main device in the structure of a poetic text, regarding the verse rhythm as well as semantics. according to attridge, in the extension of a prolongation the direction will even go backwards (2013: 41).7 in addition, the grouping level works in the same way, and this implies that every phrase and line has a universe of directions of its own. cureton names the grouping time modus ‘centroidal time’. yes, words are moving in a poem but not always in the forward direction of factual time – obviously, psychological time might point backwards or stay still. however, psychological time always must relate to factual time. simplifi cation and equivalence repetition is an odd phenomenon, not easy to catch. here, i will comment on two of its aspects, simplifi cation and equivalence. it should be noted that there is no exact repetition. even if the repeated expression is exactly the same as the fi rst one, its position will change when it appears a second time. when saying the same thing once more, (factual) time has continued forwards and altered the conditions (attridge 2013: 48, barthes 2009). can it really be true that a repeated word or clause lacks meaning? i prefer to say that repetition might simplify the expression. repetitions create simplifi cations – for every time one hears a message, more and more nuances will get lost (lilja, e., lilja, m. 2018). it will be strengthened and reduced at the same time and will become more intense and more simplistic.8 th e ordinary way to avoid this simplifi cation is to repeat with a slight diff erence (danielsen 2006). with some new details added, the listener thinks that he hears the very original again. attridge remarks that meaning itself is grounded in repetition (2013: 46). one must hear something several times to perceive its meaning. also, 7 it is possible to go backwards in space, but not in time. however, human perception of time is somehow modelled on the perception of space. motion takes place in space, and time will be conceptualised in terms of motion (lakoff , johnson 1999: 140). 8 compare with tsur’s idea (2012a: 63) of so-called cognitive economics. brain capacity always chooses the simplest way possible to solve a problem. 99movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words communities need repetition to accept new ideas. repetition is the highway for societies to build a common culture of norms and discourses (lilja, e., lilja, m. 2018). roman jakobson prefers the slight diff erence when he makes “equivalence” a main theme in his poetics (jakobson 1960; attridge 2013: 38). a good repetition shall not be exact but similar, like is the case with the rhyme eff ect in his example “horrible harry”. th is is not the kind of repetition that attridge discusses, but here i would like to point out jakobson’s idea once more, which states that a repetition makes the reader recall the fi rst time he heard these sounds, thus creating new signifi cation when the two occasions come together in the reader’s mind. every repetition reminds you of the previous occurrence in a web of signifi cations. a repeated word will close the expression (jakobson 1960). tsur also notes that repetitions add extra meaning to the text, but this comes from a theory other than jakobson’s. tsur refers to cognitive poetics, when he emphasises that repetitions create signifi cation simply due to the similarity, which mixes and disturbs the rational forward lapses of language, and forces the reader to abandon the rational principle of succession for the emotional principle of similarity (tsur 2012b: 121, 138). th ereby, he does not agree with attridge in that the repeated word would be contentless. emotion needs time to develop and get charged, and repetition creates that time with the help of a slow categorisation. as noted above, slow categorisation serves the need for more factual time in the reading process, which is one of tsur’s main ideas. every repetition slows down the reading, thereby deepening thought as well as emotion. th is description matches attridge’s handling of so-called expressive repetitions (attridge 2013: 45, 48). similarity connects elements in a poem, and similarity will, in practise, be the same as repetition of diff erent kinds, such as approximate rhyming, repeated words as well as sentences. a repetition turns the reading mind backwards to the fi rst occasion of that word, a repetition which closes the gestalt (tsur 2012a: 303–304; jakobson 1960). gestalt closure th e problem with attridge’s second chapter is its insuffi cient approach to closure. here, the concept of gestalt could be used as a methodological tool. th e closed gestalt decides what movement can do in the interplay of directions in a poem. cureton’s hierarchy of rhythm levels refers to the hierarchy of gestalts 100 eva lilja in a poem, where a small one – like a line – will be embraced by a bigger one – like a stanza.9 th e gestalts of a poem might be closed with the help of several means, and here i will point at two of them – two kinds of borders: • th e phrase signals a limit – a pause, a falling intonation – and this border creates a distinct entity where the movement takes place. • a sound repetition closes the gestalt according to the gestalt law of similarity – a similar repeated element makes a closure. as stated above, tsur uses miller’s fi nding of the so-called “magic seven”, which is based on the fact that short-term memory can hold about seven items, or syllables, at the same time. th ere is also a corresponding time limit of about three seconds, which is the capacity of the same short-term memory (pöppel 2004). according to pöppel, so much text – approximately ten syllables – can be kept in mind in one moment, and diff erent versifi cation devices will make the reading of a poem consist of a row of moments. pauses are most active in this process. poetry supports this portioning of text with the help of lineation and other pause markers, which create a reading process that is basically separated from the one in prose (tsur 2012a: 297). these active pauses make us read a poem in a succession of closed sequences – not streaming, which is the way one reads a novel. every line makes the “now” of the short-term memory, and a strong feeling of “now” will be the result for the poetry reader (ruin 1961). th is is a kind of digital reading when prose reading might be called analogous. every gestalt is spatialised and one can also talk about spatial reading. th is succession of closed gestalts will become evident if we consider tsur’s idea of “back-structuring” (tsur 2012a: 302–303). digital reading is based on temporality. poetry works in time and we have to wait a little for the closure when the form is grasped backwards. th e factual, forward directed time is replaced with a periodic time pattern. poetry is distinguished by repetitions concerning sound eff ects, themes, motives and grammatical constructs (jakobson 1960). back-structuring and repetition spatialize the text, transforming it to a room where the reader walks around looking for beauty and meaning. 9 attridge thinks of the whole poem as one gestalt – so-called “staged temporality” (2013: 39). 101movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words standing still like me, cureton is looking for a solid defi nition of the swaying concept of rhythm, and his four temporalities point at a result. rhythm deals with movements and directions in a piece of art. rhythm is a form of perception that governs the experience of artefacts. rhythm in an art work signifi es a play between temporal or spatial proportions within the perception of a gestalt – a play of directions that includes reaching a focus. a limited movement seems to be the basis of any aesthetic rhythm. th e title of attridge’s book is moving words, and this is very telling. however, i will add that the movement must be limited and closed. repetitions are very common in poems, and a repetition halts the movement. how do we understand all these repetitions? cureton establishes a category where rhythm does not move, which is his fourth temporality. th e problem here is that it is a little aside his system, and attridge obviously did not know about it when he wrote his book.10 cureton’s so-called equative prolongation concerns feeble movements, and anttridge draws the conclusion that the equative prolongation is about repetitions that stops the movement (2013: 40). th e concept of movement includes a stand still. th e immovable moment must be one aspect of moving (attridge 2013: 42). a tight rope walker stands in the middle of a dynamic play of forces (hopsch, lilja, e. 2017). we have the same amount of directions in the delicate play of big and small gestalts in a poem. movements go somewhere or they halt for a moment – i would say that this play of directions establishes rhythm. direction can go forwards and backwards, to-and-fro, which is something that both attridge and cureton mention. th e balancing sequence moves forwards in factual time, but it halts in the psychological time when the gestalt closes with the help of versifi cation devices. th e balance brings about a dynamic play of forces, which also involves symmetry and repetition – mostly not a perfect symmetry but more of equivalent repetitions.11 i will suggest that this kind of halting or slowing down is a typical characteristic of modernist arts. complicated texts invite the reader to slow 10 in his book, cureton diff ers between three kinds of prolongation – equative, additive, and progressional ones. cureton defi nes his equative prolongation as “a movement which does not signifi cantly move” (1992: 147f., larsson 1999: 91). cureton’s thematic rhythm is about standing still, time as space, and returning and repetition (larsson 1999: 99–102). 11 tsur reminds us that perceptual forces always work inside a gestalt (2012a: 83). 102 eva lilja categorisation.12 th e complexity of modernist poetry needs much factual time. th e form elements relate to balance as well as to direction, and oft en they aim at symmetry and asymmetry at the same time. rhythm could be seen as a happy contrast between balance and direction. repetition in a poem by leonard cohen i will round off this paper with a discussion of an expressive repetition in a poem by leonard cohen, no 55 in th e energy of slaves (1972). but fi rst, a word about how to read a poem in free verse. to a certain degree, rhythm in free verse depends on the reading. a lodestar for me has been to pronounce the texts as normally as possible, thereby following ordinary speech rhythm. some reading rules must be kept, but in other cases there is a choice to be made. one category of syllables must be stressed, and others must stay unstressed. but one also meets a category where the reader is allowed to choose whether to stress or not stress a syllable. factors to consider are things like tempo, meaning, line length, and exclusiveness. in addition to this, individual readers may have their own ideas about how much they want to conventionalise the sound fl ow. according to the fashions over time, aesthetic styles vary over epochs, with readings aiming at the stable tactus or the precious segment (lilja, e. 2006: 173–175). cohen is known for his elegant irony and his portraits of masculinity. th e notation signs are explained below the poem: you need her o o o 2 so you can get ooo o > your boots off the bedspread o o oo o0 4 we who have always ruled the world o oo o o / o o o don’t like the way you dance o o o o o o 6 and she said, i for one o oo / o o o > am happy with the world o o ooo o 12 compare with tsur’s basic idea about rapid and slow categorisation in the reception (2008: 577f.). 103movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words 8 she seized the lapel of a cut-throat o o o o o / oo o0 and said it again o o oo o 10 with all her small voice trembling, o o o ooo o i for one am happy with the world o o o / o o ooo o 12 i don’t know if i want to kill her or not oo o oo o / o o oo o anapaests o oo o oo / o oo o o bacchii notation signs: stress o semistress 0 unstressed o phrase shift / enjambment > th e poem consists of fi ve stanzas, fi ve closed parts: l. 1–3: a forward direction. prolongation goal: “need her”. l. 4–5: a forward direction in iambic serial rhythm. th e commencing choriamb oooo is common in iambic verse and does not disturb its forwardness. prolongation goal: “don’t like”. l. 6–7: a forward direction. th e latter line has a vague iambic seriality. prolongation goal: “happy”. l. 8–11: here comes the emphatic core of the poem and the rhythm is nuanced. th e molossus of l. 10 “her small voice trembling” ooooo parts the poem into a before and an aft er – as a kind of prolongation goal for the poem as a whole and for the stanza. l. 12: a forward direction. th ere are two possible readings regarding the interpretation. th e line is ambiguous and could be understood in two ways, but both possible readings are directed forward, with anapaests ooo or rising bacchii ooo. th is line closes the poem eff ectively. prolongation goal: “kill her”. th e story of this poem concerns a man, who calls himself “a cut-throat” and lives with a woman who represents societal order. she states that she is loyal to “the world” – perhaps the middle-class order. th e man gets very irritated and considers killing her. th is last saying could be ironic or not. th ere is a confl ict of class as well as a confl ict of gender. th e poem centres about the psychology of the male character. th e narrative cooperates with the rhythm of the poem – there are narrative structures at both of these levels. according to aristotle’s poetics, every story has (at least) a beginning, a climax, and a closure and any hollywood picture follows that rule. th e same kind of movement is to be found in courses 104 eva lilja of rhythm that build up to a culmination and thereaft er ebb away. in this way, a piece of music, for example, tells a story about going somewhere, fi nding something and thereaft er relaxing (kühl 2003: 59). th e same emotional pattern – with variations of course – exists in poetry and any other kind of rhythmic contexture. here, i would suggest that the molossus of l. 10 makes the culmination of this poem and plays an important part in the structure of the poem as a whole. th e molossus stands still – a balance point: 10 with all her small voice trembling, o o o ooo o th e line pictures the girl as a weak person – however, also brave enough to challenge the man. from this line, the reader gets a hint of what keeps this odd couple together. from the perspective of the protagonist hooligan, the phrase also expresses contempt and scorn for the girl – or perhaps for the whole middle-class establishment. according to direction, rhythm and narrative cooperate. most of the rhythm goes forward, it is rising on the level of the phrase and the line. an iambic seriality is the dominating rhythmic device of this poem within the frame of the free verse system. also, the story about the irritated hooligan quickly runs forth to the bad solution(s) of the last line. th e course of events skips insignifi cant details to concentrate on the important moments. th ere is a rush both in form and story. however, the forward movement holds back with the repetition of l. 6–7 in l. 11: 11 i for one am happy with the world o o o / o o ooo o th is sentence appears twice with varied line breaks. th is repetition embraces two stanzas, l. 6–7 and l. 8–11. in the fi rst one “happy” makes the prolongation goal, but in the second stanza, the phrase “her small voice trembling” makes the goal of that stanza inspite of the following repetition of “happy”. th e many stresses in l. 10 mark it out as an important saying. th ereby, the interpretation of exactly the same expression changes a little when repeated because of a new context. th ese prolongation goals work semantically out of the interpretation of the poem. however, they also infl uence how they are stressed. a repetition breaks a straight forward movement by turning back to the fi rst occurrence. a forward seriality of line rhythm will not change this. th e repetition facilitates reading, when it creates and closes a gestalt, which here consists of the l. 6–11 in two stanzas. what is in between the two occasions will stay in the reader’s mind. here there is a pause, a stand still, in the forward rush of this poem. 105movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words th e repeated phrase is not exactly the same when iterated. in l. 6–7 it is cut in two pieces by a light enjambment, which creates more time.13 in l. 11 it makes more of a statement with heavy line break pauses before and aft er it. th e repeated expression of l. 11 is the only falling passage of this poem. a falling direction goes slower and takes more time than the rising iambs – falling direction makes emphasis (tsur, 2017). in various rhythmic ways, the girl’s replica is marked as crucial – the repetition, the enjambment, the falling pattern, and twice the closing of a stanza. th e emphasis on l. 10–11 makes this passage heavy in interpretation. th e reader understands that she, in spite of her littleness, will win the fi ght between them. so, what about l. 12 where the hooligan threatens to kill the girl? cohen is well-known for his elegant irony, and i would recommend a double levelled ironic reading here. th e rhythm turns into an anapaestic gallop ooo – if we choose that reading. however, there is also a possiblity of a serious reading of the line with heavy bacchii ooo – and, of course, something in between these two patterns. my choice of anapaestic irony has its ground in the rather sloppy everyday language of this poem that hardly cooperates with a row of bacchii. i would like to compare cohen’s repeated line with the one attridge discusses in a poem by robert frost, “stopping by woods on a snowy evening”, where the last stanza is as follows: 13 th e woods are lovely, dark and deep, but i have promises to keep, 15 and miles to go before i sleep, and miles to go before i sleep attridge parts frost’s poem into two prolongation groups (2013: 47). th e fi rst one, l. 1–13, describes a longing for darkness and death, and the second one, l. 14–16, points at societal duties. th is second group closes with a full-line repetition. one repetition opens for more iterations, says attridge (2013: 48). principally, they could go on for ever without adding anything to the interpretation. here, he does not recognise the closing power of the repeated line. however, in a poem every detail is important – if the saying is repeated once, it is not repeated twice. th e girl in cohen’s poem won the fi ght with her partner with the help of the repeated saying that takes into account what has happened 13 th e special enjambment pronunciation means to somewhat lengthen the last possible syllable before the break, and the usual pause of a half second in the very break disappears or shortens (kjørup 2003: 239–254). 106 eva lilja aft er her fi rst replica. th e context has changed and, thereby, so has the meaning of the expression. in frost’s poem nothing happens between the fi rst and the second occurrence. however, the context here has also changed. line 16 is a repetition – time has continued aft er l. 15, and the stanza form asks for closure. th e extra time created by the repetition lets the reader connect to the charged motive of death that without that iteration might have fallen aside. conclusion gestalts are closed with distinct borders. a poem may be looked upon as a row of sequences in diff erent sizes, where the three-second limit (or miller’s approximately seven items) dominates the patterning. cognitive versifi cation studies off ers tools and theory for such new ways of looking at verse. repetition is a sliding concept. it behaves diff erently in its various practices. sometimes it strengthens the context, and other times it makes it weaker. when taking time into account, there is a cooperation between the forward motion of the universe and a permanent returning pattern modelled on nature. or do they fi ght each other? th ese two patterns point at how to understand the world, and how to interpret a poem. references attridge, derek 1982. th e rhythms of english poetry. london: longman. attridge, derek 2012. th e case for the english dolnik; or, how not to introduce prosody. in: poetics today 33(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-1505522 attridge, derek 2013. moving words: forms of english poetry. oxford: oxford university press. barthes, roland 2009 [1957]. mythologies. london: vintage. cureton, richard d. 1992. rhythmic phrasing in english verse. london: longman. cureton, richard d. 1994a. rhythmic cognition and linguistic rhythm. in: journal of literary semantics 23(3), 220–223. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlse.1994.23.3.220 cureton, richard d. 1994b. rhythm and verse study. in: language and literature 3(2), 105–224. https://doi.org/10.1177/096394709400300202 107movement and balance. a comment on derek attridge’s moving words danielsen, anne 2006. presence and pleasure: th e funk grooves of james brown and parliament. middletown, conn.: wesleyan university press. gasparov, mikhail l. 1996. a history of european versifi cation. translated by gerald s. smith and marina tarlinskaja. edited by gerald s. smith and leofranc holfordstrevens. oxford: clarendon press. hopsch, lena; lilja, eva. 2007. principles of rhythm: temporal and spatial aspects. in: arvidson, jens (ed.), changing borders: contemporary positions in intermediality. lund: intermedia studies press, 361–376. hopsch, lena; lilja, eva 2017. embodied rhythm in space and time: a poem and a sculpture. in: style 51(4), 413–441. https://doi.org/10.1353/sty.2017.0034 jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, th omas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, ma: mit press, 350–377. kjørup, frank 2003. sprog versus sprog: mod en versets poetik [language versus language: against a poetics of verse]. københavn: museum tusculanum forlag. kühl, ole 2003. improvisation og tanke [improvisation and th ought]. københavn: basilisk. lakoff , george; johnson, mark 1999. philosophy in the flesh: th e embodied mind and its challenge to western th ought. new york: basic books. larsson, jörgen 1999. poesi som rörelse i tiden [poetry as movement in time.] diss. göteborg. lilja, eva 2016. öyvind fahlström’s bord: visual devices in poetry. in: studia metrica et poetica 3(2), 7–31. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.0 1 lilja, eva (forthcoming). rhythm in modernist poetry. an essay in cognitive versifi cation studies. lilja, eva; lilja, mona 2018. linguistic resistance: establishing, maintaining and resisting truths. in: journal of resistance studies 4(1), 72–98. miller, george a. 1970. th e psychology of communication. harmondsworth: penguin. pöppel, ernst 2004. lost in time: a historical frame, elementary processing units and the 3-second window. in: acta neurobiologiae experimentalis 64(3), 295–301. ruin, hans 1961. poesiens mystik [th e mystery of poetry]. 2. ed. lund: gleerup. smith, barbara herrnstein 1968. poetic closure: a study of how poems end. chicago: university of chicago press. 108 eva lilja tsur, reuven 1977. a perception-oriented th eory of metre. tel aviv: th e porter institute for poetics and semiotics. tsur, reuven 2008. toward a th eory of cognitive poetics. 2nd. ed. eastbourne: sussex academic press. tsur, reuven 2012a. poetic rhythm: structure and performance: an empirical study in cognitive poetics. 2nd ed. brighton: sussex academic press. tsur, reuven. 2012b. playing by ear end the tip of the tongue: precategorial information in poetry. amsterdam: john benjamins. tsur, reuven 2017. poetic conventions as cognitive fossils. oxford: oxford university press. meter in traditional kakataibo chants alejandro augusto prieto mendoza*1 abstract: this paper studies the principal aspects of meter of three traditional kakataibo chants (a panoan group of peruvian amazonia). regarding meter, kakataibo chants exhibit patterns relevant for the cross-linguistic study of line and meter typology. i describe the kakataibo system of versification as a quantitative meter that counts an exact number of moras and regulates the distribution of these by imposing grouping restrictions; also, it establishes weight differences between light, heavy and superheavy syllables, and vowel lengthening plays an important role for meter purposes. in addition, the average duration of lines tends to last less than three seconds and decreases progressively during performance. keywords: amazonia, verbal art, meter, versification introduction amazonia is still one of the least studied linguistic areas of the planet. in relation to this, chants in the amazon, although their scientific documentation and analysis can be dated from the mid-twentieth century onwards, still can provide us with enough discoveries to challenge our current theories. in addition to forming a linguistic area (epps, michael 2017), the amazon basin is also a discursive area (beier, michael, sherzer 2002), on the one hand, due to the widespread presence of discourse forms and processes between different linguistic families and, on the other hand, because these forms and processes coexist in particular discursive genres (2002: 125). some of these discourse forms are parallelism (sherzer 1983), repetition (beier et al. 2002; journet 2000), shamanic discourse (baer 1994; brabec de mori 2011, 2012; seeger 1987), ceremonial dialogues (urban 1986), etc., and might show unique features. according to edmonson (1971; cited in tedlock 1983), there is no meter based on recurrent quantifications of vowel length, stresses, number of syllables, or of any other type, in indigenous amerindian verbal art. however, * author’s address: alejandro augusto prieto mendoza, pontificia universidad católica del perú; universidad tecnológica del perú; av. universitaria n° 1801, san miguel, lima, perú; e-mail: alejandro.prieto.mendoza@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 8.1, 2021, 117–138 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.04 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.04 118 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza recent studies prove otherwise (beier 2001; beier et al. 2002; michael 2004; skilton 2017). thus, this paper contributes to the debate by presenting a study of the meter of three traditional kakataibo chants. regarding meter, i propose that these three kakataibo chants exhibit a quantitative meter that counts an exact number of eight moras and regulates the distribution of these by imposing grouping restrictions; also, it establishes weight differences between light, heavy and superheavy syllables following the khalkha criterion (ryan 2019) . this paper is organized as follows: in §1, i offer a brief profile of the kakataibo language and its speakers with a special emphasis on its syllable structure, stress and monosyllables. in §2, i detail the two databases used in this paper and the number of lines and the total amount of syllables analyzed. in §3, i recap some cultural topics about kakataibo chants. in §4, i discuss michael’s (2019) classification of edge-marking lines and meter-based lines and the meter typology following aroui (2009) and ryan (2017, 2019). in §5, i analyze kakataibo meter by discussing three chants: ño xakwati ‘the hunt of the peccary’, no bana ‘iti ‘the word of the enemy’ and bana tuputi ‘words of teaching’. finally, i conclude this paper in §6 giving some reflections about the kakataibo system of versification and the importance of this research area for the understanding of amazonian verbal art and the cross-linguistic study of meter. 1. some notes on the kakataibo language and its speakers kakataibo is a peruvian amazonian language of the panoan family and its speakers live in huánuco and ucayali. according to the last census of instituto nacional de estadística e informática (2017), 1553 people identified themselves as kakataibo speakers. regarding the kakataibo dialectology, zariquiey (2011b, 2013) identifies a primary division into two branches, one composed of the lower aguaytía, upper aguaytía, and sungaroyacu dialects, and another one of the san alejandro and nokamán dialects. the chants analyzed in this article come entirely from the lower aguaytía variety and were recorded in two native communities: mariscal cáceres and yamino. as for the kakataibo phonology, the lower aguaytía dialect has the phonological inventory in table 1 and 2 (orthographic conventions are included in brackets). 119meter in traditional kakataibo chants table 1. inventory of the kakataibo consonants place of articulation labial dentoalveolar palatoalveolar palatal (retroflex) velar glottal stop p <p> t <t> k <k> ʔ <’> kʷ <kw> nasal m <m> n <n> ɲ <ñ> flap ɾ <r> affricate ts <ts> tʃ <ch> fricative s <s> ʃ <sh> ʂ <x> approximant β̞ <b> table 2. inventory of the kakataibo vowels front central back high i <i> ɨ <ë> ɯ <u> mid e <e> ɤ <o> low a <a> syllables in kakataibo may be of the shape (c)v(c), resulting in four possibilities: v, cv, vc and cvc. all these syllables can appear in any position and the coda position may be filled by one of /n/, /s/, /ʃ/ /ʂ/ and, in some restricted cases, /ʔ/ (zariquiey 2011a, 2018). it is important to highlight that vowel length is not contrastive in kakataibo; however, as we will see later, vowel lengthening plays a special role in the kakataibo meter. regarding its metrical stress system, trochaic feet are created from left to right if there are no closed syllables in even positions and the acoustic correlate of stress is a pitch peak. however, if the second syllable is closed, it becomes the head of its foot and attracts the stress. in this sense, the kakataibo metrical stress system is sensitive to syllable weight and closed syllables are treated as heavy (zariquiey 2018: 119). regarding the behavior of the monosyllables in the language, zariquiey (2011a: 150, 2018: 127–128) proposes that every phonological word in kakataibo follows the principle of minimum phonological word; that is, a phonological word in kakataibo is a prosodic unit that consists of at least two syllables (one foot) and one stress. thus, for example, the monosyllables in (4) must be analyzed as phonologically disyllabic for stress assignment 120 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza purposes – this principle also applies to monosyllabic roots. monosyllables and monosyllabic roots have a complicated behavior in kakataibo meter. (1) bi ‘mosquito’ > [βî̞ː] (ˈbí.i) ba ‘egg, larva’ > [βâ̞ː] (ˈbá.a) bu ‘hair’ > [βû̞ː] (ˈbú.u) (zariquiey 2011a: 150) as for the morphosyntactic profile, kakataibo is a postpositional and agglutinating language showing high levels of synthetic verbal morphology. word order is pragmatically-oriented, however verb-final sentences are the norm (zariquiey 2018). in addition, kakataibo has a rich switch-reference system and uses nominalizations systematically in discourse (also in chants). 2. data and methodology the corpus used in the present article comprises a total of 10 chants (4 no bana ‘iti, 3 bana tuputi and 3 ño xakwati) – shown in table 3. these 10 chants come from two databases: zariquiey (2014) and my own fieldwork during 2015–2017. from zariquiey (2014), i used seven songs documented in yamino during the years 2010–2012; these songs were recorded using a zoom-h4 recorder, in uncompressed format wav (stereo, digitized at a ratio of 44,100 hz and 16 bits). in addition, i add three more chants of my own fieldwork in yamino and mariscal cáceres; these were recorded with a sony icd-px312. in total, i have analyzed four no bana ‘iti (4 different singers in different years and from two different communities), three bana tuputi (2 different singers, same year and community) and one ño xakwati (one singer in different years). i used praat for acoustic analysis (boersma and weenik 2014) and excel for statistics. in total, my corpus has 672 lines (table 3) and i measured the actual duration of 2410 syllables (table 4)2. 2 as i expose in 5.2, figure 6, table 6, heavy and superheavy syllables differ each other only by duration in traditional kakataibo chants. superheavy syllables only appear in chanting due to metric requirements. 121meter in traditional kakataibo chants table 3. metadata and number of lines per chant chants and metadata number of lines zq-ee-nobana1-2010 67 zq-ee-nobana2-2010 120 ap-ra-nobana1-2017 54 ap-ma-nobana1-2017 40 zq-io-banatuputi1-2010 81 zq-io-banatupu2-2010 142 zq-cv-banatuputi1-2010 57 ap-ee-ñoxakwati1-2015 27 zq-ee-ñoxakwati1-2010 36 zq-ee-ñoxakwati2-2010 48 total 672 table 4. type and number of syllables measured type of syllable # light 1944 heavy 146 superheavy 320 total 2410 3. a brief summary of kakataibo chants in previous works (prieto mendoza 2018, 2019), i have studied different topics of the kakataibo traditional chants such as the learning process of the singers, the available recording and databases, the number of types of chants, etc. so in this paper i only discuss some aspects related to ño xakwati, no bana ‘iti, and bana tuputi. the traditional kakataibo chants, in general, are always improvised in each performance, which puts them in the line with areal tendencies of amazonian ritual chant (déléage 2020). as stated by erwin frank, the kakataibos never “sing a song in the same way as on other performance […] however, singers 122 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza believe that their different versions of a song are ‘always absolutely the same’” (frank 1994: 227). thus, although the content is always improvised and varies in each performance, every kakataibo learns a discursive technique of formalization that remains stable across singers. in relation to the linguistic aspects of this discursive technique, the kakataibo traditional chants exhibit a high metaphorical content, reduced syntax, specialized vocabulary, and three compositional strategies (frog 2009): semantic parallelism, enjambment, and repetition (prieto mendoza 2019). in addition, as i propose in this paper, three kakataibo traditional chants exhibit a metrical organization: ño xakwati, no bana ‘iti, and bana tuputi. ño xakwati is sung before hunting or during the last hours of the night to attract the ño ‘peccary’. kakataibos, as other panoan groups, raise peccaries and when these peccaries are sufficiently grown to eat, families or neighboring groups gathered to kill the raised peccary. during this festivity, no longer practiced, men also sing ño xakwati. bana tuputi is a women’s chant about life experiences with special attention to the parents or related family that raised her in her childhood. by singing bana tuputi, the singer instructs her offspring in the kakataibo way of life. lastly, no bana ‘iti is also about life experiences that marked the life of the male singer, such as military service, some physical prowess or how he learned to hunt. kakataibo tend to highlight their physical abilities and the aptitude of not being deceived using the figure of the ‘inu ‘jaguar’. the mythological figure of the ‘inka plays an important role in the imagery of no bana ‘iti and is associated with metal tools, airplanes, boats or products considered brought by the mestizos ‘non kakataibos, foreigners’. in terms of the continuity of this practice, many kakataibos declare that they no longer know how to sing “traditional chants”; however, a considerable group of adults, between 50and 80-year-olds, actively sing and seek to revitalize this practice. it is also worth noting that nowadays the vitality of this practice can be considered endangered since many of the singers are only elders or have died in the last two years. 4. line and meter typology one of the most important theoretical contributions of the ethnopoetic studies was to propose that amerindian verbal art is organized around structuring textual or discursive units called lines (hymes 1981). lines are defined by patterns and recurrence of different types, for example, the recurrence of certain 123meter in traditional kakataibo chants discursive particles at the beginning of the line, prosodic or intonation features, final vowel lengthening, phonological phrasing, parallelism, repetition, etc. (severi 2008; sherzer 1983; sherzer, wicks 1982; urban 1988). according to michael (2019), these recurrences are not seen “as not merely aligning with the edges of a pre-existing constituent (i.e the line), but rather as themselves constituting the line edges, and thereby creating the line” (2019: 57). likewise, lines can be classified in two types: edge-marking lines and metrical lines. the former is defined by discursive particles, prosodic features or syntactic phrasing but meter is not used, while the latter use recurrence patterns of phonological segments such as syllables, stress, moras or tone. traditionally, metrical lines have been the prototypical object of study for metrics and versification. regarding the areal diffusion of these two type of lines among amerindian languages, edmonson (1971) considers that amerindian verbal art lacks any type of metrical lines and, on the contrary, edge-marking lines would be predominant. however, recent studies prove otherwise, for example the verbal art of the curripaco (journet 2000), wampis (peña 2018), nanti (beier 2001; michael 2004) and máihɨk̃i (skilton 2017) were found to exhibit metrical lines, so there is now ample counterevidence against edmonson’s (1971) claim. on another note, regarding metrical lines, different typologies have been proposed (aroui 2009; dufter 2010; fabb 1997; fabb, halle 2008; lotz 1960; tsur 1998). according to aroui (2009), we need two criteria in order to distinguish and compare metrical lines between the world’s languages: prosodic constituents and type of organization. the first criterion refers to the type of prosodic unit on which the verse is based (mora, stress, syllable or tone); the second takes into consideration the type of organization of these units, whether it is counting or patterning. examples of moraic-counting meters are japanese classic poetry; syllable-counting meters, spanish or french; on the other hand, patterning meters are used in hausa, classic arabic, latin and ancient greek, etc. moraic systems stress systems tonal systems syllabic systems patterning meters counting meters (aroui 2009: 15) figure 1. verse typology 124 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza following ryan (ryan 2017, 2019), another important classification is the distinction between quantitative and accentual meters – because kakataibo chants use a quantitative meter, i only discuss the first one. a meter is quantitative if it is based on syllable weight or mora count – moraic systems and syllabic systems following aroui (2009). according to ryan (2019), quantitative meters vary in terms of the importance they give to syllables or moras, this is schematized in the following continuum. syllabic syllabo-moraic moraic (as in tocharian) (as in sanskrit) (as in japanese) ryan (2019: 134) figure 2. typological range of quantity sensitivity in meter on the left extreme of this continuum, syllabic-counting meters fix the number of syllables per line regardless of their weights, languages lacking phonemic vowel length tend to use this meter. at the right extreme, mora-counting meters fix a number of moras per line but, in some extreme cases, the syllable structure is ignored. according to ryan, “within this range, meters vary widely in how sensitive they are to moras vs. syllables” (2019: 136). on the other hand, quantitative meters can be classified based on of these two weight criteria: the latin criterion or the khalkha criterion. the first one considers that a syllable is light if and only if it has the structure c0v; syllables with codas count the same as long vowels. the majority of the quantitative meters studied by ryan (2019) follow the latin criterion – they come from the most widespread poetic traditions, indo-european and semitic. the second one establishes that a syllable is light if and only if it has the structure c0vc0, in other words, if it contains a short vowel regardless the presence of a coda – the khalkha criterion is considerably less common. for example, karintaa chants of the nantis, an arawakan group of the peruvian amazon, follow the khalkha criterion. in karintaa, long vowels count as bimoraic for meter purposes, but nasal codas (the only codas allowed by nanti phonotactics) are ignored (michael 2004). as proposed in §5.1, kakataibo meter follows the khalkha criterion, whereby long vowels count as two moras, while codas fail to contribute a mora. furthermore, even though weight distinctions are usually binary, some traditions distinguish heavy vs superheavy syllables (i.e trimoraic) – superheavy syllables are also important in the kakataibo meter. also, there are two putative universals of quantitative meter: final indifference and 125meter in traditional kakataibo chants final strictness. first, it is common for the weight to be ignored in the line-final position, because this position tends to be lengthened or due to extrametricality, final syllables are in fermata. second, endings, not only line-final endings but across metrical constituents, are stricter than beginnings (ryan 2019: 136). finally, it should be added that there also exist hybrid accentual-quantitative meters. following ryan (2017), such hybrid meter can be classified in two classes: (i) weight and stress map independently on the meter, and (ii) weight and stress interact, with the weight being more regulated than the latter. at last, another important topic related to line typology is the line duration. fabb (2015) proposes that there is no fixed limit for the duration of lines, and the crucial constraint in line duration is the amount and organization of information; on the contrary, turner and pöppel (1988) propose that lines tend to last between 2.5s and 3.5s. 5. kakataibo system of versification as shown in the introduction, this article discusses the metrical structure of three kakataibo chants, ño xakwati, bana tuputi and no bana ‘iti. in the following sections, i discuss the principal aspects of the kakataibo system of versification according to its relevance for each chant: syllabic behavior (khalkha criterion), vowel lengthening and line duration are discussed on the material of ño xakwati, and superheavy syllables and mora suppression are exemplified with no bana ‘iti and bana tuputi. 5.1. ño xakwati and basic aspects the first thing to comment on the following examples in (2) is that, the lines in (a-e) each have 8 moras – defined as “the temporal duration of the syllable that contains a short vowel” (banti, giannattasio 1996), even though the number of syllables may vary across lines. (2) a. rëëchite bëëxiin – ∪∪ – –   8μ / 5σ rë-chitë bëxin tip-reed peeling ‘peeling reed’ 126 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza b. shinkun runu pibëtsiin ∪∪ ∪∪ ∪∪ – 8μ / 7σ shinkun runu pi-bëtsin snake eat-coming ‘the snake is coming’ c. basi runu pibëtsiin ∪∪ ∪∪ ∪∪ – 8μ / 7σ basi runu pi-bëtsin snake eat-coming ‘the snake is coming’ d. tashiaa rëchinkiin ∪∪ – ∪∪ – 8μ / 6σ tashia rëchin-kin river sniff-s/a>a(se) ‘sniffing around the tashia river’ e. ‘inu ñoo rëkwënaan ∪∪ ∪∪* ∪∪ – 8μ / 7σ ‘inu ño rëkwë-anan tiger peccary go.forward-s/a>s/a(se) ‘the peccary is going forward’ thus, i postulate the following metric pattern for ño xakwati: (3) 2μ 2μ 2μ 2μ u u | u u | u u | –  – –  – this formalization suggests that the first three metrical feet can be composed of either two short vowels or a lengthened vowel, as evidenced by (a) and (e), while the last foot necessarily has to be performed with a syllable carrying a lengthened vowel. furthermore, for the kakataibo versification system in general, a closed syllable with a short vowel does not count metrically as a syllable with a lengthened vowel, but as an open syllable with a short one. thus, kakataibo versification follows the khalkha criterion. for example, as we see in (b-c), the first foot of (b) is composed of two closed syllables, <shin> and <kun>, and the first foot of (c) with two open syllables, <ba> <si >; however, comparing these with the first syllable with a lengthened vowel in (a), we see that the kakataibo versification system establishes a weight distinction between light and heavy syllables, and a syllable is heavy if it has a lengthened 127meter in traditional kakataibo chants vowel, also codas are ignored. it is important taking into consideration that the prosody system of the language is also sensitive to weight as i describe in §1; fact that suggests that the weight criteria differs in everyday speech and singing. in addition, in (e), we see that the monosyllable <ño>, which has a “lengthened” vowel in surface, has been represented in the same way as two short vowels (*). this decision has been taken considering that monosyllables and monosyllabic roots must be analyzed as phonologically bisyllabic, and to differentiate monosyllables from strictly lengthened vowels due to versification. on the other hand, bars, or metrical foot boundaries, tend to coincide with word boundaries, this indicates that usually two syllables of different words are not grouped in the same foot. nevertheless, in all the corpus, there only a few cases in which two syllables of different words have been grouped in the same foot, or cases in which the singer does not follow the metrical bars; i interpret these cases as stylistic deviations for aesthetic purposes. finally, consider the following figure 3, which shows the duration of light and heavy syllables in seconds. figure 3. type of syllable and duration as we can see, light syllables tend to last on average (0.21s) and heavy syllables (0.49s); thereby, i propose that a light syllable, that is a syllable with a short vowel, carries 1μ and a heavy syllable or a syllable with a lengthened vowel carries 2μ, in accordance with the khalkha criterion. superheavy syllables are not included in figure 3 because they are not employed in ño xakwati – see 5.2. 128 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza table 5. type of syllable and metrical representation syllable weight in kakataibo chants type of syllable metrical representation moras (c)v(c) u 1μ (c)vː(c) – 2μ 5.1.1. vowel lengthening as for vowel lengthening, we must first specify that, phonetically, monosyllables and heavy syllables (c)vː(c) have the same duration values; however, as discussed in §1, monosyllables are obliged to a priori follow the minimum phonological word principle, so i opted to consider them metrically as two light syllables. because of this, monosyllables and the lines in which they appear have been excluded from the analysis to distinguish them from heavy syllables. on the other hand, in case the number of moras in the line does not satisfy 8μ, kakataibo singers create artificially lengthened vowels taking into account that (i) the metric template should be respected, (ii) there are predetermined lengthenings positions according to the particular metric organization of a chant, (iii) grouping two syllables of different words in the same foot is avoided, and (iv) there is a tendency to lengthened vowels following the stress pattern of the language. to exemplify this, see the case in (4). (4) shuinkikiraatsuu shuinki1ki2=ratsu oncilla=dim ‘little tiger cat (leopardus tigrinus)’ * shuinkiiki ratsuu ∪ ∪ | – | ∪ ∪ | – shuinkiki raatsuu ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – | – in (4) we have two phonological words, shuinkiki ‘oncilla’ and =ratsu ‘dim’. first, the final syllable <tsu> is lengthened due to the ño xakwati’s meter; then, the number of remaining moras is 5, so a vowel should be lengthened. following the stress patterns in kakataibo, syllables <ki1> and <ra> can be lengthened. however, if <ki1> is lengthened, syllables <ki2> and <ra> would be in the same foot violating the principle of not grouping two syllables of different words in the same foot. on the contrary, <ra> is lengthened satisfying (3). see the next example in (5). 129meter in traditional kakataibo chants (5) rëëchinkin rëchinkiin rë1chin1-kin1 rë2chin2-kin2 sniff-s/a>a(se) sniff-s/a>a(se) ‘sniffing, sniffing’ * rëchiinkin rëchinkiin ∪ – ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – * rëchinkin rëchiinkiin ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – | – * rëchinkin rëëchinkiin ∪ ∪ | ∪ – | – rëëchinkin rëchinkin – | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – first, the last syllable in (5), <kin2>, is lengthened due to the metric organization of ño xakwati. then, the number of remaining moras is 5, so the line does not have the total amount of moras, 8, and one more mora is missing. thus, following the stress pattern of kakataibo, both <chin1> and <chin2> can be lengthened; however, it is not possible to lengthened any of them because if <chin1> is lengthened the order proposed in (3) would not be followed and if <chin2> is lengthened two syllables of different words, <kin1> and <rë2>, would be grouped in the same foot; in addition, <rë2> has the same problem of <chin1>. thus, <rë1> is lengthened satisfying (3) despite not being the nucleus of its foot. now, see the next example in (6). (6) tashiaa rëchinkiin tashia rëchin-kin river sniff-s/a>a(se) ‘sniffing around the tashia river’ * ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – | – – | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – ∪ ∪  | – | ∪ ∪ | – as in (5), in (6) <kin> is lengthened due to a predetermined metric organization and <chin> cannot be lengthened because <a> and <rë> would be in the same group. however, (6) does not follow the stress pattern of kakataibo, because <ta> is not the lengthened syllable, but <a>. in addition, we have to consider that each of these two possible realizations both follow all of the principles proposed until here. in interpret this case as a manifestation of the creativity and stylistic play that kakataibo singers do for aesthetic purposes. finally, vowel lengthening is done as many times as necessary to fulfill the meter template. 130 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza (7) rëëchitë bëëxin rë-chitë bëxin tip-reed peeling ‘peeling reed’ – | ∪ ∪ | – | – as shown, considering that the last syllable must be heavy, there are not enough syllables for the remaining six moras, since there are only four light syllables. therefore, both syllables <rë> and <bë> are lengthened following the prosodic system of the language and fulfilling the first and the third foot respectively. at last, we see in table 6 that vowel lengthening is a relatively productive strategy in kakataibo chants, although the tendency is to perform the meter without lengthenings. also, lengthening is more common in the first foot than in the second and third. lines with monosyllables have been excluded in table 6. in addition, examples like (7) with two lengthenings are extremely rare and one lengthening is the common strategy. in fact, (7) is the only case documented in all my data with two lengthenings; due to this i put (7) in ‘other’. table 6. type of scansion per chant lines ee-ñoxak wati1-2010 ee-ñoxak wati2-2010 ee-ñoxakwati-2015 total ∪∪ | ∪∪ | ∪∪ | – 15 60.00% 20 71.43% 10 66.67% 45 66.18% – | ∪∪ | ∪∪ | – 5 20.00% 7 25.00% 3 20.00% 15 22.06% ∪∪ | – | ∪∪ | – 4 16.00% 0 0.00% 0 0.00% 4 5.88% ∪∪ | ∪∪ | – | – 1 4.00% 0 0.00% 2 13.33% 3 4.41% other 0 0% 1 3.57% 0 0.00% 1 1.47% 5.1.2. duration of lines in the three ño xakwati chants analyzed, lines usually last on average less than three seconds (figure 4). this average duration applies to ño xakwati, no bana ‘iti and bana tuputi. this fact supports the hypothesis of turner and pöppel (1988). however, it is necessary to take into account the debate regarding the duration of the lines and their implications for information processing (fabb 2015). 131meter in traditional kakataibo chants figure 4. average of line duration in three ño xakwati also, the duration of lines usually decreases progressively, or, in other words, singers tend to increase their tempo. for example, in these three ño xakwati, the first line lasts 3.09s, 3.08s and 2.52s seconds respectively. in addition, considering the total number of lines of each song, the middle line lasts 2.57s (line 17), 2.45s (line 24), and 1.72s (line 13); and the penultimate line, 1.77s, 2.29s, and 1.22s. thus, we see a decrease of approximately 17% between the first line and the middle line and, on the other hand, 43% between the first line and the penultimate line. finally, the last line of ño xakwati ends with an extreme lengthening in the final syllable so the final line lasts 6.19, 5.62, and 4.70 seconds. this lengthening at the end of ño xakwati should not be confused with the phenomena previously studied as it is merely a stylistic resource associated with this chant. figure 5. line duration in three ño xakwati 132 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza 5.2. no bana ‘iti and bana tuputi as for no bana ‘iti and bana tuputi, i proposed the same metric pattern for both chants3: (8) ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ (∪) –––  –  – like ño xakwati, the first two subparts are made up of two light syllables or one heavy syllable; however, unlike in ño xakwati, the last four moras can be realized in no bana ‘iti and bana tuputi as <∪ ––– >, 4 moras, or <–––>, 3 moras, the segment (∪) may be realized or not realized. the suppression of (∪) is most common in bana tuputi than in no bana ‘iti. this indicates that kakataibo traditional chants can have their own specific meter. in addition, following line typology, we could consider that final syllables are long to mark the limits and the completion of a line; however, as proposed in the next section on syllabic suppression, superheavy syllables (trimoraic vowels) are necessary for the analysis. regarding the average duration of the superheavy syllables, we see in figure 6 that they last (0.86s), differentiating them from light syllables (0.21s) and heavy syllables (0.49s). figure 6. type of syllable and average duration in this way, table 5 is reformulated and i propose that kakataibo system of versification distinguishes between light, heavy and superheavy syllables with khalkha criterion as weight behavior. 3 although the meter is the same, these two chants differ substantially in other aspects. for example, no bana ‘iti is sung only by men, while bana tuputi only by women. for further clarification, see (prieto 2015, 2019). 133meter in traditional kakataibo chants table 7. metrical representation of light, heavy and superheavy syllables syllable weight in kakataibo chants type of syllable metrical representation moras (c)v(c) u 1μ (c)vː(c) – 2μ (c)vːː(c) ––– 3μ 5.2.1. syllabic suppression and superheavy syllables on the other hand, regarding syllabic suppression, a phenomenon only documented in these two types of chants, see the following example of no bana ‘iti (9). (9) ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪* | (∪) ––– ain xóon ‘iraaan ain xón ‘irapa-nën 3sg.gen macaw shotgun-inst ‘with his red shotgun (red as the macaw)’ the first thing to comment is that ‘irapa-nën ‘shotgun-inst’ has been realized as <‘iran>, because the meter in no bana ‘iti allows two syllables in the last foot: one light, one superheavy, respectively. thus, the segment, /rapanën/, which has three light syllables (or three moras), suffers the suppression of <pa> and <në (n)>, relocating two moras to <ran>, which, as it is postulated, is a superheavy syllable with three moras. this process is summarized in (10). in addition, i interpret xón as two light syllables due to kakataibo’s principle of minimum phonological word as in 2(e), and to differentiate monosyllables from strictly lengthened vowels due to versification. (10) * (‘i)rapanën (∪)∪∪∪  ‘irapanën > ‘ira(pa)(në)n (∪) ––– 134 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza 6. summary the study of meter in the amerindian verbal art, especially in amazonia, is still an under-researched area in linguistics and other related fields. about meter, we do not know how common or uncommon it is among amazonian verbal art and so far meter it has been documented in a few cases, despite edmonson (1971). i consider that amazonia can offer new questions and approaches for line and verse typology, as well as for musical and anthropological theory. in the following, i summarize my findings regarding the meter of three kakataibo traditional chants: ño xakwati, no bana ‘iti, and bana tuputi. these three kakataibo chants exhibit a quantitative verse that must have 8 moras and regulates the distribution of these by imposing grouping restrictions; also, for metrical purposes, the kakataibo chants employ weight differences between light, heavy and superheavy syllables following the khalkha criterion, this means that a syllable is heavy if it has a lengthened vowel, while the codas are ignored. in addition, the singer follows four principles in order to fulfill the metric organization of each chant: i) the metric template should be respected, (ii) there are predetermined lengthenings positions according to the particular metric organization of a chant, (iii) grouping two syllables of different words in the same foot is avoided, and (iv) there is a tendency to lengthened vowels following the stress pattern of the language. also, kakataibo singers manifest their creativity and expertise by creating unexpected lengthenings or breaking the metric template. besides, lines tend to last less than three seconds.4 4 my thanks to all the kakataibos who collaborated in my fieldwork, specially to emilio estrella, elder and sabio of the native community of yamino who has passed away in 2020. i would also like to express my thanks to the anonymous readers who reviewed this paper and to dgi-pucp. 135meter in traditional kakataibo chants abbreviations > ‘interclausal co-referentiality’ se ‘simultaneous dependent event’ a ‘agent’ nom ‘nominaliser’ caus ‘causative’ non.prox ‘non-proximal to the addressee’ dim ‘diminutive’ neg ‘negative’ ds ‘different subjects’ perf ‘perfective’ impf ‘imperfective’ plu ‘plural’ inst ‘instrumental’ poe ‘posterior dependent event’ references aroui, jean-louis 2009. introduction: proposal for metrical typology. in: aroui, jeanlouis; arleo, andy (eds.), towards a typology of poetic forms. amsterdam: john benjamins, 1–40. baer, gehard 1994. cosmología y shamanismo de los matsiguenga (perú oriental). quito: abya-yala. banti, giorgio; giannattasio, francesco 1996. music and metre in somali poetry. in: hayward, richard j.; lewis, ioan m. (eds.), voice and power: essays in honour of b. w. andrzejewski (african languages and cultures. supplement 3). london: school of oriental and african studies, 83–127. https://doi.org/10.2307/586655 beier, christine 2001. creating comunnity: feasting among the nantis of peruvian amazonia. master’s thesis. the university of texas at austin. beier, christine; michael, lev; sherzer, joel 2002. discourse forms and processes in indigenous lowland south-america: an areal-typological perspective. in: annual review of anthropology 31, 121–145. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.032902.105935 brabec de mori, bernd 2011. tracing hallucinations: contributing to a critical ethnohistory of ayahuasca usage in the peruvian amazon. in: labate, beatriz caiuby; jungaberle, henrik (eds.), the internationalization of ayahuasca. zurich: lit verlag, 23–47. brabec de mori, bernd 2012. about magical singing, sonic perspectives, ambient multinatures, and the conscious experience. in: indiana 29, 73–101. 136 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza déléage, pierre 2020. toward an epidemiology of ritual chants. in: social analysis 64(3), 113–144. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2020.640307 dufter, andreas 2010. phonological theory and poetic practice: syllabic and accentual constraints in romance versification. in: phonological typology of syllable and word languages in theory and practice, a workshop held at frias, albert-ludwigsuniversitat freiburg, 30 march 2010. https://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/de/dasinstitut/archiv-frias/school-of-lili/veranstaltungen/dateien_veranstaltungen/du1 edmonson, munro s. 1971. lore: an introduction to the science of folklore and literature. new york: holt. epps, patience; michael, lev 2017. the areal linguistics of amazonia. in: hickey, raymond (ed.), the cambridge handbook of areal linguistics. cambridge: university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107279872 fabb, nigel 1997. linguistics and literature: language in the verbal arts of the world. oxford: blackwell. fabb, nigel 2015. what is poetry? language and memory in the poems of the world. cambridge: university press. fabb, nigel; halle, morris 2008. meter in poetry. a new theory. cambridge: university press. frank, erwin h. 1994. los uni. in: granero, fernando santos; barclay, frederica (eds.), guía etnográfica de la alta amazonía. quito: flacso, 129–237. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.ifea.2467 frog 2009. speech-acts in skaldic verse: genre, compositional strategies and improvisation. in: dewey, tonya kim; frog (eds.), versatility in versification: multidisciplinary approaches to metrics. new york: peter lang, 223–246. hymes, dell 1981. “in vain i tried to tell you”. essays in native american ethnopoetics. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512802917 instituto nacional de estadística e informática (inei) 2017. censo nacional 2017. journet, nicolas 2000. dialogues chantés chez les curripaco de rio negro: un genre métaphorique. in: monod becquelin, aurore; erikson, philippe (eds.), les rituels du dialogue: promenades ethnolinguistiques en terre amerindiennes. nanterre: société d’ethnologie, 139–164. lotz, john 1960. metric typology. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. mit press, 135–148. 137meter in traditional kakataibo chants michael, lev 2004. between grammar and poetry: the structure of nanti karintaa chants. in: proceedings of the eleventh annual symposium about language and society – austin, april 11–13, 2003. (texas linguistic forum 47), 251–262. http://salsa.ling.utexas.edu/proceedings/2003/michael.pdf michael, lev 2019. lines in nanti karintaa chants: an areal poetic typological perspective. an essay in honor of joel sherzer. in: cadernos de etnolingüística 7(1), 56–62. http://www.etnolinguistica.org/article:vol7n1p56-64 peña, jaime 2018. the metrical structure of jivaroan nampet “drinking song.” in: amazonicas vii. baños de agua santa, ecuador. prieto mendoza, alejandro 2018. estrategias de composición en el canto kakataibo. una aproximación comparativa. master’s thesis. lima: pontificia universidad catolica del peru. prieto mendoza, alejandro 2019. semantic parallelism in traditional kakataibo chants. in: open linguistics 5(1), 383–404. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2019-0021 ryan, kevin m. 2017. the stress-weight interface in metre. in: phonology 34(3), 581–613. https://doi.org/10.1017/s095267571700029x ryan, kevin m. 2019. prosodic weight: categories and continua. (oxford studies in phonology and phonetics 3). oxford: university press. seeger, anthony 1987. why suyá sing: a musical anthropology of an amazonian people. cambridge: cambridge university press. severi, carlos 2008. el yo-memoria. una nueva aproximación a los cantos chamánicos amerindios. in: cuicuilco 15(42), 11–28. sherzer, joel 1983. kuna ways of speaking: an ethnographic perspective. austin: university of texas press. sherzer, joel; wicks, ann sammie 1982. the intersection of music and language in kuna discourse. in: revista de música latinoamericana 3(2), 147–164. https://doi.org/10.2307/780134 skilton, amalia 2017. esoteric morphology: vocable affixes in máíhɨk̃i shamanic song. in: memorias del congreso de idiomas indígenas de latinoamérica vii / proceedings of the conference on indigenous languages of latin america vii, 29–31 october 2015. organized by the center for indigenous languages of latin america (cilla), teresa lozano long institute of latin american studies at the university of texas at austin. https://ailla.utexas.org/node/99 tedlock, dennis 1983. the spoken word and the work of interpretation. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205305 138 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza tsur, reuven 1998. poetic rhythm: structure and performance. an empirical study in cognitive poetics. berne: peter lang. turner, frederick; pöppel, ernst 1988. metered poetry, the brain, and time. in: rentschler, ingo; herzberger, barbara; epstein, david (eds.), beauty and the brain: biological aspects of aesthetics. basel, boston, berlin: birkhäuser, 71–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-6350-6_4 urban, greg 1986. ceremonial dialogues in native south america. in: american anthropologist 88(2), 371–386. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1986.88.2.02a00050 urban, greg 1988. ritual wailing in amerindian brazil. in: american anthropologist 90(2), 385–400. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1988.90.2.02a00090 zariquiey, roberto 2011a. a grammar of kashibo-kakataibo (issue abril). phd thesis. la trobe university. zariquiey biondi, roberto 2011b. aproximación dialectológica a la lengua cashibocacataibo (pano). in: lexis 35(1), 5–46. https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/lexis/article/view/1257/1215 zariquiey biondi, roberto 2013. del <kaschibo> de tessmann al cashibo-cacataibo contemporáneo: algunas notas para la comprensión de la historia lingüística de un pueblo pano. in: revista brasileria de linguística antropológica 5(1), 159–192. https://doi.org/10.26512/rbla.v5i1.16546 zariquiey biondi, roberto 2014. canciones tradicionales (kakataibo). in: archivo digital de lenguas peruanas. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/35164 zariquiey biondi, roberto 2018. a grammar of kakataibo. (mouton grammar library 75). berlin: de gruyter mouton. studia metrica et poetica sisu 7_2weeb.indd verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry: david hilchen and his ancient models maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding*1 abstract: the aim of this paper is to give an account of verse forms in david hilchen’s poetry. in the paper the metrical structures and rhythmic regularities in poems gathered from different periods of his creation are studied and the results are compared with the data from ancient latin authors. some aspects of the prosodic features in hilchen’s verse are discussed as well. the paper will demonstrate the prosodic and rhythmic variety of the metres used, which resembles the rhythmic preferences of ancient models and early modern verse. keywords: metre, rhythm, neo-latin poetry, hexameter, pentameter, livonian humanism introduction: historical and biographical background the earliest signs of renaissance humanism only appeared in estonian and livonian cities just before the lutheran reformation of the 1520s and developed slowly during the sixteenth century (for more details, see viiding 2017). the first peak of renaissance humanism came as late as the 1580s in riga during the period of polish rule (1582–1621/25). this was mainly the result of one person’s activities: the livonian-polish humanist david hilchen (also known by the humanist name heliconius, 1561–1610). it was he who invited the first printer, claes mollyn, from amsterdam to riga (buchholtz 1890; zanders 1998). he also invited the first inspectors of the humanist gymnasium, johannes rivius and salomon frenzel von friedenthal, to the city (buchholtz 1890; viiding 2014, 2019). moreover, he organised a small group of humanists around him (daniel hermann from prussia, georg ciegler from tallinn and salomon frenzel from helmstedt; ramm-helmsing 1936; frisch 2015). as a typical (legal) humanist, hilchen shaped a clear literary profile for himself. he modelled it on classical examples, especially on marcus tullius * authors’ addresses: maria-kristiina lotman, department of classical studies, university of tartu, lossi 3, 51003 tartu, estonia. e-mail: maria.lotman@ut.ee; kristi viiding, under and tuglas literature centre of the estonian academy of sciences, roosikrantsi 6, 10119, tallinn, estonia. e-mail: kristi.viiding@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 7.2, 2020, 23–42 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.02 24 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding cicero, and on early modern european humanists, particularly those from germany (johannes caselius) and the low countries (justus lipsius). as a learned lawyer (education in 1580–1582 at the university of ingolstadt, 1582– 1584 in tübingen and 1584–1585 in heidelberg), he became the city secretary (1585–1589) and town jurist (syndicus; 1589–1600) of riga. in these offices, he composed about twenty-five political, festive, commemorative, and gratulatory speeches in latin, extending to more than 300 pages. he composed an unfinished historical monograph about the calendar riots in riga (now lost), at least 700 latin letters to humanists and high officials throughout europe, and 45 occasional poems.1 no one in livonia had cultivated latin oratory in such a high style nor used the genre of historical monograph before him. nor had anybody, in accordance with classical and humanist examples, collected, and systematised into books their own latin correspondence and prepared it for publication. evidently, hilchen did not experiment with epic, comedy, or tragedy, probably because of their lengthiness and lower expected public impact, as there was no theatre in riga during his time. after the first politically active half of hilchen’s life, during which he managed to solve a serious dispute between the riga city council and the guilds (also known as the calendar riots, 1585–1589); take part in more than twenty legations of the city of riga, livonia and even of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth; compile various acts and statutes for riga and livonia; and, after his ennoblement in 1591, represent both the city of riga and the livonian nobility in the polish sejm (landbotenstube), and so on, hilchen spent the last ten years of his life (1600–1610) in exile, mainly in zamość, poland. officially accused of treason against the city of riga in 1600, proceedings against him continued through various stages for more than nine years, only being terminated in may 1609 by a decree from the polish king sigismund iii (zygmunt iii waza). yet even after that, hilchen did not return to livonia. one of the first active literary figures from the region, hilchen completed his basic education at the riga cathedral school, and there he learned almost all of his skills in latin versification before 1579; during his higher education in germany, he focused instead on rhetoric and law. thus, his poems are a unique research object for analysing the level of poetics instruction in livonia in the 1570s. hilchen’s latin poems mostly belong to the genre of occasional poetry. his poetry may be categorised into four periods: juvenilia before 1585, poetry for official events in riga in 1585–1599, poetry from the crisis period in 1 for the first overview of hilchen’s poetry, see viiding 2020. 25verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry 1599–1602, and court poetry in poland 1603–1610. moreover, in his letters he refers to some additional poems he had written, but now they are evidently lost (for example, in 1606 he wrote jambicum dunamundense and an epicedium for justus lipsius). although he repeatedly refers in his letters to his ambitious poetic talent during his youth and to his writing in many genres (elegy, odes, heroic epic), this self-assessment cannot be retroactively confirmed or denied because only five poems survive from his last year of university studies. it is possible that the 1941 fire in riga city library destroyed the rest of hilchen’s juvenile poetry, but it is equally possible that hilchen in his old age simply employed the literary topos of the retrospective view on one’s poetry talent in the early life. in any case, it is certain that hilchen never once tried to publish his collected poems, although it would have been easy for him, being the inspector of riga’s printing house 1588–1600 and later a member of jan zamoyski’s inner circle in zamość. in the height of his political activity as a city official in riga during 1585– 1599, hilchen only created poetry on an exceptional basis and was rather himself the addressee of the poems. he wrote almost no occasional poems for the traditional circumstances, but rather produced congratulatory poetry for social events: the 1587 election of the king of poland, the 1589 restitution of riga’s city officials into office, in 1594 for the opening of academy in zamość, in 1595 for the high officials of the polish court and the king, in 1599 for the wedding of lew sapieha, member of the revision commission of livonia. these poems were meant to build up riga’s reputation in the polish-lithuanian state, a so-called foreign affairs propaganda. no less important was the promotion of humanist ideals in the latin inscriptions and portals of the new chancellery of riga in 1597 and dedicatory poems in the books of riga’s authors, for example, at the beginning of georg ciegler’s “de incertitudine rerum humanarum” (in all of the numerous editions beginning from the 1598 edition). during the political crisis and the personal one that accompanied it (1599– 1602), hilchen wrote and published, under a pseudonym, only one long satire in latin and two accompanying epigrams that we know about. in the first stage of his trial in riga (from january 1600 to the death sentence in may 1601), followed by his participation in the polish-swedish war in livonia, there are no known poems by hilchen until the summer of 1603, despite the mock epigrams that were written against him and his supporters. during these years, poetry became a weapon of warning and combat, and his satire was even part of the judicial charges pressed against him in riga – hilchen had allegedly tortured his addressee with it. one of his earlier poems, the latin epigram-inscription, was even removed from the chancellery building 26 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding of riga in 1602, although the court decision did not directly order this kind of damnatio memoriae. during the final period of his life in exile in poland (1603–1610), hilchen became a court poet who did not once use the poetic form to express his personal tragedy, but to write traditional occasional poetry in the festive events for polish dignitaries (six weddings, seven grief poems and three congratulatory poems for the publication of a book). instead of the short poems in elegiac distich and hexameter particular to the riga school of humanism, lyrical strophic forms became hilchen’s favoured patterns – catullus’ carmina and horace’s odes, epodic forms and motifs became his exemplar. in one of his first poems written in exile, hilchen stylised himself as a poet based on the example of horace’s ode 1.1. this aesthetic shift from a public figure and practicing lawyer into a humanist poet was not random but affected by the lyrical ideals of poetry prevalent in the community of the academy of zamość; for example, one could be reminded of the polish pindar – szymon szymonowic (with the humanist name simonides), who was famous across europe and who wrote tragedies and epics in addition to lyrics (winniczuk 1962: 139–148); adam burski, a professor of rhetoric who compiled manuscripts about literary figures and rhetoric; or jan ursyn-niedźwiecki, who was counted among the hundred best polish authors even during the 18th century (for example, lepri 2019: passim). the long occasional poems of hilchen’s period in exile indicate that he very quickly adopted the style and generic preferences of polish humanist neo-latin poetry. in this article, we study hilchen’s poetry from the aspect of its versification by separately analysing both its metric structure and, if possible, the rhythmic patterns of different metres. in this way, our first aim is to map the basic versification skills that could have been acquired at the riga cathedral school in the 1570s, before the peak of riga humanism. our second aim is to reveal the role of ancient models in the metrical and rhythmical elements of hilchen’s poetry. for comparative material, we use available data from both classical and neo-latin metres and data from both literary and epigraphic texts. 1. david hilchen’s poetic forms: general remarks in his latin poetry, david hilchen exclusively used quantitative verse metres and forms that followed ancient models. he never experimented with syllabic or accentual systems of versification or rhymed poetry that characterised medieval latin verse culture. regrettably, hilchen never commented on his 27verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry versification principles in the paratexts of his poetry, letters or in any other of his written works. all in all, david hilchen’s 45 poems consist of 1297 verses in which he used nine different verse forms, including both stichic and stanzaic forms, in an almost unchanged proportion throughout his creative periods (except for the figurative poem, which is not found in his later works). 5 versification or rhymed poetry that characterised medieval latin verse culture. regrettably, hilchen never commented on his versification principles in the paratexts of his poetry, letters or in any other of his written works. all in all, david hilchen’s 45 poems consist of 1297 verses in which he used nine different verse forms, including both stichic and stanzaic forms, in an almost unchanged proportion throughout his creative periods (except for the figurative poem, which is not found in his later works). chart 1. the proportions of different verse forms in hilchen’s poetry among the stichic metres, hilchen’s poetry contains more dactylic hexameters (altogether ca 28% of his verses), but also hendecasyllables and asclepiadean verse. almost all of the stanzaic verse forms in hilchen’s poetry are distichs (all in all, over 50.6% of all verse forms): the most frequently used is the elegiac distich, then the dactylic hexameter along with the iambic senarius (the so-called pythiambicum maius), in addition to the sapphicum maius, which consists of the shorter aristophanean verse and the longer sapphic verse (so-called versus sapphicus maior), the distich composed of the iambic senarius and quaternarius, and finally the so-called alcmanium, the first verse of which is the dactylic hexameter and the second is the dactylic tetrameter. considering the background of the european humanist poetry tradition, including turn-of-the-century polish neo-latin poetry, it is surprising that hilchen experimented with quatrains only once in a poem written in sapphic stanzas during his study period in germany, but not in his exile in poland. in hilchen’s case, alternating usage of stichic and stanzaic verse forms is neither determined strictly by the theme, nor by its genre or the social position of the addressee. a definite 28,4% 18,0%32,5% 18,4% 2,7% dactylic hexameter elegiac distich other distichs other lyric meters figurative poem chart 1. the proportions of different verse forms in hilchen’s poetry among the stichic metres, hilchen’s poetry contains more dactylic hexameters (altogether ca 28% of his verses), but also hendecasyllables and asclepiadean verse. almost all of the stanzaic verse forms in hilchen’s poetry are distichs (all in all, over 50.6% of all verse forms): the most frequently used is the elegiac distich, then the dactylic hexameter along with the iambic senarius (the so-called pythiambicum maius), in addition to the sapphicum maius, which consists of the shorter aristophanean verse and the longer sapphic verse (so-called versus sapphicus maior), the distich composed of the iambic senarius and quaternarius, and finally the so-called alcmanium, the first verse of which is the dactylic hexameter and the second is the dactylic tetrameter. considering the background of the european humanist poetry tradition, including turn-of-thecentury polish neo-latin poetry, it is surprising that hilchen experimented with quatrains only once in a poem written in sapphic stanzas during his study period in germany, but not in his exile in poland. 28 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding in hilchen’s case, alternating usage of stichic and stanzaic verse forms is neither determined strictly by the theme, nor by its genre or the social position of the addressee. a definite connection may only be noted between the stichic verse form and satire, following from the requirements of the genre in ancient roman literature.2 what is probably coincidental is the exclusive usage of the stanzaic form (elegiac distich) in the case of anagrammatic poems. one may also notice a greater variation in metres in his wedding and mourning poems after 1599, whereas poems written for other events are metrically less varied. 2. the dactylic hexameter in its variety and flexibility in hilchen’s poetic corpus, hexameter and its various derivatives in stanzaic forms constitute a sufficiently large sample (879 lines, that is, 67,8% of his total number of verses) for statistical analysis, allowing for comparison of verses both with each other and with the verses of several ancient and humanist neo-latin poets. hilchen’s hexameter is rhythmically varied, and his stichic and pythiambic hexameters (a total of 368 and 109 verses, respectively) contain all 16 possible rhythmic forms of hexameter, while there are 15 rhythmic forms (sssd3 does not appear) in his elegiac hexameters (a total of 127 verses). for comparison, we use de neubourg’s statistical data on virgil’s aeneid (1986: 160), annika kuuse’s data on a representative of humanist hexameter, laurentius ludenius, data from latin inscriptions gathered from estonian churches (ceile4; see also arukask et al. 2018), and platnauer’s statistics of latin elegiac authors (platnauer 1951: 36–37). 2 in hilchen’s poetry of that period, julius caesar scaliger’s approach to satire was common, according to which it was not just a genre created by the roman poets, but it also evolved from the greek satyr play. consequently, iamb was also a possible metre for satires (scaliger lib. 1.12 and 3.97, scaliger 1994:186–191 and 1995:54–59). thus, hilchen justified the usage of iamb in verses 17–18 accipito haec rursum, quae panas inter agrestes / et satyros lusi hamatis stipatus iambis. (“accept, in turn, what i composed, armed with hooked iambs, among the feral pans and satyrs”). the decisive differentiation between the iambic satyr play and formal satire in hexameters took place in hilchen’s lifetime with the treatise de satyrica graecorum poesi et romanorum satira by isaac casaubon in 1605 (for example, griffin 1994: 12–14). 3 s – spondaic foot, d – dactylic foot. 4 ceile (corpus electronicum inscriptionum latinarum estoniae) is the database of the latin inscriptions in estonian churches from the beginning of the 14th century to 1918. here, only the inscriptions written in quantitative metrical form are compared, all of which are from the period 1549–1738. for an analytical overview of the metrical inscriptions, compare arukask 29verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry table 1. the rhythmic forms of dactylic hexameter: different forms of hilchen’s hexameter compared to ancient and neo-latin poets and verse inscriptions rhythmic type hilchen (stichic 6d) hilchen (elegiac 6d) hilchen (pythiambic 6d) virgil. aen. ludenius ceile dddd 1.9% 4.3% 1.8% 2.1% 3.3% 5.2% ddds 9.2% 7.7% 6.4% 6.8% 6.3% 8.6% ddsd 4.6% 7.7% 5.5% 4.7% 5.3% 6.9% ddss 12.8% 5.1% 7.3% 11.8% 8.7% 13.8% dsdd 3.5% 6.0% 2.8% 3.6% 1.3% 1.7% dsds 10.1% 6.8% 9.2% 11.2% 10.3% 6.9% dssd 8.1% 14.5% 12.8% 5.7% 8.3% 8.6% dsss 16.8% 17.1% 20.2% 14.4% 21.0% 15.5% sddd 1.9% 4.3% 1.8% 2.0% 1.3% 0.0% sdds 3.8% 4.3% 1.8% 6.0% 4.0% 5.2% sdsd 4.6% 6.0% 1.8% 3.8% 5.7% 5.2% sdss 8.4% 3.4% 5.5% 9.6% 7% 10.3% ssdd 1.6% 0.9% 2.8% 2.4% 2.3% 0.0% ssds 4.1% 7.7% 6.4% 6.0% 5.7% 6.9% sssd 3.3% 4.3% 8.3% 3.0% 2.7% 0.0% ssss 4.9% 5.1% 5.5% 7.1% 6.3% 5.2% et al. 2018. latin verse inscriptions from early modern estonia are a relevant comparative material in hilchen’s case, as five of hilchen’s poems were written as epigraphs for grave monuments or representative buildings and at least two of them (no. 6 and 18) were presented in accordance with their purpose. 30 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding table 2. the rhythmic forms of dactylic hexameter: different forms of hilchen’s hexameter compared to ancient elegiac poets rhythmic type hilchen (stichic 6d) hilchen (elegiac 6d) hilchen (pythiambic 6d) tibullus propertius ovid dddd 1.9% 4.3% 1.8% 1.8% 1.3% 6.7% ddds 9.2% 7.7% 6.4% 9.2% 4.7% 9.0% ddsd 4.6% 7.7% 5.5% 5.8% 6.6% 10.0% ddss 12.8% 5.1% 7.3% 14.2% 8.6% 12.0% dsdd 3.5% 6.0% 2.8% 4.2% 2.4% 9.5% dsds 10.1% 6.8% 9.2% 14.1% 11.0% 13.8% dssd 8.1% 14.5% 12.8% 6.6% 6.0% 10.7% dsss 16.8% 17.1% 20.2% 20.0% 16.5% 13.7% sddd 1.9% 4.3% 1.8% 0.8% 2.8% 1.6% sdds 3.8% 4.3% 1.8% 4.7% 3.0% 3.0 % sdsd 4.6% 6.0% 1.8% 2.1% 5.0% 2.4% sdss 8.4% 3.4% 5.5% 5.0% 12.0% 2.1% ssdd 1.6% 0.9% 2.8% 0.5% 1.3% 1.6% ssds 4.1% 7.7% 6.4% 4.2% 7.5% 2.1% sssd 3.3% 4.3% 8.3% 2.1% 3.0% 0.5% ssss 4.9% 5.1% 5.5% 4.7% 8.6% 1.0% hilchen’s most preferred form of rhythm in both stichic and stanzaic hexameter is dsss, which is mostly composed of heavy syllables and which in different verse forms makes up about 17% or more of all the rhythmic variations of his hexameter. in his longer poems, hexameters which correspond with this rhythm scheme often appear adjacently; compare, for example, the following verses (10.2.134–136)5: kk k k versificatore indoctum qui fertur alumnum 5 for the texts of all poems and mostly chronological numeration added by the editors, see hilchen 2021. 31verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry k k kk ex helicone ortum, quanto est praeclarior hic mons: kk kk atque ego sum montis quanto observantior hujus. the incidence rates of the other forms vary somewhat: while in stichic hexameter, the second most frequent rhythm forms are dsds and ddss (the first in ca 10%, the second in almost 13% of the verses), elegiac and pythiambic hexameters contain more dssd (ca 13–14% of the cases). ddss has been avoided almost entirely in the elegiac distich; as for the dsds variation, it is interestingly the second most frequent form of elegiac hexameter during hilchen’s livonian period, but it is rare in the elegiac distich of his polish period. however, it must be noted that its proportion is nearly 10% in the pythiambic hexameter created during the polish period. when we compare the rhythmical data of hilchen’s hexameter with those of the ancient and other humanist authors, we see similar proportions: in virgil’s aeneid, the most preferred rhythm form is also dsss, but its incidence is slightly lower (14.39%; for more details, see de neubourg 1986: 160). the proportion of dssd in hilchen’s elegiac and pythiambic hexameter is higher than in other samples studied. just like in ancient authors (compare platnauer 1951: 37), the lines beginning with a dactyl outnumber those beginning with a spondee. similar proportions to those of hilchen’s hexameters from his polish period are found in the hexametric poetry by laurentius ludenius (1592–1654), a professor of rhetoric and poetics at the academy in tartu and one of the most prolific livonian neo-latin poets two generations later; in his hexameter, the frequency of this form is up to 21% (kuuse 2014). there is no systematic comparative data about works by other early modern livonian poets. relatively large differences in the hexameters of different verse forms appear as well in the ratio of dactylic and spondaic verse feet (compare table 3). while the pythiambic hexameter with its large proportion of spondees (on average, ca 58% in the scope of the verse line) is reminiscent of the heavy and graceless verse of the early roman poet ennius, the elegiac hexameter is more dactylic (the average index of spondees within the verse being 50.6%), although not as light as ovid’s verse, it is still comparable to the hexameter of the classical elegists. 32 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding table 3. the distribution of spondaic feet of dactylic hexameter: different forms of hilchen’s hexameter compared to ancient and neo-latin poets   i foot ii foot iii foot iv foot average hilchen (stichic 6d) 32.9% 52.4% 63.9% 70.1% 54.8% hilchen (elegiac 6d) 30.8% 69.2% 58.1% 56.4% 50.6% hilchen (pythiambic 6d) 33.9% 67.9% 67.0% 62.4% 57.8% ennius 55.60% 56.30% 61.40% 65% 59.60% virgil 39% 52.60% 59.60% 72.50% 55.90% lucanus 33.40% 54.60% 56.80% 72.50% 54.30% ovid 16.80% 52.50% 58.80% 52.70% 45.20% propertius 37.70% 51.30% 62% 71.30% 55.60% tibullus 23% 55.70% 60% 75.70% 53.60% martial 32% 53% 64.30% 60% 52.30% ceile 32.8% 44.8% 65.5% 72.4% 53.9% studying the distribution of the spondaic verse feet in a verse line also reveals certain differences between the verse forms: stichic hexameter has the socalled rising rhythm (for more details, see gasparov 1997: 240), where the lowest proportion of spondees is in the first foot and their incidence increases with each successive foot until it culminates in the fourth foot, which stands in sharp contrast with the fifth, dactylic foot. among ancient poets, this kind of rhythm is characteristic, for example, of virgil’s hexameter. in hilchen’s elegiac hexameters, the proportion of spondees is also lowest in the first foot, but the culmination occurs in the second foot instead, while the frequency of spondees is quite uniform in the third and fourth foot, where their incidence is a bit above the average index. in pythiambic hexameter, the proportion of spondees is lowest in the first foot, then equally high in the second and third foot and a bit lower in the fourth foot. for the last two rhythmic models, with lower rate of spondees in the fourth than in the second foot, no example seems to exist in the surviving heritage of the canonical ancient poets. hilchen’s preferences for caesurae in his hexameters largely correspond to the proportions of ancient roman hexameter, although there are small differences: the proportion of masculine caesura has slightly increased (in hilchen’s stichic hexameter, it is 92.1%; in virgil’s aeneid, 84.5%) and the proportion of feminine caesurae has decreased (it is 4.6% in hilchen’s stichic hexameter and 11.7% in virgil’s aeneid; compare butcher 1940: 130). worth a mention is 33verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry the proportion of feminine caesura in the fourth foot of hilchen’s pythiambic hexameter, which comprises 8.3%. compare the data in the following table. table 4. the occurrence of caesura in the dactylic hexameter: different forms of hilchen’s hexameter compared to ancient and neo-latin poets hilchen (stichic hexameter) hilchen (elegiac hexameter) hilchen (pythiambic hexameter) ceile virgil aen. third trochaic 4.6% 4.3% 7.3% 3.4% 11.70% penthemimeral 92.1% 92.3% 83.5% 91.4% 84.50% hephthemimeral 1.6% 2.6% 8.3% 5.2% 3.80% fourth trochaic 0.0% 0.9% 0.9% 0.0% 0.0% bucolic diaeresis 1.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% diaeresis 0.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% of the five bucolic diaereses in stichic hexameter, two are preceded with a word boundary after the second foot and three with a word boundary after the third foot. in exceptional cases, hilchen also has hexameters that are divided into two equal parts. the analysis of the clausulae in hilchen’s hexameter revealed rather large divergences between the different verse forms. the indices for stichic hexameter are very similar to virgil’s aeneid (for more details, see de neubourg 1986: 66–67): the most common is the so-called condere gentem type of ending (ca 32% of verses); for example, compare 10.2.90–92: post epulas dabo saepe meas: ossa ossibus addam, ossa canes rodant: virtutem rodere cessent. nunc primam hanc satyram ubi, mordax cerbere, mitto. in hilchen’s elegiac hexameters, the proportion of this type of clausulae is as high as 47%, resulting in a significant drop in the variability of clausulae: while in his stichic hexameter, 22 different types of clausulae are found, only 14 occur in elegiac hexameter. in pythiambic hexameters, the proportion of this type of verse has dropped to 25.7%, and the number of different variations has thus risen to 23 different forms. the second most common type of clausulae in hilchen’s stichic hexameters is the clausula in the pattern of conde sepulchro, which occurs in 18.5% 34 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding of his verses (16.3% of verses in virgil’s aeneid have the same clausula). in elegiac hexameter, too, it is the second most frequent type, albeit with a somewhat diminished proportion: 13.7%. in pythiambic hexameter, the second in frequency is the submergere ponto type of clausula, which is present in 15.6% of verses, while its proportion in hilchen’s other hexametrical forms remains below 10%. a versus graecus type of clausula is used by hilchen only exceptionally; thus, in this respect, he does not follow the practice of roman neoteric poets. 3. the dactylic pentameter, iamb and hendecasyllable the analysis of the rhythm of hilchen’s dactylic pentameter (a total of 117 verses) also brought forth certain divergences in comparison to the ancient pentameter. namely, similarly to his elegiac hexameter’s tendency towards dactylicity, his elegiac pentameters have a noticeably large proportion of completely dactylic verses: 33.3% (for comparison, tibullus and propertius have ca 24% and ovid has 30.9%; for more details, see platnauer 1951: 37). for example, compare 16.1.24: k k k k k k kk mox cecidit solito more fluentis aquae. the variation with the spondaic second foot appears in 45.3% of the cases; for example, compare 9.1.10: k k kk k k symbola virtutum: linea nulla vacat. this index is below that of ovid’s and tibullus’s verse (correspondingly, 52.4% and 58.6%), but it surpasses propertius’s 43%. on the other hand, hilchen has similar proportion of pentameters beginning with two spondees as ovid (in the pentameter of both poets in ca 8% of the cases), remaining below propertius’s corresponding index (slightly over 16%); compare, for example 5.6.8: k k kk haud fesso dvras vnvs adhuc animo 35verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry and 2.2: k k k k vt libret reges pondere quisque duos therefore, hilchen’s pentameter in its fluidity and display of versification skills is most similar to ovid’s pentameter. about 10% of hilchen’s verse corpus is composed in iambic metres (a total of 129 verses). based on surviving poems, we can conclude that hilchen started writing iambs only during his polish period, the opening decade of the 17th century. they never appear in stichic form but always in distichs, mostly with the dactylic hexameter, but in a shorter poem, the iambic trimeter is combined with the iambic dimeter. the sample of 97 verses in six-footed iambs allowed us to make some observations about versification in this metre. hilchen mostly adheres to the dipodic structure, so it corresponds to the scheme of trimeter, but there are single verses in which the second weak position of the dipody, that is, the double foot, is treated as an anceps, following the rules of the iambic senarius. in such cases, both long and short syllables can appear in this position; compare, for example 12.50: k k nec, quae restingui basiorum millibus or 17.2.116: k -kk-k terrae illius cupido flagitiosior, in which even two breve positions are filled with a long vowel. although already in the ancient roman poetry, the i before u often appears shortened, in most neo-latin dictionaries the vowel is indicated as long. for the quantity of the final vowel in cupido in neo-latin poetry see, for instance, berggren 1994: 55, sjökvist 2007: 98. rhythm as well is in accord with the structure of the iambic trimeter: 82.5% are verses without resolutions, only 2% of all six-footed iambs contain two resolutions, and there are no verses with three or more resolutions. what is atypical of ancient trimeter, however, is the use of caesurae. while the penthemimeral caesura in the third verse foot is highly dominant in ancient iambic trimeter (for example, in seneca’s verse it accounts for over 90%), hilchen’s corresponding index is merely 56.7%. a fairly large proportion of 36 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding the verses (17.5%) is divided into two equal parts, 10% of the verses lack the caesura, and in ca 15% of verses, the caesura has been shifted to the fourth verse foot. such a distribution of word boundaries has its consequences for the rhythmics of the verse: while the ancient latin iambic trimeter has a tendency for accents to fall on strong positions in the middle of the verse and on weak positions at the end of the verse line (lotman 2003: 125; 2006: 299–304), we encounter the following verses in hilchen’s iambic trimeter (16.2.1): k k k heus quo pedem trames viator abripit? in this verse line, the accentual structure in the middle of the verse is in conflict with the verse rhythm (pedem and trames), and since these are disyllabic words in which the stress lies on the first syllable, the verse is divided into two equal parts with the word break after the third verse foot. we also encountered 100 phalaecean hendecasyllables, which constitute ca 7,6% of his verses. in the case of hendecasyllables, he has followed the metric and rhythmic requirements of catullian version of this meter: although he fills the first positions of the scheme mostly with spondees, in occasional cases he admits syllable sequences corresponding to iambic or trochaic patterns. for example, compare the iambic beginning (13.1.18): k k k k k k quid ergo? bene nunc ego ominabor or the trochaic beginning (13.1.63): k k k k k at quid haec leuioribus camoenis. as concerns hilchen’s sapphic hendecasyllables, they follow the horatian pattern where the fourth syllable is always long, compare 1.4.2: k k k k suscipit summam, duce nunc potenti there is a regular caesura after the fifth syllable, a constant word accent on the fourth and an almost constant accent on the sixth syllable. 37verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry 4. some aspects of prosody hilchen has rather accurately followed ancient prosodic principles and has at the same time allowed multiple poetic licences that were acceptable already in ancient roman poetry. his use of elision is particularly liberal, with significant divergences in different verse metres. his stichic hexameter contains, all in all, 197 elisions, while 42.5% of the verse lines have at least one elision. this includes hexameters that contain two, three, and, on one occasion, even four elisions; compare (10.2.38): kk k k inter rura alia elegisti: hinc plurima acerba, in this aspect, hilchen’s stichic hexameter is comparable to virgil’s rather than ovid’s stichic hexameter with a considerably lower number of elisions (see, for instance, kent 1923: 90–91). hilchen’s elegiac hexameter has considerably fewer elisions: all in all, only 26, while verse lines containing an elision only constitute 17% of all elegiac hexameters. there are only six verses that contain two elisions and no verses containing more than that. therefore, the amount of elisions in his elegiac distichs is closer to that of ovid, tibullus and propertius than that of catullus (platnauer 1951: 72). his pythiambic hexameter contains a total of 65 elisions, and the proportion of verse lines with an elision is again greater: 48.6%. however, no verse contains more than two elisions, and there are 12 lines in total that have two elisions. such remarkably liberal usage of elision may be one of the reasons why hilchen’s poetry was never really valued by his contemporaries. the taste of that era and region appreciated verses without elision, as an evaluation of the master’s exam at the university of frankfurt/oder from 1584 demonstrates – the future professor of theology, christopher pelargus, was especially praised for his unelided verses (arnold 1908: 170).6 for example, hilchen’s contemporary poet sylvester johannis phrygius has only 29 verses with elision per 773 verse lines (sjökvist 2007: 97), which prevailingly occur in his stichic hexameters (14 elisions per 153 stichic hexameters, 15 elisions per 604 elegiac verse lines). on the other hand, andreas stobaeus, professor poeseos at lund 6 later, in the 1590s and 1600s, pelargus was among hilchen’s correspondents. in 1596–1598, hilchen tried to invite pelargus to become the superintendent of the livonian lutheran church, but the invitation process was interrupted because pelargus did not get permission from the elector of brandenburg (kleeberg 1931: 93-94). 38 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding university since 1674, admits elisions more frequently. according to maria berggren (berggren 1994: 54), his poem “augur apollo” contains as much as 177 elisions per 858 verses. on several occasions, the device of synizesis has been used, in which case two syllables are joined into one syllable; for example, compare the following verse, where in order to follow the metrical scheme, the last two syllables of the word ‘bergii’ have to be counted as one syllable (3.21): k k k k caspar, nomen habes bergii conflata vigerent, hilchen often admits certain words as iambically shortened, especially tibi, mihi, ego, and so on. in doing so, he sometimes allows for these words to appear in iambic forms as well; for example, compare 11.54: k k k k k k k k quique fauore tibi iunxit propriamque dicauit and 13.2.2: kk k k kk nunc socia(m) tibi se iungit constantia virgo. with similar flexibility, hilchen uses the opportunity of muta cum liquida; for example, the first syllable of the word patria is sometimes heavy, yet sometimes light. the recurring consonantification of the vowels i and u can be seen as well; compare the consonantified i in the following hexameter (10.2.111): k k k k k k sicque tuus tandem admoto cadet ariete crebro and the simultaneous consonantification of the u and i in pentameter (15.2.2): k k k k lithuaniae scitum est, legibus innumeris. occasionally, mistakes in the syllable quantity occur. for example, hilchen treats the first syllable of obicit as heavy, while the first syllable of noster is placed in the position of a light syllable. while obicit treated as a closed initial 39verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry syllable is quite well attested in neo-latin, noster can perhaps be explained with the licence of considering vowel as open before initial st(compare with 9.1.4 cited above; see also platnauer 1951: 62–63). 5. discussion and conclusion the analysis of versification in david hilchen’s poetry allowed us to draw the following conclusions. 1) the basis for the instruction of versification in the riga cathedral school in the 1570s broadly corresponded to the humanist approach to poetics that was predominant in europe at the time, following from the ancient models. in the riga school, evidently hexameter and elegiac distich were taught first, whereas the instruction of composing lyrical metres was not common and iambs did not constitute a part of the regular curriculum. on the other hand, the rhythmic variety of the metres used was quite diverse, although this diversity resembles the rhythmic preferences of ancient models and early modern verse, and no distinct local particularities emerged. in accordance with the versification of ancient models (in particular, ovid’s poetry), the rhythmic patterns in different verse forms diverged: the rhythm of the stichic and pythiambic hexameter in hilchen’s poems is noticeably different from that of his elegiac hexameter. as concerns the caesura and clausulae, it seems that riga students cumulatively imitated the standard patterns, while the rarer forms of ancient caesurae and clausulae became even rarer in their poetry. 2) in the riga cathedral school, hilchen thoroughly mastered the main rules of latin prosody along with the allowed poetic licences. the instruction in prosodic system was apparently liberal, rather than purist, as is evidenced by abundant prosodic liberties in hilchen’s poetry, including elision, hiatus, iambic shortening and muta cum liquida. 3) hilchen’s ancient models were quite expectedly virgil, especially in his stichic and dactylic hexameter, as well as ovid and other roman elegists, especially in his elegiac hexameter. in the case of pythiambic hexameter, for which hilchen had only few ancient models (horace epod. 14 and 15), his versification is the closest to that of lucretius. 4) from the perspective of versification, hilchen’s pentameter can be considered the most successful: the fluidity achieved in these verses most resembles the standard that was developed in ovid’s pentameter. 5) hilchen only began to write iambic verse during his exile in poland, but he did not attain proficiency. many of these verses are monotonous and 40 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding without any resolution; in comparison with the ancient models, the most common location of the caesura in the iamb (the penthemimeral break) has shifted, while nearly a fifth of iambs are divided into two equal parts in the middle of the line, and a tenth of his iambs lack a caesura altogether. 6) similarly, hilchen began to write hendecasyllables during his exile in poland, but in these he has managed to imitate the metric and rhythmic patterns of ancient authors more accurately. since david hilchen did not publish his collected poems during his lifetime, nor did he take an active role in their dissemination, while he sent his foreign literary correspondents his prosaic texts concerning politics and history, and since there exists no record of him teaching poetics, it would be futile to look for hilchen’s influence in successive works of the riga humanist authors. however, a study of the poems of hilchen’s contemporary humanist poets in riga (d. hermann, b. plinius and other, less prolific, authors) would be required in order to systematically map the versification skills of the riga poets.7 references arnold, karl franklin 1908. christoph pelargus aus schweidnitz in seinen beziehungen zu schlesien. in: zeitschrift des vereins für geschichte schlesiens 42. breslau: wohlfahrt, 151–187. arukask, anni; kriisa, kaidi; lotman, maria-kristiina; truusalu, tuuli triin; uudevald, martin; viiding, kristi 2018. verse texts in the latin inscriptions of estonian ecclesiastical space: meter and prosody. in: studia metrica et poetica 5(1), 80−104. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.1.04 berggren, maria 1994. andreas stobaeus two panegyrics in verse. edited with introduction, translation and commentary. uppsala: almquist & wiksell. buchholtz, arend 1890. geschichte der buchdruckerkunst in riga 1588–1888: festschrift der buchdrucker rigas zur erinnerung an die vor 399 jahren erfolgte einführung der buchdruckerkunst in riga. riga: müller. butcher, william guy deane 1914. the caesura in virgil, and its bearing on the authenticity of the pseudo-vergiliana. in: the classical quarterly 8(2), 123–131. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0009838800019753 7 we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful comments and suggestions that helped us to improve our study. 41verse forms and metres in livonian humanist poetry de neubourg leo 1986. la base métrique de la localisation des mots dans l’examétre latin. (verhandelingen van de koninklijke academie voor wetenschappen, letteren en schone kunsten van belgie, kl. der letteren, jaargang 48, nr. 119.) brussels: awlsk, paleis der academiën. frisch, magnus 2015. daniel hermann – a well-travelled prussian humanist and his poetic work in riga. in: letonica. humanitāro zinātņu žurnāls 30, 44–57. gasparov, mikhail l. 1997. russkij geksametr i drugie natsional’nye formy geksametra. in gasparov, mikhail l. izbrannye trudy. tom 3. o stikhe. moscow: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 234–258. griffin, dustin 1994. satire: a critical reintroduction. lexington: the university press of kentucky. hilchen, david 2021. sub velis poeticis. lateinische gedichte. herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von kristi viiding und martin klöker. mit einem vorwort von kristi viiding und maria-kristiina lotman (baltische literarische kultur 4). münster: lit. kent, roland g. 1923. likes and dislikes in elision, and the vergilian appendix. in: transactions and proceedings of the american philological association 54, 86–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/282844 kleeberg, gerhard 1931. die polnische gegenreformation in livland. leipzig: heinsius. korzeniewski, dietmar 1989. griechische metrik. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. kuuse, annika 2014. the syllabic structure of the hexameters of academic occasional poetry in tartu in the 17th century. unpublished conference paper. lepri, valentina 2019. knowledge transfer and the early modern university: statecraft and philosophy at the akademia zamojska (1595–1627). leiden, boston: brill. lotman, maria-kristiina 2003. jambiline trimeeter: värsisüsteemid, meetrum, rütm, semantika. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. lotman, maria-kristiina 2006. ancient iambic trimeter: a disbalanced harmony. in: dresher, b. elan; friedberg, nila (eds), formal approaches to poetry: recent developments in metrics (phonology and phonetics; 11). berlin; new york: mouton de gruyter, 287–308. platnauer, maurice 1951. latin elegiac verse: a study of the metrical usages of tibullus, propertius & ovid. cambridge: cambridge university press. 42 maria-kristiina lotman, kristi viiding ramm-helmsing, herta von 1936. david hilchen 1561–1610. syndikus der stadt riga. posen: historische gesellschaft für posen. scaliger, julius caesar 1994–1995. poetices libri septem. sieben bücher über die dichtkunst. vol.i and iii (edited, translated, commented and introduced by luc deitz). stuttgart: bad cannstatt. sjökvist, peter 2007. the early latin poetry of sylvester johannis phrygius. edited, with introduction, translation and commentary by peter sjökvist. uppsala: uppsala universitet. viiding, kristi 2014. salomon frenzel von friedenthal  – endstation eines humanistenschicksals. in: ludwig braun (ed.), album alumnorum. gualthero ludwig: septimum decimum lustrum emenso, dedicatum. würzburg: königshausen & neumann, 209–227. viiding, kristi 2017. das verhältnis der reformation und des humanismus in est und livland im 16. jahrhundert. in: assel, heinrich; steiger, johann anselm; walter, axel e. (eds.), kulturwirkungen der reformation in den metropolen des ostseeraums. berlin: w. de gruyter, 843–854. viiding, kristi 2019. salomon frenzels schwere mission in riga. in: neulateinisches jahrbuch. journal of neo-latin language and literature 21, 329–346. viiding, kristi 2020. der humanist in der krise. zur rolle der poesie im leben des rigaer humanisten david hilchen. in: schaffenrath, florian; hernández, maría teresa santamaría (eds.), acta conventus neolatini albasitensis. proceedings of the seventeenth international congress of neo-latin studies (albacete 2018). leiden: brill, 663–674. winniczuk, lidia 1962. die lateinische dichtung des simon simonides (1558–1629). in: renaissance und humanismus in mittelund osteuropa. eine sammlung von materialien besorgt von johannes irmscher. bd. 2. berlin: akademie-verlag, 139–148. zanders, ojārs 1998. nicolaus mollyn, der erste rigaer drucker. sein schaffen in riga von 1588 bis 1625. in: garber, klaus (ed.), stadt und literatur im deutschen sprachraum der frühen neuzeit, ii. tübingen: niemeyer, 786–800. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110239553.786 studia metrica et poetica 5.2, 2018, 55–76 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.03 testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines varun decastro-arrazola*1 abstract: in the field of metrics, it has long been observed that verse lines tend to be more regular or restricted towards the end (arnold 1905). this has led to the strict end hypothesis [seh], which proposes a general versification principle of universal scope (hayes 1983). this paper argues that two main challenges hinder the substantiation of the seh in a broad typological sample of unrelated verse corpora. first, the concept of strictness is too coarse and needs to be narrowed down to testable features or subcomponents. second, explicit measures need to be developed which enable the systematic comparison of corpora, particularly when trying to capture potentially gradient features such as the relative faithfulness to a metrical template. this study showcases how to overcome these issues by analysing the entropy at different positions in the line for corpora in five languages (english, dutch, sanskrit, estonian, berber). finally, i argue that, if the seh is shown to be typologically robust, shared human cognitive features may provide a partial explanation for this puzzling asymmetry in verse lines. keywords: final strictness; verse universals; verse typology; cognition introduction the words used in verse are subject to a number of constraints which are absent in everyday speech. by analysing how songs and poems are structured we can observe, for instance, that the discourse is organised into lines of similar length, that a pulse can be perceived by the regular alternation of strong and weak syllables, or that a number of adjacent lines end with exactly the same phonemes. however, there seems to exist an asymmetry in the way these constraints are arranged: the beginning of lines are left relatively free, and later parts of the line are more constrained. this can be the result of constraints specific to the end of lines (e. g. rhyme), or due to some general constraint (e. g. alternate weak and strong syllables) being more stringent later in the line. * author’s address: varuṇ decastro-arrazola, leiden university, centre for linguistics, postbus 9515, 2300 ra leiden, the netherlands. e-mail: varunasarman@gmail.com. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.03 56 varun decastro-arrazola the phenomenon has been most prominently mentioned with reference to early verse corpora, such as ancient greek (prince 1989) or sanskrit (arnold 1905). however, it has also been noted that it is an “almost constant feature of numerous widely differing metrical systems of the world” (kiparsky 1968: 138), which has led to the hypothesis that it “is in fact just a specific manifestation of a universal principle” (hayes 1983: 388). the strict end hypothesis (henceforth, seh) covers a number of predictions, roughly summarised by the statement that “correspondence to a metrical pattern tends to be lax at the beginnings of units; strict at the ends” (hayes 1983: 373). in order to verify the extent of the hypothesis, one needs to be able to verify whether a given sample of verse conforms to it or not. as i will argue in the following section (2), the concept of final strictness is too coarse to undertake a typological study. as defended by bickel (2007: 247), the same problem applies to many traditional descriptive variables in linguistic typology (e. g. incorporation); instead of seeking universal definitions of such variables, it would be more productive, he maintains, to encode finer-grained variables: “such variables allow capturing rather than ignoring diversity, and they stand a greater chance to be codable in replicable ways across many languages”. section 2 discusses the properties of a number of instances of final strictness from different languages, and proposes a formal division into two main classes of strictness. beyond the characterisation of the sub-variables composing strictness in verse, there is also the issue of gradience: it is unfeasible to describe with precision a relative higher strictness in a relatively late position of a line without some sort of quantification. section 3 showcases how a particular type of final strictness (the kind found in vedic verse) can be quantified. this enables a finer-grained characterisation of the degree of strictness and finality, and allows systematic cross-linguistic comparisons. in the final discussion, i present a number of potential explanations for the different types of final strictness, and point to further ways of testing them empirically. 1. types of strictness the strict end hypothesis has a number of possible definitions, which means that it is flexible enough to cover a wide range of phenomena. however, if we want to systematically survey and compare like with like manifestations of the seh, we need to be precise about the scope of the term. characterising one or several types of final strictness becomes crucial if we want to (1) verify or falsify the universality of the phenomenon, and (2) investigate the possible 57testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines causes of its pervasiveness. there are at least three problematic issues with the notion of seh. first, it is unclear whether the strictness applies only at one particular constituent level (e. g. the line), or to any kind of metrical constituent (e. g. stanzas, hemistichs, feet). this can be a source of confusion, since evidence and counter-evidence for the hypothesis can refer to completely different metrical domains. the article by zwicky and zwicky (1986) “patterns first, exceptions later” offers a potential counter-example to the hypothesis, but in this case the strictness applies at the level of the stanza: limericks show greater regularity at the beginning lines. still, most of the remarks on final strictness make reference to the level of the line. besides, lines are possibly the only defining constituents of verse (shapir 1995; fabb 2015: 20), so it is a suitable domain for a working definition of seh. a second source of heterogeneity in the phenomena is where the focus of the strictness asymmetry is set: (1) an exceptional freedom at the very beginning, (2) an exceptional strictness at the very end, (3) a gradual increase of strictness (or decrease of freedom) encompassing the line as a whole. the trochaic inversion common in english iambic pentameter refers to an exceptional looseness at the beginning of the line (hayes 1983). rhyme constraints, on the other hand, usually target just the end of lines. finally, other instances of seh are reported to apply gradually, with strictness increasing from the beginning to the end of the line (e. g. finnish kalevala verse, kiparsky 1968). third, in order to speak of strictness, one needs to posit a rule or restriction which can then be satisfied or violated; however, a variety of features (e. g. syllable weight, phonemes) can be subject to restrictions in verse templates. the cognitive representation of these features differ, and it is unclear whether strictness phenomena on different features can be directly compared as produced by a shared cause. next, i review the main types of restrictions for which the seh has been mentioned.1 1 several of the examples i mention are discussed by fabb (2002), with additional analysis on the seh. 58 varun decastro-arrazola 2. final strictness phenomena 2.1. syllable type the prototypical example of final strictness relies on the existence of a template which shows restrictions on syllable type. in somali [afro-asiatic; cushitic]2 geeraar verse lines, for instance, the third and fourth syllabic positions are required to be heavy and light respectively; the preceding positions, however, do not show a strong preference for either of the syllable types (banti, giannattasio 1996: 99). the same kind of stricter syllabic weight pattern is found in sanskrit [indo-european; indo-iranian] (arnold 1905: 9). languages where syllabic stress rather than weight is constrained in verse, e. g. english or dutch [indo-european; germanic], also show lines with looser beginnings (de groot 1936; hayes 1983). 2.2. syllable-to-position association the number of syllables or morae associated to a metrical position is fixed in many traditions. however, certain deviations are permitted, such as the resolution, where a strong position, typically filled with a heavy syllable, is realised instead as two weak syllables. this kind of freedom is frequent in greek [indo-european; graeco-phrygian] iambic trimeter, but it does not occur in the final two strong positions (prince 1989: 61). similarly, in somali gabay metre, the strong positions of the first half-line can be resolved as two light syllables; in the second half, however, only one of the three strong positions can be resolved, because the total number of syllables is fixed to six (johnson 1996: 76). this means that the second half of the line is more restricted than the first. another kind of somali verse, masafo, constrains the number of morae per position in all but the very first position of the line, where 2, 3 or 4 morae can be realised (banti, giannattasio 1996: 94). 2 in the first mention of a language in the current section, i include its genealogical information between brackets, extracted from glottolog (nordhoff, hammarström 2011). 59testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines 2.3. word length a number of verse traditions restrict the length of the line-final word, leaving the rest of words unconstrained in terms of length. in the irish [indoeuropean; celtic] ae freislighe quatrains, odd lines end in trisyllables, and even lines in dissyllables (knott 1957: 13); dyirbal [pama-nyungan] marrga songs require line-final words to be bisyllabic (dixon, koch 1996: 181); in finnish [uralic; finnic] kalevala verse, monosyllables are “not permitted at the end of a line” (kiparsky 1968: 138). 2.4. phonemes rhyme is a very common feature in the poetry and singing of many languages. this involves limiting the choices of phonemes one can use at the end of lines; i. e. a relative free choice of phonemes in every position of the line, except at the end. rhyme, hence, can be interpreted as a case of strict end. some languages, nonetheless, follow the opposite pattern: they restrict the phonemes occurring at the beginning of lines, and not elsewhere, by using line-initial alliteration. this type of strict beginning is attested throughout the mongolic language family (kara 2011, krueger 1961), as well as in welsh [indo-european; celtic] (greenhill 2011). from a typological point of view, however, line-final rhyme is much more frequent than line-initial alliteration (fabb 1999). this asymmetry further strengthens the seh. 2.5. words even more stringent are the verse templates where specific words or kind of words are required to close the line. in a sardinian [indo-european; italic] anninnia from bosa, each line in the song is closed by the formula ninna ninna (sassu, sole 1972: 121); in the melpa [nuclear trans new guinea; central east new guinea highlands] kang rom style of songs, lines are composed by regular lexical words, but one of a restricted set of vocables (i. e. meaningless words) is produced at the end of each line (niles 2011: 284). further typological work is needed to assess whether these line-final formulae are more frequent than line-initial ones, as the latter are also attested in languages such as kuna [chibchan; core chibchan] (sherzer 1982: 373). 60 varun decastro-arrazola 2.6. melody the majority of the world’s verse is performed in sung form; this usually entails the use of stable pitch classes (i. e. in the form of melodies). robust typological evidence lacking, there are indications that fixed patterns of melodic pitch classes are more frequent at the end of lines than elsewhere. in the nambudiri tradition of veda recitation (in sanskrit), lines are closed by a conventional melodic cadence over the last vowel or nasal consonant (staal 1961: 50). many verse systems show a similar pitch-cadence phenomenon, where a fixed (low) pitch closes each line (e. g. huli [nuclear trans new guinea; enga-kewa-huli] songs, pugh-kitingan 1984: 107). while these traditions display particularly invariant melodic material in the last few syllables, others display an asymmetry by singing the first few notes with an undetermined, speech-like pitch, while the rest of the line employs stable notes (e. g. tedaga [saharan; western saharan] songs, brandily 1976: 176). 2.7. rhythm a related line-final effect is the lengthening of the very last syllable of the line. this is observed e. g. in warlpiri [pama-nyungan; desert nyungic], somali or sardinian (banti, giannattasio 1996; sassu, sole 1972; turpin, laughren 2013), and has probably a widespread typological distribution (nettl 1956: 66). one of the results of lengthening is that the temporal interval between the last syllable of a line and the first of the following line is increased with respect to the preceding inter-syllabic intervals. this same effect is also achieved by a simple pause, or by leaving an empty beat, as seen at the end of lines in many nursery rhymes, such as eeny, meeny, miny, moe, where each strong syllable is followed by a weak one except at the end of lines, or hickory dickory, where all lines except the third show a line-final empty beat. this kind of truncation is used preferentially at the end of lines, as it provides a structural pause (hayes, kaun 1996; hayes, maceachern 1996). 2.8. template and instance strictness all these phenomena can be interpreted as evidence for the seh in one way or another. however, i want to argue that it is useful to be specific about the kind of features which are constrained, and to characterise the stringency of the constraints. 61testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines some of the cited examples consist of completely stringent, fixed phenomena which mark the right edge of lines somehow, e. g. by requiring the presence of specific phonemes, words or pitches. we can refer to them as examples of template strictness. the constraints related to syllable type and syllable-to-position association, on the other hand, usually exhibit varying degrees of stringency. we can call them examples of instance strictness. requiring a specific rhyme to close the line is arguably a categorical feature encoded in the verse template; the increasing consistency in using light or heavy syllables, though, is a gradual effect observed when a collection of instances of the same template are analysed. this binary classification of final strictness phenomena can already be helpful in order to better understand their possible cause or function. nevertheless, quantifying the stringency of any kind of strictness is still crucial if one wants to verify whether it is categorically localised at one of the edges, whether it is gradual, and, if gradual, the extent to which the different positions in the line are restricted. the next section develops a case study where the instance strictness of syllable type is quantified and compared across verse samples in five different languages. this is the prototypical case of final strictness, and, given its gradual nature, it constitutes a suitable object for quantitative examination. 3. measuring strictness 3.1. materials we analyse data from five languages: three indo-european languages from two different branches (english and dutch from the germanic branch, and sanskrit from the indo-iranian branch), the uralic language estonian, and the afro-asiatic language tashlhiyt berber. to be sure, the sample is not broad enough to make strong claims about the universality of final strictness; however, i describe a methodology which can be easily extended to include further data in future studies. the choice of languages attempts to maximise the typological coverage, while being constrained by the availability of sizeable digitized corpora. the kind of strictness being measured here is the one about restrictions on syllable type (cf. section 2.1). hence, any verse sample where at least certain positions require a particular syllabic feature (e. g. weight or stress) are suitable for the analysis. table 1 lists the five languages used in the analysis, together 62 varun decastro-arrazola with the total number of lines, and the number of samples (e. g. authors) for each language. the sanskrit sample includes lines from the ṛgveda, a text composed in the second millennium bc, probably earlier than 1200 bc (witzel 1995). the templates used are quantitative, i. e. they contrast heavy and light syllables. for the current analysis i have employed the summary statistics provided by gunkel and ryan (2011), who list the proportion of heavy syllables for each position in metres of eight, eleven and twelve syllables. all three metres follow a general iambic pattern. however, that the verse lines from the ṛgveda show final strictness has been known for a long time: “in all metres the rhythm of the latter part of the verse is much more rigidly defined than that of the earlier part” (arnold 1905: 9). the present analysis involves almost thirty-eight thousand lines of verse. the dutch sample includes 9079 lines by two 20th-century poets: j. p. kal (b. 1946) and c. o. jellema (1936–2003). most of the lines belong to 14-linelong sonnets and follow an iambic pentameter template. for purposes of syllable-position identification, lines longer or shorter than ten syllables have been excluded from the original corpus. each line has been automatically scanned using a scansion algorithm (van oostendorp, 2014) which takes into account the syllable’s lexical stress and its environment, and yields a binary result for each syllable: table 1: summary of corpora used in the analyses language iso lines samples family branch english eng 4198 2 indo-european germanic estonian est 8811 20 uralic finnic dutch nld 9079 2 indo-european germanic sanskrit san 37908 3 indo-european indo-iranian tashlhiyt berber shi 314 7 afro-asiatic berber metrically stressed (1) or unstressed (0). the iambic pentameter template predicts that odd positions will contain unstressed values, and even positions stressed values. the iambic pentameter template predicts that odd positions will contain unstressed values, and even positions stressed values. the english sample contains 4198 lines by john milton (1608–1674) and william shakespeare (1564–1616). our analysis is based on the digital text annotated by bruce hayes, which assigns one of four stress levels to each syllable: 0 = unstressed, 1 = secondary stress, 2 = primary, 3 = phrasal (hayes, 63testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines wilson, shisko 2012). given that most accounts of english verse only distinguish a binary opposition of stress, i have collapsed values 1, 2 and 3 into a single category of stress, opposed to unstressed (0). the lines used for the analysis all follow an iambic pentameter template. the sample by shakespeare is derived from his 154 sonnets, excluding sonnet 145 which is composed in iambic tetrameter, and excluding lines longer than 10 syllables (i. e. ending in feminine rhyme). the sample by milton is drawn from books 9 and 10 of his work paradise lost, also applying the filter to retain only 10-syllable-long lines. the estonian sample summarises 8811 lines composed by 20 different authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. the data are taken from statistics provided by m.-k. lotman and m. lotman (2013), where each syllable is assigned a stress value ranging from 0 (unstressed) to 4 (phrasal stress). as with the english sample, only a binary distinction between stressed and unstressed has been retained. all lines follow a trochaic tetrameter template, where odd positions generally contain stressed syllables, and even positions unstressed. the tashlhiyt sample contains 314 lines of verse belonging to seven different songs. each song follows a different template, but all of them are quantitative; hence, positions are expected to contain either a heavy or a light syllable (as in the sanskrit corpus). the song texts, their scansion and thorough analyses have been published by dell and elmedlaoui (2008). in all five corpora we observe templates where two classes of syllables are used in a controlled way. still, the nature of these two classes depends on the phonological features of each language, and the interpretation of which syllables constitute deviations from the template depends on the method of analysis used for each corpus. in the estonian corpus, the alternating syllable classes are based on word stress, which is always word-initial in this language (harms 2017). the syllable classes in the english and dutch corpora are also based on word stress, but this feature plays a more important role than in estonian, since its placement within the word is not fully predictable (van der hulst 1984). on the other hand, the sanskrit and tashlhiyt syllable classes are not based on stress but on weight, where syllables ending in a coda (and/ or in a long vowel for sanskrit) are considered heavy (arnold 1905; dell, elmedlaoui 2002). in terms of the kinds of methods used to detect deviant syllables, the dutch corpus differs from the other four in that for each syllable the scansion algorithm takes into account the neighbouring syllables and the ideal metrical template to determine its prominence value. in the other corpora, whether a syllable is considered weak or strong does not depend on the metrical context, but is determined exclusively on linguistic grounds. 64 varun decastro-arrazola 3.2. statistical analyses for each syllabic position in the corpora as coded here, a binary feature (0, 1) indicates the prominence value (related to stress or weight) for that syllable. it is assumed all lines in a sample follow the same template, which regulates the placement of stress or weight. in order to measure the consistency of this regulation, i compute the entropy for each position of the template using the standard equation by claude shannon (1948): (1) for a given syllabic position in a template, indicates the proportion of syllables with feature, where can be either 1 (heavy or stressed), or 0 (light or unstressed). given the binary prominence feature used here, the formula yields an entropy value between 0 and 1, with lower values indicating that the position is more consistent in using a particular prominence value. if e. g. the second position in a set of iambic pentameter lines always contains a stressed syllable, its entropy would be the lowest possible, i. e. 0. the highest uncertainty (entropy = 1), instead, would be obtained if half the lines had a stressed syllable, and half the lines an unstressed syllable, indicating effectively that that position in the line is unregulated. this measure does not capture higher order dependencies between positions, such that an unstressed syllable in the second position of an iambic pentameter is likely preceded by a stressed syllable (i. e. trochaic inversion). nevertheless, it does allow us to analyse the relative unigram consistency related to syllable type regulation across line positions, and across corpora. as explained in the previous section (3.1), the different corpora here analysed contain lines of various lengths. these range from a minimum of eight syllables (e. g. in the estonian tetrameter), to a maximum of fourteen syllables (in one of the tashlhiyt songs). in order to assess the effect of syllable position on the position’s entropy in a unified way, it becomes necessary to normalise the line lengths of the different templates. hence, instead of using the original line positions, i have computed relative syllable positions (relpos) which fall within the range [0,1]. for a line with n number of syllables, the relative syllable position for position xis computed with the formula (x−1) ⁄ ( n−1). as a result, the relpos for the first syllable of a tetrameter is (1−1) ⁄ (8−1)=0 ⁄ 7=0, while the eighth and last syllable would yield (8−1) ⁄ (8−1)=7 ⁄ 7=1. 𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛 = − ! !!! 𝑝𝑝!log!𝑝𝑝! 65testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines in order to assess whether the relative syllabic position (relpos) predicts a decrease in entropy (i. e. less heterogeneity towards the end of the line), i fit a mixed-effects model to the whole set of samples combined. the different language corpora are added as random factors (see the complete model under equation 2 as called in r using the lme4 package, bates, mächler, bolker, walker 2015). the first term on the right part of the equation (after the ) indicates the extent to which the entropy for a given metrical position is explained by its relative position within the line (relpos). the part in parentheses models the extent to which the effect of relpos, and the effect of a position being weak/strong (prominence) depend on the language of the corpus. for some languages, the relpos effect may be larger/smaller, and weak or strong positions may have a higher/lower overall entropy. in order to assess with more detail the robustness of the seh for each individual language, i also perform separate linear regressions for each language corpus. (2) entropy ~ relpos + (1 + relpos + prominence|language) 3.3. results for reproducibility purposes, the data for the five corpora, as well as the r scripts used to perform the analyses, are included at the online supplementary information.3 figure 1 plots the entropy values for each syllabic position within each sample, grouped by language. separate regression lines are drawn for positions treated as strong and weak in their respective templates. 3 https://github.com/vdca/seh1. https://github.com/vdca/seh1 66 varun decastro-arrazola figure 1. entropy of syllabic feature values (stressed vs. unstressed; heavy vs. light) for each position in each sample of verse we can observe a general downtrend in entropy for all languages, suggesting that the initial hypothesis that there is an increase in consistency in the use of weight and stress is correct. in the estonian sample, the trend for strong positions is completely flat, with no apparent increasing strictness. in fact, deviations from the ideal template (stressed syllables on odd positions) are close to null. the sanskrit sample also shows a flatter and lower regression line for strong positions. however, this is not the case for the other three languages. visual inspection reveals that the final position of sanskrit verse breaks with the increasing strictness tendency, a phenomenon well described in the literature (arnold 1905: 112). furthermore, a relative increase in entropy towards the middle of the line (e. g. english and sanskrit) suggests the presence of division of the line in two half-lines. table 2 shows the results of the mixed effects model fitted to the data. relative position within the line (relpos) proves to be a good predictor of entropy, with a strong negative estimate indicating a decrease in uncertainty as the syllable position increases. in the first row of the table (intercept), the estimate indicates what the entropy would be for the initial position of a random corpus of verse, regardless of its language. in the second row (relpos), the estimate indicates how much that entropy value would decrease on average as one goes from the 67testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines line-initial position to the line-final position of the template. a comparison of this model with the corresponding null model without the fixed predictor (i. e. relpos) indicates that the prediction of entropy significantly improves by adding relative syllable position as a predictor (χ2= 9.63, pr (>χ2) = 0.0019). figure 2 shows how these estimates are to be adjusted for each of the language corpora; that is, it visualizes the random part of the mixed model under equation 2. the vertical dashed line represents the average, languageneutral results, i. e. those shown under table 2). red/blue figures indicate that a language shows a lower/higher value with respect to the language-neutral baseline. figure 2. random effects for the five different languages in the sample. the plot indicates the amount by which the model estimates are adjusted according to the language of the data under analysis. negative adjustments with respect to the baseline are plotted in red. in the leftmost panel (intercept) we observe that sanskrit shows the highest overall entropy, and tashlhiyt berber the lowest, confirming the plots in figure 1. in the second row of table 2 we had observed that later syllables have a negative estimate, i. e. they are predicted to have a lower entropy. the rightmost panel (relpos) reveals that sanskrit is the language where this decreasing-looseness effect is strongest, i. e. it shows the steepest slope from high entropy at the beginning of the line, to low entropy at the end. finally, 68 varun decastro-arrazola the central panel (prominence1) displays the varying effect of prominence on entropy. here, we corroborate that strong positions in estonian (and in sanskrit to a lower extent) are much stricter than weak positions (i. e. are expected to show a lower entropy), whereas the opposite effect is found in english. individual linear regressions per language sample (table  3 of the supplementary information) confirm that the robust overall decrease in entropy also holds for each language corpus. the prominence value of the position (whether weak or strong) further improves the model for all languages except dutch, where weak and strong positions follow a similar downtrend. table 2. results of the full mixed model, with relative syllable position as the fixed predictor, and random slope and intercept for the effect of prominence and syllable position in each language term estimate std. error t value pr (> t) 1 (intercept) 0.575 0.117 4.91 0.00804 2 relpos -0.305 0.0616 -4.95 0.00995 discussion binary restrictions on the type of syllable used at certain positions of the line are common to many verse traditions. as proposed by e. g. jakobson (1966), metrical rules are often regarded as binary; nevertheless, ryan (2011) argues that this binarity appears to be gradient. moreover, the direction of the gradience can be predicted to a certain extent using the relative position of the syllable. in the samples of verse here analysed, there is a robust trend for the binary restriction on weight or stress to be more stringent later in the line. this supports a specific type of the seh, namely, if a verse tradition regulates a syllabic feature, it will be more consistent the later the syllable occurs in the line. visual inspection of the estonian corpus suggested a second predictor of entropy: prominence. even though four out of five corpora show distinct entropy profiles for weak and strong positions, there is no overall prediction: in some cases strong positions show higher entropy (english, tashlhiyt), and in others, lower entropy (estonian, sanskrit). a note of caution is needed when using position prominence as a predictor of entropy. at least two potential confounds can drive the direction of the effect of prominence on entropy: (1) the structure of the lexicon, (2) the coding algorithm. 69testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines in a language with higher proportion of light syllables, consistently using light syllables in weak positions proves easier, hence strong positions are predicted to have a higher entropy (i. e. it is more likely that they contain light syllables, than the other way round). on the other hand, as explained in the description of the materials, the algorithms used to decide the weight/stress feature of a syllable differ, e. g. in estonian, even the lightest degree of stress is coded as stressed; in dutch, the neighbouring syllables are considered in order to maximise the fit to the ideal template. the facts expressed in those two caveats hinder a direct interpretation on the predictive effect of position prominence on entropy. further research is needed which takes lexico-statistical data from the feature of interest as a predictor of the effect of prominence. if a robust typological tendency is established, we can hypothesise that it derives from features shared by the whole population under study, like some aspect of basic human cognition. in section 2 i propose that the diverse phenomena under the general seh can be subdivided into two main types: template strictness, and instance strictness. the contrast between the categorical nature of the first type, and the gradual nature of the second suggests different causes. from a general perspective, i propose that categorical asymmetries encoded in the templates (e. g. rhyme, cadence) may have a facilitating function, and that the gradual asymmetries (e. g. selection of syllable type) are a result of some cognitive bias. a plausible, low-level cognitive bias is the gradual increase of attention as new temporal stimuli are processed. each verse template displays a regular alternation of features, but the regularity gets a stronger representation as the line develops and more syllables satisfy the template, as proposed by the bayesian predictive coding framework (vuust, witek 2014). alternatively, if the creator or recipient of the verse lines entrains to some regular temporal sequence (e. g. of syllables or beats), the dynamic attending theory (jones, moynihan, mackenzie, puente 2002) predicts that clusters of neurons will synchronise with that regularity. the synchronisation strengthens as more stimuli are processed, and, if attention peaks correlate with neuronal firing, one is expected to be extra sensitive by the end of the line.4 hypotheses on increase of attention can be suitable for gradual phenomena, and particularly for loose beginnings, where full-entrainment has not yet taken place. nevertheless, it does not fit well with categorically final phenomena, such as rhyme. a straightforward interpretation of these is that they work as 4 these arguments could also be applied to larger chunks of verse, such as couplets or stanzas. however, there is good evidence that lines are treated as whole units in working memory (fabb 2014), making it a suitable candidate for the unit of attention increase. 70 varun decastro-arrazola boundary-markers, making the constituent structure of verse easier to parse. however, an equivalent explanation is available for left-boundary markers. hence, a number of functional accounts specific to template final strictness can be put forward, but they all remain tentative in the lack of robust empirical work, probably experimental. a feature common to all the categorical asymmetries i have discussed in section 2 is that they limit the number of choices at the very end of the line, by restricting the choice of phonemes, the word-length, or requiring a specific closing-word. this effectively reduces the cognitive load of the performer. still, this cognitive advantage at the end of lines can be seen as serving various alternative functions. the first is proposed, for instance, by niles (2011) when discussing the fixed vocables closing lines of kang rom melpa songs: “because of their regularity in delimiting a line of text, these vocables perhaps also allow the performer a brief rest and chance to mentally compose his or her thoughts for the next line”. this explanation may be particularly relevant for improvised traditions, where the following line needs to be composed while still singing the current one; yet, it also applies to non-improvised performances, where saving cognitive load can facilitate the recall of the next line (rubin 1995). similar functions have been attributed to the pervasive final lengthening observed in everyday speech (fletcher 2010). a related advantage of marking right boundaries with predictable material is that it enables a smoother turn-taking. the previous hypothesis worked best in the context of solo performance; however, there are traditions where two poets engage in dialogue-like exchange of lines (egaña 2007). in this context, one needs to compose a line while the other is singing. hence, predicting the end of a line gives the poet some advantage in order to plan the next line and execute it without delay. again, this has a parallel in everyday speech, where it has been shown that the gap between turns is so short, that speakers must plan in advance and accurately predict the end of the interlocutor’s utterance (stivers et al. 2009). an alternative proposal by fabb (2014) is that reduced cognitive load at the end of a line facilitates the recall of earlier elements within that same line. the hypothesis relies on the idea that lines are processed as single units within working memory. the final part of the line already has a recency-effect advantage, and having a reduced cognitive demand at the end would leave more room for keeping in mind earlier linguistic content. earlier in this section, i have argued that final strictness may ease the planning of the following line, while fabb proposes that final strictness eases the remembering of the current line. given the diversity of final strictness phenomena, it is unlikely that they all have the same cause or function, so apparently contradictory hypotheses may in fact prove complementary. in this specific case, fabb’s proposal covers 71testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines better the function of final strictness during verse perception, while the planning hypothesis applies to the process of verse production, as exemplified by the quote on melpa singing (niles 2011). in order to test the coverage of these hypotheses, behavioural experiments can be conducted which manipulate line-final elements and compare recall and reaction times. moreover, the predominant ecological context where verse is created and consumed in a given tradition may also require dissimilar cognitive explanations; in particular, the visual aid available when composing texts in written form, such as the dutch or estonian samples here analysed, would need to be taken into account. finally, the pervasive presence of predictable material at the end of lines can have aesthetic reasons. as argued by huron (2006), a source of pleasure in music lies in the fulfillment of expectations. moreover, added aesthetic value may be produced when expectations are violated or kept on hold for some time, and satisfying them. although gathering empirical evidence of aesthetic value poses methodological challenges, physiological measures such as skin conductance response (mas-herrero, zatorre, rodríguez-fornells, marcopallarés 2014) can potentially be used in order to test whether line-final fixed elements are a more significant source of aesthetic pleasure compared to predictable material on other locations in the line. conclusion the strict end hypothesis has been discussed in the field of metrics for more than a century. furthermore, it has been posited that it may be universal in nature. in this paper i address two challenges which precede the typological verification of the claim. first, i argue that a range of diverse phenomena are categorised within the seh, making the hypothesis effectively intractable. at the very least, two types of strictness should be distinguished: template and instance strictness. second, in order to measure the extent and degree of each type of strictness, quantification or other kinds of fine-grained description are necessary. i showcase this by characterising gradual strictness in a dataset including verse from five languages, using entropy as a proxy for strictness. finally, i discuss a number of testable cognitive explanations of the phenomena, which move towards the goal of understanding the why of final strictness5. 5 the paper has benefited from insightful comments by teresa proto, marc van oostendorp and an anonymous reviewer. the usual disclaimers apply. this research was made possible thanks to the project knowledge and culture (horizon grant 317-70-010) funded by nwo (dutch organisation for scientific research). 72 varun decastro-arrazola references arnold, edward vernon 1905. vedic metre in its historical development. cambridge: cambridge university press. banti, giorgio; giannattasio, francesco 1996. music and metre in somali poetry. in: hayward, richard j.; lewis, ioan m. (eds.), voice and power: essays in honour of b. w. andrzejewski (african languages and cultures, supplement 3). london: school of oriental and african studies, 83–127. bates, douglas; mächler, martin; bolker, ben; walker, steve 2015. fitting linear mixedeffects models using lme4. in: journal of statistical software 67(1), 1–48. bickel, balthasar 2007. typology in the 21st century: major current developments. in: linguistic typology 11(1), 239–251. brandily, monique 1976. un chant du tibesti (tchad). in: journal des africanistes 46(1), 127–192. de groot, albert willem 1936. de structuur van het vers. in: de nieuwe taalgids 30, 197–212. dell, françois; elmedlaoui, mohamed 2002. syllables in tashlhiyt berber and in moroccan arabic. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. dell, françois; elmedlaoui, mohamed 2008. poetic meter and musical form in tashlhiyt berber songs. köln: rüdiger köppe. dixon, robert m. w.; koch, grace 1996. dyirbal song poetry. the oral literature of an australian rainforest people. st. lucia: university of queensland press. egaña, andoni 2007. the process of creating improvised bertsos. in: oral tradition 22(2), 117–142. fabb, nigel 1999. verse constituency and the locality of alliteration. in: lingua 108, 223–245. fabb, nigel 2002. language and literary structure: the linguistic analysis of form in verse and narrative. cambridge: cambridge university press. fabb, nigel 2014. the verse-line as a whole unit in working memory, ease of processing, and the aesthetic effects of form. in: currie, greg; kieran, matthew; meskin; aaron; moore, margaret (eds.), royal institute of philosophy supplement 75. cambridge: cambridge university press, 29–50. fabb, nigel 2015. what is poetry? language and memory in the poems of the world. cambridge: cambridge university press. 73testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines fletcher, janet 2010. the prosody of speech: timing and rhythm. in: hardcastle, william j.; laver, john; gibbon, fiona e. (eds.), the handbook of phonetic sciences. west sussex, uk: blackwell publishers, 523–602. greenhill, peter 2011. bardic rhythm: the implications from cerdd dant studies. in: studia celtica 45, 131–153. gunkel, dieter; ryan, kevin 2011. hiatus avoidance and metrification in the rigveda. in: jamison, stephanie w.; melchert, h. craig; vine, brent (eds.), proceedings of the 22nd annual ucla indo-european conference. bremen: hempen, 53–68. harms, robert t. 2017. estonian grammar. london: routledge. hayes, bruce 1983. a grid-based theory of english meter. in: linguistic inquiry 14(3), 357–394. hayes, bruce; kaun, abigail 1996. the role of phonological phrasing in sung and chanted verse. in: the linguistic review 13, 243–303. hayes, bruce; maceachern, margaret 1996. are there lines in folk poetry? in: hsu, chai-shune k. (ed.), ucla working papers in phonology 1, 125–142. hayes, bruce; wilson, colin; shisko, anne 2012. maxent grammars for the metrics of shakespeare and milton. in: language 88(4), 691–731. huron, david 2006. sweet anticipation: music and the psychology of expectation. cambridge, ma: massachusetts institute of technology press. jakobson, roman 1966. selected writings. vol. iv: slavic epic studies. the hague, paris: mouton. johnson, john william 1996. musico-moro-syllabic relationships in the scansion of somali oral poetry. in: in: hayward, richard j.; lewis, ioan m. (eds.), voice and power: essays in honour of b. w. andrzejewski (african languages and cultures, supplement 3). london: school of oriental and african studies, 73–82. jones, mari riess; moynihan, heather, mackenzie, noah; puente, jennifer 2002. temporal aspects of stimulus-driven attending in dynamic arrays. in: psychological science 13(4), 313–319. kara, györgy 2011. alliteration in mongol poetry. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. london: palgrave macmillan, 156–179. kiparsky, paul 1968. metrics and morphophonemics in the kalevala. in: gribble, charles e. (ed.), studies presented to roman jakobson by his students. cambridge, ma: slavica, 137–148. 74 varun decastro-arrazola knott, eleanor 1957. an introduction to irish syllabic poetry of the period 1200–1600. dublin institute for advanced studies. krueger, john richard 1961. poetical passages in the erdeni-yin tobči: a mongolian chronicle of the year 1662 by sayang sečen. ’s-gravenhage: mouton. lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail 2013. the quantitative structure of estonian syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter. in: trames 17(3), 243–272. mas-herrero, ernest; zatorre, robert j.; rodríguez-fornells, antoni; marco-pallarés, josep 2014. dissociation between musical and monetary reward responses in specific musical anhedonia. in: current biology 24, 1–6. nettl, bruno 1956. music in primitive culture. cambridge: harvard university press. niles, don 2011. metric melodies and the performance of sung tales in the hagen area. in: rumsey, alan; niles, don (eds.), sung tales from the papua new guinea highlands. studies in form, meaning, and sociocultural context. canberra: australian national university press, 275–201. nordhoff, sebastian; hammarström, harald 2011. glottolog/langdoc: defining dialects, languages, and language families as collections of resources. in: kauppinen, tomi; pouchard, line c.; keßler, carsten (eds.), proceedings of the first international workshop on linked science 2011. vol. 783. http://ceur-ws.org/vol-783/paper7.pdf prince, alan 1989. metrical forms. in: kiparsky, paul; youmans, gilbert (eds.), rhythm and meter. san diego, ca: academic press, 45–80. pugh-kitingan, jacqueline 1984. speech-tone realisation in huli music. in kassler, jamie c.; stubington, jill (eds.), problems & solutions: occasional essays in musicology presented to alice m. moyle. sydney: hale & iremonger, 95–120. rubin, david c. 1995. memory in oral traditions: the cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes. oxford: oxford university press. ryan, kevin m. 2011. gradient syllable weight and weight universals in quantitative metrics. in: phonology 28(3), 413–454. sassu, pietro constantino alberto; sole, leonardo 1972. funzione degli stereotipi nel canto popolare sardo. in: rivista italiana di musicologia 7(1), 115–144. shannon, claude e. 1948. a mathematical theory of communication. in: bell system technical journal 27(3), 379–423. shapir, maksim 1995. “versus” vs “prosa”: prostranstvo-vremja poeticheskogo teksta. in: philologica 2(3/4), 7–47. 75testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines sherzer, joel 1982. poetic structuring of kuna discourse: the line. in: language in society 11, 371–390. staal, johan frederik 1961. nambudiri veda recitation. hague: mouton. stivers, tanya; enfield, nick j.; brown, penelope; englert, christina; hayashi, m.; heinemann, trine; hoymann, gertie; rossano, federico; de ruiter, jan; yoon, kyung-eun; levinson, stephen c. 2009. universals and cultural variation in turntaking in conversation. in: proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america 106(26), 10587–10592. turpin, myfany; laughren, mary 2013. edge effects in warlpiri yawulyu songs: resyllabification, epenthesis, final vowel modification. in: australian journal of linguistics 33(4), 399–425. van der hulst, harry 1984. syllable structure and stress in dutch. dordrecht: foris. van oostendorp, marc 2014. introducing a scansion machine for dutch poetry and prose. in: loquens 1(1), 1–7. vuust, peter; witek, maria a. g. 2014. rhythmic complexity and predictive coding: a novel approach to modeling rhythm and meter perception in music. in: frontiers in psychology 5, article 1111. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01111/full witzel, michael 1995. early sanskritization. origins and development of the kuru state. in: electronic journal of vedic studies (ejvs) 1(4), 1–26. zwicky, arnold m.; zwicky, ann d. 1986. patterns first, exceptions later. in: channon, robert; shockey, linda (eds.), in honor of ilse lehiste. dordrecht: foris, 525–537. 76 varun decastro-arrazola addendum. supplementary information table 3. results of the linear model applied to each language corpus, with position prominence and relative syllable position as predictors. language term estimate std. error t value pr (> t) 1 eng (intercept) 0.654 0.0668 9.79 2.1e-08 2 eng relpos -0.386 0.106 -3.64 0.00204 3 eng prominence1 0.312 0.0678 4.6 0.000258 4 est (intercept) 0.735 0.0248 29.6 3.24e-66 5 est relpos -0.297 0.034 -8.73 3.5e-15 6 est prominence1 -0.603 0.0223 -27.1 5.31e-61 7 nld (intercept) 0.547 0.0464 11.8 1.29e-09 8 nld relpos -0.189 0.0737 -2.56 0.0204 9 nld prominence1 0.00408 0.0471 0.0866 0.932 10 san (intercept) 0.966 0.0915 10.6 2.91e-11 11 san relpos -0.504 0.143 -3.53 0.00147 12 san prominence1 -0.257 0.091 -2.83 0.00859 13 shi (intercept) 0.127 0.034 3.73 0.000351 14 shi relpos -0.125 0.0552 -2.26 0.0264 15 shi prominence1 0.158 0.0431 3.65 0.000459 studia metrica et poetica sisu 7_2.indd john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman darren freebury-jones* abstract: although john fletcher is recognized as one of the most infl uential dramatists of the early modern period, many of the theories concerning the divisions of authorship in his collaborative plays continue to present insoluble diffi culties. for instance, according to the soundly based chronology developed by martin wiggins, many plays attributed in part to francis beaumont appear to have been written aft er beaumont had ceased writing (c. 1613), or even aft er he died in 1616. a prime example would be th e noble gentleman (1626), which e. h. c. oliphant and cyrus hoy attributed in part to beaumont. modern scholarship holds that this was fletcher’s last play and that it was completed by another hand aft er fletcher died in 1625. th is article off ers the most comprehensive analysis yet undertaken of the stylistic qualities of the “non-fletcher” portions in this play in relation to dramatists writing for the king’s men at the time, thereby opening up several new lines of enquiry for co-authored plays of the period. seeking to broaden our understanding of the collaborative practices in plays produced by that company in or around 1626, through a combination of literary-historical and quantitative analysis, the article puts forth a new candidate for fletcher’s posthumous collaborator: john ford. keywords: john fletcher, francis beaumont, john ford, prosody, linguistic habits, n-grams th e noble gentleman (1626) was licensed for performance by sir henry herbert on 3 february 1626 for performance at the blackfriars th eatre by the king’s men playing company.1 th is was 5 months aft er john fletcher’s death. th e play was included in both the fi rst (1647) and second (1679) beaumont and fletcher folios and appears to have been printed from authorial copy. th e noble gentleman is a farcical comedy in which monsieur mount-marine has run out of money and decides to leave the court in order to live in the country. his wife desperately wants to stay living in the town and therefore * author’s address: darren freebury-jones, th e shakespeare birthplace trust, th e shakespeare centre, henley street, stratford-upon-avon, cv37 6qw. e-mail: darren_f.j@hotmail.co.uk. 1 i follow the chronology of martin wiggins and catherine richardson’s british drama 1533–1642: a catalogue throughout this article. studia metrica et poetica 7.2, 2020, 43–60 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.03 44 darren freebury-jones concocts a plan to convince her husband that the king of france has off ered him a dukedom. meanwhile, chatillon is equally deluded into believing that a lady who has denied his hand in marriage has been imprisoned by the king as a rival claimant to the throne. th e play concludes with marine being told that he can remain a duke so long as he does not inform anyone of his title, and chatillon being told that the lady he loves has been released from prison. th e play has generated scholarly discussion in terms of authorship and chronology. henry william weber argued that the play was never acted during fletcher’s lifetime and that, having been “left imperfect” by him, “some of his friends fi nished it” (qtd in dyce 1846: 110). th is was a reasonable theory and worth pursuing, but it was ignored or dismissed by subsequent scholars. for instance, e. h. c. oliphant conjectured that francis beaumont had a hand in the play in 1927 (183–200), as did robert f. wilson in 1968. both scholars therefore argued for an early date of composition. in his wide-ranging study of plays in the fletcher and beaumont canons, cyrus hoy conjectured that fletcher had revised an early work of beaumont’s sole authorship, and argued that beaumont’s hand could be most clearly detected in 1.4, 2.2, 3.1, 3.3–4, and 4.3–5. he considered the rest of the play to be of mixed authorship. th rough a combination of literary-historical and statistical analysis, it is my aim here to provide the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of the stylistic qualities of the “non-fletcher” portions in this play, and to establish a fi rm basis for its authorial provenance. it is therefore necessary that this essay avail itself of the terminology of early modern authorship attribution studies. attribution studies aim to distinguish the author or authors of a play by identifying stylistic features that discriminate one writer from another. th is has largely been attempted by scholars since the nineteenth century through close study of verse habits; authorial preferences for particular word forms; and parallels of thought, language, and overall dramaturgy between authors’ accepted works and disputed plays. th ere are a large number of unresolved problems in this subject area: many plays of the period were published anonymously, or were attributed erroneously on title pages or in play lists. it is well-established that many plays in the beaumont and fletcher folios contain the hands of writers who were not advertised by the publishers, such as nathan field and philip massinger. studies of texts attributed to fletcher and beaumont have led to major breakthroughs in methodologies for discriminating authorial styles in the canon of early modern drama as a whole. in 1874, f. g. fleay pointed out that the number of so-called double, or “feminine” endings (pentameter lines concluding in extra syllables), were more numerous in fletcher’s works than those of his contemporaries and that his range was much higher than philip 45john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman massinger’s. he also noted the occurrence of “frequent pauses at the end” of fletcher’s lines and stated that the “union of ‘the stopped line’ with the double ending is peculiar to fletcher” (53). whereas fletcher “used the stopped line, usually”, massinger tended to end “his lines with words that cannot be grammatically separated from the next line; articles, prepositions, auxiliaries” (57), which helped fleay to distinguish the dramatists’ shares in co-authored plays like th e little french lawyer (1620). fleay also pointed out the “abundance of ‘tri-syllabic feet’” in fletcher’s works (53). oliphant’s analysis of fletcher’s verse style in 1927 validated many of fleay’s observations, especially the dramatist’s habit of employing double or triple endings, oft en “by means of some conventional and wholly unnecessary end word (such as ‘still’ or ‘else’ or ‘too’)” (33). oliphant also drew attention to the fact that fletcher avoided run-on lines and rhyme (36), concluding that his style was easily distinguishable from beaumont’s frequent use of run-on lines, single endings, and his general avoidance of the “emphatic extra syllable” (50). nevertheless, oliphant conceded that beaumont “attained no stability of style” during “his brief career” (80). fletcher’s predilection for extra-metrical verse lines was observed by ants oras in 1953. oras demonstrated that there were “unmistakeable diff erences” between portions assigned to fletcher and his co-author (201), shakespeare – whose portions have a much lower incidence of feminine endings formed by monosyllables – in all is true (1612) and th e two noble kinsmen (1613). more recently, marina tarlinskaja has provided a thorough examination of fletcher’s versifi cation characteristics, pointing out that fletcher and beaumont’s portions of th e maid’s tragedy (1611) are distinguished by the “total number of end-stopped lines: 77.6 percent in fletcher’s portion” and “only 66.4 in beaumont’s” (2014: 203), while massinger’s rate of run-on lines in th e false one (1620) is “almost fi ve times more” frequent than in fletcher’s portions of that play (220). we can see therefore that verse studies provide powerful tools for discriminating dramatists and that a combination of qualitative and quantitative prosodic analyses off ers profound insights into the distinctive features of fletcher and his co-authors’ styles. studies of linguistic preferences have also enhanced our knowledge of fletcher and his collaborators. for example, in 1901 ashley h. th orndike pointed out that fletcher frequently employed the contracted form “’em” rather than “them” (24), while w. w. greg drew attention to fletcher’s propensity for the pronominal form “ye”, rather than “you” (1905: 4). similarly, scholars like w. e. farnham were able to discriminate fletcher’s hand through his use of contractions like “i’th” and “o’th” (1916: 326–358). between 1956 and 1962, cyrus hoy built upon these fi ndings and provided the most comprehensive study of fletcher’s canon in the history of the fi eld. hoy’s delineation 46 darren freebury-jones of authorial contributions to co-authored fletcher plays was based largely on aforementioned synonym preferences and favoured contractions. however, the creation of large electronic corpora enables researchers to generate results in a fraction of the time that older scholars like hoy would take. for instance, pervez rizvi’s publicly accessible electronic corpus of 527 plays dated between 1552 and 1657, titled collocations and n-grams,2 automatically tags all words in early modern texts, enabling users to ascertain the ratios for synonym preferences and contractions. as well as examining single words, scholars like fleay, oliphant, and hoy studied verbal parallelisms in order to identify fletcher’s idiosyncratic thought processes and formulaic utterances. ian lancashire notes that word “chunks”, or phrases, “are the linguistic units we work with most: they fi t into working memory and resemble what we store associatively” (2010: 180), while brian vickers explains that where earlier linguistic theories held that users of natural language selected single words to be placed within a syntactical and semantic structure, it now became clear that we also use groups of words, partly as a labour-saving device, partly as a function of memory. such verbal economy is particularly prevalent in the drama written for the public theatres, where constraints of time demand speedy composition, characters fall into a set of roles with attendant speech patterns, and the verse line easily admits ready-made phrases. it is hardly surprising that many dramatists frequently repeat themselves (2014: 111). th e results in rizvi’s collocations and n-grams are fully automated and enable scholars to check for every contiguous word sequence shared between plays. searches of the lemmatized texts allow a wider range of phrasal matches to be discovered than by searches using original spelling or the unlemmatized forms of words. in corpus linguistics, the root form of each word (i. e. the lemma) is counted, so that “kind hearts” is matched with “kind-hearted”, to off er one example. without the aid of modern electronic corpora, older scholars could never claim that an utterance they associated with an authorial candidate was unique or commonplace, but we can now ascertain exactly how many times a phrase appears in extant drama of the period, and in which plays. as we shall see, there are several ways of examining the data in rizvi’s collocations and n-grams, which provides a powerful tool for distinguishing dramatists. 2 available online at http://shakespearestext.com/can/. 47john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman in 1932, muriel st. clare byrne demonstrated that verbal parallelisms can off er valuable evidence in authorship attribution studies, provided scholars adhere to the following criteria: parallels may be due to plagiarism, either conscious, unconscious, or coincidental, rather than common authorship; mere verbal parallelism is of little value in comparison to parallelism of thought coupled with some verbal parallelism; and mere accumulation of parallels is of no signifi cance (24). th ese criteria still hold true, despite changes in the philological basis of attribution studies. scholars operating in the pre-electronic age were able to identify dramatists’ hands through the traditional discipline of reading plays closely and highlighting instances of authorial self-repetition. such approaches, paying close attention to the verbal fabric of plays, remain essential in authorship attribution. th ere have been considerable advances in statistical analyses of early modern plays, with the inclusion or exclusion of texts in recent and forthcoming editions of the works of writers like th omas kyd, th omas nashe, shakespeare, john marston, john ford, and aphra behn dependent, at least in part, on large-scale computational attribution work. th e studies underpinning these editions tend to rely on online databases such as literature online (lion),3 early english books online (eebo),4 and collocations and n-grams in order to uncover minute details of poetic texts and therefore establish homogeneity between dubious works and the corpora of authorial candidates. th e most convincing contributions to the fi eld anchor such data-driven approaches, which off er more precise methodologies for work conducted by attributionists over the centuries, in an understanding of theatrical and historical context, as well as sensitive readings of dramatic works.5 many of hoy’s theories continue to present insoluble diffi culties. in the case of th e noble gentleman, the play’s “decidedly un-fletcherian” linguistic pattern suggested to him that beaumont wrote the original play in 1605 or 1606 (1958: 94–95). however, fredson bowers has pointed out that “hoy does not mention that the play could as easily have been a collaboration from the start” or that “it could have been completed by another hand aft er fletcher’s death”. although bowers was not willing to “say who had been the other author” (1976: 117), 3 available online at http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk. 4 available online at http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home. 5 for a survey of the history and current state of the fi eld of authorship attribution studies, and recent applications of statistical methods to early modern texts, see my essay: “‘when a man hath a familiar style’: an introduction to authorship studies in early modern drama and literature” (freebury-jones 2020). 48 darren freebury-jones he suggested that hoy “has slipped in his interpretation of the statistics”, for the “linguistic habits in the text” that hoy examined are not “distinctively beaumont’s”, who was anyway “eclectic in his preferences” (118). recently, i reinvestigated the layers of collaboration and revision in fletcher’s corpus and found that many plays that hoy ascribed in part to beaumont were composed aft er that dramatist had ceased writing (c. 1613), or even aft er he died in 1616 (freebury-jones, forthcoming). for instance, while hoy attributed 14 plays in part or wholly to beaumont, my researches have led me to assign 8 plays to fletcher and beaumont as co-authored works: th e woman hater (1606); cupid’s revenge (1607); philaster, or love lies a-bleeding (1609); th e coxcomb (1609); th e scornful lady (1610); a king and no king (1611); th e maid’s tragedy; and th e captain (1612). as martin wiggins puts it: “diff erentiating the ‘shadow beaumont’ from the real one would be a useful task for future authorship research” (2015: 518). following up wiggins’s suggestion, i discovered that many play portions that hoy gave to beaumont were reliably attributable to playwrights like nathan field. wiggins agrees with scholars like weber that “in all likelihood, fletcher died leaving” th e noble gentleman “unfi nished, like th e fair maid of the inn [...] but in a later state of preparation. if so, there are obvious reasons for the disruption of fletcher’s usual style: the play would have been completed by another hand, probably concurrently with the work on th e fair maid undertaken by webster, massinger, and ford” (2017: 166). wiggins provides a cogent survey of arguments that the play belongs to an earlier stage of fletcher’s writing career and concludes that the “date rests on the single undeniable piece of external evidence: herbert’s licence. herbert usually mentioned when he was relicensing an old play [...] therefore, prima facie, the play was new when licensed” (166). i concur with the view that another dramatist completed the play and in this article i examine the fundamental principles of dramatic authorial style – namely prosody, linguistic habits, and verbal repetitions – in comparison to other playwrights working for the king’s men at the time that the play was completed. as we have seen, the theory that beaumont contributed to th e noble gentleman is unsustainable in light of revised chronology. we must instead look to a dramatist who was writing for the king’s men and was free to work on the play in the latter half of 1625. firstly, it is necessary to ask ourselves: what is at stake in attributing parts of this play? i propose that ascertaining the authorship of th e noble gentleman will off er a major contribution to our understanding of the king’s men repertoire and the ways in which plays of the period were composed, and will enhance knowledge on the impact of revision, or, in this case, posthumous collaboration, on authorial stylistic habits. 49john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman moreover, if we can establish the identity of fletcher’s collaborator, we can deepen our understanding of that particular writer’s stylistic range, augment his dramatic canon, and situate this play in the context of his career as a king’s men playwright. th is study therefore has the potential to open up several new lines of enquiry for co-authored plays of the period. to begin with, i compared the linguistic profi le that hoy provided for portions he gave to beaumont to all feasible candidate playwrights. searching the spreadsheets for “1-grams”, meaning single words, in pervez rizvi’s corpus of 527 plays, i found that the “non-fletcher” profi le was not unlike john webster’s in that both playwrights scarcely use “has” (there is just 1 instance in the “non-fletcher” portions), “does” (3 instances in the “non-fletcher” portions), or “’em” (3 instances), but that webster’s characteristic contractions – like “for’s”, “for’t”, “in’s”, “in’t”, “o’th”, “on’t”, “upon’t”, and “’s” – have lower rates of recurrence in th e noble gentleman. th omas middleton satisfi es the circumstantial requirements and, indeed, wiggins suggests that the “possibility of contributions by th omas middleton might be worth investigating” (2017: 166). however, hoy’s fi ndings for “hath”, “doth”, and the preference for “them” in th e noble gentleman do not suggest middleton’s habits, for he appears to have overwhelmingly preferred “has”, “does”, and “’em”. wiggins notes that the “linguistic markers for middleton, distinctive in his early work, tend to be weaker in his later writing” (166), yet the overall pattern in this play is poles apart. other potential candidates for fletcher’s posthumous collaborator are robert davenport, henry shirley, and richard brome. davenport has been described as “one of the most obscure dramatists of the caroline era” by david kathman. th e “fi rst certain record of davenport comes on 10 april 1624, when th e historye of henry the first, written by damport was licensed for the king’s men by the master of the revels”. th at play, along with “another lost play, henry the 2nd”, was “entered in the stationers’ register in 1653”. kathman also notes that on “14 october 1624 another play of davenport’s, th e city night-cap, was licensed for lady elizabeth’s men at the cockpit”, while “davenport’s next known play, king john and matilda, is a reworking of chettle and munday’s death of robert earl of huntington”. an additional play that has been attributed to davenport, a new trick to cheat the devil (1626), shares an overwhelming preference for “hath” over “has” (76:1), “doth” over “does” (16:1), and “them” over “’em” (43:0) with fletcher’s collaborator on th e noble gentleman, but davenport prefers “has” (36 instances as opposed to 29 "hath") in th e city nightcap (1624) and has an equal ratio of “doth” and “does” (3:3) in king john and matilda (1628); all of his plays display a marked preference for “you” over “ye” and “them” over “’em”. 50 darren freebury-jones kathman observes that “shirley’s one surviving play, th e martyred soldier, is a christian martyr play set among the medieval vandals and goths”, which was “licensed in 1622–1623 for lady elizabeth’s men at the cockpit and then for palsgrave’s men at the fortune, but it was not entered in the stationers’ register until 15 february 1638 and was published that year”. he elaborates that “four plays were attributed to shirley in a stationers’ register entry of 1653 but are now lost. th ese include ‘th e duke of guise’ and ‘giraldo, the constant lover’, about which nothing more is known; ‘th e dumb bawd of venice’, which was performed by the king’s men at court in 1628; and ‘th e spanish duke of lerma’, which was owned by the king’s men in 1641”. th e martyred soldier (1622) reveals an overwhelming propensity for “you” over “ye” (227:4) and “them” over “’em” (43:13), but shirley’s predilection for “has” over “hath” (30:11) and “does” over “doth” (7:4) does not fi t the linguistic profi le for th e noble gentleman sample. brome’s extant dramatic corpus is much larger than davenport’s or shirley’s. martin butler notes that “at some time during the 1620s brome moved into theatre on his own account. in 1623 a now lost play, ‘a fault in friendship’, ‘by young johnson, and brome’, was licensed for the prince’s men, who were performing at the curtain”, but “brome’s writing career took off in 1629, when he achieved two big successes with london’s premier company, the king’s men: ‘th e lovesick maid, or, th e honour of young ladies’ (licensed on 9 february) and ‘th e northern lass’ (fi rst acted on 29 july, published in 1632)”. brome’s fi rst known work for the king’s men was therefore written in 1629, but he seems to have been writing for the stage from 1623 and is thus a feasible candidate for th e noble gentleman. nevertheless, all of brome’s plays display a marked preference for “has” and “does”, while there is some vacillation in terms of “them” and “’em”. his linguistic profi le, like middleton and shirley’s, is quite unlike that found in th e noble gentleman. although i tested webster’s linguistic profi le, he is one of the least likely candidates mentioned above, given that he would have been working on th e fair maid of the inn (1626) at the time according to wiggins’s chronology, as the play’s main co-author. another writer working on that play – but whose contributions were much less extensive than webster’s – is john ford, who also favoured “hath”, “doth” (with the sole exception of th e lady’s trial, which contains 9 instances of “does” as opposed to 6 examples of “doth”), and “them” in each of his plays. i tested the “non-fletcher” scenes in th e noble gentleman against brian vickers’s mean values for linguistic preferences in ford’s soleauthored plays (2017: 95). vickers established these values by dividing the total fi gure for each marker by the number of unassisted ford plays. i tabulate these markers below: 51john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman table 1. linguistic markers in “beaumont” portions of the noble gentleman and ford plays marker ford th e noble gentleman collaborator ye 11 9 you 288 225 hath 40 17 doth 9 12 ’em 10 3 th em 23 15 i’th 4 2 o’th 1 1 h’as 3 1 ’s 0.3 1 to my eyes, there is a high degree of community between the fi gures found in portions attributed to fletcher’s collaborator on th e noble gentleman, and the mean values for ford’s 8 unassisted plays. we might also note the presence of a contraction that h. d. sykes identifi ed as characteristic of ford (1924: 188): “d’ee” (oft en modernized as “d’ye”). however, the form, “d’ee”, or “d’ye”, is certainly not unique to ford: it can be found in plays by all of our candidate dramatists with the exception of shirley’s sole extant drama. nevertheless, we should note that the formulation from 3.4 of th e noble gentleman, “d’ee mock me”, co-occurs with ’tis pity she’s a whore (1631) and is comparable to “d’ee mock my parentage” and “why d’ee mock my sorrows” from th e fair maid of the inn and th e spanish gypsy (1623) respectively. th e only other playwright in rizvi’s corpus who employs the bigram (two-word phrase), “d’ye mock”, is james shirley, who was not writing for the king’s men when th e noble gentleman was composed. it is also worth noting that the exclamation “pew” occurs in the “non-fletcher” portions of th e noble gentleman. ford, middleton, and brome employ this word according to rizvi’s database (ford in love’s sacrifi ce and th e lady’s trial; middleton in th e puritan; and brome in th e weeding of covent garden), whereas davenport and shirley do not. on the basis of overall linguistic preferences, ford fi ts the profi le better than the other king’s men candidate dramatists. in 1960, ants oras studied “the phenomenon of pauses” and the “positions they appear in the verse, and in what ratios compared with other positions in the line” (1–2). he suggested that “less conscious pause patterns” could 52 darren freebury-jones help to answer questions of authorship (2). oras recorded patterns for several elizabethan and jacobean dramatists “formed by all the pauses indicated by internal punctuation”, which he termed a-patterns, as well as patterns for “pauses shown by punctuation marks other than commas” (b-patterns), and all “breaks within the pentameter line dividing speeches by diff erent characters” (c-patterns) (2). oras’s results for a-patterns, which are “formed by all the pauses indicated by internal punctuation” (3), show “the greatest continuity” in terms of authorial metrical development (13) and are ascertained by dividing the number of punctuation marks, or pauses, aft er each of the 9 positions in verse lines by the total number of pauses in a play or portion of a play. oras provided raw fi gures for the plays he examined, as well as the percentages for each of the 9 pausal positions. th e striking similarities in patterns for same-author plays examined by oras reveal that punctuation marks, be they authorial or compositorial (oras examined the earliest editions available for each play), “keep within the rhythmical climate of the time” (3), and are thus useful for identifying playwrights’ prosodic characteristics. it is unfortunate for our purpose that oras recorded only c-fi gures for brome, ford, middleton, and webster’s sole-authored plays (85–87), i. e. “breaks within the pentameter line dividing speeches by diff erent characters” (3). readers who consult oras’s data will fi nd that breaks dividing speeches occur most frequently aft er syllable 6 in all of these playwrights’ works, with the sole exception of middleton’s earlier play th e phoenix (1604). i reproduced oras’s method and recorded c-patterns for the portions assigned to a collaborator in th e noble gentleman. although this analysis is based on just 76 pauses in total, it is suffi cient to identify a pattern: table 2. ants oras c-patterns in “beaumont” portions of the noble gentleman title first half even 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 th e noble gentleman collaborator 55.3 61.8 1.3 10.5 2.6 26.3 14.5 21.1 19.7 3.9 – th e peak aft er the fourth syllable in th e noble gentleman would be anomalous in the canons of brome, ford, middleton, and webster (oras 1960: 85–87). we should also note that the pattern is quite unlike beaumont’s (oras 1960, 85), whose sole-authored play th e knight of the burning pestle (1607) has a peak aft er syllable 6 and a fi gure of 14.5 for pauses in the fi rst half of the line (i. e. syllables 1–4). in fact, the fi gure of 55.3 for these portions is higher than that 53john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman found in the work of any candidate dramatist oras surveyed. it is conceivable that these portions contain fletcherian material revised by his posthumous collaborator, and fletcher’s fi gures for syllable 4 in his sole-authored plays are oft en higher than other candidate dramatists, according to oras’s data for c-patterns (1960: 84), which could aff ect results. however, this still does not account for the high fi gure found for pauses in the fi rst half of the line, for none of fletcher’s sole-authored or co-authored works reach so high a percentage (oras 1960: 84–85). perhaps a theory of overwriting could account for the high percentage for this fi gure, as the presence of two hands in passages examined by oras’s method could produce results that are not representative of any single authorial candidate writing alone. fortunately, vickers has recorded a-patterns in the poem a funeral elegy (1612), which is now universally attributed to ford. th is enables us to compare results for at least one of our candidate dramatists. as noted above, a-patterns give us a better insight into authorial metrical development than pauses dividing pentameter lines distributed between speakers, although the caveat about fletcherian material above still stands, and we should acknowledge that a funeral elegy was written much earlier than th e noble gentleman and in a very diff erent genre. nevertheless, i reproduce vickers’s calculations (2002: 156–157) in comparison to my own calculations for the “non-fletcherian” portions of th e noble gentleman: table 3. ants oras a-patterns in “beaumont” portions of the noble gentleman and ford’s a funeral elegy title first half even 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a funeral elegy 41.4 68.5 2.0 7.7 2.0 23.4 15.5 31.9 11.3 5.6 0.8 th e noble gentleman collaborator 48.9 56.3 2.5 4.9 5.8 20.4 15.3 24.5 17.3 6.4 2.9 my analysis of a-patterns is based on a total of 485 pauses, a far greater amount of data than c-patterns aff ord us. we can see that the overall pattern between ford’s poem and the “non-fletcherian” portions of th e noble gentleman is akin in almost every respect, with the exception of the third syllable, which is slightly elevated above the second in that play. th e pause profi le of these portions could therefore belong to ford. 54 darren freebury-jones as i alluded to earlier, marina tarlinskaja is a prosodist who examines every quantifi able aspect of authorial versifi cation. she notes that “unstressed grammatical monosyllables (the, to, and, is) tend to cling to the following or the preceding adjacent stressed lexical (content) word” (2014: 19). th ese clinging monosyllables are called “clitics”, and “potentially stressed clitics that precede their stressed ‘host’ and, as it were, lean forward” are known as “proclitics”, while “those that follow a stressed word” and “lean backwards” are called “enclitics” (21). tarlinskaja also examines feminine endings in english blank verse drama, as well as masculine endings (lines concluding in stressed syllables), and she has provided detailed analyses of the verse habits of writers like fletcher, ford, and middleton during the course of her career. i sent marina tarlinskaja the sample of text attributed to fletcher’s collaborator by hoy. she noted that parts of the sample closely resemble fletcher in their frequent use of enclitics – a strong fletcherian marker – and the examples she discovered, such as “as every good wife” and “to take up wenches” do “look fletcherian”. tarlinskaja concluded that “fletcher is almost defi nitely there” in the portions assigned to a collaborator, but that these portions do not “catch all the features of fletcher’s style. if it is fletcher, why not quite fletcher? if it is not fletcher, why so many fletcher features?” a possible answer to tarlinskaja’s queries would be that fletcher’s hand can be traced in stretches of text that were overwritten by another author. tarlinskaja was confi dent that in 4.3–5 “there are two authors” and that “the second author is not middleton, for sure”. while one of the authors “could be fletcher”, the verse style in these scenes overall “is not” that of “webster” and more closely resembles “somebody like ford”. tarlinskaja noted signifi cant diff erences in the use of enclitics between diff erent scenes and suggested that “the diff erence between the results” could be due to “diff erent authorship”. th e “non-fletcherian” author uses enclitics sparingly, and though “enclitics do exist” they are not employed “in the fletcher way: not line-fi nal, for example”. th e anonymous author’s use of “feminine endings, mostly simple, fi t into ford’s style”, which is “more smooth”, and there are “too many masculine endings” for fletcher’s usual style. th ere are “no heavy feminine endings at all: not a fletcherian feature” in the passages confi dently attributed to a diff erent author. tarlinskaja concluded that it is “very likely” that ford’s hand is present in these portions.6 further work on the prosody and versifi cation habits of plays by ford, webster, middleton, brome, davenport, and shirley in comparison to th e noble gentleman would be a desideratum. 6 email correspondence, 18 dec. 2019. 55john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman th e remainder of this essay will focus on word “chunks”, or phrasal repetitions in early modern drama. in rizvi’s database, a phrase four words in length will contain diff erent types of n-grams (contiguous word sequences): one tetragram (four-word phrase); two trigrams (three-word phrases); three bigrams; and four single words. th ese are what rizvi would call “formal n-grams”. th e four-word phrase itself would also constitute what rizvi calls a “maximal” n-gram, in which case it would only be counted once. rizvi notes on his website that, having tested 86 uncontested plays in his corpus, “unique n-grams are better than all n-grams” for correctly identifying authors, despite the fact that n-grams unfi ltered for rarity “provide a vastly greater amount of data”. he also establishes that “unique” formal “3-grams” are the most reliable phrasal structures for attribution purposes and that his tests using these markers correctly identify all sole-authored fletcher plays. users can download summary spreadsheets that rank play pairs in the electronic corpus according to all maximal n-gram matches, as well as unique maximal phrasal matches (i. e. occurring in only two plays in the corpus), whilst taking account of composite word counts. th e rankings are determined by the weighted sum of indices, i. e. the number of matches shared between two plays is divided by the combined word count of that play pair. th e power of rizvi’s database for distinguishing early modern dramatists is evident when he points out that, in the case of th e faithful shepherdess (1608), only “two names appear at or near the top” of the summary spreadsheet: “john fletcher and francis beaumont. if we had no external evidence of fletcher’s authorship, these n-gram counts would quickly identify the most likely candidates for us to investigate”. unfortunately, the sample size of the “non-fletcherian” portions of th e noble gentleman was too small to provide reliable results for statistical formal n-gram tests involving candidate authors’ whole canons. th e test involving unique trigrams assigned these portions to webster while correctly identifying the author of every play tested, with the exception of middleton’s a yorkshire tragedy (1605), which it also gave to webster. th ese results might tell us more about the diffi culties of examining small samples (middleton’s play is very short in comparison to other plays tested) than authorship. with the exception of middleton’s domestic tragedy, all sole-authored plays by webster, middleton, ford, and brome were correctly assigned by this test. th e problem therefore seems to be the sample of text extracted from th e noble gentleman and the possibility of passages containing islets of fletcher, just as hoy deemed the fletcherian portions to be of mixed authorship. th e scattered evidence for fletcher’s hand in the text is interesting in itself, in that it tells us something about the composition of the play and runs counter to the notion of early 56 darren freebury-jones modern dramatists writing scene by scene, following their plot outlines in a largely linear arrangement. shirley and davenport’s extant canons were too small to test according to this method, and of course the possibility remains that the collaborator could have been an unknown dramatist. given that much of the play seems to be of mixed authorship, we can consult rizvi’s spreadsheet for plays sharing maximal n-grams with th e noble gentleman as a whole in order to determine the most likely collaborator. in doing so, we fi nd that ford’s love’s sacrifi ce (1633) is ranked fourth, higher than any text written by other feasible authorship candidates. middleton’s a trick to catch the old one (1605) is ranked eighth in rizvi’s database. brome’s th e queen and concubine (1635) is ranked at 18, th e novella (1632) at 35, while his a mad couple well matched (1639) is at 37. webster’s top play is th e white devil (1612), ranked thirtieth. shirley and davenport’s plays share few verbal affi nities with th e noble gentleman: shirley’s th e martyred soldier is ranked 410 and davenport’s a new trick to cheat the devil is at 497. on the basis of this single-play test, ford is the most likely contributor to th e noble gentleman. extremely rare phrases in rizvi’s corpus shared between the noble gentleman and ford plays include the hexagram (six-word unit), “hath by me sent you this”, and the bigram, “prithee servant”, both unique to th e lover’s melancholy (1628); the distinctive trigrams, “shape and cutting” and “near the crown”, which uniquely match perkin warbeck (1632); the tetragram, “with our great master”, which provides a unique match with th e broken heart (1629); the tetragrams, “a prince that thus”, “sir ’tis well now”, and “i shall observe them”, all unique to love’s sacrifi ce; the tetragram, “this i had prevented”, unique to ’tis pity she’s a whore; the trigram, “your noble hand”, which can be found in th e fancies chaste and noble (1636) and just one other play; and the tetragram, “kiss and kiss again”, which co-occurs with th e queen (1627) and one other play performed between 1552 and 1657. below, i tabulate results for the top-ranked play written by each candidate author in comparison to th e noble gentleman. i restrict my analysis of formal n-grams to rizvi’s weighted fi gures for unique trigram matches because, as i mentioned earlier, rizvi has shown on his website that these are the most reliable phrases for identifying authors, having correctly classifi ed 98% of a corpus of uncontested plays. i also provide results for all unique maximal matches because, as macdonald p. jackson observes: “maximal counts of all unique matches, whatever their length” can “sometimes” perform “rather better and sometimes with about the same degree of success” as “unique formal 3-grams” (2019: 212). following jackson’s approach to rizvi’s data, the “weighted fi gures are multiplied by 10,000 so as to avoid the many zeros before decimal places” (206). 57john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman table 4. top-ranked plays by candidate dramatists in pervez rizvi’s database according to unique formal trigrams and all unique maximal matches author play unique formal trigrams all unique maximal matches ford love’s sacrifi ce 2.96 3.46 middleton a trick to catch the old one 1.59 3.18 webster th e white devil 1.80 2.47 brome th e queen and concubine 1.17 2.75 davenport a new trick to cheat the devil 0.25 0.25 shirley th e martyred soldier 0.00 0.55 we can see that ford’s top play has stronger affi nities according to both weighting measures than plays by other king’s men dramatists. we should also note that the phraseological evidence for davenport and shirley’s participation in th e noble gentleman is very weak on this basis. th us, according to my analysis of unique formal trigrams and all unique maximal n-grams, ford is more likely than the other candidate playwrights to have had a hand in th e noble gentleman. it is striking that, to the best of my knowledge, no scholar has ever considered ford’s candidacy. i now wish to explore the implications of an attribution to ford in terms of his career as a professional dramatist. firstly, we should acknowledge that the lack of personal names for characters in th e noble gentleman, which wiggins considers “a distinctively middletonian trait” (2017: 166), is unlike ford, whose names are oft en carefully sourced and of a literary nature. however, this might tell us more about the play’s composition than its authorship: th e noble gentleman is a posthumously collaborative play and ford’s contributions might have been concurrent with his work on th e fair maid of the inn; these plays were licensed just 12 days apart. th e fair maid of the inn was licensed by sir henry herbert as fletcher’s play on 22 january 1626. hoy claimed that he could detect fletcher’s hand, albeit heavily overwritten by ford, in 4.1 of this play, on the basis of certain lines having a “fletcherian ring” (1960: 101). vickers provides a detailed study of philip massinger, webster, and ford’s hands in the play, but does not elaborate on fletcher’s purported contribution (2017: 288–308). in my investigation of fletcher’s proposed collaborations (freebury-jones, forthcoming), i discovered that webster’s th e devil’s law case (1619) shares the most verbal affi nities with this play in rizvi’s corpus, followed by massinger’s th e great 58 darren freebury-jones duke of florence (1627) and th e bashful lover (1636). th e top-ranked fletcher play is th e humorous lieutenant (1619) at 11, but none of its unique maximal phrases co-occur with 4.1. fletcher’s entire sole-authored dramatic corpus shares just 4 unique matches with this scene, none of which are particularly remarkable when examined in context. on the other hand, the verbal texture is overwhelmingly ford’s: th e queen shares 4 unique phrases, as does ’tis pity she’s a whore; love’s sacrifi ce shares 1 unique phrase; perkin warbeck shares 3; and th e lady’s trial (1638) shares 1. several of these parallels are highly individual combinations of thought and language. i have yet to encounter any compelling evidence for fletcher’s hand in this text, though it is conceivable that he was involved in plotting the play before his death. it is therefore possible that ford was engaging with fletcher’s material on two collaborative plays at the same time. we might ask ourselves: if fletcher, who died in 1625, were unable to fi nish th e noble gentleman, why would ford be given the job rather than a more experienced king’s men dramatist? th e answer could be circumstantial: webster (appius and virginia), massinger (a new way to pay old debts), and middleton (a civic pageant written to commemorate king charles i’s entry into london) seem to have had projects in hand at this time, whereas ford did not. it is also possibly signifi cant that ford was fi nally entrusted with sole authorship of th e queen during this period of his writing career. more research is required on this thorny attribution problem, given that there are limited prosodic and verbal data available, especially for dramatists with smaller canons, such as davenport and shirley. having opened up new lines of enquiry, it is to be hoped that future investigators will conduct further work on the stylistic habits of dramatists writing for the king’s men during this period. whereas this article has argued that beaumont is not a feasible candidate for fletcher’s collaborator on th e noble gentleman, it seems fair to say that, on the basis of linguistic preferences, prosody, verbal repetitions, and circumstantial evidence, ford’s candidacy is strong. 59john fletcher’s collaborator on the noble gentleman references bowers, fredson (ed.) 1976. th e dramatic works in the beaumont and fletcher canon: volume th ree, 10 vols. cambridge: cambridge university press. butler, martin. brome, richard (c. 1590–1652). in: oxford dictionary of national biography. 4 oct. 2007. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3503 (accessed june 4, 2020). byrne, muriel st. clare 1932. bibliographic clues in collaborate plays. in: library, 4th series 13(1), 21–48. https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s4-xiii.1.21 dyce, alexander (ed.) 1846. th e works of beaumont and fletcher: volume ten, 11 vols. london: bradbury and evans. fleay, frederick g. 1874. on metrical tests as applied to dramatic poetry. part ii. fletcher, beaumont, massinger. in: new shakespere society’s transactions 1, 51–72. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/record/000054359 freebury-jones, darren 2020. ‘when a man hath a familiar style’: an introduction to authorship studies in early modern drama and literature. in: american notes and queries 33(2/3), 112–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769x.2019.1677210 freebury-jones, darren (forthcoming). authorship attributions in the fletcher canon. greg, walter w. 1905. th e elder brother. in: a. h. bullen (ed.), th e works of francis beaumont and john fletcher: volume two, 4 vols. london: g. bell and sons. hoy, cyrus 1958. th e shares of fletcher and his collaborators in the beaumont and fletcher canon. in: studies in bibliography 8, 85–106. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40371173 hoy, cyrus 1960. th e shares of fletcher and his collaborators in the beaumont and fletcher canon. in: studies in bibliography 13, 77–108. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40371277 jackson, macdonald p. 2019. cyril tourneur and th e honest man’s fortune. in: medieval and renaissance drama 32, 203–218. kathman, david. davenport, robert (fl . 1624–1640). in: oxford dictionary of national biography. 23 sep. 2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/7204 (accessed june 4, 2020). kathman, david. shirley, henry (1591x7–1627). in: oxford dictionary of national biography. 23 sep. 2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25425 (accessed june 4, 2020). 60 darren freebury-jones lancashire, ian 2010. forgetful muses: reading the author in the text. london: university of toronto press. oliphant, ernest h. c. 1927. th e plays of beaumont and fletcher: an attempt to determine th eir respective shares and the shares of others. new haven: yale university press. oras, ants 1953. “extra monosyllables” in henry viii and the problem of authorship. in: journal of english and germanic philology 52(2), 198–213. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27713526 oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. gainesville, florida: university of florida press. rizvi, pervez. collocations and n-grams. initial launch oct. 2017. http://shakespearestext.com/can/ (accessed nov. 11, 2019). sykes, henry dugdale 1924. sidelights on elizabethan drama. new york: routledge. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versifi cation of elizabethan drama 1561–1642. farnham: ashgate. th orndike, ashley h. 1901. th e infl uence of beaumont and fletcher on shakespeare. worcester, ma: wood. vickers, brian 2002. “counterfeiting” shakespeare: evidence, authorship and john ford’s funerall elegye. cambridge: cambridge university press. vickers, brian 2014. the two authors of edward iii. in: holland, peter (ed.), shakespeare’s collaborative work (shakespeare survey 67). cambridge: cambridge university press, 102–118. https://doi.org/10.1017/sso9781107775572.008 vickers, brian (ed.) 2017. th e collected works of john ford: volume two, 5 vols. oxford: oxford university press. wiggins, martin 2012–. british drama 1533–1642: a catalogue. oxford: oxford university press . wilson jr, robert f. 1968. francis beaumont and the ‘noble gentleman’. in: english studies. new series 49, 523–529. versification and authorship attribution. a pilot study on czech, german, spanish, and english poetry petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich*1 abstract: this article describes pilot experiments performed as one part of a longterm project examining the possibilities for using versification analysis to determine the authorships of poetic texts. since we are addressing this article to both stylometry experts and experts in the study of verse, we first introduce in detail the common classifiers used in contemporary stylometry (burrows’ delta, argamon’s quadratic delta, smith-aldridge’s cosine delta, and the support vector machine) and explain how they work via graphic examples. we then provide an evaluation of these classifiers’ performance when used with the versification features found in czech, german, spanish, and english poetry. we conclude that versification is a reasonable stylometric marker, the strength of which is comparable to the other markers traditionally used in stylometry (such as the frequencies of the most frequent words and the frequencies of the most frequent character n-grams). keywords: authorship attribution; stylometry; versification; czech verse; german verse; spanish verse; english verse 1. introduction the most frequent task type that we encounter in authorship attribution (aa) begins with the following situation: we have a text of unknown or doubted authorship (the target text) and a set of candidate authors. contemporary stylometry has developed extremely accurate and sophisticated methods for handling this task type. their underlying logic is that one can determine the author by measuring the degree of stylistic similarity between the target text and specific texts written by candidate authors. various style markers are taken into account for this purpose: frequencies of words, frequencies of parts of * authors’ addresses: petr plecháč, czech academy of sciences, institute of czech literature, na florenci 1420/3, 11000 praha 1, czech republic. e-mail: plechac@ucl.cas.cz; klemens bobenhausen, metricalizer, erwinstr. 76, 79112 freiburg im brsg., germany. e-mail: bobenhausen@gmail.com; benjamin hammerich, metricalizer, erwinstr. 76, 79112 freiburg im brsg., germany. e-mail: benjamin.hammerich@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 5.2, 2018, 29–54 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.02 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.02 30 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich speech, frequencies of character n-grams, frequencies of collocations, etc. one important aspect of style (of one important form of literature) is however so far completely disregarded by stylometry, and that aspect is versification. in this article, we first argue why versification can and should be employed within the aa process (section 2), and then touch upon the history of quantitative aa methods and provide a detailed description of those we employ in our own work (section 3).1 finally, we report the results of our experiments comparing ordinary aa analysis and versification-based analysis of czech, german, spanish, and english poetry texts (sections 4 and 5). 2. motivations there are several reasons for assuming that versification analysis may be useful in aa; to name a few of the most important: • most of the features used in stylometry (such as words and n-grams) amount to what are known in statistics as “rare events”. therefore, rather large text samples are required.2 however, in practice these are rarely available in practice for aa of poetry texts – usually a single poem or just a few are in question, not an entire collection. on the other hand, versification features are usually boolean (e. g. stressed/unstressed position), or can take on only a limited number of values (e. g. rhythmic types), and thus may be analyzed even with significantly smaller samples. • versification is much more topic-independent than the usual stylometric features (words, word and character n-grams, etc.) – vocabulary may change considerably across poems of different genres written by the same author, but we may assume that their rhythm and rhyming technique will remain more or less stable. • some verse experts have stated that rhythm is more complicated to forge than lexicon.3 1 a more detailed history of the field may be found in juola 2006; koppel, schler, argamon 2009; stamatatos 2009. 2 eder 2013 states that 5000 words are a minimum sample, but eder revises this estimation in eder 2017 to make it highly dependent on the composition of the corpus. 3 compare: “rhythm is inertia created by the chain of verses. and this inertia is individual for every poet. it is easy to forge a word. but in order to forge a verse rhythm the forger has to study the imitated rhythm very hard, and [forgers are usually] not prepared for this” (tomashevsky 1923/2008: 238; english translation from lotman 2015: 145). 31versification and authorship attribution • some stylometrists propose combining different features within a single analysis, e. g. the most frequent words + character n-grams + word n-grams (cf. mikros, perifanos 2013; eder 2011), but the frequencies of these features are strongly correlated. versification, on the other hand, should be almost entirely independent of these. we thus may expect the combined analysis of lexicon and versification to be more powerful than the analysis of lexicon alone. 3. history and related works many scholars trace the origins of quantitative approaches to aa to the works of t. c. mendenhall (1841–1924), namely his papers “the characteristic curves of composition” (1887) and “a mechanical solution of a literary problem” (1901). in the first work, he suggests the capturing of the peculiarities of an authorial style via the distribution of the relative frequencies of word-lengths measured by number of characters. according to mendenhall, if the samples are large enough (he recommends 100,000 words), the curve defined by these values should be more or less stable in the works of one author, but should have different shapes in works by different authors. in the second work, he employed this method within a real-world question of authorship – the work attributed to william shakespeare. mendenhall compares the shape of the curves extracted from shakespeare’s works with those of francis bacon and christopher marlowe (see figures 1 and 2) and cautiously concludes that bacon could not have written shakespeare’s work, but that there is a strong evidence that marlowe actually did so (1901: 104–105). the differences in the curves of shakespeare and bacon were, however, later found to have been caused by the comparing of the versified texts of the former with the non-versified texts of the latter (see williams 1975), and mendenhall’s method was swept off the table. it is worth noting that long before mendenhall’s lexical analysis, there were attempts to shed some light upon the authorship of shakespeare’s works based on the quantification of verse rhythm and rhyme. these included malone 1787; weber 1812: 166; spedding 1850; and especially the works of new shakespeare society members such as ingram 1874, and fleay 1874, 1876. but these studies seem not to have had a real impact on the later development of stylometry (cf. grieve 2005; grzybek 2014). 32 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich figure 1. relative frequencies (per mille) of word-lengths measured by number of characters in works of w. shakespeare (dashed) and f. bacon (full line). source: mendenhall 1901: 104 (facsimile). figure 2. relative frequencies (per mille) of word-lengths measured by number of characters in works of w. shakespeare (dashed) and c. marlowe (full line). source: mendenhall 1901: 105 (facsimile). during the first half of the 20th century, many textual characteristics – such as sentence length (yule 1938) and the measurement of vocabulary richness (simpson 1949) – were proposed for the purposes of authorship attribution (see juola 2006: 240–241). what all these methods share in common is a basis in univariate statistical analysis. although they may characterize text by a set of numerical values (as in mendenhall’s case above) rather than by a single one, the attribution itself is based on the comparison of single values (e. g.: shakespeare uses 4-letter words more often than bacon), not on the information that may be extracted from the whole. none of these early methods are considered reliable today, as has been shown in many comparative studies (e. g. grieve 2007). since the groundbreaking study by mosteller and wallace (1964) on the authorship of the federalist papers, modern stylometry has turned to the much more reliable multivariate approach. various approaches have been proposed that employ various methods of multidimensional statistics and machine learning and rely on complex textual characteristics such as the frequencies of the most frequent words, character n-grams, and pos-tags (to name just a few). versification, however, has not been taken into account. however, despite the lack of interest by mainstream stylometry, versification was still widely used as a discriminant for authorship during the 20th century in the studies performed by certain verse experts – namely those associated with the so-called “russian school” of metrics. in the early 1920s, for example, boris tomashevsky used versification as evidence proving that the end of pushkin’s unfinished poem mermaid, which dmitry zuev had claimed to have found in 1889, was a forgery (tomashevsky 1923/2008: 238–239). other instances of the 33versification and authorship attribution use of verse rhythm and rhyme as evidence of authorship include the rejection of the authenticity of alleged fragments of eugen onegin’s tenth chapter (lotman, lotman 1986), the questioning of the authenticity of works newly added to alexander ilyushin’s edition of gavriil batenkov’s poems (shapir 1997, 1998), and especially the extensive work by marina tarlinskaja on shakespeare and his contemporaries (1987, 2014 in particular).4 due to these versification-based approaches’ isolation from the main branch of stylometry, there has been a large gap arising between stylometry’s more and more advanced methods and these approaches, which have continued in the use of rather simple methods of univariate statistics. in the sections below, we would like to illustrate this through several examples. first we will explore the example of the univariate versification-based approach provided by the above-mentioned verse expert marina tarlinskaja (section 3.1). then we will focus on one multivariate lexically based model, which has been the most widely used in the field of literary studies in recent years, the “burrows’ delta” measure (section 3.2) and its later modifications (section 3.3). we will also briefly mention one popular machine-learning method, called the support vector machine (section 3.4). finally, we will attempt to combine the advantages of versification analysis presented in section 3.1 with those of the advanced multivariate models presented in sections 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4, which – to the best of our knowledge – has so far been reported in one article only, written by programmers, and covering old arabic poetry, which differs greatly from modern european versifications (al-falahi, ramdani, bellafkih 2017). 3.1. marina tarlinskaja: the attribution of henry viii in her book shakespeare and the versification of english drama, 1561–1642 (2014), marina tarlinskaja provides many examples of versification-based aa. let us focus here upon one such example: the attribution of the 17th-century play henry viii. most scholars agree that henry viii was a collaborative text, wherein certain recognizable parts were written by john fletcher (the “a” parts) and the remainder by william shakespeare (the “b” parts). tarlinskaja (2014: 140–149) brings in evidence for this hypothesis from the domain of versification, namely 4 in part due to the influence of tarlinskaja, versification has been used as an argument in 20th century shakespearean studies even within the western tradition, namely in the long discussion on authorship of funeral elegy between don foster on one side and ward elliot and robert j. valenza on the other (see grieve 2005: 6–8). 34 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich the distribution of what she calls “strong syntactic breaks” after particular metrical positions. her argument is that the a and b parts differ in whether the peak of the distribution takes place after the 6th or 7th syllable, and that the entire distributions found in the a parts and b parts are similar to those found in the two authors’ other texts written in the very same period: fletcher’s bonduca and shakespeare’s tempest respectively (see figure 3). preceeding metrical position p er ce n ta ge o f st ro n g sy n ta ct ic b re ak s henry viii parts a henry viii parts b fletcher: bonduca shakespeare: tempest 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 10 20 30 40 figure 3. the frequencies of strong syntactic breaks after particular metrical positions in the a and b parts of henry viii, and in fletcher’s bonduca and shakespeare’s tempest. source: tarlinskaja 2014: table b.3. while this is a strong and valid argument, we may assume that even more reliable evidence may be gathered by moving from a univariate approach (the comparison of individual values) to a multivariate one (the comparison of entire sets of values). let us also add here that a solely visual comparison may be misleading (especially when dealing with large data sets). in the sections below, we will present several ways in which this problem is being handled in modern stylometry. 3.2. burrows’ delta measure burrows (2002, 2003) has proposed delta as a measure of the stylistic difference between texts. it is based on a comparison of the frequencies of the n most frequent words (mfw), and it deals with the above-mentioned question of 35versification and authorship attribution how to funnel multiple differences into one value. burrows’ solution is rather simple and intuitive. let us illustrate it with an example based on data provided by burrows himself (2002: 270–272). we will use a model situation – there is a manuscript entitled paradise lost and strong evidence that it was written by either john milton or aphra behn. the question, of course, is: which of these two is the real author? to find an answer, we collect one set of texts that were provably written by milton and one set of texts that were provably written by behn. next we reach for the n words that are the most frequent across all the texts collected. for the sake of clarity, let us work with n = 20, even though much larger numbers (from hundreds to thousands) are usually used in burrows’ delta. what we are attempting to do here is to find out which of the two authors has works that are more similar to paradise lost in terms of the relative frequencies of these words. the most straightforward method would be to plot the frequencies (figure 4) and compare the curves, just as mendenhall (section 3) and tarlinskaja (section 3.1) did. but such a visual judgment is rather vague and unreliable in this case. what burrows suggests instead is to express the degree of dissimilarity between the texts as the mean value of the differences between the frequencies of specific words. but – as we know and as we may also observe in figure 4 – word frequencies generally tend to decrease rapidly after the top ranks (zipf ’s law). thus the difference between the frequencies of the most frequent word will be generally much larger than the difference between the frequencies of the 50th or 100th most frequent word in any given body of texts. so as to be able to consider each word as a marker of equal weight, burrows transforms the frequencies of individual words into z-scores. very roughly speaking, such a transformation shrinks or extends the frequency ranges so that the ranges are approximately the same for each word (see figure 5).5 5 more precisely, it transforms the distribution into another one with mean = 0 and standard deviation = 1. for a particular word in text t having a frequency of ft, z-score is calculated as follows: zt = (ft – μ) / σ, where μ stands for the mean frequency of the word across all texts, and σ stands for its standard deviation. 36 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich f ( % ) relative frequencies of 20 most frequented words paradise lost milton behn th e an d o f a to (i) in (p ) h is w it h to (p ) is b u t h e al l i it as th ei r h er n o t b e 0 1 2 3 4 5 figure 4. the relative frequencies of the 20 most frequent words in milton’s paradise lost, other works by milton, and the work of aphra behn (1640–1689). the characters in parentheses disambiguate homographic forms: i = infinitive and p = preposition. source: burrows 2002: 270–272. zsc o re s relative frequencies of 20 most frequented words transformed to z-scores paradise lost milton behn th e an d o f a to (i) in (p ) h is w it h to (p ) is b u t h e al l i it as th ei r h er n o t b e -4 -2 0 2 4 figure 5. the relative frequencies of the 20 most frequent words in milton’s paradise lost, other works by milton, and the work of aphra behn (1640–1689). transformation into z-scores based on all of the samples in the corpus. the characters in parentheses disambiguate homographic forms: i = infinitive and p = preposition. source: burrows 2002: 270–272. at this point, each of the three samples (paradise lost, milton, and behn) is represented by a set of 20 values corresponding to the frequencies of the 20 words transformed into z-scores. in order to find which of the two candidates is closer to the values of paradise lost, burrows chose the most intuitive method: 37versification and authorship attribution δ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇! = |𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!) ! !!! | 𝑛𝑛 (1) for each word in each candidate sample, count the difference between its own frequency transformed to z-score and the one found in paradise lost. as we are only interested in the size of the differences, not their directions, we work with their absolute values. (2) the value of the delta measure between each of the candidate samples and paradise lost is then calculated as the arithmetic mean of the particular differences. figure 6 shows the entire procedure and the expected result, wherein john milton is found to be more similar to his own work than aphra behn. zsc o re s burrows' delta: calculation paradise lost milton behn th e an d o f a to (i) in (p ) h is w it h to (p ) is b u t h e al l i it as th ei r h er n o t b e m ea n -4 -2 0 2 4 figure 6. the calculation of burrows’ delta between milton’s work and paradise lost and behn’s work and paradise lost. through a simple generalization of the procedure above, we may arrive at the general formula for burrows’ delta: let zi(t1) be the z-score for the relative frequency of a word in the text (or set of texts) t1 that is the i-th most frequent in the entire corpus, and zi(t2) be the z-score for the relative frequency of the same word in the text (or set of texts) t2. the delta score for t1 and t2 based on the n most frequent words (δn(t1,t2)) is then calculated as follows: [1] 38 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich 3.3. the mathematical basis for and modifications to burrows’ delta soon after its publication, delta became a popular and widely used method within aa. several modifications have been proposed (e. g. hoover 2004a, 2004b), but what seems to be the most important step forward from today’s perspective is shlomo argamon’s interpretation of delta’s key principle. argamon (2006) has pointed out that the method intuitively proposed by burrows is in fact equivalent to what is known in mathematics as a measurement of manhattan distance, and that delta may thus be considered as an instance of the nearest neighbor classifier. in the following section, we will clarify this relationship using a “real-world” example and will mention some other alternatives used in contemporary aa, namely the euclidean-distancebased quadratic delta (δq) proposed by argamon himself (2008) and the cosine-similarity-based cosine delta (δ∠) proposed by smith and aldridge (2011). since manhattan distance actually takes its name from the grid of east-west streets and north-south avenues in new york city’s borough of manhattan, let us locate our example there. imagine a pedestrian seeking the shortest path from the chelsea hotel to the empire state building (figure 7). it doesn’t matter if he chooses to walk 10 blocks north via 7th avenue and then east via 33rd street (as indicated by the red line in the map below), or to instead walk e. g. one block east via 23rd street, 10 blocks north via 6th avenue, and the rest via 33rd street; the distance is always the same – it is the simple sum of the individual distances walked along the streets (d1) and avenues (d2). this corresponds to the manhattan distance between these two buildings on a twodimensional map: dman(2) = d1 + d2. the euclidean distance, on the other hand, corresponds to the path “as the crow flies”. notice that as long as we know d1 and d2, this distance may easily be calculated using the pythagorean theorem: 𝐷𝐷euc(2) = 𝑑𝑑! ! + 𝑑𝑑! ! . finally, the cosine similarity may be roughly depicted as the size of the angle under which these two buildings are seen by some distant observer (we will reach the precise formula later). 39versification and authorship attribution figure 7. manhattan distance (red), euclidean distance (black), and cosine similarity (green). “real-world” examples in 2d. now consider a similar task in 3-dimensional space – here we are interested in the distance from the entrance of the chelsea hotel to the very top floor of the empire state building (figure 8). to get the manhattan (pedestrian) distance, we simply sum up the distances walked along streets (d1) and avenues (d2), along with the elevator ride (d3): dman(3) = d1 + d2 + d3. to get the euclidean distance (a phantasmal crow’s flight), we start by taking the direct connecting line on the ground, which – as has been shown above – is equal to the root of the sum of the squares of the distances along streets and avenues ( 𝑑𝑑!! + 𝑑𝑑!! ). we may then complete our calculation of the euclidean distance by using the pythagorean theorem once again – with this connecting line being one leg of the right triangle, and the vertical distance (the elevator ride) being the other (see figure 8), thus in this case: [2] 𝐷𝐷!"#(!) = 𝑑𝑑! ! + 𝑑𝑑! ! ! + 𝑑𝑑! ! = 𝑑𝑑! ! + 𝑑𝑑! ! + 𝑑𝑑! ! 40 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich observer empire state building chelsea hotel manhattan distance euclidean distance cosine similarity figure 8: manhattan distance, euclidean distance, and cosine similarity. “real-world” examples in 3d. how does all this relate to burrows’ delta? let us return to our model situation that deals with paradise lost (t1), the other works of john milton (t2), and the works of aphra behn (t3). for the sake of clarity, we will focus only on the three most frequent words (1: the; 2: and; 3: of) and the z-scores of their frequencies in these three samples: z1(t1); z2(t1); z3(t1) | z1(t2); z2(t2) … as has been shown above, burrows’ delta between t1 and t2 is in this case equal to: [3] δ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇! = |𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!) ! !!! | 3 = 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! + 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! + 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!)| 3 41versification and authorship attribution when we plot the sets of z-scores representing these two samples as data points (vectors) in a 3-dimensional diagram (figure 9), it becomes clear that this is equal to their manhattan distance divided by 3. and as long as we use delta purely to rank the candidate samples, it makes no difference if we divide all distances by a constant (the number of words analyzed) or not. we may thus simplify the calculation to be fully equal to the manhattan distance: [4] [0;0;0] euclidean distance manhattan distance cosine similarity -3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 -1.5 -1.25 -1 -0.75 -0.5 -0.25 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 milton (t2) paradise lost (t2) z1(t2) z1(t1) z2(t1) z3(t1) |z1(t1) z1(t2)| |z2(t1) z2(t2)| |z3(t1) z3(t2)| z2(t2) z3(t2) figure 9. the manhattan distance, euclidean distance, and cosine similarity between paradise lost (t 1 ) and other works by milton (t 2 ), as represented by the z-scores of the three most frequent words (the; and; of). δ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇! = 𝐷𝐷!"# ! (𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇!) = 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! + 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! + 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!)| 42 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich burrows’ delta thus turns out to be an instance of a nearest neighbor classifier – it simply picks the author of the candidate sample that is the nearest one to the target text in terms of its manhattan distance. and even though the human imagination is limited to the 3-dimensional space, mathematics is not – no matter whether we choose to work with the 25 or the 500 most frequent words, the principle remains the same: we are still seeking the nearest neighbor in a 25-dimensional or 500-dimensional vector space. the above-mentioned alternatives – the quadratic delta (δq) and the cosine delta (δ∠) – follow the very same principle of nearest-neighbor classifier, just with a different distance function. the quadratic delta simply replaces manhattan with a straightforward euclidean distance, which in 3-dimensional space – as has been shown above – equals the square root of the sum of the squares of the distances along each dimension: [5] via a simple generalization of the procedure above, we can arrive at the formula that applies for n-dimensional vector space in general: [6] and just as the division of each distance by a constant in burrows’ delta does not affect the final ranking, the same holds true for extracting the root in the euclidean distance. the formula for argamon’s quadratic delta is thus defined as the square of the euclidean distance: [7] finally, the cosine delta takes the cosine similarity of vectors as the ranking principle, or in other words, it takes the cosine of the angle between the lines connecting the data points with the origin of the chart (the data point where all coordinates equal zero); see figure 9. the logic behind the formula for the calculation of the cosine similarity (cos α): 𝐷𝐷!"# ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇2 = (𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! )! + (𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! )! + (𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! )! 𝐷𝐷!"# ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇2 = (𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!))! ! !!! δ! ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇! = (𝐷𝐷!"# ! 𝑇𝑇!,𝑇𝑇! )! = (𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! − 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!))! ! !!! 43versification and authorship attribution [8] is rather complicated, and we are not willing to bother the reader with its detailed derivation. what is, however, worth noting is that the cosine of the angle may range from 1 (maximum similarity) to -1 (maximum dissimilarity). in order to reflect the greater degree of vectors’ similarity for lower values and vice versa (as in the case of the original burrows’ delta and argamon’s quadratic delta), smith and aldridge’s cosine delta is defined as: [9] 3.4. the support vector machine metrics from the delta family have been widely used and successfully tested with various configurations for the number of words analyzed as well as with other features, such as the most frequent character n-grams or the most frequent word n-grams (see e. g. eder 2011; jannidis et al. 2015), but recently it seems that machine-learning methods are poised to overtake them due to the latter methods’ even-better performance. let us thus briefly mention one machine-learning method that is usually judged to be the most powerful one in authorship attribution – the support vector machine (svm). the svm is a supervised learning model, which means that the algorithm uses labeled training data to infer a classification function. let us clarify how it functions with a very simple example based on artificial data: assume that we have a text of unknown authorship (the target text) and a set of 20 text samples from each of two candidate authors (author 1 and author 2). all of the texts are characterized by the z-scores of the frequencies of the two most frequent words (“the”; “and”). during the first phase (learning), the svm is fed with data from author 1 and author 2 (training data), labeled according to who wrote which sample, and attempts to find a function that correctly separates them with respect to their labels. this is done using a hyperplane – a subspace of one dimension less than the original vector space. in our example with its 2-dimensional cosα = 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! 𝑧𝑧!(𝑇𝑇!) ! !!! 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! ! ! !!! 𝑧𝑧! 𝑇𝑇! !! !!! δ𝑛𝑛 ∠ 𝑇𝑇1,𝑇𝑇2 = 1−cosα 44 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich data, this means a 1-dimensional space, i. e. a line. during the second phase (classification), the hyperplane inferred from the training data is used for classifying the target text. as the first chart of figure 10 indicates, there is an infinite number of hyperplanes that can correctly separate our training data, with some of them attributing the target text to author 1, and some of them to author 2. from all of these possible lines, the svm chooses the one that maximizes the distance to the nearest vector on each side (with these being called support vectors), as shown in the second chart of figure 10. the svm thus classifies the target text as a text of author 1. mfw1 ("the") m fw 2 (" an d ") z-scores of frequencies of 2 most frequented words (artificial data) target text author 1 author 2 -4 -2 0 2 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 mfw1 ("the") m fw 2 (" an d ") z-scores of frequencies of 2 most frequented words (artificial data) target text author 1 author 2 -4 -2 0 2 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 figure 10. the support vector machine. left: various possible hyperplanes separating training data from author 1 and author 2. right: a maximum-margin hyperplane; the dashed lines indicate the distances to the support vectors. this example is – of course – a very elementary one. not only do we need to deal with data of much higher dimensions in real-world attribution tasks, but in the vast majority of cases, one is faced with data that is not linearly separable. furthermore, in most attribution tasks, one needs to perform multiclass classification, i. e. to decide among more than two candidates. the ways in which the svm deals with these two issues are too complex to be discussed here. we have illustrated at least some of the svm’s very basic principles, and we will note that the svm (in addition to the distance functions discussed above) is implemented in the scientific libraries of many programming languages (e. g. scikit-learn in python), where it is ready to be used even without deep knowledge of its workings. 45versification and authorship attribution 4. method let us now turn to our experiments, wherein we aimed to test whether or not versification features may be considered as authorship markers with effectiveness equal to that of the traditional features used in aa. we worked with four corpora of poetic texts: czech (cs), german (de), spanish (es), and english (en), with data taken from the following sources: • cs: corpus of czech verse (plecháč, kolár 2015; plecháč 2016; <http://versologie.cz>) • de: metricalizer (bobenhausen 2011; bobenhausen, hammerich 2015; <http://metricalizer.de>) • es: corpus de sonetos del siglo de oro (navarro-colorado 2015; navarrocolorado, ribes-lafoz, sánchez 2016; <https://github.com/bncolorado/ corpussonetossiglodeoro>) • en: chicago rhyming poetry corpus (reddy, knight 2011; <https://github. com/sravanareddy/rhymedata>) all of the corpora were tokenized, phonetically transcribed, and annotated in terms of their meters and rhymes.6 in order to test the above-mentioned hypothesis, we extracted samples of essentially the same size from each corpus (100 lines in cs, de, and en; 98 lines – i. e. 7 sonnets – in es). the samples consisted of lines written in specified meters: masculine and feminine trochaic tetrameters in cs, feminine trochaic tetrameters in de, hendecasyllabic lines in es, and masculine iambic pentameters in en. each sample was written by a single author, and none of the poems were divided into two or more samples. the samples’ basic characteristics are given in table 1 and table 2. 6 all of the annotations were provided by the authors of the corpora, with the following exceptions: the spanish corpus was phonetically transcribed using espeak speech synthetizer (<http://espeak.sourceforge.net), and rhymes were annotated by rhymetagger (plecháč 2018; <http://github.com/versotym/rhymetagger>). the phonetic transcription and metrical annotation of the english corpus was performed using the prosodic parser (<http://github.com/ quadrimegistus/prosodic>). 46 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich table 1. the numbers of samples extracted from each corpus, and the numbers of their authors # of samples # of authors cs 275 21 de 142 8 es 323 10 en 142 12 each sample was represented by the frequencies of the stressed syllables at particular metrical positions (its stress profile) and the frequencies of particular sounds (a simple way to “caption” the vague notion of “euphony”). in de, we also worked with various characteristics of rhyme: the vowel length match frequency, the frequency of closed rhymes (i. e. ending with a consonant), and the frequencies of vowel and consonant pairs. all of the values were transformed into z-scores. this ensured that each sample was represented by a vector consisting of a few dozen values. using this data, we tested all of the above-discussed classifiers: burrows’ delta (δ), argamon’s quadratic delta (δq), smith–aldridge’s cosine delta (δ∠), and the support vector machine (svm). this evaluation was performed using the “leave one out” cross-validation method. in this method, in order to estimate the accuracy of the classifier, each sample is iteratively picked out to be treated as the target text, with the rest of the samples being treated in that iteration as candidates. the accuracy is than calculated as the percentage of cases in which the real author was recognized successfully. apart from versification itself, we also tested the classifiers with: (1) the 100 most frequent words, (2) the 100 most frequent character trigrams, and (3) combined vectors consisting of versification features, the 100 most frequent words, and the 100 most frequent character trigrams. for each corpus, we also report the value of the random baseline – an estimation of what portion of the samples would be attributed correctly if assignment of authorship were to be completely random. this value is calculated as: [10] where n is the number of authors, x is the number of samples and ai is the number of samples written by author i. random baseline = ( 𝑎𝑎! 𝑋𝑋 )! ! !!! 47versification and authorship attribution c s d e es en č el ak ov sk ý, f ra nt iš ek l ad is la v (1 1) c hm el en sk ý, jo se f k ra so sl av (7 ) fu rc h, v in ce nc (2 8) h aj ni š, f ra nt iš ek (6 ) h av el ka , m at ěj (1 7) h ně vk ov sk ý, š eb es tiá n (7 ) k lu m pa r, ja n k vě to sl av (9 ) k ul da , b en eš m et od (3 2) m ac há če k, s im eo n k ar el (5 ) n ej ed lý , v oj tě ch (1 5) pi ce k, v ác la v ja ro m ír (2 7) po ha n, v ác la v a le xa nd er (1 1) pu ch m aj er , a nt on ín ja ro sl av (6 ) r ub eš , f ra nt iš ek ja ro m ír (9 ) r yb a, ja ku b ja n (1 0) šn aj dr , k ar el s ud im ír (8 ) šr ám ek , j an (6 ) ta bl ic , b oh us la v (1 4) u hl íř, jo se f ( 10 ) v ill an i, k ar el m ar ia d ra ho tín (2 0) v in ař ic ký , k ar el a lo is (1 7) br en ta no , c le m en s (1 6) ei ch en do rff , j os ep h vo n (2 0) fl em in g, p au l ( 13 ) g le im , j oh an n w ilh el m l ud w ig (1 2) g oe th e, jo ha nn w ol fg an g (2 3) h ei ne , h ei nr ic h (2 6) le na u, n ik ol au s (2 2) sc hl eg el , a ug us t w ilh el m (1 0) a rg en so la , b ar to lo m e (2 2) c et in a, g ut ie rr e de (3 5) g on go ra (1 6) h er re ra , f er na nd o de (4 5) li ta la y c as te lv i, j os ep h de (2 1) q ue ve do (7 3) r oj as , p ed ro s ot o de (1 7) ta ss is y p er al ta , j ua n de (2 9) u llo a y pe re ir a, l ui s de (1 5) v eg a, l op e de (5 0) c on st ab le , h en ry (6 ) c ro sl an d, t .w .h . ( 6) d ra yt on , m ic ha el (9 ) d ry de n, jo hn (6 ) fi nc h, a nn e (9 ) jo ns on , b en (3 6) lo ve la ce , r ic ha rd (7 ) po pe , a le xa nd er (7 ) sm ith , c ha rl ot te t ur ne r (3 1) sp en se r, ed m un d (1 1) sw ift , j on at ha n (5 ) w or ds w or th , w ill ia m (9 ) ta b le 2 . t h e au th or s an d th e n um b er s of s am p le s fr om e ac h o f t h em 48 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich 5. results figure 11 presents the results of our experiments. because the values of the random baselines differ greatly, it does not make sense to compare the results across specific corpora. on the other hand, a comparison of features and classifiers within particular corpora shows some interesting trends: 1. in each corpus and with each classifier, the success rate for versification features is significantly higher than the value for the random baseline. versification thus may be considered to be a reasonable stylometric marker. 2. the success rate for versification relative to words and trigrams varies strongly; it is significantly higher in cs, slightly higher with delta measures and slightly lower with the svm in es, slightly lower in de, and significantly lower in en.7 3. when comparing classifiers among the same feature set, in each corpus the svm consistently gives the best performance out of all the classifiers.8 out of the delta family, cosine delta usually evinces the best performance. 4. the combining of versification features with words and trigrams always displays better performance than these features alone. 7 here let us note that the english corpus comprises several extensive works (such as spenser’s faerie queene), the chapters of which are treated as separate poems. the extremely high accuracy with words here may thus simply be due to overfitting – the classifiers may actually not be recognizing the author’s style, but rather the specific vocabulary of a given work. 8 two other machine learning methods were tested, namely random forest and naive bayes classifier, but these were outperformed in all cases by the svm. 49versification and authorship attribution su cc es s ra te cs 0. 67 27 0. 71 27 0. 69 45 0 .7 74 5 0. 58 18 0. 62 91 0. 55 27 0. 73 82 0. 51 64 0. 66 55 0. 54 55 0. 73 09 0. 72 36 0 .8 10 9 0. 70 91 0. 86 55 versification words 3-grams combination δ δ δq svm 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 random baseline 100 % su cc es s ra te de 0. 43 66 0. 47 18 0. 59 15 0. 64 08 0. 52 82 0. 46 48 0. 51 41 0. 69 72 0. 54 93 0. 55 63 0. 66 2 0. 70 42 0. 57 75 0. 56 34 0. 72 54 0. 84 51 versification words 3-grams combination δ δ δq svm 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 random baseline 100 % figure 11. 50 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich su cc es s ra te en 0. 71 83 0. 70 42 0. 67 61 0. 78 17 0. 95 77 0. 96 48 0. 95 77 0. 97 89 0. 76 76 0 .8 59 2 0. 76 76 0. 89 440 .9 78 9 0. 97 18 0. 96 48 0. 99 3 versification words 3-grams combination δ δ δq svm 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 random baseline 100 % su cc es s ra te es 0. 72 14 0. 73 99 0. 73 99 0 .8 26 6 0. 71 21 0. 72 76 0. 67 18 0. 87 62 0. 64 71 0. 67 18 0. 65 33 0. 84 52 0. 81 73 0. 82 66 0. 80 8 0. 96 28 versification words 3-grams combination δ δ δq svm 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 random baseline 100 % figure 11. the accuracy of burrows’ delta (δ), cosine delta (δq), quadratic delta (δ∠), and the support vector machine (svm) with versification features, the 100 most frequent words, the 100 most frequent character trigrams, and the combination of these three. 51versification and authorship attribution conclusions and future work we have shown that versification is a reasonable stylometric indicator, of comparable strength to those that are used in stylometry traditionally. so far we have worked with only limited sets of versification features (the stress profile and sounds’ frequencies and rhyme characteristics), which were chosen rather ad hoc, as were the poetic meters with which we were working (the czech and german trochaic tetrameter; the english iambic pentameter). in our future work, we would like to systematically test the methods proposed with other features added (e. g. the frequencies of word boundaries after particular metrical positions), as well with other meters and even other languages. apart from merely testing the method, we would also like to employ it for real attribution tasks. we do believe that this article has provided evidence that versification can and should be used for such purposes.9 references al-falahi, ahmed; ramdani, mohamed; bellafkih, mostafa 2017. machine learning for authorship attribution in arabic poetry. in: international journal of future computer and communication 6(2), 42–46. argamon, shlomo 2008. interpreting burrows’s delta: geometric and probabilistic foundations. in: literary and linguistic computing 23(2), 131–147. bobenhausen, klemens 2011. the metricalizer: automated metrical markup for german poetry. in: küper, christoph (ed.), current trends in metrical analysis. frankfurt am main [etc.]: peter lang, 119–131. bobenhausen, klemens; hammerich, benjamin 2015. métrique littéraire, métrique linguistique et métrique algorithmique de l’allemand mises en jeu dans le programme metricalizer². in: langages 199, 67–87. burrows, john f. 2002 “delta”: a measure of stylistic difference and a guide to likely authorship. in: literary and linguistic computing 17(3), 267–287. 9 the authors would like to thank ryan heuser (stanford university) for his kind help with setting up the prosodic package, and borja navarro-colorado (university of alicante) for his helpful comments on spanish verse. the study was supported by the czech science foundation, project ga17-01723s (stylometric analysis of poetic texts). 52 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich burrows, john f. 2003. questions of authorship: attribution and beyond. in: computers and the humanities 37(1), 5–32. eder, maciej 2011. style markers in authorship attribution. a cross-language study of the authorial fingerprint. in: studies in polish linguistics 6, 99–114. eder, maciej 2013. does size matter? authorship attribution, short samples, big problem. in: digital scholarship in the humanities 30(2), 167–182. eder, maciej 2017. short samples in authorship attribution: a new approach. in: digital humanities 2017: conference abstracts. montreal: mcgill university, 221– 224. https://dh2017.adho.org/abstracts/341/341.pdf. fleay, frederick gard 1874. on the authorship of the taming of the shrew. in: transactions of the new shakespeare society 1, 85–129. fleay, frederick gard 1876. shakespeare manual. london: macmillan. grieve, jack 2005. quantitative authorship attribution. a history and an evaluation of techniques. master thesis. burnaby, bc: simon fraser university. grieve, jack 2007. quantitative authorship attribution: an evaluation of techniques. in: literary and linguistic computing 22(3), 251–270. grzybek, peter 2014. the emergence of stylometry: prolegomena to the history of term and concept. in: kroó, katalin; torop, peeter (eds.), text within text – culture within culture. budapest, tartu: l’harmattan, 58–75. hoover, david l. 2004a. testing burrows’s delta. in: literary and linguistic computing 19(4), 453–475. hoover, david l. 2004b. delta prime? in: literary and linguistic computing 19(4), 477–495. ingram, john kells. 1874. on the “weak endings” of shakespeare, with some account of the history of the verse tests in general. in: transactions of the new shakespeare society 1, 442–456. jannidis, fotis; pielström, steffen; schöch, christof; vitt, thorsten 2015. improving burrows’ delta. an empirical evaluation of text distance measures. in: digital humanities 2015: conference abstracts, sydney: university of western sydney. http://dh2015.org/abstracts/ juola, patrick 2006. authorship attribution. in: foundations and trends in informational retrieval 1(3), 233–334. 53versification and authorship attribution koppel, moshe; schler, jonathan; argamon, shlomo 2009. computational methods in authorship attribution. in: journal of the association for information science and technology 60(1), 9–26. lotman, mihhail 2015. a study on shakespeare’s verse in its historical context (marina tarlinskaja, shakespeare and the versification of english drama, 1561–1642, ashgate, 2014) [review article]. studia metrica et poetica 2(1), 140–153. lotman, yuri; lotman, mihhail 1986. vokrug desjatoj glavy “evgenija onegina”. in: petrunina, nina nikolaevna (ed.), pushkin: issledovanija i materialy xii. leningrad: nauka, 124–151. malone, edmond 1787. a dissertation on parts one, two and three of henry the sixth tending to shew that those plays were not written originally by shakespeare. london: henry baldwin. mendenhall, thomas corwin 1887. the characteristic curves of composition. in: science 9, 237–249. mendenhall, thomas corwin 1901. a mechanical solution to a literary problem. in: popular science monthly 9, 97–110. mikros, george k.; perifanos, kostas a. 2013. authorship attribution in greek tweets using author’s multilevel n-gram profile. in: papers from the 2013 aaai spring symposium. “analyzing microtext”, 25–27 march 2013, stanford, california. palo alto, ca: aaai press, 17–23. mosteller, frederick; wallace, david l. 1964. inference and disputed authorship: the federalist. reading, ma: addison-wesley. navarro-colorado, borja 2015. a computational linguistic approach to spanish golden age sonnets: metrical and semantic aspects. in: computational linguistics for literature naacl 2015, denver, co, 105–113. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/w/w15/w15-0712.pdf navarro-colorado, borja; ribes-lafoz, maría; sánchez, noelia 2016. metrical annotation of a large corpus of spanish sonnets: representation, scansion and evaluation. in: proceedings of the tenth international conference on language resources and evaluation (lrec 2016). portorož. plecháč, petr 2016. czech verse processing system květa: phonetic and metrical components. in: glottotheory 7, 159–174. plecháč, petr (2018). a collocation-driven method of discovering rhymes (in czech, english, and french poetry). in: fidler, masako; cvrček, václav (eds.), taming the corpus. from inflection and lexis to interpretation. cham: springer, 79–95. 54 petr plecháč, klemens bobenhausen, benjamin hammerich plecháč, petr; kolár, robert 2015. the corpus of czech verse. in: studia metrica et poetica 2(1), 107–118. reddy, sravana; knight, kevin 2011. unsupervised discovery of rhyme schemes. in: proceedings of the 49th annual meeting on the association for computational linguistics. portland, or: acl, 77–82. shapir, maxim 1997. fenomen batenkova i problema mistifikatsii (lingvostikhovedcheskij aspekt 1–2). in: philologica 4, 85–144. shapir, maxim 1998. fenomen batenkova i problema mistifikatsii (lingvostikhovedcheskij aspekt 3–5). in: philologica 5, 49–132. simpson, edward h. 1949. measurement of diversity. in: nature 163, 688. smith, peter w. h.; aldridge, w. 2011. improving authorship attribution: optimizing burrows’ delta method. in: journal of quantitative linguistics 18(1), 63–88. spedding, james 1850. who wrote shakespeare’s henry viii. in: the gentleman’s magazine, 115–123. stamatatos, efstathios 2009. a survey of modern authorship attribution methods. in: journal of the association for information science and technology 60(3), 538–556. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. shakespeare’s verse: iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncrasies. new york: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama, 1561– 1642. farnham [etc.]: ashgate. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1923/2008. pjatistopnyj jamb pushkina. in his: izbrannye raboty o stikhe. moskva, sankt-peterburg: akademija, 140–242. weber, henry (ed.) 1812. the works of beaumont and fletcher in fourteen volumes. vol. 13. edinburgh: j. ballantyne & co. williams, carrington bonsor 1975. mendenhall’s studies of word-length distribution in the works of shakespeare and bacon. in: biometrika 62(1), 207–212. yule, george udny 1938. on sentence-length as a statistical characteristic of style in prose, with application to two cases of disputed authorship. in: biometrika 30, 363–390. shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification marina tarlinskaja*1 abstract: the article describes the development of english iambic pentameter during 260 years, 1561–1821. the evolution of the versification went in waves: strict (renaissance) – loose (baroque) – strict (classicism) – loose (romanticism); the periods developed “over the head” of adjacent periods. the similarity of the renaissance and classicism vs. baroque and romanticism was probably rhythmical homonymy rather than imitation. the article reveals the versification similarity of shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci. the similarity of versification added to the noticed earlier similarity of motifs, phraseology and vocabulary. keywords: meter, rhythm, syntax, stress, shakespeare, shelley, renaissance, baroque, classicism, romanticism 1. the similarities between macbeth and the cenci the similarities between macbeth (1605–1606) and the cenci (1819) have been variously noted and catalogued (e. g., harrington-lueker 1983, particularly footnote 1 for bibliography). shelley’s “appropriations” from shakespeare were even considered plagiarisms, though the similarities between the two plays could have been conscious borrowings and allusions, or merely language clichés (akimova 2017). the recorded similarities concerned analogous situations, and even lexicon and phraseology. here is one example: the scenes of a banquet in macbeth and in the cenci. at the banquet macbeth sees the ghost of murdered banquo that nobody else can see; he is distraught (“avaunt! and quit my sight!”), and lady macbeth comforts the guests: “think of this, good peers, but as a thing of custom: ‘tis no other, only it spoils the pleasure of the time” (macbeth, 3.4.95–97) * author’s address: marina tarlinskaja, department of linguistics, university of washington, seattle, box 354340 seattle, wa 98195-4340. e-mail: marinat@uw.edu. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 7–31 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.01 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.01 8 marina tarlinskaja in the cenci at the banquet celebrating count cenci’s unnatural joy at his sons’ death, the count apologizes to the guests for his daughter’s agonizing outburst: “my friends, i do lament this insane girl has spoilt the mirth of our festivity” (the cenci 1.3.160–161) before murdering duncan macbeth hesitates at killing the sleeping king who “hath honoured me of late” (macbeth, 1.7.32); lady macbeth also balks at killing the sleeping old man: “had he not resembled my father as he slept, i had done’t” (macbeth, 2.2.12–13). instead, she urges her husband on: “when you durst do it, then you are a man.” “but screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail” (macbeth, 2.1.49, 60–61) in the cenci olimpio and marzio also balk at murdering “an old and sleeping man”, and beatrice forces them on: “miserable slaves! where if ye dare not kill a sleeping man, found ye the boldness to return to me with such a deed undone?” … “take it! [the weapon] depart! return!” (the cenci, 4.3.22–25, 36) both in macbeth and the cenci personages wish for the murdered victim to revive; macbeth wishes that duncan may be awakened: “wake duncan with thy knocking! i wish thou could!” (macbeth, 2.2.74), and in the cenci lucretia moans: “would that he might yet live!” (the cenci, 4.4.26). one more recurring motif is that of steps on the stones or the pavement leading to the sleeping victim: “… thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk for fear the very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror of the time, which now suits with it…” (macbeth, 2.1.56–60) 9shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification “o thou most silent air that shalt not hear what now i think! thou pavement which i tread toward her chamber – let our echoes talk of my imperious step, scorning surprise, but not of my intent…” (the cenci, 1.1.140–144) the two excerpts deal with similar motifs and contain identical words, their synonyms, words belonging to the same semantic field, and even phraseology: “steps – step, prate – talk, pavement – stones, tread (the pavement) – walk, earth – air”; “they walk” – “i tread”, “hear not” – “not hear”. the similarities in phraseology are not necessarily in the same excerpt: “i go, and it is done”; “had he not resembled my father as he slept, i had done’t”; “i have done the deed” (macbeth, 2.1.62, 2.2.12–14) – “it must be done, it shall be done” (the cenci, 1.3.178). in macbeth the doctor concludes: “unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles” (macbeth, 5.1.71–72); in the cenci savella muses: “strange thoughts beget strange deeds” (the cenci, 4.4.139). in later shakespeare’s plays and in shelley’s the cenci we find similar rhetorical figures: “never, never, never, never, never” (king lear, 5.4.308), “horror! horror! horror!” (macbeth, 2.3.66), and “murder! murder! murder!” (the cenci, 4.4.52). cf. middleton’s a game at chess (1625) where the same figure is used humorously, in a discussion of the price for the indulgence from various sins, for example, from murder: “killing, killing, killing, killing, killing” (middleton, a game at chess, 4.2.90). 2. aims of the article we are going to look for (1) the similarities of versification in shelley’s tragedy the cenci and shakespeare’s tragedy macbeth. we shall also (2) follow the evolution of the iambic pentameter during the 260 years of english dramaturgy (1561 to 1821), from norton and sackville’s gorboduc to byron’s the two foscari. comparing actual iambic pentameter with the speech model of verse we shall check (3) which periods of versification followed the traits of english speech (represented by dickens’s prose), and which periods deviated from these traits; in other words, which periods cultivated the “verse-prose” opposition and which periods eschewed it. 10 marina tarlinskaja 3. strict and loose iambic pentameter: preliminary remarks. material analyzed the form of early new english iambic pentameter evolved remarkably quickly: during the eighty years of renaissance drama (1561–1642) the form changed from strict in early elizabethan plays to loose during the period of baroque, the epoch of king james i. in 1642 cromwell’s edict closed all theaters, and the jobless playwrights and actors died in poverty. after the restoration of monarchy in 1660 charles ii gave licenses to two theater companies, and the new authors began to compose plays for the newly opened theaters. the plays were again created in the form of iambic pentameter. the versification gradually changed again, back to a stricter form, and became even more strict during the period of john dryden (1631–1700) and the 18th century classicism. the versification of romanticism, 19th century, while retaining a strict syllabic count, introduced various accentual deviations not used in the previous epochs (see below). the versification of romanticism, compared to classicism, is loose. how do we define stricter and looser iambic pentameter? the most important parameters are: • the syllabic composition of lines; • the placement of stresses within the line; • the types and number of accentual deviations from the iambic scheme; • the placement of syntactic breaks within the line; • the correlation between syntactic and accentual types of lines; • the structure of line endings: their syllabic, accentual and syntactic features. we shall discover how the versification of macbeth and the cenci correlate. we shall also see how these two plays relate to other plays of different epochs. i studied the dramatic iambic pentameter of various epochs. the periods and plays studied were as follows: elizabethan renaissance, second half of the 16th c. norton and sackville, king gorboduc, 1561, kyd, the spanish tragedy, 1586–1587 and shakespeare’s richard iii, 1592–1593. jacobean baroque, first quarter of the 17th c.: shakespeare, macbeth, 1605– 1606 and the tempest, 1610–1611, webster, the duchess of malfi, 1612–1613, and massinger, the maid of honour, 1621–1623. classicism, 18th c.: addison, cato, 1712, theobald, the persian princess, 1708, orestes, 1731 and the fatal secret, 1733, the refurbished webster’s the duchess of malfi; cf. pope, epistles. romanticism, first half of the 19th c.: shelley, the cenci (1819) and charles the first (1822), and byron, sardanapalus and the two foscari (1821). 11shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification 4. the speech model of verse we compare the versification of various periods with the speech model of verse. the speech model of verse is a “text” consisting of “verse lines” that occur in prose fortuitously, by accident, but that could have occurred in actual iambic pentameter verse. the speech model was constructed from dickens’s novel david copperfield. the 487 “lines” of the model were selected, as much as possible, from the end of a syntactic period. here are some examples of the “lines”: “to leave her with the doctor and her mother” “was mortally affronted by his marriage” “my father’s eyes had closed upon the light” “and how, from india tidings of his death” “bolted and locked against it. my poor mother” 5. parameters of versification the main parameters of versification considered in this article are (a) the placement of strong syntactic breaks after syllables 2–11; (b) the distribution of stresses on even syllables 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 (tables 1, 2); (c) “rhythmical figures” (strings of accentual deviations from the iambic scheme) and their link with semantics; (d) the types of line endings; and (e) syllabic composition of lines (baroque only). the strings of stresses on syllables 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and on 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 represent the stress profile of the text. all the chosen plays are composed in iambic pentameter. the meter of iambic pentameter can be delineated as a string of syllabic positions, strong (s) and weak (w): wswswswsws (w). s positions are filled with predominantly stressed syllables, and w positions – with predominantly unstressed syllables. both s and w allow occasional deviations from the scheme: s positions allow occasional unstressed syllables, and w positions tolerate occasional stresses. omitted stresses on positions 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 are particularly relevant. their distribution follows the traits of the english speech, the rules of the iambic meter, the prevalent stress profile of the epoch, and the style of the individual poet. the minimum of midline stresses (the “dip” on the diagram) usually falls either on syllable 6, or 8; the placement of the dip depends on the prevalent syntactic structure of the lines and the chronology of the play (see below). the maximum consecutive deviations on adjacent syllables are usually two, on positions ws or sw, sometimes three, on positions wsw, and practically never on sws; the latter rhythmical figure occurs in the particularly loose 12 marina tarlinskaja variants of iambic pentameter, such as the 17th century later baroque (e. g., philip massinger’s versification style). examples of rhythmical figures ws and sw: “stabbed by the selfsame hand that made these wounds”; “in thy foul throat thou liest (shakespeare, richard iii, 1.2.10, 93); wsw: “still it cried ‘sleep no more!’ to all the house” (shakespeare, macbeth, 2.2.41), and sws: “here will i be feasting! at least for a month” (massinger, a new way to pay old debts, 5.1.255) “here will” occupy the same syllabic position, one. one more possible interpretation: “i be” occupy syllabic position 3. 6. analyses 6.1. strong syntactic breaks we differentiate three degrees of syntactic cohesion between adjacent content words with their clitics. the closest link marked [/] occurs between the components of an attributive phrase, a verb and its object, or members of a compound nominal or verbal predicate. the medium link marked [//] occurs between a subject and a predicate, a verb and its adverbial modifiers, or between two adjacent metrical words1 that have no immediate syntactic link. the weakest link, that is, the strongest break, marked [///], occurs between two sentences, the main sentence and a subordinate clause, between the author’s and direct speech, and between expanded homogeneous sentence elements, e. g. “…go carry them, /// and smear [t]he sleepy grooms with blood” (shakespeare, macbeth, 2.2.49– 50). the sign [] denotes enjambments. here is how we mark the texts: “we dare not / kill // an old // and sleeping / man.” “we strangled / him /// that there // might be / no blood” “it was the mantle /// which // my grandfather //  wore // in his high / prosperity, /// and men //  envied / his state; /// so may they / envy / thine.” (shelley, the cenci, 4.3.10, 45, 51–53) enjambments are created by the disruption of strong and medium links. both enjambments in the examples above break a medium link. in byron’s plays enjambments particularly often break a close link: 1 a metrical word is a lexical word with a stress on s or a clitic group arranged around a stress on s (see gasparov 1974: 169–170). monosyllables with a secondary stress on w and disyllabic words creating inversions of stress are pulled into the metrical word. 13shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification but he avow’d / the letter // to the duke /  of milan, /// and his suffering // half / atone for /  such weakness. /// we shall see. /// you, loredano, /// (byron, the two foscari, 1.1.15–17) let us look at strong breaks calculated as percent from the total number of lines. table 1. strong syntactic breaks after syllables 2–11 plays 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 runons norton, gorboduc, acts 1–3, 1561 9.4 2.3 22.6 5.1 7.3 1.3 2.4 0.6 75.4 0.1 24.5 kyd, the spanish tragedy, 1586–1587 11.9 4.4 22.7 9.3 6.9 2.6 1.7 0.7 89.2 1.3 9.5 shakespeare, richard iii, 1592–1593 12.6 4.4 19.6 11.3 13.1 4.5 2.2 0.8 70.9 17.3 11.8 shakespeare, othello, 1603–1604 9.3 4.5 20.8 15.3 21.0 11.7 7.3 2.2 60.5 23.1 16.3 shakespeare, macbeth, 1605–1606 6.1 2.8 15.3 12.6 29.6 13.0 10.6 2.6 53.1 18.6 28.3 shakespeare, the tempest, 1610–1611 7.2 2.7 17.9 15.8 30.0 17.7 13.2 8.1 35.9 22.1 42.0 webster, the duchess of malfi, 1612 7.0 5.2 12.8 17.2 19.7 22.2 7.9 2.9 43.8 26.5 30.0 theobald, orestes, 1731 11.0 3.6 22.6 9.4 18.2 2.9 2.9 1.9 60.2 27.2 12.6 theobald, the fatal secret, 1733 3.2 3.7 20.5 11.1 27.3 10.5 9.0 1.8 40.7 35.4 23.9 shelley, the cenci, 1819 11.9 6.8 22.5 9.0 19.2 8.4 10.3 2.1 60.5 9.1 28.2 14 marina tarlinskaja plays 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 runons shelley, charles the first, 1821 5.4 7.6 13.3 10.0 18.7 8.2 7.8 1.2 77.1 22.5 17.4 byron, sardanapalus, 1821 11.3 6.7 15.6 15.2 16.9 14.6 13.5 5.5 36.4 38.6 35.5 byron, the two foscari, 1821 12.2 7.9 15.4 14.5 18.0 16.0 16.0 10.3 34.0 22.7 43.2 model 10.7 4.7 13.0 7.7 13.0 9.0 9.4 2.3 54.9 35.7 9.1 in the speech model of verse the highest numbers of breaks occur after syllables 4 and 6, though, in comparison with actual verse, the numbers in the model are low and equivalent: only 12.9 and 13.0% of all “lines”. in the renaissance plays (norton and sackville, kyd, early shakespeare) the most frequent break fell after syllable 4, the end of the first hemistich. this tendency followed the structure of the french decasyllable. shakespeare’s richard iii was composed 30 years after norton and sackville’s gorboduc and seven years after kyd’s spanish tragedy; in shakespeare’s play the percent of breaks after the fourth syllable (19.6%) is lower than in norton’s acts 1–3 and in kyd’s tragedy (22.6 and 22.7%). there are more breaks after syllables 5 and 6 in richard iii (11.3 and 13.1%) than in kyd’s the spanish tragedy (only 9.3 and 6.9%): in later elizabethan plays the breaks are scattered more freely along the line. in shakespeare’s post-1600 jacobean plays macbeth (1605–1606) and the tempest (1610–1611) the place of the most prominent break had moved closer to the end of the line to fall after syllable 6, while othello has a transitional distribution of syntactic breaks: the percent of breaks after syllables 4 and 6 is almost equal. in webster’s baroque play the duchess of malfi (1612–1613) and massinger’s later baroque tragi-comedy the maid of honour (1625) the most frequent break falls after syllable 7 (22.2% of all lines in the duchess of malfi and 25.2% in the maid of honour); there are numerous breaks also after syllables 4, 5 and 6. webster’s and particularly massinger’s line does not have an obvious hemistich segmentation; it is syntactically more amorphous than late shakespeare’s (cf. byron’s plays). theobald’s plays belong to the period of classicism, the 18th century. the most frequent syntactic break moved back closer to the beginning of the line: now it falls after syllable 4 (orestes). in the fatal secret there are two places of frequent breaks, the major break falls after syllable 6 (27.3%) and a less 15shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification prominent one occurs after syllable 4 (20.5%). the fatal secret is based on webster’s the duchess of malfi; this may explain the place of the most prominent break after syllable 6, while the less prominent break, as in other poetical works of classicism, falls after syllable 4. thus, classicism does not follow the traits of the preceding period (baroque), but seems to imitate the period before baroque: the later renaissance. classicism, as it were, goes “over the head” of the preceding period. such a trend has been recorded in other poetic traditions (gasparov 1984). however, the versification of classicism might be merely homonymous to that of the later renaissance: similar metrical restrictions cause a similar line structure. in byron’s plays, sardanapalus and the two foscari there is absolutely no hemistich segmentation; for example, in sardanapalus the number of syntactic breaks after syllables 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 is 15.6, 16.2, 16.9, 14.6, 13.5%; in the two foscari the percent of breaks after the same syllables is 15.4, 14.5, 18.0, 16.0, 16.0%. what about shelley’s dramas? unlike byron’s plays, the two dramas show dissimilar tendencies. charles the first has the highest number of breaks only after syllable 6 (and not too many: 18.7%, cf. with byron’s the two foscari), while the cenci shows a different trait: the highest number of breaks appears after syllables 4 (22.5%) and 6 (19.2%); this is not unlike а transition from the earlier to the later shakespeare, something like henry v, julius caesar or othello; the latter both i and douglas bruster attribute to an earlier date than the years traditionally assumed (tarlinskaja 2014, appendix b; bruster 2015; bruster, smith 2016; cf. taylor, egan 2017). i tentatively date othello 1601–1602 instead of the traditional 1603–1604. syntactic breaks after syllables 4 and 6 must have been shelley’s idea of shakespeare’s versification, particularly in the great tragedies: this is how shelley “heard” shakespeare’s iambic pentameter and imitated it in the cenci. the distribution of breaks in the cenci does not quite follow macbeth, where a maximum of breaks occurs only after syllable 6 (29.6%). the location of the most frequent syntactic breaks in the cenci tentatively follows the pattern of othello. thus, the maximum of syntactic breaks falls after syllable 4 in the renaissance plays, after syllable 6 in the post-1600 baroque, and even after syllable 7 in the verse of some baroque playwrights, such as webster, massinger and middleton. examples: “alas, poor duke! /4/ the task he undertakes is numb’ring sands, /4/ and drinking oceans dry” (shakespeare, king richard ii, 2.2.147–148) 16 marina tarlinskaja “the wood began to move. /6/ – liar and slave! – let me endure your wrath, /6/ if ‘t be not so” (shakespeare, macbeth, 5.4.35–36) “yet strive not to come near ‘em. /7/ this will gain access to private lodgings, /7/ where yourself ” (webster, the duchess of malfi, 1.2.221–222) here is an excerpt from the cenci: “and when a deed /4/ where mercy insults heaven. why do i talk? /4/ hadst thou a tongue to say but never dream /4/ ye shall outlive him long! stop, for god’s sake! /4/ i will go back and kill him. give me the weapon, /5/ we must do thy will. take it! /2/ depart! /4/ return! /6/ how pale thou art. we do but that /4/ which ‘twere a deadly crime to leave undone. /4/ would it were done! /8/ even whilst that doubt is passing through your mind, /8/ the world is conscious of a change. /6/ darkness and hell…” (shelley, the cenci, 4.3.30–40) most breaks fall after syllable 4. below is a longer excerpt from macbeth: “they must lie there: /4/ go carry them, /8/ and smear the sleeping grooms with blood. /6/ – i’ll go no more: i am afraid to think /6/ what i have done; look on’t again i dare not. /7/ – infirm of purpose! give me the daggers: /5/ the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures: /5/ ‘tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil. /6/ if he do bleed, i’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, for it must seen their guilt. /6/ whence is that knocking?” (shakespeare, macbeth, 2.2.49–57) the noun “devil” is monosyllabic. most breaks in the excerpt fall after syllable 6. in the plays of romantisism the syntactic structure of lines eschewes their hemistich segmentation. in the speech model of verse most breaks fall after 17shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification syllables 4 and 6, and both are low: only 12.9 and 13%, cf. othello, the fatal secret, and the cenci. but the breaks in othello occur almost two times more often than in the speech model of verse: 20.8 and 21.0% vs. 12.9 and 13%. the verse amplifies the speech tendency. in shakespeare’s plays the word boundaries after syllable 4 are mostly below 50% of lines; exceptions are 2 henry vi, 3 henry vi, love’s labour’s lost, and romeo and juliet. the earlier works, such as king gorboduc, both coauthors, jocasta, also both co-authors, and the misfortunes of arthur place word boundaries after syllable 4 in up to 78.5% of the lines. this means that the earlier works sport a caesura after syllable 4, but not shakespeare’s plays. 6.2. distribution of stresses on syllables the three earlier plays, norton and sackville’s king gorboduc, kyd’s the spanish tragedy and shakespeare’s richard iii have a minimum of stresses (a “dip” in the diagrams) on syllable 6, while stressing on syllable 4 is high: the syntactic structure of renaissance iambic pentameter usually divides the line into 4 + 6 syllables, thus the frequent stressing on syllable 4 supports the syntactic end of the first hemistich. a new phrase begins with syllable 5: english phrases often begin with one or more unstressed grammatical words, e. g.: “and rock me | to the sleep”, “and was the first | to call”, “at the impiety”, and so on. consequently, a syntactic seam after syllable 4 causes a stressing dip on syllable 6: english syntax and phrasal accentuation are interrelated. figure 1 shows the stress profiles of constrained and loose iambic pentameter. series2 series3 2 4 6 8 10 syllabic position 100% 60% loose: webster the duchess of malfy constrained: kyd the spanish tragedy 70% 80% 90% figure 1. stressing on s in the constrained (renaissance) and loose (baroque) iambic pentameter (in % of all lines) loose: webster the duchess of malfy constrained: kyd the spanish tragedy 18 marina tarlinskaja the loose iambic pentameter is close to the speech model of verse (see table 2). table 2. stressing on s syllables (in % from all lines) plays 2 4 6 8 10 norton, gorboduc, acts 1–3, 1561 75.8 90.5 68.3 84.6 94.3 kyd, the spanish tragedy, 1586–1587 73.5 87.7 69.2 76.7 82.8 shakespeare, richard iii, 1592–1593 64.7 84.2 68.7 75.3 89.9 shakespeare, macbeth, 1605–1606 65.0 81.8 76.8 69.6 94.5 shakespeare, the tempest, 1610–1611 67.9 80.1 77.7 70.4 87.6 webster, the duchess of malfi, 1612 70.7 79.8 80.7 68.4 90.9 addison, cato, 1712 72.5 89.3 70.1 78.8 97.9 theobald, orestes, 1731 78.4 89.4 72.4 84.2 99.1 theobald, the fatal secret, 1733 78.6 88.4 73.5 82.8 99.0 shelley, the cenci, 1819 64.4 82.8 77.3 71.8 90.0 shelley, charles the first, 1821 75.3 84.1 76.1 75.5 88.1 byron, sardanapalus, 1821 71.9 78.4 73.0 72.5 90.5 byron, the two foscari, 1821 72.4 76.9 73.7 72.6 86.3 model 69.4 76.8 76.8 62.5 93.4 the same stress profile, with a dip on syllable 6, recurs in the verse of 18th c. classicism; e. g., addison’s cato, theobald’s orestes and the fatal secret (figures 2 and 3). the versification of baroque differs from renaissance: the stressing dip has moved to syllable 8, as in shakespeare’s macbeth and the tempest. in webster’s the duchess of malfi and in massinger’s the maid of honour the major syntactic seam falls after syllable 7, the stressing dip occurs on syllable 8, while the stressing on syllables 4 and 6 is equal, and low (cf. with the speech model). theobald’s the fatal secret is completely unlike its original the duchess of malfi: the stressing of syllable 4 is high, marking the end of the first hemistich, and the midline stressing dip falls on syllable 6, the way it does in other iambic pentameter texts during the period of classicism. norton’s portion of gorboduc (acts 1–3) and kyd’s the spanish tragedy also had a prominent stress on syllable 4 and a dip on syllable 6. stressing on syllable 2 in shakespeare’s plays and the cenci is low: the beginning of the line is also the beginning of a phrase. in richard iii the stressing on syllable 2 is only 64.7%, in macbeth 65%, in the cenci it is 64.4%. the dip in midline falls on syllable 6 in the elizabethan dramas and in those of classicism, while in the baroque plays 19shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification and in the model the dip moves to syllable 8: the elizabethan plays and those of classicism oppose their verse structure to the speech (prose) tendencies, while the baroque plays follow the tendencies of speech (prose). in the speech model of verse the “dip” on syllable 8 is mostly created by two rhythmical types of lines, xxxxxxxxxxx (“she found the latter standing at the window”) and xxxxxxxxxxx (“she thinks i am too thoughtless and too pretty”). the underlined x stands for an ictic syllable with an omitted metrical stress. the rhythmical line type xxxxxxxxxx used to be typical of john ford (tarlinskaja 2014). classicism went back to the rhythm of renaissance “over the head” of baroque. this could have been a conscious imitation of the early new english iambic pentameter, or a subconscious use of the syntactic and accentual pattern 4 + 6 syllables, with a syntactic seam after syllable 4 (or after syllable 5, a feminine ending of the first hemistich). in that case the rhythmical form of the 18th c. iambic pentameter is homonymous to the 16th c. verse form. figure 2 shows the difference between webster’s baroque play the duchess of malfi (1612) and its rendering the fatal secret (1736) by lewis theobald during 18th c. classicism. series2 series3 2 4 6 8 10 syllabic position 100% 60% webster the duchess of malfy theobald the fatal secret 70% 80% 90% fig. 2. stressing on s in webster’s the duchess of malfi (1612–13) and its adaptation by lewis theobald, the fatal secret (1736) webster the duchess of malfy constrained: kyd the spanish tragedy 20 marina tarlinskaja 1 2 3 4 5 series2 series3 2 4 6 8 10 syllabic position 100% 60% kyd "the spanish tragedy" addison "cato" 70% 80% 90% fig. 3. stressing on s in kyd’s the spanish tragedy (1586–87) and addison’s cato (1712) the stressing pattern of the fatal secret is not unlike elizabethan plays with a dip on syllable 6, and completely different from the duchess of malfi, with its dip on syllable 8 and an equal stressing on syllables 4 and 6 (and most breaks after syllable 7): table 3. stressing on s syllables (in % from all lines) plays 2 4 6 8 10 the duchess of malfi 70.7 79.8 80.7 68.4 90.9 the fatal secret 78.6 88.4 73.5 82.8 99.0 the spanish tragedy 73.5 87.7 69.2 76.7 82.8 the maid of honour 73.8 75.9 76.4 63.9 90.1 the two foscari 72.4 76.9 73.7 72.6 86.3 speech model 69.4 76.8 76.8 64.3 93.4 the stressing of the duchess of malfi is very close to the speech model. in the maid of honour stresses on syllables 2, 4, 6 are almost equal, and close to the indices of byron’s tragedies. the difference between the fatal secret and the spanish tragedy is in the number of stresses on syllable 8 (higher in the fatal secret) and 10: there are almost no omitted stresses on syllable 10 in the fatal secret, while they are numerous in gorboduc and the spanish tragedy. norton and kyd relatively often end their lines with polysyllabic words such as “insolence”, “flattery”, “delightfulness” with the final syllable unstressed. the final syllable was considered stressed by борис томашевский in his “пятистопный ямб пушкина”, 1919. this interpretation is contrary to the early new english phonology. in the oral rendition the heavy suffixes kyd the spanish tragedy addison cato 21shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification might have carried a secondary stress; i, however, considered them unstressed. theobald’s syllable 10 is almost always stressed. the stressing similarity between the fatal secret and the spanish tragedy, as suggested above, might be either a conscious imitation, or, more likely, a relationship of metrical homonymy. in byron’s tragedies, the period of romanticism, there is no syntactic hemistich segmentation (table 1), consequently, the stressing on syllables 2, 4, 6, 8 is almost equal (table 2); here is the stressing pattern in the maid of honour and the two foscari: table 4. stressing on s syllables (in % from all lines) plays 2 4 6 8 10 the maid of honour 73.8 75.9 76.4 63.9 90.1 the two foscari 72.4 76.9 73.7 72.6 86.3 except for syllable 8, containing the stressing dip in the maid of honour but not in the two foscari, the stressing patterns in the two plays are close. again, we are probably facing metrical homonymy of the two periods rather than imitation: it is unlikely that byron imitated massinger. the similarity occurs “over the head” of classicism. in shelley’s charles the first the stressing on syllables 6 and 8 is almost equal, thus there is no dip on syllable 8 (cf. sardanapalus and the two foscari), while in the cenci, similarly to macbeth, there is a dip on syllable 8. here are the stressing patterns in macbeth, the cenci, charles the first, sardanapalus, and the speech model: table 5. stressing on s syllables (in % from all lines) plays 2 4 6 8 10 macbeth 65.0 81.8 76.8 69.6 94.5 the cenci: 67.2 82.0 76.2 69.9 91.7 charles the first 75.3 84.1 76.1 75.2 88.1 sardanapalus 71.9 78.4 73.0 72.5 90.5 speech model 69.4 76.8 76.8 64.3 93.4 stressing of the cenci is impressively close to macbeth, while charles the first is different from the cenci and not unlike byron’s sardanapalus: stresses on midline syllables 6 and 8 are equal (figure 4). in the speech model of verse the stressing on syllables 4 and 6 is equal: there is no “hemistich” segmentation in 22 marina tarlinskaja the speech model, while in macbeth, the cenci and charles the first the high stressing on syllable 4 suggests a hemistich segmentation. a tendency close to the speech model occurs in webster’s the duchess of malfi, in massinger’s the maid of honour and in byron’s tragedies. moreover, massinger sometimes used heavy feminine endings (5.5% of all lines) coupled with enjambments. no wonder ants oras accused massinger of composing prose-like verse (oras 1960). stressing and places of syntactic breaks in byron’s tragedies are also prose-like, but in a different way from massinger’s plays. the strict syllabic composition of sardanapalus and the two foscari compensates for their prose-like stressing and the numerous enjambments (see below). the last ictus in macbeth and the cenci, syllable 10, is frequently stressing. this mode of stressing in macbeth is explained by the chronological place of the tragedy in shakespeare’s oeuvre: there are already few polysyllables at the end of the line, such as “envious”, “perjuries”, “faithfully” (all from romeo and juliet), and still no unstressed monosyllables on syllable 10, such as prepositions “in”, “for” and “by” and conjunctions “and”, “but” and “that” (all from the tempest). these will appear in later plays, beginning with antony and cleopatra (tarlinskaja 2014, appendix b). and in the cenci shelley impressively closely replicated the stressing pattern of macbeth. the actual verse of baroque and of the romantic the cenci imitating the baroque macbeth has, like the speech model of verse, a dip on syllable 8: frequent stressing on syllable 10 causes, by contrast, a dip on syllable 8. series2 series3 2 4 6 8 10 syllabic position 100% 60% macbeth the cenci 70% 80% 90% + charles the first fig. 4. stressing on s in shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci and charles the first macbeth the cenci charles the first 23shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification 6.3. rhythmical deviations and meaning the accentual pattern of the romantic tragedies is bolder than in the earlier plays. while retaining a strict syllabic count, shelley introduced various rhythmical deviations not used in the previous epochs (see tarlinskaja 1976, 1987). in the cenci there are numerous cases of a disyllabic word creating an inversion of stresses on syllabic positions ws at the end of a syntactic period, e. g.: “if thou hast done murders, /// made thy life’s path…”; “what did he say? – nothing. /// as soon as we…”; “who yet remain stubborn. /// – i overrule” (the cenci, 5.2.134, 180, 185). another type of deviations, also at the end of a phrase, is the use of two monosyllables, an unstressed grammatical word and a stressed content (lexical) word on syllabic positions sw; e. g.: “and holding his breath, /// died. – there remains nothing” (the cenci, 5.2.183). the deviations, such as “who yet remain stubborn. – i overrule” and “and holding his breath, /// died” are clearly used for emphasis, in the former case, to emphasize the stubborn refusal of the prisoner to speak; in the latter case, to support the effect of suffocation. such rhythmic-syntactic patterns did not occur in earlier epochs. the romantic playwrights had learned from the previous epochs how to use disyllabic and trisyllabic accentual deviations on positions ws, sw and wsw to emphasize meaning (“rhythm and meaning”, see tarlinskaja 1987, 2014, appendix a), e. g.: “touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man”, “stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul”, “dare you, with lips yet white from the rack’s kiss”, “and the rack makes him utter, do you think” (the cenci, 4.3.17, 5.2.1 123, 8, 96), cf.: “weep our sad bosoms empty. – let us rather”, “pour the sweet milk of concord into hell”, “wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts” (macbeth, 4.3.2, 98, 116); cf.: “spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day”, “clapp’d his glad wings, and sate to view the fight”2 “on her heav’d bosom hung her drooping head” (pope, the rape of the lock, 4.88, 5.54, 4.145) 2 on formulas in english literary verse see tarlinskaja 1989 and 2014. 24 marina tarlinskaja the rare deviations on sws can also emphasize meaning; e. g.: “abroad in colonies, or fall by the sword” (massinger, the maid of honour, 1.1.209) the word “colonies” is considered disyllabic. 7. alternation of periods versification patterns evolve in waves. texts with a stressing dip on syllable 8 follow the speech tendency, and the “verse-prose” opposition becomes eschewed, while the dip on syllable 6 signifies a retreat from the speech tendency, and the “verse-prose” contrast increases. iambic pentameter of renaissance and of classicism was strict, while that of baroque and romanticism was loose. philip massinger (1583–1640), for example, in addition to other prose-like features, created many enjambments that combined with feminine and dactylic endings; for example: “and, when at push of pike i am to enter a breach, to show my valor i have bought me an armor cannon-proof. – you will not heap then o’er an outwork in your shirt? – i do not like activity that way…” (massinger, the maid of honour, 1.1.59–63) lines 59–61 have feminine endings accompanied by enjambments, line 61, in addition, has a heavy feminine ending. in earlier baroque iambs, such as fletcher’s, enjambments and feminine endings were mutually exclusive: fletcher’s feminine endings required a syntactic line boundary (tarlinskaja 2020). in massinger plays, accentual deviations from the meter on adjacent syllabic positions sws were permitted. all these features made massinger’s dramas sound like prose; see oras 1960. obviously, prose-sounding verse was massinger’s goal. here are three lines from the tragedy the maid of honour3: 3 the sign  designates enjambments, underlines are for two syllables filling the same w position, bold letters emphasize accentual deviations, the number in square brackets indicates a missing syllable. 25shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification “[1] pray you, style me as i am, a wretch forsaken of the world as myself. – i would it were in me to help you. – ay, if that you want power, sir” (massinger, the maid of honour 3.1.109–111) line 109 has an omitted first syllable (in square brackets). strings of two syllables (underlined) occupying the same w occur on positions 5 and 7 of lines 109 and 111. lines 109 and 110 have enjambments, line 109 has a feminine ending and an enjambment; and line 111 has an extra-metrical stress on syllable 9 and a heavy feminine ending. line 110 contains accentual deviations on positions sws (2, 3, 4); such lines would be disallowed in shakespeare’s verse. the period of baroque was replaced by pre-classicism (the second half of the 17th century) and classicism of the 18th c. in 1660 the monarchy was restored. king charles ii who had spent his exile years at versailles, acquired a taste for gallantry and for theatrical entertainment. the king gave licenses to two theater companies; the director of one of them was william davenant, an alleged shakespeare’s godson and a mediocre playwright. the tastes of the public were changing; the “gallant” audience expected a more refined style of plays with a happy ending, and smooth versification. shakespeare’s dramas and their versification were now considered barbaric. different tastes required different plays, and а new generation of playwrights began to create dramas that suited the changed tastes of the public. the post-restoration playwrights lacked both talent and time: the new theaters required new repertoire, but new plays are not composed in a hurry, so the post-restoration authors began to alter and rewrite elizabethan and baroque plays “for their own good”. verse was moving towards greater strictness and symmetry that will develop by the end of the 17th c. in dryden’s poetry; dryden was the forerunner of classicism. syntactic breaks in william davenant’s plays began to appear after syllables 4 and 6 equally often, and the stressing dip on position 8 (the verse style of baroque) began to be replaced by equal stressing of syllables 6 and 8 (cf. with shakespeare’s henry v and othello). the most noticable feature of the post-restoration plays was the smoothing out of the line rhythm: the accentual “deviations” that earlier poets used to emphasize meaning began to be ironed out. what more, the renaissance figures of speech such as metaphors, became too complicated for the new audience to digest, and were removed. here is one exampe. in macbeth shakespeare is describing the murder of the king. the deed was so heinous that the day became as dark as the night (probably during a solar eclipse): 26 marina tarlinskaja “…by th’ hour ‘tis day, and yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp” (shakespeare, macbeth 2.4.7) the verb “strangles” occurs on syllabic positions 5–6, a rhythmical deviation from the meter and a metaphor for “covers”; “the traveling lamp” is a metaphoric nomination of the sun. here is how davenant smoothed out and simplified line 7: “and yet dark night does cover all the skie” (davenant, macbeth 2.4.7) during the time of classicism (beginning of the 18th century) the concept of what is beautiful had changed and required a return to a stricter verse form and a stronger “verse-prose” contrast. here are some examples of the postrestoration and early classicism authors and plays: john dryden, all for love 1677, thomas otway venice preserved 1682, william congreve the way of the world 1700, joseph addison cato 1713, george lillo the london merchant 1731. the eighteenth-century poems and plays favored a symmetrical line structure with a syntactic break after syllables 4 (or 5) and a frequent stressing dip in midline, on syllable 6. here are some random examples from john dryden’s absalom and achitophel (1681) with syntactic breaks of different strength after syllable 4: “so, several factions / from this first ferment, work up to foam, /// and threat the government. some by their friends, /// more by themselves thought wise oppos’d the pow’r, /// to which they could not rise” (dryden, absalom and achitophel, 140–143) rhythmical parallelism of hemistiches often accompanied grammatical parallelism; here are examples from a later poem, an epistle to dr. arbuthnot (1734) by the famous classicist alexander pope: “what walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?” “they stop the chariot, and they board the barge” “with honest anguish, and an aking head” “he’ll write a journal, or he’ll turn divine” “a painted mistress, or a purling stream” “true genius kindles, and fair fame inspires” 27shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification “the trifling head, or the corrupted heart” “the libell’d person, and the pictur’d shape” “by nature honest, by experience wise” (pope, an epistle to dr. arbuthnot, 7, 10, 37, 54, 150, 194, 328, 354, 400) the syllabic count became precise, and remained so all through romanticism. in the period of romanticism iambic pentameter became loose again, but in a different way from baroque. the line syntax and stressing marked no hemistich segmentation: syntactic breaks were scattered along the line, and the stressing on syllabic position (2), 4, 6, 8 tended to be equal. romanticism allowed accentual deviations from the iambic scheme not permitted in the previous epochs; and, as we shall see below, byron’s lines allowed numerous enjambments that broke close syntactic links. thus, typologically similar periods of versification alternated “over the head” of adjacent periods: early renaissance and classicism – baroque and romanticism. 8. line endings 8.1. run-on lines (enjambments) run-on lines were scarce in renaissance plays (kyd, the spanish tragedy 9.5% lines, shakespeare richard iii 11.8%), still scarce in mid-shakespeare’s plays (othello 16.3%), but grew in later shakespeare (macbeth 28.3, the tempest 42.0% of lines) and during the period of later baroque (massinger, the maid of honour, act 1, 59.3% of all lines). the number of run-on lines decreased during the epoch of classicism (theobald orestes 12.6%), and grew up again in the plays of romanticism (byron, the two foscari 43.2%, cf. shakespeare’s the tempest 42.0%), shelley the cenci 28.7%, cf. macbeth 28.3%: here too shelley seems to follow shakespeare’s macbeth. in the two foscari byron uses particularly many run-on-on lines, 43.2% (see above). the enjambments in the two foscari often break a strong syntactic link, with the enjambed lines ending in a grammatical word; this is how the play begins: “where is the prisoner? – reposing from the question. – the hour’s past – fix’d yesterday for the resumption of his trial. – let us rejoin our colleagues in the council, and urge his recall. – nay, let him profit by a few brief minutes of his tortured limbs.” (byron, the two foscari, 1.1.1–6) 28 marina tarlinskaja five lines out of six have enjambments, one line with an enjambment has a feminine ending, and three lines end in a preposition (“from, by”) or a conjunction (“and”). 8.2. the syllabic structure of line endings the syllabic structure of line endings had changed too. the baroque versification had developed numerous feminine endings. moreover, feminine endings began to accept stresses on syllable 11, as in “you look extreme ill; is it any old grief ?”4 (fletcher, monsieur thomas, 2.1.19), see also the examples from massinger above. phrases like “old grief ”, with a stress (probably weakened in declamation) falling after a metrical stress on 10, occur also in midline: in the same line from fletcher’s monsieur thomas there is a phrase “extreme ill” with the main phrasal stress on the metrically strong (s) position 4 and an adjacent, probably weakened, stress on the following metrically weak (w) syllabic position 5. such syncopated phrases are called “enclitic”. in the speech model of verse feminine endings constitute 39.4% of all “lines”,5 webster’s the duchess of malfi (35.1%) and particularly byron’s sardanapalus (38.6%) are close to that index. this is one more feature that brings the duchess of malfi close to regular speech. macbeth has 25.3% of feminine line endings, and the cenci unexpectedly contains only 9.1%, however, charles the first displays a shakespearean index close to the time of macbeth: 23.0%. massinger’s the maid of honour has particularly many feminine endings: 45.8% of all lines; however, fletcher had many more: bonduca 66.8%, fletcher’s portion in the false one 80.9% (tarlinskaja 2014 appendix, table b3, tarlinskaja 2020 table 3.). of the four plays of the period of romanticism, the line endings of byron’s sardanapalus are particularly close to the speech model: 38.6% of all lines of sardanapalus have feminine endings. the two foscari, with its numerous enjambments, has fewer feminine endings, only 22.7% of lines: feminine endings and enjambments usually mutually exclude each other (tarlinskaja 2020), and the two foscari has many run-on-on lines, 43.2% (see above). 4 stressed syllable on s is capitalized, the enclitic stress on the following w is underlined. 5 recall that i tried to select the model “lines” from the ends of phrases; 39.4% of “feminine” endings is how phrases tended to end. 29shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification 9. the syllabic structure within the lines one more feature of baroque versification is the syllabic structure within the lines: two or even three syllables fitted into one w slot. performances in enclosed theaters abolished the need for the actors to enunciate every line separately. the tempo of declamation must have changed: the syllabic structure of verse lines lost its strict count. such clusters of syllables were probably recited quickly (tarlinskaja 2004), making the verse resemble every-day speech. here is an example (clusters of syllables are underlined): “thou hast pressed to the emperours presence without my warrant” (fletcher, the prophetess, 3.2.79): two syllables filling the same w slot occur in positions 1, 3, and 7. there are also cases when a syllable is omitted on w and even on s. the omitted syllable sometimes accompanied an action (e. g., kneeling). as we have seen, the “verse-prose” opposition cultivated during elizabethan times weakened during the period of baroque, as the playwrights clearly tried to have their verse resemble every-day speech. the tempo of declamation must have quickened. the loose syllabic structure of lines was typical of later baroque, 1620–1630 (middleton, massinger). 10. conclusion 1. the versification of shelley’s the cenci is very much like later shakespeare’s plays, especially macbeth and othello, cf. the places of syntactic breaks in othello and the cenci, and particularly the stress profiles of macbeth and the cenci. shelley imitated shakespeare’s macbeth not just in using similar motifs, lexicon and phraseology, but also in the versification: in the place of syntactic breaks, the structure of line endings, and particularly in its stressing pattern. 2. english versification developed in waved: a stricter form, with a syntactic break after syllables 4 or 5 and a stressing “dip” on syllable 6 (elizabethan renaissance) – a looser verse during the period of baroque, with frequent two syllables filling the same w position, a syntactic break after syllable 6, or even 7, and a stressing “dip” on syllable 8 – a strict verse of classicism, with a syntactic break after syllables 4 (or 5), a syntactic parallelism of hemistiches and a stressing “dip” on syllable 6 – a looser verse of romanticism, with its syntax and stressing particulars indicating no hemistich segmentation, and with numerous stressing deviations (“rhythmical figures”) used to emphasize meaning. the strict forms of classicism are either a conscious imitation of renaissance “over the head” of its immediate predecessor, the baroque, or 30 marina tarlinskaja a case of rhythmical homonymy: a hemistich segmentation 4 + 6 syllables, with a syntactic break after syllables 4 or 5 brings to life a stressing dip on syllable 6. the versification of romanticism, compared to classicism, is loose; it avoids hemistich segmentation: the syntactic breaks and omitted stresses are often scattered indiscriminately in midline (byron’s plays, shelley’s charles the first). the versification of shelley’s the cenci, very much like shakespeare’s macbeth and othello, is unlike the plays by byron, as well as shelley’s charles the first. thus, strict periods of versification were elizabethan renaissance and classicism, while periods of loose verse were baroque and romanticism. the similarities of periods “over the head” of adjacent periods lead to homonymous rhythmical structures of iambic pentameter: strict – loose – strict – loose. 3. the speech model of iambic pentameter helped to establish which period plays initiated the norms of the english speech (the periods of baroque and romanticism) and which preferred a contrast to the speech norms (renaissance and classicism).6 references akimova, marina 2017. tsitata ili klishe v poeticheskom tekste. in: marina akimova, marina tarlinskaja (eds.), m. l. gasparovu-stkihovedu. in memoriam. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 221–254. bruster, douglas 2015. shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology. in: studia metrica et poetica 2(2), 25–47. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.03 bruster, douglas; smith, geneviève 2016. a new chronology for shakespeare’s plays. in: digital scholarship in the humanities 31(2), 303–320. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqu068 gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh: metrika i ritmika. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1984. ocherk istorii russkogo stikha: metrika. ritmika. rifma. strofika. moskva: nauka. 6 i wish to express my profound gratitude to igor pilshchikov for his inspiration, bibliography help, and his patience in following the various stages of this project. i am also grateful to sergei liapin for editorial assistance. 31shakespeare’s macbeth and shelley’s the cenci: versification harrington-lueker, donna 1983. imagination versus introspection: the cenci and macbeth. in: keats-shelley journal 32, 172–189. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30210200 jackson, macdonald p. 2002. pause patterns in shakespeare’s verse: canon and chronology. in: literary and linguistic computing 17(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/17.1.37 oras, ants 1960. pause pattern in elizabethan and jacobean dramas. an experiment in prosody (university of florida monographs. humanities 3). gainesville: university of florida press. tarlinskaja, marina 1976. english verse: theory and history. the hague, paris: mouton. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. rhythm and meaning: rhythmical figures in english iambic pentameter, their grammar and their links with semantics. in: style 21(1), 1–35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945629 tarlinskaja, marina 1989. formulas in english literary verse. in: language and style 22(2), 115–130. tarlinskaja, marina 2004. verse text: its meter and its oral rendition. in: christoph küper, (ed.), meter, rhythm and performance – metrum, rhythmus, performanz. frankfurt am main [etc.]: peter lang, 39–55. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama, 1561– 1642. farnham: ashgate. tarlinskaja, marina 2020. fletcher’s versification. in: studia metrica et poetica 7(1), 7–33. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.01 taylor, gary; egan, gabriel (eds.) 2017. the new oxford shakespeare: authorship companion. oxford: oxford university press. studia metrica et poetica sisu 5_1.indd attributing john marston’s marginal plays darren freebury-jones, marina tarlinskaja, marcus dahl* abstract: john marston (c. 1576–1634) was a dramatist of the elizabethan and jacobean periods, known for his satirical wit and literary feuds with ben jonson. his dramatic corpus consists of nine plays of uncontested authorship. this article investigates four additional plays of uncertain authorship which have been associated with marston: lust’s dominion; histriomastix; the family of love; and the insatiate countess. the internal evidence for marston’s hand in these four texts is examined and an analysis made of the potential divisions of authorship. the essay provides a survey of marston’s individual style by testing vocabulary; prosody; collocations of thought and language; and versification habits within both his acknowledged plays and the contested texts, in comparison to plays written by other authorship candidates. keywords: marston; dekker; lording barry; authorship attribution studies; vocabulary; collocations; versification analysis introduction interest in the authorship of elizabethan dramas has grown exponentially during the past several decades. computerized studies have become a powerful means of uncovering minute details of poetic texts, and online concordances, such as literature online (lion)1 and early english books online (eebo),2 have become available. nonetheless, some analyses can still be made only by hand. the most productive evidence for the authorship of renaissance plays is a linguistic approach. scholars have been able to enhance our knowledge of early modern canons through analyses of authorial preferences for morphological, syntactic, and orthographic forms; authors’ vocabularies, including * authors’ addresses: darren freebury-jones, school of english, communication and philosophy, cardiff university, john percival building, colum drive, cardiff, cf10 3eu, uk. e-mail: darren_f.j@hotmail.co.uk; marina tarlinskaja, department of linguistics, university of washington, seattle, box 354340 seattle, wa 98195-4340, usa. e-mail: marinat@uw.edu; marcus dahl, institute of english studies, university of london, senate house, malet street, london wc1e 7hu, uk. e-mail: marcus.dahl@sas.ac.uk. 1 available online at http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk. 2 available online at http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home. studia metrica et poetica 5.1, 2018, 28–51 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.1.02 29attributing john marston’s marginal plays preferred contractions, colloquialisms, and interjections; parallelisms of thought and language; as well as versification habits. in the elizabethan period, dramas were not considered works of art worthy of respectful publication and preservation. for instance, john suckling, in his poem a session of the poets (1637), makes ben jonson claim that “he deserves the bays / for his were called works, while others were but plays”. plays were often composed by two or more co-authors, copied by semi-literate scribes, prompters, or actors, and frequently published anonymously. shakespeare has always been the primary focus of attention in attribution studies. though the central part of his canon suggested by e. k. chambers is still intact (chambers 1930), new plays where shakespeare was a co-author or later refurbisher keep being added to the canon, such as edward iii (1593)3 and the 1602 additions to the spanish tragedy (1587). however, in recent years there has been new interest in other dramatists of the period, exemplified by editions of playwrights such as thomas middleton, john webster, john ford, and james shirley. after all, shakespeare did not work in a vacuum. he had notable predecessors, he was surrounded by contemporaries, and by younger colleagues who had not followed in his footsteps. indeed, it is the minor poets who consolidate a poetic tradition, and there was a host of hard-working but less notable dramatists writing during this period, such as john marston (1576–1634), the focus of our attention in this article. marston was an elizabethan and jacobean poet, playwright, and satirist. his career as a writer lasted around a decade; he ceased writing plays after he was ordained deacon in 1609, getting a living as a parish priest. marston’s dramatic corpus consists of nine plays of uncontested authorship. his sole-authored plays are antonio and mellida (1599); antonio’s revenge (1600); jack drum’s entertainment (1600); what you will (1601); the malcontent (1603); the dutch courtesan (1604); parasitaster (1605); and the wonder of women (1605). he co-authored eastward ho (1605) with ben jonson and george chapman. however, the boundaries of marston’s dramatic canon remain uncertain, for he sometimes worked with collaborators and may have refurbished old plays. we examine four plays of uncertain authorship which have been associated with marston: lust’s dominion (1600); histriomastix (1602); the family of love (1607); and the insatiate countess (1610). this study surveys some of the internal evidence we have discovered for marston’s hand in these texts, with the aim of providing firm foundations for future researchers to examine marston’s impact on early modern drama. we outline the complex attribution histories of the four contested plays below. 3 we have followed martin wiggins and catherine richardson’s british drama 1533–1642: a catalogue for dating. 30 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl lust’s dominion lust’s dominion; or, the lascivious queen is a revenge tragedy, printed in 1657. gustav cross proposed that marston had a hand in the play in 1958 (39–61). he claimed that the play exhibited marston’s idiosyncratic vocabulary and could be identified with the spanish moor’s tragedy – for which philip henslowe paid thomas dekker, john day, and william haughton in 1600 – and that it was also the unnamed tragedy for which henslowe paid marston in september 1599 (collier 1825: 311). cyrus hoy concurred that lust’s dominion and the spanish moor’s tragedy were the same play, but suggested that marston began a revision of an older play for henslowe in 1599, which was completed by dekker, haughton, and day the following year (hoy 1980). charles cathcart has argued that the play originated with marston, was revised by dekker, haughton, and day, and perhaps went through a subsequent limited revision, most likely in 1606 (2001: 360–375). histriomastix histriomastix, or the player whipped was entered in the stationers’ register on october 31 1610, and published by thomas thorpe that same year. the anonymous play was first assigned to marston by richard simpson (1878: 1–89). simpson suggested that marston had revised an older, lost text, a theory that convinced r. a. small (1899: 67–90) and chambers (1923: 17–19). other scholars, including f. g. fleay (1891: 69–72), alvin b. kernan (1958: 134–150), and george l. geckle (1972: 205–222), argued for marston’s sole authorship. david j. lake’s linguistic analysis led him to conclude that marston had “a main finger” in the play (1981a: 152). marston’s involvement, either as coauthor or reviser, hardened into orthodoxy until roslyn knutson contended that the play does not belong in marston’s canon (2001: 359–377). knutson’s arguments have since been challenged by james p. bednarz (2002: 21–51), john peachman (2004: 304–306), and cathcart (2008: 8–13). the family of love the family of love was entered into the stationers’ register on 12 october 1607 and was published the following year in quarto form by john helmes. this city comedy was performed by the children of the king’s revels. edward 31attributing john marston’s marginal plays archer ascribed the comedy to middleton in 1656, and the play was included in middleton’s oeuvre by alexander dyce in 1840 and a. h. bullen in 1885. gerald j. eberle contended that the play was co-authored by dekker and middleton (1948: 726). george r. price argued in 1969 that neither dramatist was responsible for the play (177–178). in 1975, lake concluded that the play contains the hands of middleton, dekker, and lording barry (91–108). in 1999, macdonald p. jackson, gary taylor, and paul mulholland refuted the attribution to middleton and argued that lording barry was sole author (213–241). they concluded that “if, as the 1608 edition explicitly tells us, the family of love had a single author, lording barry is the obvious candidate, on the basis of both external and internal evidence” (227). however, cathcart has proposed that marston “is likely to have been an original composer of the play” (2008: 79). the insatiate countess the insatiate countess was published by thomas archer in 1613; the title page announced marston as the author. however, one copy of the 1613 quarto contains a cancel-leaf attributing the play to william barksted and lewis machin, while a third quarto, published by hugh perrie in 1631, assigns the play to marston. shortly afterwards, perrie provided an alternative title page, which names barksted as the author. the confusion in title page attributions has inevitably polarized attribution scholars: lake concluded that the play was non-marstonian (1981b: 166–170). conversely, giorgio melchiori argued that there was strong evidence for “the existence of a first draft by marston, extending to the first part of the comic plot and to the whole of the tragic one, but limited, after act i, to certain passages and scenes” (1984: 12). melchiori elaborated that “marston devised the plot and underplot of the play, wrote a first draft of act i, part of ii.i, some speeches and outlines of the rest, particularly ii.ii, ii.iv and, to a lesser extent, iii.iv, iv.ii and v.i” (16). cathcart has more recently proposed that the play was “written in or soon after 1601, probably during the time of marston’s connection with the children of paul’s [...] its first published text reflects a version prepared with a view to performance at the whitefriars by the children of the king’s revels”, and that “barksted and machin treated the playscript” for “the whitefriars performances” (2008: 59–60). 32 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl methods we examined marston’s acknowledged sole-authored plays to identify authorial markers, such as spelling distinctions; vocabulary; recurrent collocations; and versification features. some of our methods were computational, while others involved manual analyses of old spelling texts downloaded from lion. we also made use of the search functions available for the database eebo, within the time period 1590–1610. we explore some of our findings below.4 spelling distinctions spelling particulars can provide a useful discriminator test. shakespeare, for example, displays an “overwhelming preponderance of o spellings”, which helps to distinguish his hand in collaborative texts from middleton’s, who “strongly preferred the spelling oh” (jackson 1979: 214–215). we tested marston’s eight sole-authored plays and found that the dramatist seems to have overwhelmingly preferred the spelling “o”, with 680 instances, compared to 91 examples of the spelling “oh”. compare marston’s disputed plays: table 1. “o” and “oh” spelling distinctions play o oh lust’s dominion 4 79 histriomastix 48 0 the family of love 52 1 the insatiate countess 52 6 the most notable play in this list is lust’s dominion, which is unlike any text in which marston’s hand can be found. the family of love accords with other marston texts in its preference for “o”, though lording barry also displays this preference in his ram alley (1608). histriomastix and the insatiate countess are typical for marston. 4 for further explanation of the methods and data employed in this article, see freeburyjones, tarlinskaja, dahl 2018 (forthcoming). 33attributing john marston’s marginal plays we also tested the fifty most frequent lexical words, using the software programs wordstat5 and qda miner.6 we examined marston texts plus texts from the canons of dekker, jonson, and day. global mean figures for all the top occurring non-character frequent words were compared to the top fifty global mean occurring words. we compared a separate list for those words in marston only, and then compared the top ten words for their respective commonalities. this enabled us to tell which words from the common marston list differed from the global group common words, therefore helping us to determine “marston-like” spelling preferences. we discovered that marston texts favour “foole” over “fool”, “onely” over “only”, and “lord” over “lorde”. according to these orthographic tests, histriomastix, the family of love, and the insatiate countess largely comply with marston’s sole-authored texts, whereas lust’s dominion does not. the first three plays could be, at least in part, by marston, while the latter play seems unlikely on this basis. vocabulary and diction we examined marston’s plays for word preferences such as “whilst” versus “while”; “among” versus “amongst”; and “betwixt” versus “between”. this test offered an insight into marston’s linguistic habits. for example, marston’s sole-authored plays display an overwhelming preference for “whilst”: 60:9. nonetheless, the overall preference for “whilst” (8:5) in lust’s dominion does not provide strong evidence for marston’s hand, given that dekker “nearly always writes whilst” (lake 1975: 50), and haughton and day also seem to have preferred “whilst”. the high count for “while” in histriomastix (seven instances, more than any uncontested marston play, as opposed to ten instances of “whilst”) could be the result of either revision or non-marstonian authorship. the ratio for the family of love (4:9) does not support an attribution to marston, but accords with the ratio for lording barry’s ram alley: 4:14. the insatiate countess displays an overwhelming preference for “while” (eight instances), with the sole appearance of “whilst” in act i possibly pointing to marston’s hand. we found that marston almost never used “amongst”: there is just one example in his sole-authored canon (in the wonder of women) as opposed to twelve instances of “among”. it is therefore surprising to discover that 5 available online at https://provalisresearch.com/products/content-analysis-software/. 6 available online at https://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/. 34 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl “amongst” features in every act of histriomastix except act ii and act v (the sole occurrence of “among” can be found in act iv). in lust’s dominion, the single instance of marston’s preferred form, “among”, occurs in v.i (there are three examples of “amongst” in this text overall). the family of love contains two more instances of “among” than “amongst”. lording barry’s ram alley has three instances of “amongst” and one “among”. the insatiate countess has one “among”, which occurs in the play’s second act, and zero examples of “amongst”. lake pointed out that “marston hardly ever uses” the connective “between” (1975: 46). our searches validate this observation: we found sixteen instances of “betwixt” in marston’s sole-authored plays but only two instances of “between”. in this respect, histriomastix does not resemble marston, for it has no instances of “betwixt”, but two examples of “between”; nor does the insatiate countess correlate with marston (the play contains seven examples of “between”), although marston’s preferred form can be found in i.i, iii.i, and iv.i. the sole example of “between” is found in iii.v of lust’s dominion; dekker preferred “between”. the family of love contains a single example of “betwixt” and three examples of “between”. lording barry uses “betwixt” on six occasions in ram alley, but not “between”. marston is notorious for his “indiscriminate use of latinate terminations, especially words ending in -ate” (vickers 2002: 226). we searched marston’s uncontested plays for polysyllabic words ending in -ate and found that he averages one -ate suffix per 742–1518 words. following jackson, we totalled the number of words in each play and divided them by our counts for polysyllabic words ending in -ate (jackson 1979). we found that lust’s dominion is again well outside the range for plays in which marston’s hand can incontestably be found: one -ate suffix per 1846 words. dekker is known to have used words of latin origin sparingly (pierce 1909: 5), so a low count for -ate supports a theory of dekker’s being the main hand in lust’s dominion. conversely, histriomastix is commensurate with marston’s practice of using words ending with -ate frequently: one per 845 words. the insatiate countess is close to marston’s range (one -ate suffix per 729 words), while the family of love is doubtful, but not unlike some of marston’s later plays: one -ate per 1384 words. on the basis of latinate diction, the family of love and the insatiate countess are close to marston’s style; histriomastix unquestionably points to marston; while lust’s dominion again does not. 35attributing john marston’s marginal plays collocations we employed the software pl@giarism to compare the four contested plays with the undoubted marston canon, as well as the plays of other authorial candidates.7 the length of the collocations was limited to three words (known as “trigrams”). this generated a list of 8092 phrases, which was then run through a program which compared all those matches with the texts in the rest of a database of forty-nine early modern author groups. we compared the matches that occurred in the marston canon and each of the candidate texts, but nowhere else. histriomastix and lording barry’s ram alley share the most unique trigrams plus with marston’s uncontested plays according to this round of analysis, while lust’s dominion and the family of love share the least. pervez rizvi has developed an electronic corpus of 527 plays dated between 1552 and 1657, titled collocations and n-grams.8 rizvi’s results are fully automated and enable scholars to check for every contiguous word sequence (including lemmas), as well as all discontinuous word associations within a ten-word window, shared between plays. searches of the normalized and lemmatized texts – drawn from martin mueller’s corpus shakespeare his contemporaries9 and the folger shakespeare editions website10 – allow a wider range of matches to be discovered than by searches using original spelling or the unlemmatized forms of words. in order to broaden our analysis, we cite some of rizvi’s data. according to this publicly accessible corpus, dekker figures prominently in terms of texts sharing dense verbal relations (weighted according to the length and rarity of shared phrases) with lust’s dominion: his the noble spanish soldier (1622) is ranked third in a summary list of 620 play pairs involving the revenge tragedy. old fortunatus (1599) is ranked twelfth. the highest ranking uncontested marston play in this list is parasitaster, ranked seventeenth. marston is prominent in the list of plays sharing dense verbal relations with histriomastix: his what you will is ranked third and jack drum’s entertainment is ranked thirteenth. however, according to rizvi’s data, the family of love shares even more rare verbal links with marston: the dutch courtesan is ranked second in comparison to all drama of the period, whereas barry’s 7 available online at http://pl-giarism.software.informer.com/0.9/. 8 rizvi provides detailed explanations for how these play links were recorded and weighted on his website. available online at http://www.shakespearestext.com/can/index.htm. 9 available online at https://shc.earlyprint.org/shc/home.html#. 10 available online at http://www.folger.edu/folger-shakespeare-library-editions. 36 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl ram alley is ranked eighty-fourth. the results for the insatiate countess are yet more striking, with marston’s antonio’s revenge topping the list, followed by jack drum’s entertainment in third place. we should remember, however, that large quantities of verbal links between plays can be due to other factors than common authorship, such as genre, influence, plagiarism, and shared playing companies. we therefore ran another batch of tests using wcopyfind,11 examining both old spelling texts, drawn from lion, as well as normalized texts,12 for accurate results, and determined the rarity of these matches using eebo. this time we recorded all matches occurring only within each targeted text and the acknowledged plays of authorial candidates first performed 1590–1610. once again, we limited our searches to matches consisting of at least three contiguous words in order to examine meaningful utterances (admitting two-word units in our study would increase the number of meaningless fragments that we would need to check against eebo, e. g., “of the”, “at a”, and so forth). the purpose of this round was to focus on the quality of matches within a shorter time period. as muriel st. clare byrne pointed out in a classic essay: “quality is all-important, and parallels demand very careful grading – e. g. mere verbal parallelism is of almost no value in comparison with parallelism of thought coupled with some verbal parallelism” (1932: 24). we tested marston, dekker, day, and haughton’s soleauthored plays against lust’s dominion. our analysis indicates that haughton and day’s contributions to the revenge tragedy are minimal. haughton was largely responsible for the scenes featuring the friars, crab and cole, whereas day may have helped with the portions in which maria encounters oberon and the fairies, and some martial scenes in acts iii and iv. dekker’s hand is evident throughout much of the play, especially in the verbal fabric of act i, e. g., “death’s frozen hand holds royal philip’s heart” (lust’s dominion, i.ii) closely parallels dekker’s: “i faint, death’s frozen hand / congeals life’s little river in my breast” (old fortunatus, v.ii.168–169). conversely, there are few matches between the revenge tragedy and marston plays that suggest common authorship, despite the fact that his uncontested sole-authored canon is larger than the other candidates’ unassisted plays of the period. we discovered around thirty unique phrases shared between acknowledged marston plays and histriomastix. compare this figure to an undoubted text relatively close in date, what you will, which shares forty-six unique phrases 11 available online at http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/z-wordpress/software/ wcopyfind/. 12 available online at https://shc.earlyprint.org/shc/home.html#. http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/z-wordpress/software/ 37attributing john marston’s marginal plays with the remainder of marston’s sole-authored canon. the large majority of shared phrases in what you will are three and four-word units, but marston sometimes repeated much larger chunks of speech: that casts out beams as ardent as those flakes which singed the world by rash-brain’d phaethon (what you will, iv.i.195–196) ardent as those flames that singed the world by heedless phaeton. (malcontent, i.v.44–45) the phrase, “remember to forget”, co-occurs with histriomastix (iv.i), antonio and mellida (iv.i.125), and what you will (iii.i.4–5). in the fourth act of histriomastix we also find: “should stand and lick the pavement with his knee” (iv.i). this line provides a verbal match with the malcontent: “petitionary vassals licking the pavement with their slavish knees” (i.v.28–29). we find another distinctive image in the following act: “spit on thy bosom; vowing here by heaven” (histriomastix, v.i). this line is matched in antonio’s revenge: i’ll skip from earth into the arms of heaven, and from triumphal arch of blessedness spit on thy frothy breast. (ii.ii.81–83) verbal links between the family of love and marston exceed what we might expect for an authentic marston text (around sixty unique links). however, as noted above, we also discovered copious phrasal relations between lording barry’s ram alley and marston’s corpus, which suggests that matches between these texts could be due to plagiarism. lording barry, who was a pirate, was probably a literary pirate also; he has been accused of “shameless plagiarism” (fraser 2015: 74–88). the verbal evidence therefore suggests that either marston had a hand in both ram alley and the family of love, or, more likely, that barry was a borrower who incorporated marston’s phraseology within his own passages. we have traced lording barry’s collocations of thought and language throughout the family of love: there are over twenty unique verbal links between this play and ram alley, e. g., “short tale to make, i got her ring” (family of love, v.iii), which parallels, “short tale to make, i fingered have your daughter” (ram alley, iv.iv.95); and “pity the state of a poor gentleman” (family of love, i.iii), which matches: “dear widow, pity the state of a young, / poor, yet proper gentleman” (ram alley, v.i.62–63). 38 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl there are close to fifty unique verbal links between the insatiate countess and marston’s dramatic corpus. the distribution of these parallelisms of thought and language (seven matches in act i; eleven in act ii; eight in act iii; ten in act iv; and twelve in act v) suggest that marston had written much of the play before it was revised. our findings suggest that william barksted had a hand in the beginning and the end of the play. for instance, the line, “like beauty in a cloud” (insatiate countess, i.i.12), closely parallels barksted’s poem, hiren, or the fair greek (1611): “let not thy sunne of beauty in a cloud” (l. 87). parallels with marston are also strong, e. g., “well sir, your visor gives you colour for what you say” (insatiate countess, ii.i.98) and antonio and mellida: “good colour for what he speaks” (v.ii.61). the lines, “my husband’s not the man i would have had. / o my new thoughts to this brave sprightly lord” (insatiate countess, ii.iii.45–46), seem to derive from marston’s lexicon: “you should have had my thought for a penny” (antonio & mellida, ii.i.74–75). there are also several long collocations shared between marston’s acknowledged plays and passages in act v of insatiate countess. for example, in antonio’s revenge we find: “blest be thy hand, i taste the joys of heaven” (v.v.36), cf. with the insatiate countess: “blessed be thy hand: i sacrifice a kiss” (v.i.77). the line, “flesh and blood cannot endure it” (insatiate countess, v.ii.57–58), closely parallels jack drum’s entertainment: “flesh and blood cannot endure your countenance” (iv.i). it thus seems that marston’s hand is very prominent in the insatiate countess. versification analysis for the purpose of authorship versification analysis is a good tool for attribution, especially if the text is long enough; unlike verbal tests, it cannot attribute a single line. the earliest parameters in versification analyses were line endings; next came the distribution of “pauses” (not to be confused with strong syntactic breaks) in the lines of the texts. “pauses” and “strong syntactic breaks” are not synonymous. ants oras, the pioneer in researching the placement of “pauses” in renaissance plays, associated “pauses” in declamation with punctuation (oras 1960). he studied hundreds of texts, mostly dramas. “pauses” were identified with commas; with other punctuation marks; and places where lines are divided between characters. the disadvantage of this method is the reliance on the literacy of sixteenthand early seventeenth-century scribes, prompters, and actors. a later approach developed by marina tarlinskaja relies on syntax (tarlinskaja 1984: 1–26). the advantages of her methodology are objectivity 39attributing john marston’s marginal plays and uniformity of the approach; the disadvantage is the painstaking manual work. tarlinskaja’s versification analysis is not limited to syntactic breaks; this and other parameters of versification research as applied to marston’s plays will be described below. ants oras’s methodology applied to our material oras studied the positions that “pauses” occur in the verse lines to answer questions of periodization and authorship. the number of “pauses” after every syllable was calculated as a percentage from the total number of all “pauses” after every syllable of the line (oras 1960: 1–2). oras recorded patterns for numerous elizabethan and jacobean dramatists formed by all the “pauses” indicated by internal punctuation, including “pauses” shown by punctuation marks other than commas (oras 1960: 3). we follow oras’s approach, recording all punctuation marks in marston’s pentameter lines. the remarkable similarities in patterns for same-author plays examined by oras suggest that punctuation marks can help to identify a dramatist’s individual prosodic characteristics. we examined the “pause” patterns for marston’s unaided texts and found that marston was consistent in the placement of “pauses” throughout his career. all of the plays exhibit a major peak after position 4 and a minor peak after 6: table 2. ants oras pause patterns: uncontested plays play 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 antonio and mellida 1–2 6.8 10.2 4.4 25.3 18.0 20.1 7.0 5.9 2.3 jack drum’s entertainment 4.0 8.1 4.9 31.9 21.5 20.0 7.1 1.8 0.7 what you will 2.9 9.4 5.5 26.4 19.9 19.6 8.2 5.5 2.7 the malcontent 5.0 10.2 4.1 31.4 10.9 23.2 7.1 6.3 1.8 parasitaster 1.4 4.9 3.5 36.7 17.9 22.6 7.4 4.9 0.7 the dutch courtesan 2.7 8.5 2.4 27.9 14.8 23.0 12.4 7.3 0.9 the wonder of women 2.4 6.9 3.3 31.8 15.6 21.4 9.4 6.7 2.4 40 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl we also examined act i of lust’s dominion, according to hoy’s hypothesis that marston’s hand can be traced in the beginning of the play (hoy 1980: 69), as well as the three other contested texts (oras only examined breaks dividing speakers, in just twenty lines of verse from the family of love): table 3. ants oras pause patterns: contested plays play 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lust’s dominion (act i) 4.1 8.9 6.5 19.1 15.0 26.4 13.4 5.7 0.8 histriomastix 7.3 9.7 5.5 24.9 19.4 18.4 10.7 3.2 0.9 the family of love 2.7 6.8 0.9 35.2 14.2 30.1 5.5 4.6 0 the insatiate countess 2.6 7.0 4.0 25.9 22.0 24.3 9.8 3.2 1.2 histriomastix is consistent with the patterns found for unaided marston plays. “pauses” after syllabic positions 4 and 6 are lower than in marston’s uncontested texts (the play is filled with numerous polysyllabic words that somewhat efface the frequency of “pauses” after 4 and 6), but the overall profile fits with marston’s style. the insatiate countess also follows marston’s style. on the other hand, our results contradict the argument that marston’s verse can be found in lust’s dominion: “pauses” after position 4 are too low for marston, while the predominant peak after position 6 is too high, quite unlike marston. on the basis of these data, it is hard to imagine that marston’s hand can be found in the scenes analyzed. the majority of dekker’s plays, including the shoemaker’s holiday (1599) and old fortunatus, also display a major peak after position 6, as we might expect at the period of writing. day’s the isle of gulls (1606) and humour out of breath (1607) display peaks after position 4 (oras 1960: 53–55). the evidence for dekker’s sole authorship of act i of lust’s dominion is therefore compelling. the “pause” profile for the family of love shows some correlations with marston. the percentage for position 1 is identical to that found for the dutch courtesan; the percentage for “pauses” after the second syllable is very close to the wonder of women; and the percentage of “pauses” after syllable 4 accords with marston. but there are some major differences: the dramatist(s) responsible for this play employed “pauses” after position 6 far more frequently than marston, whose style remains in the pre-1600 versification mode. having just one lording barry play for comparison problematizes analysis of this kind, but the profile for ram alley corresponds to that in the family of love: a high peak at position 4, closely followed by position 6. our tests so far do not rule out marston’s authorship of the family of love, but neither do they rule out barry. 41attributing john marston’s marginal plays marina tarlinskaja’s tests applied to our material tarlinskaja’s versification analysis includes twenty parameters. some of them are used in this essay. let us start with syntactic breaks. the analysis of syntactic breaks is based solely on syntax, not on punctuation, as it had been in oras’s analysis. the approach based on syntax makes it possible to disregard punctuation inserted by copyists and later editors. there are many nuances in syntactic affinity between adjacent words in connected speech, but only three degrees are differentiated: (1) close links, marked by [/], as between a modifier and a modified noun, or a verb and its direct object, e. g., “the humble / slave, desire / increase”; (2) medium links that are also medium breaks, marked [//], as between the subject and the predicate; a verb and an adverbial modifier of time or place; or adjacent words that have no immediate syntactic links, e. g., “thy fingers // walk; alive // that time; my heart // my eye // the freedom / of that right”; and (3) strong breaks, as between the author’s direct speech, or between two sentences, e. g., “‘for shame,’ /// he cries, /// ‘let go, /// and let me / go’”. the links and breaks are calculated as percentages from the total number of lines. in elizabethan times, the most frequent break fell after syllable 4, emphasizing the hemistich segmentation 4+6 syllables. after 1600 the most frequent break began to fall after syllable 6, or even 7. the line segmentation became 6+4 or 7+3 (or 7+4). another parameter of analysis is stressing. we separate the abstract metrical scheme from actual stresses in actual lines of the metrical text, in our case, iambic pentameter. metre is a scheme “distilled” from many actual texts. it is a string of metrically weak (w) and metrically strong (s) syllabic positions: w s w s w s. positions w tend to be filled with unstressed syllables, and positions s tend to be filled with stresses. “tend” means that w allow some stresses, and s allow some unstressed syllables. metre also incorporates rules that the author is aware of, so he chooses a limited set of words and word combinations in a particular syntactic arrangement. for example, “the divine desdemona” is permissible for shakespeare, but “who’s divine? you refer to desdemona?” is not: “divine” on positions sw cannot occur before a strong syntactic break. the problem of stressing monosyllables is particularly challenging; our approach is explained in detail in tarlinskaja 1976 and 2014. here is the explanation in a nutshell: monosyllables have no sense-differentiating stress, as do polysyllables (cf. “a present” – “to present”), therefore they easily acquire and lose phrasal accentuation. however, in the flow of speech some mono syllables tend to be unstressed, others tend to be stressed, while yet others can be either stressed or unstressed. thus, in versification analysis, all monosyllables are 42 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl formally divided into three stressing categories: always stressed (on s as well as on w): nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, pronominal nouns; always unstressed: articles, prepositions, the particle “to”, conjunctions; and “ambivalent”: stressed on s and unstressed on w, such as pronouns. in the “ambivalent” category, for a more nuanced analysis, we differentiate unstressed pronouns on s that are placed immediately before its syntactic partner, and those that are divided from its syntactic partner by a phrase. cf. stressing of the pronoun “i”, in the lines: “most true it is, that i have looked on truth” and “when i against my self with thee partake”. pronouns are considered stressed in the cases of overt contrast (but not our subjective “gut feeling”): “since i left you, mine eye is in my mind”. stressing also depends on the period: in the early elizabethan iambic pentameter, pronouns occurred on s more often than in later periods and were probably felt to be stressed stronger in the minds of elizabethans than the jacobeans. the three groups of monosyllables are, as stated above, a formal differentiation. in recitation, many variants of stressing are possible. nouns on w, for example, may lose their stress. but formally they are considered stressed, otherwise every person will stress texts subjectively, and the results will never be comparable. thus, in john donne’s line, “makes mee her medall, and makes her love mee”, all four last words are counted as stressed: “makes her love mee”, even though in recitation “makes” and “love” may lose their stress. but both “makes” and “love” belong to the group “always stressed”, so we count them as “stress” on w positions 7 and 9. to get a picture of how a text is stressed, we calculate the percentage of stresses on each syllabic position (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…) from the total number of lines. the resulting string of numbers is called the stress profiles of the text. it is convenient to tabulate stressing on s and w separately. we also examine phrasal stressing: a stress on w adjacent to the stress on s on its left or its right, e. g., “dear love”, and “with too much pain”. in the first example, the stress on w occurs to the left of the stress on s, in the second example, to the right. the first type of micro-phrase is conditionally called proclitic, the second type is enclitic. the ratio of enclitic phrases (calculated per 1000 lines) is a particularly good way of differentiating authorship, e. g., the scenes belonging to shakespeare and john fletcher in the two noble kinsmen (1613). among other parameters of analysis are the types of line endings, syllabic, accentual, and syntactic. syllabic types fall into masculine, feminine, dactylic, and very rarely hyperdactylic. masculine endings can be stressed and unstressed, and the unstressed syllable on position 10 may be created by a polysyllabic word or by a weakly stressed or unstressed monosyllable, such 43attributing john marston’s marginal plays as a preposition or a conjunction. feminine endings can be simple (“loving”) or compound (“love it”). compound feminine and dactylic endings can be light (no stress on syllable 11) and heavy (with a stress on syllable 11), e. g., “in love too”. syntactically, line endings can be end-stopped or run-on. additional parameters include the frequency of syllabic suffixes -ed and -eth; or disyllabic variants of the suffixes -ion and -ious. the disyllabic variant of -ion was still used in the seventeenth century; suckling, for example, rhymed “go on” with “pre-sump-ti-on” in a session of the poets: “apollo stopped him there, and bade him not go on, / ’twas merit, he said, and not pre-sump-tion”. other features include the frequency of pleonastic verb “do”; grammatical inversions; the frequency of alliterations; and the use of deviations from the metre to emphasize the meaning of the micro-situation, for example, “duck with french nods and apish courtesy”, instead of something more “iambic”, like: “or duck with nods and apish courtesy”. verbs occur in rhythmical italics three times more frequently than in the text outside the italics, and in the majority of cases these are verbs of action (tarlinskaja 2014: 275). syntactic breaks in marston plays in elizabethan verse before 1600, the most frequent syntactic break fell after syllabic position 4, while after 1600, in jacobean plays, the break fell after syllable 6 and even after 7 (cf. with oras, above). for comparison with marston’s texts we shall look at shakespeare’s romeo and juliet (1595), henry v (1599), and king lear (1605), because shakespeare’s versification style reflects the general tendencies of the periods. antonio and mellida was taken as a sample of marston’s style. lording barry’s ram alley was analyzed for comparison with the family of love, and dekker’s the noble spanish soldier for comparison with lust’s dominion. 44 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl table 4. strong syntactic breaks after syllables 2–9, in % from the total number of lines play 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 tamburlaine 1 (1587) 6.5 2.2 12.0 6.7 4.6 2.0 1.7 0.2 antonio (1599) 11.5 4.5 23.5 16.8 14.6 7.7 4.7 2.4 histriomastix (1599) 7.7 4.4 10.8 10.1 9.4 5.4 1.9 0.7 lust’s dominion (1600) 7.8 4.1 13.0 12.6 23.8 11.5 5.9 1.1 the family of love (1607) 5.7 1.1 22.2 10.4 23.6 3.2 4.6 0.0 ram alley (1608) 8.2 5.6 26.6 8.2 25.2 10.2 5.6 3.9 countess (1610) act 1 6.6 2.3 18.8 8.8 11.0 3.7 2.2 0.7 countess act 5 6.0 5.4 20.7 12.3 14.3 6.9 3.7 1.0 romeo (1595) 10.2 4.8 25.7 13.0 14.0 4.4 3.4 1.6 henry v (1599) 6.6 3.2 14.3 11.1 13.5 6.8 2.8 1.0 king lear (1605) 8.2 4.8 18.2 15.2 27.7 15.4 8.9 3.7 dekker, soldier (1622) 7.2 4.2 14.4 12.8 23.2 16.8 8.0 2.6 marston’s tendency is much like early elizabethans, in particular christopher marlowe’s, though all of marston’s plays were composed close to or after 1600. marlowe uses many polysyllabic words, particularly in tamburlaine the great (1587); therefore, though most breaks fall after syllable 4, the peak is not too high. shakespeare’s plays follow the trends of the periods: a peak after syllable 4 in the early romeo and juliet; breaks after 4, 5, and 6 are almost equal in henry v, a transitional play; and a peak after syllable 6 in the later king lear. breaks in later shakespeare, as in most other post-1600 authors, become more frequent towards the end of the line. dekker’s the noble spanish soldier displays a firm peak of breaks after syllable 6. in marston’s antonio and mellida the major peak of syntactic breaks falls after syllable 4 in almost a quarter of the lines. now look at marston’s questionable plays. the insatiate countess, act i (all) and act v (ending with the execution of the countess), though a jacobean play, is unquestionably marstonian, with a peak after syllable 4. histriomastix has a high peak of breaks after syllables 4 and 6 in an almost equal proportion, so this test does not tell us much about its authorship. lust’s dominion is completely unlike marston with its major peak of breaks after syllable 6. it reminds us of dekker, as has been suggested above. the places of major breaks in the family of love are very much like barry’s ram alley: their breaks create firm maxima after syllables 4 and 6. 45attributing john marston’s marginal plays stressing table 5. stressing on positions 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 (in % of all lines; minima underlined) play 2 4 6 8 10 tamburlaine 1 70.2 86.9 66.3 79.0 77.2 antonio and mellida 75.6 92.1 70.6 86.9 81.8 lust’s dominion 72.1 83.8 74.2 74.9 86.2 histriomastix 77.8 87.9 76.5 81.1 79.9 the family of love 86.4 91.4 78.1 83.5 91.4 ram alley 74.1 87.9 79.9 78.1 94.4 countess act i 63.6 87.5 63.6 76.5 85.7 countess act v 69.5 87.2 66.0 77.8 82.3 romeo 66.7 87.2 68.3 73.6 88.5 henry v 63.5 81.7 70.8 71.9 86.8 king lear 69.9 82.0 77.6 67.8 95.7 dekker, soldier 68.1 84.5 80.4 73.6 90.6 antonio and mellida and histriomastix display, similarly to tamburlaine, a wavelike tendency of stressing on s: the “dips” are on syllables 2, 6, and 10. both the family of love and particularly the insatiate countess resemble marston’s style, with a “dip” on 6, but the stressing on syllable 10 is higher and on 8 lower than in marston’s earlier plays, because there are fewer polysyllables at the end of its lines, such as long names of personages (antonio and mellida) and romance borrowings (histriomastix), and more verse lines scattered among long passages of prose and non-iambic verse (the family of love), therefore the ends of iambic pentameter lines need to be made clearly marked by a stress. a missing stress on syllable 6 is often accompanied by grammatical symmetry, expressed most often in two attributive phrases. in histriomastix, symmetrical rhythmical-syntactic lines, or “clichés” (gasparov 1999), constitute 13.5% of all lines with an omitted stress on 6, e.  g., “then sacred knowledge by divinest things” (histriomastix, i.i); “all other pity is but foolish pride” (iii.i); and “th’impatient spirit of the wretched sort” (iii.i). the same types of lines are obvious in the insatiate countess: “of dian’s bowstring in some shady wood” (i.i.329); “some little airing of his noble guest” (i.i.417). here too marston followed earlier playwrights. there are also symmetrical rhythmical-syntactic patterns of other types. 46 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl other features of versification analysis table 6. additional features, per 1000 lines play procl. encl. pleon. “do” syllabic ed, eth disyllab. ion, ious gramm. invers. rhythm meaning alliter. tamburlaine 1 161.4 11.1 10.1 38.0 13.4 27.5 70.6 237.5 antonio 446.3 75.1 16.7 45.9 13.6 10.4 100.1 137.6 histriomastix 343.5 57.8 19.8 19.8 17.8 25.7 64.3 177.2 lust’s 508.8 56.5 31.8 0.0 3.5 21.2 95.4 144.9 family 309.0 32.1 39.4 21.5 7.1 21.5 35.8 111.1 ram alley 389.8 60.5 16.9 7.3 4.8 7.3 48.4 41.2 countess act i 330.9 55.1 14.7 11.0 11.0 33.1 154.6 117.6 countess act v 305.4 20.0 29.5 29.5 10.0 39.4 98.5 113.3 romeo 370.3 49.6 36.3 23.5 3.7 12.8 62.2 121.4 henry v 322.9 33.4 40.1 26.7 13.9 37.3 138.6 206.6 king lear 363.7 39.4 35.8 11.8 1.6 36.4 116.1 161.8 dekker, soldier 457.8 96.4 18.1 0.0 6.0 30.3 84.3 101.1 marston’s line endings are predominantly masculine in all plays except the later text, the insatiate countess: 17.3 and 19.2%. among them we find compound feminine, mostly light, but in three lines they are heavy, with a stressed monosyllable on position 11. run-on lines are particularly numerous in antonio and mellida and the family of love (21.5 and 29.2%). here the family of love resembles marston’s style. marston’s plays contain numerous stresses on w: the indices of proclitic phrases are in the mid-300s in antonio and mellida, histriomastix, the insatiate countess, the family of love, and also in ram alley. lust’s dominion stands out: its index is over 500 per 1000 lines, similarly to dekker. the indices of enclitics are within a narrow range, except for the insatiate countess act i, where the ratio of enclitics is much lower than marston. the family of love is 47attributing john marston’s marginal plays similar to the insatiate countess act i. the ratio of pleonastic “do” is relatively low, the two exceptions being the family of love and lust’s dominion. a difference exists in the ratio of syllabic -ed and disyllabic -ion. lust’s dominion, exactly like dekker’s the noble spanish soldier, has no syllabic -ed at all, and very few disyllabic variants of -ion, again, like dekker’s play. notice that barry’s ram alley, similarly to dekker’s play, has few syllabic -ed, few disyllabic suffixes -ion, but numerous enclitic phrases. the family of love resembles both marston and lording barry’s ram alley. the insatiate countess reminds us of antonio and mellida, marston’s earlier play. marston was fond of making polysyllabic words even longer: in addition to the cases of words with disyllabic -ion, we find “phy-si-ci-an”, “mar-ri-age”, “for-be-a-rance”, and “ven-ge-ance”. such cases are few in ram alley, which is unlike the marstonian mode, and there are none in lust’s dominion, which resembles dekker’s habits in other ways too. rhythmical italics are particularly frequent in antonio and mellida and the insatiate countess, plays about love and death. examples include: “cropped by her hand” (v.i.63); “mixed in his fear” (v.i.171); and “down with my ashes sink” (v.ii.218), all from act v of the insatiate countess. conclusions of the four uncertain plays, we assign two to marston. our findings suggest that histriomastix can be attributed to marston, though it seems to contain some non-marstonian material, probably as later alterations. the play shows affinities with marston in its latinate diction, the stress profile, and recurrent collocations. the play was probably composed wholly by marston, but at some point the text might have been “lightly overwritten by another hand” (cathcart 2008: 10). our findings for the insatiate countess largely agree with melchiori’s arguments for marston’s authorship, but we have also detected lexical evidence for his hand in ii.iii; iv.i and iv.iv; and some speeches in act v (v.i and v.ii), which might explain why we find “marston’s initial choice” of character names in v.ii (melchiori 1984: 16). the evidence for recurrent collocations is generally supported by the co-occurrence of marston’s preferred word forms, such as “whilst” and “betwixt”, although it seems possible that substantial overwriting diluted the evidence for marston’s linguistic habits. our findings suggest that barksted, and not “some hack writer” (melchiori 1984: 16), was largely responsible for the last scene of the play, while our verbal evidence corroborates with 48 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl martin wiggins’s observation that act i seems “to have been worked over by barksted” (wiggins 2015: 43). our versification analysis, however, attributes act i to marston alone. lust’s dominion and the family of love suggest marston’s dramaturgical and phraseological influence, but it seems unlikely that marston actually had a hand in these plays. dekker seems to have compiled his co-authors’ sections of lust’s dominion for a final copy of the whole play, sometimes touching up dialogue, while haughton and day probably helped with some episodes. our battery of tests rules marston out as a serious candidate for the authorship of lust’s dominion. the family of love is akin to lording barry in terms of the play’s preference for “while” over “whilst”, and the high count for “amongst”, while spelling preferences do not correspond with marston’s accepted stage plays. the stress profile for the play is not unlike marston’s, but its placement of syntactic breaks is similar to barry’s ram alley. furthermore, both the family of love and ram alley share dense verbal relations with marston’s oeuvre, indicative of close imitation. our results suggest that the author of the family of love was “highly influenced by marston’s own writings” (cathcart 2008: 89), and that its author was probably lording barry. we suggest that the dramatic relationship between marston and barry should be explored further. having employed diverse and mutually-enforcing approaches in order to ascertain the limits of marston’s dramatic corpus, we hope that future researchers will afford him the critical attention he deserves.13 13 the authors wish to thank martin butler and matthew steggle for the opportunity to examine marston’s dramatic corpus as part of the oxford marston project. 49attributing john marston’s marginal plays references bednarz, james p. 2002. writing and revenge: john marston’s histriomastix. in: comparative drama 36, 21–51. bullen, arthur henry (ed.) 1885. the works of thomas middleton, vol. iii. boston, ma: houghton, mifflin. bullen, arthur henry (ed.) 1887. the works of john marston, vol. ii. london: j. c. nimmo. byrne, muriel st. clare 1932. bibliographic clues in collaborate plays. in: library 13, 21–48. cacheado, mary ellen 2005. lust’s dominion (or the lascivious queen), a tragedy. ma dissertation: sheffield hallam university. cathcart, charles 2001. lust’s dominion; or, the lascivious queen: authorship, date, and revision. in: the review of english studies 52(207), 360–375. cathcart, charles 2008. marston, rivalry, rapprochement, and jonson. aldershot: ashgate. chambers, edmund kerchever 1923. the elizabethan stage, vol. iv. oxford: clarendon press. chambers, edmund kerchever 1930. william shakespeare a study of facts and problems. london: oxford university press. collier, john payne (ed.) 1825. dodsley’s a select collection of old plays, vol. ii. london: septimus prowett. cross, gustav 1958. the authorship of lust’s dominion. in: studies in philology 55, 39–61. dyce, alexander (ed.) 1840. the works of thomas middleton, vol. ii. london: edward lumley. eberle, gerald j. 1948. dekker’s part in the familie of love. in: mcmanaway, james g.; dawson, giles e.; willoughby, edwin e. (eds.), joseph quincy adams memorial studies. washington, dc: folger shakespeare library, 723–738. farmer, john s. (ed.) 1912. histriomastix. amersham: tudor facsimile texts. fleay, frederick gard 1891. biographical chronicle of the english drama, vol. ii. london: reeves and turner. 50 d. freebury-jones, m. tarlinskaja, m. dahl fraser, robert duncan 2013. ram alley, or merry tricks (lording barry, 1611): a critical edition. doctoral thesis: sussex university. fraser, robert duncan 2015. lording barry: dramatist, pirate  – and dramatis persona? in: a quarterly journal of short articles, notes and reviews 28(2), 74–78. freebury-jones, darren; tarlinskaja, marina; dahl, marcus 2018 (forthcoming). the boundaries of john marston’s dramatic canon. in: medieval and renaissance drama in england, 31. gair, reavley (ed.) 1978. antonio’s revenge. baltimore, ma: manchester university press. gasparov, mikhail l. 1999. metr i smysl. ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamyati [metre and meaning. about one mechanism of cultural memory]. moscow: rggu. geckle, george l. 1972. john marston’s histriomastix and the golden age. in: comparative drama 6, 205–222. grosart, alexander b. (ed.) 1876. occasional issues of unique or very rare books, vol. iii. manchester: printed privately. hazlitt, william carew (ed.) 1874. the poems, plays and other remains of sir john suckling, vol. i. london: frank & william kerslake. hoy, cyrus; bowers, fredson (ed.) 1980. introductions, notes, and commentaries to texts in the dramatic works of thomas dekker. cambridge: cambridge university press. hunter, george k. (ed.) 1965. antonio and mellida. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press. hunter, george k. (ed.) 1999. the malcontent. manchester: manchester university press. jackson, macdonald p. 1979. studies in attribution: middleton and shakespeare. salzburg: jacobean studies. kernan, alvin b. 1958. john marston’s play histriomastix. in: modern language quarterly 19, 134–150. knutson, roslyn lander 2001. histrio-mastix: not by john marston. in: studies in philology 98(3), 359–377. lake, david j. 1975. the canon of thomas middleton’s plays. cambridge: cambridge university press. 51attributing john marston’s marginal plays lake, david j. 1981a. histriomastix: linguistic evidence for authorship. in: notes and queries 226, 148–152. lake, david j. 1981b. the insatiate countess: linguistic evidence for authorship. in: notes and queries 28, 166–170. melchiori, giorgio (ed.) 1984. the insatiate countess. manchester: manchester university press. oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. gainesville, fl: university of florida press. peachman, john 2004. previously unrecorded verbal parallels between histrio-mastix and the acknowledged works of john marston. in: notes and queries 51, 304–306. pierce, frederick erastus 1909. the collaboration of webster and dekker. new york: henry holt. price, george r. 1969. thomas dekker. new york: twayne. simpson, richard 1878. the school of shakespeare, vol. iii. london: chatto and windus. small, roscoe addison 1899. the stage quarrel between ben jonson and the so-called poetasters. breslau: m. & h. marcus. smeaton, oliphant (ed.) 1904. old fortunatus, a play written by thomas dekker. london: j. m. dent. tarlinskaja, marina 1976. english verse: theory and history. the hague and paris: mouton. tarlinskaja, marina 1984. rhythm-morphology-syntax-rhythm. in: style 18(1), 1–26. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of elizabethan drama 1561–1642. farnham: ashgate. taylor, gary; mulholland, paul; jackson, macdonald p. 1999. thomas middleton, lording barry, and the family of love. in: the papers of the bibliographical society of america 93(2), 213–241. vickers, brian 2002. counterfeiting’ shakespeare: evidence, authorship, and john ford’s funerall elegye. cambridge: cambridge university press. wiggins, martin (ed.) 1998. four jacobean sex tragedies. oxford: oxford university press. wiggins, martin; richardson, catherine 2015. british drama 1533–1642: a catalogue, vol. vi: 1609–1616. oxford: oxford university press. studia metrica et poetica sisu 6_1.indd studia metrica et poetica 6.1, 2019, 119–122 peter grzybek (22.11.1957 – 29.05.2019) mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman*1 on may 29, 2019 peter grzybek passed away. peter grzybek was born in 1957 in herne, germany. his alma mater was ruhr university bochum, but having been awarded different scholarships, he also studied in yugoslavia, the soviet union and the united states. in 1988 he defended his phd thesis on the conception of signs in soviet semiotics. in 1992 he moved to graz in austria and started working as a researcher at the university of graz, with which he was affiliated until his death serving as the chair of the department of slavic languages, literatures and cultures. he also held visiting positions in berlin and salzburg. peter grzybek was a multifaceted scholar. he left a considerable legacy in the fields of linguistics (especially important are his works on phraseology: e.g., baur, chlosta, grzybek 1995, graphemes: grzybek 2005, 2007a, 2014b, and the issues of word length and sentence length: grzybek 2006, 2016b, grzybek, stadlober, kelih 2007, fan, grzybek, altman 2010), folklore studies (especially proverbs and erotic folklore: grzybek 1995, 1999a), literary studies (e.g., a classification of authors and genres, or stylometry: grzybek 2014a), and semiotics (grzybek 1999b, 2007b, 2014c). he also made an important contribution to verse studies (including the study of verse rhythm in comparison with the rhythm of proze) and poetics (e.g., grzybek 2002, 2013a, and 2013b). for him, an exact scientific approach, including the use of quantitative methods was of utmost importance (see grzybek, köhler 2007), and he applied them to various germanic, slavic and finno-ugric texts. one of grzybek’s last papers (2016a) was published in studia metrica et poetica. it focused on certain linguistic aspects of traditional estonian poetic texts – the folk song vana kannel and the epic kalevipoeg. using the methods of statistics and information theory, grzybek studied the entropy and variability of these texts, the occurrence of different word types and the correlation between word lengths and verse lengths. * authors’ addresses: mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail.lotman@gmail.com; igor pilshchikov, tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, 10120 tallinn, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee; mariakristiina lotman, department of classical philology, university of tartu, ülikooli 17, 51014 tartu, estonia. e-mail: maria.lotman@mail.ee. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.1.05 120 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman peter grzybek was also an energetic organizer of scholarly research. he was the editor or a member of the editorial board of several academic journals, the founder of several book series, and a participant in many research teams. a scholar with a broad range of expertise, peter was also a very active and prolific promoter of science. his wide knowledge, enthusiasm and kindness were contagious. studia metrica et poetica will miss our friend and contributor. references baur, rupprecht s.; chlosta, christoph; grzybek, peter 1995. verbale und nonverbale phraseologie. in: damme, robert (ed.), well schriff de bliff ! festgabe für irmgard simon zum 80. geburtstag am 6. oktober 1995. [niederdeutsches wort; 35] münster: aschendorff, 3–29. fan, fenxiang; grzybek, peter; altman, gabriel 2010. dynamics of word length in sentence. in: glottometrics 20, 70–109. grzybek, peter 1995. foundations of semiotic proverb study. in: de proverbio. an electronic journal of international paremiology 1. https://deproverbio.com/foundations-of-semiotic-proverb-study/ grzybek, peter 1999a. south slavic erotic folklore. traditional erotic phraseology from dalmatia. in: bernard, jeff; gorlée, dinda; withalm, gloria (eds.), sex and the meaning of life / life and the meaning of sex. akten des “wiener semiotischen ateliers” über “sex and the meaning of life / life and the meaning of sex” (wien, 26.–29. märz 1998). [semiotische berichte; 23; 1-4] wien: isss, 131–154. grzybek, peter 1999b. sowjetische und russische konzepte der semiotik. in: jachnow, helmut (ed.), handbuch der sprachwissenschaftlichen russistik und ihrer grenzdisziplinen. [slavistische studienbücher; n.f. 8] wiesbaden: harrassowitz, 1274–1305. grzybek, peter 2002. quantitative aspekte slawischer texte (am beispiel von puškins “evgenij onegin”). in: wiener slawistisches jahrbuch 48, 21–36. grzybek, peter 2005. a study on russian graphemes. in: toporov, v.n. (ed.), jazyk – ličnost’ – tekst. sbornik statej k 70-letiju t.m. nikolaevoj. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur, 237–263. grzybek, peter 2006. history and methodology of word length studies: the state of the art. in: grzybek, peter (ed.), contributions to the science of text and language. word length studies and related issues. [text, speech and language technology; 31] dordrecht, nl: springer, 15–90. 121peter grzybek (22.11.1957 – 29.05.2019) grzybek, peter; stadlober, ernst; kelih, emmerich 2007. the relationship of word length and sentence length. the inter-textual perspective. in: decker, reinhold; lenz, hans-j. (eds.), advances in data analysis. proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the gesellschaft für klassifikation e.v., freie universität berlin, march 8–10, 2006. berlin, heidelberg: springer, 611–618. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70981-7_70 grzybek, peter; köhler, reinhard (eds.) 2007. exact methods in the study of language and text. dedicated to gabriel altmann on the occasion of his 75th birthday. [quantitative linguistics; 62] berlin, new york: mouton de gruyter. grzybek, peter 2007a. on the systematic and system-based study of grapheme frequencies. a re-analysis of german letter frequencies. in: glottometrics 15, 82–91. grzybek, peter 2007b. semiotik und phraseologie. in: burger, harald; dobrovol’skij, dmitrij; kühn, peter; norrick, neal r. (eds.), phraseologie. ein internationales handbuch der zeitgenössischen forschung 1. halbband. berlin, new york: de gruyter, 188–208. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110171013.188 grzybek, peter 2013a. empirische textwissenschaft. prosarhythmus im ersten drittel des 20. jahrhunderts als historisch-systematische fallstudie. in: hansen-löve, aage; obermayr, brigitte; witte, georg (eds.), form und wirkung. phänomenologische und empirische kunstwissenschaft in der sowjetunion der 1920er jahre. münchen: fink, 427–455. https://doi.org/10.30965/9783846751213_021 grzybek, peter 2013b. samoreguljatsija v tekste (na primere ritmicheskikh protsessov v proze). in: pil’shchikov, igor’ a. (ed.), sluchajnost’ i nepredskazuemost’ v istorii kul’tury. tallinn: tlu press, 78–115. grzybek, peter 2014a. the emergence of stylometry: prolegomena to the history of term and concept. in: kroó, katalin; torop, peeter (eds.), text within text – culture within culture. budapest, tartu: l’harmattan, 58–75. grzybek, peter 2014b. regularities of estonian proverb word length: frequencies, sequences, dependencies. in: baran, anneli; laineste, liisi; voolaid, piret (eds.), scala naturae. festschrift in honour of arvo krikmann. tartu: elm scholarly press, 121–148. grzybek, peter 2014c. semiotic and semantic aspects of the proverb. in: hrisztovagotthardt, hrisztalina; varga, melita aleksa (eds.), introduction to paremiology: a comprehensive guide to proverb studies. warsaw, berlin: de gruyter; 68–111. grzybek, peter 2016a. verse diversification: frequencies and variations of verse types in vana kannel and kalevipoeg. in: studia metrica et poetica 3(2), 50–98. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.03 122 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman grzybek, peter 2016b. word length in estonian prose. in: trames.· a journal of the humanities and social sciences 20(2), 145–175. https://doi.org/10.3176/tr.2016.2.03 kelih, emmerich; antić, gordana; grzybek, peter; stadlober, ernst 2005. classification of author and/or genre? the impact of word length. in: weihs, claus; gaul, wolfgang (eds.), classification. the ubiquitous challenge. heidelberg, new york: springer, 498–505. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28084-7_58 the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry rebekka lotman*1 abstract. mikhail gasparov concludes his monograph “a history of european versification” with the recognition that in the development of particular verse forms in each tradition of poetry, there is a permanent interaction between two types of poetry: those of oral popular and bookish culture. the forms engendered by popular culture are assimilated by bookish culture, while those engendered by literary culture descend into popular culture (gasparov 1996: 295). here, folk poetry represents oral popular poetry, and literary poetry represents poetry published in books. over the last decade, and especially during the last five years, the importance of lyrical poetry as an art form in western culture has grown precisely due to the widespread distribution of both types of poetry – oral and written. yet oral poetry is no longer marked by folklore, and the primary medium of the written poetry is no longer books – we can see that rap poetry and digital poetry, especially instapoetry (instagram poetry), are increasingly occupying a central position. however, bookish poetry is also rising, thanks to the latter. the growing popularity of both subgenres of poetry is associated with the emergence of new media: the platform of the first is audio and visual media (soundcloud, spotify, youtube) and of the second is textual and visual media (at first tumblr, now primarily twitter, instagram, and facebook). this article examines attitudes and issues related to the emergence of this new era poetry and outlines its poetics from a semiotic perspective. the analysis focuses on estonian instagram poetry and rap, studying how these subtypes of poetry, which originate from english-speaking cultures, have emerged after a time gap in smaller literature and have changed the audience, the authors, and the meaning-making of poetry. keywords: digital literature, instapoetry, rap poetry, poetics, semiotics of poetry * author’s address: rebekka lotman, institute of cultural research, university of tartu, ülikooli 16, 51003, tartu, estonia, email: rebekka.lotman@ut.ee. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 58–79 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.04 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.04 59the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry 1. is it poetry at all? there are three prevailing viewpoints about poetry on social media, especially instagram poetry. according to the first, it is not real poetry, but according to the second and less-common view, it saves poetry as a literary genre. the third holds that it is not real poetry but saves poetry by leading to real poetry.1 the first viewpoint is common in estonian critical discourse and elsewhere. the following article title is characteristic of it: “few read poetry, but millions read rupi kaur” (rao 2017). instapoetry is framed as the opposite of highvalue literary poetry. rebecca watts has named it “artless” poetry that follows the logic of consumer society and is oriented toward selling (watts 2008). thus, it is not an art form anymore but a commodity. journalistic experiments that attempt to prove that it is not an actual genre of poetry but something that can be faked, i. e., a forgery, also point to instapoetry as non-poetry. such an experiment was conducted, for example, by a journalist working for the canadian american lifestyle and culture magazine vice who “decided to find out whether instagram poetry took real talent, or if the whole thing is a sham, by becoming the worst poet the internet has ever seen.” he published one hundred poems under the pseudonym raven s. (@ravenstarespoetry) in four weeks. he admitted that it was incredibly easy to create these poems: “there were no standards, aside from the deliberate lack of any.” the author said that although these verses were insincere, the readers’ reactions were genuine, valid, and sincere (lloyd 2019). within a month, he gained more than one thousand followers, and each post has received 50-100 likes. one of the most popular raises a question about poetry itself: “is / this / a / poem? // – raven s.” it is noteworthy that he used typewriter font in his poetry posts.  a few months later, a similar experiment was done in estonia’s biggest weekly newspaper, eesti ekspress, by an anonymous author grafomaniakk who was intrigued by the success of local instapoet nete tiitsaar. tiitsaar gained thousands of followers by posting photographs of herself in erotic poses and writing poetry that, according to alvar loog, has a stimulating effect on those “who usually don’t read belles-lettres, especially poetry” (loog 2019). the journalist from eesti ekspress described also tiitsaar’s reception in social media: the “real” poets and writers had mocked her with pleasure and labeled her – in the best case – a successful seller and not a serious poetess. in this 1 these viewpoints are related to the problematics of the distinction between amateur and professional or high poetry. social media poetry is often seen as falling into the first category. analyses of qualitative differences between these two types of texts do not fall within this article’s scope, which seeks to describe the semiotic mechanisms of digitally published poetry. 60 rebekka lotman article, tiitsaar’s works are named as “poems” (in quotes), signaling the ironic use of the word. as a journalistic experiment, the author of the article started publishing “relatively simple sentences” or online poems consisting of three verses (@grafomaniakk), for example: „kui sul on sees mustvalge film / siis ära loodagi näha värvipilte“ (“if you have a black and white film inside / don’t even expect to see color pictures“). the visual side of the posts was important, and they alternated between images and texts. grafomaniakk also gained more than 1,000 followers in a short time (#grafomaniakk 2019). it is worth noting that the most famous estonian instapoet, lauri räpp, also belongs to this group. he has confirmed that he does not consider himself a real poet. “for me, the poet is doris kareva, indrek hirv or betti alver. i am more of an amateur” (lõbu 2021). often, in academic discussions, we can see this viewpoint functioning implicitly through exclusion, for example, in defining or delimiting poetry. in an article about 21st-century estonian literature, literary scholar märt väljataga compiled a list of authors who form the core of today’s estonian writers. he names nearly 50 individuals, of whom 29 have published poetry, and the list is based on the annual nominations and awards of the cultural endowment of estonia (väljataga 2021). thus, it consists only of award-winning and recognized literary poets who also form the core of writers whose books are reviewed in local literary magazines. there is no mention of instagram authors or rappers, who are probably considered amateurs.  lili pâquet points out that academic scholarship has largely ignored instagram poets, considering this subgenre too mass-market and uncultured for extended evaluation. “the elitism of this kind of response excludes intriguing ideas about the poetry that is being sold to millions of readers in a time when poetry is supposedly perishing” (pâquet 2019: 310–311). in estonia, digital literature has been studied through multiple perspectives by piret viires, who has written about the emergence of digital modernism (viires 2013), the periodization of digital literature (viires 2017), and the functions and main characteristics of social media poetry (viires 2020), on which this analysis is partly based. the second viewpoint, that instagram saves poetry as an art form, is expressed, for example, by alex gurtis in his article “instapoetry – the polarizing new poetry style that is making poetry relevant again.” it begins with the statement, “poetry is dead, long live poetry.” gurtis sees the essential difference between two types of poetry: traditional literary poetry and instapoetry. however, he insists that one should not argue whether it is poetry at all but rather study it. “this style is now canon everywhere but academia and 61the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry accomplishes something they only could have dreamed of – made poetry popular” (gurtis 2018). on the other hand, this approach is often accompanied by negative criticism. for example, an article entitled “how instagram saved poetry” (hill, yuan 2018) states in the lead, “social media is turning an art form into an industry.” the article describes how most legendary poets, like william carlos williams, who was also a doctor, have always split their life between two duties: making a living and making art. in the authors’ opinion, rupi kaur started the change: since the publication of her poetry collection, milk & honey, poetry has become the fastest growing category in book publishing in the englishspeaking world. however, in the estonian context, it should be noted that for professional and recognized writers, there is a system of annual creative grants (for about 50 authors) and biennially awarded writers’ salaries (for five authors), providing an opportunity to earn some additional income from writing poems. estonian digital media and rap poets, on the other hand, must work for a living because here only a few authors (for example, lauri räpp) are able to gain sales revenue. the third viewpoint is expressed, for example, by the editor of the poetry magazine the rialto, rishi dastidar. “i think it’s great if people are enjoying poetry through social media, but the next step would be to read more poetry and understand what else is out there. contemporary poets offline are incredibly vibrant – it’s just directing people into that world” (qureshi 2015). in estonian criticism, this viewpoint is represented by hanna-linda korp in her article “poetryless poetry saves poetry.” korp writes that young people read poetry not always in a book, but more often on social media. the article concludes, “i do not believe that reading poetry with simple content and form on instagram makes you poorer: in the end, instapoetry is a transitional form from the reader’s, not poetry’s point of view” (korp 2019). the author expresses hope that the reader will at some point turn from this “poetryless” poetry to real poetry, and the poetry itself has not changed.  contemporary oral poetry culture in the form of rap, on the other hand, is more often recognized as a form of real poetry, and several voluminous monographs have been published on its poetics (e. g., pate 2010). thus far, no considerable studies have been published on rap in estonia. however, some bachelor works on rap poetry have been written, and one master thesis is being written now. nevertheless, critiques published in cultural magazines confirm that estonian rap belongs to real poetry. jürgen rooste has explicitly worded this in his review of estonian rapper beebilõust’s lyrics, which begins with the assertion that “rap is at least as much poetry as all folklore.” thereupon, rooste places beebilõust’s poetry among estonian “high poetry”: “thus, next 62 rebekka lotman to liiv or viiding or koidula or kareva or ehin, we also have beebilõust, whose footprint and skull shape is even more familiar to the young ‘reader’ who is touched by the poetry” (rooste 2017). unlike lauri räpp, beebilõust intends his work to be understood as real poetry, and he has always said that he wanted to be a poet. “and he is,” concludes rooste (2017). a collection of estonian rap texts (2006) also received many positive reviews (e. g., vaher 2006). on one occasion, the lyrics sheet of a rap cd has even been nominated for the cultural endowment of estonia’s literary prize: chalice’s taevas ja perse (heaven and the ass, 2007). it was an exception that received much attention. according to sirje olesk, the chairman of the jury, it was nominated not only to highlight oral poetry but also to make a deliberately challenging choice. she explained, “adding chalice to the nominees should show that there is music in which words are almost as crucial as in printed poetry. it also seemed a rather intriguing step for us” (peegel 2008). however, it has remained a single act, and rap poets and instapoets tend to be left out of the estonian literary field unless they publish their texts as separate books. another reason for greater recognition of rap as poetry probably results from the fact that it is a much older phenomenon than social media poetry – the first estonian rapper, cool d, released his album in 1994, and the boom started ten years later when chalice released ühendatud inimesed (connected people, 2003), and the musical group toe tag released an album with genka’s innovative rhymes called legendaarne (legendary, 2004). in this new decade, however, the popularity of rap has increased both among listeners and creators, and this is largely due to the possibilities of new media. the fact is that these two seemingly different directions in poetry  – instagram poetry and rap  – have brought poetry as a literary genre to a broader population, especially to the younger generation, making rhyming and reading poetry more popular among them. 2. numbers and authors statistics clearly show the new arrival of poetry in english-speaking literature. a study by the u.s. national endowment for the arts analyzed american cultural consumption up to and including 2017. it turned out that until 2012, the number of poetry readers had constantly been decreasing. in 1992, 17% of respondents had read at least one work of poetry, but in 2012, this number had reduced to 6.7% (national endowment for the arts 2019). nevertheless, for the first time in the period covered by this study, the number of poetry 63the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry readers began to grow again with the rise of digital literature after 2012, reaching 12% by 2017. more importantly, there has been a demographic shift: since 2012, the majority of poetry readers belong to the 18–24 age group, in which the number of poetry readers has more than doubled. these numbers have also risen greatly among african-americans, asian-americans, and other non-white groups, reaching an all-time high. not only has the number of people reading poetry increased with university education, but more people without higher education are since then interested in poetry (maher 2018, national endowment for the arts 2019). thus, one can conclude that poetry is not winning back old readers but has started to expand its reach among new generations, different ethnic groups, and people with different levels of education. the popularity of poetry has grown even more since this survey. for example, according to nielsen bookscan, a u.k. book sales monitor, sales of poetry books rose by more than 40% between 2015 and 2020, with 41% of buyers in the13–22 age group and predominantly female. the best-selling author was instagram poet rupi kaur, who now has 4.4 million followers on her social media account. she has become the world’s best-selling poet (ferguson 2019). interestingly, the publishers at first did not apprehend this turn; rupi kaur could not find a publisher, so she was forced to self-publish her first collection, milk & honey (2014). behind the rest of the sales figures, there are also many instapoets, although works by leonard cohen, john cooper clarke, seamus heaney, carol ann duffy, and homer sold many copies (ferguson 2019). the digital reading platform, 24symbols, which contains more than 500,000 e-books, has also described the emergence of instapoets as the most powerful trend of recent times. for example, in 2018, five of the fifteen most-read books were poetry collections. “the young poets prove that poetry is alive and well and have opened the doors for a new and large audience,” says the website. again, several instapoets who later published their texts in books reached the top of the sales charts (24symbols 2019). recently, the pandemic has also expanded the interest in poetry; for example, according to jennifer benka, president of the american academy of poets, the number of visitors to the website poets.org increased by a quarter from march 1, 2020 to january 25, 2021. amanda gorman’s poem “the hill we climb”, read at the inauguration ceremony of u.s. president joe biden, went viral thanks to new media: she gained 2 million instagram followers in one day, and millions of people shared her poem on twitter. as a result of these processes, we can see new arrangements of poetry books in shops: once again, they are placed at the front of bookstores (hines 2021). we are witnessing a 64 rebekka lotman renaissance of poetry – although many scholars and critics do not consider this poetry at all. the most popular estonian instapoet, lauri räpp, has more than 21,000 followers, and each of his poems has between 1,000 and 3,000 likes. it is also worth noting that räpp has a master’s degree in marketing. the opening text of his website states, “are you looking for an experienced copywriter who would write you compelling texts? in this case, you are in the right place” (www.laurirapp.ee). the anonymous multimedia artist @aegruum (timespace) who publishes haikus, has more than 10,000 followers, and each poem has more than one thousand views (this author uses dynamic instagram posts). gerda laura liiv (@gerdalaura) has more than 3,200 followers. other estonian instapoets (@armutupostiljon, @sumemadepale, @luulestviidud, @luulelend, @ohakalind, @ohakalind, @heraluule, @maarjaluulud, etc.) have fewer followers, but both the number of instapoets and their audience is increasing. given the fact that the print run of estonian poetry books is often around 300, if not less – one thousand followers is already a remarkable number of readers.  in addition, mention should be made of the master of puns, keiti vilms (@keitivilms, 15,500 followers on instagram). vilms posts funny wordplays, usually based on common phrases, proverbs, sayings, poetry classics and poems by forgotten authors, literary recommendations, as well as pictures of herself and bizarre and exciting finds from dictionaries, the press, shops, other places. she has also published her online posts as a book, @keitivilms. eesti esimene säutsukogumik (estonia’s first tweet collection, 2017), which was a sales success. in line with trends in the english-speaking world, instapoets have increased the sales of poetry books in estonia. first came translated poetry books by rupi kaur (honey & milk was published in estonian 2018). then in 2021, lauri räpp published lihtsate asjade tähtsus (importance of simple things 2021), which has been a bestseller in all the most significant book chains and stores. it has surpassed, for example, the sales of the biographical book about the divorce of famous estonian journalists heidit kaio and priit kuusk, which was published at the same time and received high coverage in the paper and digital media, as well as in national broadcasting. räpp’s poetry book has created a precedent and has outperformed sensational biographies, cookbooks, and other popular books and genres. the first edition of lauri räpp’s poetry collection (with a print run of 2,500 copies) sold out within a few weeks, and by the end of the next month the second and the third printing also ran out; according to the author, the publisher is already planning a fourth edition. anonymous poet-artist aegruum (aegruum, [time-space] 2020) and gerda 65the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry laura liiv (enne, [before] 2020; sold out) have also entered the world of published books from the internet, and their books have been popular. behind the popularity of rap poetry is also mainly new media, primarily youtube. a new wave of rap emerged, on the one hand, with professional production under the influence of the previously mentioned rapper genka and his group toe tag, but on the other hand, amateur rappers also played a role: for example, fun rap artist mc vimpel with the song “botased kuluvad” (“the sneakers are wearing down”, 2004, currently with almost 650,000 views on youtube). in addition, at the end of the last decade, estonian rap battles began to appear on youtube channels, and young rappers of the present day grew up watching them. the music environments soundcloud and spotify contributed to further growth. in december 2021, the initiator of the boom, genka, had more than 21,000 listeners on spotify. nublu, the most popular rap artist of recent times, gained almost 164,000 listeners in december (6630 subscribers on soundcloud), pluuto had around 28,000 listeners (3,800 subscribers on soundcloud), $ipelga14 had more than 6,500 listeners (more than 4,055 subscribers on soundcloud), and väike pd had 4,600 listeners (2570 on soundcloud). with these numbers, estonian rappers are leading the local music charts (see nestor 2019). 3. the semiotic mechanisms of the new poetry each new platform – newspaper, book, radio, television, or internet – inevitably transforms poetry itself (cf. chasar 2010). it changes the meaning-making of the poem – its poetics and pragmatics, including the communicative situation and textual relations. piret viires has identified four main features of social media literature: democratization (everyone can publish online), participatory culture, multimodality, and ephemerality (viires 2020). in the following analyses, i envisage the semiotic mechanisms of digital era poetry by expanding viires’ approach. i have distinguished nine more or less intertwined levels that help to define the turn to poetry taking place through social media and rap in the 21st century. 66 rebekka lotman the primacy of a single poem during most of the long history of poetry, a single poem, not a collection of poetry, has taken primary place in lyric poetry – it means that the central unit has been a separate poem, not a bouquet of poetry. as kristi viiding has pointed out, this affects the poem’s meaning: text published within a poetry book belongs to a broader system, is part of a whole, and this whole forms a kind of implicit ars poetica that that is expressed through each individual poem. according to viiding, in livonia the transition from single poems to collecting and publishing many poems together took place in early modern humanist literature during the 16th and 17th centuries (viiding 2021). in the case of poetry written in the estonian language, this shift took place at the end of the 19th century or even at the beginning of the 20th century. before that, the emphasis was on the individual poem that first appeared in the press and only afterward in a poetry collection. poetry collections have been prominent for most of the 20th century; these poems are part of a conceptual whole formed within the poetry collection. in 21st-century digital poetry, however, there has been a turn back to the individual poem, again changing how the poem is perceived. in the case of both instagram poetry and soundcloud’s oral poetry, i. e. rap the emphasis is now on a single text. in music, online streaming has created a so-called post-album era. this means that one individual work at a time is presented to the reader/listener. this shift has consequences for the text itself. in the case of a poetry book or album, each poem expands the meaning of the others inside the same edition; it has a broader concept and poetics. also, the poem’s position in the book is significant (the beginning and end are always marked strongly). yet in the case of a text published alone the boundaries of a poem lie more strictly within this individual text. secondly, the poem published individually earns more time/attention, as it remains a separate experience for the reader/listener. although poems published online are sometimes later published in a book, and a concert or album follows a song that appears first on soundcloud, the single work is primary, and this collection is secondary. two-way communication the communication scheme of a traditional work of poetry is one-way, as roman jakobson has put it: the sender (poet) sends a message (poem) to the recipient (reader). according to jakobson, in complement to these three parts, there are three more components required for understanding the meaning of a 67the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry poem: contact (the physical channel of the poem), context (referential meaning), and code (language use, metalinguistic level) (jakobson 1960). although in jakobson’s model, this communication is one-way, his six-part scheme helps to explain the meaning-making functions of the poetics and communication of new media poetry. a shift has occurred due to a change in the communication channel itself, and its role here is more critical than in conventional poetry. the different possibilities for the various communication channels affect the meaning of the other levels of the message (poem) and their interrelations. for example, online poetry favors using emoticons, twitter poetry determines the length of the text, and instagram influences the code by adding a vital visual aspect to the poem. in addition, the communication process of the poem has transformed. according to the reader-response theory that emerged in the 1960s, the emphasis on meaning creation moved from author to reader (see, for example, iser 1974). in social media literature, the reader-author relationship is bidirectional: both the reader/listener and the author reply to the poem’s comments. the reader is in direct contact with the author and is present with them in the same medium. hence, piret viires has linked social media literature to the concept of participatory culture. “one of the most significant manifestations of participatory culture in social media literature is interactivity, the dynamics of the author-reader relationship – the participation of readers in commenting on works, expressing their opinion or participating in the process of creating a work” (viires 2020: 223). it is very common that instapoets communicate with their readers by answering or liking their comments. lauri räpp occasionally replies verbally to remarks but almost exclusively marks them as pleasing, thus confirming his approval of these texts on his wall. in turn, comments can affect the meaning of the posted poem. for example, on august 31, 2021, gerda laura liiv posted a poem about the impossibility of speaking out: “ei oska endast enam teistele rääkida / sisemine monoloog välja ei kostu” (“i can’t talk about myself to others anymore / the inner monologue doesn’t come out”). next to the post, she explains, “i don’t know how i am doing and what have i done, and i don’t know what to say”. one reader responds, “sometimes silence says more than a thousand words ❤️ or a thousand words come after silence!” the poet replies to this comment, “well said! i hope these 1000 words are on their way to me✨”. this conversation remains on the wall next to the poem, expanding its meaning – reaffirming the impossibility of speaking in many words adds unintended irony to the poem. 68 rebekka lotman instant emotive communities in jakobson’s model, the sender or author of a text expresses the emotive (also expressive) function, which represents the speaker’s attitude toward what he is talking about, his attitudes, and emotions (jakobson 1960). joep leerssen has spoken about the emotive communities created by a shared experience of lyric poetry: while silent reading is private, performative oral performance is public, creating an emotive community between the author and the reader (e. g., baltic song festivals). in the case of conventionally written poetry, singing together is necessary for such a community of shared emotion to emerge. this function of lyrical poetry was influential in creating a sense of nationality in the romantic era (leerssen 2021). in the case of social media poetry, this performative effect arises simultaneously when the text is published, immediately (re)creating emotive communities: the followers of the poet-artist, the subscribers to his channel, already belong to one community. in the case of rap, these communities also meet in real life; at concerts, the audience is largely made up of subscribers and followers of these artists on online channels. in addition, this feeling of belonging is confirmed by liking and sharing a poem or leaving a public comment on the wall of a media channel. for example, on may 1, 2021, lauri räpp published a poem that begins: “mu kallis / kuidas sul seal läheb / meil siin vahtrad / tilguvad vett / jah, mu hääl on veidi kähe / joon kummeliteed / kus tilgake vett” (“my dear / how are you doing there / our maples here / are dripping water / yes, my voice is a little hoarse / i am drinking chamomile tea / with a drop of water”). one reader adds a comment, “so, someone should now create music for this poem.” the author replies, “i would like the idea. and go find out, maybe someone will create 😊.” another reader adds, “i believe that it has already made many hearts ring, and this music will soon be heard in others.” thus, this sense of community is also emphasized here in a verbal message. just as the poem’s communication in the new media is bidirectional – not only does the author write to the readers, but the reader participates in its meaning as well – so is the sense of community. kovalik and curwood have researched the attitudes and perceptions of young poets (ages 13–25) an they emphasized that the sense of community and interactivity was important also to poets, especially in regard to feedback. 93% had received feedback on their poems, 89% had given feedback to others; the most common method was commenting, followed by private direct messages to the author (kovalik, curwood 2019: 190). 69the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry the new lyrical self the distance between the reader and the poet has decreased in association with the previous two points. both in instapoetry and in rap poetry, the author is more directly present than before. social media poetry is not mediated by the publisher (poetry published in the book is laid out and proofread by professionals, the reader buys it from anonymous sellers from the bookshops, etc). in the case of instagram poetry, the authors directly give the text to the recipients with their own design and voice. it is a straightforward communication in which the performer addresses the audience directly. here we can distinguish between two opposite directions. first, instagram allows complete anonymity. in the case of a printed book, this is not impossible but quite tricky (you need to pay for the printing, contact the isbn center, and then market the book and make arrangements with the bookstores). on social media, you can create your persona, which also is performed as a lyrical self, and no one knows to whom that voice belongs in real life. the most famous example here in estonian context is @aegruum. another type of authors associates their social media poetry posts directly with their real life persons. they share personal information between poems and songs, including posting pictures of themselves. some share their views on world events, opinions on political processes, and personal life. this marks the substantial rise of the lyrical self: “i speak to you”, and this “i” can easily equate the voice heard in poems with the author’s voice. in the case of rap, personality has played a significant role in the reception of estonian youtube rappers – they have published music videos and video posts sharing their attitudes, opinions, and jokes, and their personality is directly associated with their music. it is strongly perceived that the rapper expresses their ideas and thoughts, and their lyrical subject corresponds to their own voice. in the third case, the author is known by name; they may share pictures, but at the same time, they keep their attitudes, political beliefs, and personal life to themselves. the account is not anonymous, but the poets maintain their privacy. this type of social media account belongs to lauri räpp, whose poems express timeless topics and states of mind. the attitudes displayed in his poetry do not relate to social or political issues that often polarize society. 70 rebekka lotman the intention of genuine expression the new lyrical self emphasizes authenticity in both oral and written social media poetry. in instagram poetry, we can often meet simple and worn-out metaphors. although the authors and readers underline the authenticity of instapoems – they are based on genuine feelings – they have also been criticized as literary clichés or even plagiarism (see nohria 2019). for example, the poet nayyrah waheed, who started posting poems on tumblr at the same time as rupi kaur, has accused the latter of plagiarism because she was the first to use the metaphor of honey in this social media platform. thus, the terms “genuine” and “plagiarism” are both used to describe this type of poetry. yet the contradiction here is only on the surface; the true and immediate feelings expressed in these poems are not usually so unique but universal and have already been used repeatedly in poetry. here one can see a resemblance to the poetics of folklore formulas studied by milman parry and albert lord, showing that ancient poetry is not a matter of borrowing or plagiarism but instead of orally circulating formulas that other poets interwove in their texts. according to parry, a formula is “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea” (parry 1930: 80). so, in the case of instagram poetry, it would be fruitful to analyze these recurring figures not as features of bookish poetry but similarly to the poetics of folklore formulas, highlighting characteristic patterns. due to the tendency to use a typical figurative language in social media poetry, it is easy to parody this kind of work of art, and several authors have done so. for example, the award-winning poet thom young discovered that serious and famous poets received little attention, but trivial short poems garnered thousands of followers (flock 2017). he started parodying this subgenre of poetry on his instagram account @tyypoet, and it turned out very successful. now he has over 42,000 followers. the next generation of instagram poets – who are more ironic and witty – is already emerging in the englishspeaking world (leach 2021). on the other hand, in oral rap poetry, sincerity signifies eloquence and not censoring yourself on any level. the rap poets use the words they want; their rhyming words are their personal items and genuine expression. they aim to offer surprising rhymes, and the use of clichés and worn-out rhymes is taboo. authenticity here is marked by saying things as they are with the words the rapper chooses. 71the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry a particular moment – ephemerality unlike book poetry, publishing a poem on social media is related to a very precise time and space. in the case of books, poetry can also deal with current problems, but it lacks the immediacy characteristic of social media. on instagram, the artist chooses the exact moment to share their creation with their audience, and it is possible to react and perform instantly. however, this also brings about the temporality of online works: the poem appears in the reader’s social media feed, but it sinks into the past like everything else on social media. piret viires has pointed out that one of the main attributes of social media poetry is its ephemerality. “longevity and endurance are not characteristic features of social media platforms. the ephemerality of social media literature is first and foremost determined by technology and is related to the structure and principles of usage in social media platforms” (viires 2020: 228).  however, most estonian instagram poems do not investigate current topics, even though this type of media should encourage this. timeless themes are preferred: feelings, states of being, images of nature, and philosophical insights. in addition, the most famous social media poets, lauri räpp and aegruum, usually use vocabulary that does not connect the poem with any particular era or place, and no proper names are mentioned. for an example, see aegruum’s haiku from june 12, 2020: “enese sisse / ehitan igaviku / täidan sinuga” (“inside myself / i build an eternity / filled with you”). also, poems wondering about poetry itself are quite common, e. g., elis laulniit (@ohakalind): “kas luuletajal olema peab hääl / miks ma luul / kui tühi tuul / lihtsalt uluda või välja pääl?” (“does a poet need a voice / why my poetry / like empty wind / may not like wind just howl on the field?”). the exception here is gerda laura liiv, who occasionally brings social critique and politics into her instagram poetry. she has dedicated a poem to the new estonian president: “ärge siis unustage / kui alar karis tööle hakkab” (“do not forget / when alar karis starts to work”) and another to the current pandemic: “koroona teine laine” (“the second wave of covid”). on the other hand, rap lyrics feature a wide array of proper names, places, references to contemporary politics and other timely topics and events, and unusual and unexpected vocabulary (which offers novel rhyming possibilities). it often embodies social poetry through the subjective prism of the lyrical self. 72 rebekka lotman brevity these texts spanning a brief moment are usually short themselves; this tendency can be seen in both social media and new media rap lyrics. while influence can be seen from twitter (the 140-character limit), other types of social media also induce brevity in the poems. for example, a post’s text has to be large enough to be readable on a phone. the poems usually have fewer than ten lines, and longer poems may be up to 16 lines (four verses each consisting of four lines). for the uncommon longer poems (e. g., lauri räpp), the solution has been to publish each one as several pictures in one post. the verse lines also tend to be relatively short. metrically, the most common form is free verse, often with a verse line consisting of only one, two, or three words. as mentioned, aegruum uses syllabic verse (haikus). in addition to free verse, lauri räpp also posts metrical and rhymed poems on instagram, using dolnik and iambic structures. for longer metrical rhymed units, for example four stressed dolnik, it is common to divide one metric segment visually into several separate verse lines, e.g., “lumi on / ununenud / unistuste / tolm // sa ütlesid / kui tulid / saatjaks / lumetorm” (“snow is / forgotten / dust / of dreams // you said / when you came / accompanied / by the snowstorm”). there are a total of four stressed positions in each stanza, and the last singleworded lines rhyme with each other. however, in most cases, räpp’s stanzas consist of two or three feet. rap songs have also gotten shorter with time. for example, cool d’s first album in 1995 had an average song length of 3.9 minutes, and several pieces spanned 6 minutes. artists releasing music on social media platforms often have songs between 1–2.5 minutes. rapper lil till’s average song length on soundcloud is 2 minutes, and for pluuto, it is 2.4 minutes. this follows the general trends in the music industry; e. g., for 2019 billboard top 100 songs, the average length was half a minute shorter than the year before (trust 2019).2 2 at the same time we can already see counterreactions to this tendency. for example, russian popular rapper oxxxymiron published after a long creative pause on november 1, 2021, on youtube song “кто убил марка?” with a length of 9,5 minutes; in one month it has gained more than 15 million views. 73the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry new textual relations postmodern poetic revolution in estonian literature at the end of the previous century is characterized by maximal literary effects. to understand the full meaning and semantic mechanisms of a postmodern work of poetry, it is necessary for the reader to know the structures that are being deconstructed, intertextual references, etc. in social media poetry, the textual relations have changed, but in different ways in oral and written poetry. social media written poetry is characterized by replacing mandatory intertexts with paratexts, which includes the person of the poet, his comments, hashtags that tie the poem into a more extensive web of posts, and tags of other people and places. in a way, lauri räpp’s posts can be compared to dante alighieri’s prosimetrical “vita nuova” (1294). as dante described in prose form next to his sonnets, cantos, and ballads the sentiments, thoughts, and intentions he had when writing each poem, in a similar way, lauri räpp often includes an explanatory text with a poem, which also belongs to the poem’s meaning. for example, on october 1, 2021, he published two poems at once with the caption, “october is outside, and only rust remains of the summer. the smoky breath of fireplaces is in the air, and some early mornings are already crackling under my feet. autumn’s thoughts are sweet like bitter chocolate, and the surrounding somber beauty inspires. those walks with leaf-fall through the low autumn light and a tin cup warming palms, where peppermint tea is steaming. life is beautiful, and beauty is in life itself. share this with the important people. i give you two autumn notes into the october that began today.” rap lyrics are generally more playful than written social media poetry – the genre uses more possibilities of the language, also, there is strong intertextuality, which can be regarded as a direct dialogue between rap artists. for example, the aforementioned song “botased kuluvad” by mc vimpel begins with the lines: “jess palgapäev, ma lähen kohe lolliks, panen vastu hambaid konduktorile trollis” (“yay, payday, i’m going mad right now, i will punch the conductor in the teeth in the trolley”), then marp$ responds to this in his song “botased” (sneakers) with the following lines: “jess palgapäev, ma lähen kohe holli, panen vastu hambaid suva poserile sollis” (“yay, payday, i’m going to club hollywood right now, i will punch some random poser in the teeth in the mall”). here a parallel can be seen with 17th-century french bouts rimés, in which a sonnet had to be written with rhymes given by another person – in the same way rappers respond to each other using the same lines and rhymes. a general distinctive feature of rap lyrics is dialogue, but this interaction arises 74 rebekka lotman mainly with other texts belonging to the same subculture rather than with the broader literary canon. thus, the digital poetry has lost the multilayered nature valued in conventional book poetry or, in other words, it has freed itself from literary boundaries. väljataga also draws attention to this tendency, however, keeping in mind not the authors who publish elsewhere than books and cultural journals, but poets of youth literary magazine värske rõhk. he refers to the falling apart of literary history, which is supported by the fact that young poets seldom mention older poets other than fs or sveta grigorjeva. “i think the earlier literary history is no longer perceived as linear, in a way where one poet is followed with another: classics or ‘canon’ is now simultaneously present in a great museum hall without one author ‘growing out’ from the other.” at the end of the article, he admits: in no way the end of art and the end of art history precludes the creation of new works of art. they may entertain and teach, but they lack greater ambitions. perhaps it has always been so, and the inflated talks of the eternity of literature and other similar pretensions are rather a historical deviation. if so, then at least poetry will have a hard time justifying itself because there are not enough audience who would be entertained and taught by contemporary verse (väljataga 2021). nevertheless, as we have seen, the poetry that escaped linearity has brought a new rise of this art form in the 21st century. visuality/intonation instagram poetry emphasizes the visual side of a text in a special way: each poem is inseparable from its design. instapoets often use solutions that refer to the age prior to new media, alluding to the authenticity of the work of art: hand-drawn images (rupi kaur) and typewriter imitations are widespread (lauri räpp, gerda laura liiv, and lesser-known authors like @_piskyy_, @ punktitaluul, and others). these typewriter fonts came into use following the example of western poets like knott gregson (@tylerknott), who has been active on social media since 2009 and has 348,000 followers on instagram. he not only publishes poems in typewriter font, but they are also on paper that is crumpled or marked in some other way. thus, the text published on social media adds a connotation of literary poetry not through intertextual references but using design. at the same time, it refers to the pre-computer era of typewriters, which bears in itself the connotation of the “real” (as opposed to the virtual) thing. 75the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry the pun artist vilms has also stressed the importance of social media posts’ visual aspect. “if i post my own pun on twitter, then i always want it to be in a certain font and that it has a clean white sheet behind it.” in addition, vilms shares the pictures of pages from books on the internet to create “a certain idea of a book” (allik 2018). this also includes the publication of pictures and photos depicting the author or illustrating the poem. due to the significance of the visual aspect, pâquet (2019) has noted in instagram poetry the emergence of one of the oldest literary techniques, ekphrasis. dynamic pictures are also used in instapoetry. for example, rupi kaur has used her voice and an animated picture in her poetry design (https:// www.instagram.com/p/cv1f6lqgdqz/). dynamically designed (both audibly and visually) poetry among estonian artists may be found on the account of @aegruum. piret viires has agreed with pâquet by distinguishing multimodality as one of the main features of digital literature (viires 2020: 224–226). rap highlights the oral nature of poetry in a unique way. intonation is essential, and words that do not rhyme in written poetry are made to rhyme orally, i. e., eye rhyme is replaced by ear rhyme. here again, the pioneer was genka, who sometimes rhymes superlong syllables with the short ones: “ja me pappi ei saagi / ja kas on vajaagi” (2004); the correct spelling would be ‘vajagi’ with the stress on the first syllable, but here we can see the accentual and quantitative shift on the first and the second syllable. in addition, sometimes the boundary between words and non-words is blurred and the voice is distorted (e. g., using auto-tune), turning words into onomatopoeic utterances. 4. conclusion we are witnessing the rise of the importance of poetry in the 21st century and its simultaneous transformation. the new era poetry has escaped the institutional and academic corpus where it is prized, but it has returned to the people, especially among the younger generation, through rap music, which has taken the position of traditional oral poetry, and digital poetry, which has taken the place of conventional book poetry. thus, it can be said that digital poetry has escaped from the traditional literary landscape. while postmodern poetry became elitist, 21st century digital poetry has freed itself from the chains of literature. a new kind of poetry has emerged that institutional literary circles do not even recognize as poetry; rather, it is seen as some kind of curiosity or a phenomenon that does not belong to the field of poetry but rather is a consumer good or entertainment. 76 rebekka lotman it is important to note that the change in poetry’s meaning-making and communication process is inevitable with the use of new media, regardless of the nature of the poem posted. a classic poem may find a new life and new readers via instagram, but at the same time, this text enters new mechanisms of meaning. it frees itself from the old system, disregarding academia, the history of poetry, literary movements to which a poem belongs, and other poems by the same author. instead, the poem’s significance now includes the person who shared it, the moment of posting, the styling, the sense of community, the surrounding comments and hashtags, the number of likes, but most importantly, the poem itself – the text without historical context or cultural meaning, only with the message it conveys. in the new reading experience, the affective function is prominent – how the poem impacts the reader. thus, social media poetry may not be written in a different way, may not be better or worse by quality than classical pieces of art, but the platform itself imposes a different meaning. instagram poetry and rap lyrics do not win prizes, and the authors are not publicly funded. however, the so-called institutional poetry, which is valued in many ways, has become a point of interest for a decreasing audience. this is in the essential nature of poetry: to conquer areas of non-poetry, to break out of the framework of what is seen as poetry. in the 20th century, poetry shifted the borders of this form of art playfully inside the realm of literature; the digital poetry of the 21st century seeks its way out of literature altogether. 3 references #grafomaniakk 2019. loe seda artiklit, kui tahad saada kuulsaks instapoeediks ja saada 160 laiki ühe päevaga. in: eesti ekspress. 31.12.2019. https://ekspress.delfi. ee/artikkel/88496211/loe-seda-artiklit-kui-tahad-saada-kuulsaks-instapoeediksja-saada-160-laiki-uhe-paevaga 24symbols 2019. instapoets are revolutionizing the genre. in: 24symbols. https://www.24symbols.com/24stories/en/instapoets-poetry-digital-age/ 3 this research has been supported by the centre of excellence in estonian studies (european union, european regional development fund) and is related to the research project “the factor of lyrical poetry in the formation of small literatures” (estonian ministry of education and research). https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/88496211/loe-seda-artiklit-kui-tahad-saada-kuulsaks-instapoeediks-ja-saada-160-laiki-uhe-paevaga https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/88496211/loe-seda-artiklit-kui-tahad-saada-kuulsaks-instapoeediks-ja-saada-160-laiki-uhe-paevaga https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/88496211/loe-seda-artiklit-kui-tahad-saada-kuulsaks-instapoeediks-ja-saada-160-laiki-uhe-paevaga https://www.24symbols.com/24stories/en/instapoets-poetry-digital-age/ 77the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry allik, heli [interviewer] 2018. keiti vilms: sõnad on mind päästnud kõige hullematest kohtadest. in: err kultuuriportaal. 17.10.18. https://kultuur.err.ee/869784/keitivilms-sonad-on-mind-paastnud-koige-hullematest-kohtadest alter, alexandra 2015. web poets’ society: new breed succeeds in taking verse viral. in: the new york times. 07.11.2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/ business/media/web-poets-society-new-breed-succeeds-in-taking-verse-viral.html chasar, mike 2020. poetry unbound. poems and new media from the magic lantern to instagram. new york: columbia university press. ferguson, donna 2019. poetry sales soar as political millennials search for clarity. in: the guardian, 21.01.2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/21/ poetry-sales-soar-as-political-millennials-search-for-clarity flock, elizabeth 2017. why this poet is posting meaningless verse on instagram. in: pbs, 12.06.17. gasparov, mikhail 1996. a history of european versification. oxford: clarendon press. gough, emily 2021. market report – instapoets and the rise of online poetry. in: falwriting. 2.08.2021. https://falwriting.com/new-blog/2021/7/29/market-reportinstapoets-and-the-rise-of-online-poetry-by-emily-gough gurtis, alex 2018. instapoetry – the polarizing new poetry style that is making poetry relevant again. in: odyssey 10.01.2018. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/instapoetry hill, faith; yuan, karen 2018. how instagram saved poetry. in: the atlantic. 15.10.2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/rupi-kaurinstagram-poet-entrepreneur/572746/ hines, morgan 2021. a ‘renaissance’ is upon us: interest in poetry on the rise after year of pandemic, chaos. in: usa today. 8.02.21. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/ entertainment/books/2021/02/08/could-renaissance-coming-poetry-wakepandemic/6256821002/ iser, wolfgang 1974. the implied reader: patterns of communication in prose fiction from bunyan to beckett. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. jakobson roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: mit press, 350–377. korp, hanna linda 2019. luuletu luule päästab meedia. in: sirp. 12.07.2019. https://sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c7-kirjandus/luuletu-luule-paastab-luule/ https://kultuur.err.ee/869784/keiti-vilms-sonad-on-mind-paastnud-koige-hullematest-kohtadest https://kultuur.err.ee/869784/keiti-vilms-sonad-on-mind-paastnud-koige-hullematest-kohtadest https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/business/media/web-poets-society-new-breed-succeeds-in-taking-verse-viral.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/business/media/web-poets-society-new-breed-succeeds-in-taking-verse-viral.html https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/21/poetry-sales-soar-as-political-millennials-search-for-clarity https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/21/poetry-sales-soar-as-political-millennials-search-for-clarity https://falwriting.com/new-blog/2021/7/29/market-report-instapoets-and-the-rise-of-online-poetry-by-emily-gough https://falwriting.com/new-blog/2021/7/29/market-report-instapoets-and-the-rise-of-online-poetry-by-emily-gough https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/rupi-kaur-instagram-poet-entrepreneur/572746/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/rupi-kaur-instagram-poet-entrepreneur/572746/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2021/02/08/could-renaissance-coming-poetry-wake-pandemic/6256821002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2021/02/08/could-renaissance-coming-poetry-wake-pandemic/6256821002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2021/02/08/could-renaissance-coming-poetry-wake-pandemic/6256821002/ 78 rebekka lotman kovalik, kate; curwood, jen scott 2019. #poetryisnotdead: understanding instagram poetry within a transliteracies framework. in: literacy 53(4), 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12186 leach, samantha 2021. the second wave of instagram poetry is here. in: bustle. 18.03.2021. https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/the-second-wave-of-instagram-poetry-is-here leerssen, joep 2021. emotive communities: the lyric as form, affect and platform. in: the factor of lyrical poetry in the formation of literary cultures. 14th international conference of the estonian association of comparative literature. https://www.uttv.ee/naita?id=31748 lloyd, andrew 2019. i faked my way as an instagram poet, and it went bizarrely well. in: vice. 12.09.19. https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmjmj3/instagram-poetry-becomesuccessful-scam loog, alvar 2019. autori surm vs autori sarm? in: postimees. 5.11.19. https://leht.postimees.ee/6819037/autori-surm-vs-autori-sarm lõbu, grete [interviewer] 2021. sotsiaalmeedia luuletaja lauri räpp: kirjutan oma sisetunde pealt. in: menu 25.10.2021. https://menu.err.ee/1608381785/ sotsiaalmeedia-luuletaja-lauri-rapp-kirjutan-oma-sisetunde-pealt maher, john 2018. can instagram make poems sell again? in: publishers weekly. 02.02.2018. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/ publisher-news/article/75976-can-instagram-make-poems-sell-again.html national endowment for the arts 2019. u.s. patterns of arts participation: a full report from the 2017 survey of public participation in the arts. https://www.arts. gov/sites/default/files/us_patterns_of_arts_participationrevised.pdf nestor, siim 2019. eesti tipp-40 muusikas: soundcloudi popräpp pommitab eesti lugude tabelit. in: eesti ekspress, 3.06.19. https://ekspress.delfi.ee/ artikkel/86414015/eesti-tipp-40-muusikas-soundcloudi-poprapp-pommitabeesti-lugude-tabelit. nohria, aarushi 2020. copy and paste by rupi kaur. in: the daily campus. 19.11.20. https://dailycampus.com/2020/11/19/copy-and-paste-by-rupi-kaur/ pâquet, lili 2019. selfie-help: the multimodal appeal of instagram poetry. in: the journal of popular culture 52(2), 296–314. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12780 parry, milman 1930. studies in the epic technique of oral verse-making. i. homer and homeric style. in: harvard studies in classical philology 41, 73–147. https://doi.org/10.2307/310626 https://menu.err.ee/1608381785/sotsiaalmeedia-luuletaja-lauri-rapp-kirjutan-oma-sisetunde-pealt https://menu.err.ee/1608381785/sotsiaalmeedia-luuletaja-lauri-rapp-kirjutan-oma-sisetunde-pealt https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/75976-can-instagram-make-poems-sell-again.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/75976-can-instagram-make-poems-sell-again.html https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/us_patterns_of_arts_participationrevised.pdf https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/us_patterns_of_arts_participationrevised.pdf https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/86414015/eesti-tipp-40-muusikas-soundcloudi-poprapp-pommitab-eesti-lugude-tabelit. https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/86414015/eesti-tipp-40-muusikas-soundcloudi-poprapp-pommitab-eesti-lugude-tabelit. https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/86414015/eesti-tipp-40-muusikas-soundcloudi-poprapp-pommitab-eesti-lugude-tabelit. https://doi.org/10.2307/310626 79the semiotics of new era poetry: estonian instagram and rap poetry pate, alexs 2010. in the heart of the beat: the poetry of rap. african american cultural theory and heritage. lanham, maryland, toronto, plymouth, uk: the scarecrow press. peegel, mari 2008. chalice esitati kultuurkapitali luulepreemia kandidaadiks. in: eesti päevaleht, 7.02.08. https://epl.delfi.ee/artikkel/51118450/chalice-esitatikultuurkapitali-luulepreemia-kandidaadiks qureshi, huma 2015. how do i love thee? let me instagram it. in: the guardian, 23.11.15. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/23/instapoets-instagramtwitter-poetry-lang-leav-rupi-kaur-tyler-knott-gregson rao, sonia 2017. few read poetry, but millions read rupi kaur. in: boston globe, 11.10.17. https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2017/10/10/few-read-poetrybut-millions-read-rupi-kaur/whiacdvozjhywftmx3uojp/story.html rooste, jürgen 2017. “täna mo värsid on vihased” ehk beebilõusta poeesia lühianatoomia. in: sirp, 16.06.17. https://sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c7-kirjandus/tana-mo-varsid-on-vihased/ trust, gary 2019. billboard hot 100 top 10s in 2019 are, on average, 30 seconds shorter than last year. in: billboard, 6.04.19. https://www.billboard.com/pro/hot-100-top-10s-30-seconds-shorter-2019/ vaher, berk 2006. eesti räpptekstide kogumik. in: eesti ekspress, 6.06.06. https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/68997451/eesti-rapptekstide-kogumik viires, piret 2009. the new elite: from digital literature to a printed book. in: interlitteraria, 14(1), 247−255. viires, piret 2013. digimodernistlik eesti kirjanik. in: methis 8(11), 9–21. https://doi.org/10.7592/methis.v8i11.999 viires, piret 2017. digitaalse kirjanduse defineerimisest ja periodiseerimisest. in: philologia estonica tallinnensis 2, 129−145. https://doi.org/10.22601/pet.2017.02.08 viires, piret 2020. uued loomevõimalused internetis. märkmeid sotsiaalmeedia kirjandusest. in: methis: studia humaniora estonica 21(26), 217−236. https://doi.org/10.7592/methis.v21i26.16917 väljataga, märt 2021. üks korralik kirjandus? mõttevahetus: xxi sajandi eesti kirjandus. in: looming 10. https://www.looming.ee/arhiiv/uks-korralik-kirjandus/ watts, rebecca 2018. the cult of the noble amateur. in: pn review 239, 44(3). https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10090 https://epl.delfi.ee/artikkel/51118450/chalice-esitati-kultuurkapitali-luulepreemia-kandidaadiks https://epl.delfi.ee/artikkel/51118450/chalice-esitati-kultuurkapitali-luulepreemia-kandidaadiks https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/23/instapoets-instagram-twitter-poetry-lang-leav-rupi-kaur-tyler-knott-gregson https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/23/instapoets-instagram-twitter-poetry-lang-leav-rupi-kaur-tyler-knott-gregson https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2017/10/10/few-read-poetry-but-millions-read-rupi-kaur/whiacdvozjhywftmx3uojp/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2017/10/10/few-read-poetry-but-millions-read-rupi-kaur/whiacdvozjhywftmx3uojp/story.html https://www.etis.ee/portal/publications/display/24305755-e6a0-441b-b7d5-b44f2db53236 https://www.looming.ee/arhiiv/uks-korralik-kirjandus/ https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?toc=3;volume=44 the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics: vladimir nabokov’s and jurgis baltrušaitis’s binary tetrameters from a typological perspective mihhail lotman*1 abstract: the article discusses the problems of poetic rhythm in two aspects. the first concerns the possibility of awareness and conscious modelling of various aspects of poetic rhythm; the second is related to the manifestation of similar or even identical tendencies in the rhythmic structures of various authors who belong to different eras and literary trends and even writing in different languages. works from bilingual authors such as vladimir nabokov and jurgis baltrušaitis are of the particular interest. the first half of the article focuses on how the concept of rhythm proposed in the book by andrei bely (1910) influenced the poetic practice. before bely, it had been implicit that the choice of stanzaic and metric forms was usually conscious for authors, while bely demonstrated that poets and their audience can be aware of verse rhythm as well. after the publication of his results, bely and other poets of a predominantly symbolist approach began to pay attention to the rhythmic structure of the verse and made attempts to model it. considered are the following problems: a) how do poetic meters relate to rhythmic forms; b) to what extent can the rhythmic momentum be recognized by the author, and to what extent can the author influence it; and c) how can the author compose verses in accordance with a pre-selected rhythmic model. in the second half of the article, the rhythm of iambic and trochaic tetrameters in russian poetic heritage of jurgis baltrušaitis is analysed in comparison with the rhythm of his lithuanian verses. as it turns out, despite the obvious differences in the prosody of the lithuanian and russian languages, the rhythmic structure of his poems obeys the same regularities. in the final part of the article, possible explanations of rhythmic patterns are proposed and an outline of the typology of the rhythm of the binary tetrameters is given. keywords: rhythmics; binary tetrameters; semiotics of verse; andrei bely; nabokov; baltrušaitis * author’s address: mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail.lotman@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 6.2, 2019, 74–101 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.03 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.03 75the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics 1. introduction. verse rhythm: the problems of its nature and its meaning ever since the russian formalists, there has been a distinction between meter and rhythm in versification: meter is an ideal structure, while rhythm is its concrete realization; a different set of rhythmic forms corresponds to each meter (compare pilshchikov 2017). in most cases, the choice of meter is conscious, and the choice of rhythm is not. nevertheless, rhythm – as all the other elements of aesthetic structure – can be conscious and not only studied and described, but also intentionally modelled. modernist poetry experiments with both meter and rhythm. in the beginning of the 20th century andrei bely, valery bryusov and several lesser known symbolists actively experimented with rhythm. this experimentation raises two questions. the first is connected to the problem of autonomy of verse rhythm: does it automatically stem from the qualities of verse meter and language (for example, syntax), or does it have its own regularities? when mikhail lomonosov founded the tradition of the russian iambic tetrameter, he followed martin opitz’s instructions. on the one hand, his iambic tetrameter has four iambic feet, that is, four stresses; at the same time, however, he followed the rhythmics of german iamb, and here he used johann christian günther’s oeuvre as a prototype, first of all, his ode written in 1718. the prosody of the german language is considerably different from that of the russian language, and it took some time before the influence of russian prosody reached lomonosov’s poetry. there are other examples as well where verse rhythm is influenced by a particular foreign verse tradition. jaak põldmäe demonstrated how translating “eugene onegin” has influenced betti alver’s rhythm in her original estonian poetry (põldmäe 1975). in a similar way, vikram seth uses, in his verse novel “the golden gate” which is written in onegin stanzas, the rhythm forms which are very rare in english iambs, but regular in pushkin’s iamb and are, in a way, his impresa (the fourth paeon). similar rhythm forms can be found in onegin stanzas by diana burgin. in seth’s case it is especially remarkable that he did not know russian and studied pushkin’s ‘novel in verse’ from secondary sources. diana burgin, on the other hand, is a slavist, and knows pushkin’s works comprehensively. the second question of experimentation is, how free the poets are in a conscious modelling of verse rhythm, and how far they can move from meter as its prototype so that it could be still perceived as a rhythm of this meter. innokenty annensky asked if the second and the fourth paeon are the same meter or two different ones and andrei bely’s analysis showed that they are the same meter: iambic tetrameter. these are two different rhythm types of the 76 mihhail lotman same verse meter. but what about tyutchev’s “last love”? is it still an iambic tetrameter, or is it some other verse form1? if a certain rhythmic regularity arises in the works of an author, group of authors or literary period, it forms a rhythm type: for example, there is a rhythmic type which is characteristic to the 18th century russian iambic tetrameter, and another to that of the 19th century; kiril taranovsky described three different rhythmic types in andrei bely’s iambic tetrameter. thus, different rhythm types can coexist in the same meter. but, can the same rhythmic regularities occur in different meters? or even more importantly, can the same rhythmic types occur in verses in different languages? 2. iamb and paeon: two different meters or different rhythm forms of the same meter? in 1910, innokenty annensky published the collection cypress box (kiparisovyj larets); one of the sonnets included in the collection begins with the quatrain: на службу лести иль мечты равно готовые консорты, назвать вас вы, назвать вас ты, пэон второй – пэон четвертый? (annensky 1990: 133) at the service of flattery or dream, [you are] equally ready consorts, [shall i] call you ‘you’ [plural], [or shall i] call you ‘thou’ [singular], paeon the second – paeon the fourth? the title of the poem is “paeon the second – paeon the fourth” (“peon vtoroj – peon chetvertyj”). to understand this fragment, one must know both the historical and poetological background. at the beginning of the 20th century various russian poets – all of them representatives of symbolism – began to study versification. the most successful was andrei bely (real name: boris bugaev), whose book symbolism published in 1910 marks the birth of modern 1 fedor tyutchev’s famous poem “last love” (“poslednjaja ljubov’”) which is written on the basis of the iambic tetrameter. however, in five lines of twelve, there are violations that are not permissible in iamb. 77the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics statistical analysis of verse. it is tempting to associate annensky’s poem with bely’s results, yet this may not be chronologically correct, since annensky presumably created his poem before the publication of bely’s work. the work by bely and by the rhythmic studies group that he led was preceded by studies conducted by other remarkable symbolists – valery bryusov and vyacheslav ivanov. in any case, the questions regarding versification formed a central focus for the symbolists. in 1934, vladislav khodasevich recalled: “we [i.e. the poets and foremost the symbolists – ml] were tormented by the question: what, besides phonics, ensures the difference in sound in the same verse meter? in the summer of 1908, [bely] called me and laughingly yelled: “[...] i have made a discovery! a true discovery, like archimedes!” i of course came over [...]. on the table was a gigantic pile of papers with vertical columns drawn on them. the columns contained spots which were connected to each other with straight lines in a complex fashion. bely patted the pile with his palm: “here is the entirety of iambic tetrameter. just in the palm of your hand. the verses of the same meter are differentiated by rhythm. the rhythm does not coincide with meter and is defined by the omission of metrical stress. “moi djadja samykh chestnykh pravil” has four stresses, but “i klanjalsja neprinuzhdenno” has two: the rhythm is different, but the verse meter is the same – iambic tetrameter. these have become by now common knowledge. on that day, however, it was a discovery, indeed simple and surprising, just like in the case of archimedes.” (khodasevich 2012: 41–63). according to andrei bely, meter is the central point (at present we would call it the prototype), from which rhythm diverges towards different directions: in one are the patterns that lack metrical stress in the first foot, in another the patterns have the second foot with no stress, and in the third direction the patterns are without stress on the third foot; the stress may be simultaneously absent from the first and the second, the first and the third, and the second and the third verse foot. altogether, bely distinguishes between seven different rhythmic forms. bely devised a method of statistical analysis of rhythm which is used with certain corrections to this day. the results of the analysis are no less important. as it turns out, the rhythm of iambic tetrameter was different in the 18th and 19th centuries: the index of stressedness of the first foot is higher in the 18th century than that of the second foot, while the opposite holds for the 19th century, when the first verse foot was weaker than the second (bely 1910: 262–264). one could say, using the terminology of that era, that in the 18th century the rhythmical momentum of i4 was formed with the second paeon (∪—∪∪), while in the 19th century it was with the fourth paeon (∪∪∪—). 78 mihhail lotman this is exactly what annensky had in mind in his sonnet: in 18th-century russian neoclassicist poetry i4 appears, first of all, in odes (“flattery”), during the 19th century – in elegies and romantic poems (“dreams”). here he asks the question: do the differences in the rhythmics of the 18th and 19th century call for the necessity to treat these as different verse meters or the same meter: “shall i call you ‘you’ or ‘thou’”? for annensky, the rhythmic form is an indexical sign, which points to a certain tradition and probably even a genre. the question of the paeon arose later in a fairly curious context. on september 13, 1942, vladimir nabokov writes to edmund wilson: dear bunny, it took me exactly ten minutes to compose the following little masterpiece consisting exclusively of 4th paeons, a sequence that is seldom found even in russian prosody. the complicated variation of lepidoptera affords a fascinating occupation for proletarians and lords. and here is the same thing in russian: разнообразное сложенье чешуекрылыхъ мотыльковъ уготовляетъ услажденье для королей и бѣдняковъ. (karlinsky 2001: 92) there is no explanation in the letter as to what drove him to create this “little masterpiece”. “the same thing in russian” is not the exact translation of the english quatrain: the ‘proletarians and lords’ are replaced with ‘kings and paupers’ etc., but it is not nabokov’s goal here to attain the exact correspondence of content, but rather that of the rhythm: both quatrains have the 4th paeon for this, that is, the rhythm form vi of i4, according to the bely-kolmogorov numeration2. nabokov is right here: the sequences of this rhythmic pattern 2 compare the list of the rhythm forms of russian iambic tetrameter in igor pilshchikov’s paper (2019: 54). andrei bely’s list was not originally numerated, it was numbered by kiril taranovsky (1953), bely’s numeration was later adjusted by georgy shengeli (shengeli 1923: 79the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics are very rare in russian iamb and appear mostly in experimental poetry; in english iamb, even solitary ‘paeonic’ verses do not occur.3 nabokov’s miniature is not merely a tour de force, this joke has a touch of bitterness. in the previous correspondence, wilson and nabokov attempt to teach the rules of prosody to each other and often do it in a condescending tone. wilson is more modest, he tries to prove that nabokov misunderstood english prosody while making disparaging comments in passing about russian verse theory, while nabokov makes his way into the field of english prosody. quoted is nabokov’s attempt to counter wilson’s complaints in a letter sent on september 1. wilson: “now about the metrics: the terminology you use – of amphibrachs, pyrrhics, etc. – is obsolete in english. we now speak of these feet only in analyzing choruses from greek plays – because greek verse is quantitative and you have feet made up of combinations of long and short syllables and require special names to designate them. thus, in this line from the agamemnon – περίβαλον / γάρ οἱ / πτερόφορōν / δέμας / θεοί περίβαλον and πτερόφορον are paeons; but when an english-speaking reader reads them, he accents the first syllable of each word, imposing on the line his own metrical system (nobody seems to know what the greeks did, because nobody seems to know precisely what the written greek accent indicated); and since we have got away in english in prosody as well as in grammar from trying to fit english into the molds of the classical languages, we have simplified our 139–141), who changed the places of forms v and vii. shengeli’s version became popular thanks to andrei kolmogorov, it was also used by mikhail gasparov. 3 years ago i studied more than 200,000 verses of english iambic tetrameter from the 18th until the first half of the 20th century and i did not find a single line that could have been interpreted as the v, vi or vii rhythm form; however, nabokov (1964: 458–461) brings some examples of english i4 with two stresses. overall, lines with two stresses are extremely rare in english i4, like, for instance, byron’s and cupola and minaret (“venice. a fragment”), where the stress falls on the second and the sixth syllable (russian iamb does not contain such lines and they do not fit inside the bely-kolmogorov classification, since the 8th syllable – the socalled stress constant – has remained unstressed). yet i did find both the vi and vii rhythm forms in two works created during the second half of the 1980s: vikram seth’s the golden gate (1986) and diana lewis burgin’s richard burgin: a life in verse (1988). both are written in onegin stanzas and influenced by russian prosody. compare the vi rhythm form: sentimentality behind, irritability and charm (seth), half-anecdotal, half-scholastic, what unbelievable frustration (burgin); the vii rhythm form: no herb of reconciliation, of hatred, the intoxication (seth), the concerts of the philharmonic, an urgency apocalyptic (burgin). 80 mihhail lotman metrics to five kinds of feet. we couldn’t have any such thing as a line beginning ∪∪∪— in english, so we don’t need to talk about fourth paeons (if they taught you those other feet in school, the analysis of russian verse – which seems to me basically, from the point of view of metrics, just like english verse, as you say – then the russian discussion of prosody was still in a backward state). our five english feet are these: trochee, iambus, anapest, dactyl, spondee. we do not need any more. the notation is the same we use for greek and latin, but here the little curves mean unaccented syllables instead of short syllables, and the dashes mean accented syllables instead of long syllables. (sometimes they write a / instead of a dash; but i have got into the habit of writing in the other way.) these five feet suffice for analyzing any english verse. in our metrics, or ∪∪ ĭmāg / ĭnā / tiŏn’s brūsh / ĭs vīv / ĭd is scanned like this.” (karlinsky 2001: 89) the latter example should mean that the beginning of the verse, where nabokov mistakenly sees a paeon (imagina… ∪∪∪―), has two iambs according to wilson (imag/ina… ∪―/∪―). paeons, and so on, according to wilson should remain for the analysis of ancient greek choruses. in this case, nabokov did not delve into theoretical discussion, but responded with two poems: with a paeonic piece inserted in a letter and later with a longer amphibrachic poem, “exile”, which wilson held in high regard. wilson’s letter was in turn an answer to nabokov’s voluminous letter from august 24, in which he thoroughly explains the foundations of russian rhythmics by deriving first and foremost from andrei bely’s treatment, developing it further in an original way and even attempting to demonstrate that the english iamb is founded on the same principles (karlinsky 2001: 85). it is here that nabokov introduced ‘paeons’ to describe the rhythm of i4. “[o]wing to the presence of some long adjective “неугомóнная забота” or “таинственныя времена” the line may consist of two ‘fourth’ paeons ∪∪∪−́ ∪∪∪−́ or a ‘second’ paeon plus a ‘fourth’ one ∪−́∪∪ ∪∪∪−́” (karlinsky 2001: 81). however, nabokov emphasises that this terminology and the corresponding transcription are purely conditional and the line “неугомонная забота” (“neugomónnaja zabóta”) can be designated either as ∪∪∪−́ ∪∪∪−́[∪] or ∪―∪− ́∪―∪−[́∪], but the second designation is the clearer one as it shows the rhythmic relation of a concrete line to its abstract basic meter (karlinsky 2001: 81). this means that nabokov is considerably sharper and more modern than wilson, who stood confined to the so-called school metrics: to nabokov, verse 81the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics feet are conventional terms that represent an abstract system, but not the actual pronunciation: the differentiation between versification (stikhoslozhenie) and verse pronunciation (stikhoproiznesenie) was common in russian verse theory.4 andrei bely created the foundations of russian statistical verse doctine, but by the 1940s his views and methods of analysis were largely outdated due to the work of boris tomashevsky, viktor zhirmunsky and others. nevertheless, bely is the only author that nabokov refers to with respect to rhythmic analysis, and whose ideas he uses and elaborates on. most likely this was due to the fact that nabokov deliberately ignored everything coming from the soviet union and the formalists, who had by then fallen into disdain, were nevertheless associated with bolshevism by him.5 the analysis of verse line in bely’s book turned out to be extremely productive, but the author’s goals were much more ambitious: he devised a method which allowed for the visualisation of dynamic rhythm and considered this type of analysis to be particularly important. the complicated patterns formed by the spots connected with straight lines that khodasevich saw on bely’s table were the results of such analysis. “a figure is the connection of two or more verses that deviate from the meter in a similar or different way; by connecting with straight lines the points of acceleration [uskorenie – another of bely’s failed terms denoting the absence of metrical stress – ml] represented by dots we get the figure” (bely 1910: 300–301). it unfortunately turned out later that this part of bely’s tractate was not scientifically valid: despite numerous attempts, no correlation was found between rhythmical forms in adjacent lines (tomashevsky 1929, vasyutochkin 1968, baevsky 2001). however, being insignificant from the viewpoint of verse theory, the ‘graphic’ considerably affected the consciousness of many poets. nabokov was one of those poets. in the novel the gift (1933–38) this method appears twice. firstly, the talentless poet yasha chernyshevsky sketched these schemes in his notebooks. secondly, the main character and another poet, fyodor godunov-cherdyntsev, after studying ‘bely’s monumental research’ and estimating critically his own poetry, concluded that it was poor from 4 compare trubetzkoy 1987: 360. unfortunately, nabokov used the unsuccessful term ‘halfaccent’ (poluudarenie) which was inherited from bely. he did not use it to mark the secondary stress, but the lack of stress in a metrically strong position; this probably confused wilson. 5 however, nabokov probably knew some things about the formalists, in any case he makes two freudian errors by wrongly naming bely’s book. compare: “i shall have to suggest your perusing the treatise poetica by andrei bely which is probably the greatest work on verse in any language” (karlinsky 2001: 86). the matter at hand is that the name of bely’s tractate is symbolism, while poetica is the second title of boris tomashevsky’s theory of literature (poetica) (tomashevsky 1925). 82 mihhail lotman the viewpoint of figures and decisively changed his style. we also know that nabokov himself analysed the works of his and others in this manner. we also encounter such treatments and schemes in his letters to wilson. let us give a simple example. nabokov is analysing the following excerpt from pushkin’s “count nulin” (1825): она тарквинию с размаха дает – пощечину, да, да, пощечину, да ведь какую! сгорел граф [in nabokov’s quotation: мой – ml] нулин от стыда, обиду проглотив такую; не знаю, чем бы кончил он, досадой страшною пылая, но шпиц косматый, вдруг залая, прервал параши крепкий сон. услышав граф ее походку и проклиная свой ночлег и своенравную красотку, в постыдный обратился бег. как он, хозяйка и параша проводят остальную ночь, воображайте, воля ваша! я не намерен вам помочь. 83the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics the first column has the text, then the scheme where the black dots mark the lacking metrical stresses, after that the summary of action (slap, …, troubled night), then the figure itself. as said previously, these graphics were not only a method of analysis for nabokov, but also one of creation. in the novel the gift, he describes the poetry of godunov-cherdyntsev’s youth, which is poor in figures. below is this quatrain as an example, to which we add our own scheme. mjàch zakatílsya mój pod njánin komód, i na polú svechá ten’ za kontsý berjót i tjánet tudá, sjudá, – no nét mjachá. when the character reaches his bleak result, he begins to write completely differently so that there would be a lot of figures, and that they would be complex. in 1961, the novel was translated into english, with nabokov himself translating its poems. thus the ‘elaborately’ rhythmed quatrain looks like this in the original and the rhythmically identical translation, we also add a rhythmic scheme following the method of bely-nabokov. zadúmchivo i beznadézhno rasprostranjáet aromát i neosushchestvímo nézhno uzh poluuvjadáet sád. in miserable meditations, and aromatically dark, full of interconverted patience, sighs the semidenuted park. (nabokov 1991: 151) both the russian original and especially the english translation have a particularly refined rhythm. andrei bely was not able to find any rhythm form v (vii, according to other numeration) and brought an artificial example: i velosipedíst letít (∪ − ∪ − ∪ − ́∪ −)́6. yet here, both in the original and in the translation, two such lines occur in a sequence. yet that is not all. nabokov, the master of hiding, secrets and mimicry (compare hansen-löve 2000) not only brings forth the rhythmic figures 6 bely claimed, relying on his memory, that he saw one such line in the poem dedicated to nikolai yazykov by karolina pavlova (bely 1910: 294–295), and the poem “n. m. yazykovu. otvet” (“to n. m. yazykov, in reply”, 1840) contains indeed the following verse line: dlia polugorodskíkh poléj (для полугородских полей). both according to bely’s own and existing conventions, the rhythm forms are determined only by main stresses, hence, this line should be indeed approached as the form v (at the same time, in the word pòlugorodskíkh the first syllable carries a secondary stress). as said previously, these graphics were not only a method of analysis for nabokov, but also one of creation. in the novel the gift, he describes the poetry of godunov-cherdyntsev’s youth, which is poor in figures. below is this quatrain as an example, to which we add our own scheme. mjàch zakatílsya mój pod njánin komód, i na polú svechá ten’ za kontsý berjót i tjánet tudá, sjudá, – no nét mjachá. ∙°°° °∙°° °°°° °°°° when the character reaches his bleak result, he begins to write completely differently so that there would be a lot of figures, and that they would be complex. in 1961, the novel was translated into english, with nabokov himself translating its poems. thus the ‘elaborately’ rhythmed quatrain looks like this in the original and the rhythmically identical translation, we also add a rhythmic scheme following the method of bely-nabokov. zadúmchivo i beznadézhno rasprostranjáet aromát i neosushchestvímo nézhno uzh poluuvjadáet sád. ° • • ° • ° • ° • • ° ° • • ° ° in miserable meditations, and aromatically dark, full of interconverted patience, sighs the semidenuted park. ° • • ° • ° • ° • • ° ° • • ° ° (nabokov 1991: 151) both the russian original and especially the english translation have a particularly refined rhythm. andrei bely was not able to find any rhythm form v (vii, according to his own numeration) and brought an artificial example: i velosipedíst letít (è è è -́ è -́)6. yet here, both in the original and in the translation, two such lines occur in a sequence. yet that is not all. nabokov, the master of hiding, secrets and mimicry (compare hansenlöve 2000) not only brings forth the rhythmic figures but sometimes also skilfully hides them. observe in the poem “ursa major” (“bol’shaya medveditsa”, september 23, 1918): oleg fedotov discovered that a scheme of the constellation is encoded into it, which is also 6 bely claimed, relying on his memory, that he saw one such line in the poem dedicated to nikolai yazykov by karolina pavlova (bely 1910: 294–295), and the poem “n. m. yazykovu. otvet” (“to n. m. yazykov, in reply”, 1840) contains indeed the following verse line: dlia polugorodskíkh poléj для полугородских полей. both according to bely’s own and existing conventions, the rhythm forms are determined only by main stresses, hence, this line should be indeed approached as the form v (at the same time, in the word pòlugorodskíkh the first syllable carries a secondary stress). as said previously, these graphics were not only a method of analysis for nabokov, but also one of creation. in the novel the gift, he describes the poetry of godunov-cherdyntsev’s youth, which is poor in figures. below is this quatrain as an example, to which we add our own scheme. mjàch zakatílsya mój pod njánin komód, i na polú svechá ten’ za kontsý berjót i tjánet tudá, sjudá, – no nét mjachá. ∙°°° °∙°° °°°° °°°° when the character reaches his bleak result, he begins to write completely differently so that there would be a lot of figures, and that they would be complex. in 1961, the novel was translated into english, with nabokov himself translating its poems. thus the ‘elaborately’ rhythmed quatrain looks like this in the original and the rhythmically identical translation, we also add a rhythmic scheme following the method of bely-nabokov. zadúmchivo i beznadézhno rasprostranjáet aromát i neosushchestvímo nézhno uzh poluuvjadáet sád. ° • • ° • ° • ° • • ° ° • • ° ° in miserable meditations, and aromatically dark, full of interconverted patience, sighs the semidenuted park. ° • • ° • ° • ° • • ° ° • • ° ° (nabokov 1991: 151) both the russian original and especially the english translation have a particularly refined rhythm. andrei bely was not able to find any rhythm form v (vii, according to his own numeration) and brought an artificial example: i velosipedíst letít (è è è -́ è -́)6. yet here, both in the original and in the translation, two such lines occur in a sequence. yet that is not all. nabokov, the master of hiding, secrets and mimicry (compare hansenlöve 2000) not only brings forth the rhythmic figures but sometimes also skilfully hides them. observe in the poem “ursa major” (“bol’shaya medveditsa”, september 23, 1918): oleg fedotov discovered that a scheme of the constellation is encoded into it, which is also 6 bely claimed, relying on his memory, that he saw one such line in the poem dedicated to nikolai yazykov by karolina pavlova (bely 1910: 294–295), and the poem “n. m. yazykovu. otvet” (“to n. m. yazykov, in reply”, 1840) contains indeed the following verse line: dlia polugorodskíkh poléj для полугородских полей. both according to bely’s own and existing conventions, the rhythm forms are determined only by main stresses, hence, this line should be indeed approached as the form v (at the same time, in the word pòlugorodskíkh the first syllable carries a secondary stress). 84 mihhail lotman but sometimes also skilfully hides them. observe in the poem “ursa major” (“bol’shaya medveditsa”, september 23, 1918): oleg fedotov discovered that a scheme of the constellation is encoded into it, which is also alluded to in the seven verse lines and the images of ‘seven maids’ and ‘seven stars’ (fedotov 2017; 2015: 282–308). byl grózen vóln polnóchnyj rjóv... sèm’ dévushek na vzmór’e zhdáli nevozvratívshikhsja chelnóv i, rúki zalomív, rydáli. sèm’ zvjózdochek v suróvoj mglé nad rybakámi chjótko vstáli i ukazáli pút’ k zemlé... let us summarise. when andrei bely started his studies of verse rhythm and opposed meter and rhythm he derived from the fact that if the choice of verse meter is deliberately chosen by the author and recognizable by the listener/ reader, then rhythm is not the result of conscious choices, but of subconscious processes. meter is loaded with associations stemming from traditions, but rhythm expresses only the intratextual impulses and movements. in a similar vein, john hollander distinguished between the semantics of meter and the semantics of rhythm: the former is like an emblem that connected the text and hand to another created in the same verse meter, the semantics of rhythm is related to various intratextual effects like contrast, entanglement, flow, and so on (hollander 1959, 1975). after the acknowledgment of rhythm and the description of some of its regularities it became possible to knowingly model it and use it as an emblem. thus, different russian modernists in the beginning of the 20th century deliberately used both the rhythm referring to the 18th century and the pronouncedly harmonious 19th century rhythm. innokenty annensky himself did not experiment with rhythm, but his sensitive instinct allowed to specify the emblematics of rhythm. andrei bely created an unprecedented asymmetric and stumbling rhythm of i4 to describe horrible things (taranovsky 2000): new themes needed corresponding rhythms. and finally, vladimir nabokov semantisized meta-rhythm: not the rhythmic movement itself, but its description. let us finish this section, as we started, with the question of paeon. in 1916, vladislav khodasevich wrote a small poem “paeon and caesura. trefoil of meanings” (“peon i tsezura. trilistnik smyslov”): 85the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics pokórstvujushchij vsém zhelán’jam taínstvennoj vladéet siloj: tsezúra govorít molchán’em – peón ne prekoslóvit míloj. no lásk neterpelívo prósit podrúga – i v soznán’e vlásti on médlenno glavú voznósit, rastjágivaja zvén’ja strásti. every line starts with a paeon followed by two iambic feet. accordingly, we are dealing with iambic tetrameter and its rhythm form iii. however, since such monotonous rhythm embraces the whole text, sergei mazur in his detailed analysis interprets it as a logaoed (mazur 1990: 89). thus, the paeon is in the beginning of the line, but where are the caesurae? it appears that they form a certain pattern, which is in harmony with the content of the poem, having an erotic meaning: caesura (feminine gender) impatiently asks paeon (masculine gender) to “caress” her (line 5), but he is “prolonging the links of passion” (last line). ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ∪ | ―∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ∪ | ∪ ―∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― ∪ | ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― | ∪ ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― | ∪ ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― ∪ | ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ∪ | ∪ ― ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ― ∪ ∪ ∪ | ― ∪ ― ∪ here we can see a more refined play, even as compared with bely’s “figures” in nabokov’s poem: they varied different forms of the same meter, whereas khodasevich takes one rhythmic form and creates a pattern from variations of its word-boundaries. just like in nabokov’s “ursa major”, this picture can be obtained only as a result of the analysis. 86 mihhail lotman 3. comparative rhythmics comparative versification study belongs among the more recent fields of verse studies, especially as concerns the research of comparative rhythmics. while in the fields of metrics and systems of versification numerous valuable results were achieved already in the 19th century, the comparative analysis of rhythm in different poetic systems has only become possible with the development of the statistical method. the studies by kiril taranovsky, mikhail gasparov, marina tarlinskaja and others are more widely known; of the most recent treatments, one can also refer to the works of evgeny kazartsev (compare especially 2017: 134–150)7. the legacy of bilingual poets is a gratifying material from the perspective of comparative verse study. unfortunately, while there is a fair amount of bilingual poets, their literary heritage rarely contains enough material to allow for comparative statistical analysis of rhythm. kiril taranovsky has described the rhythmics of taras shevchenko’s iambic tetrameters (i4) by comparing his ukrainian and russian poems. the result is more than meaningful: in shevchenko’s ukrainian i4 and his early russian i4, there is an exact correspondence between the indices of average stressedness of the metrically strong positions (α1, α2, … , αn); since the groundbreaking works by andrei bely, the stressedness of strong position has been considered the main parameter of rhythm. chart 1. ukrainian and russian i4 in taras shevchenko’s poem (taranovsky 2010: 49) 7 the results of many studies have been presented in the monograph lotman, lotman 2018 (see especially 2018: 319–342). 87the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics furthermore, it can be confirmed that the rhythmic momentum of taras shevchenko’s ukrainian poetry is quite close to the rhythmic tendencies which characterized russian poetry of the same period (for example, the works by pushkin and especially his successors). compare the stress profile in sevchenko’s ukrainian i4 with the analogous data in baratynsky’s i4: chart 2. the rhythmics of taras shevchenko’s ukrainian i4 in comparison with the rhythmics of yevgeny baratynsky’s i4 (taranovsky 2010: 449–453) both cases demonstrate dissimilative rhythm: α4 > α2 > α1 > α3, which is characteristic to russian i4 in the post-pushkin era. however, the question inevitably arises, whether the aforementioned patterns are the result of the influence of cultural factors or is the rhythmics of shevchenko’s i4 determined solely by the prosodic parameters of the ukrainian language, while the correspondence with the rhythmics of russian i4 is merely a consequence resulting from the closeness of the languages or even random in the first place? there were no bilingual ukrainian-russian poets before shevchenko who could have left a significant iambic heritage. however, it is useful to compare ivan kotliarevsky’s ukrainian eneida (1798) with nikolai osipov’s russian poem virgilieva eneida, vyvorochennaja naiznanku (virgil’s aeneid travestied, 1791–1796); as we know, kotlyarevsky’s work is a free translation of osipov’s poem. 88 mihhail lotman chart 3. ukrainian and russian i4 in kotlyarevsky’s eneida and osipov’s original (taranovsky 2010: 446–447) here, too, the rhythmic contours essentially overlap, but they are fundamentally different in comparison with shevchenko’s verse. here, the hierarchy of the stressedness of the strong positions is α4 > α1 > α2 > α3, which is characteristic of 18th-century russian i4. 4. regularities of rhythm by analysing a considerable bulk of 18thand 19th-century verses in russian binary meters, kiril taranovsky formulated two statistical laws of russian rhythmics: the law of the stabilisation of the first strong position after the first weak position, and the law of regressive dissimilation (taranovsky 1953).8 both laws explain the hierarchy of the stressedness of the strong positions in a verse line. in accordance with the first law, the first strong position stands out with higher occurrence of stresses if it is preceded by a weak position, as it is in iamb. however if a verse line starts with a strong position, as it is in trochee, the higher stressedness characterizes not the first, but the second strong position. in other words, the second syllable is prominent in iamb, the third 8 in kiril taranovsky’s formulation: “the law of the stabilization of the first ictus after the first weak position in the line” (taranovsky 2010: 409) and “the law of regressive accentual dissimilation” (taranovsky 2010: 325). 89the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics syllable in trochee.9 according to the second law, the last position of the verse is the most stressed, which is in contrast with the penultimate position, being the weakest, the antepenultimate position has again higher stress while still being weaker than the last strong position etc. these laws show interaction in the following manner: they harmonize in trochees with even-numbered feet (dimetric, tetrametric, hexametric verse) and in iambs with odd-numbered feet (trimetric and pentametric verse), amplifying each other; they clash in trochees with odd-numbered feet and iambs with even-numbered feet, resulting in the law of stabilisation inhibiting the law of dissimilation in the first hemistich during the 18th century; in the 19th century the law of dissimilation becomes stronger than the law of stabilisation while nevertheless not completely oppressing it. in reference with the russian i4, mikhail gasparov called the the 18th-century type of rhythm ‘framing’ and the 19th-century type of rhythm ‘alternating’, marking it respectively as swws and wsws (s – a strong position with higher prominence of stresses, a “strong foot”; w – a strong position with lower prominence of stresses, a “week foot”).10 the iambs in osipov’s and kotlyarevsky’s poems are of the framing type, while shevchenko’s iambs represent the alternating type. the russian and ukrainian languages are closely related and have a very similar prosodic structure; if we add close cultural relations, then the similarity of rhythmic factors should not be surprising. the situation is completely different in the case of the russian and lithuanian languages. unlike in russian, in lithuanian heavy and light syllables are distinguished and the stress is tonic. since the location of stress is not fixed in a word, there should not be any problems creating syllabic-accentual verses. 9 compare boris tomashevsky’s standpoint that the first two syllables in trochee can be considered its anacrusis, that is, the first strong position in a trochaic verse is on the third syllable: “we have reason to believe that in trochee and dactyl the entire first foot is anacrusis, that is, in trochee we are dealing with a disyllabic, in dactyl a trisyllabic anacrusis”(tomashevsky 1925: 111, footnote 1). tomashevsky, however, confuses metrical structures with the rhythmic ones. 10 the prominence of a strong position is not an absolute parameter, but relative, being determined by its context: the high incidence of stresses can characterise also non-prominent positions, but it has to be lower there than in the neighbouring strong positions. 90 mihhail lotman 5. jurgis baltrušaitis: comparative analysis of the rhythm of russian and lithuanian binary tetrameters jurgis baltrušaitis (1873–1944), a symbolist poet, wrote little and published even less, but his œuvre was nevertheless a significant phenomenon, first in russian, then in lithuanian culture.11 unlike his contemporaries valery bryusov and konstantin balmont, baltrušaitis did not experiment with verse forms. iambic and trochaic tetrameters constitute a significant part of his heritage and provide sufficient material for statistical analysis. the rhythmic structure of baltrušaitis’ lithuanian t4 and i4 is studied on the basis of juozas girdzijauskas’s data (girdzijauskas 1975: 45–59 and 1979: 169–180).12 the material for the statistical analysis of baltrušaitis’ russian poems was assembled from the collection compiled by juozas tumelis (baltrušaitis 1983), which contained the more important poems from three previously published poetry collections and also a few previously unpublished texts. the specificity of the approach offered below is that the data of t4 and i4 are studied together (not separately, as it is traditionally done). t4 summarized indices t4 theoretical model i4 summarized indices i4 theoretical model chart 4. lithuanian binary tetrameters: summarized indices and the theoretical model 11 andrey bely in his analysis of baltrušaitis’s unpublished poems (“ex deo nascimur”) called him “a truly beautiful poet” (bely 1974: 426). 12 girdzijauskas presents only the data on the distribution of rhythmic forms, but it allows for an easy reconstruction of the parameters of stressedness in the strong positions of the verse. 91the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics first, let us consider the summarized indices of t4 and i4 in comparison with the theoretical models of these verse metres, which have also been calculated based on girdzijauskas’s data relying on the rhythmic dictionary of the language. the rhythmic contours of lithuanian t4 and i4 differ significantly. in the case of the trochee, both its theoretical model and indices of the actual verse represent a clearly expressed alternating type (wsws), with the differences between the s and w positions in the verse being more prominent than in the theoretical model. the second difference concerns the average stressedness of the strong positions of the verse: in the theoretical model, this index is 62.4%, in the verse it is 69.9%. as for iamb, the contours of the theoretical model and verse rhythm do not coincide. the theoretical model is characterized by a framing rhythm (swws), which is also particular to the theoretical model of russian i4, whereas the indices of the stressedness of the strong positions in verse virtually coincide in the first half of the verse (α1 ≈ α2); in russian verse, this rhythm is particular to the poetry from the beginning of the 19th century; kiril taranovsky called such rhythmic type the transitional rhythm (that is, the transition from the 18th century framing rhythm to the pushkinian tradition of alternating iamb, compare taranovsky 2010: 91). as for the average stressedness of the strong position, here too the index of the theoretical model (70.7%) is considerably lower than the index of verse (74.9%). that is, in verse, the strong positions in t4 and i4 are more clearly contrasted with the weak ones as compared to the theoretical model. it should be noted that the same patterns function in russian versification and it is possible that they are universal in the case of syllabic-accentual verse. now we turn our attention to the rhythmics of baltrušaitis’s rhythmics and introduce first the data of his russian poetry. table 1. the stressedness of strong positions in baltrušaitis’s iambic and trochaic tetrameters α1 α2 α3 α4 average number of lines i4 93.4% 95.0% 59.2% 100% 86.9% 479 t4 72.7% 100% 53.2% 100% 81.5% 370 the main differences in the rhythmics of iambic and trochaic tetrameters lie, first, in the fact that the average stressedness of trochee is smaller than in iamb – t4 is “lighter” than i4. secondly, the dissimilative rhythm has reached 92 mihhail lotman its maximum in t4: the verse has two accentual constants, on the third and on the seventh syllable. compare the sound of t4 and i4 (the number of the rhythm form is indicated after each verse line). t4: дышит полночь тенью жуткой... i тьма в окне и в сердце тьма... i сладость – малая минутка... iv горечь – долгая зима... iv чуткий дух в тоске бессменной i внемлет ночи у окна... iv велика, неизреченна vi неземная тишина... vi но с годами понемногу vi тают тайные круги, iv и к последнему порогу vi приближаются шаги... vi слышен звон освобожденья iv в бое медленных часов, iv и сдвигает бег мгновенья ii неразгаданный засов... vi будет час, и дрогнут петли, i дверь глухая задрожит, iv и узнаю, тьма ли, свет ли ii смертный выход сторожит! iv in baltrušaitis’s russian t4, there are no forms iii and v (where the third syllable is unstressed). next are the data on i4: как трудно высказать – нелживо, iv чтоб хоть себя не обмануть – iv чем наше сердце втайне живо, i о чем, тоскуя, плачет грудь... i речь о мечтах и нуждах часа ii в устах людей – всегда – прикраса, i и силен у души – любой – iii 93the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics страх наготы перед собой, – vi страх истины нелицемерной v иль, брат боязни, хитрый стыд, i о жалком плачущих навзрыд, iv чтоб точным словом, мерой верной i того случайно не раскрыть, iv чему сокрытым лучше быть... i now compare the rhythmic indices of baltrušaitis’s lithuanian and russian t4 and i4: chart 5. baltrušaitis’s lithuanian binary tetrameters compared to his russian ones the presented data are quite telling. the rhythmic contour of the verse is more dependent on verse meter than on language. the alternating rhythmic type is predominant, but it is much more clearly expressed in the trochee than in the iamb, and baltrušaitis’s russian i4 is generally close to the transitional rhythm of the beginning of the 19th century. in other words, taranovsky’s laws also apply to lithuanian verse and operate not only in baltrušaitis’s poetry, but more or less in every author studied by girdzijauskas (t4 has been described in seven and i4 in nine 20th-century poets). in all these cases t4 is characterized by a clearly expressed alternating rhythm (see below). as for the linguistic differences, the index of stressedness in both t4 and i4 in the first three strong positions of baltrušaitis’s russian verse is stronger than in lithuanian verse: the average stressedness in strong positions in lithuanian 94 mihhail lotman t4 is 73.1% (the lowest corresponding index in lithuanian poetry is binkis’s 62.7%), whereas the average stressedness in strong positions in russian t4 is 82.9%; in i4 the data is 78.8% and 86.9%, respectively. to use mikhail gasparov’s terminology, baltrušaitis’s russian binary verses are heavier than in his lithuanian poems. the t4 rhythmic indexes of maironis’s (jonas mačiulis), faustas kirša’s, juozas tysliava’s and kazys binkis’s poetry, were calculated for this paper: chart 6. the rhythmic indexes of lithuanian t4 this reveals that baltrušaitis’s lithuanian t4 fits organically into the context of his contemporary poetry. however, the rhythmics of lithuanian i4 is characterized by a greater diversity. 95the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics chart 7. the rhythmic indices of lithuanian i4 one can outline three different types of rhythm: alternating rhythm similar with pushkin’s i4 (for example, maironis and henrikas radauskas); framing rhythm (faustas kirša and algimantas baltakis), which corresponds the most to the theoretical model, and intermediary rhythm (marcinkevičius and jonas šimkus). in each case, the divergence from t4 is determined by the law of stabilisation functioning in the first strong position of the iambic line. why are the rhythmic patterns of lithuanian binary tetrameters close to the russian ones, despite the obvious differences in the prosody of the natural languages? it would be difficult to explain away as possible cultural influence. it seems that we might find the reason in the counteraction of two factors: language and rhythmics. from the perspective of language, not the existence, or lack thereof, of the phonological length of vowels nor the tonic basis of lithuanian stress are of decisive importance, but, as in russian, its mobile 96 mihhail lotman nature. the rhythmic factor is the existence of the stress constant on the last strong position in the verse line,13 and therefore the existence of this constant does not derive from the prosodic properties of the language. the analysis of t4 and i4 in different poetic traditions demonstrates that the stress profiles of these verse metres are almost always considerably different. the only known exception is estonian verse. in the estonian language, like in czech, hungarian or finnish, stress is fixed on the first syllable of the word. but only in estonian iamb does ban on general trans-accentuation in syllabic-accentual verse expand to the beginning of the line, and as a result, in the vast majority of the cases, the iamb is essentially a trochee that has a monosyllabic word added in anacrusis. therefore, the stress profiles of the strong positions of the iamb and trochee essentially overlap. this is not the case in many other poetic traditions. compare, for example, the last stanza of sándor petőfi’s “reflections” (“tűnődés”, 1841), where each verse begins with an inverted foot: akár a lyányka hű ajkáról szedvén új édes csókokat, akár ha szárnya képzetemnek dicsőbb világokhoz ragad. the poem is, as a whole, syllabic-accentual14, but the above-cited verses compensate for the violation of the tonic principle quantitatively: #∪́−#. however, this compensation is not mandatory in hungarian (compare lines 7–8 of the same poem: s mennynek röpíté képzeményim / hesper-tüzű tekintete), nor in finnish and czech iamb. compare the beginning of karel hynek mácha’s famous poem “may” (“máj”, 1836; see jakobson 1979): byl pozdní večer – první máj – večerní máj – byl lásky čas. hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas, kde borový zaváněl háj. o lásce šeptal tichý mech; květoucí strom lhal lásky žel, 13 of all the authors analysed by girdzijauskas, only in kirša’s t4 the stressedness of the last strong position is 99.8% (in all the others there is a stress constant in both in t4 and i4, that is, it carries a stress in 100% of the cases). 14 the question of versification system in the hungarian iamb is quite complicated: it is characterized by both accentual and quantitative restraints (compare kerek 1971: 18–22). 97the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics svou lásku slavík růži pěl, růžinu jevil vonný vzdech. jezero hladké v křovích stinných zvučelo temně tajný bol, břeh je objímal kol a kol; a slunce jasná světů jiných bloudila blankytnými pásky, planoucí tam co slzy lásky. compare also the first two quatrains of kaarlo kramsu poem “uusi aika” (“the new era”, 1887): käy myrsky, murtain kaikki voimallansa, syvästi aika uusi hengähtää; ja luulot vanhat horjuu juurillansa, pyhyydet muinaisuuden häviää. rajusti aatteet iskee toisihinsa, ja eestä niiden urhot uhrataan. ei luota orja enää kahleihinsa: vapaana riehuin tuntee voimiaan. the second, fourth, fifth and eighth lines of the poem begin with a threesyllable word. the beginning of the second and fifth lines are made up of three light syllables: ∪∪́∪, at the beginning of the fourth and eighth lines the second syllables are heavy: ∪́−∪. due to the admissibility of these types of inversions the rhythmic structure of iambic verse is significantly different from the trochaic one, especially in the first distich. 6. concluding remarks: the typology of rhythm an analysis of baltrušaitis’s rhythmics of binary tetrameters demonstrates that the same rhythmic patterns occur in his russian and lithuanian poetry. a comparison with analogous data on other lithuanian poets confirms this hypothesis. but how universal are the aforementioned patterns? the ukrainian and russian languages are closely related, and their prosodic systems are similar. if we take into consideration their close cultural contacts, 98 mihhail lotman it may seem that similar tendencies in the rhythmics of these verses should be found in the area of their origin and influences. cultural contacts may be a more important factor than the kinship or similarity of the languages. the structures of german and russian languages are significantly different both in the field of prosody and syntax, which did not hinder lomonosov from implanting into russian poetic culture not only in the verse meters brought from germany, but also the rhythm characteristic to german iamb. the prosodic systems of lithuanian and russian languages are quite dissimilar. differently from russian, lithuanian has the contrast of heavy and light syllables and pitch-accent. it is also difficult to explain lithuanian rhythmics with cultural influences. therefore, the reasons of similarities must be found elsewhere. it can be assumed that there are two reasons, the first of which is linguistic, the other follows from versification. the linguistic cause lies in the free stress (it is not important, whether the stress is dynamic or tonic) and the abundance of polysyllabic words. the rhythmic factor lies in the so-called rhythmic constant, which results in the mandatory stress on the last strong position. it has to be emphasized that this constant is not in any way linguistically motivated, it is purely a phenomenon of versification. as a consequence, usually the penultimate strong position is contrastively weaker: …ws (taranovsky calls it regressive dissimilation). thus, there remain only two possibilities: either the dissimilative rhythm wsws or the framing rhythm swws. the rhythmics of russian i4 in the 18th century follows the framing impulses of the languages, while in the beginning of the 19th century marks the transition to the dissimilative rhythm. it is worthwhile to compare the previous observations with the situation of binary meters in the languages where the stress is fixed on the first syllable. in the case of t4, the conflict between the language and verse meter usually does not occur and in general, a dissimilative rhythm evolves, however, not regressive, but progressive: swsw, while the first s forms the accentual constant. in the hungarian, czech and finnish i4 the tendency of inverting the first verse foot occurs, and as a result, there are no accentual constants in the verse. at present, we have the rhythmical data of a number of poetic traditions (russian, ukrainian, polish, czech, serbian, bulgarian, lithuanian, english, german, dutch, finnish, estonian, among others) that have been acquired with a comparable method. the data reveals that of the 16 possible combinations of higher stressedness (s) and lower stressedness (w) in verse, only four have found widespread use: ssss (for example, german i4, lomonosov’s early iambs), swsw (progressive dissimilation: czech t4), swws (framing 99the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics rhythm: 18th-century russian i4) and wsws (regressive dissimilation: russian and lithuanian t4, 19th-century russian i4). it has to be noted, that all these results are obtained only with the statistics of main stresses; adding the secondary stresses (in the languages where it exists) to the calculation changes the results. the same can be said about phrasal stresses, for instance, in estonian verse. here a clear chronological and aesthetic difference between the “traditionalist” and “modernist” poets can be observed: in the verse of the former, the accentual peak of the verse line is on the penultimate strong position, in the verse of the latter – on the last one. it is remarkable that this regularity characterizes both t4 and i4. the rhythm of a particular poem is formed as a combined effect of different factors. these factors are verse meter, prosody of language in its broadest meaning (including the syntactic prosody) and the regularities of rhythm itself. but verse rhythm can also depend on the era, style and other aesthetic factors. and finally, rhythm can occur as the consequence of conscious modelling of an author.15 references annensky, innokenty 1990. stikhotvorenija i tragedii. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. baevsky, vadim 2001. lingvisticheskie, matematicheskie, semioticheskie i komp’juternye modeli v istorii i teorii literatury. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. baltrušaitis, jurgis 1983. derevo v ogne. stikhi. vilnius: vaga. bely, andrei 1910. simvolizm. kniga statej. moskva: musaget. bely, andrei 1974. a belo rankraštis apie j. baltrušaičio lyriką. parengė v. kubilius ir d. straukaitė. in: lietuvių poetikos tyrinējimai (literatūra ir kalba xiii). vilnius: vaga, 424–452. fedotov, oleg 2015. mezhdu motsartom i sal’eri. o poeticheskom dare nabokova. moskva: flinta. fedotov, oleg 2017. otzvuki formalizma v metapoetike vladimira nabokova. in: pilshchikov, igor; levchenko, jan (eds.), epokha “ostranenija”: russkij formalizm i sovremennoe gumanitarnoe znanie. moskva: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 487–496. 15 this research was supported by estonian research council grant no. put1231. i am highly obliged to igor pilshchikov for his comments and improvements. 100 mihhail lotman girdzijauskas, juozas 1975. lietuvių eilėdara (xx amžius). filologios mokalų daktaro laipsniondisertacija. priedai. vilnius. (typescript). girdzijauskas, juozas 1979. lietuvių eilėdara xx amžius. vilnius: mokslas. hansen-löve, aage 2000. estetika «kaliptiki»: apollinskie kontseptsii v metafizicheskoj poetike nabokova. in: revue des études slaves 72(3–4), 311–317. https://doi.org/10.3406/slave.2000.6663 hollander, john 1959. the metrical emblem. in: the kenyon review 21(2), 279–296. hollander, john 1975. vision and resonance: two senses of poetic form. oxford: oxford university press. jakobson, roman 1979. toward a description of mácha’s verse. translated by peter and wendy steiner. in: jakobson, roman. selected writings. vol. v: on verse, its masters and explorers. the hague, paris, new york, 433–485. karlinsky, simon (ed.) 2001. dear bunny, dear volodya. the nabokov-wilson letters, 1940–1971. revised and expanded edition. berkeley, los angeles, london: university of california press. kazartsev, evgenij 2017. sravnitel’noe stikhovedenie: metrika i ritmika. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo rgpu im. a. i. gertsena. kerek, andrew 1971. hungarian metrics: some linguistic aspects of iambic verse. bloomington: indiana university press. khodasevich, vladislav 2012. andrei bely. in: khodasevich, vladislav, nekropol’. vospominanija. moskva: statut, 41–63. lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2018. eesti silbilis-rõhulise rütmika jooni: neliktrohheus ja -jamb 19. sajandi teisel poolel ja 20. sajandi alguses. tallinn: eksa. mazur, sergei 1990. erotika stikha. germenevticheskij etjud. in: daugava 10/160, 88–94. nabokov, vladimir 1964. notes on prosody. in: eugene onegin: a novel in verse, by aleksandr pushkin, translated from the russian, with a commentary, by vladimir nabokov. vol. 3. london: routledge and kegan paul, 448–540. nabokov, vladimir 1991. the gift. translated by m. scammell with the collaboration of the author. new york: vintage international. pilshchikov, igor 2017. ponjatija «stikh», «metr» i «ritm» v russkoj stikhovedcheskoj traditsii. in: moldovan, aleksandr (ed.), trudy instituta russkogo jazyka im. v. v. vinogradova. xi: slavjanskij stikh. moskva: institut russkogo jazyka im. v. v. vinogradova ran, 12–25. 101the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics pilshchikov, igor 2019. rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 53–73. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.02 põldmäe, jaak 1975. eesti silbilis-rõhulise värsisüsteemi uurimise meetod ja betti alveri poeemide nelikjambi rütm. in: huno rätsep (ed.), keele modelleerimise probleeme 5 (tartu riikliku ülikooli toimetised 363), tartu: trü, 163–233. taranovsky, kiril 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. taranovsky, kiril 2000. chetyrekhstopnyj jamb andreja belogo. in: taranovsky, kiril, o poezii i poetike. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 300–318. taranovsky, kiril 2010. russkie dvuhslozhnye razmery. stat’i o stikhe. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. tomashevsky, boris 1923. russkoe stikhoslozhenie. petrograd: academia. tomashevsky, boris 1925. teorija literatury (poetika). petrograd: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. tomashevsky, boris 1929. pjatistopnyj jamb pushkina. in: tomashevsky, boris, o stikhe. leningrad: priboj, 138–253. trubetzkoy, nikolai 1987. izbrannye trudy po filologii. moskva: progress. shengeli, georgy 1923. traktat o russkom stikhe. chast’ i. organicheskaja metrika. moskva, petrograd: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. vasyutochkin, georgy 1968. o raspredelenii form chetyrekhstopnogo jamba v stikhotvornykh tekstakh. in: kholshevnikov, vladislav (ed.), teorija stikha. leningrad: nauka, 125–155. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd jaak põldmäe 75 mihhail lotman on november 6, 2017, jaak põldmäe (1942–1979) would have become seventy-five years old. his life was short and difficult. põldmäe was born in tartu during the german occupation, and his father was arrested in 1945. in 1949, he and his mother were also arrested as family members of an “enemy of the people” and deported to the omsk oblast in siberia. that deportation, as well as learning russian in the schools of omsk, had a heavy impact on his mind as a child, and can explain many of his life-long character traits as a man. in 1955, more than a year after the death of stalin, the family was allowed to return to estonia. instead of returning to tartu, they relocated to the small nearby town of elva. after graduating from high school põldmäe was admitted to the university of tartu. in high school and at university he stood out for his multifaceted academic talents and was able to continue his work as a postgraduate student, supervised by the renowned semiotician and linguist vyacheslav v. ivanov. during his studies, põldmäe immersed himself into the russian methods of statistical versification, but ivanov inspired him to work on the axiomatic approach to versification systems. põldmäe’s enthusiasm and working capacity were admirable. in just a few years he had managed to achieve more in estonian verse studies than all of his predecessors combined. unfortunately, however, his novel ideas evoked controversial reactions from the close-minded scholars, while his results and international recognition aroused their envy. he was a man of principle, which sometimes manifested as stubbornness, and was often met with ill will by colleagues, who in-turn often attempted to obstruct his scholarly career. facing this hostile environment, põldmäe developed self-destructive tendencies. the persecution continued even after his death, as literary critic mart mäger tried to dissolve his lifework in two lengthy papers (1981, 1982). ain kaalep, an outstanding estonian academician, poet, translator and poetry theorist, defended him (1981), as did the author of this text (lotman 1982). the overview of põldmäe’s lifework was presented in a collective paper (gasparov, lotman, rudnev, tarlinskaja 1987), which can now be read in english in the abovegiven translation by igor pilshchikov and marina tarlinskaja together with their emendations and comments. studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 152–153 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.07 153jaak põldmäe 75 references gasparov, mikhail leonovich; lotman, mihhail; rudnev, pyotr; tarlinskaja, marina 1987. problemy stikhovedenija v rabotakh ja. r. põldmäe [approaches to verse theory in the works of ja. r. põldmäe]. in: studia metrica et poetica [v]: poeetiliste süsteemide dünaamika / dinamika poeticheskikh sistem [the dynamics of poetic systems] (acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis 780). tartu: the university of tartu, 99–115. kaalep, ain 1981. kahjuks pigem arutus kui arutlus [alas: a concussion, rather than a discussion]. in: keel ja kirjandus 9, 551–555. leino, pentti 1985. “eesti värsiõpetuse” võimalused [prospects for estonian verse theory]. in: looming 8, 1118–1132. lotman, mihhail 1982. jaak põldmäe värsiõpetus ja selle arutelu [jaak põldmäe’s verse theory and the discussions surrounding it]. in: looming 7, 983–991. mäger, mart 1981. arutlusi eesti värsiõpetuse üle [on the discussions of estonian verse theory]. in: looming 7, 1003–1023. mäger, mart 1984. värsiõpetuse õppetunnid [lessons of verse theory]. in: looming 2, 249–266. quantitative approaches to versification: conference report (june 24–26, 2019, prague, czech republic) igor pilshchikov, vera polilova* the quantitative approaches to versification conference met on june 24–26, 2019 in prague. the conference, which continued the tradition of the regular slavic verse (slavjanskij stikh) and comparative slavic metrics (słowiańska metryka porównawcza) conferences dating back to the 1960s, was dedicated to květa sgallová in recognition of her 90th birthday. sgallová, one of the most prominent czech experts in versification, honored the conference with her presence. the conference was jointly organized by the institute of czech literature (czech academy of sciences) and the institute of russian language (russian academy of sciences) and gathered a group of international scholars who share an interest in the formal quantitative analysis of all aspects of versification. the prague meeting featured more than twenty presentations, all in english. the program is available at http://versologie.cz/conference2019/. the main topics of the conference included a broad range of issues unified by an umbrella concept of quantitative approaches to the study of verse: new approaches to comparative metrics, descriptions of ancient, medieval and modern european syllabic, accentual and accentual-syllabic meters, an analysis of texts with an unknown metrical status, an automated processing of versified texts, the use of corpora-based methods in verse studies, a statistical analysis of verse rhythm and specific rhythmic varieties of meters, as well as analyses of various measurable aspects of poetic texts, such as semantic patterns and lexical diversity, or the relationship between syntax and rhythm in verse. not only written, but also spoken and sung poetry was analyzed. according to the organizers, the conference comprised “various methodological perspectives ranging from simple descriptive statistics to advanced machine learning methods (such as support vector machines, random forests or neural networks) as well as material covering a large span of time and languages: from very ancient versifications (sumerian, akkadian, hittite; ancient greek), through medieval * authors’ addresses: igor pilshchikov, university of california, los angeles, department of slavic, east european and eurasian languages and cultures, 320 kaplan hall, ucla, los angeles, ca 90095; tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee; vera polilova, institute of world culture, lomonosov moscow state university, 1–51 leninskie gory, room 854, moscow 119991, russia, e-mail: vera.polilova@ gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 116–137 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.05 http://versologie.cz/conference2019/ https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.05 117quantitative approaches to versification: conference report (old english, old icelandic, old saxon) and renaissance verse to modern experiments (free verse, concrete poetry); from english and russian through spanish and german to portuguese and catalan” (qav 2019: 275). what all the presented papers share in common is that “versification is being studied in the context of other linguistic phenomena that may affect or determine it” (ibid.). our experience of the venue fully confirms this claim. conference organizers rejected the concept of keynote speakers; the panels were thematically structured but were all plenary. this helped the participants to combine the scope and representativeness of an international conference with the vivid nature of a workshop, where an affinity group of scholars meets to debate and exchange opinions. by the beginning of the conference a book of extensive synopses – in fact, articles – had been published in print and online (see qav 2019), so that the audience had a chance to prepare themselves for almost every talk in advance.1 this design proved to be very fruitful and the conference discussions were no less inspiring than the presented papers. the conference was inaugurated by the director of the institute of czech literature pavel janáček, who in his opening speech commemorated the work of květa sgallová and her collaborator miroslav červenka, as well as their long-time participation in comparative slavic metrics international projects. the opening panel featured only one paper. salvador ros and javier de la rosa’s “using deep learning paradigm to improve syllabic versification: a first approach” was presented by javier de la rosa. the presentation was part of the postdata (poetry standardization and linked open data) project funded by the european research council in horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation. the coauthors are representatives of linhd (the spanish national distance education university’s research center on digital humanities), which has long been working in the field of automatic text processing. they described the prospects of using neural networks for verse analysis, particularly for automatic scansion, and proposed using an inference-based approach instead of a rule-based approach that defines syllable boundaries, language stressing, metrical stressing and rhythmic patterns. the presenter listed the currently existing automatic rule-based scansion systems for spanish and english created between 1996 and 2018 (such as scandroid, zeuscansion, poesy, analysepoems, etc.), as well as recently created systems using neural scansion (ixa for english and spanish, kaist for english). he 1 a few papers were not included in the book; a few others were included but were not delivered. the proceedings have been included in the web of science core collection. a copy of the book on academia.edu has been viewed more than 1,000 times. 118 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova examined the principles of bilstm (bidirectional long short-term memory) used in neural scansion and the four prosodic phenomena that affect the number of syllables in spanish verse: synaloepha, hiatus, syneresis and dieresis. in their future work, the coauthors plan to use words and sentences embeddings based on the language model bert (bidirectional encoder representations from transformers by google). the advantages of this model are many; it is multilingual, pre-trained and fine-tuning. the coauthors believe their approach is paving the way for an unsupervised multi-language scansion system. the next panel was devoted to a structural and statistical analysis of germanic and slavic verse. it opened with evgeny kazartsev’s paper, titled “probability and cognitive models of verse meter”, in which he reported on the establishment of iambic versification in early modern european poetry with a focus on iambic tetrameter. the study explores the development of iambic verse in northern europe and the baltic area. the inclusion of russia in this cultural zone after the northern war and the reforms of peter the great predetermined, according to kazartsev, the fate of russian and east slavic poetry. his comparative research is devoted to studying the mechanisms of intercultural and interlingual communication involved in the formation of syllabotonicism in different languages. kazartsev studied the rhythmical structure of iambs against the background of probability language models of meter, which are constructed on the basis of rhythmical vocabularies of fiction prose. he distinguishes between two types of models: the language models of independence (which are based on the presumption of the independence of rhythmical words in a metrical line) and the language models of dependence. kazartsev’s study revealed that models of dependence are better suited to describing the early stages in the development of metrical verse. despite the similarity of certain tendencies in the use of rhythmic structures, he discovered significant differences in the rhythm of early dutch, german and russian iambs. the presenter’s hypothesis was that this difference is due to the fact that “german and russian iambs arose under identical conditions not as a result of natural evolution, as was the case with dutch verse, but due to a substantial and quite abrupt reform” (qav 2019: 111). in their “verse and prose: linguistics and statistics”, tatyana skulacheva and alexander kostyuk discussed the most stable (i.e. statistically proven) linguistic differences between verse and prose found in texts written in several european languages. these differences regularly occur in verse of different meters, different systems of versification, different periods and literary styles. what, in particular, is different, according to the presenters? first, syntax. parataxis predominates in verse, whereas hypotaxis is less frequent in poetry than in prose, as the calculations for russian, french and spanish poetry and 119quantitative approaches to versification: conference report prose from the 17th to the 20th century demonstrate. then, intonation. an analysis of intonation in the praat program and a statistical analysis of the obtained data shows that miroslav červenka’s idea that verse has a specific intonation (“intonation of enumeration”) is correct. perceptive analysis (listening by 23 informants) has also shown that people easily recognize verse intonation in contrast with prosaic, even in a delexicalized text. there are many other differences relating to semantics, information processing, mistake detection, etc. in particular, participants in the experiments easily detected mistakes in prose, while mistakes in verse almost always remained undetected (kimmelman 2012). the recent data obtained by neurophysiologists in the u.s. (the carnegie mellon group) and the u.k. (the group based at liverpool and other british universities) enabled the presenters to suppose that the peculiarities observed in verse may be linguistic mechanisms of activating imaginative thinking at the expense of logical thinking. igor pilshchikov’s “rhythmically ambiguous words or rhythmically ambiguous lines? in search of new approaches to an analysis of the rhythmical varieties of syllabic-accentual meters” reexamined the problem of rhythmical ambiguity in russian poetry. analysis of the rhythm of russian syllabic-accentual verse confronts the problem of how to accentuate words whose natural-language stress is weaker than that of fully-stressed words. viktor zhirmunsky called such words “ambiguous” and formulated a rule: they should be considered stressed in “strong” (ictic) positions and unstressed in “weak” (non-ictic) positions (zhirmunsky 1966 [1925]: 93–113). pilshchikov noticed that in many poems the fully-stressed lines that contain rhythmically ambiguous words are often isomorphic with the form that predominates in the poem. he argued that what is important here is the distribution of the ambiguous forms in the line, i.e. not rhythmically ambiguous words, but rhythmically ambiguous lines. the statistics of rhythmical forms may be complemented with an analysis of ambiguous forms, better reflecting what the russian formalists called the rhythmical impulse of the poem. a revised and extended version of this paper was published in the previous issue of studia metrica et poetica (pilshchikov 2019). petr plecháč and david j. birnbaum’s paper “assessing the reliability of stress as a feature of authorship attribution in syllabic and accentual verse” was built on a recent study by plecháč, bobenhausen and hammerich (2018), which shows that statistics relating to versification may be used for authorship attribution. one such statistic is the stress profile of a poem, i.e. a vector consisting of frequencies of stressed syllables at particular metrical positions. the initial hypothesis was that, because syllabic versification regulates the number of syllables in a line but not the distribution of stresses, it allows authors to 120 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova individualize their rhythmical style much more than accentual-syllabic versification, where the distribution of stresses is primarily determined by meter. for that reason, plecháč and birnbaum expected the stress profile to be a more reliable indicator of authorship in spanish syllabic versification than in czech or german accentual-syllabic versification. this hypothesis, however, was not supported by their analysis. this failure led them to another idea: measuring the tonic entropy of the data described above (a modification of the procedure of using the kullback entropy as a measure of rhythmic diversity proposed in dobritsyn 2016). they demonstrated that “czech is in this respect closer to less regular spanish than to more regular german”. as a consequence, versification-based attribution dealing with strongly regulated versification systems (such as german) “would require more features than languages with less regular versification systems” (qav 2019: 209). the late afternoon panel discussed the correspondences between metrical, prosodic and phonetic structures in verse. in “some characteristics of sound patterns in english verse”, olga barash and georgy vekshin discussed a certain kind of sound repetition in english poetry. their task was to determine whether the concept of phonosyllabic patterns, consisting in repetition of groups of identical or similar consonant sounds within a potential syllable, is valid when applied to poems written in english. this method of analysis was previously tested on russian poems using the phonotext 2.1 software presented in vekshin’s introduction to vekshin and barash’s joint talk.2 the material of the research comprises randomly chosen accentual-syllabic and accentual poems by english and american poets of different centuries and literary schools, from thomas wyatt to dylan thomas. lord byron’s poem “sun of the sleepless! melancholy star...” was discussed in detail. the methods used for measuring sound cohesion were based on a “syllabocentric” view of the sound composition of a poetic text. this approach proceeds from the fact that the elementary speech constituents are syllables or syllable-like entities, outside of which no sound and rhythmic associations of text segments are possible (vekshin 2006, 2008). the sound chain of verse is granulated in accordance with the syllabic organization of speech and its prosody. the functional significance of individual granules is provided by analogies in the structure of the chain – by sound repetitions that, because they are embedded in the rhythmic and prosodic contours of words, phrases and text, complicate and redistribute its syntactic and morphological links 2 this introduction was initially announced as a separate paper under the title “automatic detection of sound repetitions and quantitative measurement of sound cohesion in russian verse: the phonotext 2.1 software”. 121quantitative approaches to versification: conference report and thereby ensure the multidimensionality of the poetic form. another complicated issue discussed in the paper was the question of grapho-phonic and graphic repetition (when letters rather than sounds are repeated). patrik bye presented a paper on “english iambic meters and the tension asymmetry”. the corpus for the study consists of 125 isometric poems (47 in tetrameter, 73 in pentameter and 5 in hexameter) from the last 400 years. it has been revealed that, in comparison with iambic tetrameter, iambic pentameter allows greater metrical tension – specifically, a higher relative frequency of prominence mismatches. the presenter attributed this tension asymmetry to the uneven metrical structure of the pentameter and supported his hypothesis by the finding that iambic pentameter does not only show inversion more frequently, but tolerates inversion at lower levels of the prosodic hierarchy. the crucial role of even vs. uneven structures in explaining the tension asymmetry is also supported by the discovery that (balanced) hexameter is at least as stringent as tetrameter. iambic pentameter is more tolerant of initial inversion at lower levels of the prosodic hierarchy (inside the phonological phrase and even the procliticized prosodic word), which tetrameter seems to disallow. the hypothesis that best explains the facts seems to be “the nonlinear metrical hypothesis, according to which the difference between even and uneven metrical structure[s] plays a crucial role. the tension asymmetry is thus an interesting example of a statistical expression of an underlying structural asymmetry” (qav 2019: 47). the presenter hypothesized that this fact explains the expressive capabilities of the meter, which led to the cultural dominance of iambic pentameter in english poetry. the first panel of the second day opened the floor for a discussion of oral poetic traditions. “homeric formulas and meter” by sophia sklaviadis and james k. tauber was a visualization of the formulae in the homeric corpus, through which it is possible to explore stylistic features such as the correspondence between formulae boundaries and metrical boundaries. the coauthors used a python script to count all repeated n-grams in the homeric corpus, visualized n-grams at a high level across the entire corpus and constructed a reading environment in which repeated n-grams in the text are indicated by color. n-gram variants can be defined in terms of equivalence classes: n-gram equivalence class may be set by the user, based on tokens or on any function of surface forms. for example, n-grams can be visualized over orthographic normalization, lemmatization, part of speech and meter. the n-gram analysis is potentially useful for semi-automated treebank correction based on partial n-gram matches at 122 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova different equivalence classes, as well as a computational characterization of epic prosody (qav 2019: 237). alexander m. petrov presented a paper on the “metrical types of bylinas (russian epic folk songs) in the collection of the institute of linguistics, literature and history at the karelian research center of the russian academy of sciences”. he discussed the typology of epic verse exemplified by the material stored in the audio archive of the karelian research center in petrozavodsk. the problem of analyzing folklore verse is complicated by two factors: 1) until recently, audio recordings of folklore texts were not available to researchers and 2) metrical studies lacked a developed method for the analysis of folk verse. petrov applied the method for analyzing folklore texts proposed by mikhail gasparov and developed by tatyana skulacheva (see skulacheva 2012, 2014). the following five indicators were used: metrical structure, anacrusis, clausula, number of stresses and number of syllables. a total of 25 texts and fragments collected from the russian traditional singer fyodor andreevich konashkov (1860–1941) that present russian epic stories (about duke stepanovich, ilya of murom, dobrynja, vol’ga and others) were analyzed. the result is in many aspects different from the established view of the bylina meter. the author acknowledges that the material (441 lines from 25 texts) is not sufficient for definitive conclusions. he intends to continue this research with the recordings of another 100 epic songs (texts or fragments) that are available but require transcriptions and markup. mari sarv’s paper “‘the meter of estonian folksong is always the same’: how to visualize regional variation of folk meter” was devoted to estonian runosongs, a branch of common finnic musical-poetic traditions usually described as kalevala-metric (with some deviations). kalevala-meter is a set of versification rules discovered and noted down by finnish scholars on the basis of karelian folksongs. these rules have been overtaken by estonian research tradition without much critique. as a result, the significant variation of folksong meter has remained almost unnoticed in scholarly literature, in school-books and other writings on the estonian runosongs. in some cases, the estonian runosong-texts have even been “repaired” according to the kalevala-model, and literary imitations of folksongs are often written in kalevala-meter deviating from real estonian folksongs. variation is an essential feature of folklore, therefore it is natural that in the process of transmission songtexts are in constant renewal and adaptation. sarv’s studies, based on an analysis of folksongs from 101 estonian parishes, have shown that the meter in the songs noted down mainly between 1880–1920 has been in transitional stage from specific quantitative meter to syllabic-accentual one (see, in particular, sarv 2019). in the case of estonian folksongs, metrical variation reflects 123quantitative approaches to versification: conference report linguistic variation and the prosodic structure of dialects. on the other hand, the constant re-creation inherent to folklore also manifests itself in meter, and metrical variation reflects the changes in the prosodic structure of language. the aim of the paper was to detect the “metrical dialects” of the estonian runosong on the basis of several metrical features and compare different possibilities of detecting and visualizing metrical grouping, from bundling isolines on the maps to various calculated alternatives. after the coffee break the participants reunited to discuss less studied metrical forms, from the world’s earliest poetic traditions to the avant-garde experiments. what these papers had in common was an uncertainty about the prosodic basis of these poetic texts, or their rhythmical specificity, or – in case of the first paper devoted to what possibly was the world’s earliest form of verse – even doubts as to their poetic status. the paper by rim nurullin, nadezhda roudik, maria molina, andrei sideltsev and tatyana skulacheva “the most ancient verse in the world (sumerian, akkadian, hittite): quantitative analysis” was presented by tatyana skulacheva. the paper discussed the methods suitable for analyzing the most ancient verse in the world, which is not strictly organized. the discussion was exemplified by a quantitative analysis of verse texts in sumerian, akkadian and hittite languages. though there are many hypotheses as to the system of versification for proto-indo-european or even all-world verse at its initial stage of development, the most ancient examples of verse have not yet been thoroughly studied in terms of their versification. that is why sumerian, akkadian and hittite texts (some of which were written from the 23rd to 13th centuries bc, before the much better known ancient greek) were examined using the following indicators: number of syllables, number of stresses, number and distribution of long vowels and distribution of heavy syllables within a line. comparing quantitative data for the three languages enabled the coauthors to suggest that “both syllabic (sumerian) and accentual (akkadian, hittite) systems” coexisted and that the choice of a particular system of versification was dependent on the peculiarities of the given language (qav 2019: 173). andrew cooper opened “a quantitative analysis of the old english verse line” with the statement that scholars, beginning from eduard sievers, have produced many analyses of old english verse, but the only point of agreement among them is that each line has four stressed syllables marked by alliteration. at the same time these lines show great variation in the quantitatively measurable indicators of metrical structure. cooper presented “a metrical model of the old english verse line using entirely quantitative criteria and without the need for a typology of acceptable forms” (qav 2019: 54). to formulate it, he created a large corpus of old english verse (14 texts for a total of ca. 7000 lines) 124 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova and annotated it for stress, syllable quantity and alliteration patterns. cooper demonstrated that line length, foot size and metrical prominence are functions of a verse structure based around a quantitative line of 8–16 moras (as in golston and riad 2003), with a prototypical line of 12 moras. metrical prominence is determined by foot length, which is distributed around 10 syllables (from 8 to 14) and 12 vocalic moras (from 8 to 16). to place the old english data in the context of its two nearest traditions, two small balanced and representative samples of old saxon verse and old icelandic fornyrðislag verse forms. it was revealed that, despite superficial similarities, the presented model is applicable only to old english. these findings allow all old english verse lines to be described with a single metrical pattern, which is “based on a preference for verse feet to be congruent with prosodic words, and for prosodic words to be measured in length by the combined syllable weight of metrical feet” (qav 2019: 72). mirella de sisto in her “microand macro-variation in verse: a typology of romance renaissance meter” presented the study of the main romance renaissance forms, traditionally divided into three groups: 1) the purely syllabic poetry of the french tradition; 2) the meter of italian and spanish hendecasyllable, tending towards iambic rhythm, and 3) the meter of catalan and portuguese decasyllable, tending towards syllabicity. the paper proposed a quantitative approach to verify or disprove this grouping and to answer the ongoing question about the presence of the iambic tendency in renaissance meter (gasparov 1981 [1978]; 1987; piera 1980/1981; nespor, vogel 1986; akimova, bolotov 2009). de sisto considered 20 samples from italian, french, spanish, catalan and portuguese, as well as less investigated varieties: occitan, neapolitan, sicilian and venetian (130 lines for each author, ca. two authors per language). the aim of the study was to investigate the extent to which the “tendency towards iambic rhythm” deviates from the iambic scheme, the microvariation within the groups, and the difference between traditions with a pre-renaissance decasyllabic meter (catalan and portuguese) and those that directly adopted the new form. it was shown that, in terms of the two poles (“pure syllabicity” and “pure iambicity”) the two portuguese samples are far apart: the pre-renaissance poet diniz is the furthest from iamb, whereas camões is close to the samples with an iambic tendency, next to the venetian and neapolitan/spanish sub-branches. french (peletier and du bellay) is a sub-branch of the syllabic group, closely related to the catalan (march and torroella) and occitan (ventadorn and guacelm) sub-branches. on the “iambic” pole we find two neapolitan poets (velardiniello and cortese) and the spanish poet garcilaso, whose poetry was deeply influenced by his trip to naples and subsequent stay there. at the same time all forms under consideration are not constrained on the foot-level but should be considered 125quantitative approaches to versification: conference report colon-based: strictness increases on the right edge of the two cola, in the middle and at the end of the line. “the comparison with the two germanic samples shows how distant the romance traditions are from an iambic meter and highlights the germanic versus romance distinction in terms of poetic instantiations” (qav 2019: 90). what is problematic here is, to our opinion, de sisto’s definition of the “iambic template”: “the 01 sequences of every sample were processed in order to calculate the percentage of deviation from a perfect iambic pattern for each position” (qav 2019: 82). this definition presupposes that, in accentual-syllabic verse, stresses cannot be skipped, and the template for iambic pentameter is 0101010101(0). but they can. therefore, 0100010101(0) or 0101000101(0) (with skipped stresses) are as perfectly iambic as 0101010101(0). furthermore, stresses can be not only skipped but also added. however, the possibility of skipping and adding stresses depends on the word-boundaries: a phonetic word-unit in a syllabic-accentual line can either skip a metrical stress or add an extrametrical stress, but cannot do both simultaneously. one version of this rule, as applied to russian binary meters, is widely known from roman jakobson’s “linguistics and poetics” (jakobson 1960: 361; see pilshchikov 2019: 62–64 for the discussion and references). simplified, clarified and restricted to iamb, it can be reformulated thus: “iamb is a verse line, in which the stress of non-monosyllabic words may fall only on even syllables” (lotman 1975: 302; cf. shapir 2019 [2005]: 123). it follows from this rule that, in iamb, stressed monosyllabic words can occupy odd syllables without violating iambicity. therefore, 1001010011(0) can be iambic or not depending on the wordboundaries: 1|001|0100|1|1(0) is iambic, whereas 10|010|10|01|1(0) is not. thus, in aleksandr pushkin’s mozart and salieri (famously written in iambic pentameter) mozart says: nét – ták; bezdélitsu. namédni nóch’ju 1|1|0100|010|10 bessónnitsa mojá menjá tomíla, 0100|01|01|010 i v gólovu prishlí mne dvé, trí mýsli. 0100|010|1|1|10 none of the five syllables marked in bold violates the iambic template. the same rules work in german iamb. moreover, both russian and german meters are examples of strict iamb. other traditions, such as english or czech, allow for even more divergences from the “01” template.3 3 see, in particular, červenka 1973, tarlinskaja 1987 and lotman 2019, among many other valuable studies. 126 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova adiel mittmann, paulo henrique pergher and alckmar luiz dos santos’s paper “what rhythmic signature says about poetic corpora” was presented by adiel mittmann, who analyzed various sets of verses in portuguese and spanish in order to establish the relative frequency distribution of rhythmic patterns, which the coauthors term the rhythmic signature, and to describe how such signatures relate to each other. the researchers built a corpus with more than 250,000 verses: first, they compared the poems written in portuguese; then, they examined several books written by the same poet; finally, they compared portuguese and spanish poets. two methods were used: the gini coefficient and agglomerative hierarchical clustering. the results show that many authors have a distinguishable, sometimes unique rhythmic signature. at the same time a poet can deliberately mimic the rhythmic style of another poet. the third experiment showed that verses in portuguese and spanish are rhythmically similar and that differences in style can mostly be ascribed to the authors, not to the languages. the distribution of stressed syllables within a portuguese and spanish verse line is fairly varied, which allows poets to use the rhythmic patterns in specific ways. longer verses tend to impose constraints as to which syllables are allowed to carry stress, but there is still room for variation. for instance, 10 syllable lines can belong to one of 22 standard patterns (or rhythmical forms, as the scholars of russian verse habitually called them in the discussion). anne-sophie bories presented an analysis of raymond queneau’s free and strict verse using the queneau database as a research tool. an extensive database was developed (ca. 8,000 lines) specifically to analyze queneau’s versification, and in particular the relationship between the form and the meaning of his meters. an important component of queneau’s poetics is his blending of trivial language and everyday grammar with rare and pedantic vocabularies, of humor and silliness with grave themes, and of scientific subjects with intimate psychoanalytical autobiography. this eclecticism is mirrored in his versification choices, with nearly half of his poems in strict verse, nearly half in free verse, and a fair amount of his lines being more difficult to classify. queneau uses light meters for grave subjects, epic alexandrines for the glorification of plastic, and expected rhymes to create puns. this mismatching of subject and tone is typical of queneau’s writing practices. the presenter emphasized some of the challenges of gathering good quality data, along with the utility of an economical approach, the necessity of quantitative methods to get a good sense of versification choices from a stylistic point of view, and the relevance of a dual method combining the quantitative, computational approach with a more traditional close reading of texts in order to achieve a truly hermeneutical understanding of the texts and their poetics. she argued that the quantitative 127quantitative approaches to versification: conference report method is both acutely necessary to the study of versification and insufficient on its own, as versification analysis should be used to serve interpretation. the afternoon section of the second day was devoted to russian verse. in his “rhythmical structure of russian iambic tetrameter and its evolution”, sergei liapin reexamined the evolution of the most popular, most frequently used and most studied russian meter: iambic tetrameter. for many years, it has been considered that the rhythm of russian iambic tetrameter is formed under the influence of two tendencies: 1) stabilization of the first ictus after at least one unstressed syllable and 2) regressive accentual dissimilation, that is, the alternation of strong and weak ictuses from the end of a line towards its beginning (taranovsky 1971). the doubts to this theory expressed as early as 1973 by miroslav červenka were recently confirmed; a number of studies have discovered the reality of linguistic factors (syntax is a main one) that form the rhythmic structure of a verse text. liapin gathered statistical data for longer russian narrative poems from the middle and the second half of the 19th century, that have never been investigated before. these data seriously question existing views regarding the evolution of russian iambic tetrameter. for example, the second ictus of the iambic tetrameter of konstantin sluchevsky – an important poet of the late 19th century studied by james bailey (1975) – is even more intensively stressed than in the second half of 19th century in general. the highly stressed second ictus discovered by taranovsky can be explained by the fact that the second half of the 19th century is poorly represented in taranovsky’s data, and longer narratives are almost fully absent from the calculations. meanwhile, liapin’s data show that the rhythm of the narrative poems of this period is markedly different from that of lyrical poems. the reason is that, in non-stanzaic narrative verse, sentences are less uniform in length and often have a more complex structure than in stanzaic lyrical verse, and very often the boundaries of a sentence do not coincide with the boundaries of a line. also, the so-called third rhythmical form of iambic tetrameter (with stress omitted on the second ictus) appears much more frequently, which, of course, lowers the number of stresses on the second ictus. the presenter posited that there is a correlation between the increasing frequency of sentence borders within a line (often followed by enjambments) and the increasing frequency of the third form and, accordingly, the lowering number of stresses on the second foot. liapin also argued that investigating stress profiles alone cannot provide sufficient information for describing the structure and evolution of verse rhythm. the analysis should be improved by the use of more advanced linguistic and statistical methods. in her “taktovik or mixed meter? rhythmic features of russian non-classical verse (1890–1920)” vera polilova presented preliminary results of the 128 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova study of the four-ictus taktovik (tk4) of russian symbolists. recent studies of texts by aleksandr blok and konstantin balmont have already demonstrated that the tk4 of russian symbolists can be productively interpreted as a combination of two separate hemistichs. regarding balmont’s verse, it has also been established that his lines corresponding to tk4 have a visibly stricter metric structure (polilova 2017). this structure can be described as a combination of segments of classic binary and ternary russian accentual-syllabic meters (i.e. lines composed of disyllabic or trisyllabic feet). the anacrusis and clausula of each segment may vary freely, while the hemistichs are separated by word boundaries and syntactic breaks that may be considered as a quasicaesura. based on this fact, polilova compiled a corpus of four-ictus tonic texts dated between 1890 and 1920 and carried out an analysis of rhythmic structure, not only for each line as a whole but also separately for the left and right hemistichs. the resulting data enables a new vision of the genesis of russian strict stress-meters and the question of dolnik/taktovik separation. the symbolist corpus demonstrates the extreme paucity of dolnik-structured lines and hemistichs, as well as a significant number (no less than half ) of hemistichs written in binary meters. these established facts lead to a reappraisal of mikhail gasparov’s theory that taktovik originated in dolnik (which, in its turn, allegedly descended from ternary meters and has a trisyllabic basis).4 the structure of balmont’s and blok’s tk4 points to an entirely different genesis of the russian taktovik. it is much more reminiscent of mixed or heteromorphic meter that allows for a free interchange of iambic, trochaic, dactylic, anapestic and amphibrachic lines. tatiana yanko’s “prosody of poetic reading in comparison with prosody of everyday speech (joseph brodsky)” was aimed at analyzing the prosody of so-called poetic reading. it was exemplified by joseph brodsky’s reading of his own verse and the writings of other authors. poetic reading was analyzed in comparison with ordinary spoken speech, where the prosody designates a variety of meanings that form sentences as speech acts and texts as connected units of discourse. the paper was illustrated throughout with frequency tracings of sound recordings (yanko analyzed the sound data with the praat software). brodsky consistently followed a rhythmical manner of reading, with all accents, pauses and length variations aimed at forming the rhythmic units of verse. he ignored all linguistic meanings – topics, foci, discourse continuity – that are designated by prosody. in this manner of recitation, the obligatory linguistic meanings remain unexpressed. nevertheless, the prosodic 4 on the concept of taktovik see gasparov 1974: 254–351, specifically on tk4: ibid., 331–340. 129quantitative approaches to versification: conference report system used by brodsky is connected not only with the rhythmic structure of verse but is also aimed at designating some specific, non-linguistic, variety of meanings. these meanings are not random – they are organized in a system. however, they do not belong to the russian language but to a specific strategy of recitation. brodsky developed a highly consistent and very simple prosodic organization for the spoken poetic text based on the following markers: a rise on the tonic syllable of each phonetic word in a poetic text; an increase in the medial frequency in each minimal poetic unit; the final fall in the frequency at the end of each minimal poetic unit; and an increase in the medial frequency from one minimal poetic unit to the next minimal poetic unit in advancing towards the end of the entire text. brodsky’s manner of reciting his own poetry forms a kind of semiotic system, which treats the spoken poetic text as a structure. discussants conjectured that this description can serve as an example of what roman jakobson called delivery pattern (jakobson 1960: 366–367). unlike the other three elements of jakobson’s dichotomies (verse pattern, verse instance and delivery instance), delivery pattern is rarely examined. the third and last day of the prague conference was also devoted to russian verse. roman leibov, boris orekhov and artjoms šeļa’s paper “trochaic travels and iambic landscapes: using topic modelling to reveal semantic patterns within poetic meters” was presented by artjoms šela. the paper addressed an established theory in versification studies that is known as the “semantic halo of a meter”. mainly popularized in the works of scholars of russian poetry (kiril taranovsky and mikhail gasparov), in general form this theory states that the distribution of meanings across different metrical forms (and their variations) is non-random.5 for example, iambic trimeter over the course of its history would most likely retain certain semantic features, and the configuration of these features would never completely overlap with other metrical forms (gasparov 1979; 1999: 88–119). the existence and accumulation of these metrical differences could, as it was suggested, form a “semantic valency” of a meter or its “expectations horizon” for a reader. despite being well established, the theory of the “semantic halo” is one of the less rigorous work venues in quantitative versification studies. tracing high-level semantic patterns across the whole tradition was a meticulous task which was hard to formalize. scholars were able to explore more distinctive, less populated metrical forms (notably, russian trochaic pentameter) but struggled to describe mechanisms 5 for the archeology of the concept see shapir 1991. for recent discussions see gasparov 1996, lotman, lotman 2012, trunin 2017. 130 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova behind the appearance of the halo and the overall structure of relationships of meters in the semantic space. in their presentation the coauthors proposed an operationalization of the “semantic halo” using topic modelling on an 1800– 1950s corpus of russian poetry. they modelled each meter as aggregated topic probabilities of individual poems (composed in the corresponding meter) and then used an entropy metric to compare probability distributions. they demonstrated that, based on the vectors of semantic features, meters cluster together in a non-random fashion: this strongly suggest that the “semantic halo” theory holds true for a large-scale corpus when accounting for every metrical variation in it. topic modelling could be used to answer the fundamental questions of the nature of the semantics/semiotics of meters and even to compare the “halo effects” across languages and national traditions. olga lyashevskaya, ekaterina vlasova and kristina litvintseva discussed the “lexical diversity and color hues in russian poetry”. the paper is subtitled: “a corpus-based study of adjectives”. the coauthors described the distribution of color adjectives in russian poetry of the silver age and defined individual preferences as to poetic tradition, syllable structure and metrical restrictions. their research method combined a lexico-semantic approach, formal literary analysis and quantitative metrics obtained via the frequency database of the russian poetic corpus (over 10 million words, including one million adjectives).6 the database allows users to create and compare subcorpora and build graphs of timeline distribution. the graphs demonstrate that the lexical diversity and relative frequencies of color adjectives start to grow rapidly in the 1890s, as the modernists employed color adjectives to enlarge the poetic inventory. the adjectives referring to non-banal hues, including borrowed words such as fioletovyj ‘violet’ or lazorevyj ‘azur’, belong to the middle part of the ranked wordlist. a correspondence analysis of the data revealed individual color preferences and stylistic similarities among the most important poets of the silver age (for example, anna akhmatova and aleksandr blok are similar in respect to their use of the white hues). the distribution of the selected color hue adjectives across the metrical types highlights the strong association of multisyllabic adjectives with certain meters, although some words have a more complex distribution. barry p. scherr presented a paper on “the russian quintain”. this stanza occurs far less often than the quatrain (the predominant stanza in russian verse). as a rule, quintains account for no more than several percent of a 6 part of the russian national corpus. the newest version: http://ruscorpora.ru/new/searchpoetic.html; the old version: http://ruscorpora.ru/old/search-poetic.html. http://ruscorpora.ru/new/search-poetic.html http://ruscorpora.ru/new/search-poetic.html http://ruscorpora.ru/old/search-poetic.html 131quantitative approaches to versification: conference report poet’s oeuvre, which can be explained by the asymmetry of this stanza form. scherr examined a corpus of 300 poems in five-line stanzas written since the early 19th century. the analysis revealed the relative frequency of the possible rhyme schemes and showed how this form has transformed from the 19th century through the modernist era and into more recent times: “only four of the ten possible patterns based on two rhymes have enjoyed even moderate usage and just one of the four, the abaab form, predominates over all others. [...] [five]-line stanzas have evolved significantly, with the abaab form achieving its peak popularity during the 19th century”, whereas “[d]uring the silver age both the varieties of clausulae within that basic rhyme pattern and the types of patterns in use expanded” (qav 2019: 234). topics explored in the paper, which included the metrical affinities of the russian quintain and its stanzaic rhythm (the frequency of stress in each line), led the presenter to the conclusion that, “[w]hile the rhyme schemes and types of heterostanzaic poems have generally become more varied over the years, the quintain’s limited range of meters and its main stanza rhythms ultimately suggest that poets still tend to fall back on certain familiar formal templates when employing this less common stanza” (qav 2019: 219). scherr’s paper further develops the findings made in his earlier study of sevenand nine-line stanzas in russian poetry (scherr 2014). kseniia tverianovich’s “rhythm and syntax in aleksandr sumarokov’s odes” continued the topic of stanzaic rhythm, but from a different perspective. the paper was focused on the accentual rhythm and grammatical structures in the lines of iambic tetrameter in odic stanzas of aleksandr sumarokov, one of the most prolific and influential 18th-century russian poets and verse theorists. the presented research was based on the concept of russian iambic tetrameter as a stereotype, a cliché, or a formula. this concept was introduced in the 1920s by osip brik, who called this phenomenon “a rhythmical-syntactic figure” (brik 1971 [1927]: 120) and later developed by mikhail gasparov in relation to individual lines of the meter (see, in particular, gasparov 1984 [1982]). tverianovich demonstrated that, in sumarokov’s odes, not only do the individual lines of iambic tetrameter become formulaic, but so does the whole odic decima. formulaic lines tend to occur in certain positions in stanzas. moreover, they tend to fit the key images and concepts of sumarokov’s solemn odes, such as the idea of absolutist state power and the greatness of the monarch. anastasia kruglova, olga smirnova and tatyana skulacheva presented a paper titled “syntax and pauses in a verse line: statistical analysis”. in regular human speech, pauses are of different lengths; this phenomenon is based on the strength of syntactic breaks between words. as it turns out, this peculiarity 132 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova of speech has special importance for the structure of a poetic line, a principle now firmly established in a number of european languages (russian, spanish, french, english). in their presentation, the coauthors concentrated on the regularities observed in russian iambic tetrameter (exemplified by aleksandr pushkin’s evgeny onegin) and compared the data on the distribution of close and loose syntactic ties within the line and between lines, as well as the distribution of longer and shorter pauses in the reading of the same text. for acoustic analysis, the text of the second and the third chapters of evgeny onegin were read by a skilled public reader, a woman with higher nonlinguistic education. the duration of the recording is 60 minutes. pauses were measured using the praat program. the coauthors’ analysis of this recording showed that close syntactic ties occur at the beginning (between words of the first and the second feet) and at the end of a line (between the words of the third and the fourth feet). according to the presenters, closer ties and shorter pauses normally occur near the borders of a verse line (to form a contrast with the longest pauses and weakest syntactic ties between lines), while weak ties and long pauses within a line are concentrated in the middle of the line. this mirror-like dichotomy of close and loose connections between words at both the syntactic level and the corresponding phonetic one constantly occurs in verse and disappears in prose (various examples of accentual-syllabic meters, syllabic meters and free verse were examined). loose syntactic ties show a mirror-like opposite distribution: they are not very numerous at the beginning, are extremely scarce near the end of a line, and reach a maximum in the middle. the same distribution has been observed in different periods of russian (accentual-syllabic verse, dolnik, vers libre), english, and french verse (skulacheva 1996). the reason for such a distribution may be the necessity to keep words of a line together as one unit: it is much easier to tear away one word at the beginning or the end of a line than to break a line in the middle. loose ties between lines support division into lines – the basic feature of a verse text – whereas a long pause within a line, too close to the interlinear pause would distract attention from the latter. the length of a pause depends on the type of syntactic tie. long pauses at different positions within a line behave like the weak ties to which they correspond. long pauses are not very numerous at the beginning, their maximum within a line is in the middle and they are very infrequent closer to the end, i.e. between words in the last two feet of a line. there is often no pause between words in the first and second feet of a fully stressed iambic tetrameter line, an absence of pause is most typical for the position between words in the last two feet of a line, and the absence of pause falls to its minimum in the middle of the line. longer pauses are concentrated 133quantitative approaches to versification: conference report in the middle of lines, where they can not be mistaken for the end of a line. the longest pauses appear between lines, thus supporting the division into lines. the position between lines in russian accentual-syllabic verse is normally the position for testing the strength of a tie: weak ties reach their maximums there, and strong ties – their minimums. the longer the pause, the more often it occurs between lines. the concluding paper of the conference, svetlana matyash’s “rhythmicalsyntactic formulas in the position of enjambment in russian poetry”, was the only paper presented in russian (and simultaneously translated into english by tatyana skulacheva). matyash studied enjambments in russian 19thand 20th-century narrative poems written in iambic tetrameter. she investigated the same corpus that she previously employed to study enjambment in russian poetry at large (matyash 2017). the texts were divided into six groups (a total of 48 long poems containing 43,584 lines) according to authors and periods: 1) zhukovsky’s innovative translation of byron’s the prisoner of chillon (1822); 2) pushkin’s evgeny onegin and eleven narrative poems (1820–33); 3) nine narrative poems of pushkin’s epoch (1824–32); 4) fifteen narrative poems by lermontov (1828–41); 5) nine poems from the mid-19th century (1845–58) and 6) two 20th-century poems: blok’s vozmezdie (1911) and tvardovsky’s za dal’ju – dal’ (1950–60). as contrastive material, non-four-foot-iambic texts, such as fables of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, zhukovsky’s ballads from 1808–22 and pushkin’s boris godunov and domik v kolomne, were used. matyash adjusted gasparov’s concept of “rhythmical-syntactic formulas” (gasparov 1984 [1982]) to a description of enjambments. gasparov’s term refers to different lines by one or more authors where rhythmical structure, syntactic structure and one or more words fully coincide. to describe certain types of enjambment the presenter identified enjambments with identical final words in the line. the repertoire of formulas, their frequency and their structure were described against the background of the data on all enjambments of a particular period, author or poem. the frequency of enjambment formulas was calculated as a percentage of all enjambments and their structure was analyzed using the following features: 1) the type of enjambment (contre-rejet, double-rejet, but not rejet – this type was excluded from the study); 2) the type of the upper line clausula (masculine or feminine); 3) the type of the wordboundary after the formula in the subsequent line; 4) the number of words between the syntactically connected words of the upper and lower lines; 5) the type of interlinear syntactic ties and their frequency (by poem, author or period); 6) the rhyming/non-rhyming of the upper line (qav 2019: 148). the analysis of syntactic ties was based on the hierarchy proposed by gasparov and skulacheva (1993). matyash drew several conclusions about the functioning of 134 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova the enjambment formulas: 1) the repertoire of enjambment formulas is rather stable and has a tendency to broaden; 2) they occur as a result of borrowing, imitation and indicating adherence to a certain tradition; 3) their occurrence is often stimulated by the search for a rhyme, but the presence of these formulas in blank verse shows that the role of rhyme should not be overemphasized; 4) the number of formulas does not depend on the number of enjambments in a particular poem. if the outcomes of quantitative approaches to versification were to be summarized in one sentence, we could say that it was a memorable example of joint efforts of researchers from different countries who greatly contributed to the rapprochement of insulate scholarly traditions. the prague conference demonstrated that verse theorists are willing and able to integrate into a diverse but vibrant and collaborative academic community.7 references akimova, marina viacheslavovna; bolotov, sergei grigorievich 2009. stikh “bozhestvennoj komedii” i problema ego adekvatnoj peredachi na russkom jazyke. in: prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh viii: stikh, jazyk, smysl. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur, 299–321. bailey, james 1975. the metrical and rhythmical typology of k. k. slučevskiy’s poetry. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 18, 93–117. brik, osip 1971 [1927]. contributions to the study of verse language. trans. by c. h. severens. in: matějka, ladislav; pomorska, krystyna (eds.), readings in russian poetics: formalist and structuralist views. cambridge, mass.: the mit press, 117– 125. [a section of brik’s “ritm i sintaksis”, first published in novyj lef 3–6 (1927).] červenka, miroslav 1973. ritmicheskij impul’s cheshskogo stikha. in: jakobson, roman; schooneveld, cornelis h. van; worth, dean s. (eds.), slavic poetics: essays in honor of kiril taranovsky. the hague, paris: mouton, 79–90. dobritsyn, andrei 2016. rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic diversity (the example of the russian iambic tetrameter). in: studia metrica et poetica 3(1), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.02 7 this paper is part of a research project based at lomonosov moscow state university and supported by russian science foundation grant № 17-18-01701.the authors are grateful to robert kolár, petr plecháč and lydia roberts for their help. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.02 135quantitative approaches to versification: conference report gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh: metrika i ritmika. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1979. semanticheskij oreol metra: k semantike russkogo trekhstopnogo jamba. in: grigor’ev, viktor petrovich (ed.), lingvistika i poetika. moskva: nauka, 282–308. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1981 [1978]. ital’janskij stikh: sillabika ili sillabotonika? in: grigor’ev, viktor petrovich (ed.), problemy strukturnoj lingvistiki 1978. moskva: nauka, 199–218. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1984 [1982]. ritmicheskij slovar’ i ritmikosintaksicheskie klishe. in: grigor’ev, viktor petrovich (ed.), problemy strukturnoj lingvistiki 1982. moskva: nauka, 169–185. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1987. a probability model of verse (english, latin, french, italian, spanish, portuguese). transl. by m. tarlinskaja. in: style 21(3), 322–358. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42946210 gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. the semantic halo of the russian trochaic pentameter: 30 years of the problem. in: elementa 2(3/4): 191–214. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1999. metr i smysl: ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamyati. moskva: rggu. gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna 1993. ritm i sintaksis v svobodnom stikhe. in: ocherki istorii jazyka russkoj poezii xx veka: grammaticheskie kategorii. sintaksis teksta. moskva, 20–43. golston, chris; riad, tomas 2003. alliteration och avkodning i germansk vers. in: bäckman, sven; hansson, mattias; lilja, eva (eds.), rytm och dialog: studier framlagda vid åttonde nordiska metrikkonferensen umeå 4–7 oktober 2001 (skrifter utgivna av centrum för metriska studier 14). göteborg: cms, 61–86. jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas albert (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: m.i.t. press, 350–377. kimmelman, vadim igorevich 2012. poezija i proza: semanticheskij eksperiment. in: prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh ix. moskva: rukopisnye pamiatniki drevnei rusi, 281–288. lotman, mihhail 1975. review of: halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay. the iambic pentameter (in: versification: major language types. new york, 1972, 217–237). in: trudy po znakovym sistemam 7 (uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 394): 301–305. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42946210 136 igor pilshchikov, vera polilova lotman, mihhail 2019. the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics: vladimir nabokov’s and jurgis baltrušaitis’s binary tetrameters from a typological perspective. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 74–101. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.03 lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2012. editors’ preface. in: sign systems studies 40(1/2). special issue: semiotics of verse, 9–17. https://doi.org/10.12697/sss.2012.1-2.01 matyash, svetlana alekseevna 2017. stikhotvornyj perenos (enjambement) v russkoj poezii: ocherki teorii i istorii. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo rgpu imeni a. i. gertsena. nespor, marina; vogel, irene 1986. prosodic phonology. dordrecht: foris. piera, carlos jose 1980/1981. spanish verse and the theory of meter. a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree doctor of philosophy in romance linguistics and literature. ucla. https://linguistics.ucla.edu/general/dissertations/piera_diss_ucla1980.pdf pilshchikov, igor 2019. rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 53–73. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.02 polilova, vera 2017. o neklassicheskom stikhe bal’monta: ritmicheskaja struktura preryvistykh strok. in: zbornik matice srpske za slavistiku / matica srpska journal of slavic studies 92, 731–746. plecháč, petr; bobenhausen, klemens; hammerich, benjamin 2018. versification and authorship attribution: a pilot study on czech, german, spanish, and english poetry. in: studia metrica et poetica 5(2), 29–54. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.02 qav 2019 – plecháč, petr; scherr, barry p.; skulacheva, tatyana; bermúdez-sabel, helena; kolár, robert (eds.), quantitative approaches to versification. prague: the institute of czech literature of the czech academy of sciences, 2019. http://versologie.cz/conference2019/proceedings.php sarv, mari 2019. poetic metre as a function of language: linguistic grounds for metrical variation in estonian runosongs. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 102–148. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.04 scherr, barry p. 2014. odd stanzas. in: studia metrica et poetica 1(1), 28–54. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.03 shapir, maksim il’ich 1991. “semanticheskij oreol metra”: termin i poniatie (istoriko-stikhovedcheskaja retrospektsija). in: literaturnoe obozrenie 12, 36–40. [republished in his universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xvii– https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.03 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.02 http://versologie.cz/conference2019/proceedings.php https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.04 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.03 137quantitative approaches to versification: conference report xx vekov, book 2. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury, 2015, 395–404.] shapir, maksim il’ich 2019 [2005]. “for thee there is no weight nor measure”: the possibilities and limitations of “exact” methods in the humanities. translated by craig saunders. in: journal of literary theory 13(1), 116–144. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0004 skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna 1996. lingvistika stikha: struktura stikhotvornoj stroki. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh: stikhovedenie, lingvistika i poetika. moskva: nauka, 18–23. skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna 2012. metody opredelenija metra v neklassicheskom stikhe. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 71(2), 45–54. skulacheva, tatyana vladimirovna 2014. metody analiza stikha pri neizvestnoj sisteme stikhoslozhenija. in: vestnik orenburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 11, 41–46. taranovsky, kiril 1971. o ritmicheskoj strukture russkikh dvuslozhnykh razmerov. in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), poetika i stilistika russkoj literatury: pamjati akademika viktora vladimirovicha vinogradova. leningrad: nauka, 420–429. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. meter and language: binary and ternary meters in english and russian. in: style 21(4), 626–649. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945666 trunin, mikhail 2017. towards the concept of semantic halo. in: studia metrica et poetica 4(2), 41–66. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.03 vekshin, georgy viktorovich 2006. ocherk fonostilistiki teksta: zvukovoj povtor v perspektive smysloobrazovanija. moskva: mgup. vekshin, georgy viktorovich 2008. metafonija v zvukovom povtore (k poeticheskoj morfologii slova). in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 90, 229–250. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1966 [1925]. introduction to metrics: the theory of verse. translated from the russian by c. f. brown. edited with an introduction by edward stankiewicz and walter n. vickery. london, the hague, paris: mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0004 https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945666 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.03 alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature: general clarifications and proposal for a new vertical variant, alliteration before or after the caesura marina salvador-gimeno* abstract: in this article, two types of alliteration in latin are analyzed: the one that occurs horizontally in the verse (saepe solet scintilla suos se spargere…, lucr. 4.606) and the one that develops vertically in successive verses (aurea … || asper… || arboris…, lucr. 5.32–34 or … annis || … habendo, || … aratri || … aruis, lucr. 1.311–314). we propose a vertical variant that has not been studied to date and that we have called alliteration before or after caesura, insofar as it takes place between terms placed immediately before or after the caesura of two or more contiguous verses (…manus |… ||… memores |… ||… musis |…, claud. 26.5–7; or … | palantia… || … | praeclara … || … | primum …, lucr. 2.1029–1031); this article shows that both horizontal and vertical alliteration constitutes an element of delimitation and cohesion of contiguous hemistichs or verses. keywords: alliteration, latin poetry, caesura, vertical correspondence 1. introduction1 alliteration is a rhetorical device that has been studied in depth by numerous critics, as it is one of the stylistic resources which is most difficult to define2. * author’s address: department of classical philology. complutense university of madrid (ciudad universitaria, pl. menéndez pelayo, s/n, 28040). madrid (spain). email: marisalv@ucm.es. 1 the editions used for this article are, for livius andronicus, naevius and ennius: traglia (ed.) 1986; for claudian and rutilius namacianus, the edition included in the website created by giuseppe frappa, http://www.poesialatina.it/index.htm, and for the rest of the authors, the editions on the website classical latin texts prepared by the packard humanities institute: https://latin.packhum.org|. metrical notation: | caesura and || line break. 2 for greek: defradas 1958; opelt 1958; silk 1974. for latin, of particular interest are: naeke 1829; klotz 1876; wölfflin 1881; boetticher 1884, peck 1884; loch 1885; rasi 1889; evans 1921; marouzeau 1935; ferrarino 1938; cordier 1939; stoll 1940; herescu 1960; barchiesi 1962: 300– 310; grilli 1962; hofmann and szantyr 1965; valesio 1967; ronconi 1971: 283–382; greenberg 1980; ceccarelli 1986; la penna 1990; margolin 1992; coleman 1999; facchini tosi 2000. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 80–107 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.05 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.05 81alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature the problem in defining the limits of this procedure justifies the current lack of a precise definition in the specialised dictionaries and treaties on rhetoric3: “multiple repetitions of an identical sound” (dupriez 1991: 23). “the repetition of the sound of an initial consonant or consonant cluster in stressed syllables close enough to each other for the ear to be affected” (preminger; brogan (eds.) 1993: 36). “repetición de ciertos sonidos, tanto vocálicos como consonánticos, usados con el fin de que se produzca un determinado efecto musical, un refuerzo del ritmo” = “repetition of certain sounds, both vowel and consonant, used in order to produce a certain musical effect, a reinforcement of the rhythm” (platas tasende 2000: 30). “figura de habla en que las consonantes, especialmente al comienzo de las palabras, o en las sílabas acentuadas, están repetidas” = “a figure of speech figure in which consonants, especially at the beginning of words or stressed syllables, are repeated” (cuddon 2001: 42). “reiteración de sonidos semejantes -con frecuencia consonánticos, alguna vez silábicos – al comienzo de dos o más palabras o en el interior de ellas” = “reiteration of similar sounds – often consonant, sometimes syllabic – at the beginning of two or more words or within them” (marchese; forradellas 2013: 21). these five definitions are sufficient to demonstrate the lack of agreement when it comes to determining what type of repetition occurs in alliteration; in other words, if it is produced between sounds that are the same, similar, initial, final, vowels, consonants, etc. this article synthesises for the first time the theoretical divergences with respect to alliteration, based on six key points that have to be addressed when formulating a specific definition of this device: i. relation with the semantic context: there are two approaches here: one that considers that alliteration is a purely phonic procedure, and as a result the repeated sounds do not adapt to the thematic requirements of the text, as in o tite, tute, tati, tibi tanta, tyranne, tulisti (enn. ann. 62)4; and another that attributes to the device an expressive iconic value that converts it into 3 cf. boetticher 1884: 2; evans 1921: xiii; barchiesi 1962: 300; valesio 1967: 7; loikala sturani 1980: 9; ceccarelli 1986: 1–2; beccaria 1996: 39; criado 2002: 509; calvo martínez 2011: 105. 4 cf. wölfflin 1881; ebrard 1882; keller 1896, evans 1921, marouzeau 1935; ferrarino 1938: 103; palacios martín 1983: 172. 82 marina salvador-gimeno a mechanism for sonic mimesis, as in at tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit (enn. ann. 83)5. ii. type of repetition: on the one hand, there are scholars who consider that the repetition takes place with identical sounds6 (cum capta capi ... cum combusta cremari, enn. ann. 221.2); and on the other, there are scholars who extend the limits of repetition, considering that it may be between similar sounds, in other words with some feature of articulation in common, but not necessary the same (primus … bradyn … bellique peritus, enn. ann. 263; quicquam quisquam cuique … quisque conueniat …, enn. incert. 34)7. iii. the nature of the repeated sound: there are two views: one that considers alliteration a device of exclusively consonantal repetition, applying the term ‘assonance’ to the repetition of vowels (… sibi paratum pestem … participet parem, enn. trag. 82.2)8; and the other, more common, which extends the phenomenon not only to consonantal articulation but to vocalic and syllabic as well (... atque animi acrem acrimoniam, naev. trag. 28)9 iv. the position that this sound occupies in the word: some describe alliteration as a repetition of the start of the word (… virum vera virtute viuere animatum addecet, enn. trag. 160.1)10; others are less restrictive and extend the limits of the device to the inside or end of the word (pater noster, saturni, liv. andron. od. 2)11. 5 by reiterating the voiceless dental occlusive /t/ the aim is to reproduce the sound emitted by the trumpet (serv. aen. 9.501). this opinion is shared by ronconi (1971: 367); ceccarelli (1986: 6); bacry (1992: 204); margolin (1992: 407); azaustre and casas (1997: 96); bussolino (2006: 16); auger (2010: 11) and canton (2020). 6 cf. belardi 1962: 9; hernández vista 1968: 348; mounin 1974: 19; ceccarelli 1986: 2; criado 2002: 511; bussolino 2006: 15 and 16. 7 cf. klotz 1876: 2; schlossarek 1911: 282–283; evans 1921: 12–17; stoll 1940: 388; aquien 1993: 47; glover 2010: 243. 8 cf. bailey 1947: vii; belardi 1962: 9; martínez conesa 1972: 11; mounin 1974: 19; arbusow 1974: 76; cuddon 2001: 42; dubois et al. 2002: 24; wales 2014: 14. 9 cf. naeke 1829: 331; wölfflin 1881: 4; peck 1884: 59; defradas 1951: 38; barchiesi 1962: 301; grilli 1962: 119; catone 1964: 129. 10 cf. volkmann 1872: 439; marouzeau 1935: 42; ferrarino 1938: 93; ronconi 1939: 297; ceccarelli 1986: 2; facchini tosi 2000: 10; bussolino 2006: 15; auger 2010: 11; wales 2014: 14. 11 cf. naeke 1829: 331; loch 1865; klotz 1876; rasi 1889: 179; evans 1921: 43; defradas 1958: 38; valesio 1967: 28. 83alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature v. the number of necessary terms: the former view allows alliteration inside a single word (perpopulor, inimitabilis)12; the latter requires at least two words (… casus cassandra canebat, verg. aen. 3.183)13. vi. separation of the words affected: the scholars for whom alliteration is a device that implies the presence of at least two words consider that there must be a short distance between them. proximity is not in general specified, except for some authors who limit the extension of the phenomenon to the metrical or syntactic unit14. in the following sections our aim is to clarify this confusing situation with respect to the idea of ‘alliteration’ by coining a specific definition that provides a precise resolution of the six points set out. the operational definition of ‘alliteration’ we offer in this work classifies the phenomenon and positions a new class of alliteration within the established typology: the ante-/postcaesura alliteration. although it has not been the subject of study until now, it nevertheless had a significant presence in latin poetry, not only in authors of the archaic period (lucretius, catullus), but also in classical (virgil, tibullus, propertius, ovid) and late period (claudian and rutilius namacianus) authors. 2. concept of alliteration and its use in the latin world 2.1. concept of alliteration in the theoretical diversity offered by the concept of alliteration, some scholars have proposed as an effective definition that was offered by ferrarino, and followed by barchiesi (1962: 300; oniga 1994: 118–119): “ritmico ritorno della prima sillaba di due o più parole comincianti con la medesima lettera e tra loro particolarmente connesse” = “rhythmic return of the first syllable of two or more words beginning with the same letter and particularly connected to each other”. however, we consider that ferrarino’s definition should be nuanced with respect to the following points (ferrarino 1938: 151): “prima sillaba di due o più parole”: it is true that alliteration tends to occupy part or all of the first syllable, above all if the words affected by the 12 cf. lázaro carreter 1962: 37; dubois et al. 2002: 24. 13 cf. ferrarino 1938: 103; belardi 1962: 37; martínez conesa 1972: 11; mounin 1974: 19; arbusow 1974: 76; spang 1979: 154–155; facchini tosi 2000: 10. 14 cf. arbusow 1974: 76; spang 1979: 154–155; facchini tosi 2000: 10. 84 marina salvador-gimeno procedure have little phonic volume. however, we should not exclude from our definition cases in which alliteration exceeds the first syllable, as in … obstant obstringillant…, enn. sat. 4). “parole comincianti con la medesima lettera”: given that alliteration is an acoustic phenomenon, we believe it is more appropriate to talk about sounds rather than letters. moreover, nothing is mentioned about the distance there may be between the alliterative terms or the type of connection that links them. it is essential to determine this point if the concept is to be analysed with greater rigour. taking into account that phonic repetition must be perceived by the ear, we believe it is prudent to limit the distance between words to the metric unit, i.e. the line; and if the phrase exceeds the limits of the line, the syntactical unit, i.e. that part of the phrase that continues into the next line. given the above, we propose the following operational definition of alliteration: “a rhythmic repetition of vocallic, consonantal or syllabic sounds at the start of two or more adjoining words or words that are close to each other, i.e. forming part of the same metrical or syntactic unit” this definition attributes to alliteration a rhythmic purpose inherent to the figure itself; in turn, we present it as a device in which identical consonantal, vocal or syllabic sounds are repeated at the start of at least two words, which may be in contact (in either horizontal or vertical correspondence) or close to each other (in the same line, or in case of enjambement, the same syntactical phrase). it is important to note that by the start of the word we also understand the start of the second segment of a compound word, provided it is perceived as such: incertis certos compotesque consili (enn. trag. 71.3). this is what a. grilli has called “allitterazione coperta” (grilli 1989: 120). 2.2. use of alliteration in the latin world alliteration is a phonic procedure that is universal in nature15. álvarez pedrosa (1994: 190) defines this figure as “recurrente en casi todas las tradiciones poéticas de las lenguas históricas indoeuropeas” = “recurring in almost all poetic traditions of historical indo-european languages”. it is particularly important in the latin tradition, as it impregnates practically all the spheres of everyday 15 cf. boetticher 1884: 14; barchiesi 1962: 301; marouzeau 1967: 42; valesio 1967: 7. 85alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature life16: it is common in popular (mense maio malae nubent “it is bad to marry in may”; vicinia vitia virtutibus “vices are near to virtues”), legal (senatusque populi romani... censuit consensit consciuit “and the senate of the roman people… affirmed, agreed, approved”; do dico addico “i give, say, adjudge”), military (manu militari “with military aid”, domi duellique “in war and in peace”) and magical/religious contexts (sit saluus sator, salua sint sata, salua seges sit “god bless the farmer, the field and the harvest”; dat donat dedicat “gives, offers, dedicates”; quod fastum felix fortunatumque sit “may it be fortunate, happy and prosperous”)17 within literature, alliteration is very common in both latin poets and prose writers (cf. berger 1939 [1913]: 310; coleman 1999: 47). in poetry of particular note are authors of the archaic period, with the excessive use they make of the device: mater … multo mulier melior mulierum (enn. trag. 26.3); apud abundantem antiquam amnem (acc. trag. 297); optumo optume optumam operam … (plaut. amph. 278) and … potuisse propagando procudere prolem (lucr. 5.856). examples of alliteration can be found in poets of the classical period, although they are much more restrained than those of the archaic period, due perhaps to the greater impact of hellenism on its authors, such as virgil (… eliadum … epiros equarum? g. 1.59), horace (vindemiator … invictus, … viator, sat. 1.7.30), tibullus (parcite … praeda petenda …, 1.1.34) and propertius (… amor … amat artificem, 1.2.8); cf. baske 1884: 13; marouzeau 1935: 46. examples of alliteration can also be found in poets of the post-classical period, such as claudian (… natura ... noua numina ..., rapt. pros. 2.371) and rutilius namacianus (phoebus chelarum pallidiore polo, 1.184) the same rhythmic procedure can be found in prose, although to a lesser extent than in poetry. worth mentioning are cicero (difficultatibus adfectus atque adflictus … fidem, quinct. 10.1; illa initia… integra atque inuiolata, cael. 11.12) caesar (permotus manus, superat sententia sabini, gall. 5.31.3.2), sallust (tanta tamque corrupta ciuitate catilina, catil. 14.1.1; magna munera misere …, iug. 7.4), tacitus (adfirmarent, anxius animo… amicorum adhibitis …, hist. 1.2.15; plerosque … poenam exposcentium … adprobat, hist. 1.58.4) and apuleius (cunctae ciuitatis… considerans circumirem, 3.3.17–18). 16 cf. naeke 1829: 326; boetticher 1884: 1; peck 1884: 58; baske 1884: 6; marouzeau 1935: 42–44; lesiak 2007: 22–24. 17 for a more in-depth treatment see rasi 1921. 86 marina salvador-gimeno because fewer alliterative sequences can be found in prose, and because the new type of alliteration we have called ‘anteand post-caesura’ occurs exclusively in poetic compositions, we have limited our study to the area of poetry. 3. types of alliteration in poetry there are two types of alliteration in poetry according to the position of the terms affected by the device: 1) horizontal alliteration: between words that follow each other in a line (… fidem foedusque feri… firmum, enn. ann. 29); and 2) vertical alliteration: between words which occupy the same metric position in two or more adjacent lines (… harena || …artes ||…acumen, iuv. 100–103)18. 3.1. horizontal alliteration (aaa...) horizontal alliteration is defined as a sequence of terms starting with the same sound that extend over a line and can even run into the start of the next by enjambement (… candida callis || currenti…, lucr. 6.92–93; … anxius angor || adsidue… lucr. 6.1158–1159). when it occupies the start of the next line alliteration performs what we call a ‘cohesive function’, as it creates an acoustic link between the enjambed phrase with the previous line. in this article we have selected strong alliterative sequences, consisting of the repetition of the start of at least three words19. lucretius: corpora continuo conexaque conuenientis (2.712); … acerbis acrius aduertunt animos … (3.53); … mollia membra mouere, mollia mobiliter … mittunt (4.787); sponte sua sursum possunt consurgere … (6.1021)20 18 examples of these structures can be found in virgil in kvičala (1881: 301–325); brouwers (1973: 256–257); raffaelli (1982: 151) and facchini tosi (2000: 54 and 67). 19 for more examples of alliteration in lucretius see schneider 1897; deutsch 1939 and snyder 1980; in catullus: guggenheimer 1970; in virgil: kvičala 1881; clarke 1976 and ceccarelli 1986; in ovid: capecchi 1969. 20 multa minuta modis multis… (2.116);… ceruices circum collum coronat (2.802); … tenebris tantis tam … extollere … (iii 1); … aliena … allata atque auris aliunde … alienis (5.546); … potuisse propago procudere prolem (5.853); lubrica proluuie larga lauere… (5.947). 87alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature catullus: … mala mens, miselle … (40.1); dea … dea … dea domina dindymi (63.91); … cognatos compositum cineres (69.98); … valens viuat… venusta… (89.2)21 virgil (aeneis): insontem infando indicio … (2.84); … populi … proceres, primumque parentem (3.58); … amens animi … accensus amaro (4.203); … validas… viscera vertite vires (6.833)22 ovid (metamorphoses): contentique cibis … cogente creatis (1.103); … phaëthon penitus penitusque patentis (2.179); … frater felix… fortunata profecto (4.323); sustinet instantes; instanbat … sinistra (5.162)23 claudian (de raptu proserpinae): aestuat ante alias auido … (2.137); … morte … immota moratur (3.194); … damnare decus ... dearum (3.213) rutilius namasianus: … crimen contemnere ciues (1.23); … minus … miseranda magis (1.22); … multiplici meruit munimine … (2.39) there may be two or more horizontal correspondences in the same line. depending on the form in which they are combined, three types of rhythmic structures can be distinguished: an aabb(cc...) series; a parallel abab(ab...) series and a chiastic structure abb(b...)a (cf. ziwsa 1879: 7–14; facchini tosi 2000: 67). aabb(cc...) structure: the alliterative sequences appear one after the other without being interrupted: lucretius: … magnos manibus … montes multaque viuendo vitalia vincere … (1.201); mollia mortali consistere corpore creta (2.906); … fertur fruges liberque liquoris … laticem (5.14); auget alitque deminui debet recreari… recipit res (322)24 21 … pote plurimum perire (45.5); tene thetis tenuit… (64.28);… cedentem celeri cum classe … (64.53); sauia … spurca saliua … (78.4); mentula moechatur. moechatur mentula? ... (94.1);… potui … possem … perdite … (104.3); … mentula magna minax (115.8) 22 … arrectisque auribus adstant (1.152);… siciniae saltem sedesque … (1.557); sanguis … solidae suo stant … (2.639); ducebatque diem danaique … (2.802); … virga, versumque venenis (7.190); candenti corpore cycnum (9.563); … veneris violaui volnere … (11.277). 23 … delubraque ditia donis (2.77);… surgere signa solent … (3.112); … patriae praelate … praelate parenti? (8.109);… vela videt, vacuum … (11.471); … vestris valuissent vota … (13.127); templa tibi … tribuam tibi turis … (14.128) 24 … primus portarum claustra cupiret (1.71); perfecto posset claro comitari … (1.97); … alit atque auget … pabula praebens? (1.229); ludit lacte mero mentes… (1.261); … aduertas animum… pernoscere possis (3.181); alis auroram clara consuetum… (4.708); morigerisque modis … munde corpore culto (4.1273); illi inprudentes ipsi sibi saepe venenum vergebant (5.1007). 88 marina salvador-gimeno catullus: … laneum latusculum manusque mollicellas (25.10); … labante languore oculos … operit (63.37); animo aestuante rursum reditum … (63.47); magnanimum … minoa … sedesque superbas (64.85)25 virgil (aeneis): principibus permixtum adgnouit achiuis (1.488); ascanium anchisenque patrem… penatis (2.747); magna medius comitante caterua (5.76); palantisque polo stellas sequor (9.21)26 ovid (metamorphoses): … graciles gramem carpsere capellae (1.299); artibus atque animas formatae infundere … (1.364); perspicit … placidas partim radice reuellit (7.227); laomedonteis latoius astitit aruis (11.196)27 claudian (de raptu proserpinae): conscidit … crine auellit aristas (3.150); insidias superum, cognatae … cernis (3.200); … patriis procul amandauerit astros (3.214); induitur digitisque attemptat … arcum (3.217) rutilius namasianus: consumunt… celsa lauacra lacus (1.102); verticis… virides, roma, refinge… (1.114); … cupiunt, cernere posse putant (1.192); ... serenus || signat septenis culmina clara … (1.197–198); occurrit chalybum memorabilis … metallis (1.351) abab structure: two or more alliterative sequences are interwoven in parallel: lucretius: cibus auget corpus alitque (1.859); sonere auris, succidere artus (3.156); clara loca candida luce (5.776); exprimitur validis extritus viribus … (5.1096)28 catullus: mallem diuitias midae dedisses (24.4); notae … populo … nates pilosas (33.7); pulchre conuenit improbis cinaedis (57.1, 10); … vidua … nudo vitis … nascitur … (62.49)29 virgil (aeneis): … amissam respexi animumue reflexi (2.741); seminecem liquit saxo lacerumque (5.275); sacrilego pendetis sanguine poenas (7.595); memores regi mandata referte (11.176)30 25 … deuota domum periuria portas? (64.135); vellera virgati custodibant calathisci (64.319); … vago victor certamine cursus (64.340) 26 diuidit … dictis maerentia … mulcet (1.197); tegmina tuta cauant capitum (7.632); … insultans spargit rapida … rores (12.339) 27 … perueniunt partim campoque recepta (1.41); fraternaeque fidem pacis petiitque … (3.128); … adductis hastilia lenta lacertis (8.28) 28 … lignis … flamma latet fumusque (1.871); … opinantis tenebris obducere terras (5.774); exprimitur validis extritus viribus … (5.1096) 29 … falx attenuat frondatorum arboris (64.41) 30 fessi rerum frugesque receptas (1.178); … vestra manus violasset … mineruae (2.189); abstulit ingeminant abruptis … ignes (2.199); subito prorsam sociosque precatur (10.293) 89alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature ovid (metamorphoses): … hiems canos hirsuta capillos (2.30); diues agri dorylas… alter (5.130); prius aërias… phoebus… auras (10.178); phoebus… simulat praereptaque… sumit (11.310)31 claudian (de raptu proserpinae): soluis amazonios… stymphalidas arcu (2. pr.37); laeva parte… libamina potat (2.53); conspicit… natae… sedula nutrix (3.171) rutilius namasianus: obruerint … scelerata obliuia solem (1.53); saepius attonitae resonant… aures (1.201); leges restituit libertatemque reducit (1.215); … vallauit multis vitalia membris (2.37) abba structure: two or more different alliterative sequences are combined chiastically, so that one is included inside the other: lucretius: validi possunt pontes venientis… (1.285); candida … nullo … nigro nata colore (2.793); pondera … deorsum deducere pugnent (2.205); … forte voles variare figuras (2.491); … cessare aetheriis adfixa cauernis (4.389); discludere mundum membraque diuidere (5.444); canibus succinctas semimarinis corporibus (5.889)32 catullus: … primum digitum dare appetenti (2.3); … di mala multa dent … (14.6); acmen septimius suos amores (45.1); … fraterno multum manantia fletu (101.9); prata … siluas saltusque paludesque (115.5)33 virgil (aeneis): arcebat longe latio… annos (1.21); … patriam … sceleratas sumere poenas (2.576); templo capitolia celsa tenebat (8.654); prima viam victoria pandit (12.626)34 ovid (metamorphoses): contemptrix supremum saeuaeque … caedis (1.161); ambrosiae suco saturos praesepibus altis (2.120); nise pater … malis, modo prodita, nostris (8.126); … vides apparet adhuc vetus … (12.444)35 claudian (de raptu proserpinae): pars aulaea …, alii praetexere … (2.320); audax sacrilego supplebat aranea … (3.158); ... dapes … arma habitumque dianae (3.216) 31 inde … libatos inrorauere liquores (1.371); impensaque sui poterit superare … (8.63) 32 … partim concilio … constant principiorum (1.484); corporibus … paruis paucisque creatast (3.278); omnibus … populo … praeconis … ore (4.562); viuebant … priuati parte virili (6.1207) 33 magna caecilio incohata mater (35.18); laneaque aridulis haerebant … labellis (64.316); aucupium … pisces prata arua … (114.3) 34 coniugo tali! teucrum comitantibus (4.48); finem; inposuit pugnae fessumque (5.463); totiens data dextera turno (7.366) 35 … desolatas agere alta silentia … (1.349); … obstantis proturbat pectore siluas (3.80). 90 marina salvador-gimeno rutilius namasianus : foedere communi… cuncta facis (1.78);… assyriis conectere contigit armis (1.83);… mergi nequeunt nisu maiore… (1.129); … aliis romam redeuntibus haeret… (1.167) mixed rhythmic structures: however, there are rhythmic structures that differ in complexity from the above, being the result of the addition of at least one more sequence or rhythmic structure. we have grouped all the possible combinations into a single set that we have called ‘mixed rhythmic structures’: some examples are: (abba + abab) principio caeli clarum purumque colorem (lucr. 2.1030) (abba + cc) consule pompeio primum … cinna, molebant || maeciliam… (catull. 113.1–2); ... tali persensit peste teneri || cara... coniunx,... (verg. aen. 4.90–91) (abab + cc) ... agros || palmiferos arabas panchaeaque rura reliquit (ovid. met. 10.477–478) (aabb + abab) … patriae priamo datum … pergama dextra (verg. aen. 2.291) (aabb + abba) arduus armatos mediis … moenibus adstans (verg. aen. 2.328) (abab + abba) … modo rore maris, modo … rosaue (ovid. met. 12.410)36 3.2. importance of caesuras in horizontal alliteration in the works of lucretius, catullus, virgil and ovid caesuras play an important role in the arrangement of the alliterative words37. these words tend to be placed around the caesura, constituting at times an element for joining and demarcating the hemistichs in the same line38. 36 (abab + abba) possit … ira poenas petere imbibat … (lucr. 6.72); (abba + cc) sacra deosque dabo; socer arma … habeto (verg. aen. 12.192); (ab+cc+ab) suppliciis inclusa teror! tu saeua choreis (claud. rapt. pros. 3.102). 37 a classification of alliteration is established according to the position occupied by the alliterative words in the line in ronconi (1939: 300–316) and mahoney (2001: 80). 38 it does not always constitute an element of cohesion or demarcation of lines or hemistichs. in lucretius (6.42–44), for instance, alliteration exercises an emphatic function, since the sequences of words with the same initial sound are placed after the fifth-foot caesura, thus highlighting the second hemistich with respect to the first; cf. brouwers 1973: 257: … | pergam pertexere dictis … | mundi mortalia templa … | consistere corpore caelum 91alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature 3.2.1. alliteration and its cohesive function alliterative terms are located on either side of the caesura, each belonging to a different hemistich. the same initial sound creates cohesion between the two, as in the following examples: lucretius: … multa modis | multis mutata… (1.1024); … protelo | plagarum… (2.531); … vultum | vitalem… (3.655) catullus: … perditius | potes… (42.14); … torpet, | tenuis… (51.9); … causae | credideram… (91.8) virgil (aeneis): … vita | victor… (6.168); … festinant | flentes… (6.177); … nigro | nemorumque… (6.238)39 in ovid there is a fragment of four consecutive lines in which the procedure of placing an alliterative term on each side of the caesura is repeated. the device provides acoustic cohesion to the hemistichs in each line. … rogat | rapta …, … artus | anima …. … placauit | precibusque …, … effetum | proferri … (ovid. met. 7.249–252) this type of alliteration also appears in claudian and rutilius namasianus: claudian: … minuit | merces… (25.11);… potestates | priscus… (26.39); … rarum | referens… (26.78); … modum | mutates… (26.119); … stilicho, | succedant… (4.13) rutilius namasianus: … patet | peregrinae (1.13); … desideriis | addere… (1.34); … circumfusus | fluctuat… (1.56); … giganteum | graecia… (1.100); … cupiunt, | cernere… (1.192); … postliminium | pacis… (1.214); … multiplici | meruit munimine… (2.39); … geticis | grassatus… (2.51) 3.2.2. alliteration and its demarcating function there are two ways of demarcating hemistichs: by means of the acoustic correspondence of their extremes (x … x | …; … | x … x) or through the acoustic correspondence of their respective starts (x … | x …) or ends (… x | … x). demarcation of the first hemistich: in the examples selected the extension of the first hemistich is marked by the initial homophony of its extremes: lucretius: multaque… mundi | ... (2.1105); floribus… foliis | … (5.1400); aeris… accepit | … (6.1063) catullus: muneraque… musarum | … (68.10); suffixum… summa | … (99.4). 39 … siluam, | stabula … (6.179) 92 marina salvador-gimeno virgil (aeneis): litoraque… latos | … (1.225); corripio… corpus, | … (3.176); daedalus… dolos | … (6.29). ovid (metamorphoses): corpora… coeptis, | … (1.2); luctus… leuior. | … (1.654); sospite… scylla | … (14.39)40 claudian: aequor… hadriacas | … (5.39); seminecem… subito | … (5.65); plena… patriis | … (15.5) rutilius namasianus: vernula… vario | … (1.112); verticis… virides, | … (1.116) demarcation of the second hemistich: similarly, alliteration may suggest the extension of the second hemistich of the line by the initial homophony of its extremes. lucretius: … | penitus… possis (1.145); … | verbis… videmus (1.197); … | reuomit… remittit (2.199); … | vita… videtut (3.66); … | plerumque… potestas (5.42) catullus: … | praemia… peto (66.86); … | mater… meae (67.34); … | limine… licet (67.38) virgil (aeneis): … | partu … prolem (1.274); … | referet … fouebit (1.281); … | sacrata … sedebat (9.4); … | conclamat … caicus (9.35)… |41 ovid (metamorphoses): … | pelagi … profundum (1.331); … | valido … veneno (7.123); … | animum … artes (8.188)42 claudian: … | totidem … retorquens (26.65); … | certamina … recordor (26.104); … | aquilas … harenis (15.33); … | perfert … pacis (15.99). rutilius namasianus: … | procerum … propago (1.7); … | lacrimis … laude litamus (1.45); … | victrix … vires (1.69); … | longior … liber (2.2); … | multis … membris (2.37) demarcation of both hemistichs: a way of individualising and at the same time marking the extension of the two hemistichs consists of positioning alliterative terms at their respective starts or clausulae: alliterative terms at the start of each hemistich: lucretius: impetibus … | interdum … (1.293); corpus… | communis … (1.422); multaque … | magnum … (2.109); principio … | persubtilem (3.179) virgil (aeneis): tantane … | tenuit (1.132); prospectum … | pelago petit … (1.181); accipiet … | antiquam … (3.96); seruatum … | strophadum … (3.209). 40 stamina … summo | … (4.179); amissam … mea | … (13.234). 41 … | melior … menti | … (2.35); … | viuit … volnus (4.67); … | peragunt … propinquant (6.384) 42 … | reparabat … phoebe (1.11); … | sacrorum … suorum (11.68) 93alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature ovid (metamorphoses): aureus … | asopida … (6.113); moenia. … merui … (8.127); sidere … | sumptam … (8.178); vatis … | vocalia … (11.8); perfidiae … | falsis … (11.296)43. claudian: phoebeo … | python … (2.1); conpleri … | porrexerit … (3.10); incluta… | celsa … (3.174); terra … | tyrios … (3.207). rutilius namasianus: ditia … | dent … (1.143); explorata … | pelagi … (1.205); saepe … | serus … (2.5); arridet … | radiis… (2.13) alliterative terms at the end of each hemistich: lucretius: … rursum | … resoluat (1.57); … rerum | … repertis? (5. 2); … mortali | … mundum (5.65); … faciant | … ferantur (6.85). virgil (aeneis): … ardens | … ab arce (2.41); … reges, | … rerum (7.37); … manum | … monstrant (9.44); … manis | … manebat (10.39). ovid (metamorphoses): … phoenicas, | … parabant (3.46); … athin, | … arcus (5.63); … poterat: | … repugnas (7.11); … acie. | … achiui (7.142); … arentis | … aristas (11.112)44 claudian: … poenis | … pasci (22.14); … armis, | … amicos (22.45); … solem, | … soluta (rapt. pros. 1.115); … phrygios | … penates (rapt. pros 1.179); … astrictis | … aquis (rapt. pros. 2.18). rutilius namasianus: … aetherios | … axes (1.17); … minus, | … magis (1.22); … ager | … aurelius agger (1.39); … superat | … saxis (2.65) 3.3. vertical alliteration vertical alliteration is a parallel sequence of words starting with the same sounds that belong to two or more sequential lines; in general, they are placed at the start or in the clausula of these lines, giving them a greater cohesion45. in this article we will analyse the simple vertical sequences (a…|| a…|| a…) and, occasionally, successive vertical structures (a…|| a…|| b…|| b…), as being acoustically easier to perceive. 43 corripere … | corpus … (lucr. 3.163); postquam … | priamique … (verg. aen. 3.1); pergama … | peditem … (verg. aen. 6.516); sidonis … | sacri sub… (ovid. met. 14.80). 44 … molli | … membra (lucr. 3.112); … summa | … sede (lucr. 3. 84); … longo | … luctu (verg. aen. 2.26); … exsequis | … solutis (verg. aen. 7.5); … indomitas | in iras (ovid. met. 5.41) 45 cf. an allusion to alliteration as an element used to link successive lines in mahoney (2001: 82). vertical correspondences, both lexical and phonic, are included in the study by deutsch (1939: 48–96). 94 marina salvador-gimeno 3.3.1. vertical correspondence at the start of consecutive lines the alliterative terms are placed at the start of consecutive lines. given that the lines used to be recited and not read silently, this type of repetition served to mark the start of a new line46. lucretius: strataque… || saxea… || signa… || saepe… (1.315–318) propterea… || praecepit… || posterior… (6.1049–1051) virgil (aeneis): pallamque... || praecipue... || expleri... || phoenissa... (1.711–714) idaeumque… || inuocat… || hic…|| intonuit… || ipse… (7.140–143)47 ovid (metamorphoses): impediebat... || inposita... || ipse... || instruit... || icare... (8.200–204) contemptor... || cycnus... || corpore... || caenea... || incoluit... (12.170–174)48 claudian: occultat... || consultare... || crinigeri... || curia... (26.479–482) transilit... || turbaque... || terrigenas... (rapt. pros. 2.165–167) rutilius namasianus: priuatam... || praesentes... || prodest... (1.24–26) sparserunt… || substitimus… || insanituris… (1.618–620) 3.3.2. vertical correspondence at the end of consecutive lines just as in modern rhyme, in which the ends of successive lines are linked by total or partial repetition of sounds of final syllables of the words, in latin poets the clausulae of adjacent lines can be joined by means of repetitions of the initial parts of words. this type of vertical correspondence is much more frequent than that occurring at the start of adjacent lines. lucretius: … colli || … cursu || … cientes || … circum (2.322–325) ... animai || ... artus || ... animai || ... auras || ... || ... remansit || ... membris || ... remota || ... auras || ... animai || ... haeret (3.397–400; 3.402–407)49 46 the same is true in the alliteration in the clausulae of successive lines. alliteration demarcates these lines, indicating acoustically the point at which they end. 47 saeuus ... || sarpedon, ... || scuta ... (1.99–101); ortygiam …. || occultas … || ore … (3.694– 696); arrectae … || ardet abire … || attonitus … (4.280–282) 48 nulla … || nondum … || non … || non … (1.96–99); poena … || perdere … || protinus (1.260–262) 49 … possis, ||… ponit, ||… priuis || … membra. || … minora (3.370–374); … aaetas ||… alter, 95alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature virgil (aeneis): … amore || … amorum || … aegram || … amantem (1.350) … locutus || … reliquit || … auram || … amens ||… haesit (4.276–280) ovid (metamorphoses): … cernes || … calores|| … currum || … cremabis (2.133–136) ... adorat || ... arua || ... altis || ... auras (3.18–21)50 claudian: ... amne || … hasta || … austri || … acumen || … auras || … harenae (rapt. pros. 2.198–203) … membris ||… moueri ||… metallo ||… minantur (5.358–361) rutilius namasianus: … amoenae || … antiphate ||… agebat (1.381–383) … semel || … solutis || … sequi (2.10–12) 4. a new sub-type of vertical alliteration: ante-caesura and post-caesura the importance of the caesura in vertical alliteration has barely been studied so far; indeed, no type of the alliteration we call ante-/postcaesura has been noted. in this case, the correspondence takes place not at the start or end of two or more consecutive lines, but within the lines themselves, specifically, immediately before or after the metric pause in the line51. this internal corre|| … ante. ||… creare || … coorta (5.834–838); … ictum || ... ignis, || ... illi || ... ictum (6.313–316); … prodita partem || … paratae. || … mundo ||… manere, || … molem! (6.563–567); … habere || … aër || … appositusque. || … abditus aër (6.1034–1037); … urbe, || … humari; || … unus || … humabat (6.1279–1281) 50 … manuque … mollem || … mouere maligno (6.363–365); … aruo, ||… arma. || … hastas || … parantis, || … pelasgi (7.129–133) 51 bartalucci (1968: 115–116) alludes generically to internal vertical correspondence, both phonetic and syntactic, without specifying the type of ante/post caesura alliteration. one example of vertical alliteration is: solus auem seruat | … || quaerit auentino | …, where only one of the alliterative terms, auentino, is in the position immediately before the caesura; deutsch (1939: 52–63) mentions cases in which cases of gemination, polyptoton, figura etymologica, paronomasia and rhyme are developed inside consecutive lines, occupying a similar or identical metrical position; he addresses these cases only vaguely and tangentially in the study of alliteration, with no mention at all of ante/post caesura (in fact, in one of the author’s examples, lucr. 2.697–698, only one of the initially words with the same initial sound is in direct contact with the caesura). facchini tosi (2000: 73) refers briefly and generically to alliteration inside successive lines, although in his two examples the alliterative words are located between the penthemimeral 96 marina salvador-gimeno spondence within the line is not random, but rather the product of a deliberate selection by the poet, as appears to be demonstrated in the clearest vertical correspondences where the author repeats (a) etymologically related terms or (b) various forms of the same word52: (a) denique corporis atque animi | vivata potestas inter se coniuncta ualent | vitaque fruuntur; nec sine corpore enim | vitalis edere motus (lucr. 3.558–560) declamas belle, | causas agis, attice, belle, historias bellas, | carmina bella facis, componis bele | mimos, epigrammata belle (mart. 2.7.1–3) (b) naturam rerum | mutare et uertere motus. illud in his rebus | non est mirabile, quare, omnia cum rerum | primordial sint in motu (lucr. 2.307–309) as in the vertical alliterations at the start and end of the line, in anteor postcaesura alliteration this resource has a cohesive function, as it constitutes an element of union. 4.1. ante-caesura alliteration ante-caesura alliteration takes place between terms in adjacent lines located immediately before the metric pause: … aliquid | … … animus | … … agere aetatem | … … ambiguo | … …adfixum | … (lucr. 4.1134–1138) and heptemimeral caesura: hor. carm. 4.15.5–6; and the trihemimeral and penthemimeral: hor. epist. 1.37–38, none of them anteor post-caesura. similarly, calvo martínez (2011: 519) talks about ‘alliterative symmetry’, understanding alliteration to mean the repetition of similar initial sounds, between words that are not in a position immediately next to the caesura (soph. oed. 458–460). 52 these fragments are examples of etymological figure (a) and polyptoton (b), not alliteration, since the same root or word is repeated. in these cases, the intention of the poet to create rhythmic sequences immediately before or after the caesura is more evident. 97alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature … admiscetur | ... …harmoniae | …. atque alias alii | … … aliae | … (lucr. 4.1247–1250)53 … expeteres | … … puerum | … … populo | … … platea | … … praetereunt | … (catull. 15.4–8) … nescis | … … nimium | ... … nusquam | … … nasum | … (mart. 1.3.3–6) … magnum | … … meritis | ... … motus, | … … maesti | … (verg. aen. 11.223–226)54 … patria | … … potui, | ... … puero, | … … puero | … (ovid. ars. 2.27–30) … patrios | … … procul; | … … purpurea | … … phoebus | … (ovid. met. 2.21–24) 53 dies – dederunt– destiterunt (lucr. 4.973–975); aquae – abundanti – altis (lucr. 1.281– 283); paene – potius – possint (lucr. 2.959–961); praesagit – partis – prorsum (lucr. 3.512–514); feriant – fluunt – fluuiis (lucr. 4.217–219); plagae – primas – paulatim (lucr. 4.940–942); amplexus – atlanteum – adit (lucr. 5.34–36); pendentes – pingues – properant (lucr. 5.295– 297); aliam – aeuo – aeriis (lucr. 5.536–538); perscidit – patrio – partis (lucr. 6.297–299); ignem – incautum – icti (lucr. 6.389–391) 54 constituit – conuexo – clausam (verg. aen. 1.309–311) 98 marina salvador-gimeno … fructus, | … … refers, | … … fero | … … frondes | … (ovid. met. 2.285–288) another case worth mentioning is that of catullus’s 52nd poem, where the ante-caesura alliteration is developed in the four lines of the poem, thus giving cohesion to the whole composition. quid est, catulle? | quid moraris emori? sella in curuli | struma nonius sedet, per consultaum | peierat vatinius: quid est, catulle? | quid moraris emori? (catull. 52.1–4)55 … pertulerat | … … placidam | … … pepulit | ... … precibus | … (claud. 22.47–50)56 … seni | … … sinus. | … … subit; | … (claud. 5.67–69) … patitur | ... … paruis | … … perfugio | … … penetrent | … (rut. nam. 1.218–221) 55 this poem is characterised by its cohesion, not only vertical but also horizonal, through phonic repetitions that link the hemistichs in each line: anaphora in lines 1 and 4 (quid… || quid…) and alliteration in line 2 (sella… | struma… sedet), v.3 (per… | peierat…). 56 cf. alte – ascendit – aestus (claud. rapt. pros. 3.382–384); ausonidum – alta – argolicas (claud. 26.627–629); patrare – pueros – poenis (claud. 15.274–276); admoto – accensam – apices (claud. 20.348–350); patriae – patris – duplicat (claud. 28.118–120); pretium – populo – praesens (claud. 28.610–612); plausus – repeto – placidus (claud. 23.17–19); fuit – flammas – foedus (claud. 26.74–76); conubium – choros – cinguntur (claud. 29.27–29). 99alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature … primo | … … publicolas | … … praefecti | … (rut. nam. 1.271–273) 57 4.2. post-caesura alliteration post-caesura alliteration takes place between terms in adjacent lines, located immediately after the metric pause: … | cunctis … … | cogatur …, … | clinamen … … | certa … (lucr. 2.290–293)58 … | multi … … | manet … … | mature … … | minus … (catull. 61.53–56)59 … | succedimus … … | sparsit... … | solus... (verg. ecl. 5.6–8) … | fixus … … | fidus … … | efficiet … … | furtim … (tibul. 1.62–65) … | maesta …. … | matris … … | maereat … … | manes … (tibul. 3.2.12–15) 57 cf. complexus – patriae – protulerat (rut. nam. 1.509–511). 58 cf. naturam – nequeunt – nulla (lucr. 1.606–608); summis – subitamque – species (lucr. 2.362–364); possint – plagis – penitus (lucr. 1.527–529); certa – crescentia – certa (lucr. 2.708– 710); magnis – magnum – malos (lucr. 2.552–554); pariter – pariterque – pueri (lucr. 3.445–447) 59 cf. proponis – perpetuumque – promittere (catull. 109) 100 marina salvador-gimeno … | variant … … | vertitur … … | verbo … (prop. 2.5.11–13) … | primae … … | plenus … … | caeninum … … | cuspide … … | caenina … (prop. 4.10.59) … | comitem … … | circumdata … … | cythno gyaroque (ovid. met. 5.250–252)60 … | pisaea … … | praemia … … | positos … … | principis … (ovid. trist. 4.10.95–98) … | non … … | nimium … … | nomen … … | nasonem nouit … … | adnumerare … (ovid. trist. 2.1.116–120) … | perhibent … | porrectus … | populos (claud. 28.286–288)61 60 the sequence cythno gyaroque instead of the sequence gyaro cythnoque, the same as the first from the metric point of view, is probably due to the author’s alliterative wish, as the term cythno after the caesura allows a vertical correspondence between words that start with the same sounds: cythno, comitem and circumdata. cf. praebat – reparabat – pendebat (ovid. met. 1.10–12). 61 there is also alliteration after the caesura in claudian: nullo – nimbos – nunc (claud. rapt. pros.1.161–163); diuas – delos – duces (claud. 24.255–257); patris – pignora – pridem (claud. 13.6–8); libera – ludite – ludite (claud. 14.32–34); patris – pignora – pridem (claud. min.1.7–9) 101alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature 4.3. combination of anteand post-caesura there are also fragments in which the two forms of vertical alliteration are included inside the same line. they may be simultaneous, as in … placida | compostus… … progenies, | caeli… (ver. aen. 1.249–250) … tuis | conduntur… … totos | celsa… (rut. nam. 1.101–102) or successive: … musam | ... … magni | … … | legis … … | liceat … … | totum … … | tua … … | tibi … (verg. ecl. 8.5–11) … | comprensa... … | consistere … … comprendunt | … … coniungendo | … (lucr. 6.454–457) … | studium sub … … | sollicitare solet.. … | stellantis … … summi | … … somnus, | … (claud. 28.11–15) 102 marina salvador-gimeno 5. conclusion two types of alliteration can be distinguished in latin poetry: horizontal alliteration, meaning a sequence of words starting with the same sounds, distributed in the line and giving rise to diverse rhythmic structures (in sequence, parallel, chiastic and mixed); and vertical alliteration, formed by words starting with the same sounds, located at the start, middle or clausula of two or more successive lines. when the alliteration is in the middle of two or more successive lines, specifically in the position immediately before or after the metric pause, we call this the ante-/post-caesura alliteration, as represented frequently in poets such as lucretius, catullus, virgil, tibullus, propertius and ovid. the important role of the caesura in the positioning of alliterative words should not be forgotten, as they are frequently located around it, constituting an element of cohesion and demarcation of successive hemistichs (horizontal limitation) and lines (vertical alliteration).62 references adams, james n.; mayer, roland g. (eds.) 1999. aspects of the language of latin poetry. new york: oxford university press. álvarez pedrosa, juan antonio 1994. la aliteración como recurso poético en las lenguas indoeuropeas. in: cfc(g) 4, 189–204. aquien, michèle 1993. dictionnaire de poétique. paris: librairie générale française. arbusow, leonid 1974. die rhetorischen figuren in antike und ma. (schemata. figurae). in: colores rhetorici: eine auswahl rhetorischer figuren und gemeinplätze als hilfsmittel für akademische übungen an mittelalterlichen texten. genova: slatkine reprints, 35–82. auger, peter 2010. the anthem dictionary of literary terms and theory. london: anthem press. azaustre, antonio; casas, juan 1997. manual de retórica española. barcelona: ariel letras. 62 this work is part of the research project ‘poetas romanos en españa’ (roman poets in spain) (ref.: pid2019-106844gb-i00) financed by the ministry of science and innovation. i would like to express my thanks to the supervisors of my doctoral thesis, vicente cristóbal lópez and juan luis arcaz pozo for their revisions and helpful comments. 103alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature bailey, cyril 1947. titi lucreti cari. de rerum natura libri sex. oxford: the clarendon press. barchiesi, marino 1962. nevio epico: storia interpretazione edizione critica dei frammenti del primo epos latino. padova: cedam. bartalucci, aldo 1968. la sperimentazione enniana dell’esametro e la tecnica del saturnio. in: sco 17, 99–122. baske, johannes arthur 1884. de alliterationis usu plautino particula prior. regimonti prussorum: typis kiewningianis. beccaria, gian luigi 1996. dizionario di linguistica e di filologia, metrica, retorica. torino: giulio einaudi editore. belardi, walter 1962. dizionario di fonologia. roma: edizioni dell’ateneo. berger, ernst 1939 [1913]. stylistique latine. paris: librairie c. klincksieck. boetticher, carolus 1884. de alliterationis apud romanos ui et usu. berlin: apud meyerum et muellerum. brouwers, johannes hubertus 1973. allitération, anaphore et chiasme chez perse. in: mnemosyne 26.3, 249–264. https://doi.org/10.1163/156852573x00774 bussolino, claudia 2006. glossario di retorica, metrica e narratologia. milano: alpha test. calvo martínez, josé luis 2011. los balbuceos del tirano. la aliteración en el agón edipo-tiresias (edipo rey vv. 300–462). in: pérez jiménez, aurelio; calero secall, inés (eds.), δώρον μνημοσύνης. miscelánea de estudios ofrecidos a mª ángeles durán lópez. zaragoza: libros pórtico, 103–114. canton, mario 2020. figure retoriche e affini della lingua italiana. in: https://books. google.es/books?id=4fceeaaaqbaj&printsec (accessed april 23, 2020). capecchi, elzeario 1969. l’allitterazione nelle heroides ovidiane. in: sifc 41, 95–127. ceccarelli, lucio 1986. l’allitterazione a vocale interposta variabile in virgilio. l’aquilaroma: japadre editore. clarke, william mitchel 1976. intentional rhyme in vergil and ovid. in: tapha 103, 49–72. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935966 coleman, robert 1999. poetic diction, poetic discourse and the poetic register. in: adams, james n.; mayer, roland g. (eds.), aspects of the language of latin poetry. new york: oxford university press, 21–93. https://books.google.es/books?id=4fceeaaaqbaj&printsec https://books.google.es/books?id=4fceeaaaqbaj&printsec 104 marina salvador-gimeno cordier, andré 1939. l’allitération latine. le procédé dans l’énéide de virgile. paris: libraire philosophique j. vrin. criado, ninfa 2002. sobre el concepto de aliteración. in: lexis 26, 509–519. cuddon, john anthony 2001. diccionario de teoría y crítica literarias a|l. buenos aires: editorial docencia agüero. defradas, jean 1958. le rôle de l’allitération dans la poésie grecque. in: rea 60, 36–49. https://doi.org/10.3406/rea.1958.3578 deutsch, rosamund e. 1939. the pattern of sound in lucretius. bryn mawr: literary licensing. dubois, jean et al. 2014. dictionnaire de linguistique. paris: larousse. dupriez, bernard marie 1991. a dictionary of literary devices, trad. albert w. halsall. toronto and buffalo: university of toronto press. evans, walter jenkin 1921. adlitteratio latina. london: williams and norgate. facchini tosi, claudia 2000. euphonia. studi di fonostilistica (virgilio orazio apuleio). bologna: pàtron editore. ferrarino, pietro 1938. l’allitterazione. in: raib 4, 93–168. glover, dennis 2010. common figures and terms. in: the art of great speeches. cambridge: cambridge university press, 243–247. https://doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9781139151412.014 greenberg, nathan a. 1980. aspects of alliteration: a statistical study. in: latomus 39, 585–611. grilli, alberto 1962. studi enniani. brescia: paideia. guggenheimer, eva h. 1970. acoustic symmetry in catullus. in: dialectica 24, 1–3, 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-8361.1970.tb01212.x herescu, niculae i. 1960. la poésie latine: étude des structures phoniques. paris: belles lettres. hernández vista, eugenio 1968. la aliteración en virgilio: una definición estilística. in: actas del iii congreso español de estudios clásicos ii. madrid: seec. hofmann, johann baptist; szantyr, anton 1965. lateinische syntax und stilistik. münchen: c. h. beck. klotz, richard 1876. zur allitteration und symmetrie bei titus maccius plautus, insbesondere im ersten akt des miles gloriosus. zittau: druck von r. menzel. 105alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature kvičala, jan 1881. neue beitraege zur erklaerung der aeneis nebst mehreren excursen und abhandlungen. india: classic reprints. la penna, antonio 1990. l’allitterazione dell’esilio in latino. in: rfic 118, 64–72. lázaro carreter, fernando 1962. diccionario de términos filológicos. madrid: gredos. lesiak, katarzyna 2007. estetyka dźwięku, czyli instrumentacja dźwiękowa oraz jej praktyczna realizacja w poezji epickiej mistrzów łacińskiego heksametru: lukrecjusza, wergiliusza i owidiusza [doctoral thesis]. katowice: university of silesia. loch, eduardus 1865. de usu allitterationis apud poetas latinos. diss. halis saxonum. loikala sturani, paula 1980. il principio dell’allitterazione nell’antica poesia germanica en el folklore finlandese. ricerche tipologiche. bologna: clueb. mahoney, anne 2001. alliteration in saturnian verse. in: new england classical journal 28, 78–82. marchese, angelo; forradellas, joaquín 2013. diccionario de retórica, crítica y terminología literaria. barcelona: ariel. margolin, jean-claude 1992. alliteration. in: ueding, gert (ed.), historisches wörterbuch der rhetorik. tübingen: max niemeyer verlag, 406–413. marouzeau, jules 1935. traité de stylistique latine. paris: les belles–lettres. martínez conesa, josé antonio 1972. figuras estilísticas aplicadas al griego y al latín. manual práctico para el comentario de textos literarios. valencia: editorial bello. mounin, georges 1974. dictionnaire de la linguistique. paris: presses universitaires de france. naeke, august ferdinand 1829. de alliteration sermonis latini. in: rhm 3, 324–418. oniga, renato 1994. l’allitterazione in plauto e terenzio: un esperimento di analisi quantitativa. in: lexis 12, 117–134. opelt, iliona 1958. alliteration im griechischen? in: glotta 37, 205–232. palacios martín, ángela 1983. consideraciones acerca de la enclítica -que en metamorfosis de ovidio. in: anuario de estudios filológicos 6, 171–190. peck, tracy 1884. alliteration in latin. in: tapha 15, 58–65. https://doi. org/10.2307/2935800 platas tasende, ana maría 2000. diccionario de términos literarios. madrid: espasa. 106 marina salvador-gimeno preminger, alex; brogan, terry v. f. (eds.). 1993. the new princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. princeton: princeton university press raffaelli, renato 1982. segmenti ritmici e figure foniche in plauto e terenzio. in: ricerche sui versi lunghi di plauto e di terenzio (metriche, stilistiche, codicologiche). pisa: giardini editori e stampatori, 105–159. rasi, pietro 1889. osservazioni sull’uso dell’allitterazione nella lingua latina. in: aapat 5, 121–157. rasi, pietro 1921. de alliteratione, quae in prouerbiis et sententiis uel locutionibus latinis popularibus obuia fit. in: miscellanea di studi critici in onore di ettore stampini, torino, genova: s. lattes, 177–191. ronconi, alessandro 1939. allitterazione e ritmo. in: studi italiani di filologia classica 15, 297–321. ronconi, alessandro 1971. interpretazioni grammaticali. roma: edizioni dell’ateneo. schlossarek, maximilian 1911. die sprache des terenz unter hauptsächlicher berücksichtigung ihres rhetorischen elements. in: festschrift zur jahrhundertfeier der universität breslau am 2. august 1911. herausgegeben vom schlesischen philologenverein. breslavia: trewendt und granier, 275–299. schneider, ignaz 1897. de allitterationis apud t. lucretium carum usu ac ui. bamberg: bamberger neueste nachrichten̈. silk, michael s. 1974. aural interaction. in: interaction in poetic imagery with special reference to early greek poetry. london: cambridge university press, 173–193. snyder, jane mcintosh 1980. puns and poetry in lucretius’ de rerum natura. amsterdam: b. r. grüner. spang, kurt 1979. fundamentos de retórica. pamplona: eunsa. stoll, elmer edgar 1940. poetic alliteration. in: modern language notes, 55, 388–390. https://doi.org/10.2307/2910998 traglia, antonio (ed.) 1986. poeti latini arcaici: livio andronico, nevio, ennio. torino: unione tipografico-editrice torinese. valesio, paolo 1967. strutture dell’allitterazione. grammatica, retorica e folklore verbal. bologna: zanichelli. volkmann, richard 1872. die rhetorik der griechen und römer in systematischer übersicht. berlin: ebeling & plahn. 107alliteration as a rhythmic device in latin literature wales, katie 2014. a dictionary of stylistics. london and new york: taylor & francis. wölfflin, eduard 1881. die allitterierende verbindungen der lateinischen sprache. münchen: g. franz’schen buchund kunsthandlung. ziwsa, karl 1879. i. die figuren der alliteration, annominatio, conduplication, reuocatio. in: die eurhythmische technik des catullus. wien: verlag von carl konegen, 1–29. morris halle (1923–2018) paul kiparsky*1 in 1940 morris halle, 17 years old, managed to emigrate in the nick of time with his parents from his native latvia to the united states. after two years of engineering study in city college, new york, he was drafted into the u.s. army and sent to europe, where he ended up participating in the liberation of paris. discharged in 1946, he began to study slavic and general linguistics, first at the university of chicago, and then at columbia university with roman jakobson, whom he followed to harvard in 1949. in 1951 he was hired at mit to teach russian and german in the department of modern languages, and to work on phonetics in the research laboratory of electronics (rle), the peacetime incarnation of the radiation laboratory where much of the early work on radar had been done. shabbily housed in the legendary building 20, where it would later be joined by the linguistics department, rle was a rich intellectual environment that reflected the scientific ferment of the postwar era, with electrical engineers, mathematicians, biologists, psychologists, as well as researchers on language engaged in a variety of projects on machine translation, acoustics, and speech communication. during this decade halle steadily built up mit’s linguistics course repertoire and piloted it into a full-fledged ph.d. program, adroitly maneuvering in mit’s intricate archipelago of departments and research laboratories. in 1953 he introduced a graduate course on “hearing, speech and language” co-taught with walter rosenblith, a specialist in the electrophysiology of hearing, which was offered jointly by the electrical engineering department and the modern language department. his key move was to get noam chomsky hired in 1955, who offered two undergraduate courses in general linguistics a year, in addition to teaching french and german and working in the machine translation group at rle. halle himself began teaching a regular phonology course in 1957. in a style that was to become a hallmark of the department’s curriculum, they integrated their courses with their research as far as possible, presenting their work and inviting students to actively engage with it. out of these courses came seminal publications such as chomsky (1957) and halle (1954, 1957, 1959). * author’s address: paul kiparsky, anne t. and robert m. bass professor in the school of humanities and sciences, office: 420-024, margaret jacks hall, building 460 rm. 127, stanford, ca 94305-2150, usa. e-mail: kiparsky@stanford.edu. studia metrica et poetica 5.2, 2018, 113–124 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.06 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.06 114 paul kiparsky halle’s next masterstroke was getting roman jakobson appointed in 1960 as institute professor to lecture annually on his current research. the topic varied from year to year, and in some years it was metrics and poetics. when the ph.d. program was officially inaugurated in 1961, halle recruited additional linguists from rle’s machine translation project to complete its original faculty, among them g. h. matthews and edward klima.1 halle served as the program’s director and would remain its guiding spirit long after he handed the reins to s. j. keyser in 1977, when the program joined with philosophy into a department. he was a brilliant administrator, and a fortunate one in two respects. academic governance in those days was unimaginably light by present standards. matters that would now require dossiers of paperwork wending their way through a bureaucratic maze could sometimes be settled by halle with a phone call to rosenblith (who had meanwhile become provost of mit). the other lucky break was that in the fifties the government had begun to allocate sufficient support for basic research, often presented as having immediate practical applications and funded via the armed forces, in order to foil demagogic politicians out to cut taxes. halle was able to support the entire linguistics program on successive blanket five-year grants from these sources.2 as a result the program grew rapidly. by 1962 there were already 16 graduate students enrolled, a diverse group recruited largely by word of mouth. that year, in another inspired coup, halle organized the 9th international congress of linguists at mit, featuring chomsky among the plenary speakers. no-one who saw chomsky calmly dominate such luminaries as benveniste and kuryłowicz in a dramatic debate on the foundations of linguistics could miss that they were witnessing a turning point in the field. within a few years halle and chomsky had built the top linguistics program in the world, with an unmatched record of research and teaching that continues to this day. a world-class pedagogue, halle structured graduate study as an apprenticeship – then a radical break with tradition, now emulated throughout the field. students get offices, and are on their way to independent research within a year of enrolling, always working closely with the instructors – not only with 1 for halle’s early years in the program see harris, harris 1974 and halle 2011. 2 when one of my first articles, on a point of classical greek phonology, was published in a german learned journal, i had to ask its incredulous editor to have a large number of extra reprints made for the various sponsoring branches of the armed forces (400 of them, if memory serves, which for all i know was more than the entire circulation of the journal). they were duly delivered to them, and politely returned with the note that no further documentation of my research would be required. 115morris halle (1923–2018) their formal advisers but in principle with the entire faculty. the faculty might be assigned to qualifying committees regardless of their area of specialization. everyone is encouraged to be present on a regular basis, to attend the colloquia, to sit in on courses, and to be generally accessible. faculty cannot live in another city and fly in once a week for their classes, students cannot disappear and then show up one day with a thesis to defend. the sustained mutual interaction of students and faculty fostered in this way builds an esprit de corps that sees students through the rigors of graduate study. in such an environment students learn at least as much from each other as they do in their coursework. in halle’s words, learning happens best “in conversation between people who [are] interested in the problems” (halle 2011). harder to replicate is halle’s ability to develop a personal relationship with each student and engage them in the personality-appropriate way. he would patrol the corridors and drop in on the students’ offices, dispensing solace, cheer, insights, admonishment, and blunt reprimands as needed. his gruffness could be off-putting if you didn’t understand the respect and deep humanity it came from. many times a student in trouble was helped by his personal kindnesses. from the shrinking violet to the oversized ego, from the “smartest boy in pinsk” to the truly exceptional individual, all did their best under his astute tutelage. he took pride in his ability to manage the occasional problem student – even in one extreme case a violent psychopath who later self-destructed. only rarely did he have to resort to the ultima ratio of a consilium abeundi (one of his favorite latin expressions, uttered with a chortle). he turned his students not only into productive contributors to the field but into better and wiser persons. halle’s own research has transformed linguistics in many ways. it is the outcome of several concurrent lifetime projects, initiated at different times in his career but never terminated. the first of them concerned the theory of the binary distinctive features that according to jakobson (1938, 1942) underlay the phonemic contrasts of the world’s languages. jakobson had given some good phonological evidence for them, but their phonetic definitions remained sketchy, and they had therefore not yet been widely accepted at the time. advances in electrical engineering and information science during the war had made new speech technology available, including the sound spectrograph, and provided the new mathematical framework of information theory. they fueled a boom in research on acoustics, of which mit’s rle became an important center, with notable figures such as leo beranek. halle exploited the new tools to solidify the phonetic foundations of the features, in collaboration with several engineers and phoneticians, notably george hughes, kenneth stevens, and gunnar fant. the results were presented in the classic 116 paul kiparsky preliminaries to speech analysis (jakobson, fant, and halle 1952), followed by the information-theoretically oriented cherry, halle and jakobson (1953), the less technical fundamentals of language (jakobson and halle 1956), halle and hughes (1956), halle, hughes, and radley (1957), and halle’s the sound pattern of russian (1959). soon the quantal theory of halle’s rle collaborator kenneth stevens would provide independent articulatory phonetic support for the distinctive features by showing that they correspond to particularly stable configurations of the vocal tract, at which small displacements of the articulators have little effect on the sounds produced, making consistent speech production possible.3 with feature theory on a more solid footing, halle updated it in the following decades with a series of revisions and extensions in response to a flood of new descriptive and theoretical work that he himself had done much to stimulate. in chomsky and halle (1968) he added the feature [coronal], which together with high and back replaces jakobson’s [compact/diffuse] and [grave/ acute], and separate features for lip rounding and pharyngealization to replace jakobson’s [flat]. later he added a pair of antagonistic features which define tongue root position (halle, stevens 1969), laryngeal features which characterize voicing, aspiration, and pitch (stevens, halle 1971), and features for clicks (halle, vaux, wolfe 2000). he also weighed in on the neuro-anatomy of the speech mechanism, to the point of associating the feature values with specific muscular gestures in the vocal tract (halle 1983), and on the grouping of features into hierarchically organized bundles that can function as units in phonological rules (feature geometry, halle 1995). in five decades halle had shaped feature theory into a form that since then has been widely adopted in phonetics and phonology and hardly even seriously challenged. if this was an area in which he carried jakobson’s earlier brilliant initiatives to a successful conclusion, his other work was a series of his own brilliant initiatives, usually in collaboration with colleagues or former students, in which a somnolent field would be rudely kicked awake with wellreasoned unorthodoxies, usually too radical to gain universal assent. the first of these was phonological theory. in his earliest writings halle still inhabited jakobson’s structuralist world, where phonology was a system of contrastive segments bi-uniquely related to phonetics, which was strictly separated from morphophonology (halle 1951, 1953). through discussions with chomsky he came to see phonology in a different way: as a component 3 halle and murray eden also applied the idea of feature decomposition to cursive handwriting (eden, halle 1961). 117morris halle (1923–2018) of generative grammar that maps an input representation containing only phonological information to an output representation by a system of unidirectional ordered rules, subject to its own principles of locality and interfacing with other components including syntax. the inaugural presentation of this new conception was chomsky, halle, and lukoff (1956), which showed that the stress patterns of english sentences can be predicted from syntactic structure. halle (1961, 1962) went on to argue that phonological descriptions are governed by the principle of simplicity, that this principle requires that phonological rules be formulated in terms of features, and that the rules apply in a strict order, in at least some cases cyclically from the innermost constituents outward. he further demonstrated that under these assumptions the phonemic level, in the sense of a representation of purely contrastive information, can only be derived at the cost of redundancy and loss of generalizations. from this he drew the conclusion that such a level is merely an artifact of structuralist methodology, and that the only significant levels in phonology are underlying representations and output (phonetic) representations. halle’s formal argument was incontrovertible, and yet its conclusion was understandably controversial, since the phoneme seemed a useful intermediate level of abstraction for many purposes, including historical linguistics and the study of poetic form.4 the summation of this phase was chomsky’s and halle’s sound pattern of english (1968). it is a remarkable work for several reasons, each of which reflects a facet of halle’s scientific principles and personality: for the care with which it lays out and motivates the formal principles of the theory, for the depth, detail, and insight of its treatment of english phonology, synchronic as well as historical, and for the self-critical final chapter that draws attention to a fundamental shortcoming of the theory and puts forward a solution for it (which unfortunately turned out to be stillborn). halle would often return to aspects of english phonology (halle, mohanan 1985, halle, kenstowicz 1991, halle 1997), and justifiably demand that alternative theoretical proposals should be as explicit and deal with the complexities of english as successfully as spe does. halle was just as ready to criticize, modify and even abandon his own ideas as those of others. the ability to backtrack quickly out of a dead end was in fact one of the keys to his productivity and creativity as a scholar. but in retrospect it seems that he sometimes gave up too soon. the idea of contrastive feature 4 stratal ot provides a resolution to this contradiction. the output of the lexical phonology is actually a better characterization of the relevant level than structuralist phonemic representations are (kiparsky 2018). 118 paul kiparsky hierarchies, which is prominent in halle 1959, is absent in his subsequent work, and indeed largely missing in the phonological literature of the next forty years. dresher (2009, 2018) has now revived it and made a good case for its relevance to understanding sound change. a more poignant example is halle’s disavowal of probabilistic and information-theoretic approaches, in which he had invested a great deal of effort, as having been a waste of time (halle 1975). yet this too has begun to flourish again in the last decade, with intriguing results (e. g. cohen priva 2017). like rivers, scientific ideas grow when new tributaries join them, but they can also dwindle or even go underground, to resurface as the terrain or climate changes. halle never swerved from the rule-based proceduralism of spe, and had no use for optimality theory, which took phonology by storm in the nineties. he complained that ot proponents had only addressed the cases that yield easily to constraint-based analyses, and that the theory could not deal with the hard cases (halle 2003: 10–13). this is the objection that every new theory has faced, including generative phonology itself. theoretical innovations in ot, such base/output constraints and paradigm uniformity constraints on the one hand, and stratal ot on the other, have taken much of the sting out of this objection. trickier were the conceptual objections that halle raised in collaboration with sylvain bromberger, which to my knowledge have not been explicitly addressed. halle and bromberger claimed that rule ordering in phonology (and its absence in syntax) is justified by an intrinsic asymmetry in phonological derivations which is absent in syntax: underlying representations are intrinsically prior to surface phonological representations because they are stored in memory, whereas surface phonological representations are generated in the course of a derivation (bromberger, halle 1989). the response to this argument would be that the asymmetry does not entail rule ordering, for it is equally compatible with constraint based formalisms such as ot. a second conceptual argument was based on the premise defended in bromberger, halle (1995) that phonological theory is not about abstract types, but about concrete intentional events and states that occur in the world, and enter into causal relations. building on this claim, they then submit that derivational phonology provides a more plausible account of those speech events than ot does (bromberger, halle 1997). the counter-argument would be that the objection depends on construing phonology as a performance model, which bromberger and halle are careful not to do. speech production and perception cannot really adjudicate between theories of phonology without an explicit account of how these theories are involved in the use of language. after the completion of spe it was a natural step to put the new theory to a test in other domains. this led halle to investigate, in collaboration with 119morris halle (1923–2018) s. j. keyser, the role of stress in metrical verse. they laid out a conception of meter as a matching between a simple abstract template (such as an alternating sequence of strong and weak positions) related to linguistic representations by correspondence conditions – in the case of english, the stress maximum principle (halle, keyser 1968, 1971). their purely constraint-based approach to the correspondence between metrical pattern and text can be seen as a precursor of developments such as autosegmental phonology, and even of the correspondence theory that later grew out of optimality theory. in his subsequent work on meter halle switched to a mixed theory that conceived meter as a set of parsing operations, but still governed by constraints. the basis of halle’s new theory of poetic meter was the bracketed grid approach to stress that he had developed with vergnaud and idsardi (halle, vergnaud 1987, halle, idsardi 1995). as representations of metrical structure, bracketed grids are equivalent to labeled trees. but by reifying the brackets and grid columns as elements that can be inserted, deleted, and moved they opened up a formal pandora’s toolbox that can do much more than the classical metrical theory of stress. this was the toolbox that was exploited in his work with fabb (2008). they recast meter as a bottom-up directional parsing procedure that constructs bracketed grids in satisfaction of certain well-formedness conditions. critics noted that in spite of its richness, this theory of meter shares with the phonological stress theory that it is based on an inability to account for top-down effects. these are in principle unproblematic for constraintbased approaches, which can deal with them by ranking constraints on higher domains ahead of constraints on lower levels to construct an optimal parse. the book’s boldest theoretical claim is that rhythm is not a constitutive property of meter, but an epiphenomenon that arises in performance as a side-effect of counting syllables or other prosodic units. this view seems at odds with the formalism of bracketed grids itself, which is designed precisely to represent rhythm as periodic alternation of prominence at a hierarchy of levels. it is also at odds with the simple observation that meter always constrains prominencedefining categories such as stress and weight, and with the intimate connections between poetic meter and musical rhythm. the lasting value of the book is to bring a large variety of metrical systems from world literature into the theoretical discourse by working out precise and detailed formal analyses of them. a second domain in which the theory of stress begged to be tested is historical change. earlier stages of english yielded some intriguing results (halle, keyser 1971), but the real challenge was the movable stress of languages like russian and the similarly behaving pitch accent of greek and sanskrit. simply listing the paradigms seemed a rather unenlightening type of analysis, but the 120 paul kiparsky tools of spe did not offer a better one. during one of halle’s sabbatical years he and i met regularly in his study in widener library to tackle this problem. we arrived at a compositional approach which derives the accent of words from the lexically specified accentual features of their constituent morphemes (halle, kiparsky 1979, 1981, kiparsky, halle 1977, halle 1997d, 2001). a default rule (the basic accentuation principle) erases all accents but the leftmost one, and assigns an accent to the left edge of an unaccented domain. our proposal has only recently begun to gain some traction among indo-europeanists. morphology is an area that halle launched twice, each time to great effect. in an early essay (halle 1973) he raised the problem of gaps in the lexicon – semantically, syntactically, and phonologically possible words which are not actual words, such as *derival and *arrivation. he advocated an overgenerating morphology in which the missing items are generated by word formation rules, but marked as not being subject to lexical insertion, and therefore unavailable to actual use. by highlighting issues of productivity, compositionality, and the treatment of lexical exceptions, the study inspired much of the early work on morphology in generative grammar. halle returned to morphology in joint work with marantz to set forth a new theory, distributed morphology (dm), which is realizational but morpheme-based. it holds that all words are built from roots and affixes. roots are unspecified for lexical category, and become nouns, verbs, or adjectives in virtue of being complements of a functional head v, n, or a, which may be either null, or realized by a derivational affix such as -ize and -ion. dm posits a rich apparatus of morphological rules, such as fission, fusion, impoverishment, and metathesis. there is no “lexicon”; the phonological and morphological content of morphemes is stored in different modules. dm has been enormously successful and is now by far the dominant approach to morphology among syntacticians, even among adherents of minimalism. but the debate continues, for important properties of morphology that come free out of the box in lexicalist approaches, notably locality, inward dependency, cyclicity, and the mirror principle, must be stipulated by extrinsic constraints on derivations in dm. morris halle was the most pāṇinian of linguists in his ability to detect patterns in language, in his methodological commitment to an exhaustive accounting of the data, and in taking seriously the theoretical formalism and the principle of simplicity. in recognition of his achievements halle was awarded an endowed chair at mit in 1976, and a lifetime institute professorship in 1981. he was elected president of the linguistic society of america in 1974, and received honorary doctorates from brandeis university and the university of chicago, as well 121morris halle (1923–2018) as several prestigious scientific prizes. his students expressed their admiration, affection, and gratitude by editing and contributing to three festschrifts dedicated to him (1973, 1984, 2013). on april 2, 2018, morris halle died of heart failure, in peace and surrounded by his sons david, john and tim, and their children. references bromberger, sylvain; halle, morris 1989. why phonology is different. in: linguistic inquiry 20(1), 51−70. bromberger, sylvain; halle, morris 1995. the ontology of phonology. in: studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics 134, 725−743. cherry, e. colin; halle, morris; jakobson, roman 1953. toward the logical description of languages in their phonemic aspect. in: language 29(1), 34−46. chomsky, noam; halle, morris; lukoff, fred 1956. on accent and juncture in english. in: halle, morris; lunt, horace; mclean, hugh; schooneveld, cornelis van (eds.), for roman jakobson: essays on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. the hague: mouton, 65−80. cohen priva, uriel 2017. informativity and the actuation of lenition. in: language 93(3), 569–597. dresher, b. elan 2009. the contrastive hierarchy in phonology. cambridge: cambridge university press. dresher, b. elan 2018. contrastive feature hierarchies in old english diachronic phonology. in: transactions of the philological society 116(1), 1–29. eden, murray; halle, morris 1961. the characterization of cursive handwriting. in: cherry, colin (ed.), information theory: fourth london symposium. london: butterworth’s, 187–299. halle, morris 1951. the old church slavonic conjugation. in: word 7(2), 155–167. halle, morris 1953. the german conjugation. in: word 9(1), 45–53. halle, morris 1954. why and how do we study the sounds of speech? in: mueller, hugo  j. (ed.), report of the fifth annual round table meeting on linguistics and language teaching (georgetown university monographs on languages and linguistics 7). wahington, d. c.: georgetown university press, 73–83. 122 paul kiparsky halle, morris 1957. in defense of the number two. in: pulgram, ernst (ed.), studies presented to joshua whatmough on his sixtieth birthday. ’s-gravenhage: mouton, 65–72. halle, morris 1959. questions of linguistics. in: il nuovo cimento. serie x. supplemento 13(2), 494–517. halle, morris 1961. on the role of simplicity in linguistic descriptions. in: jakobson, roman (ed.), structure of language and its mathematical aspects: proceedings of the twelfth symposium in applied mathematics. held in new york city, april 14–15, 1960 (proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics 12). providence, rhode island: american mathematical society, 89–94. halle, morris 1962. phonology in generative grammar. in: word 18, 54–72. halle, morris 1973. prolegomena to a theory of word formation. in: linguistic inquiry 4(1), 3–16. halle, morris 1975. confessio grammatici. in: language 51(3), 525–535. halle, morris 1983. on distinctive features and their articulatory implementation. in: natural language and linguistic theory 1(1), 91–105. halle, morris 1995. feature geometry and feature spreading. in: linguistic inquiry 26(1), 1–46. halle, morris 1997a. metrical verse in the psalms. in: meij, dick van der (ed.), india and beyond: aspects of literature, meaning, ritual and thought. essays in honor of frits staal. leiden: international institute for asian studies, london: kegan paul international, 207–225. halle, morris 1997b. the stress of english words 1968–1998. in: linguistic inquiry 29(4), 539–568. halle, morris 1997c. distributed morphology: impoverishment and fission. in: bruening, benjamin; kang, yoonjung; mcginnis, martha (eds.), pf: papers at the interface (mit working papers in linguistics 30), 425–449. halle, morris 1997d. on stress and accent in indo-european. in: language 73(2), 275–313. halle, morris 2001. on accent, stress and quantity in west slavic. in: lingua 111(11), 791–810. halle, morris 2002. from memory to speech and back: papers on phonetics and phonology 1954–2002. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 123morris halle (1923–2018) halle, morris 2011. 50 years of linguistics at mit, lecture 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8g0a8qr61s halle, morris; bromberger, sylvain 1997d. the content of the phonological sign: a comparison between their use in derivational theories and optimality theories. in: roca, iggy (ed.), derivations and constraints in phonology. oxford: clarendon press, 93–123. halle, morris; chomsky, noam 1968. the sound pattern of english. new york: harper and row. halle, morris; fabb, nigel 2008. meter in poetry. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. halle, morris; hughes, george w.; radley, jean-pierre a. 1957. acoustic properties of stop consonants. in: journal of the acoustical society of america 29(1), 107–116. halle, morris; idsardi, william j. 1995. general properties of stress and metrical structure. in: goldsmith, john. a. (ed.), the handbook of phonological theory. oxford: blackwell, 403–443. halle, morris; mohanan, karuvannur p. 1985. segmental phonology of modern english. in: linguistic inquiry 16(1), 57–116. halle, morris; kenstowicz, michael 1991. the free element condition and cyclic versus noncyclic stress. in: linguistic inquiry 22(3), 457–501. halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1966. chaucer and the study of prosody. in: college english 28(3), 187–219. halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1971. english stress: its form, its growth, and its role in verse. new york: harper and row. halle, morris; kiparsky, paul 1979. internal constituent structure and accent in russian words. in: scatton, ernest a.; steele, richard d.; gribble, charles e. (eds.), studies in honor of horace g. lunt. columbus, oh: slavica, 128–153. halle, morris; kiparsky, paul 1981. review of paul garde, histoire de l’accentuation slave (paris 1976). in: language 57(1), 150–181. halle, morris; marantz, alec 1993. distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. in: hale; kenneth; keyser, samuel jay (eds.), the view from building 20: essays in linguistics in honor of sylvain bromberger. cambridge, ma: mit press, 111–176. 124 paul kiparsky halle, morris; marantz, alec 1994. some key features of distributed morphology. in: carnie, a.; harley, h.; with bures, t. (eds.), papers on phonology and morphology (mit working papers in linguistics 21), 275–288. halle, morris; stevens, kenneth n. 1962. speech recognition: a model and a program for research. in: ire transactions on information theory 8(2), 155–159. halle, morris; stevens, kenneth n. 1969. on the feature “advanced tongue root”. in: mit rle quarterly progress report 94, 209–215. halle, morris; vaux, bert; wolfe, andrew 2000. on feature spreading and the representation of place of articulation. in: linguistic inquiry 31(3), 387–444. halle, morris; vergnaud, jean-roger 1987. an essay on stress (current studies in linguistics 15). cambridge, ma: mit press. harris, florence; harris, james 1974. the development of the linguistics program at the massachusetts institute of technology. http://ling50.mit.edu/harris-development hughes, george w.; halle, morris 1956. spectral properties of fricative consonants. in: journal of the acoustical society of america 28(2), 303–310. jakobson, roman; fant; gunnar; halle, morris 1952. preliminaries to speech analysis: the distinctive features and their correlates. cambridge, ma: acoustics laboratory, massachusetts institute of technology. jakobson, roman; halle, morris 1956. fundamentals of language. the hague: mouton. kiparsky, paul 2018. formal and empirical issues in phonological typology. in: hyman, larry; plank, frans (eds.), phonological typology. berlin: de gruyter mouton. kiparsky, paul; halle, morris 1977. towards a reconstruction of the indo-european accent. in: hyman, larry (ed.), studies in stress and accent (southern california occasional papers in linguistics 4). los angeles: university of southern california. department of linguistics, 209–238. stevens, kenneth n.; halle, morris 1971. a note on laryngeal features. in: mit rle quarterly progress report 101, 198–213. russian verse studies after gasparov vera polilova* abstract: this article discusses the most important results and materials presented at the verse studies section of gasparov lectures 2007–2019, an annual conference held in moscow every april since 2007 in memory of the prominent russian scholar mikhail l. gasparov (1935–2005). it aims to present the current state of affairs in russian verse studies, to sum up some of their recent achievements, to identify the main controversies that act as their growth points, and to highlight the most promising areas of current research into versification. keywords: russian verse studies, gasparov lectures 2007–2019, issues in verse study 1. introduction on april 13, 2020, the greatest russian verse scholar of the twentieth century, mikhail gasparov (1935–2005), would have turned 85. his colleagues – verse scholars, literary historians and classical philologists – planned to celebrate this date during the sessions of the gasparov lectures, a conference held every april since 2007 in memory of the eminent scholar. like most other public events around the world, gasparov lectures 2020 were cancelled due to the pandemic, along with their verse studies section, a central discussion forum for topical issues in russian verse studies in recent years.1 however, we can take advantage of this forced hiatus, to assess the progress made by russian verse studies in the 15 years since gasparov’s passing. the following survey is based on materials from the verse studies section of gasparov lectures 2007–2019 (see belousova 2009; golovastikov 2011a, 2011b, 2013; polilova, levashov 2013; polilova 2014; polilova, levashov 2016, 2017; polilova 2018; polilova 2019; polilova, skulacheva 2021). it aims to present the current state of affairs in russian verse studies, to sum up some of their recent achievements, to identify the main controversies that act as their growth points, and to highlight the most promising areas of research. some * author’s address: vera polilova, institute of world culture, lomonosov moscow state university, 1–51 leninskie gory, room 854, moscow 119991, russia. e-mail: vera.polilova@gmail.com. 1 after this article had already been completed, gasparov lectures 2020 were held in a scaleddown format between september 21 and 26. – editors’ note. studia metrica et poetica 8.1, 2021, 140–163 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.05 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.05 141russian verse studies after gasparov of the results presented and discussed here has already been published (in such cases, we provide the respective references). however, for various reasons, a substantial part of them has hitherto not taken shape in the form of books or individual articles. this is true of some of the most topical issues and hypotheses, discussions, critique, and debates that revolve around them. we will devote particular attention to this invisible side of the academic process. despite the variety of topics and approaches to verse studies presented at the meetings of the gasparov lectures that we will outline here, for most of their participants, the unifying research platform is represented by inductive statistics and probability-based analysis elaborated in the classical studies by andrei belyi, boris tomashevsky, sergei bobrov, kiril taranovsky, andrei kolmogorov, and mikhail gasparov himself. therefore, the object of analysis, the conceptual apparatus, and the methodology are common to scholars of different generations working with a variety of verse material. an important feature of this research tradition is its historiographical nature manifested in researchers’ attention to the works of the pioneers of verse studies and the theoretical and methodological principles formulated in these works (with varying degrees of accuracy). another characteristic trait of present-day russian verse theory is its constant striving for a systematization of its conceptual and terminological apparatus. it seems fair to say that russian verse studies develop cyclically, re-actualizing and problematizing their legacy at every stage. today, the entire conceptual baggage inherited from formalism and structuralism is subject to such re-actualization. this even applies to some research strategies that had been, it seemed, completely abandoned (for example, there has been a revival of interest in “tactometric theory”, see below). anticipating our conclusion, one can say that – thanks to the revision of everything that had been done – russian verse studies are gradually breaking out of a strategic impasse; the feeling of “all has been said and done” turned out to be erroneous. gasparov’s tetralogy (contemporary russian verse. metrics and rhythmics, 1974; an outline of the history of russian verse, 19841, 20002; russian verse in commentaries, 19871, 19932, 20013, and an outline of the history of european verse, 19891, 20032, translated into english as a history of european versification, 1996); see also italian, 1993, and czech editions, 2012), in the opinion of many scholars and general readers, has become a manifesto of the completeness of the edifice of russian verse studies. in 1995, at the opening of the slavic verse international conference in moscow, gasparov himself said something of the kind and urged verse scholars to “think of expanding the discipline’s field of vision, establishing a structural link between verse phenomena as such and those belonging to other levels within the structure of 142 vera polilova the poetic work, its phonetics, grammar, style, and semantics”, since “the traditional four areas of verse studies (metrics, rhythmics, rhyme, and stanzas) are already so well-developed, that new revolutions are not to be expected there any time soon”; therefore, “[our] research methodology has already been elaborated, and now it is but a matter of time and capable graduate students” (the talk was revised into an article gasparov 1996b: 5). this line of thinking was matched by gasparov’s own research strategy embodied by his books metre and meaning (1999) and articles on verse linguistics (2004; co-authored with tatiana skulacheva). not all researchers, however, were ready to agree with gasparov. in the introduction to his fundamental article “the european metrical fund of russian poetry of the 18th–20th centuries”, mihhail lotman argued: [...] the author [i.e. lotman] is far from assuming that the main problems of russian versification have already been solved [and that] all that remains is to clarify some details, examine (using a well-established methodology) the material that has not yet been examined, and resolve some secondary issues concerning theoretical aspects. it seems that the situation is almost entirely the opposite. (lotman 1995: 259) lotman was echoed by maksim shapir: there is no denying that the achievements of russian verse studies are indeed impressive, but the overwhelming majority of them are related to verse history (although here, too, there has recently been a tendency towards a radical revision of a whole series of ideas which until recently seemed unshakable [...]) [...] in the field of theory, the situation is much less favourable: with but a little exaggeration one can say that there still exists no theory of verse as a single scholarly discipline. (shapir 2000: 76) lotman and shapir proposed their own projects of a more general theory: lotman, using the optics of generative metrics (see for example 1995, 1998, 2000), and shapir (2000, 2015), developing the ideas of russian formalists and structuralists (yuri tynianov, maksim kenigsberg, and roman jakobson). shapir, who was among the most ardent partisans of quantitative verse studies, also wrote on the limitations of “exact” methods in verse theory (shapir 2005; english translation: 2019); the article sparked a debate, already after shapir’s death (see gladky 2007; pertsov 2009). it is with shapir’s name that the most remarkable controversies of the turn of the millennium are associated: e. g. regarding his hypothesis about the role 143russian verse studies after gasparov of empress elizabeth’s first name (elizavéta / elizavét) in the evolution of the rhythm of lomonosov’s iambus (i. e. involuntary and inevitable pyrrhic feet), and regarding his theoretical project (shapir 2000: 9–128, 131–160). lotman’s generative approach provoked neither direct objections nor direct support in the russian verse scholars’ community in the 1980s and 1990s, but was acknowledged by gasparov in his typology of versification systems presented in gasparov 1989 (1996a) and paved the way for the reception of the generative approach by russian verse scholars of the new generation. the mid-2000s became a sad milestone in the history of the russian verse studies. gasparov’s death was followed by the sudden and premature demise of maksim shapir (1962–2006), and, four years later, of marina krasnoperova (1940–2010), the creator of the theory of reconstructive simulation of versification. these losses significantly changed the academic landscape of russian verse studies. in 2010, the scholarly discipline in question, orphaned and leaderless, celebrated its centenary jubilee (since the publication of andrei belyi’s symbolism). at the 2010 international conference russian verse theory: centennial results and development prospects, organized in saint petersburg by the students of vladislav kholshevnikov (1910–2000),2 scholars demonstrated the traditionally high standards of individual research and, at the same time, noted the need to systematize the accumulated material, revise the existing conceptual apparatus and present the results of their research in a form accessible not only to domain experts, but also to linguists, literary scholars, as well as students (tverianovich 2011: 254). they also spoke of the need to create an academic history of russian verse, a project yet to be launched. no terminological systematization has been achieved so far, although various groups of researchers have begun to work in this direction (pilshchikov 2017a; english translation: pilshchikov 2021a). in recent years, independent verse scholars and a number of verse study groups have been active in russia, as well as several university seminars: 1) at saint petersburg university, led by elena khvorostianovа, a student of vladislav kholshevnikov (through their efforts, a two-volume metrical guide to the poems of several russian poets was published; see khvorostianovа 2008–2013), 2) at the russian state university for the humanities (which hosts several projects on the linguistics of verse), led by tatiana skulacheva, 3) at orenburg state university, led by svetlana matiash, and 2 see the conference proceedings (bogdanov, khvorostianovа 2010). 144 vera polilova 4) at the higher school of economics, led by evgenii kazartsev, a student of marina krasnoperova. there are also two informal associations: a group of colleagues and former students of maksim shapir (including the coterie of contributors to the journal philologica, 1994–2014) and vladimir plungian’s group who are developing the poetic subcorpus of the russian national corpus. in 2013, vadim baevsky died, and 2016 saw the death of aleksandr iliushin who had led seminars on poetics and verse theory at smolensk state university and moscow state university, respectively. since 2010 (with some interruptions), the vinogradov institute of the russian language of the russian academy of sciences (moscow) has been hosting the centre for textology and verse studies (in 2019 renamed the centre for linguistic textology and computer linguistic verse analysis) headed by nikolai pertsov. the centre opens the floor to regular discussions of issues in the analysis of poetic speech. 2. gasparov lectures 2007–2019: participants and topics at the turn of the millennium, before the birth of the gasparov lectures, only one regular verse studies conference had been held in russia, the slavic verse triennial (since 1995), organized after gasparov’s death by tatiana skulacheva (the most recent proceedings: prokhorov, skulacheva 2009, 2012; skulacheva 2017a, 2017b). the emergence of a new annual conference changed the rhythm and atmosphere of verse scholars’ meetings: whereas at slavic verse researchers tried to present the results of large and completed projects, gasparov lectures offered ample opportunities for discussing materials in a “work in progress” mode and allowed for longer discussions. gasparov lectures differ from slavic verse in their more “parochial” format, with most of the participants being researchers from moscow and saint petersburg. since 2007, the number of speakers has grown from 7 to 27 (in 2019). over the years, the range of topics discussed has expanded as well. in addition to research within the framework of traditional sections of verse studies (metrics, rhythmics, stanzas, comparative metrics, linguistics of verse, poetic syntax, phonics, verse semantics, etc.), now participants present and discuss talks devoted to quantitative and automated methods in the study of text, the psychology and neurophysiology of perception as applied to verse, the acoustic analysis of recited poetry, etc. 145russian verse studies after gasparov the distribution of talks by topic (see table below), hard as it is to unequivocally assign some talks to one group or another, reveals certain important tendencies. table 1. distribution of talks by topic (the verse studies section of gasparov lectures, 2007–2019) rhythmic typology 22 history of russian verse 18 digital methods and computational tools for linguistic and prosodic analysis of verse 16 rhythmical effects, expressive features of rhythm 15 comparative metrics 15 linguistics of verse 14 analysis of individual poetic texts 13 research methods of studying verse 11 (5 featuring mathematical or formal approaches) underresearched non-russian systems of versification 8 history of verse studies 7 verse semantics 6 stanzas 5 recited poetry 5 rhyme and euphony 5 general verse theory 3 poetic syntax 3 metrical prose 1 other 12 total 179 as apparent from the table, there has been little to no discussion on general verse theory. in the 13 years, there have only been three talks of this type, all featuring analysis, criticism, or interpretation of shapir’s theory of verse (talks in 2007, 2008, 2017). the issues of rhyme, sound organization of verse, and metric repertoire have been of marginal interest to the participants. most scholarly 146 vera polilova activity seems to have revolved around rhythm factors and the development of a rhythmic typology of “non-classical” metres (i.e., non-syllabotonic / nonsyllabic-accentual metres), mainly the so-called dolnik and taktovik (meters with a variable length of the inter-ictic interval in a verse line). in dolniks, the amplitude of variation of inter-ictic intervals equals one (the inter-ictic intervals can be either monosyllabic or disyllabic). in taktoviks, the amplitude of variation of inter-ictic intervals equals two (the inter-ictic intervals can be monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic) (liapin, pilshchikov 2015: 60). a large group of talks classified as “comparative metrics” has also dealt mainly with issues of rhythmic organization of texts in various languages, and those dealing with the analysis of individual poems were often focused on their rhythmic peculiarities (the commonest methodology consisting in the investigation of texts’ rhythmic features in their complex interaction with the author’s style, genre and composition). the number of talks on the verse linguistics has also been stably high. among other topics of undying interest, one might highlight the development of computer analysis tools. below, we give a description of the results presented over the years at the gasparov lectures, related to the following research areas: 1) rhythmic typology and the study of rhythmical effects, 2) studies of the rhythm of the russian iambic verse, 3) analysis of poetic syntax. in addition, we will summarize the discussion of general verse theory that saw no major breakthroughs, but is particularly illustrative of the set of contemporary theoretical premises used by russian poetry scholars. most of the talks, as can be seen from the table, were predictably devoted to various issues of the history of russian verse, but a general account here is hardly possible, given the extreme variety of topics. suffice it to mention special talks dedicated to the verse of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, nineteenth and twentieth-century russian poets, such as simeon polotsky, aleksandr sumarokov, mikhail lomonosov, evgenii baratynsky, kornei chukovsky, vladimir pozner, velimir khlebnikov, joseph brodsky, konstantin balmont, marina tsvetaeva, anna akhmatova, and many others. among this multitude of talks, particular mention should be made of svetlana matiash’s fundamental study of russian free iambic verse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, culminating with the publication of a dedicated monograph (matiash 2011). 147russian verse studies after gasparov 3. talks and discussions 3.1. verse theory as mentioned above, issues of general verse theory were discussed in connection with shapir’s theory of verse. it is based on the conception of verse viewed as a system of pervasive compulsory paradigmatic segmentations, which structure the texts’ additional fourth dimension (in addition to the speech, linguistic and semiotic dimensions) and act as a unifying factor for segments that are sometimes strikingly different from each other in their length, grammar, and semantics (shapir 2000: 36–75, 81–83; see also belousova, polilova 2015). according to shapir, verse segmentations are compulsory because they are pre-ordained by the author’s will, which is objectively expressed and cannot be ignored by the recipient; furthermore, they are consistent and paradigmatic: they form the rhythmic units belonging to the same level which are correlated with one another as variants of a single invariable. shapir formulated his concept gradually, analyzing the theoretical works of poetry scholars of the 1920s (noting ideas which would corroborate his new theory),3 interpreting unusual verse forms and criticizing his contemporaries’ and predecessors’ definitions and formulations (in particular, boris bukhshtab’s theory of double segmentation (bukhshtab 1973: 110–111) and tomashevsky’s and gasparov’s definitions, according to which verse is “artistic speech phonically divided into relatively short segments which are perceived as comparable and commensurable” (gasparov 1972: 197; 2001 [1993]: 6). the discussion of shapir’s theory was partly conditioned by its polemical presentation: for example, sergei kormilov, in 2008, devoted his talk at the gasparov lectures to the defense of gasparov’s formulations (“where shapir was wrong in criticizing gasparov’s theoretical postulates as a verse scholar”), while igor pilshchikov and nikolai pertsov (“on shapir’s concept of verse”, 2007) and anastasia belousova (“on shapir’s concept of verse paradigmatics”, 2017) used shapir’s theory to explore texts that were usually thought to elude analysis in the framework of verse studies. these talks and discussions have repeatedly raised the issue of the psychological component of the distinction of verse vs. prose. shapir himself was 3 shapir’s definition of verse is most closely related to maksim kenigsberg’s conjectures on the nature of verse, as well as to jakobson’s definition of the poetic function (shapir 2015: 346–383, 389–394): “the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence” (jakobson 1960: 358). 148 vera polilova inclined to draw the boundaries as rigorously as possible, and the reliance on the reader’s individual perception was not part of his phenomenological stance. nevertheless, contemporary scholars of verse believe that such reliance is latently present in his theoretical constructs (dobritsyn 2007: 503–505). suggestions were made as to using a psychological experiment in the more difficult cases (for example, free verse or “feigned prose”, mnimaja proza), when the definition of the invariant, and indeed the very answer to the “verse or prose” question, is unclear. tatiana skulacheva believes that shapir and gasparov attempted to define the same thing, namely, “a concept, intuitively felt but still not amenable to a strict linguistic description, that implies a psychological equality or balance between verse lines (gasparov), reminiscent of the equality of members of a paradigm in language (shapir)” (skulacheva, buiakova 2010: 38 fn. 1). it can be said that, at present, we see maintenance of the status quo in russian verse studies: many scholars prefer not to delve into general theoretical issues at all, others remain faithful to gasparov’s definitions, while a third group (primarily shapir’s closest colleagues and students who have attended his verse study seminar) rely on the provisions of shapir’s theory, often recognizing the need of a further clarification and development of his logic. it seems that, in recent years, the most productive research has been not in the field of the theoretical definition of verse as such, but in the development of constructive (i.e. practical) definitions of the constituent elements of russian verse: versification systems, poetic metres and their specific varieties, and poetic rhythm and rhythmical types of specific metres (see pilshchikov 2017a, 2021a). the search for constructive definitions of the phenomena involved in russian verse have primarily developed in connection with practical tasks, such as the automatic diagnostics of verse metre and the automatic recognition of rhythmical forms (ibid.; compare pilshchikov, starostin 2015). 3.2. rhythmic typology. classification of metres multiple talks have been devoted to the classification of russian metres and versification systems, the material employed usually consisting of samples of non-classical (i.e., non-syllabic-accentual) metres of the symbolist poets, as well as joseph brodsky’s versification, so far defying a strict versological description and causing significant difficulties and disagreements in the interpretation of its individual specimens. time and time again, and from vastly different positions, the participants discussed the problem of distinguishing between different types of dolniks; 149russian verse studies after gasparov between dolniks and taktoviks; taktoviks and mixed metres; free dolniks with unstressed ictuses and taktoviks; and — last but not least — taktoviks and dolniks “formed on the basis of binary metres” (with a predominance of monosyllabic iner-ictic intervals), which are uncommon to russian poetry, unlike the more common taktoviks and dolniks “formed on the basis of ternary metres” (with a predominance of disyllabic iner-ictic intervals),4 as well as questions of the genesis of all these verse types. in 2014, sergei liapin devoted a special talk to the confusion reigning in current russian verse nomenclature (“evolution of gasparov’s concepts of dolnik and taktovik”). in 2015, kirill korchagin presented a talk on gasparov’s concept of “a dolnik on the basis of binary metres” and discussed the peculiarities of this metre. having analyzed the texts most likely to fall into the category of dolniks based on binary metres extracted from the poetic subcorpus of the russian national corpus, he found that they failed to demonstrate a sufficiently stable rhythmical type (poems by leonid martynov, sergei petrov, igor chinnov, and others). tsvetaeva’s dolnik on the binary (iambic) basis, possibly related to the german dolnik, were examined and allocated to a special group in liapin’s 2013 talk “russian hemiiambs and their european analogues”; the ad hoc term “hemi-iambs” was suggested based on a 40% concentration of iambic lines in tsvetaeva’s dolnik poems (liapin, pilshchikov 2015: 73–77). in her 2017 talk, vera polilova spoke about the practical impossibility of using gasparov’s accepted definitions to distinguish unambiguously between dolniks with skipped ictic stresses, on the one hand, and taktoviks, on the other. she also proposed to no longer count konstantin balmont’s experimental rhythm (the so-called “interrupted lines”, preryvistye stroki) among 4-ictus taktoviks; she demonstrated that this type of verse was built on hemistichs of classical binary and ternary syllabic-accentual metres (polilova 2017). the typology of three principal types of the three-ictus dolnik by russian poets introduced by gasparov (“esenin’s type” with predominant forms i and iii, “gumilëv’s type” with predominant forms iii and ii, and “tsvetaeva’s type”, in which forms iii and v prevail, see gasparov 1968: 100–102; 1974: 241–242) was also refined on the basis of a corpus-dependent approach. thus, in 2016, aleksander levashov spoke about his research into sergei esenin’s three-ictus dolnik, conducted jointly with liapin, igor pilshchikov, alexander prokhorov, and anatoly starostin. the researchers used a corpus-dependent approach to distinguish between dolniks and ternary metres and demonstrated the fallaciousness of the view that esenin’s dolnik is a transitional metrical form 4 gasparov’s terms: “dol’niki na dvuslozhnoi osnove” and “dol’niki na trekhslozhnoi osnove”. 150 vera polilova between ternary metres and “gumilëv’s” and “tsvetaeva’s” more formalized types of dolnik (for preliminary results see pilshchikov, starostin 2015: 100– 101). levashov and liapin achieved important results in the study of brodsky’s dolnik: in a series of talks (2010, 2012, 2013), elements of a new metric classification of brodsky’s texts were presented, based on rhythmic analysis, splitting apart some poetic forms previously lumped together. in particular, a separate metric type was identified, the basis of which is a line consisting of two segments of a three-ictus dolnik (dk3 + dk3; i.e. segmented dolnik, see liapin 2011). brodsky created it in the late 1960s and used it in all his subsequent oeuvre (that is, for more than a quarter of a century). yuri orlitsky worked on the problem of the distinction between brodsky’s so-called “free blank accentual verse” and vers libre (his 2008 talk; see orlitsky 2012). in 2014, levashov and prokhorov conducted a new statistical study of the samples of unrhymed accentual verse identified by orlitsky, analyzing 25 of brodsky’s poems in terms of inter-stress interval distribution statistics. the researchers determined the correlation coefficients for different types of interstress intervals and identified two groups of poems. the first group includes texts, in which monoand disyllabic inter-stress intervals prevail, whereas 0and 3-syllable intervals are avoided (in this group, 4and 5syllable interstress intervals are allowed, as well as 6and 7-syllable intervals which are, however, rare). in the second group, the number of 0and 3-syllable interstress intervals avoided in the first group is greater. it turns out that the poems that fall into different groups are also chronologically remote from each other (see levashov, prokhorov 2016). in discussions of “non-classical” (i. e. non-syllabotonic) metres at the meetings in various years, a frequent point of argument was the possibility of skipping metrical stresses in strong positions and determining the place of these unstressed ictuses (and indeed the very possibility of talking about ictuses in the dolnik and taktovik). in his 2017 talk “‘beyond the dolnik verse’: unstressed ictuses and extra-schematic stresses in russian accentual verse”, igor pilshchikov proposed to use the concept of ictus (and therefore metre) when analyzing not only dolniks and taktoviks, but also accentual verse. for a number of colleagues, pilshchikov’s very idea verged on absurdity. many, following gasparov, consider accentual verse to be purely tonic, that is, one where the range of fluctuations in the length of the inter-stress intervals is so great that it eliminates the very opposition between weak and strong positions. pilshchikov believes that even in accentual verse (e.g. mayakovsky’s), the “interaction between rhythm and metre” is preserved, that is, there exist both extrametrical (extra-schematic) stresses on metrically unstressed syllables and unstressed ictuses – the fact which actually was never denied by 151russian verse studies after gasparov gasparov, who, however, preferred to refrain from far-reaching conclusions on the subject (see pilshchikov 2021b; compare pilshchikov 2017b, a follow up talk at frontiers in comparative metrics 3 in tallinn). another question raised more than once is that of the applicability of the concept of caesura to non-classical verse. when interpreting various poets’ non-classical metres, researchers are faced with the fact that verse lines tend to be divided into two halves. it is not entirely permissible to refer to these metres as “caesuraed” according to the established russian terminology; in russian verse theory, a caesura is defined as a constant word boundary at a certain position of the line (usually after a specific foot). in the non-classical texts under consideration, the syllable length of the line is not constant and, accordingly, the position of the word boundary fluctuates (causing inconsistent augmentation or truncation). for such a caesura-like word boundary, the term “quasi-caesura”, proposed by vadim semenov (2010), gained immediate traction. kirill korchagin proposed the concept of “derivational caesura” in his talk “dolnik and caesura: stating the problem” presented at the 2011 conference and in the unpublished phd thesis caesura in russian verse from the eighteenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth century (2012). this term refers to the so-called “derivational model” of accentual verse developed by vladimir plungian and kirill korchagin himself (korchagin 2020; see also semenov 2013). from the point of view of this theory, specific lines of dolnik-like and taktovik-like texts are viewed as derived from some regular and conventional syllabic-accentual pattern by way of transformation. in a follow-up discussion on the issue of the caesura, it was also noted (levashov, liapin) that an exclusive application of the notion to syllabic-accentual verse is not entirely reasonable: gasparov had already applied this term to non-classical russian verse, such as russian galliambs (2001 [1993]: 144; cf. dobritsyn 1993: 307). a more exhaustive idea of plungian and korchagin’s approach to the dolnik can be obtained from korchagin’s 2017 talk (“the dolnik as a static object and a dynamic procedure: the tactometric procedure and mikhail gasparov”, see korchagin 2020). the essence of the proposed approach can be reduced to the distinction between three entities: 1) the basic (initial) metric structure, 2) the real (observed) metric structure, and 3) the rules of the transition from (1) to (2). methodologically, this approach does not differ from most of the models adopted in conemporary linguistics (the only difference being the material). accordingly, it is proposed to regard the dolnik as “a dynamic entity”. according to korchagin, this understanding is also close to gasparov’s ideas: 152 vera polilova if one can speak of a dolnik on the binary or ternary basis, then there is an implicit set of procedures enabling the transition from an iambic/trochaic/ dactylic/anapaestic/amphibrachic line to a corresponding dolnik line. these procedures transform syllabic-accentual verse into dolnik by means of: 1) syncope, the elimination of the syllable in the weak position of the foot (creating a “leimma”, in georgii shengeli’s terms, i.e. (usually) a transformation of a disyllabic interval into a monosyllabic one in a line of ternary metre); 2) reduction of the syllable in a strong position with the loss of the ictus occupying that position; 3) reaccentuation; 4) extension of the foot; etc. (see korchagin 2017; also plungian 2005, 2014 etc.). this approach is close to generative metrics and revives the reasoning of the “tactometric theory” proposed by aleksandr kviatkovsky in the 1920s (korchagin 2020). lively debates took place during the discussion of this talk and other contributions with a similar approach to the problem of verse forms with a fixed number of ictuses and a fixed diapason of variation of unstressed syllables in the inter-ictic interval (for example, plungian’s 2010 talk “‘nochami edet skvoz’ zybkij son’ [‘rides through a fluid dream at night’]: on the metrics of igor chinnov’s poem”). in particular, sergei liapin and marina akimova spoke of the frequent impossibility of an unambiguous choice between a binary or ternary basis for a specific dolnik text; moreover, a “dynamic” or “derivational” interpretation makes it impossible to create a rigorous rhythmic typology: instead of working with the real rhythmical structure of a text, the researcher is urged to search for its deeper structure which is unknown in advance. it remains unclear to other scholars of verse how to limit the number of procedures. discussions on these issues have not been reflected in articles published in recent years. in 2018 liapin proposed another approach to dolnik (“on the problem of the poetic description of the russian dolnik”). he explained the popularity of the dolnik in the twentieth century and its gradual transformation, in gasparov’s words, into the “sixth classical russian metre” (gasparov 2000 [1984]: 308), by the fact that this metre is constructed with emphasis not only on the two-syllable and three-syllable foot (i.e. the dolniks on the binary metre basis or ternary metre basis) but also tetrasyllabic feet (paeans) and pentasyllabic feet (hyper-paeans). according to liapin’s assumption, dolnik is a special form of syllabic-accentual verse, and many dolnik texts should be regarded as poems based on a pentasyllabic rhythm. as a striking example of such verse, liapin analyzed the lines of tsvetaeva’s perekop (1928–29). they are 153russian verse studies after gasparov akatalectic and, therefore, a pentasyllabic inertia is clearly perceptible in them. according to liapin, without considering the phenomenon of tetrasyllabic and pentasyllabic feet, it is impossible to understand the evolution of the russian dolnik, and its rapid establishment in the metrical canon is bound to remain an insoluble mystery, just like the failure of its development in the nineteenth century. arguably, the dolnik on the pentasyllabic basis crystallized gradually. it emerged in folk poetry, then evolved in koltsov’s experiments with a hyperpaeanic metre (“penton iii”, a pentasyllabic line/foot with a stress on the third syllable) and eventually flourished in the poetry of the acmeists, who succeeded in combining the existing trends and launched the “metro-rhythmical wave” that is characteristic of the modern russian dolnik. a review of the talks presented at gasparov lectures on the issues of rhythmic typology shows unequivocally that the non-classical russian metres – the dolnik, the taktovik and accentual verse – have not yet been adequately investigated. the nomenclature gasparov proposed in 1974 underwent significant (but not explicitly articulated) changes in his subsequent works but it does not allow for a consistent description of contemporary diversity of russian non-classical metric forms. obviously, the recourse to computer-aided statistical analysis, especially the use the corpus-statistical approach, has led to important results, but there is still much to be done in the identification of relevant metric features. the available statistical data needs to be expanded, which will definitely help make the existing definitions more precise, yet, at the same time, will hardly solve all of the problems, as data gathered without relying on a working hypothesis often turns out to be useless (as is the case with the existing studies of brodsky’s or balmont’s poems, where statistics collected without a clear understanding of the rhythmic structure has for years obscured the visibility of hemistichs and impeded an accurate analysis of the rhythm, which lead to incorrect metric interpretations). to sum up, practical work in verse studies should go hand in hand with theoretical work. when analyzing verse, it is necessary to identify its rhythmical impulse, while a mere accumulation of data concerning stressed and unstressed syllables in a line is insufficient. 3.3. research into russian iambus. criticism of taranovsky’s autonomous rhythmic laws. issues in verse modelling in the case of russian non-classical metrics (implicit and a-posteriori metrics, to quote mihhail lotman 2008), the data accumulated over a century are not the result but rather the beginning of research. surprisingly enough, studies of 154 vera polilova classical russian metres, allegedly by now explored “inside out”, have revealed new facts, especially as regards their rhythm. first of all, even the most meticulously prepared statistics do not create an objective picture by themselves, since the sample analyzed may not be representative. the rhythm is influenced by many factors: the genre characteristics of the text, its length, the stanzaic form, the number of enjambments, and the part-of-speech content of the lines. each of these parameters affects the obtained results, and, with data from different texts combined, a distortion and averaging of the results inevitably occur. liapin’s 2015 talk “on the failure of the ‘autonomous laws of versification’” criticized taranovsky’s law of “regressive accentual dissimilation” and outlined an alternative conception of the rhythmic development of russian iambic tetrameter from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. liapin’s key claim was that alternating rhythm emerged as a consequence of the syntactic features of rhythmic forms iii and vi of russian iambic tetrameter (xxxxxxxx(x) and xxxxxxxx(x)).5 he presented the development of the metre as a chain of successive revolutions: 1) the rejection of full stress in mikhail lomonosov’s verse; 2) elimination of form iii, unusual for a colon with final stress (in russian, it is more frequently stressed in the middle), due to ivan krylov’s rejection of inversions; 3) the actualization of form vi in vasilii zhukovsky’s verse, and 4) the final transition to “natural” syntax and the corresponding rhythm in vladislav khodasevich’s iambs. in 2015, levashov presented additional arguments in favour of changes in the frequency of four-foot iambic forms iii and vi being caused by the rejection of inversions at the turn of the nineteenth century. a year later, liapin presented new evidence in favour of the view that russian iambic tetrameter was governed not by special verse laws, but by general speech tendencies. according to liapin’s data, in twentieth-century verse, compared to nineteenth-century verse, the frequency of rhythmic forms iii, vi, and vii increases at the expense of forms i and iv. at the same time, the frequency of forms vi and vii grows proportionally, so that we can classify the rhythm profile as neither n-shaped nor u-shaped. liapin also noted that the distribution of rhythmic forms is identical both in twentieth-century verse and in random iambic lines generated by the yandex autopoet online robot that creates poetry based on users’ search queries. according to liapin, this 5 for the accepted classification of rhythmic forms see, for example, dobritsyn 2016: 36. 155russian verse studies after gasparov is how the process of convergence of iambic verse with natural speech was completed – the process that had been ongoing for three centuries. in other words, liapin continues, the basis of the evolution of the rhythm of the iambic tetrameter from the eighteenth to the twentieth century lies not in the transition from a u-shaped rhythm to an alternating n-shaped form, but in the consistent convergence of this poetic metre and everyday speech habits (the results of this study are summarized in liapin 2016 and 2020). objections to liapin’s claims were raised in mikhail lotman’s talk “are there autonomic laws of verse rhythm?” presented at the tallinn-based conference frontiers in comparative metrics 3 (see the abstract lotman 2017 and the subsequent publication lotman 2019), frequented by many gasparov lectures regulars. in the ensuing discussion, liapin accepted some of lotman’s counter-arguments, which he then stated explicitly in his later publications. thus, in recent years, a completely new account of the history of the development of the rhythm of the most popular russian iambic metre was proposed. evidently, it will be a while before it is properly comprehended and accepted by the academic community. the discussions following the talks on taranovsky’s rhythmic laws have been invariably lively: some of the listeners fully accepted the revolutionary conclusions, while alexander prokhorov and evgenii kazartsev firmly disagreed with them and voiced their objections. ultimately, the disagreement centres around the question as to the principal cause of russian iambic tetrameter’s rhythmic evolution from the “eighteenthcentury rhythm” to the “nineteenth-century rhythm” (has it evolved from verse rhythm towards natural speech rhythm or vice versa). another issue is the kind of data that should be taken as the reference standard for “neutral” verse rhythm, i.e. a language-based model (tomashevsky-kolmogorov), a speechbased model (kholshevnikov), or a model based on cognitive reconstructive simulation of versification (krasnoperova). the language-based model of verse (also known as the “theoretical-probabilistic” model) is computed by multiplying the “linguistic” probabilities of the words (or phrases unified by one stress) that fit in a line of a particular metre and particular length (this probability is defined by the sum of all possible combinations of rhythmic words/phrases in the metrical design). the speech-based model is defined differently: syntagmas (phrases with one or more stresses) that fit in a line of a particular metre and particular length are extracted from prose (they are called sluchajnye iamby, “random iambs”, or samorodnye iamby “native iambs”). marina krasnoperova developed a model based on the principle that the choice of each rhythm-forming element (rhythmic word/phrase unified by one stress) in a verse line depends on its metrical position and rhythmic context 156 vera polilova (krasnoperova 2000: 99–101; etc.; krasnoperova, kazartsev 2011; kazartsev 2014; 2017: 129–133; 2019; 2020 etc.). the challenge of comparing the results of the rhythmic analysis of specific texts with those of the different approaches and comparative data interpretation seems to be one of the most important issues in modern verse studies. the theoretical foundations and the very practice of the formation of these models should remain subject to discussion and mutually interested criticism. 4. conclusion based on our review of the talks and discussions that have taken place at the verse studies section of gasparov lectures, we can single out the domains that are most popular today among russian researchers and have shown the most promising results: • creation of a new paradigm for the description of the rhythm of russian iambic tetrameter • rhythmic typology and the study of russian non-syllabotonic versification • study of various aspects of the meaning of poetic forms (verse semantics) • analysis of the relationship between verse and language: rhythm and poetic syntax • comparative metrics the first four directions of research were outlined above as succinctly as possible. the current state of affairs in comparative metrics in russia will be described in a special paper.6 the study of russian verse is an endeavour that unites researchers of several generations and academic schools from all over the globe. scholars of russian verse continue to make a significant contribution to this collective effort. the diversity of viewpoints, objects of research, methods and techniques is brought together by a shared underlying scholarly tradition. what russian verse studies lack today are new recapitulative book monographs that would take into account and summarize the results of the recent decades. the appearance of such works could help curb the inevitable trend toward “atomization” observable in scholarly research in the field and in 6 see igor pilshchikov, vera polilova. comparative verse studies in russia and beyond (in press). 157russian verse studies after gasparov general. in addition, among the traditional subfields of verse studies, euphony stands out as the most needy of further development (georgii vekshin is the only researcher persistently working in this area today; see, for example, vekshin 2006 and 2012). the contradiction between the fundamental significance of this aspect of poetic speech and the extreme paucity of ongoing studies is particularly striking.7 references belousova, anastasiia sergeevna; polilova, vera sergeevna 2015. nenapisannaja stat’ja m. i. shapira o “stikhakh na kartochkakh” l’va rubinshtejna. in: shapir, maksim il’ich. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. vol. 2. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 483–495. belousova, vera 2009. gasparovskie chtenija–2009 (moskva, 9–11 aprelja 2009 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 98, 409–412. bogdanov, sergei igorevich; khvorostianovа, elena viktorovna (eds.) 2010. otechestvennoe stikhovedenie: 100-letnie itogi i perspektivy razvitija: materialy mezhdunarodnoj nauchnoj konferentsii 25–27 nojabrja 2010 g. sankt-peterburg. sankt-peterburg: filologicheskij fakul’tet spbgu. bukhshtab, boris yakovlevich 1973. ob osnovakh i tipakh russkogo stikha. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 16, 96–118. dobritsyn, andrei aleksandrovich 1993. gallijamb u voloshina (v poiskakh semantiki metra). russian linguistics 17(3), 299–312. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01838771 dobritsyn, andrei 2007. les travaux sur la poésie russe de maksim šapir (25 août 1962 – 3 août 2006). revue des études slaves 78(4), 495–506. dobritsyn, andrei 2016. rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic diversity (the example of the russian iambic tetrameter). in: studia metrica et poetica 3(1), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.02 gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1968. russkij trekhudarnyi dol’nik хх veka. in: kholshevnikov, vladislav evgen’evich (ed.), teorija stikha. leningrad: nauka, 59–106. 7 this publication was supported by russian science foundation grant 19-78-10132. i am grateful to sergei liapin, mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, and mikhail oslon for their comments and suggestions. 158 vera polilova gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1972. stikh. in: surkov, aleksei aleksandrovich (ed.), kratkaja literaturnaja entsiklopedija, vol. 7. moskva: sovetskaja entsiklopedija, col. 197–198. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh. metrika i ritmika. [contemporary russian verse. metrics and rhythmics]. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1989. ocherk istorii evropejskogo stikha. [an outline of the history of european verse]. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1993. storia del verso europeo. edizione italiana a cura di stefano garzonio. bologna: il mulino. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996a. a history of european versification. translated by gerald stanton smith and marina tarlinskaja. edited by gerald stanton smith and leofranc holford-strevens. oxford: clarendon press. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996b. lingvistika stikha. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh: stikhovedenie, lingvistika i poetika: materialy mezhdunarodnoj konferentsii, 19–23 ijunja 1995 g. moskva: nauka, 5–17. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2000 [1984]. ocherk istorii russkogo stikha: metrika. ritmika. rifma. strofika. [an outline of the history of russian verse: metrics. rhythmics. rhyme. stanzas]. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2001 [1993]. russkij stikh nachala xx veka v kommentarijakh [the russian verse of the beginning of the 20th century in commentaries]. moskva: fortuna limited. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2012 [1999]. metr i smysl: ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamjati [meter and meaning: on one of the mechanisms of cultural memory]. moskva: fortuna el. gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna 2004. stat’i o lingvistike stikha. [articles on verse linguistics]. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2012. nástin dějin evropského verše. překlad robert ibrahim, alena machoninová. praha: dauphin. gladky, alexei vsevolodovich 2007. o tochnykh i matematicheskikh metodakh v lingvistike i drugikh gumanitarnykh naukakh. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 5, 22–38. golovastikov, kirill 2011a. gasparovskie chtenija–2010 (moskva, rggu, 15–17 aprelja 2010 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 107, 406–409. 159russian verse studies after gasparov golovastikov, kirill 2011b. gasparovskie chtenija–2011 (moskva, rggu, 14–16 aprelja 2011 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 112, 465–467. golovastikov, kirill. 2013. gasparovskie chtenija–2012 (moskva, rggu, 19–20 aprelja 2012 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 120, 439–444. jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, ma: mit press, 350–377. kazartsev, evgenii 2014. comparative study of verse: language probability models. in: style 48(2), 119–139. kazartsev, evgenii viacheslavovich 2017. sravnitel’noe stikhovedenie: metrika i ritmika. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo rgpu im. a. i. gertsena. kazartsev, evgeny 2019. probability and cognitive models of verse meter. in: plecháč, petr; scherr, barry p.; skulacheva, tatyana; bermúdez-sabel, helena; kolár, robert (eds.), quantitative approaches to versification. prague: the institute of czech literature of the czech academy of sciences, 105–112. kazartsev, evgeny 2020. computer models of verse prosody. in: elizarov, alexander; loukachevitch, natalia (eds.), proceedings of the computational models in language and speech workshop, kazan, russian, november 12–13, 2020. (ceur workshop proceedings 2780), 155–165. http://ceur-ws.org/vol-2780/paper14.pdf khvorostianovа, elena viktorovna (ed.) 2008–2013. peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov, vol. i–ii. sankt-peterburg: nestor-istorija. korchagin, kirill mikhajlovich 2017. tipologija sistem stikhoslozhenija i metricheskij status dol’nika na dvuslozhnoj osnove. in: zbornik matice srpske za slavistiku / matica srpska journal of slavic studies 92, 707–728. korchagin, kirill mikhajlovich 2020. derivatsionnaja teorija metriki: prolog. in: kibrik, andrej aleksandrovich et al. (eds.), vaprosy jazykoznanija: megasbornik nanostatej. sbornik statej k jubileju v. a. plungjana. moskva: buki vedi, 99–104. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 2000. osnovy rekonstruktivnogo modelirovanija stikhoslozhenija (na materiale ritmiki russkogo stikha). sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo sankt-peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. krasnoperova, marina; kazartsev, evgeny 2011. reconstructive simulation of versification in comparative studies of texts in different languages (theoretical aspects and practice of application). in: lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics. bern [etc.]: peter lang, 97–120. 160 vera polilova levashov, aleksandr mikhailovich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 2016. statisticheskij metod klassifikatsii metrov neklassicheskogo russkogo stikha (na materiale tak nazyvaemogo “belogo aktsentnogo stikha” i. brodskogo). in: voprosy jazykoznanija 4, 112–133. https://doi.org/10.31857/s0373658x0001052-6 liapin, sergei evgen’evich 2011. “segmentnyj” dol’nik: k opisaniju metricheskikh novatsij iosifa brodskogo. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 6, 36–46. liapin, sergei 2016. the russian iambic tetrameter: the problem of description (prolegomena to a new paradigm). in: studia metrica et poetica 3(2), 99–127. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.04 liapin, sergei 2020. russian iambic tetrameter: the evolution of its rhythmic structure. in: studia metrica et poetica 7(2), 7–22. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.01 liapin, sergei; pilshchikov, igor 2015. “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik (following osip brik’s, boris jarcho’s and andrei fedorov’s remarks on the russian translations from heine). in: studia metrica et poetica 2(1), 58–80. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.03  lotman, mihhail 1995. russkij stikh: osnovnye razmery, vkhodjashchie v evropejskij metricheskij fond. in: pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.), europejskie wzorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich (słowiańska metryka porównawcza vi). warszawa: instytut badań literackich, 259–340. lotman, mihhail 1998. o sistemakh stikhoslozhenija (preimushchestvenno na materiale estonskogo i russkogo stikha). in: trudy po znakovym sistemam 26, 201–255. lotman, mihhail 2000. russkij stikh: metrika, sistemy stikhoslozhenija, prosodika (generativnyj podkhod). in: sign systems studies 28, 217–241. https://doi.org/10.12697/sss.2000.28.12 lotman, mihhail 2008. metre: the unknown. in: lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics: in memoriam mikhail gasparov: conference abstracts, november 21–23, 2008. tallinn: tallinn university press, 32–34. lotman, mihhail 2017. are there autonomic laws of verse rhythm. in: lotman, mariakristiina; lotman, mihhail; pilshchikov, igor (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics 3. in memoriam jaak põldmäe. september 29−30, tallinn: tallinna ülikool, 29. https://doi.org/10.12697/sss.2000.28.12 161russian verse studies after gasparov lotman, mihhail 2019. the semiotics of verse rhythm and comparative rhythmics: vladimir nabokov’s and jurgis baltrušaitis’s binary tetrameters from a typological perspective. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 74−101. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.03 matiash, svetlana alekseevna 2011. vol’nyj jamb russkoj poezii xviii–xix vv.: zhanr, stil’, stikh. sankt-peterburg: filologicheskij fakul’tet spbgu. orlitsky, yuri borisovich 2012. belyj aktsentnyj stikh iosifa brodskogo. in: prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tat’jana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh ix. moskva: rukopisnye pamjatniki drevnej rusi, 117–124. pertsov, nikolai viktorovich. 2009. o tochnosti v filologii. in: voprosy jazykoznanija  3, 100–124. pilshchikov, igor 2017a. ponjatija “stikh”, “metr” i “ritm” v russkom stikhovedenii xx veka. in: trudy instituta russkogo jazyka im. v. v. vinogradova 11: slavjanskij stikh, 12–30. pilshchikov, igor 2017b. is there such a thing as “pure accentual verse” in russian prosody? in: lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail; pilshchikov, igor (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics 3: in memory of jaak põldmäe. september 29–30, 2017. tallinn university, estonia: conference abstracts. tallinn: [tallinn university], 33–35. pilshchikov, igor 2021a. the concepts of “verse”, “meter” and “rhythm” in russian verse theory. in: forum poetyki / forum of poetics (forthcoming). pilshchikov, igor 2021b. “po tu storonu dol’nika”: bezudarnye ikty i sverkhskhemnye udarenija v russkom aktsentnom stikhe. in: kritika i semiotica (forthcoming). pilshchikov, igor; starostin, anatoli 2015. reconnaissance automatique des mètres des vers russes: une approche statistique sur corpus. traduit par éliane delente. langages 199, 89–105. https://doi.org/10.3917/lang.199.0089 plungian, vladimir aleksandrovich 2005. k evoljutsii russkoj metriki: nemonotonnaja sillabo-tonika. in: toporov, vladimir nikolaevich et al. (eds.), jazyk. lichnost’. tekst: sbornik statej k 70-letiju t. m. nikolaevoj. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur, 857–869. plungian, vladimir aleksandrovich 2014. neklassicheskij stikh lermontova: nekotorye detali. in: uchenye zapiski petrozavodskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 7, 40–51. polilova, vera 2014. gasparovskie chtenija–2014 (rggu, 13–16 aprelja 2014 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 130, 409–419. 162 vera polilova polilova, vera 2018. gasparovskie chtenija[–2017] (rggu / niu vshe, 19–22 aprelja 2017 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 150, 407–413. polilova, vera 2019. gasparovskie chtenija[–2018] (ivgi rggu, 12–14 aprelja 2018 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 155, 420–430. polilova, vera; levashov, aleksandr 2013. gasparovskie chtenija–2013 (rggu, 18–20 aprelja 2013 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 124, 414–422. polilova, vera; levashov, aleksandr 2016. gasparovskie chtenija–2015 (rggu, 16–18 aprelja 2015 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 137, 382–388. polilova, vera; levashov, aleksandr 2017. x gasparovskie chtenija[–2016] (ivgi rggu, 14–16 aprelja 2016 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 145, 452–457. polilova, vera; skulacheva, tatiana 2021. xiii gasparovskie chtenija[–2019] (rggu, rankhigs, 15–20 aprelja 2019 g.): stikhovedenie. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 167, 9–14. polilova, vera 2017. o neklassicheskom stikhe bal’monta: ritmicheskaja struktura preryvistykh strok. in: zbornik matice srpske za slavistiku / matica srpska journal of slavic studies 92, 731–746. prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna (eds.) 2009. slavjanskij stikh viii: stikh, jazyk, smysl. [slavic verse viii]. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur. prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna (eds.) 2012. slavjanskij stikh ix. [slavic verse ix]. moskva: rukopisnye pamjatniki drevnej rusi. semenov, vadim 2010. polustishija v pozdnem neklassicheskom stikhe i. brodskogo: kvazitsezura. in: studia slavica: sbornik nauchnyh rabot molodykh filologov ix. tallinn: institut slavjanskikh jazykov i kul’tur, 199–222. semenov, vadim 2013. rannij taktovik bloka kak postmetricheskij stikh: (v zashhitu derivacionnoj modeli tonicheskoj metriki). in: stat’i na sluchaj: sbornik k 50-letiju r. g. lejbova [digital edition]. tartu. http://www.ruthenia.ru/leibov_50/semenov.pdf shapir, maksim il’ich 2000. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. vol. 1. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. shapir, maksim il’ich 2005. “tebe chisla i mery net”: o vozmozhnostjakh i granitsakh “tochnykh metodov” v gumanitarnykh naukakh. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 43–62. 163russian verse studies after gasparov shapir, maksim il’ich 2015. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. vol. 2. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. shapir, maksim il’ich 2019. “for thee there is no weight nor measure”: the possibilities and limitations of “exact” methods in the humanities. translated by craig saunders. in: journal of literary theory 13(1), 116–144. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0004 skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna (ed.) 2017a. trudy instituta russkogo jazyka im. v. v. vinogradova 11: slavjanskij stikh. [slavic verse]. skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna (ed.) 2017b. trudy instituta russkogo jazyka im. v. v. vinogradova 14: slavjanskij stikh. [slavic verse]. skulacheva, tatiana vladimirova; buiakova, mariia valerievna 2010. stikh i proza: sochinenie i podchinenie. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 37–54. tverianovich, kseniia yurievna 2011. mezhdunarodnaja nauchnaja konferentsija “otechestvennoe stikhovedenie: 100-letnie itogi i perspektivy razvitija”. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9. filologija 3, 250–254. vekshin, georgii viktorovich 2006. ocherk fonostilistiki teksta: zvukovoj povtor v perspektive smysloobrazovanija. moskva: mgup. vekshin, georgii viktorovich 2012. rifma – vnutrennjaja rifma – alliteratsija. (sillabotsentricheskij vzgljad). in: prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tat’jana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh ix. moskva: rukopisnye pamjatniki drevnej rusi, 152–164. studia metrica et poetica sisu 6_1.indd evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays (mid-16th to mid-19th centuries) marina tarlinskaja*1 abstract: the aim of this essay is to demonstrate how the rhythmical evolution of english dramatic iambic pentameter parallelled the changes of aesthetic tastes and social values of english society from the mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century. during 250 years the evolution of such features as the abundance or absence of enjambments, the use of constrained or loose iambs, and some others corresponds to the changes in the architecture of the theaters, the social structure of the audience, the manners of declamation, the complexity of poetic language, and the types of characters and plots the playwrights used. keywords: english dramatic iambic pentameter; evolution of grand styles; evolution of versification styles so far the object of my research and the subject of my writings has been versification: english verse in its evolution, and the links between verse form and meaning (meter and meaning; and rhythm and meaning). in the present essay i shall try to show that the rhythmical evolution of english versification (mostly iambic pentameter) parallelled the changes of tastes and values of the society: the popular attitude towards morality, the viewers’ expectations of how the playwright should portray love or villainy, and the features of dramatic personae. such work has never been done before; the only name i can think of is boris yarkho, who divided the history of european tragedy into periods and determined the boundaries between them, using quantitative features. (yarkho 2019 [1938]). lovers and villains in early elizabethan tragedies compared to their baroque and post-restoration counterparts in tragedies and tragi-comedies are quite dissimilar. the versification in elizabethan, baroque, post-restoration classicism and romanticism plays had evolved. was there any link between the evolution of tastes and expectations of the public, the plots and characters portrayed in the plays, and the changes in versification style? * author’s address: marina tarlinskaja, department of linguistics, university of washington, seattle, box 354340 seattle, wa 98195-4340. e-mail: marinat@uw.edu. studia metrica et poetica 6.1, 2019, 7–19 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.1.01 8 marina tarlinskaja english dramatic iambic pentameter the form of early new english iambic pentameter (i5) evolved relatively quickly: during the seventy years of renaissance drama (1561–1642) the form changed from very strict iambs in early elizabethan plays to loose verse during the time of jacobean baroque. after the restoration of monarchy in 1660 (the return of charles ii as king) the verse form changed again, to a stricter form, and became even stricter during the time of classicism, dryden and the eighteenth century. how do we define stricter and looser i5? the most important parameters, as we shall see, are the syllabic composition of lines, the placement of stresses and strong syntactic breaks within the line, and the types of line endings: their syllabic, accentual and syntactic particularities. the earliest dramas written in iambic pentameter were composed by and for the members of the jurists’ inns1 and the royal court. the first english drama composed in i5, was thomas norton and thomas sackville’s “the tragedy of gorboduc” (1561). it was played during christmas celebrations given by the inner temple in 1561 and then at whitehall before queen elizabeth on january 18, 1562. its syllabic structure was modeled on the french decasyllable with a caesura after syllable 4, though the stressing alteration was clearly iambic (see table 1 in tarlinskaja 2014). another tragedy, closely following “gorboduc” and staged at gray’s inn, was gascoigne and kinwelmarche’s “jocasta” (1566). it was a translation of a translation: the authors based their play on an italian original “giocasta” by lodovico dolce who, in turn, had reworked a tragedy by euripides. the verse of “jocasta”, though bearing clear signs of the syllabic pattern of the italian original, was, similarly to “gorboduc”, strict iambic pentameter, with prevailing word boundaries (caesura) after syllable 4, masculine line endings and frequent stressing on syllables 4 and 10. the stressing on syllables 4 and 10 rises to 91 and 97% of all lines in sackville’s portion of “gorboduc”. the word boundaries after syllable 4 appear in threequarters of all lines. a few decades later, the i5 plays descended to the lower strata of the population, replacing bear-baiting and other cruder entertainments. compared to “gorboduc” and “jocasta”, kyd’s “spanish tragedy” (1587) and marlowe’s “tamburlaine” part one (1588), are more relaxed in form and much more dramatic in contents, but they are still composed in relatively strict verse form. 1 the inns of court were four law schools in london, namely the inner temple, the middle temple, gray’s inn, and lincoln’s inn. 9evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays they sported a precise count of syllables in the line, always 10, and practically no feminine endings (1.5% of all lines in “the spanish tragedy” and 2.5% in 1 “tamburlaine”). almost all lines corresponded to a syntactic unit: we find very few enjambments. the lines had to be shouted out by a tragic actor, so that each line could get across to the audience standing there around the stage in open-air performance centers, sometimes in the inn yards. as we know, the first theaters were built without a roof, they were open to the elements. figure 1. stressing on s in constrained and loose iambic pentameter (in % of all lines) the word boundaries and syntactic breaks after syllable 4 divided the line into two even shorter portions, 4+6 syllables. as english phrases often begin with one or more unstressed grammatical words, a syntactic break after syllable 4 (or 5) frequently caused an omitted stress on syllable 6, e. g.: “raves in egyptia, /5/ and annoyeth us” (marlowe, 1 “tamburlaine”, 4.3.10). a break after syllables 6 (or 7) caused an omitted stress on syllable 8, as in “the clouds methought would open, /7/ and show riches” (shakespeare, “the tempest” 1.1.143). figure 1 illustrates the contrast between constrained and loose i5, kyd’s “the spanish tragedy” with its minimum of stresses (a “dip”) on syllable 6 and webster’s “the duchess of malfi” (1612) with its “dip” on syllable 8. 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 2 4 6 8 10 fr eq u en cy o f o cc u rr en ce o f s tr es se s o n s tr o n g s yl la b ic p o si ti o n s % constrained: kyd, “the spanish trajedy” loose: webster, “the duchess of mal�” syllabic position 10 marina tarlinskaja the verse structure began to get looser by the end of the elizabethan epoch (1600 is conventionally considered the boundary between the two poetic styles), and it greatly changed during the baroque period. by that time, enclosed theaters began to be built, and the need to enunciate every separate line disappeared. the tempo of declamation must have changed: the syllabic structure of verse lines lost its strict count, and two or even three syllables began to be inserted between stresses on metrically strong (s ) syllabic positions. such clusters of syllables on metrically weak (w) syllabic positions were probably recited quickly. here is an example (clusters of syllables are in bold): “thou hast pressed to the emperours presence without my warrant” (fletcher, “the prophetess”, 3.2.79): two syllables filling the same w occur in positions 1, 3, 5, 7. we also find cases when a syllable is omitted both on w and s syllabic positions. the omitted syllable sometimes accompanied an action, e. g., putting down a spoon, giving a letter, kneeling. after 1600 the most frequent word boundary and syntactic break gradually moved closer to the end of the line and began to fall after syllable 6 or even 7. consequently, the stressing “dip” moved from syllable 6 to syllable 8. cf.: he hunted well /4/ that was the lion’s death (kyd, “the spanish tragedy”, 1.1.170) to that loved duke stands next you; /7/ with the favour (middleton, “a game at chess” 2.2.164) in kyd’s line there is a break after syllable 4 and an omitted stress on six, while in middleton’s line there is a syntactic break after syllable 7 and an omitted stress on eight. figure 1 above shows that as the stressing “dip” had moved from syllable 6 to 8, the frequency of stressing on syllable 4 had dropped and on 6 increased: a completely different syntactic and accentual line configuration. the structure of line endings had changed too. numerous enjambments and feminine endings developed; for example, in shakespeare’s early “the comedy of errors” (1589–1590) the number of feminine endings is 13.5%, while in his last solo play “the tempest” (1610–1611) it is 35.6%, and in middleton’s “a game at chess” (1624) it has climbed up to 59.4%. moreover, feminine endings began to accept stresses on syllable 11, as in “you look extreme ill; is it any old grief ” (fletcher, “monsieur thomas”, 2.1.19). the stress on syllable 10 is in capitals, stressing on syllable 11 is underlined. phrases like ”old grief ”, with a stress on position 11 (probably weakened in declamation) following a stress on position 10, occur also in midline. in the same line from fletcher’s “monsieur thomas” we find a phrase “extreme ill” with the main phrasal 11evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays stress on the metrically strong (s) position 4 and an adjacent, probably weakened, stress on the following metrically weak (w) syllabic position 5. i call such syncopated phrases “enclitic”, as opposed to the more frequent “proclitic phrases” with a stress on w preceding the stress on s, as in “loved duke”. the “verse-prose” opposition cultivated during early elizabethan times weakened during the period of jacobean baroque, as the playwrights clearly tried to have their texts resemble regular speech, and the tempo of declamation must have quickened. i5 of later baroque became even more loose. massinger, for example, sported many enjambments that combined with feminine and dactylic endings. in earlier verse, such as fletcher’s, enjambments and feminine endings were mutually exclusive: fletcher’s feminine endings required a syntactic line boundary. here are some examples of massinger’s lines with feminine endings combined with enjambments (enjambments are marked [→]): they do presume they may with license practice→ their lusts and riots, they shall never merit→ the noble name of soldiers. to dare boldly→ in a fair cause, and for their country’s safety→ to run upon the cannon’s mouth undaunted... (massinger, “a new way to pay old debts”, 1.2.95–99) in massinger plays, accentual deviations from the meter on adjacent syllabic positions sws were allowed and expected; e. g.: “shrink up with sloth, nor for want of employment” (massinger, “the maid of honor” 1.1.218). all these features made massinger’s dramas sound like prose; his loose rhythms were criticized by such subtle scholars as ants oras (oras 1960: 26–27). obviously, prose-sounding verse was massinger’s aim: the “verse-prose” opposition was not aesthetically valued any more and got effaced. here are three lines from massinger’s tragedy “the maid of honour”): pray you, style me as i am, a wretch forsaken→ of the world as myself. — i would it were→ in me to help you. — ay, if that you want power, sir (massinger, “the maid of honour” 3.1.109–111) strings of two syllables occur on positions 5 and 7 of lines 109 and 111 (underlined), line 109 has a feminine ending and an enjambment, line 110 contains accentual deviations on positions sws (2, 3, 4, in bold), and line 111 has a heavy feminine ending. such lines would be disallowed in shakespeare’s verse. 12 marina tarlinskaja cromwell’s parliament closed all theaters in 1642. theaters were reopened after the restoration of monarchy in 1660. king charles ii had spent his exile years at versailles and acquired a taste for gallantry and theater. on his return to england he licensed two theater companies, one of them headed by william davenaunt, a courtier and a second-rate playwright. french, and now english, theaters allowed women-actresses, and the actions were enlivened by the “machines” that made it possible for the angels and witches to come flying on stage. by that time the tastes and expectations of the british public had changed; the “gallant” audience needed a more refined style; shakespeare’s plays and their versification were considered barbaric. different tastes required different plays, and а new generation of playwrights began to create plays that suited the changed tastes. the post-restoration playwrights lacked both talent and time: the new theaters required new plays, but new plays are not composed in a hurry, so the post-restoration authors began to alter and rewrite later elizabethan and baroque plays. we shall discuss the altered plots and style below, right now let us look what happened to the verse structure of the refurbished plays. verse was moving towards greater strictness and symmetry that will develop by the end of the seventeenth century. it was epitomized in dryden’s poetry: dryden was the forerunner of classicism. syntactic breaks in, for example, william davenant’s authentic plays and alterations began to appear after positions 4 and 6 equally often, and the stressing “dip” on position 8 began to be replaced by equal stressing of syllables 6 and 8 (cf. with shakespeare’s “henry v” 80 years previously). the most noticeable feature of the post-restoration plays was the smoothing out of the line rhythm: the accentual “deviations” that earlier poets used to emphasize meaning began to be ironed out. what more, the renaissance figures of speech such as metaphors, obviously became too complicated for the new audience to understand and were simplified or removed. here is an example. in “macbeth” shakespeare is describing the murder of the king. the deed was so horrible that the day became as dark as the night (obviously during a solar eclipse): ...by th’ hour ’tis day, and yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp (shakespeare, “macbeth” 2.4.7) “the traveling lamp” is a metaphorical nomination of the sun. the verb “strangles”, stressed on the first syllable, occurs on positions 5–6, a rhythmical deviation from the meter and a metaphor for “covering, extinguishing”. here is how davenant altered the line, simplifying its rhythm and removing the metaphors: 13evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays and yet dark night does cover all the skie (davenant, “macbeth” 2.4.7) during the time of classicism (beginning of the eighteenth century) the concept of what is beautiful had changed again and required a return to a stricter verse form and a stronger “verse-prose” opposition. italian-style opera became fashionable, and playwrights composed librettos, also in the form of i5 as did theobald in “orestes”. here are some examples of the post-restoration and early classicism authors and plays: john dryden’s “all for love” (1677), thomas otway’s “venice preserved” (1682), william congreve’s “the way of the world” (1700), joseph addison’s “cato” (1713), and george lillo’s “the london merchant” (1731). figure 2. stressing on s in webster’s “the duchess of malfi” (1612) and its adaptation by lewis theobald in “the fatal secret” (1736) the eighteenth-century poems and plays favor a symmetrical line structure with a stressing “dip” on position 6. rhythmical parallelism of hemistichs often accompanied grammatical parallelism, e. g.: 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 2 4 6 8 10 fr eq u en cy o f o cc u rr en ce o f s tr es se s o n s tr o n g s yl la b ic p o si ti o n s % theobald, “the fatal secret” syllabic position webster, “the duchess of mal�” 14 marina tarlinskaja with quivering pinions, in the genial blaze to weeping grottoes, and the hoary caves (thomson, “winter”, 24, 76) figure 2 displays the stress profile of webster’s tragedy “the duchess of malfi” (1612) and its rewritten variant by theobald 124 years later, “the fatal secret” (1736). theobald’s line is structurally symmetrical, with its stressing “dip” on syllable 6, but the most noticeable changes are in the plot: the scenes of psychological torture of the duchess are omitted, the villain bozola reforms and helps the duchess, the duchess is not murdered but survives and is reunited with her low-born but beloved husband whom she had secretly married (her “secret”). romanticism (the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries). opposed classicism ideologically, thematically and in the discovery of new meters. we might expect romanticism to find new rhythms in the still widely used iambic pentameter. but the iambic pentameter of the earliest romantic play, “the cenci” by shelley seems to have retained some versification features of the preceding epoch, with a firm “dip” on syllable 6. figure 3. stressing on s in shelley’s “the cenci” and tennyson’s “queen mary” (in % of all lines) 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 2 4 6 8 10 fr eq u en cy o f o cc u rr en ce o f s tr es se s o n s tr o n g s yl la b ic p o si ti o n s % shelley, “the cenci” tennyson, “queen mary” syllabic position 15evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays byron’s “sardanapalus”, dedicated to goethe and composed ten years later than “the cenci”, in 1821, already has a different stress profile: the stressing on syllable six is 73.8% and on position eight 70.4%: the “dip” is beginning to move to position 8. in the much later “queen mary” by tennyson (1875) the “dip” on position 8 is distinct (figure 3). “queen mary” is, as were shelley’s and byron’s tragedies, clearly composed in the shakespearean mode, and in spite of its altered stress profile configuration, it retains an “elizabethan” pattern of word boundaries and syntactic breaks after syllable 4: stand fast it may, /4/ but it had written last: those that were now /4/ her privy council, sign’d before me; nay, /4/ the judges had pronounce that our young edward /5/ might bequeath the crown of england, putting by his father’s will, yet i stood out, /4/ till edward sent for me, the wan boy-king, /4/ with his fast-fading eyes fixed hard on mine, /4/ his frail transparent hand... (tennyson, “queen mary”, 1.1. cranmore’s monologue 1–9) and one more feature of the eighteenthand nineteenth-century dramas: they were all syllabically strict. the eighteenth century loved order and symmetry, while the nineteenth century had to oppose iambs to the new-born dolnik and, later, free verse, so the syllabic structure of the dramatic i5 through frost’s twentieth-century plays remained regular. verse form and tastes of the epoch verse form is only one part of a poetic work. it was determined by such seemingly unrelated features as the architecture of the theaters, and by such clearly relevant circumstances as the tastes and expectations of the public. we shall see how the changes of verse form accompanied the changes in plots of the plays and their genres, the character types and the depiction of such ubiquitous motifs as love and villainy. look at the theme of love as presented by shakespeare throughout his canon. except for the “dark lady”, the lyrical heroine of the sonnets, who seems to have been a real person, “love” in shakespeare’s works is passionate but pure (tamora’s lust for the villain aaron in “titus andronicus” does not count), it often ends in a marriage, both in the comedies (beatrice and benedick from “much ado about nothing”) and tragedies (romeo and juliet). sometimes lovers are already married (othello and desdemona, imogen and posthumus 16 marina tarlinskaja in “cymbeline”, compare with marlowe’s tamburlaine and zenocrate in his “tamburlaine the great”), or, as an alternative, one of the spouses is trying to win the love of the other (helena and bertram in “all’s well that ends well”). lust is condemned; the object of lust is an innocent victim, a lamb (lucrece in the poem “the rape of lucrece”, lavinia, raped and mutilated in shakespeare’s early tragedy “titus andronicus”). recall that elizabethan verse structure was usually strict, the syllable count was precise, the hemistich segmentation 4+6 (or 5+5) syllables was indicated by the word boundary and syntactic line segmentation, the stressing “dip” fell on syllable 6, the consequence of the syntactic line segmentation 4+6 or 5+5. the link between the thematic and versification preferences of the epoch is not direct but some link seems to exist. the queen died in 1603, and 1600 is usually considered the end of the elizabethan epoch and the beginning of the baroque. the term “baroque” in medieval italian meant an obstacle in schematic logic. subsequently it came to denote any contorted idea or physical form, for example, a pearl of a contorted shape. the period of baroque in england is associated with the rule of kings james i and charles i, the first half of the seventeenth century. later, in an anonymous review of jean-philippe rameau’s opera “hippolyte et aricie”, 1733 (based on racine’s tragedy “phèdre”) the critic complained that the music was too bizarrely “du baroque”, it lacked harmony, it was full of dissonances, and its “meter” changed with an unwarranted frequency. the term “baroque” and later “rococo” were associated with a gross lack of pleasing orderliness and symmetry. recall how the verse structure of dramatic works had changed after 1600. it turns out that the playwrights’ treatment of the plots, the major motifs (“love”, for example) and the character types had also changed. the popular ideology of the british “bon monde” was based on the ideas of the french poet and philosopher théophile de viau (1590–1626), who himself was a follower of the italian philosopher lucilio vanini. vanini questioned the immortality of the soul; he was accused of heresy and practicing magic, after a trial in 1610 his tongue had been cut out, he was strangled, and his body was burned. théophile de viau who in his satires and elegies advocated a libertine and epicurean lifestyle was banned from france and at one time settled in england. théophile de viau’s follower in england was the poet, courtier and coxcomb john wilmot, earl of rochester (1647–1680). a talented poet and the most learned wit among charles ii’s courtiers, he was also famous for his rakish lifestyle. most of his works were so obscene that the young earl did not publish them during his lifetime, they were passed from one person to the next. the most famous of his works is the obscene “a satyr against reason and mankind”. 17evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays the new ideology preached permissiveness in love. marriage began to be considered a heavy burden; homosexuality and incest became favorite motifs in the baroque plays. incestuous love was particularly in vogue. an example of incestuous love was the famous tragedy by john ford “’tis pity she’s a whore” performed between 1629 and 1633 by queen henrietta’s men at the cockpit theater. the plot of the tragedy is the passionate love between giovanni and annabella, a brother and a sister. the end is, as expected, not only tragic but also macabre. middleton’s tragicomedy “women, beware women” (1657) contains a theme of a love affair between a young uncle and his niece. the motif of incestuous love of a brother for his twin sister is hinted at in webster’s “the duchess of malfi”, and a discussion of homosexual group sex takes place in middleton’s tragicomedy “a game at chess” (1624). the period of baroque, with its decadent tastes, ubiquitous melancholy and craving for things previously abhorred and forbidden was marked by its “du baroque” loose verse. we have only discussed several features of such looseness: the syllable count, types of line endings, places of major syntactic breaks and the position of the midline stressing dip, but there were other features too. they made the jacobean dramatic verse prose-like, and this kind of irregular verse accompanied the changed morality of the audience and the themes of the plays that appealed to the viewers. the monarchy was restored in 1660, and the puritan strictness of morals and behavior was replaced by the pre-cromwellian looseness of manners and permissiveness. the new king, charles ii, who had spent his youth at the versailles, had, as mentioned above, acquired an indelible taste for the french refined manners, gallantry, as well as arts and theater. so, on his return to england charles ii gave licenses to two theater companies. actresses replaced boys as female leads in the english theater, and the king had several mistressesactresses. but the permissiveness did not last long. charles ii was replaced by the boring james ii, and in the last quarter of the seventeenth century england returned to the old theater traditions and old playwrights, but with reservations. classicism was approaching; the plays of the old and still revered authors had to be rewritten “for their own good”, so that they should end well, the plots introduced, or emphasized, a sentimental pair of lovers, or even better, two pairs of lovers, as in nahum tate’s adaptation of shakespeare’s “richard ii” (1680): classicism loved symmetry. the plays were not composed for the ignorant “masses” but for the sentimental “gallant” public (murray 2005). they had to contain a clear “moral”: evil had to be punished and virtues had to triumph. the playwrights began to be guided by the principles “follow the rules”. the new rules barred strong passions, they had to be replaced by 18 marina tarlinskaja milder feelings. the versifiers also had to observe strict rules; the critic edward albert instructed the playwrights to follow “strict care and accuracy in poetic technique”. the pre-classicism english poets were greatly influenced by classical authors and contemporary french literature, particularly the tragedies by corneille and racine. heroic tragedies with ancient greek and roman heroes became fashionable. the main characters of such tragedies were conventional figures: men of superhuman bravery whose passion for the beloved was pure and selfless. love and duty were at war. in the heart of the heavenly beautiful heroine, honor and duty always won, as was already foretold in the carolinian tragedy by john ford “the broken heart” (published in 1633). the main poet of the pre-classicism period was john dryden. his heroic tragedies such as “the conquest of granada” (1670) composed in rhymed couplets and “all for love” (1677), in blank verse as an imitation of shakespeare’s “antony and cleopatra” were, as it was now expected, filled with super-valiant heroes and heavenly beautiful heroines. rhymed couplets and symmetrical line rhythm are typical features of classicism, both in poems and some plays. classicism loved operas; one of the most notable plays by lewis theobald is an opera libretto “orestes” (1731) composed in symmetrical iambic pentameter (tarlinskaja 2014). then came romanticism with the new tastes, new themes and new verse forms. but the plays, at least by shelley and byron, as later by tennyson, were composed, following shakespearean models, in iambic pentameter. though innovative in plot and character types, they were building on the much earlier, though transformed, features: recall their verse rhythms and their themes and motifs, created “over the head” of classicism, reminiscent of shakespearean renaissance and the jacobean baroque, with their pure, selfless love (as in “sardanapalus”), or sadism, incest and patricide (as in “the cenci”). thus, we see how during the almost 250 years that we have run through, the changes in the verse structure of the plays accompanied the changes in the tastes of the public and the evolution of the plot compositions and the character types. 19evolution of verse form, plots and characters in english plays references murray, barbara a. 2005. introduction. in: murray, barbara a. (ed.), shakespeare adaptations from the restoration five plays. madison and teaneck, nj: fairleigh dickenson university press, xv–lxxxi. oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama (university of florida monographs, humanities 3). gainesville, fl: university of florida press. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama 1561– 1642. farnham, surrey and burlington, vt: ashgate publishing. yarkho, boris 2019 [1938]. speech distribution in five-act tragedies (a question of classicism and romanticism). translated by craig saunders. in: journal of literary theory 13(1): 13–76. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0002 studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd in memoriam: arvo krikmann (1939–2017) mari sarv arvo krikmann was, among many other things, an estonian academician, folklorist, linguist, paremiologist, and humour researcher. working in folklore departments at the estonian literary museum, institute of estonian language and literature, and university of tartu, his main resources for study throughout his career had been voluminous archival collections of estonian folklore, as well as the early literary notations and contemporary parallels to these materials. as the head of the working group on paremiology, and compiler of academic publications “estonian proverbs” and “estonian riddles”, he had a thorough command of the variety of archival sources concerning all the genres of folklore short forms, as well as jocular stories. arvo krikmann’s doctoral dissertation, introspections into minor forms of folklore, vol. 1. basic concepts, genre relations, general issues, is a basic guide and source of inspiration in studying archival collections, on one hand leading us to the issues to take into consideration when dealing with vast collections, and on the other pointing us to abundant methods and discoveries. krikmann’s main areas of research throughout have been on different aspects of folk short forms, the problems of variation and geographical spread of folklore, poetic language, metaphor theory, and humour theory. he had also taught these topics as a professor at the university of tartu and supervised several postgraduate students. during his lifetime krikmann had received numerous research awards and been recognized with various titles, medals and honoraria. in 1997 he was elected a member of the estonian academy of sciences. for me personally, arvo krikmann was best as my teacher, advisor and good colleague since the very first days of my professional life. his warm support, advice, comments and discussions on my writings have been invaluable and have helped me through problems of research, as well as in other aspects of academic life. i would like to highlight for the readers of studia metrica et poetica some results from the works of arvo krikmann that might be of interest. i. having a total overview of the presence of several folklore genres in estonian folklore archives, thoroughly typified during the compilation of academic publications, krikmann was able to identify regularities of variation in cases of the oral transmission of folklore. namely, he has shown how folkloric variation tends to follow the same patterns as lexical variation according to studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 162–164 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.09 163in memoriam: arvo krikmann (1939–2017) zipf ’s law, that is the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank (krikmann 1997). ii. in studying the spread and variability of various folkloric and linguistic materials, krikmann developed his own methods for cartographic detection of regions and isolines, relying on heterogeneous data collected with various density. this led to more general results on the stereotypy and uniqueness of folklore material through a geographical perspective (krikmann 1980, 1997, 2000) iii. in his numerous writings on the content, meaning, and form of estonian proverbs (e.g. krikmann 1974a and b, 1984, 2004, 2009 etc.) krikmann analysed how these different levels of expression combine and mutually structure each other, how it relates to situation of proverb use, what the general principles are in a creative mind using proverbs, and within the general patterns of thinking about life. iv. in his studying of alliteration in various finnic folksongs, krikmann made the important discovery of how not only does alliteration engage distinct consonants and vowels, but instead has a more general strive toward a similarity of vowels – the remarkable and relevant tendency to use vowels as phonetically close as possible in alliteration (krikmann 2015). 164 mari sarv references krikmann, arvo 1974a. on denotative indefiniteness of proverbs: remarks on proverb semantics 1. tallinn: [academy of sciences of the estonian ssr]. krikmann, arvo 1974b. some additional aspects of semantic indefiniteness of proverbs: remarks on proverb semantics 2. tallinn: [academy of sciences of the estonian ssr]. krikmann, arvo 1980. towards the typology of estonian folklore regions: paper presented to the fifth international finno-ugric congress, turku, 1980. in: remmel, mart (ed.), academy of sciences of the estonian s.s.r. division of social sciences. tallinn: academy of sciences of the estonian ssr. krikmann, arvo 1984. 1001 frage zur logischen struktur der sprichwörter. in: kodikas/code. ars semeiotica 7, 387−408. krikmann, arvo 1996. the great chain metaphor: an open sesame for proverb semantics? in: folklore. electronic journal of folklore 1, https://www.folklore.ee/ folklore/nr1/gcm.htm (accessed 11.06.2017). krikmann, arvo 1997. sissevaateid folkloori lühivormidesse i: põhimõisteid, žanrisuhteid, üldprobleeme [insights into the short forms of folklore i: basic concepts, genre relations, general problems]. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus [the university of tartu press]. krikmann, arvo 1998. on the relationships of the rhetorical, modal, logical, and syntactic planes in estonian proverbs. in: folklore. electronic journal of folklore 6, 99−127; 8, 51−99; 9, 71−96, http://folklore.ee/folklore/ksisu.htm (accessed 11.06.2017). krikmann, arvo 2000. eesti kihelkondade murdesõnavaralisi suhteid [the relationship between the dialectal lexical funds of estonian parishes]. in: http://www.folklore. ee/~kriku/murre/index.htm (accessed 11.06.2017). krikmann, arvo 2009. proverb semantics: studies in structure, logic, and metaphor. burlington, vt: the university of vermont. krikmann, arvo 2015. on the vowel euphony in finnic alliterative folksongs. in: folklore fellows’ network 46, 12−17. http://www.folklore.ee/~kriku/murre/index.htm http://www.folklore.ee/~kriku/murre/index.htm https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/nr1/gcm.htm https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/nr1/gcm.htm studia metrica et poetica sisu 7_2weeb.indd radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization michael wachtel* abstract: aleksandr radishchev (1749–1802) has long been recognized for the boldness and originality of his writings. the present essay examines a substantial but largely forgotten poetic work (“bova”), focusing on its experimental metrics. the author considers radishchev’s possible motivations in creating this unprecedented form and suggests a new means of categorizing it. keywords: radishchev, karamzin, folklore, stylization, metrics in memoriam nikolai alekseevich bogomolov aleksandr radishchev was a remarkable poet whose work has never received the attention it deserves. for most soviet scholars radishchev was a political midas – everything he touched turned subversive. as a result, a complicated thinker and original poet was transformed into a revolutionary caricature. this image overdetermined the content and context of everything he wrote. the present paper will be devoted to radishchev’s “bova”, a “heroic tale in verse” (“povest’ bogatyrskaja stikhami”). the analysis will completely disregard the work’s supposed social criticism, which has been dependably, if unconvincingly, asserted by such otherwise excellent scholars as lidia lotman and grigory gukovsky.1 instead, it will examine the only quality of the work that can indisputably be considered revolutionary – its versification. * author’s address: michael wachtel, princeton university, department of slavic languages and literatures, 225 east pyne, princeton, new jersey 08544, usa, email: wachtel@princeton. edu. 1 “the poem’s revolutionary character consists not of specific political hints, but in general principles directed against the literature and ideology of the nobility in its particular area, in the battle against the reactionary distortion of the idea of the folk and folk culture that was so dear to radishchev and, first and foremost, in the battle against the very genre of the fairy-tale poem as the clearest manifestation of this movement”. [“революционность поэмы состоит не в отдельных политических намеках, а в общих принципах, направленных против дворянской литературы и идеологии на определенном ее участке, в борьбе против studia metrica et poetica 7.2, 2020, 61–89 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.2.04 62 michael wachtel radishchev wrote poetry throughout his life, but his output was modest. the most recent edition – in the “poet’s library” series from 1975, includes only 16 poems, amounting to less than 150 pages in total. none of his manuscripts have survived, which is particularly unfortunate in the case of works like “bova”, where the first publication was posthumous. nonetheless, even in the at times unpolished form that his poetry has come down to posterity, it is striking for its highly experimental approach to form, genre, and poetic language. in addition to his poems, radishchev wrote two lengthy and revealing prose statements about russian verse. the first is the chapter “tver’” from his journey from petersburg to moscow, in which the narrator relates his discussion with a garrulous “fashionable versifier” (“novomodnyj stikhotvorets”), who, after offering a fascinating and idiosyncratic commentary on the history of russian poetry, recites long excerpts from his ode “vol’nost’”. this interlocutor’s opinions are transparently those of radishchev himself, just as his poem is of course radishchev’s own. a decade later radishchev devoted another work to the subject of russian verse and versification. titled “a monument to the dactylo-trochaic hero”, it takes the form of a series of “dramatico-narrative conversations of a youth and his tutor” (“dramatikopovestvovatel’nye besedy junoshi s pestunom ego”) and is devoted in large part to vasily trediakovsky’s notorious epic “the tеlemakhida”. all of radishchev’s poetry and writings about poetry reveal a dissatisfaction with the constraints that russian poets had established, whether generic, thematic, metrical, rhythmical, lexical, phonetic, or syntactic. as the “fashionable versifier” of the travelogue argues, the problems began with lomonosov’s reforms. his main complaint is not that lomonosov was a bad poet, but that he was an excellent poet. indeed, he was so good that his successors felt they had no choice but to follow in his footsteps.2 this influence is reflected in subsequent реакционного искажения близкой радищеву идеи народности и народной старины, и – в первую голову – в борьбе против самого жанра поэмы-сказки, как наиболее яркого проявления этого течения”] (lotman 1939: 140). “the ideo-political content of radishchev’s other poems is likewise significant. he did not miss the opportunity, for example, in the poem ‘bova’ to hint more or less transparently at the sad fate of the russian state in his time, at the gangsterism of the rulers that had been made into law etc”. [“значительна идейнополитическая содержательность и других стихотворений радищева. он не пропускал случая, например, в поэме «бова», намекнуть более или менее прозрачно на печальную судьбу русского государства в его время, на узаконенный бандитизм властей и т. п.”] (gukovsky 1947: 565). 2 these thoughts are developed in the “slovo o lomonosove”, which comprises almost the entire final chapter of the puteshestvie. the work’s narrator claims that this paean to lomonosov’s brilliance was authored by that same “fashionable versifier”. 63radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization poets’ dependence on rhyme (“kraeslovie”, in radishchev’s archaicized idiom) and iambs. though radishchev himself did not always renounce iambs or rhyme, he did not feel bound by them. his most famous poem, “vol’nost’”, is written in the standard iambic tetrameter and odic rhyme scheme that lomonosov had pioneered in russia (albeit, as we shall see, with certain unusual rhythmical features). however, some of his works draw transparently on the poetry of antiquity, which of course did not employ rhyme. (the eponymous “dactylo-trochaic hero”, for example, is simply a convoluted way of referring to the modern russian equivalent of the unrhymed hexameter of homeric epic.) in addition to applying ancient versification to modern poetry, radishchev also considered the possibility of revisiting folkloric form, an interest that figures most prominently in “bova”. this turn to folklore was not unique to radishchev; in fact, he was in this regard following the example of a number of his contemporaries.3 these writers tended to glorify russian folk tradition in opposition to the greek mythology that had been championed by poets of the neo-classical tradition, whether the french or their russian imitators. the irony, as lidia lotman justly remarks, was that they were far more familiar with greek mythology than with their own folklore.4 radishchev knew more about his native folklore than most writers of his day (azadovsky 2014: 83–90). however, like them, he wrongly assumed that the character of prince bova was distinctly russian. as d. s. mirsky explains: “the influence of the narrative folk-song is again clearly apparent in two romances that were introduced into russia from abroad at some time in the first half of the seventeenth century – bova korolevich and eruslan lazarevich. 3 an excellent overview of russian eighteenth-century attitudes toward and knowledge of folklore can be found in azadovsky 2014. 4 “though contrasted to classical, this ‘russian’ mythology was completely based on ancient greek mythology, since the writers who were extolling it knew the culture with which they were battling much better than the material on which they were constructing their convictions; not to mention the fact that the majority of them had only the vaguest conception of folklore: the authors of these fairy-tale poems often barely knew their ‘ancient russian’ olympus [...] russian folk warriors were drawn according to the image of european knighthood, then repackaged in the form of heroes of ancient rus’ and contrasted to the west...” [“будучи противопоставляема классической, эта «русская» мифология была всецело построена на основе античной, так как писатели, пропагандировавшие ее, лучше знали культуру, с которой боролись, нежели материал, на котором строили свои убеждения; не говоря уж о том, что большинство их имело крайне слабое представление о фольклоре: авторы поэмсказок часто не твердо знали даже свой «древнерусский» олимп [...] русские богатыри рисовались по образцам европейского рыцарства, а затем преподносились в виде героев древней руси, противопоставляемой западу...”] (lotman 1939: 135–136). 64 michael wachtel bova is of french origin, being the descendant of the carolingian romance bueves d’anston (the english version is called bevis of hampton). to russia it came by way of a north italian bovo d’antona, and thence through bohemia and white russia. in russia it was completely assimilated and thoroughly russianized. it is amusing to see how the french romance has been transformed into a story of purely fairy-tale adventure, with all the chivalrous and courteous element eliminated. bova and eruslan (which is of oriental origin and a distant descendant of the persian rustam) were immensely popular as chap-books. it was from them the poets of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries formed their idea of russian folklore” (mirsky 1927: 35). whether national or not, “bova” was a story that flaunted its unpolished origins. this was a tale for the unsophisticated reader (or listener), without any pretenses to edifying its audience. as one of the grandees in derzhavin’s “felitsa” unashamedly states: “i read polkan and bova; reading the bible, i yawn and sleep”.5 it is thus unsurprising that radishchev should have chosen the character of bova for his lengthiest foray into russian folkloric stylization. this work serves as an excellent example of just how far radishchev was willing to stray from canonical verse form. the extant text of “bova” is 988 lines long, consisting of an “introduction” followed by the first canto. according to the poet’s son, radishchev commenced work on the poem in 1799 and completed eleven of the projected twelve cantos.6 had this text come down to us, it would have been by far radishchev’s longest work in verse. however, for reasons unknown, at some point between 1799 and his suicide in 1802, the poet destroyed cantos two to eleven. the plot of the missing ten cantos – a series of adventures and misfortunes (sventure)7 – can be reestablished through recourse to a surviving 5 “полкана и бову читаю; за библией, зевая, сплю”. in notes to his own poem, derzhavin explains that the grandee in question is aleksandr alekseevich viazemsky, who tasked the poet with reading aloud to him “polkan and bova and <other> well-known ancient russian stories” (derzhavin 1957: 376). 6 in his notes to the soviet complete edition of radishchev, gukovsky points out that pavel radishchev made this statement almost fifty years after his father’s death. gukovsky argues that the poem could have been begun in 1798, but not earlier (radishchev 1938: 449). 7 the epigraph to the entire work is “o che caso! che sventura” (oh, what a situation! what a misfortune). i cannot agree with andrei kostin’s claim that “sventura” (“misfortune” or “misadventure”) is a misprint for “avventura” (“adventure”) (kostin 2012: 188). the expression “che sventura” is common in italian, and “bova” – pace kostin – relates numerous misadventures, even if the work was ultimately to culminate in a happy ending. kostin hypothesizes that the source of this epigraph comes from an italian aria and laments that it has never been discovered. in fact, his hypothesis is probably correct. igor pilshchikov (private communication) has 65radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization six-page prose “plan”, which gives an overview of the entire poem, at least as it was initially conceived. while our interest is primarily in the versification, it is important to say a few things about this plan and the poem’s plot. first and foremost, the prose plan is in many ways inadequate. it begins as follows: “as a ship sails silently, bova sings a song about his sad fate. suddenly there is a storm [...]”.8 the first sentence of this summary corresponds to the first 35 lines of the first canto. however, the second sentence corresponds to what must have been the second canto, because these events are not recounted in the first. in other words, approximately 700 lines of the first canto are not reflected in the plan. these lines – the vast majority of the extant text – relate a conversation between bova and an old woman, the ship’s cook. upon hearing bova’s tale of woe, she is moved to compassion and then to passion. their conversation has a humorous character, because the old woman’s interest in bova, seemingly maternal at first, becomes increasingly erotic in nature. by the end of the canto, when bova innocently mentions a despondent princess who wants to hang herself on a “bol’shoj gvozd’ i dereviannyj” (“a large wooden stick”), his by now nymphomaniacal interlocutor recognizes this large stick as a phallic symbol or, possibly, a dildo. this inspires her to sing a hymn to the god “fal” (phallus) and even to produce a “svjashchennyj obraz” (“holy image”) of “her god” made of clay. lidia lotman has recognized in this scene a spoof of the traditional “fairy godmother” motif of fairy tales, leading her to conclude that the entire poem is a parody.9 discovered two potential sources of this quotation, both of which belong to the once popular genre of the “dramma giocoso”. the first is “la vendemmia” by giovanni bertati (1778), where the line appears in the closing quatrain of act 1, scene 7: “o che caso, che sventura / io non so quel che mi far. / batte il cor per la paura, / che mi gela, e fa tremar” (https://books.google.com/ books?id=ev6wkzux4goc&pg=pa16). the second is from “lo sposo di tre e marito di nessuna” by pasquale anfossi (1768), where it is found in act 3, scene 1 in a less prominent position: “oh che caso! oh che sventura! / maladetta la scrittura, lassa me! povera me!” (https://books. google.com/books?id=2rgkpof7dfmc&pg=pa57). it should be noted that the additional “oh” in this line does not affect the scansion, since standard italian pronunciation would elide it with the “o” in “caso”. whether radishchev would have known this is another question, and it makes the former source more probable. 8 “при тихом плавании бова поет песню, соответственную своей горькой участи. вдруг восстает буря [...]” (radishchev 1975: 16). 9 for her, this particular scene “borders on the grotesque” (lotman 1939: 140). gukovsky likewise reads this scene as a parody, though of an epic: the meeting of dido and aeneas in vergil’s aeneid (radishchev 1938: 452). nikolai bogomolov (e-mail communication of 4 july 2020) has suggested that radishchev is responding directly to his notorious contemporary i. s. barkov. citing this same passage, william edward brown cryptically notes: “it is evident from 66 michael wachtel whether folkloric or parodic (or both), a work of twelve cantos qualifies as an epic – or a mock-epic. vergil’s aeneid, it should be recalled, is divided into twelve cantos. all told, vergil’s poem contains slightly less than 10,000 lines. had radishchev completed his project as planned and had all his stanzas been of the same length as the first, his work would have been close to 10,000 lines as well. in “tver’”, the “fashionable versifier” advocates the necessity of expanding the metrical repertoire of russian epic poetry: “if lomonosov had translated job or the psalmist in dactyls and if sumarokov had written ‘semira’ or ‘dimitri [the pretender]’ in trochees, then kheraskov might have thought of writing in other meters besides iambs and, had he described the taking of kazan in a verse form appropriate to an epic, his eight-year labor would have garnered greater glory”.10 the reference here is to kheraskov’s monumental but not terribly successful “rossijada”, which was written in russian alexandrines (iambic hexameter rhymed in pairs), a form familiar to contemporary russian readers from sumarokov’s neo-classical tragedies (such as “semira” and “dimitri”).11 one possible alternative to iambs was the ancient hexameter, familiar from homer and vergil. this was trediakovsky’s model when he decided to turn fénelon’s french novel about telemachus into a russian epic. radishchev’s “fashionable versifier” has a lot to say about this: the indefatigable workhorse trediakovsky made no small contribution [to the stasis of russian versification] with his “telemakhida”. it is now very difficult to give an example of new versification, because the examples of good and bad versification have left deep roots. parnassus is surrounded by iambs and guarded by rhymes. whoever might try to write hexameters is assigned trediakovsky as a tutor, and the most beautiful child will appear to be an abomination until a milton, shakespeare or voltaire is born. then they’ll dig trediakovsky out of his passages such as this in ‘bova’ that, despite the markedly indecent nature of the treatment, there is intended an esoteric secondary meaning, the nature of which can hardly be made out certainly from the meager fragment we possess” (brown 1980: 489). 10 “если бы ломоносов преложил иова, или псалмопевца дактилями или если бы сумароков, семиру или дмитрия написал хореями, то и херасков вздумал бы, что можно писать другими стихами опричь ямбов, и более бы славы в осмилетнем своем приобрел труде, описав взятие казани, свойственным епопеи стихосложением” (radishchev 1938: 352). 11 on the widespread use of iambic hexameter in high genres of eighteenth-century russian poetry, see gasparov 1984: 58–60. 67radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization moss-covered tomb, and they will find good lines in the “telemakhida” that will serve as models.12 provocatively, radishchev himself chose a line from the “telemakhida” as the epigraph to the journey from petersburg to moscow.13 radishchev’s evaluation of trediakovsky’s epic is aptly summarized at the end of the “dactylo-trochaic hero”: “in the ‘telemakhida’ there are some superb lines, some good lines, many mediocre and weak lines, and so many ridiculous lines that though it would be possible to count them, no one is ready to do so. thus, we can say: the ‘telemakhida’ is the work of a man who was learned in versification, but who had not the slightest idea about taste”.14 in other words, radishchev sees the problem not in the applicability of ancient meters to russian verse, but with the poet who chose to apply them and through his example discredited the very possibility. radishchev further argues that fénelon’s novel was an inappropriate subject for a “heroic song”.15 in other words, he recognizes that certain forms are 12 “неу томимый возовик тредиаковский немало к тому способствовал своею телемахидою. теперь дать пример нового стихосложения очень трудно, ибо примеры в добром и худом стихосложении глубокий пустили корень. парнас окружен ямбами, и рифмы стоят везде на карауле. кто бы ни задумал писать дактилями, тому тот час тредиаковского приставят дядькою, и прекраснейшее дитя долго казаться будет уродом, доколе не родится мильтона, шекеспира или вольтера. тогда и тредиаковского выроют из поросшей мхом забвения могилы, в тeлемахиде найдутся добрые стихи и будут в пример поставляемы” (radishchev 1938: 352–353). 13 that same line is called “laughable” [smekhotvorno] in the later “dactylo-trochaic hero”. (radishchev 1975: 204). 14 “[...] в «телемахиде» находятся несколько стихов превосходных, несколько хороших, много посредственных и слабых, а нелепых столько, что счесть хотя их можно, но никто не возьмется оное сделать. итак, скажем: «телемахида» есть творение человека ученого в стихотворстве, но не имевшего о вкусе нималого понятия” (radishchev 1975: 210). on radishchev’s complicated and at times seemingly contradictory attitude towards the “telemakhida”, see also v. a. zapadov’s comments in radishchev 1975: 40. 15 “the prejudice against the creator of the ‘telemakhida’ is too great. if you take into account that the idea of this book was not his, that he should not answer for what is unnecessary and inappropriate for a heroic poem or for the weak or drawn-out passages... then at worst he should be judged as a person who passionately loved fénelon’s ‘telemachus,’ who wanted to dress it in a russian caftan, but being a bad tailor, was not able to give it a fashionable look and hung little bells on it as decoration” [“предубеждение твое против творца телемахиды чрез меру велико. если ты рассудишь, что вымысел сея книги не его, что он отвечать не должен ни за ненужное и к ироической песни неприличное, ни за места слабые или растянутые... то о нем должно судить разве как о человеке, полюбившем страстно фенелонова телемака, 68 michael wachtel better suited than others for certain genres. one may thus presume that he felt that – albeit for different reasons – neither iambs nor greek hexameters could be used in a russian epic (or mock-epic). as the opening lines of “bova” illustrate, radishchev’s solution was unprecedented in russian poetry. из среды туманов серых времен бывших и протекших, из среды времен волшебных где предметы все и лица, чародейной мглой прикрыты, окруженны нам казались блеском славы и сияньем [...] (radishchev 1975: 137) with the exception of the second line, these verses easily scan as trochaic tetrameter. and indeed, m. l. gasparov does not hesitate to describe “bova” in precisely this way. however, the second line is – at least by the standards of conventional russian versification – an anomaly. for it to read “correctly”, the word “vremen” would have to take stress on the first syllable. any thought that this was radishchev’s intention is made problematic by the fact that the same word appears in the very next line with its usual stress on the second syllable. it should be recalled, of course, that russian folklore is characterized by stresses on syllables that would not be stressed in ordinary speech or in written poetry. the same word may be stressed two different ways in the same line or the same passage (bailey 1993: 44). in connection with the opening of radishchev’s “bova”, we might note that such “incorrect” stresses likewise occur in folkloric stylizations (bailey 1970: 439). the formula “v nochnó vremjá” is attested to in folkloric poetry (bailey 1993: 54), though it is doubtful that the same phenomenon would occur outside of that fixed phrase and in particular with the genitive plural “vremen”, a form with a valence much more literary than folkloric. outside of folklore, it is not so unusual to find stress on “weak” beats in russian syllabo-tonic poetry. however, in binary meters such freedoms are limited to monosyllabic words. in german and especially in english binary захотевшем одеть его в русской кафтан, но будучи худой закройщик, он не умел ему дать модного вида и для прикрасы обвесил его колокольчиками”] (radishchev 1975: 187–188). 69radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization meters, such stress shifts routinely occur on disyllabic words.16 thus, milton can write (emphases mine): and bended dolphins play: part huge of bulk wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, tempest the ocean [...] (paradise lost, 7: 410–412) this passage – and the entire work that it is from – is in iambic pentameter (blank verse), but the second line and third lines begin with trochees.17 milton presumably employs these rhythmic “interruptions” for a semantic purpose, in this instance to emphasize clumsiness of motion. that he seems to have confused the graceful movement of dolphins with the lumbering movement of larger sea creatures need not bother us. the relevant issue concerns poetic rhythm. passages like this are common in milton, where they are used expressively, as a type of rhythmic underlining. in russian, such possibilities are extremely restricted. it is precisely this characteristic that has allowed for the development of the statistical approach to russian verse. initiated by the poet andrei belyi, refined by boris tomashevsky, and systematized by kirill taranovsky and m. l. gasparov, this methodology allowed scholars to reveal distinct rhythmical tendencies in the poets of various historical epochs and, at times, in poets within a single epoch. this entire approach is predicated on two main assumptions: 1) that a syllable is either stressed or unstressed (i.e., that there are no “gray areas” or “partial stresses”) and 2) that hypermetrical stress – i.e., stress on weak syllables – either does not occur at all or occurs so rarely as to be statistically insignificant. elsewhere i have questioned the first assumption (wachtel 2015). the work of radishchev, especially “bova”, forces us to confront the second. the oddity of radishchev’s rhythms was noticed by tomashevsky himself, who drew attention to a peculiarity of the iambs in the following stanza from “vol’nost’”: господню волю исполняя, до встока солнца на полях скупую ниву раздирая, 16 for a clear overview of the differences in national traditions, see gasparov 1996: 202–206 and tarlinskaja 1987. 17 in the context of milton’s versification, both of these words have only two syllables. because of elisions, the second line would scan: “wall’wing unwield’ enormous in their gait”. 70 michael wachtel волы томились на браздах; как мачиха к чуждоутробным исходит с видом всегда злобным, рабам так нива мзду дает. но дух свободы ниву греет, бесслезно поле вмиг тучнеет; себе всяк сеет, себе жнет. (emphases by tomashevsky in tomashevsky 1929: 67) here we find two instances of disyllabic words where the stress falls on weak syllables. one might argue that the word “vsegda” could be read with no stress at all, but “sebe” is more difficult to explain. similar to the case we examined above (“vremen”), the word is used twice in close proximity, but with different stresses. in this example, they occur within the very same line, with the standard stress coming first (себе всяк сеет, себе жнет) and the incorrect stress second (себе всяк сеет, себе жнет). however, in the context of “vol’nost’” there are mitigating circumstances. first of all, this happens only rarely. second, the word “sebe”, being a pronoun, could arguably be read without any stress (as pronouns are pronounced when they fall on weak syllables).18 compare, for example, the use of the possessive pronoun “tvoj” in the very first stanza of “vol’nost’”: о! дар небес благословенный, источник всех великих дел, о, вольность, вольность, дар бесценный, позволь, чтоб раб тебя воспел. исполни сердце твоим жаром, в нем сильных мышц твоих ударом во свет рабства тьму претвори, да брут и телль еще проснутся, седяй во власти да смятутся от гласа твоего цари. (radishchev 1975: 56. emphases mine.) 18 thus, because of the iambic “rhythmic inertia”, the opening of pushkin’s famous poem “я вас любил” is scanned with a stress on “vas”, but not on “ja”. whether this corresponds to the way one would or should recite the poem is a complicated question, but this is the assumption that tomashevsky, taranovsky, and gasparov have used to create their formidable statistical studies. 71radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization the second and third appearances of this word take stress on the expected final syllable, but in the first usage (“tvoim”) the stress would presumably fall on the first syllable. once again, the easy explanation – whether correct or not – is to appeal to what russian metricists call “atonirovanie”, i. e., that, in the context of iambic “rhythmic inertia”, the exceptional stress is reduced to the point where it simply disappears. otherwise, one must accept that radishchev was pushing the possibilities of russian meter to the breaking point, not only allowing stresses to fall on weak syllables, but allowing them to fall on weak syllables of polysyllabic words. interestingly, this second explanation is gasparov’s. he cites this passage in the context of radical experimentation in the late eighteenth century, of making poetic rhythm “more difficult” (“zatrudnennyj stikh”)19 (gasparov 1984: 82). as we have already noted, the situation is more complicated in “bova”, because, as far as poetic rhythm is concerned, there is an enormous difference between a pronoun and a noun. one can argue that “tvoim” should not be stressed at all, but it is harder to make that claim about “vremen”. and there is another, more significant problem. if this phenomenon occurred only rarely, it might be dismissed as a statistically insignificant aberration.20 however, this is by no means the case. whereas relatively few accentually problematic lines appear in “vol’nost’”, they are common in “bova”. let us look at the following passage: говоря сие, отводит бову в малую каюту, где старуха наша нежна обед братьям всем готовит. тут, согрев и накормивши, бову нежно обнимает, очи мокры от слез горьких отирает поцелуем. “скажи мне, – она вещает, – 19 taranovsky cites another line from “vol’nost’” with the same rhythmic shift and notes that this is “very rare” (“sovsem redko”) in iambic verse (taranovsky 2010: 33). 20 one might compare “bova”, with “pesn’ istoricheskaia”, radishchev’s longest surviving work, which is written in this same form. that poem also features rhythmic shifts (e.g. “народ шаткий, легковерный” or “может, может сказать смело” – emphases mine), but they are infrequent. this raises the obvious question of why they occur so often in “bova”. i would suggest that the folkloric qualities are central here, though one could argue that the parodic nature also contributes to its rhythmic “errors”. 72 michael wachtel “скажи мне свою кручину, свою участь мне сурову!” бова нежно имел сердце... (radishchev 1975: 145. emphases mine.) of these twelve consecutive lines, only four are, strictly speaking, “correct” trochees. the other eight all feature misplaced accents. or, put otherwise: in the space of twelve trochaic lines, we find nine iambic feet (with the final line mixing two iambic and two trochaic feet). for purposes of comparison, we might note that, according to maksim shapir, such exceptional stresses occur only nine times in all of radishchev’s “vol’nost’”, a poem of 540 lines.21 moreover, of the nine “incorrect” stresses in this passage in “bova”, only one falls on a pronoun. the rest fall on verbs or nouns, words that indisputably take stress. in most cases the “errors” occur on the first foot of the line, creating an emphatic syncopation that simply is not to be found elsewhere – at least not with anything approaching this type of frequency – in russian syllabo-tonic versification. though this passage is extreme, it is not difficult to find consecutive lines with “incorrect” stresses in “bova”, as the following passage, found towards the very end of the first canto (lines 971–975), indicates. “продолжай, – она вещает, – свою повесть ты плачевну. бова, вынув платок белой, отирает чело старо своей нежныя подруги [...] (radishchev 1975: 161. emphases mine.) here we find four consecutive lines with iambic stress shifts, including one line (as in the previous passage) with two of them. gasparov rarely mentions “bova”, but his brief comments are characteristically insightful. in his outline of the history of russian verse, he writes: “in his experiments with verse made difficult, radishchev dared even to break the rule that only allowed hypermetrical stress in the iamb and trochee on monosyllabic words [...] in the trochees of the poem ‘bova’ such striking interruptions are still more numerous [...] here we undoubtedly encounter an imitation 21 in all nine instances, the words in question are pronouns or adverbs. shapir argues that while the stress on these words is surely reduced, it is nonetheless present (shapir 2009: 465). 73radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization of folk verse” (gasparov 1984: 82).22 in his lengthy study of russian literary imitations of folk poetry, he adds two more observations: “in folk verse there are almost no works written in trochaic tetrameter with feminine endings, and in literary imitations this meter appears only in radishchev’s ‘bova’ (perhaps not without the unexpected influence of the ‘spanish’ trochaic tetrameter of karamzin’s recent ‘count guarinos’)” (gasparov 1997: 86).23 first, gasparov explains the poem’s rhythmic oddities as a reflection of russian folkloric practice. this fact had already been established by taranovsky in his study of binary meters. taranovsky found that, to the extent such rhythmic shifts were present, they tended to occur on the first foot of a trochaic line (taranovsky 2010: 27–28). as our exemplary passages demonstrate, this is indeed the case in radishchev, and it suggests a much more thorough acquaintance with folk versification than was common in the eighteenth century. however, as gasparov points out, while radishchev’s rhythms may be modeled on folklore, his meter has no folkloric provenance. in order to account for it, he suggests a source in karamzin’s “graf gvarinos” (“count guarinos”). anthony cross has shown that radishchev’s views of poetry and poetics were strikingly close to those of the young karamzin, who himself had advocated supplementing the dominant russian iambic tradition with trochees, unrhymed verse, and meters from antiquity (cross 1968: 40).24 given karamzin’s status in the literary world of eighteenth-century russia, one may safely assume that his poetic practice was highly influential in forming radishchev’s views. karamzin’s “graf gvarinos”, written in 1789 and published in 1792, is a good example of these experimental tendencies. written on an exotic spanish subject (according to the subtitle, it is an “ancient hispanic historical song” [древняя гишпанская историческая песня]), it is formally striking. it is the first russian example of what in european versification is called “spanish trochees”, meaning unrhymed trochaic tetrameter. spanish versification is 22 “в своих экспериментах с затрудненным стихом радищев решился даже нарушить правило, допускавшее сверхсхемные ударения в ямбе и хорее лишь на односложных словах [...] в хорее поэмы «бова» таких резких перебоев еще больше [...] здесь несомненна имитация ритма народного стиха”. 23 “произведений, написанных четырехстопным хореем с женским окончанием, в народной лирике почти нет, а в литературных имитациях этот размер появляется лишь в «бове» радищева (быть может, не без неожиданного влияния «испанского» четырехстопного хорея недавнего «графа гвариноса» карамзина)”. 24 cross emphasizes that after 1793 karamzin’s poetry became much more “traditional”, the result of karamzin changing his models from german to french. 74 michael wachtel syllabic, so the term “trochee” is, strictly speaking, irrelevant, but this was how german poets had rendered the spanish “romancero” (polilova 2018). indeed, karamzin’s poem was itself a translation of friedrich justin bertuch’s german translation from the spanish. at least in meter, karamzin’s poem resembles the form that radishchev was to use: unrhymed trochaic tetrameter. closer inspection reveals, however, that the works are formally distinct. the first eight lines of karamzin’s poem suffice to show why this is so: худо, худо, ах, французы, в ронцевале было вам! карл великий там лишился лучших рыцарей своих. и гваринос был поиман многим множеством врагов; адмирала вдруг пленили семь арабских королей. (karamzin 1966: 74) “count guarinos” is divided into quatrains, whereas radishchev’s poem is astrophic. moreover, karamzin alternates feminine and masculine line endings, whereas radishchev uses only feminine cadences. most importantly for our purposes: karamzin uses none of the rhythmic freedoms that make “bova” so distinctive. these are three significant differences, and one wonders whether gasparov’s suggestion was inspired by thematic rather than strictly formal considerations.25 25 in karamzin’s poem, the eponymous hero, charlemagne’s companion count guarinos, is taken prisoner in the battle of roncesvalles (in 778). after refusing to convert to islam, he languishes for years in an arab prison. at a certain point, the local ruler organizes a chivalric tournament where all knights are challenged to hit a target with their spear. none succeed, at which point guarinos asks for the opportunity to do so, offering his life if he should fail. after seven years of forced inactivity and against the ruler’s expectations, guarinos succeeds. he then slays a vast number of arabs and escapes to his native france. though this plot has no connection to the extant sections of “bova”, it does bear a resemblance to an episode that radishchev sketched in his prose plan. bova, separated from his beloved princess, is enslaved and sent to work in a stable. when a tournament is announced, he is not allowed to participate, but he nonetheless appears and defeats the champion (radishchev 1938: 23–24). that said: miraculous escapes from imprisonment to victory on the battlefield are not uncommon in adventure stories (americans might think of the film “the princess bride”), so such plot similarities may be typological rather than a sign of influence. 75radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization there is another karamzin poem that might just as plausibly have served as radishchev’s model: the unfinished, but highly influential “ilya muromets”, subtitled “bogatyrskaja skazka” (cf. radishchev’s “povest’ bogatyrskaja stikhami”) and published to great acclaim in 1795.26 a few representative lines of karamzin’s poem follow: [...] нам другие сказки надобны; мы другие сказки слышали от своих покойных мамушек. я намерен слогом древности рассказать теперь одну из них вам, любезные читатели, если вы в часы свободные удовольствие находите в русских баснях, в русских повестях, в смеси былей с небылицами, в сих игрушках мирной праздности, в сих мечтах воображения. (karamzin 1966: 149–150) this poem is not a spanish stylization of a western european theme, but rather is devoted to a truly russian folk hero. like “bova”, it is astrophic and in trochaic tetrameter. however, rather than the feminine endings of “bova”, karamzin used exclusively dactylic endings. in a note appended to the title, karamzin insisted that this form was “completely russian”, and that “almost all of our ancient songs are written in this meter”.27 this claim is not entirely correct, but neither is it wrong. trochees are indeed found in many forms of russian folklore (though generally in lyrics rather than epics), as are dactylic endings. indeed, in karamzin’s time, dactylic cadences were exceedingly rare in russian poetry, and they were introduced to give an exotic folkloric flavor (gasparov 1999: 19–20). given the limited number of genuine folkloric texts that would have been familiar to karamzin at the time he wrote “ilya 26 on radishchev’s distinction between “povest’” (an oral genre) and “povestvovanie” (a written genre), see kostin 2013: 321–322. 27 “в рассуждении меры скажу, что она совершенно русская. почти все наши старинные песни сочинены такими стихами” (karamzin 1966: 149). 76 michael wachtel muromets”, his stylization of folklore was metrically astute.28 gasparov (1999: 21) convincingly postulates that he had found this form in chulkov’s anthology of folk songs, published in 1780–81.29 two salient features separate the form of karamzin’s “ilya muromets” from radishchev’s “bova”: the cadence (dactylic in karamzin, feminine in radishchev) and the free placement of stresses in weak positions. both of these features of radishchev’s poem are highly unusual, and their combination is unique in the history of russian poetry. nonetheless, it might be noted that karamzin occasionally uses a misplaced stress. compare, for example, the lines: чудодея илью муромца! [...] кто сей рыцарь? – илья муромец [...] как илья, хотя и муромец (emphases mine) in the trochaic context of the poem, only the third of these lines places the stress correctly, on the second syllable of the eponymous hero’s first name. the other two lines use an “incorrect” stress on the first syllable.30 again, one can point to folkloric practice, where phrasal stress takes precedence over word stress and where the name “ilya” would get reduced stress, because the primary stress would fall on the following syllable (on the surname “muromets”).31 but insofar as karamzin’s popular stylization of folklore served as a point of departure for radishchev, it is tempting to see these unusual “misplaced” stresses 28 the tradition of the “bylina” was at this point unknown to karamzin, since the kirsha danilov collection was first published in 1804. karamzin saw this collection in manuscript and advocated for its publication, but this occurred in the early years of the nineteenth century, not in the 1790s (putilov 1977: 361). 29 gasparov notes in passing that the poems in that anthology that used this form were not, strictly speaking, folkloric in origin. however, this did not prevent later poets from using the form of karamzin’s “ilya muromets” for their own folkloric stylizations. this verse form was the subject of one of osip brik’s presentations at the moscow linguistic circle (pilshchikov and ustinov 2020: 407–408). 30 the second of these lines is cited by taranovsky (2010: 27) as a rare example of a trochaic stress shift that occurs in the middle of a line. he cites another line from karamzin’s poem as a more common shift that occurs at the beginning of the line: “ему хочется глаза ее”, though it bears repeating that pronouns do not have the same status as other nouns when it comes to determining poetic stress. 31 on the origin of the name muromets, see azadovsky 2014: 101. 77radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization as a rhythmic feature that radishchev chose to develop. and they do indeed occur far more frequently in radishchev than in karamzin. but how can we explain the feminine ending? everyone who has written about the form of “bova” notes the oddity of this cadence. as we have seen, gasparov emphasizes that this form has no precedent in russian folklore and that it never again appears in russian folkloric stylizations (gasparov 1997: 86). for andrei kostin, this is proof that radishchev did not understand – or value – folk versification.32 however, there is an explanation that gasparov himself offers, albeit in another context. in his study of the trochaic tetrameter with dactylic ending (the highly influential form of karamzin’s “ilya muromets”), he notes that this was only one of many ways that russian poets chose to imitate the folkloric “taktovik”. from the perspective of literary versification, the “taktovik” was an odd form in that it contained a mixture of lines, some of which could be scanned according to the syllabo-tonic system, while others could not. all the lines, however, had one unifying feature: an unrhymed dactylic cadence. in adapting the “taktovik” to literary norms, most poets retained that cadence, but simplified the rhythmic diversity of the individual lines. they took one of the syllabo-tonic variants and used it 32 “it also should be noted that not once in his numerous discussions of russian verse does radishchev mention folk verse; there are basically no attempts in his works to imitate it, even in a work where it would be logical to expect it [...] the trochaic tetrameter of ‘historical song’ and ‘bova,’ that has more than once been seen as “russian verse”, lacks the dactylic cadence, the main marker of the form that is being imitated, and for this reason can hardly be considered an experiment with folk versification. it is noteworthy that the meter of ‘bova’ repeats the meter of the italian verse line ‘ah, che caso, che sventura,’ apparently borrowed from an italian aria”. [“следует заметить также, что ни разу в своих многочисленных рассуждениях о русском стихе радищев не упоминает стиха народного; нет, по сути, в сочинениях писателя и попыток его имитации, в том числе в таком сочинении, где их логично было бы ожидать [...] неоднократно указываемый в качестве «русского» стих «песни исторической» и «бовы» – четырехстопный хорей – не обладает главным признаком имитирующего размера, дактилическим окончанием, и поэтому вряд ли может считаться опытом работы радищева с народным стихом. примечательно, что размер «бовы» повторяет размер итальянского стиха «ah, che caso, che sventura», по-видимому заимствованного из какойлибо итальянской арии” (kostin 2013: 316–317). kostin’s observation that the meter of the italian epigraph coincides with the meter of the poem is ingenious, even if the italian line would have to be (mis)read according to syllabo-tonic principles, something russian poets have been known to do. however, it is difficult to accept the suggestion that one line from an italian aria served as the poem’s metrical source. most poets would write their poem before choosing an epigraph. if anything, it would be more logical to conceive of a poet writing his work and then seeking out an equimetrical epigraph. in this particular instance, even if we agree that both epigraph and poem are in trochaic tetrameter (and this is already a significant assumption), the epigraph does not display any of the rhythmic oddities that distinguish the poem. 78 michael wachtel exclusively, adding the dactylic cadence as a clear marker of folk style. so, for example, while in “ilya muromets”, karamzin took the trochaic tetrameter, other poets opted for trochaic hexameter, anapestic trimeter or the “5 + 5” meter (gasparov 1999: 21). nonetheless, there were occasional poets who decided to reflect the rhythmic peculiarities of the “taktovik” by combining in a single poem syllabo-tonic and non-syllabo-tonic lines. the works gasparov has in mind were almost all written after radishchev’s death, in an age when, thanks to the publication of the kirsha danilov anthology, folkloric study had reached a higher level of sophistication. vostokov and pushkin wrote stylizations that used the full range of rhythmic possibilities of the folkloric “taktovik”, yet they replaced the traditional dactylic ending with a feminine ending. gasparov explains their motivation as follows: “the exotic rhythm made the exotic cadences unnecessary” (gasparov 1999: 21).33 in other words: to achieve the effect of russian folklore, it was not necessary to copy every aspect of the source text. one could either use the dactylic line endings (in which case the strange rhythms were superfluous) or the strange rhythms (in which case the dactylic line endings were superfluous). this seems to be precisely the decision that radishchev reached, anticipating by more than two decades the development of russian metrics.34 when gasparov studied the folkloric stylizations in “taktovik” by pushkin and vostokov, he of necessity altered his statistical approach. rather than trying to force these poems into a syllabo-tonic system, he took the poems line by line to see the relative percentage of the various meters (gasparov 1997: 128). to represent fairly the innovative versification of “bova”, a similar approach would presumably be appropriate. however, gasparov never attempted such a task, perhaps because radishchev’s experiment had no influence on future poets or perhaps because to take radishchev’s practice seriously would have necessitated rethinking the statistical methods that could so easily be applied to all other russian syllabo-tonic poetry. similarly, in the “theoretical” introduction to his book, taranovsky did not hesitate to include lines from radishchev’s “bova” as examples of odd stress patterns of the trochee, but when he undertook the “historical” (statistical) study, he passed over radishchev in silence. 33 “экзотический ритм делал ненужными экзотические окончания”. 34 it is conceivable that radishchev took his cue from sumarokov’s “khor k prevratnomu svetu”. however, this metrically experimental work is not particularly folkloric, and there is no certainty that radishchev even knew it. 79radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization vladimir zapadov, editor of the “poets’ library” edition of radishchev, approached the problem of the versification of radishchev’s “bova” from a very different direction. radishchev strongly emphasizes the non-trochaic (it might even be better to say anti-trochaic) character of his “russian verse” by introducing an enormous number of stresses on the even-numbered syllables, especially noticeable at the beginning of the line, on the second syllable [...] the “introduction” of this poem consists of 203 lines, and according to the syllable count (not the foot!) the stress is allocated thus: 48–42–203–10–92–21–203–3. in other words, the third and seventh syllables are stressed 100% of the time, while the first and second are almost equal in the degree of stressing (23.3 and 20.7). surely radishchev put such a large number of stresses on the second syllable because he was especially concerned that his readers not confuse his “russian structure”, his “russian verse” with a trochee. the poet “structures” his lines this way so that he destroys and possibility of perceiving his “russian verse” as a variant of a syllabo-tonic meter. the fundamental rhythmic principle of radishchev’s “russian verse” is the two-stressed line, moreover in the vast majority of cases these fall on the third and seventh syllable; in exceptional cases, on the first and seventh (radishchev 1975: 38–39).35 according to zapadov, “bova” is simply not a syllabo-tonic poem. he dismisses the possibility that it is trochaic, going so far as to label it “anti-trochaic”. this is an interesting argument, but it has its shortcomings. to begin with, zapadov’s statistics are open to question. because he begins with the assumption that this poetry is not syllabo-tonic, he reads the text as if it were free verse or prose, without any rhythmic inertia, which means that any monosyllabic word can 35 “радищев резко подчеркивает нехореический (лучше даже сказать – антихореический) характер своего «русского стиха», вводя огромное количество ударений на четных слогах, в особенности ощутимых в начале строки, на втором слоге [...] «вступление» к этой поэме насчитывает 203 стиха, и по слогам (а не по стопам!) ударения распределяются так: 48–42–203–10–92–21–203–3. иначе говоря, третий и седьмой слоги имеют 100% ударений, а первый и второй – почти одинаковы по степени ударности (23,3 и 20,7). не потому ли у радищева такое большое количество ударений на втором слоге, что он специально заботился, дабы читатели не перепутали его «русский строй», «русский стих» с хореем? [...] поэт «строит» строки таким образом, что ликвидирует всякую возможность восприятия «русского стиха» как разновидности силлабо-тонического размера. основной ритмический принцип радищевского «русского стиха» – двухударность, причем в подавляющем большинстве случаев ударения расположены на третьем и седьмом слоге; редчайшие исключения – первый и седьмой”. 80 michael wachtel in principle take stress, regardless of its position in the line.36 he thus gives himself license to stress every pronoun and every monosyllabic word (except for particles). for example, since he claims that the final syllable of the line is stressed three times, he could only have had in mind the following lines: я намерен рассказать вам (l. 34) итак, только расскажу вам (l. 41) когда будет, – не пророк я (l. 197) in all three of these examples, zapadov seems to read the final two syllables of the line as being stressed. if these lines were scanned as trochaic, according to the conventions used by statisticians of verse, the last syllable would be regarded as unstressed. as taranovsky (2010: 26) explains: “while the final strong syllable in russian binary meters is as a rule always stressed, all of the non-obligatory syllables after it are as a rule unstressed”. in the context of radishchev’s exclusively feminine clausulae, it is obvious that phrases like “рассказать вам”, “расскажу вам”, “не пророк я” have only one stress and that it falls on the penultima. to read these lines as ending in a spondee would be strange from any point of view, whether that of a scholar of verse form or of a native speaker or, for that matter, of a non-native speaker – pro doma sua. however, we might return to our earlier examples to see how complicated this question can become: скажи мне, – она вещает, – скажи мне свою кручину [...] syntactically and rhythmically, the opening of these lines clearly resembles the clausulae of the first two lines we examined above. in each case, a verb is followed by a monosyllabic indirect object in dative case. in all of these passages, the logical stress falls on the verb. if we read the lines as trochaic, however, rhythmic inertia would encourage at least a weakened stress on the pronoun when it falls on syllable three. this is definitely how zapadov reads these lines, because he views stress on the third syllable as an invariant. in this case, the 36 in syllabo-tonic verse, monosyllabic words are not stressed in weak positions unless they are clearly set off by syntax or semantic weight. for example, in the context of iambs, the first stress of the line “гм-гм, читатель благородный” falls unambiguously on the second syllable. if this were part of a prose passage, one might argue for different accentuation. (this example comes from lotman 1995: 267.) 81radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization russian verse statisticians would presumably agree with him, because syllable three is a strong position in trochaic meters. once we move away from the concept of rhythmic inertia, it becomes challenging to scan the text. to give just one example: во болгарах спою песню; воздохну на том я месте (lines 151–152) the first of these lines is fairly clear. it has stress on syllables 3 and 7, but also on syllable 6, a weak position in a trochaic line. one might reduce this stress somewhat in actual declamation, but it is a verb, which ordinarily demands stress. the second line is less obvious. again, the stresses clearly fall on syllables 3 and 7, but here one could argue for additional stresses on 5 and 6. three consecutive stresses are rare in russian, especially if the words are not the same part of speech. (cf. “слова: бор, буря, ведьма, ель”, in eugene onegin 6: xxiv or derzhavin’s “рев крав, гром жолн и коней ржанье”).37 if radishchev’s lines were unambiguously trochaic, it would be clear that the stress on “ja” should be omitted in the phrase “воздохну на том я месте”. but in the context of a poem where stresses fall unpredictably, one could plausibly argue that the stress should be omitted from syllable five (where it would be likely to fall in a trochaic line) and displaced to syllable six (where it did indeed fall in the previous line) or that one is supposed to stress three consecutive syllables, albeit with greater or lesser emphasis. here we would enter the thorny question of relative stress levels.38 since such ambiguities are frequent, i was unable to reproduce zapadov’s statistics. in one reading, i put stresses only where they logically and unambiguously fall. i read the syllable stresses of the same 203 lines as follows: 26–19–203–1–39–6–203–0. in another reading, i was much more generous in allowing stresses on monosyllabic words and came up with the following figures: 51–32–203–9–85–14–203–0. though both sets of my numbers differ 37 strong syntactic breaks can also create constructions with (potentially) three consecutive stresses. see lotman 1995: 279. 38 at a 1919 meeting of the moscow linguistic circle, osip brik (following f. e. korsh) insisted on the need to distinguish among different levels of stress in analyzing the rhythms of russian poetry (pilshchikov 2017: 167–68). a few years later, zhirmunsky advocated four degrees of stress (zhirmunsky 1925: 128–130). later russian theorists did not necessarily disagree with brik and zhirmunsky; they apparently just recognized that such a complicated system was impractical for statistical analysis. in scholarship on other traditions, where statistics play a lesser role, the concept of four degrees of stress is common (kiparsky 1975: 582). 82 michael wachtel significantly from zapadov’s, there is no disputing the fact that, if this verse is indeed trochaic, a surprisingly high percentage of stresses fall on the second syllable. (according to my first scansion, the first syllable is stressed approximately 13% of the time, while the second syllable is stressed about 9% of the time. according to my revised scansion, it would be 25% vs. 16%.) regardless of which set of data one uses, there is no question that the figures for stress on the second syllable are statistically significant. yet zapadov’s explanation is troubling. on the one hand, he insists that the preponderance of unusual stresses indicates that this cannot be syllabo-tonic verse, but on the other hand he argues for “metrical constants” on the third and seventh syllables. so strong is his sense of these constants that he marks accents in lines where the third-syllable stress might not be obvious to modern readers: e.g., line 202: “о странáх сих иметь хочешь”, since contemporary readers might anachronistically place the initial stress on syllable two: “о стрáнaх сих иметь хочешь”.39 this would result in three iambic feet and only one trochaic foot, something that never happens elsewhere in the poem. as far as the invariant stress on the third syllable goes, zapadov is surely correct. it might be noted in support that lines beginning with words of three or more syllables inevitably take stress on the third syllable, e.g., рассекáл, подошлá, умирáющих, прижимáла. there is never a case where a line opens with a polysyllabic word that has a rhythmic profile like читает or слышала, which would unambiguously displace the stress from syllable three to syllable two (or one). in other words, the third syllable may not get the primary phrase accent, but it always has the possibility of getting some degree of stress, cf. the above-mentioned line opening of “скажи мне...”. in his urge to reject the possibility of trochaic verse, zapadov neglects one important factor. it so happens that the third and seventh syllables are by far the most common positions for stress in a standard trochaic tetrameter line. in his discussion of this meter, taranovsky observes: “it is immediately evident that the percentage of stresses on the third syllable continually rises. in eighteenth-century poets it wavers between 82.1% and 94.4%, while in the nineteenth century it ranges from 96.1% to 100%. in eight instances we are talking precisely about 100% – this is one of few examples where a rhythmic tendency becomes a rhythmic constant” (taranovsky 2010: 73).40 in other 39 on the accentuation of the word “strana”, see es’kova 2008: 58. in such instances, zapadov’s stress marks are correct, but nowhere does he indicate that he added them. they are not found in earlier publications, e.g., the edition that gukovsky prepared (radishchev 1938) or, of course, the first edition (radishchev 1807). 40 “бросается в глаза то, что процент ударений на третьем слоге постоянно растет. 83radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization words, in addition to the obligatory stress on the penultima (syllable seven) of a trochaic tetrameter line, taranovsky notes a very strong propensity for stress to fall on the third syllable.41 thus, it is strange to argue that “bova” is “anti-trochaic” when the “invariant” stresses correspond so closely to the primary patterning of trochaic tetrameter. indeed, in this regard radishchev was if anything ahead of his time, since his insistent realization of the stress on syllable three anticipates the usage found in later poets (taranovsky 2010: 26). in regard to zapadov’s insistence that radishchev shifts the stress on the first foot with the aim of rejecting the possibility of a trochaic reading, taranovsky makes another apposite point: “in the trochee a shift of stress occurs rather often at the beginning of a line (from the first syllable to the second) [...] such a stress shift is especially often encountered in trochaic folk songs” (taranovsky 2010: 27–28).42 unfortunately and uncharacteristically, taranovsky does not define what “rather often” means in the present context. his first two examples of this phenomenon are, not surprisingly, from radishchev’s “bova”. curiously, he takes two subsequent examples from karamzin’s “ilya muromets”, though he does not postulate the influence that we have suggested.43 despite the absence of statistics, one might apply taranovsky’s observations by saying that the surprising number of lines in radishchev where the initial stress falls on the second syllable is not so very unusual in trochees, especially in folkloric trochees. indeed, if we look at the placement of “inverted feet” in “bova”, a striking pattern emerges. these occur only in monoor disyllabic words, у поэтов xviii века он колеблется от 82,1% до 94,4% а в xix веке от 96,1% до 100%. в восьми случаях речь идет именно о ста процентах – это один из редких примеров перехода ритмической тенденции в константу”. 41 strictly speaking, the stress on syllable 7 is mandatory in trochaic tetrameter. in this regard, it is noteworthy that in the line “иль вы, гусли звончатые”, zapadov’s statistics indicate that he places the stress on the penultima. in the context of this poem, it is tempting to read it his way, but it would be an extremely unusual stress for that word. oddly, the standard stressing of that word before the twentieth century was on the second syllable (es’kova 2008: 405–406), but if it were read this way, the final stress of this line would fall on syllable 6, which would be unprecedented in radishchev’s poem. in my statistics, i have followed zapadov in this instance, but with a good deal of uncertainty. 42 “в хорее довольно часто является сдвиг ударения в начале стиха (с первого слога на второй) [...] такой сдвиг ударения особенно часто встречается в песенной народной лирике хореического типа”. 43 in contrast, dimitri blagoi (blagoi 1960: 499–500) apodictically states that radishchev borrowed the form of “bova” from karamzin’s “ilya muromets”. however, he simply labels the form of “bova” as “unrhymed trochaic tetrameter” and completely disregards the frequent rhythmic shifts that make it so distinctive. 84 michael wachtel usually on syllables one and two and, less frequently, on syllables five and six. this means that the word boundaries always coincide with the boundaries of a binary foot and only occur on the first and third “feet”, the weak feet in a tetrameter line. in more traditional scholarly notation, this could be designated as sw cw sw cw, where s = strong position, w = weak position and c = constant (obligatory stress) and where sw feet can be pyrrhic or inverted (that is ww or ws), but cw feet are fixed and therefore cannot be pyrrhic or inverted. all of this strongly suggests that we are dealing with some variant of trochaic tetrameter. however, the frequent inversions on disyllabic words make it impossible to define this variant through recourse to traditional russian metrics. at this point, it seems appropriate to introduce – and refute – one final perspective on radishchev’s choice of meter. the american scholar william edward brown (brown 1980: 488) writes: “‘bova’ uses the so-called ‘russian meter,’ an octosyllabic line of two strong beats and one or two weak ones, basically trochaic in rhythm [...] the meter inevitably suggests to an american longfellow’s hiawatha, which is trochaic tetrameter acatalectic, and very similar; and since longfellow’s use of the meter, and indeed some of the episodes in his poem, come, by his own admission, from the finnish kalevala, one may wonder if radishchev had encountered karelian or estonian prototypes of the ballads which dr. lönnrot collected to put together the kalevala”.44 the meter of the kalevala, as mihhail lotman has shown, is a bit more complicated than brown’s description.45 still, in the kalevala, the two initial positions are arbitrary in terms of stress, and it is these syllables that account for the majority of radishchev’s odd rhythms. attractive as the explanation is, the possibility that radishchev had encountered this form is remote. according to kostin (kostin 2013), he showed little interest in collecting even russian folkloric songs, let alone folkloric verse in a language he did not know (and in a language in which both syllable length and stress are relevant to the versification). additionally, there is a powerful historical argument to be made against the influence of the kalevala. even in scandinavia, this work was barely known until 1835, when lönnrot produced his edition. any resemblance between radishchev’s poem and the finnish epic must be therefore attributed to coincidence rather than influence. 44 brown’s comment about the “russian meter” appears to come from some sloppy terminology in zapadov’s essay cited above (radishchev 1975: 38). ordinarily, the term “russian meter” refers to vostokov’s definition of the folk “taktovik”, a non-syllabo-tonic form with a constant number of stresses per line. 45 gasparov 1996: 257. this subsection of the book was authored by mihhail lotman. 85radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization trochaic or not trochaic? ultimately, that is the question. but perhaps we can answer it indirectly, not in terms of either/or, but rather both/and. some verse theorists at the beginning of the twentieth century considered the possibility of “paonic” approaches to russian poetry (tomashevsky 1925: 76–78; scherr 1986: 122–124). the basic idea was that, if binary meters had feet of two syllables and ternary meters had feet of three syllables, then it should theoretically be possible to have feet of four syllables (a paeon) or even five syllables (a penton). the first paeon would sound like this (× k k k), the second (k × k k), the third (k k × k) and the fourth (k k k ×), where × signifies stressed and k signifies unstressed syllables. the terminology was adapted from ancient greek and latin verse, which was based on syllable length rather than stress and which in various positions permitted substitutions of one long syllable for two short syllables. when applied to russian versification, based entirely on stress, such substitutions were impossible. hence a problem was readily apparent; “pure” paeons and pentons occur in the russian language only rarely. it would be difficult to compose an entire poem where stress would fall only on every fourth or fifth syllable. within most paeons or pentons there would inevitably be “hypermetrical” stresses that break the line down into more traditional feet, such as iambs and trochees. as barry scherr notes, “the first and third paeons have a trochaic rhythm, the second and fourth iambic” (scherr 1986: 123). if this is the case, rather than describing various types of paeons with hypermetrical stresses, one might just as well stick with the traditional metrical arsenal of iambs, trochees, and pyrrhic feet (tomashevsky 1925: 123–124). however, one distinct advantage of a paeonic theory is that it could allow us to highlight the key stresses (the invariants or “constants”) while worrying less about the placement other stresses.46 thus, radishchev’s “bova” could be said to exemplify a dimeter line of the third paeon (k k × k). in its purest form, this would correspond to lines such as: “добродетели чертами” or “велелепные и пышны”. however, such lines are relatively few. in radishchev’s “bova”, it is not so much that there are no other stresses except on syllables 3 and 7 as much as that these other stresses are so unpredictable, especially at the beginning of the line. thus, we could say that the paeonic form offers a rhythmic outline, a new type of rhythmic inertia, which insists on the precise placement of two stresses in the line, but tolerates stresses on all other syllables except the last. 46 this is one of the reasons why mihhail lotman reads joseph brodsky’s “pis’ma rimskomu drugu” (“letters to a roman friend”) as “paeonic” rather than trochaic (lotman 1995: 312– 314). it might be noted that brodsky’s rhythmic shifts in this poem are far less radical than those in radishchev’s “bova”. 86 michael wachtel admittedly, the unpredictability is usually limited to syllables 1, 2, 5 and 6, but stress could in principle fall anywhere except on the final syllable.47 ultimately, it is not so important to determine which classification of radishchev’s poem is “correct”. in a certain sense, all three classifications are correct. my modified paeonic approach can be easily reconciled both with trochees (the interpretation of gasparov and taranovsky), and with zapadov’s “anti-trochaic” reading. the problem with zapadov’s explanation is that it does not recognize that radishchev’s rhythmic shifts are common – albeit not this common – in trochaic (and especially in folk trochaic) verse. the problem with a strictly trochaic reading like that of taranovsky or gasparov is that it erases precisely those experimental qualities that make the work so interesting. one of the essential qualities of this verse is that it resists definition according to the traditional parameters of russian metrics. and if this is the case, it would seem more appropriate to adjust those parameters rather than to remove the work from close scholarly analysis. radishchev himself was exiled to siberia; his poetry deserves a better fate. references azadovsky, mark konstantinovich 2014. istorija russkoj fol’kloristiki. sost. i otv. red. o. a. platonov. moskva: institut russkoj tsivilizatsii. bailey, james 1970. literary usage of a russian folk song meter. in: slavic and east european journal, 14(4), 436–452. https://doi.org/10.2307/305737 bailey, james 1993. three russian lyric folk song meters, columbus, oh: slavica. blagoi, dmitrij dmitrievich 1960. istorija russkoj literatury xviii veka. moskva: gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo. brown, william edward 1980. a history of 18th century russian literature. ann arbor: ardis. cross, anthony 1968. problems of form and literary influence in the poetry of karamzin. in: slavic review 27(1), 39–48. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2493911 derzhavin, gavrila romanovich 1957. stikhotvorenija. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. 47 such a conclusion would dovetail with taranovsky’s observation that the folkloric trochee tends towards paeons more than the literary trochee (taranovsky 2000: 282). admittedly, taranovsky was simply referring to the frequency of pyrrhic feet, not to the expanded notion of the paeon that i am suggesting here. 87radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization es’kova, natal’ja aleksandrovna 2008. normy russkogo literaturnogo jazyka xviii–xix vekov: udarenie, grammaticheskie formy, varianty slov, slovar’, pojasnitel’nye stat’i. moskva: rukopisnye pamjatniki drevnej rusi. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. a history of european versification. translated by g. s. smith and marina tarlinskaja. edited by g. s. smith with leofranc holfordstrevens. oxford: oxford up, 202–206. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1997. russkij narodnyj stikh i ego literaturnye imitatsii. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich, izbrannye trudy. tom 3: o stikhe. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 54–131. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1999. metr i smysl: ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamiati. moskva: rggu. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1984. ocherk istorii russkogo stikha. moskva: nauka. gukovsky, grigorij aleksandrovich 1947. radishchev. in: istorija russkoj literatury v 10 tomakh. moskva, leningrad: izdatel’stvo an sssr, 1941–1956. t. iv: literatura xviii veka. ch. 2, 507–570. karamzin, nikolai mikhailovich 1966. polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij. moskva, leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. kiparsky, paul 1975. stress, syntax, and meter. in: language, 51(3), 576–616. https://doi.org/10.2307/412889 kostin, andrej aleksandrovich 2012. ob istochnike epigrafa k poeme a.n. radishcheva “bova”. in: litterarum fructus: sbornik statej v chest’ sergeja ivanovicha nikolaeva. sankt-peterburg: al’ians-arkheo, 184–192. kostin, andrej aleksandrovich 2013. radishchev kak fol’klorist. in: xviii vek 27, 310–324. lotman, lidiia mikhailovna 1939. “bova” radishcheva i traditsii zhanra poemyskazki. in: uchenye zapiski leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 33 (filologicheskaja serija, № 2), 3–17. lotman, mihhail 1995. russkij stikh: osnovnye razmery, vkhodiashchie v evropeiskij metricheskij fond. in: červenka, miroslav; pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.), słowiańska metryka porównawcza vi: europejskie wzorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich. warszawa: instytut badań literackich. mirsky, prince d.s. 1927. a history of russian literature from the earliest times to the death of dostoyevsky (1881). london: george routledge & sons. 88 michael wachtel pilshchikov, igor 2017. zasedanie moskovskogo lingvisticheskogo kruzhka 1 ijunia 1919 g. i zarozhdenie stikhovedcheskikh kontseptsij o. brika, b. tomashevskogo i r. jakobsona. revue des études slaves 88(1/2), 151–175. https://doi.org/10.4000/res.956 pilshchikov, igor; ustinov, andrei 2020. moskovskij lingvisticheskij kruzhok i stanovlenie russkogo stikhovedenija (1919–1920). in: fleishman, lazar; bethea, david m.; vinitsky, ilya (eds.), unacknowledged legislators: studies in russian literary history and poetics (stanford slavic studies 50). berlin [etc.]: peter lang, 389–414. polilova, vera 2018. spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form. in: studia metrica et poetica 5(2), 77–108. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.04 putilov, boris nikolaevich 1977. “sbornik kirshi danilova” i ego mesto v russkoj fol’loristike. in: evgen’eva, a. p.; putilov, b. n. (eds.), drevnie rossijskie stikhotvorenija sobrannye kirsheju danilovym. moskva: nauka. radishchev, aleksandr nikolaevich 1938. polnoe sobranie sochinenij. t. 1. moskva, leningrad: izdatel’stvo an sssr. radishchev, aleksandr nikolaevich 1807. sobranie ostavshikhsja sochinenij pokojnogo aleksandra nikolaevicha radishcheva. ch. 1. moskva: tipografija platona beketova. radishchev aleksandr nikolaevich 1975. stikhotvorenija. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. scherr, barry p. 1986. russian poetry: meter, rhythm, and rhyme. berkeley, los angeles, london: university of california press. shapir, maksim il’ich 2009. “tebe chisla i mery net”: o vozmozhnostiakh i granitsakh “tochnykh metodov” v gumanitarnykh naukakh. in: prokhorov, a. v.; skulacheva, t. v. (eds.), slavjanskij stikh. viii: stikh, jazyk, smysl. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur. taranovsky, kirill 2000. o poezii i poetike. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. taranovsky, kirill 2010. russkie dvuslozhnye razmery. stat’i o stikhe. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. meter and language: binary and ternary meters in english and russian. in: style 21(4), 626–649. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945666 tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1925. teorija literatury (poetika). leningrad: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1929. o stikhe. leningrad: priboi. 89radishchev’s “bova” and its place in the history of russian folkloric stylization wachtel, michael 2015. charts, graphs, and meaning: kiril taranovsky and the study of russian versification. the slavic and east european journal 59(2), 178–193. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44739360 zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha. leningrad: academia. spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form vera polilova*1 abstract: in this paper, i analyze russian translations and close imitations of spanish romancero poetry composed between 1789 and the 1930s, as well as russian original poems of the same period marked by “spanish” motifs. i discuss the spanish romance as an international european genre, and show how this verse form’s distinctive features were transferred into russian poetry and how the russian version – or, rather, several russian versions – of this form came into being. i pay special attention to the genesis of the stanza composed of a regular sequence of feminine (f) and masculine (m) clausulae fffm. in johann gottfried herder’s der cid, this clausula pattern was combined with unrhymed trochaic tetrameters, but, in early twentieth-century russia, it emancipated from this metrical form, having retained the semantic leitmotifs of the spanish romance, as well as its “spanish” theme. i contextualize other translation equivalents of romance verse and compare them to the original spanish verse form. i show (1) which forms poets used in translating romance verse and how those forms correlate (formally and functionally) with the original meter. further, i discuss (2) when and how the trochaic tetrameters rhyming on even lines (xrxr) – originally used in translations of spanish romances in german and english poetry – became the equivalent of romance verse in the russian tradition. finally, i demonstrate (3) how, in konstantin balmont’s translations of spanish poetry, the fffm clausula pattern lost its connection with trochee. after balmont, other poets of the silver age of russian literature started using it in original non-trochaic compositions to express “spanish” semantics. keywords: romancero; poetic translation; “spanish trochee”; unrhymed trochaic tetrameter; fffm clausula pattern; semantics of meter * author’s address: vera polilova, institute of world culture, lomonosov moscow state university, 1–51 leninskie gory, room 854, moscow 119991, russia. e-mail: vera.polilova@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 5.2, 2018, 77–108 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.04 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.04 78 vera polilova 1. introduction 1.1. generalities in her paper “comparative metrics and comparative literature”, rowena fowler noted: “metrical forms have never traveled as well as plots, themes, or genres, and they are often the first thing jettisoned by the translator” (fowler 1977: 289). although it is impossible to measure the degree of ease with which plots, themes and genres are transferred between languages and cultures compared to metrical forms, we should nevertheless note that the latter often travel more successfully and with more impressive results. to demonstrate this, it would suffice to mention, for instance, the fact that nearly all verse forms and verse systems in russian versification were borrowed from non-slavic european poetry. the present article is the outcome of my research on the poetics of russian translations of spanish romances and original russian poems with “spanish” motifs written between 1789 and the 1930s. it is specifically devoted to a particular aim, namely: to demonstrate how, on russian soil, the unrhymed clausula pattern fffm, even without an obligatory connection to any particular meter (i. e., not only in combination with trochaic tetrameter) came to be associated with spanish romancero and spain. i will also show that, in the russian tradition, half-rhymed trochaic tetrameter xrxr (which is formally quite similar to the spanish original inasmuch as the presence of rhyme compensates for the absence of assonance) is strongly associated with the poetry of heinrich heine. these additional associations make it more difficult to use this form to translate and imitate romancero verse. i must therefore discuss the interactions among three national poetic traditions: the spanish tradition as the source culture, the german tradition as an intermediary culture, and the russian tradition as the target culture. i will also show that the conventional view of russian-spanish literary relations, which only takes into account german literary mediation in the 1790s–1830s (without considering the german influence in the 1840s and later) is inadequate. the foregrounding of the romance genre was a side effect of the heine cult and thus should not be disregarded. this study examines two key concepts. one is the semantic halo of meter, which assumes the existence of mechanisms through which the elements of verse form become associated with particular meanings and acquire the ability to bear specific semantic connotations. the other one is the concept of functional and formal equivalence in poetic translation. 79spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form russian verse theorists have been discussing the connection between verse rhythm and semantics since the 1910s (see shapir 2015: 395–404; trunin 2017: 41–48). osip brik in the late 1920s and roman jakobson in the late 1930s used the example of russian trochaic pentameter to substantiate the idea that meter can assume a meaning of its own. this problem attracted broader attention after the publication of kirill taranovsky’s article entitled “on the relationships between verse rhythm and theme”, where he expanded on his predecessors’ observations by analyzing the semantics of trochaic pentameter in russian poems written from the 1840s to the 1940s (see taranovsky 1963). in the 1970s, mikhail l. gasparov started referring to this phenomenon as the “semantic halo” of meter. he contributed more than any other scholar to the study of semantic halos in russian poetry (gasparov 1999). grigorii vinokur, miroslav červenka, mihhail lotman, marina tarlinskaja, maksim i. shapir and other scholars, who examined the issue of semiotics of meter and analyzed distinctive prosodic features in the versification of particular authors and periods, as well as polymetrical poems, described various groups of meters as “semantically loaded systems of verse forms” (see pilshchikov 2017: 57). a study of the formation of verse semantics should also account for the semantization of traditional stanzaic forms in russian poetry (see, e. g., shapir 2015: 257–323; stepanov 2010; belousova 2013). eugene a. nida (1964: 166–177) proposed a dichotomy of functional (dynamic) vs. formal equivalence that refers to the differences between the translation and the original. russian scholars discussed the functional principle as the foundation for judgment on the adequacy of translations and on the best accessible ways of rendering the formal structure of the original. one of them was andrei v. fedorov, who began his work under the supervision of yuri tynianov (pilshchikov 2016: 71–72). in his article “the sound form of the verse translation (problems of metrics and phonetics)”, fedorov considered, among other things, the issues of rendering rhythmic structure, functional equivalence, functional adequacy, and equivalent associations in translated poetic texts (see fedorov 1928). four decades later, in his article “verse and translation (from the history of the romantic poem)”, viktor zhirmunsky came to the conclusion that “creative transformation of a foreign-language original” follows two paths, which “sometimes go in opposite directions and sometimes intersect” (zhirmunsky 1966: 433).1 the first path assumes that the original verse form should be replaced by its functional equivalent in the national tradition of the target culture. the second path is based on the idea that the original verse form should be reproduced faithfully, as one of the constitutive features of the original’s 1 henceforth all translations from languages other than english are mine. 80 vera polilova genre and style. a great number of intermediate cases lie between these antithetical tendencies.2 these cases can be plotted as points on an imaginary axis with functionally equivalent translations at one end and formally equivalent translations at the other. for instance, functional equivalents can correspond to a certain extent to the formal characteristics of the original. some of them prove to be more “precise”, i. e., more adequate not only in view of their position in the poetic system, but also in view of the particulars of their verse form (line length, syntactic organization of stanzas, rhyme scheme, etc.). for instance, in russian poetry both trochaic tetrameter and three-ictic dolnik (either isosyllabic or non-isosyllabic) can serve as functional equivalents of the spanish octosyllabic romance meter, but dolnik is closer to romance verse in terms of its rhythmical structure.3 the question “what is the formal equivalent of original verse?” can be answered in more that one way. the material discussed here illustrates this fundamental problem and shows the historical instability of the relations between formal and functional equivalence. the relationship between meter and meaning has always had a historical nature: the use of a particular verse form often entails “the use of the semantics (i. e. the thematic peculiarities) of the original” (levin 1982: 152). this process did not go unnoticed by the scholars of metrical semantics. yuri i. levin maintains that a meter that a meter as a code “begins to predetermine lexical or syntactic content, becomes ‘genrified’ and acquires features of an ‘emblem’ or ‘subtitle’, while the ‘code + meaning’ complex turns into a canon or template” (levin 1982: 152). it should be emphasized that all elements “at all levels of verse structure” are subject to “replication, i. e., metrization and semiotization” (shapir 2000: 107) and, eventually, semantization. this article is focused primarily on the semantization of the clausula pattern. “meter” can be understood in several different ways. it indicates the length of the line as well as other features of the prosodic structure: the presence vs. absence of rhymes, rhyme scheme, the linegrouping principle, etc. – including the clausula pattern.4 therefore, there is no obstacle to using the concept of the “semantic halo of meter” here. 2 for a detailed typology of the methods of poetic translation (10 types) see lotman 2012: 448–453. 3 according to the nomenclature of spanish meters proposed by sergei goncharenko (1988; cf. domínguez capparós 2014: 159–162). for a more detailed discussion of the metrical interpretation of the romance meter see § 2 of this article. ‘dolnik’ is the russian term that describes a particular type of non-syllabic-accentual meter, in which inter-ictic intervals are variable and can be either monosyllabic or disyllabic. 4 meter, in a broad sense, is conceived of as “a sum total of constant paradigmatic segmentations [...] that allows one to predict the structure of each following verse line” (shapir 2000: 83). 81spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form 1.2. material for this paper, i examined the russian translations of poems written in spanish romance verse. this includes translations of folk and literary spanish romances, folk songs and the romance passages from spanish dramas and spanish polymetrical romantic poetry. i also analyzed imitations of spanish romances and poems with “spanish” semantic leitmotifs written in either unrhymed trochaic tetrameter or trochaic tetrameter, in which the second and the fourth lines are rhymed but the first and the third remain unrhymed. i did not analyze imitations of spanish romances that use other metrical forms. german and english translations of romances and numerous poems in these languages in unrhymed or half-rhymed5 trochaic tetrameter were only analyzed as a necessary background and the most probable intermediaries between the spanish and russian texts. 1.3. “spanish trochees” and other equivalents of romancero verse in russian poetry: a survey of previous scholarship verse forms used in russian translations of spanish romances and their imitations have never been studied specifically. mikhail p. alekseev (1985: 5–205, 240–257) wrote a history of translations (more detailed for the period between 1789 and 1835 and somewhat sketchy for the period between 1835 and the 1860s) in the broad context of spanish-russian cultural relations and accompanied his analysis with some prosodic observations. vsevolod bagno commented on the clausula scheme in the first russian translations of spanish romances (bagno 2006: 98–100). efim etkind (1999: 57–59) briefly discussed the variety of clausula patterns in connection with alexander pushkin’s attempts at the spanish romance genre in the 1830s and the style of the russian romancero. m. l. gasparov (2000/1984: 69, 121, 176–177; 1999: 194, 200– 201, 205) mentioned “spanish trochees” as one of the more exotic domains of russian unrhymed trochee’s semantic evolution. he also emphasized the influence of german poetry on the use of unrhymed trochaic tetrameter in russian lyrics of the 1840s–1880s and noted that the german romantics had borrowed this type of verse from spanish romances (gasparov 2000/1984: 176). translators also contributed to the discussion of the equivalents of assonance. mikhail donskoy described his search for the russian equivalent of spanish assonance in translations of spanish dramas (donskoy 1970: 5 trochaic tetrameter rhyming on even lines. 82 vera polilova 212–216). some comments on the verse forms of the russian translations of romancero are found in an essay on the fate of spanish poetry in russia by sergei goncharenko (1978: 21–29). in her dissertation (supervised by goncharenko), asja kopina analyzed the structural and functional differences between spanish and russian rhymes and systematized the way that spanish assonance is rendered in russian translations (kopina 2001). irina ershova (2014) criticized the russian tradition of translating old spanish romances for their stylistic and formal differences from the original texts. i have previously discussed some aspects of the rendition of romance verse in konstantin balmont’s translations of pedro calderón de la barca’s dramas and spanish folk songs in polilova 2013 and 2014 (see also bagno 2005: 144–152). unrhymed trochaic tetrameter fffm, used by alexander blok and anna akhmatova in 1913 and 1914 (see § 3.4 below), attracted the attention of michael wachtel (2006) and alexander zholkovsky (2009/2006). these scholars independently investigated the origins of this version of “spanish trochee” in blok’s poetry. wachtel focused on this problem in connection with the “poetic dialogue” between blok and akhmatova. zholkovsky examined akhmatova’s subsequent use of this meter; he also made important observations on “spanish trochee” with satirical overtones. elsewhere (polilova 2017) i have pointed to balmont’s 1903 poem “nezhnyj zhemchug, margarita...” (“gentle pearls, margarita...”) as blok’s plausible source and surmised that blok had borrowed balmont’s meter. in this study i develop my earlier observations in a broader context of the evolution of russian verse. 1.4. structure of the article this paper is organized as follows: section 2 describes the structure of spanish romance verse, focusing on the structural features that are most important for my topic, and briefly outlines the reception of romance as a metrical form in germany and england. section 3 discusses the process by which romancero and the so-called “spanish trochee” entered russian poetry, then points out the elements of romance verse chosen by translators and poets, and examines how these competing forms correspond, formally and functionally, to the original. in the same section i also clarify the role that translations of heine’s poetry played in the establishment of the mock hispanicized romance genre. finally, i analyze in detail the process by which the fffm clausula pattern came to be associated with “spanish” themes outside the trochaic meter. 83spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form 2. the metrical form of romance and its interpretations 2.1. the spanish romance as an international verse form the scholarly literature on the romancero genre – its origin, formal scope, metrical and rhythmical structure – is extensive, and the number of controversies it has ignited is perhaps only comparable to debates over the cantar de mío cid.6 i will focus on this genre’s general metrical form, which will be sufficient for this article’s purposes. the word romancero denotes any collection of spanish short narrative poems or ballads of folkloric or literary provenance, fragmentary in character, composed of eight-syllable lines (with feminine endings) or seven-syllable lines (with masculine endings); in these line sequences, the even-numbered lines are assonant and the odd lines remain unrhymed.7 compare the opening lines of the romance “abenámar y el rey don juan” (“abenámar and king john”) assonating in í-a: – ¡abenámar, abenámar, [x] ∪ ∪ 3 ∪ ∪ ∪ 7 ∪ moro de la morería, [a] 1 ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ 7 ∪ el día que tú naciste [x] ∪ 2 ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ 7 ∪ grandes señales había! [a] 1 ∪ ∪ 4 ∪ ∪ 7 ∪ estaba la mar en calma, [x] ∪ 2 ∪ ∪ 5 ∪ 7 ∪ la luna^estaba crecida; [a] ∪ 2 ∪ 4 ∪ ∪ 7 ∪ moro que^en tal signo nace, [x] 1 ∪ ∪ ∪ 5 ∪ 7 ∪ no debe decir mentira. [a] ∪ 2 ∪ ∪ 5 ∪ 7 ∪ a typical text contains 25 to 80 lines and consists of a tirade (spanish: tirada; french: laisse monorime) – a series of lines, in which the even-numbered ones assonate (xaxa...). in the example above, the following words assonate: morería : había : crecida : mentira. the two last vowels at the end of each even line are to be the same, but the consonants are to differ. in spanish versification, paroxytones (spanish: llanas) assonate in two vowels (or a diphthong), while oxytones (spanish: agudas) assonate on the 6 for more on the subject, see the bibliographies: domínguez caparrós 1988; micó 2009. 7 historically: assonanced lines of sixteen syllables, divided into hemistichs of eight syllables. 84 vera polilova last syllable only (asonancia aguda). the post-tonic vowels do not have to be completely identical: a relative proximity in place of articulation suffices (i for e, u for o; spanish: asonancia equivalente, asonancia simulada). there exist 20 possible simple assonances (ignoring diphthongs and vocal articulation similarity): á, ó, é, í, ú, á-a, á-e, á-o, é-a, é-e, é-o, ó-a, ó-e, ó-o, í-a, í-e, í-o, ú-a, ú-e, and ú-o. according to various accounts, in old romances the proportion of asonancia aguda (i. e., masculine endings) is about 20%, and in literary romances about 15% (navarro tomás 1983: 238, n. 40; kopina 2001: 139, table 1). in spanish poetry, assonance occupies a special place. its function is significantly different from that of assonance in other forms of european poetry. first of all, the opposition between assonance (inexact rhyme) and consonance (perfect rhyme) corresponds to the opposition between two dissimilar poetic registers – the folkloric register (assonance) and the literary register (perfect rhymes). the former is mostly represented by romance verse, and the latter by various stanzas. in the versification of the golden age drama and the polymetrical poems of the spanish romantics, these two registers are interrelated and their combination is especially expressive. spanish assonance is essentially a very simple type of rhyme, which abounds in the language and demands almost no creative effort from the poet. therefore the spanish poet’s task seems as if intentionally complicated by the requirement of multiple repetitions of the same assonating vowels throughout the poem. 2.2. the interlingual transfer of spanish assonance and the romance meter russian and spanish assonance differ in formal structure and functions (zhirmunsky 1975: 287; kopina 2001: 56–66). in spanish, the absence of vowel reduction allows the listener and reader to perceive assonance when consonants are quite different. russian assonance, due to the significant reduction and transformation of both pre-tonic and post-tonic vowels, is not sensitive to vowels in rhymed syllables except the last ictus (the stressed vowel of the rhyme). the role of consonants in russian assonance is therefore very important: russian assonance permits and even requires a certain difference in the consonant rhyme sets, but at the same time alleviates it. according to asja kopina, “in russian assonance, the total number of rhyming consonants normally exceeds the number of consonants in a classical perfect rhyme” (kopina 2001: 65–66). moreover, russian assonance is a “difficult” and experimental kind of rhyme. compare: zabúdem : ljúdi, stúzhe : krúzhev, bezmólvny : vólny, opúshchen : grjadúshhem, skrómnyj : napómnil, kúpol : slúshal (examples from zhirmunsky 1975: 287–288). furthermore, when writing in russian, it is hard 85spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form to maintain a monorhyme, i. e. multiple repetitions of the same vowels in the rhyme. however, when this requirement is fulfilled (see the experimental translation of cantar de mío cid into russian made by boris yarkho in the 1930s and his unpublished translations of spanish romances), the feminine clausulae do not reproduce double assonance (as was already noted above, spanish prosody requires the coincidence of two vowels or at least some similarity between them). in russian experimental assonance, only the stressed vowel is repeated, while the post-tonic vowel varies: plácha : paláty : nástezh : plát’ja : slinjávshih : pecháli : slovámi : sláva : supostáty (yarkho 1936: 362). this type of assonance remains unnoticed by russian readers because they have no experience of this type of euphony in their native tradition. we may distinguish three solutions used in the russian tradition: 1) omission of assonance; 2) experimental imitation of assonance; 3) substitution of spanish assonance either by classical rhymes or inexact rhymes (single-vowel assonance with additional rhyming consonants). in the german tradition, as i will show below, the same three approaches already coexisted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. in russia, the first attempts to substitute rhyme in translation for original spanish assonance date back to the 1880s, while attempts to imitate assonance experimentally occurred as late as the 1930s. in germany, thanks to the romantics, double assonance of the spanish type became widespread not only in translations from spanish but also in original german poems (knörrich 2005: 16). scholars have proposed different interpretations of the rhythm of romance verse. it has been described as traditional octosyllabic verse, as three-ictic dolnik (goncharenko 1988: 48–49), or as a specific type of trochaic tetrameter with rhythmic licencia in the first half of each line (bělič 1969; jandová 1984). in his classification of spanish versification systems, domínguez caparrós (2014) places medieval romance verse in the group referred to as verso fluctuante (i. e., verse in which the number of syllables oscillates within a certain range).8 in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when romance became a point of interest in europe, its rhythm was interpreted as trochaic. as early as 1834, in august apel’s metrik, trochaic tetrameter was referred to as the meter “of spanish romance and spanish drama” (apel 1834: 322). 8 “[...] su número de sílabas oscila, dentro de unos límites [...]” (domínguez caparrós 2014: 159). 86 vera polilova in 1780, friedrich justin bertuch used trochaic tetrameters in fmfm quatrains of his “romanze vom grafen guarinos”. he substituted exact rhymes for original spanish assonance: weh und bitter, ach franzosen, [x] [f] war die jagd bey ronceval! [r] [m] carlomann verlohr, mit ehre, [x] [f] seine zwölf pairs allzumal. [r] [m] johann gottfried herder, in his first translations of spanish romances included in volkslieder (1778) – “zaid und zaida”, “zaida an zaid”, “zaid an zaida”, “zaida’s traurige hochzeit” (“zaida’s unhappy marriage”), “die herrlichkeit granada’s” (“granada’s splendor”),9 “abenamars unglückliche liebe” (“abenamar’s unfortunate love”),10 etc. – used unrhymed quatrains11 with feminine endings: zaid und zaida durch die strasse seiner dame [f] wandelt zaid auf und nieder, [f] harrend, daß die stunde komme, [f] endlich komme, sie zu sprechen. [f] zaida’s traurige hochzeit und in dieser nacht vermählet [f] sie sich einem schlechten mohren, [f] weil er reich und in sevilla [f] war alcaide von alcazar. [f] die herrlichkeit granada’s abenamar, abenamar! [f] mohr aus diesem mohrenlande, [f] 9 the texts of the romances were taken from ginés pérez de hita’s historia de los vandos de los zegries y abencerrages caualleros moros de granada (1595). 10 a romance taken from cancionero de romances (around 1550). 11 both “zaida’s traurige hochzeit” and “die herrlichkeit granada’s” contain one 6-line stanza alongside with the quatrains. 87spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form jener tag, der dich gebohren, [f] hatte schöne große zeichen... [f] in the romance poem “alkanzor und zaida”, also included in this collection – a translation of “alcanzor and zayda, a moorish tale: imitated from the spanish”12 from the reliques of ancient english poetry collected by bishop thomas percy (1765) – herder followed the structure of the english original and used half-rhymed trochaic tetrameter xrxr with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes fmfm: in yon palace lives fair zaida, [x] [f] whom he loves with flame so pure: [r] [m] loveliest she of moorish ladies? [x] [f] he a young and noble moor. [r] [m] in dem pallast wohnet zaida, [x] [f] die so treu, er sich erkohr, [r] [m] sie, die schönste junge mohrin, [x] [f] er, ein edler junger mohr. [r] [m] in the first four texts of herder’s translations of romances of the cid (der cid, 1805) we find unrhymed trochaic tetrameter with the new clausula pattern fffm: traurend tief saß don diego, [f] wohl war keiner je so traurig; [f] gramvoll dacht er tag’ und nächte [f] nur an seines hauses schmach. [m] in the following romances, the text is divided not into quatrains but rather into stanzoids of different lengths, in which herder makes the final verse catalectic, i. e. its masculine lines appear less frequently than once per four verses (f...m). 12 percy made a free imitation of the romance “zaide y zaida” taken from the historia de los vandos de los zegries y abencerrages caualleros moros de granada: “in the following a wider compass hath been taken. the spanish poem that was chiefly had in view [...]” (percy 1910: 284). herder included both a translation of this romance and a translation of its english imitation in his collection. 88 vera polilova it is difficult to determine what made herder use the regular fffm scheme and then strophoids with final masculine ending in his translation of spanish romance verse. in the original spanish romance “cuidando diego lainez...” (“brooding sat diego lainez...”), which consists of 72 lines, all the endings are feminine. in the other three romances there are only occasional masculine clausulae. it has been long established that herder based his romances of the cid on the anonymous prosaic french paraphrase of the cid cycle in the parisian bibliothèque universelle des romans (1783) and consulted the spanish originals only at the last stage of his work. the stanza chosen by herder does not formally correspond to the original. on the contrary, the regularized alternation of feminine and masculine clausulae and the abundance of masculine endings contradict the original. this contradiction is especially visible due to the repetitions of the structure (fffm fffm fffm ...). nothing like this quatrain is found in the source text. the vast majority of the clausulae, as noted above, are feminine, and the series of the romance is not divided into quatrains.13 in the spanish original, only one assonance is usually applied per rather long passages, containing tens of verses; therefore, the introduction of regular fffm quatrains in the translation considerably restructures the romancero form. despite this formal contradiction, the stanza proposed by herder – and the principle of combining catalectic and acatalectic lines of unrhymed trochaic tetrameter – deeply influenced the development of german verse. after der cid, heinrich heine used this variation of “spanish trochees” with some differences (see § 3 of this article) in his mock-epic poem atta troll (1841–43). in his letter to the publisher, baron johann georg von cotta, dated 17 october 1842, heine states he used herder’s der cid as a model. this form became associated with the names of both poets, herder and heine. as can be seen from the above, in germany, at the very first stage of translating spanish romances, at least four formal equivalents were proposed to render their metrical form. these equivalents are similar in that they use trochaic tetrameter but different both in that they either render or do not render assonance and in the chosen clausula pattern. in addition, german poets strove to integrate spanish-style assonance into german poetry. in his translations of romance verse in calderón’s dramas, august w. schlegel used assonance in a way that recalled the spanish originals 13 i leave aside the possibilities of the strophic organization of the romances on the basis of quatrains (see morley 1916), combination of consonance and assonance in romance verse (ibid.), and graphic division into stanzas (see scherr 2016) in german, english and russian translations of spanish romances. 89spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form (xaxa). for instance, in the first act of the play die andacht zum kreuz (the cross devotion, 1803, a translation of calderón’s la devoción de la cruz), assonance on é-e14 in the dialogue between lisardo and eusebio continues for more than 200 lines. here is the beginning of lisardo’s speech: lisardo wohl, ich bin ein sieneser [a] des lisardo curcio sohn. [x] meines vaters ungemeßner [a] aufwand, hatt’ in kurzem zeitraum [x] das vermögen aufgezehret... [a] johann diederich gries, another german translator of calderón, even copied the assonant vowels from the spanish text in his translation of calderón’s el alcalde de zalamea [the mayor of zalamea] (der richter von zalamea, 1822): inés asómate a esa ventana, [x] prima – así el cielo te guarde –, [a] verás los soldados que entran [x] en el lugar. isabel no me mandes [a] que a la ventana me ponga, [x] estando ese hombre en la calle, [a] inés, pues ya cuánto el verle [x] en ella me ofende sabes. [a] inés mühmchen, komm ums himmels willen, [x] komm ans fenster! die soldaten [a] sollst du sehn, die eben einziehn [x] in den ort. isabel nur nicht verlange, [a] daß ich mich ans fenster stelle, [x] 14 in the spanish original the assonance is on é-a: “pues yo soy lisardo, en sena, / hijo de lisardo curcio. / bien excusadas grandezas / de mi padre consumieron”. 90 vera polilova wenn der mensch dort aufund abgeht. [a] denn du weißt, wie sehr mich ’s ärgert, [x] ines, dort ihn zu gewahren. [a]15 another german author who used this type of assonance was friedrich schlegel in his tragedy alarcos (1802). the german romance began to develop independently from the spanish tradition, but continued to use its assonant rhymes. zhirmunsky (1975: 397) points to similar experiments of another romantic poet, clemens brentano’s die romanzen vom rosenkranz (romances of the rosary, 1812): in des ernsten tales büschen [x] ist die nachtigall entschlafen, [a] mondenschein muß auch verblühen, [x] wehet schon der frühe atem. [a] heine also used this type of assonance (see an example in § 3.2).16 german poetry also integrated other verse forms to represent the spanish romance. for instance, brentano, following herder, used a regular combination of catalectic and acatalectic unrhymed trochees. in the romance poem “nach sevilla, nach sevilla...” from the play ponce de leon (1804), a series of five feminine lines is followed by a masculine line – making for a total of six lines (fffffm): guten abend, guten abend – [x] [f] lieber vater, setzt euch nieder, [a] [f] ei, wo seid ihr dann gewesen? [b] [f] und dann singt sie schöne lieder, [a] [f] kann so hübsch in büchern lesen, [b] [f] ach! und ist mein einzig kind. [x] [m] the first and the last lines of this stanza remain unrhymed but in the middle there is a sequence rhymed abab. 15 example from darebný 2016: 114. 16 zhirmunsky writes that these romantic poets’ experiments remained exotic because of linguistic features: “[d]espite the prosodic experiments of the romantics, assonances remain an exotic genre in the german poetry due to the absence of sonorous clausulae (the post-tonic syllable always contains a reduced and vague e)” (zhirmunsky 1975: 397). 91spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form in terms of functional equivalence, all of the above-described german equivalents of romance verse are equally good. the use of trochee can be explained by the fact that it is common in folk songs. but in terms of formal equivalence, poets and translators found different solutions for rendering assonance. the solutions that retain the phonetic correspondence among even-numbered lines hew closer to the spanish model. unrhymed trochee with feminine clausulae wipes out assonance altogether. unrhymed trochees were by default associated with folk songs and quite naturally became a cultural signifier of the spanish romance. however, both the regular fffm pattern of unrhymed clausulae proposed by herder and attempts by other romantic poets to render assonance can be viewed as ways of creating a special form, distinguishable from verses with a general folkloric feel. in english literature, as george w. umphrey’s study revealed, translators of spanish romance use seven basic verse types (see umphrey 1946). it is important for this study that one type (namely, the quatrains of trochaic tetrameters structured xrxr, first used by percy in his translation of “río verde, río verde...”17 and in his “alcanzor and zayda”) was “frequently used as a model by many of the later translators” (bryant 1973: 227). the scope of the quasi-terminological expression “spanish trochee” is often limited to blank (unrhymed) verse only (gasparov 2000/1984: 69, 121, 176– 177). yet it is evidently also correct to use it for trochaic tetrameters with either assonance in every second line (xaxa) or a classical rhyme in every second line (xrxr), which serve as a rough equivalent of the original assonance. columns 1–3 of table 1 summarize the information presented above. 17 “gentle river, gentle river, / lo, thy streams are stain’d with gore, / many a brave and noble captain / floats along thy willow’d shore”. 92 vera polilova table 1. clausula models in the translations of spanish romances model number clausula pattern german poets and translators who used this model russian poets and translators who used this model assonance / rhyme i f herder likhonin almazov unrhymed ii fffm herder balmont iii f...m herder zhukovsky iv fmfm karamzin katenin gonorsky v xrxr bertuch herder nemirovichdanchenko briusov assonanced / rhymed vi xaxa a. w. schlegel gries yarkho donskoy 3. romancero and “spanish trochee” in russia and the influence of heinrich heine russian interest in old spanish romances emerged under the influence of german romantic poets. the first stage of the evolution of this genre in russia has been described thoroughly in scholarly literature (see alekseev 1985: 84–85, 151–156, 240–257). the syllabic-accentual interpretation / transformation of the romance meter was also adopted from the german tradition. unrhymed trochaic tetrameter with various clausula patterns became a verse form that was used to represent the original spanish meter. it was initially used in translations, imitations, and pastiches, but later unrhymed trochaic tetrameter fffm acquired some degree of autonomy in lyric poetry. the use of trochaic verse was justified here from the perspective of functional equivalence, as in the german translations. the semantic range of russian trochaic tetrameter, as described by gasparov (2000/1984: 192–216), was strongly associated with the use of this meter in folk songs. this is one of the reasons why trochee was successfully exploited in russian classical poetry in order to render a folkloric and exotic feel (greco-latin, slavic, “oriental”, scottish, and, of course, spanish). 93spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form for almost a hundred years, spanish folk romances were mostly translated, both from intermediary texts and directly from the spanish originals, using unrhymed trochaic tetrameter. attempts to render assonance in translations of spanish romancero with an xrxr rhyme pattern (model v) first appeared in russian translations as late as the 1880s. in the 1930s, boris yarkho experimentally introduced assonance imitations (model vi) in his translations. however, model v with xrxr clausula pattern was introduced into russian poetry much earlier, with no direct influence of romances, but rather thanks to heine’s popularity among russian poets since the 1840s. in his poetry, various versions of “spanish trochee” were used outside of translations – in imitations, stylizations, parodies and ballads even without an identifiably “spanish” local color. let us describe this process in more detail. 3.1. the beginning: nikolai karamzin, vasilii zhukovsky and pavel katenin the first example of the use of “spanish trochee” – and at the same time the first ballad written in russian – is nikolai karamzin’s romance poem “graf gvarinos” (“count guarinos”). the most important russian pre-romantic writer, karamzin composed this poem in 1789 and published it in 1792. the romance was translated not from the spanish original but from friedrich justin bertuch’s german version “romanze vom grafen guarinos” (mentioned in § 2.2). in accordance with bertuch’s text, karamzin used alternating trochees in fmfm quatrains – but, unlike bertuch, he did not rhyme them (model iv):18 sólntsa svét pochtí zatmílsja [f] ot velíkogo chislá [m] tékh, kotórye stremílis’ [f] na gvarínosa vse vdrúg. [m] after karamzin, “spanish trochee” remained out of use for a long time. in 1816–18 razumnik gonorsky published two translations of the romances that until recently were entirely unknown (korkonosenko 2018; polilova, 18 the form of karamzin’s translation is discussed in alekseev 1985: 244; stephenson 1938: 105; and nebel 1967: 104–105. these scholars do not emphasize the poet’s formal innovation and describe the interaction between karamzin’s and bertuch’s romances in rather vague terms, so that most readers incorrectly assume that karamzin both followed the german text and reproduced its form. 94 vera polilova forthcoming). gonorsky also used unrhymed trochaic tetrameter fmfm. the first-rate romantic poets vasilii zhukovsky and pavel katenin turned to spanish material and started translating the romances del cid. like karamzin, they based their translations on the german version, herder’s der cid. it has been shown that zhukovsky also consulted the spanish text (remorova 1989: 176 and sq.; zhiljakova 2010). as noted above, herder’s german text uses unrhymed trochaic tetrameter with regular clausulae fffm (model ii) and f...m trochaic tetrameter without strict clausula sequences but with predominantly feminine clausulae (model iii). zhukovsky did not copy the fffm stanza, but used a free ordering of masculine and feminine clausulae.19 yet it is easy to find some regularities in their distribution. for instance, in his translation of ten romances published in 1831, the ratio of m-clausulae to f-clausulae is 334 to 35, i. e., a masculine clausula appears in every tenth line on average. moreover, zhukovsky often used masculine clausulae (and the clausula pattern fffm) to mark the beginning and end of each romance. romances iii, iv, and vi begin as follows: fffmfffm (fffm×2). in romance v, the fffm pattern is repeated three times (fffm×3). romances iii, iv, v, vi, vii, viii, and ix end in masculine clausulae. to render romance verse, katenin, in his turn, used the same model as karamzin – namely, unrhymed trochaic tetrameters with alternating fmfm clausulae: dón diég sidél pechál’nyj, [f] vvék niktó tak ne stradál. [m] grústno dúmal dnë́m i nóch’ju, [f] chto egó porúgan dóm... [m] (1822–1823, published in 1832) the greatest russian poet alexander pushkin chose the same fmfm pattern in his imitation of spanish romances, “na ispaniju rodnuju...” (“to his native spain...”, 1835). scholars believe that pushkin used the first two cantos of robert southey’s poem “roderick, the last of the goths” (1814), written in iambic pentameter, as one of his sources of inspiration. however, pushkin 19 hereinafter i discuss zhukovsky’s otryvki iz ispanskikh romansov o side (fragments from the spanish romances of the cid), composed and published in 1831. in 1820, zhukovsky translated seventeen other romances under the title sid v pravlenie ferdinanda (the cid in ferdinand’s reign). he followed herder’s texts and copied their stanzaic structure. these translations remained unpublished until 1978 (see remorova 1989: 161–177). 95spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form did not reproduce the metrical form proposed by southey, but preferred the model already canonized in russian translations. mikhail likhonin, the first russian translator who turned to the original spanish text of the romances del cid, used trochaic tetrameter with uniform feminine clausulae (model i) in his translation (1846). he possibly followed herder or was encouraged by zhukovsky’s “alonzo” (1831).20 in the 1870, boris n. almazov also translated the old spanish romances about king rodrigo with continuous feminine endings (“korol’ rodrigo”). thus, russian poets initially used only those metrical models that do not render original spanish assonance. column 4 of table 1 summarizes the information presented above. 3.2. from translations to imitations. heinrich heine and russian poets the 1840s marked a new stage in the russian use of “spanish trochee”. after pushkin and zhukovsky, this meter, which originated in spanish translations, started to be used in free variations on “spanish” themes. on the other hand, the new wave of german influence began at this moment. m. l. gasparov accurately described the trend of using trochaic tetrameter in the 1840s–1880s: next to the revival of the folkloric tradition of trochaic tetrameter, a renewal of another, western tradition [of this meter] took place: philosophical lyrics [...] died away, and ironic lyrics came to dominate, modelled on the example of heine, who was extremely popular in russia at that time. it is from his lyrical poetry that trochaic tetrameter with feminine endings, either fully rhymed or half-rhymed [...], adopted by german romantics from spanish romances, entered russian poetry. all this provided the new variation of the meter with an exclusive range of thematic associations; it contained both antiquity and modernity, both ingenuous lyricism and impressionistic negligence, as well as sophisticated irony. the russian reader could hear in it the echoes of the romance trochee, the ballad trochee and the trochee of satirical songs. (gasparov 2000/1984: 176) 20 a translation of ludwig uhland’s durand. 96 vera polilova having mastered nearly all variations of this form proposed by the romantics,21 heine started adding irony and burlesque into the romancero genre. let us point out some examples of heine’s use of the metrical form in question. in his buch der lieder (book of songs, 1827), heine included a section of romanzen, which contains, among others, a poem entitled don ramiro. in this poem, heine used the romanzenstrophe xaxa with feminine endings (model vi): donna clara! donna clara! [x] heißgeliebte langer jahre! [a] hast beschlossen mein verderben, [x] und beschlossen ohn erbarmen. [a] in “auf den wällen salamankas...” (“on the walls of salamanca...”), another “spanish” poem from this collection, heine substituted rhyme for assonance (model v) and used feminine endings throughout the text: auf den wällen salamankas [x] sind die lüfte lind und labend; [r] dort, mit meiner holden donna, [x] wandle ich am sommerabend. [r] in 1843, heine published the first version of his mock-epic poem atta troll, also written in “spanish trochees” – namely, in quatrains with predominantly feminine clausulae. at the same time, heine’s text contains a few lines (below 10%) with masculine endings (especially where the line ends with atta troll’s name). unlike herder’s stanzas and stanzoids, such lines can occupy any place in a stanza. as was already noted, heine himself named herder’s der cid as the source of this poem. über schwarzen bärenundank! [f] denn er habe atta troll [m] stets wie einen freund behandelt [f] und im tanzen unterrichtet. [f] 21 heine also frequently used quatrains abab with a regular alteration of the trochaic lines of varying feet (4/3/4/3). i leave these examples out of consideration. 97spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form ironic and grim romances written in trochee, some of them with “spanish” settings and motifs, are also found in the main collection of heine’s poems, romanzero (1851) – see “der mohrenkönig” (“the moorish king”), “spanische atriden”, “vitzliputzli”. in these, he combines his lyricism with sarcasm. all these forms of trochee became associated with heine’s name. in the 1840s and 1850s, heine’s influence was so strong that all the metrical forms discussed above – in connection with the spanish romancero – grew to be strongly associated with his poetry. this is especially true, of course, of the rhymed xaxa quatrains, which came to be known in russia as “heine’s stanza”.22 thus, through the love of heine, the second wave of fascination with “spanish trochee” came to russia. this time, it had at most a vague connection with its remote spanish sources. in 1847, afanasii fet, the best lyricist of the new generation, translated the above-quoted poem “auf den wällen salamankas...”, retaining the feminine clausulae and rhyming even lines: po bul’váram salamánki [f] vózdukh blagorastvorénnyj. [r] tám, v prokhládnyj létnij vécher, [f] ja guljáju s míloj dónnoj. [r] it is possible that nikolai shcherbina wrote his poem “noch’ i sin’ora” (“the night and a signora”, 1841), in unrhymed trochees with regular ffm clausulae, under the influence of the german tradition. the finale of this poem reads as follows: ó, sojdí ko mné v gondólu, [f] na razdól’e iz palátstso, [f] chernoókaja krasá! [m] ja ne búdu ljubovát’sja [f] étoj dévstvennoju nóch’ju!.. [f] ó, sojdí zh ko mné, sojdí!.. [m] shcherbina’s imitation of a certain southern european (most likely, italian) charm seems to take the form of parody. 22 vyacheslav v. ivanov wrote that “the hundred years from tiutchev and lermontov to blok passed under the sign of heine [...]. his favorite meters were introduced to russian poetry thanks to his influence” (ivanov 2003: 490). russian poets were especially affected by his “fascination [...] with even-rhymed or blank verse” (ivanov 2003: 496; see also iliushin 2004 86–87; dubovskaja 1997: 98–135). 98 vera polilova according to mikhail p. alekseev (1985: 201–202), russian poems satirizing clichéd compositions on “spanish” themes – including the best known text of this kind, “osada pamby” (“the siege of pamba”, 1854) by kozma prutkov (a parodic author created by aleksei k. tolstoy and the zemchuzhnikov brothers) – were written as a response to the many hackneyed poems with exotic “spanish” settings and plots, as well as the popularity of vasilii botkin’s essay series pis’ma ob ispanii (letters about spain, in print since 1847). “the siege of pamba” is written in trochees with predominant feminine clausulae. commentators on prutkov’s works rightfully point to zhukovsky’s sid that introduced this clausula pattern in russia and katenin’s romansy o side (romances of the cid) as targets of prutkov’s parody (berkov 1933: 76; bukhshtab 1965: 432). meanwhile, the fact that prutkov’s device of using comic, satirical, ironical and mock-sublime poetic genres in the form of spanish romance was, in fact, borrowed from heine, has gone unnoticed. heine, who is often called “germany’s last romantic”, exploited this device in his mock-epic atta troll, as well as in “pomare”, “vitzliputzli” and “spanische atriden”. prutkov’s text is concurrently a kind of response to heine and his russian followers. it seems that “the siege of pamba” is much more closely connected with the reception of heine’s poetry and style than with the russian literary process or the translations of romances about the cid published in the first half of the nineteenth century. heine played with the german romantic tradition, and challenged established genres. prutkov, following heine, played with the russian romantic tradition, parodying zhukovsky, katenin and heine’s russian adherents. perhaps it is not a coincidence that one can find links between the “the siege of pamba” and heine’s “spanische atriden”. in both texts, the hero’s name is don pedro and the spanish saint jacob is mentioned. i believe, however, that the creators of kozma prutkov had some other, unknown influences: the parody demonstrates familiarity with the whole subgenre of the romancero fronterizo (frontier romancero), romances about the siege (“romance del cerco de baeza” [“on the siege of baeza”], “romance del moro de antequera” [“the moor from antequera”] and others). subsequently, poets used various types of russian equivalents of romance verse for ironical and satirical poems. yuri verkhovsky, a learned and talented poet, translator and literary critic, combined catalectic and acatalectic lines of unrhymed trochaic tetrameter in his cycle of four poems published under the title “romansy o grafe villamediane” (“romances about count villamediana”, 1906).23 sasha cherny, a highly popular satirical poet, adopted 23 verkhovsky used the following clausula patterns: 1) fffm×4 ffff; 2) ffff/fmfm×2; 3) abab×4 (assonance and inexact rhymes); 4) ffff/fffm×2 ffff. 99spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form the model with continuous feminine endings (“o, ispanets blagorodnyj!..” [“o, noble spaniard!..”], 1906). in the 1860s, under heine’s influence, russian authors wrote several poems and ballads in unrhymed xrxr trochaic tetrameter; “spanish” overtones in such compositions were one of the many possible themes. vivid examples of such poems include apollon maykov’s “ispoved’ korolevy” (“queen’s confession”, 1860) and the “spanish motifs” cycle by vsevolod krestovsky (“ispanskie motivy”, 1860). the first translator to choose half-rhymed trochaic tetrameter xrxr to translate romances (rather than heine’s ballads) was vasilii nemirovichdanchenko, the elder brother of the famous theater director vladimir nemirovich-danchenko. na goré – suróvyj zámok; [x] [f] báshni, slóvno paladíny [r] [f] v sérykh látakh, smótrjat grózno [x] [f] v polusónnye dolíny. [r] [f] (“staryj zamok” [“the old casle”], 1888) he also followed this model in his imitation of romancero entitled “korol’ ramiro” (“king ramiro”, 1889). in the twentieth century, konstantin balmont used trochaic tetrameter with the xrxr rhyming scheme in his 1904 translations of spanish coplas (see polilova 2013: 150–151). valerii briusov also followed this model in his translation of the spanish romance “compañero, compañero...” (“moj tovarishch! moj tovarishch!..” [“my companion, my companion!..”], 1913). subsequently, many soviet translators also used the xrxr pattern. however, this meter, with its strong association with heine and its satirical connotations, proved utterly unfit for translating twentieth-century spanish poets, above all garcía lorca. 3.3. konstantin balmont and the fffm stanza numerous studies have been devoted to the hispaniana of the russian symbolist poet konstantin balmont (azadovsky 2011; polilova 2013, 2014; etc.). here i only analyze the models he used to render romance verse in his translations. since 1902, balmont used a strict sequence of clausulae fffm in his translations of calderón’s polymetric dramas. balmont consistently used unrhymed trochee only in two translations from spanish (except for a few coplas noted above): first, in his translation of tirso de molina’s drama el burlador de sevilla (the seducer of sevilla) – sevil’skij 100 vera polilova obol’stitel’, which was not published in balmont’s lifetime; second, in his translations of fragments of romances from the romacero general included in balmont’s comments to liubov’ i nenavist’: ispanskie narodnye pesni (love and hate: spanish folk songs, 1911). in his other spanish translations, balmont used iambs instead of trochees and usually substituted unrhymed iambic tetrameter with three feminine clausulae and one masculine clausula for the romance verse of the original: (i4fffm) sebjá nevól’no voprosháju, [f] chtò, són ja vízhu, probudívshis’, [f] il’ rassuzhdáju usyplë́nnyj? [f] ja srázu bódrstvuju i spljú. [m] (vrach’ svoej chesti, 1912)24 the same meter and clausula sequence are found in balmont’s interpretation of gongora’s romance “servía en orán al rey...” – “ispanec iz orana” (“a spaniard from orán”, 1902). it may be suggested that the choice of verse with the fffm clausula was the result of following herder’s example, as well as those of the most well known russian romances discussed in § 3.1. one example is zhukovsky’s sid, where unrhymed trochaic tetrameter with unregulated clausulae contains regulated fragments, including those with the fffm clausula pattern. although this clausula sequence does not correspond to the original pattern, the fffm pattern often reappears in balmont’s translations of spanish poetry. moreover, he began to combine it not only with binary meters (iambus and trochee) but also with ternary ones (dactyl, amphibrach, and anapaest). the earliest example is his salamankskij student (the student of salamanca, 1919), a translation of josé de espronceda’s polymetrical poem el estudiante de salamanca. in his translation, balmont used a combination of dactylic, amphibrachic, and anapaestic trimeters25: 24 a translation of calderón’s el médico de su honra (the surgeon of his honor). 25 salamankskij student was published for the first time only two years ago (see espronceda 2015–2016). 101spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form (d3fffm) na kolokól’ne zabýtoj, [f] vózle razrúshennoj tsérkvi, [f] zvón voznikáet, proklját’ja, [f] gólos anáfemy, zhút’. [m] (am3fffm) luná iz-za dál’nej vershíny [f] vykhódit, ob”játa pechál’ju, [f] edvá pripodnjáv nad ustúpom [f] cheló nezemnój belizný. [m] (an3fffm) oshchutíl montemár, chto grobnítsy [f] sokrushílis’ u nóg ego s tréskom, [f] cherepá natolknúlis’ na kámen’, [f] i bezúmstvuet më́rtvyj naród... [m] in terms of formal equivalence, only trochaic tetrameter and dactylic trimeter are isosyllabic to the original octosyllabic meter. in spanish poetry, virtually no lines are based on repeated uniformity of syllabic-accentual feet, and the choice of a ternary meter over a binary one, as sergei goncharenko noted on a similar occasion,26 “cannot be, in fact, criticized”: a line of the spanish meter “mostly contains two ternary feet and one binary foot, a combination that is closest to the russian dolnik verse, so that amphibrach [as well as dactyl and anapaest – v. p.] reproduces the sound of the original even better than trochee” (goncharenko 1978: 22). one could even say that there is nothing surprising in the fact that balmont (who had already allowed himself to occasionally use iambus, instead of the more traditional unrhymed trochee, to imitate spanish verse) later turned to ternary meters as prosodic equivalents of octosyllabic spanish verse. in all these cases, line length varies from seven to ten syllables, and the key signifier of romance verse is the clausula pattern fffm. the metrical and rhythmical form of verse is of secondary importance. 26 commenting on dmitrii oznobishin’s decision to use amphibrach instead of the more usual trochee in his translation (“al’gama”, 1834) of the spanish romance “alhama”. 102 vera polilova 3.4. formation of the semantic halo of the fffm stanza as i have tried to demonstrate above, in the first half of the nineteenth century, russian poets, following karamzin and the german romantics, developed four models of rendering the original structure of spanish romances in their translations and more or less faithful imitations. all these models use unrhymed trochaic tetrameter with different clausula patterns – fmfm, f, and f...m. evenrhymed trochaic tetrameter was not used in translations of the romancero until the 1880s. it was introduced into russian lyrics in the 1840s due to heine’s influence and gradually became a form suitable for ballads and romances with exotic elements, as well as for various imitations of heine’s style. during the nineteenth century, the model with assonance (xaxa) was never used in translations. the first experiments of this type, dating back to the 1930s, were carried out by boris yarkho, a professional verse theorist of the formalist school. the fffm stanza, canonized by herder as an equivalent form for spanish trochees in the first four romances of der cid, was not adopted in russia until the early twentieth century, when balmont chose a regular fffm clausula pattern for his translations of spanish poetry (although zhukovsky often used masculine clausulae to mark the beginning and end of each romance). balmont was also the first poet to introduce the stanza fffm in combination with unrhymed trochaic tetrameter in his original lyrics. an example is his madrigal “gentle pearls, margarita...” (1903): nézhnyj zhémchug, margaríta, – [f] kak pojút v ispánskikh pésnjakh, – [f] péli ángely na nébe [f] v dén’ rozhdén’ja tvoegó. [m] this text consists of four stanzas and reflects a direct influence of spanish folk songs. this is indicated not only by the second line kak pojút v ispánskikh pésnjakh (‘as they sing in spanish songs’), but also by each stanza of the poem; they are constructed as variations of spanish folk coplas and reflect images typical of spanish folk lyrics, for example, comparisons between lips and clove pinks and between eyes and heaven (polilova 2013; markov 1988: 194). in conclusion, i will briefly discuss the history of the use of unrhymed fffm clausulae in other poems of the russian silver age, as well as the formation of this form’s semantic halo. in 1905, the fffm stanza in combination with trochaic tetrameter was adopted by alexander blok in “ty prokhodish’ bez ulybki...” (“you walk by without a smile...”). in 1906 yuri verkhovsky used it in his semi-parodic cycle romances about count villamediana discussed above (§ 3.2). in 1913–14 it was 103spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form finally canonized in the poetical dialogue between blok and anna akhmatova (see zhirmunsky 1970; gasparov 1997: 489; zholkovsky 2009/2006; wachtel 2006; and polilova 2017). in reply to blok’s madrigal “krasota strashna, vam skazhut...” (“beauty is terrible, they’ll tell you...”, december 1913), containing its spanish motifs and addressed to akhmatova, she composed “ia prishla k poetu v gosti...” (“i came to the poet’s house...”, january 1914) that can be considered the most famous russian poem that uses the fffm stanza. later, mikhail kuzmin creatively transformed this structure by inserting two fffm trochaic tetrameter stanzas (rhymed abcd abcd and filled with quotations from blok’s “beauty is terrible...”) in his polymetrical poem “byl by ja khudozhnik, napisal by...” (“if i were a painter, i would paint...”, 1927; cf. bogomolov 1996: 788). i also found this clausula pattern beyond the scope of trochaic tetrameters in other poetical texts containing unambiguous “spanish” associations. compare three examples: (1) unrhymed trochaic trimeter fffm. marina tsvetaeva’s “na zare moroznoj...” (“on the frosty dawn...”) from the “don juan” cycle (“don-zhuan”, february–may 1917): na zaré moróznoj [f] pod shestój berë́zoj [f] za uglóm u tsérkvi [f] zhdíte, don-zhuán... [m] (2) unrhymed logaoedic verse 1*2*1* fffm. marina tsvetaeva’s “bozhestvenno, detski-plosko...” (“divinely, childishly flat...”) from the “carmen” cycle (“karmen”, june 1917): bozhéstvenno, détski-plósko [f] korótkoe, v sbórku, plát’e. [f] kak stórony piramídy [f] ot pójasa mchát boká. [m] (3) unrhymed iambic pentameter fffm. boris poplavsky, “liubov’ k ispantsam” (“love for spaniards”, 1920s): ispáncy éto vróde marokkáncev [f] prekrásnejshie ljúdi na planéte [f] oní davnó nosíli brjúki kléshem [f] tren’-trén’kali na sábljakh v dóbryj chás. [m] 104 vera polilova tsvetaeva may have copied this clausula scheme directly from balmont’s poetry. the two poets first met in june 1916 and soon became friends. in the summer of 1917 they met regularly to read poetry together (see tsvetaeva’s letter to maksimilian voloshin of 24 august 1917). we can see that in russia the fffm stanza was first used in balmont’s translations of spanish authors (combined with all syllabic-accentual meters), then in the original poems by balmont, blok, verkhovsky, akhmatova and kuzmin (combined with trochaic tetrameter) and eventually in tsvetaeva’s poems (combined with various meters). as a result, the fffm clausula pattern – an element of the metrical structure, which was proposed by herder and had no formal correspondence with the original spanish text – gradually became a signifier of the spanish romance in russian poetry.27 references alekseev, mikhail pavlovich 1985. russkaja kul’tura i romanskij mir. leningrad: nauka. apel, august von 1834. metrik. bd. 1. leipzig: neue wohlfeile ausgabe. azadovskij, konstantin 2011. “toledskoe predanie”: (bal’mont – perevodchik khose sorril’i). in: kul’turnyj palimpsest: sbornik statej k 60-letiju v. e. bagno. sanktpeterburg: nauka, 6–21. bagno, vsevolod evgen’evich 2005. russkaja poezija serebrjanogo veka i romanskij mir. sankt-peterburg: giperion, 144–152. bagno, vsevolod evgen’evich 2006. rossija i ispanija: obshchaja granitsa. sanktpeterburg: nauka. bělič, oldřich 1969. sobre el ritmo de los romances españoles. in: análisis estructural de textos hispanos. madrid: prensa española, 1–18. belousova, anastasija sergeevna 2013. genezis i evoljutsija russkoj oktavy. unpublished candidate (phd) dissertation, russian state university for the humanities, moskva. berkov, pavel naumovich 1933. koz’ma prutkov: direktor probirnoj palatki i poet. k istorii russkoj parodii. leningrad: izdatel’stvo an sssr. 27 chapters 1 and 2 of this article result from the research project based at the institute for world culture of lomonosov moscow state university and supported by a russian science foundation grant 17-18-01701. chapter 3 of this publication was supported by the grant of the president of russian federation for young scholars (grant no. мк-3319.2017.6). i am grateful to igor pilshchikov and mikhail oslon for their comments and suggestions. 105spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form bogomolov, nikolaj alekseevich 1996. primechanija. in: kuzmin, mikhail. stihotvorenija. sankt-peterburg: akademicheskij proekt, 679–788. bryant, shasta m. 1973. the spanish ballad in english. lexington, ky: the university press of kentucky. bukhshtab, boris jakovlevich 1965: primechanija. in: prutkov, koz’ma. polnoe sobranie sochinenij. moskva, leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’, 419–462. červenka, miroslav 2011. smysl i stikh: trudy po poetike. perevod s cheshskogo a. bobrakova-timoshkina. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. darebný, jan 2016. verso español y verso checo: traducción del teatro polimétrico de calderón de la barca. phd dissertation, masaryk university, brno. https://is.muni.cz/th/v3gdn/darebny_tesis.pdf (accessed 30.10.2018). donskoy, mikhail 1970. kak perevodit’ stikhotvornuju klassicheskuju komediju? in: masterstvo perevoda. [vol. 7]. moskva: sovetskij pisatel’, 186–216. domínguez caparrós, josé 1988. contribución a la bibliografía de los últimos treinta años sobre la métrica española (cuadernos bibliográficos 50). madrid: consejo superior de investigaciones científicas. domínguez caparrós, josé 2014. métrica española. madrid: universidad nacional de educación a distancia. dubrovskaja, larisa dmitrievna 1999. polurifmovannyj stikh v russkoj pojezii pervoj poloviny xix veka. unpublished candidate (phd) dissertation, herzen state pedagogical university of russia, saint petersburg. ershova, irina viktorovna 2014. russkie perevody ispanskogo “starogo” romansa: razrushenie zhanra. in: voprosy literatury 3, 148–161. espronceda, josé de 2015–2016. salamankskij student: legenda. perevod k. bal’monta. publikatsija t. v. petrovoj, v. s. polilovoj. in: solnechnaja prjazha 9, 114–120; 10, 128–144. etkind, efim grigorjevich 1999. bozhestvennyj glagol: pushkin, prochitannyj v rossii i vo frantsii. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. fedorov, andrej venediktovich 1928. zvukovaja forma stikhotvornogo perevoda (voprosy metriki i fonetiki). in: poetika: vremennik otdela slovesnykh iskusstv gosudarstvennogo instituta istorii iskusstv 4. leningrad: academia, 45–69. fowler, rowena 1977. comparative metrics and comparative literature. in: comparative literature 29(4), 289–299. 106 vera polilova gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1997. stikh anny akhmatovoj. in his: izbrannye trudy. vol. iii: o stikhe мoskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 476–491. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1999. metr i smysl: ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamjati. moskva: rggu. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2000 [1984]. ocherk istorii russkogo stikha: metrika. ritmika. rifma. strofika. [second revised edition]. moskva: fortuna limited. goncharenko, sergej filippovich 1978. predislovie. in: ispanskaja poezija v russkikh perevodakh. moskva: progress, 5−42. goncharenko, sergej fillipovich 1988. stilisticheskij analiz ispanskogo stikhotvornogo teksta. moskva: vysshaja shkola. iliushin, aleksandr anatol’evich 2004. russkoe stihoslozhenie. moskva: vysshaja shkola. ivanov, vyacheslav vsevolodovich 2003. geine v rossii. in his: izbrannye trudy po semiotike i istorii kul’tury. vol. 3. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 490–504. jandová, jarmila 1984. el ritmo intensivo en los romances tradicionales colombianos. in: thesaurus: boletín del instituto caro y cuervo 39, 270–310. knörrich, otto 2005. lexikon lyrischer formen. stuttgart: kröner. kopina, asja evgenjevna 2001. ispanskaja rifma v sopostavlenii s russkoj (strukturnosemanticheskij i funkcional’no-kommunikativnyj aspekty) i problemy perevoda ispanskogo rifmovannogo stikha na russkij jazyk. unpublished candidate (phd) dissertation, moscow state linguistic university. korkonosenko, kirill sergeevich 2018. rannij perevod s ispanskogo jazyka: romans “zaid i zaida” (1816). in: russkaja literatura 1, 240. levin, jurij iosifovich 1982. semanticheskij oreol metra s semioticheskoj tochki zrenija. in: finitis duodecim lustris: sbornik statej k 60-letiju prof. ju. m. lotmana. tallinn: eesti raamat, 151–154. lotman, maria-kristiina 2012. equiprosodic translation method in estonian poetry. in: sign systems studies 40(3/4), 447−472. markov, vladimir 1988. kommentar zu den dichtungen von k. d. balmont, 1890–1909 (bausteine zur geschichte der literatur bei den slaven 31). köln: böhlau. micó, josé maría 2009. bibliografía para una historia de las formas poéticas en españa. digital edition. alicante: biblioteca virtual miguel de cervantes. www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/140729.pdf (accessed 30.10.2018). 107spanish romancero in russian and the semantization of verse form morley, s. griswold 1916. are the spanish romances written in quatrains? – and other questions. in: romanic review 7, 42−82. navarro tomás, tomás 1983. métrica española: reseña histórica y descriptiva. barcelona: labor. nebel, henry m. 1967. n. m. karamzin: a russian sentimentalist. the hague, paris: mouton and co. nida, eugene albert 1964. toward a science of translating: with special reference to principles and procedures involved in bible translating. leiden: e. j. brill. percy, thomas 1910. the reliques of ancient english poetry. collected by bishop thomas percy. vol. i. london: j. m. dent & sons, ltd., and new york: e. p. dutton & co. pilshchikov, igor 2016. the semiotics of phonetic translation. in: studia metrica et poetica 3(1), 53–104. pilshchikov, igor 2017. “the inner form of the word” in russian formalist theory. in: mrugalski, michał; schahadat, schamma (eds.), theory of literature as a theory of the arts and the humanities (wiener slawistischer almanach. sonderband 92). leipzig, wien: biblion media, 37–64. polilova, vera sergeevna 2013. ispanskie narodnye pesni v perevode k. bal’monta. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 1, 147–161. polilova, vera sergeevna 2014. polimetrija ispanskikh komedij zolotogo veka i poeticheskij perevod: sluchaj kal’derona v rossii. in: novyj filologicheskij vestnik 2, 88–98. polilova, vera sergeevna 2017. belyj chetyrekhstopnyj khorej s okonchanijami zhzhzhm: bal’mont i razmer poeticheskoj perepiski bloka i akhmatovoj. in: trudy instituta russkogo jazyka imeni v. v. vinogradova 11, 76–88. polilova, vera sergeevna (forthcoming). dva mavritanskikh romansa v perevode r. t. gonorskogo. remorova, nina borisovna 1989. v. a. zhukovsky i nemetskie prosvetiteli. tomsk: izdatel’stvo tomskogo universiteta. scherr, barry p. 2016. to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure. in: studia metrica et poetica 3(2), 32–49. shapir, maksim il’ich 2000. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. vol. 1. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. shapir, maksim il’ich 2015. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. vol. 2. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. 108 vera polilova stepanov, aleksandr gennad’evich 2010. strofa pamjati i “pamjat’” strofy (k semantike stikhotvornoj formy). in: kul’tura v fokuse znaka. tver’: sfk-ofis, 297–309. stephenson, robert clarence 1938. the english source of pushkin’s spanish themes. in: studies in english 18, 85–111. taranovsky, kirill fedorovich 1963. o vzaimootnoshenijakh stikhotvornogo ritma i tematiki. in: american contributions to the fifth international congress of slavists. vol. i: linguistic contributions. the hague: mouton, 287–332. trunin, mikhail 2017. towards the concept of semantic halo. in: studia metrica et poetica 4(2), 41–66. umphrey, george w. 1946. spanish ballads in english. in: modern language quarterly 7(1), 21–33. vinokur, grigorij osipovich 1930. vol’nye jamby pushkina. in: pushkin i ego sovremenniki: materialy i issledovanija. vol. 38/39. leningrad: izdatel’stvo an sssr, 23–36. wachtel, michael 2006. poeticheskaja perepiska bloka i akhmatovoj: vzgljad na pervuju publikatsiju. in: stikh, jazyk, poezija: pamjati mikhaila leonovicha gasparova. moskva: rggu, 154–163. yarkho, boris isaakovich (trans.) 1936. pesn’ o moem side. in: shor, rozalija osipovna (ed.), khrestomatija po zapadnoevropejskoj literature. literatura srednikh vekov (ix–xv v.v.). moskva: uchpedgiz, 361–390. zhiljakova, emma mikhajlovna 2010. [primechanija: “sid”]. in: zhukovsky, vasilij andreevich, polnoe sobranie sochinenij i pisem v 20 tomakh. t. 5: epicheskie stikhotvorenija. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur, 363–379. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1966. stikh i perevod (iz istorii romanticheskoj poemy). in: russko-evropejskie literaturnye svjazi: sbornik statej k 70-letiju so dnja rozhdenija akademika m. p. alekseeva. moskva, leningrad: izdatel’stvo an sssr, 423–433. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1970. anna akhmatova and aleksandr blok. in: russkaja literatura 3, 57–82. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1975. teorija stikha. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. zholkovsky, alexander konstantinovich 2009 [2006]. “prosypat’sja na rassvete...” anny akhmatovoj: poetika osvezhenija. in his: novaja i novejshaja russkaja poezija. moskva: rggu, 56–71, 282–294. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 7–33 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.01 fletcher’s versification marina tarlinskaja* abstract: the essay deals with fletcher’s versification compared to his contemporaries and co-authors. fletcher had the most feminine endings compared to other playwrights, more compound feminine endings, and more heavy (stressed) feminine endings. he had few run-on lines: run-on lines and compound feminine endings are in reverse proportion. the main features outlined in the paper are the distribution of stressing and strong syntactic breaks in the line, types of line endings, and the syntactic and semantic function of enclitic micro-phrases. fletcher’s verse had undergone an evolution, from bonduca and valentinian (1610–13) to the island princess (1621–23), e. g. the changed place of strong syntactic breaks. analysis of massinger’s verse confirmed oras’s impression that it was prose-like: massinger often squeezed two syllables into the same metrical slot; he had little hemistich segmentation; and he often divided his lines syntactically; the second part of the divided line ran-over onto the next line, thus effacing the division of his verse into lines. unlike shakespeare’s enjambments, which are composed with masculine endings and with an unstressed monosyllabic grammatical word placed on position 10, massinger’s syntactic breaks in midline and run-on lines occur with compound light feminine endings. keywords: meter, rhythm, syllabic position, enclitics, proclitics, line endings, enjambment. 1. introduction this essay is about the versification of john fletcher’s plays analyzed linguistically. we compare fletcher’s verse style with that of his predecessors and contemporaries, including co-authors. the results can be used for the attribution of scenes in collaborative plays. verse form is a significant feature of english renaissance drama, and its variations show the evolution of the line stressing, their syntactic composition, the line endings, and other features of verse. its analysis differentiates the styles of individual authors. we will look at fletcher’s versification in his solo plays and in collaborations with other playwrights. we shall observe the correlation between line endings and enjambments. scholars have often neglected the features of * author’s address: marina tarlinskaja, department of linguistics, university of washington, seattle, box 354340 seattle, wa 98195-4340. e-mail: marinat@uw.edu. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.01 8 marina tarlinskaja versification; when one reads their critical works, it is not clear in what form the analyzed texts were composed – as prose or as verse. and does it matter? yes, it does. playwrights took special pains to compose their texts in verse, though plays were often written in a hurry, and sometimes by two or more authors. plays were not considered works of art. in his poem a session of the poets, john suckling depicts a conference in which poets argue who deserves a laurel wreath, and ben jonson “told them plainly he deserved the bays, | for his were called works, while others were but plays”. and yet, the playwrights invested time and effort to compose their plays in metrical verse. the verse was iambic pentameter; this verse form had become traditional since 1561, when gorboduc, the first tragedy in iambic pentameter, was composed. the verse form gave clues to the audience, so that the public not only recognized the genres of tragedy vs. comedy, but probably also heard the differences between the utterances of different character types (tarlinskaja 1984). when commoners spoke in prose and noble heroes discoursed in verse, the opposition emphasized the social status of the characters. the difference between heroes and villains was also reflected in the structure of their utterances, e. g. othello of the first act vs. iago (tarlinskaja 1987). variations of the meter can add to the text semantics. rhythmical structure of separate lines also began to add to the meaning of the text: poets had learned to create rhythmical italics (tarlinskaja 2014: appendix a). rhythmical italics are deviations from the iambic meter used to emphasize the meaning, e. g. “claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red” (shakespeare, venus and adonis, 469) instead of something smoothly iambic: “he clapped her cheek”. the act of clapping is emphasized by accentual deviations on syllables 1-2-3 (w-s-w).1 the verb on the first syllabic position (w) is the most important component of rhythmical italics. there are three times more verbs than other parts of speech within rhythmical italics, while in the text outside the italics the most frequent part of speech is the noun (tarlinskaja 2014: 275). within rhythmical italics, verbs of violent action (clap, pierce, beat, rush) are seven times more frequent than neutral verbs (sit, glance, think, sleep), while in the rest of the text, verbs of action are as frequent as neutral verbs. rhythmical italics became a stylistic device not unlike onomatopoeia: the sound emphasizes the sense. playwrights usually followed the canons of their epoch, and so did shakespeare (see tables 1–3). as the periods changed, so did shakespeare’s 1 iambic pentameter is a string of ten syllabic positions: weak, w, usually unstressed, and strong, s, usually stressed syllabic positions of the metrical line: wswswswsws(ww). the last two positions, the endings, called feminine and dactylic, are optional. they can bear a stress, usually with a weak phrasal accentuation, as in “the king is dead, then?” 9fletcher’s versification versification. shakespeare’s verse, as it changed during the 25 or so years of his writing career, helps to attribute a play to a chronological period. fletcher’s versification also changed with the times. 2. tests used in verse analyses: a brief outline 2.1. the first test: stressing. the first test is the stressing of syllables on every s (strong) and w (weak) syllabic position of the iambic meter. several problems arise here. the main problem is the stressing of monosyllables (see tarlinskaja 2014, chapter 1). there are many nuances of stressing in speech; we recognize that, for example, adverbs so, too, and some other monosyllables, when occurring on w of iambic verse (so well, too late) can weaken or lose stress in declamation. however, we adopt a formalized, consistent approach to stressing and take into consideration the part of speech of monosyllables, their placement on w or s syllabic positions, their syntactic function, and the distance from its syntactic partner (kolmogorov, prokhorov 2015 [1968]: 118–119; 2015 [1985]: 168). following zhirmunsky (1925; english translation: 1966), i divide monosyllables into three stressing categories: those that are always unstressed, both on s and w (articles, prepositions, conjunctions), always stressed (nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs), and ambivalent: usually stressed on s and always unstressed on w (personal, demonstrative, possessive and relative pronouns; relative adverbs). compare the pronoun thou in three lines from shakespeare’s sonnets: “look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest”; “if thou couldst answer ‘this fair child of mine’”; “that thou amongst the waste of time must go” (shakespeare, son. 3.1, son. 2.10, son. 12.10). in the first line the personal pronoun thou fills a w syllabic position and is considered unstressed. in the second line the pronoun occupies an s and is immediately followed by its syntactic partner, the predicate; i mark it as unstressed, though it may be marked as stressed in another approach to stressing (kazartsev 2015, 2017), and, of course, it may be stressed in declamation. in the third example, the subject thou also falls on an s position but it is separated from its predicate by a phrase: “among the waste of time”. i considered thou stressed: it is located at a distance from its syntactic partner (kolmogorov, prokhorov 2015 [1968]: 118–119). kazartsev follows zhirmunsky’s classification more consistently: all ambivalent monosyllables in his analysis are always stressed on s and unstressed on w. i find this scansion too heavy for english with its numerous monosyllables. 10 marina tarlinskaja during the early period of english iambic versification, poets and actors might have stressed ambivalent words more often than in the following periods (cf. elizabethan vs. jacobean plays). in jacobean verse two syllables filling the same syllabic position are a frequent occurrence; they must have been pronounced faster than when each syllable filled one syllabic position, as it usually does in elizabethan verse. the syllabic structure of verse lines hints at the change in the tempo of declamation. the place of the performance probably also played a role: in an inn yard under the open sky the actors had to shout out each word to be heard by the public, while in a roofed theater the tempo of declamation could have become faster. however, my approach to stressing texts of different periods is uniform. the placement of stresses in a text for its analysis is not equivalent to a declamation: there are more variants of declamation than of text analyses (tarlinskaja 2002). the key to analysis is to explain the principle of stressing clearly and to apply it consistently. for the stressing analysis of long texts, i use the simplified opposition “stress” vs. “non-stress”. degrees of stressing are taken into consideration in our analysis of separate lines and in special cases, e. g. “and worse still;2 he’s dead then; but thus much; he’s wise too”. the emphasized words on w are often words of vague semantics. they probably required a weaker stress than their syntactic partner on s. stressing on each w and s (all stresses on syllabic position 1, syllabic position 2, syllabic position 3, etc.) is calculated as a percent from the total number of lines (table 1). in early renaissance the most numerous omitted stresses on s occurred on syllable 6, and so it did in early shakespeare (see kyd’s the spanish tragedy and shakespeare’s romeo and juliet in table 1). in post-1600 poetry the “dip” moved to syllable 8, and it did so in shakespeare’s verse. here is an example of early shakespeare’s style: “that dogs bark at me as i halt by them” (richard iii, 1.1.23). and here is later shakespeare: “of all the under fiends. but if so be” (coriolanus, 4.5.94). the material in tables 1–3 contain three plays by shakespeare solo, four by fletcher solo, three solo plays by massinger, and five plays where fletcher coauthored with other playwrights: beaumont, shakespeare, massinger, and rowley.3 2 words in the capitals are strongly stressed and occupy a strong (s) syllabic position; nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs on w preceding the strong stress on s are termed proclitics (“too hot”), nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs on w following the strong stress on s are termed enclitics (“he’s dead then?” “a good wench”). in counting stresses for the tables, “too” and “then” are marked as stressed, in declamation (as in “it is too hot”) their stress may be weakened, in analyzing separate lines and phrases these words are considered weakly stressed (tarlinskaja 2002; 2014: chapter 1). 3 in tables 1 and 2 i have added the data on kyd. 11fletcher’s versification 2.2. the second test is the preferred placement of strong syntactic breaks. when determining syntactic links between adjacent words, i rely on grammatical categories, not on punctuation (cf. oras 1960 and his followers, e. g., jackson 2015). table 2 demonstrates the percentage of strong syntactic breaks after syllables 2–11 calculated from the total number of lines. we differentiate three degrees of syntactic cohesion between adjacent words in verse: (1) a strong break [///], e. g., between sentences, clauses, or the author’s and direct speech; (2) a medium break [//], as between subject and predicate (the building blocks of a sentence), a verb and an adverbial modifier of time and place, or between adjacent words that have no immediate syntactic link; and (3) a strong link [/], as between a modifier and a modified noun, or a verb and its direct object. the most frequent syntactic break in pre-1600 poetry fell after syllable 4, and in post-1600 verse – after syllable 6, and so it did in shakespeare’s verse. in some jacobean texts the break fell after syllable 7, as in earlier fletcher. however, each poet added individual features to his verse style which help in attribution. here is an example of marking degrees of cohesion between adjacent words: “the jew // shall have / all justice. /// soft, /// no haste” (shakespeare, the merchant of venice, 4.1.320). monosyllables on w, both unstressed and stressed, are drawn into the rhythmical unit with a stress on s: “these tidings // will well comfort / cassius” (shakespeare, julius caesar, 5.3.54). the speech units grouped around a stress on s are called “metrical words” (gasparov 1974). thus, “will well comfort” is a metrical word grouped around the syllable “com-” on s. english phrases often begin with one or several unstressed grammatical monosyllables, therefore the syntactic line composition is related to its stressing. a break after syllable 4 predicts a frequent omitted stress on syllable 6, and a break after syllable 6 often accompanies an omitted stress on syllable 8. here are examples from early and later shakespeare; a syllable with an omitted stress is emphasized: “now is the winter // of our discontent made glorious summer // by this son of york...” “and that so lamely // and unfashionable that dogs bark at me /// as i halt by them.” (shakespeare, richard iii, 1.1, 1–2, 22–23) 12 marina tarlinskaja “i would have voided thee; /// but in mere spite...” “stand i before thee now. /// then if thou have a heart of wreak in thee, /// thou wilt revenge...” “as benefits to thee, /// for i will fight...” (shakespeare, coriolanus, 4.5.85, 87–88, 93) there are several more important features called “additional” (table 3). additional features greatly help attribution. some of these features are particularly characteristic of fletcher’s style, for example the number of the so-called enclitic micro-phrases calculated per 1000 lines (see footnote 1). an “extrametrical” stress on w may occur to the left or to the right of the stress on s. phrases where a stress on w precedes a stress on s are called proclitics (as in “sweet boy”), while phrases where a stress on w follows the s are called enclitics (“ye spake well”). enclitic phrases add to fletcher’s syncopated rhythm. midline enclitics emphasize a “feminine” rhythm of fletcher’s verse, as in “or break down | hedges | for it. | – dorothea |” (fletcher, monsieur thomas, 1.3.56). the only playwright who used enclitic phrases as often as fletcher was middleton (tarlinskaja 2014: table 4b). when enclitic phrases terminate a verse line, they create a heavy feminine ending, as in “...my boy, my sweet boy” (fletcher, bonduca, 4.2.78). one more feature that is useful in attribution is the ratio of pleonastic verbs do per 1000 lines. pleonastic do fills, when needed, a syllabic position, e. g.: “not from the stars do i my judgement pluck” (shakespeare, son. 14.1). shakespeare used pleonastic do lavishly throughout his writing career. 3. analyses 3.1. stressing within and at the end of the line (table 1). we compare four of fletcher’s solo plays and his collaborations with shakespeare, beaumont, massinger, and rowley. we also compare fletcher with three massinger’s solo plays and his portion in the false one. ants oras compared massinger’s verse to prose (oras 1960). we shall see what gave oras such an impression. 13fletcher’s versification kyd’s the spanish tragedy (1586–87) and shakespeare’s romeo and juliet (1594–95) illustrate elizabethan verse style, henry v (1598–99) represents the short transitional period, and the tempest (1610–11) shows the stressing tendency after 1600. the spanish tragedy and romeo and juliet, pre-1600 plays, have a stressing “dip” on syllable 6. the year 1600 is conventionally considered a boundary between elizabethan and jacobean periods. john fletcher (1579–1625) was younger than shakespeare; all his plays were composed after 1600. therefore, in all of fletcher’s plays analyzed the stressing “dip” always falls on syllable 8. frances beaumont (1584–1616), philip massinger (1583– 1640) and william rowley (1585?–1626), three of fletcher’s collaborators, were several years younger than fletcher, their general styles were different, and yet the stressing distribution was similar, though for different reasons. beaumont’s later admirers praised him for his smooth verse and compared him to shakespeare. beaumont’s portions of the maid’s tragedy (1611) seem eleven-twelve years behind its period: its stressing on syllables 6 and 8 is equal (cf. henry v). in beaumont, this is a sign of smooth, archaic rhythm. rowley’s portion in the comedy the maid in the mill (1623), on the contrary, contains numerous gross syllabic irregularities and prose. one possible explanation of rowley’s more regular stressing in his iambic lines is that the author compensated the syllabic irregularities with a more regular stressing mode: a frequent stressing on syllable 4, as it were, marks the end of the first hemistich, and an equal stressing on syllables 6 and 8 compensates the irregularities of his noniambic lines. massinger’s verse is also full of deviations, e. g., two syllables filling the same w position, underlined in the example below: “to the speech of my brother. – have you moved him for us?” (massinger, the city madam, 1.2.105). other features of massinger’s verse will be discussed below. fletcher’s four solo plays and his portions in both the maid’s tragedy and the maid in the mill show a firm “dip” on syllable 8, as was typical of the post1600 period. notice the stressing in massinger’s three solo plays and in his portion in the false one: the stressing “dip” on syllable 8 is very low (64.9% of lines in the maid of honour, 65.6% in the city madam, and 64.2% in his portion of the false one), while massinger’s stressing on syllables 2–4–6 varies. it is almost equal in two texts, in the maid of honour, 73.8–75.9–74.9%, and in the false one, 72.4–76.3–75.4% of the lines (table 1). a third play by massinger has an equal number of breaks after syllables 5–6–7 (table 2): the city madam, 21.3–21.0–21.3%. and the fourth play, a new way to pay old debts, has both an almost equal number of stresses on positions 2–4–6 (73.8–75.9–74.9% of all lines) and an equal number of breaks after syllables 5–6–7, in the middle of the line (20.8–20.7–21.8%). equal stressing on positions 2–4–6 and an equal 14 marina tarlinskaja percent of breaks after syllable 5–6–7 efface massinger’s hemistich segmentation and among other things (see below) make his verse prose-like. recall that there is a correlation between syntactic and accentual line composition. particularly clear link between syntax and stressing is observed in the two early plays, kyd’s the spanish tragedy and shakespeare’s romeo and juliet: a strong syntactic break after syllable 4, the end of the first hemistich, calls for a new phrase and a frequent stressing “dip” on syllable 6. fletcher’s verse is more regular than massinger’s, and yet in monsieur thomas there is an equal amount of stresses on positions 4 and 6, and in the later island princess there is an increasing number of stresses on positions 2–4–6 and a massinger-style “dip” on position 8 (67.7% of the lines). in fletcher’s texts the stressing “dip” on position 8 is not as low as in massinger’s, and the “peak” on position 4 is almost always high (up to 90.8% in the maid in the mill): a sign of hemistich segmentation of fletcher’s lines. in the island princess the stressing “peak” occurs on position 6; it correlates with numerous breaks after position 6: 25.7% of all lines. the stressing “dip” on position 8 reminds us of massinger: 67.7%. what is important is not just the percent of stresses on even syllables, but also their relative prominence between the two adjacent even syllables; e. g., in shakespeare’s portion of henry viii the percent of stresses on position 4 is relatively low (80.2%), but it is surrounded by much lower indices: 68.3% on syllable 2 and 77.6% on syllable 6. these numbers create a “peak” on syllable 4. one of the stressing features of fletcher’s lines are numerous enclitic phrases (table 3). compare the numbers of enclitics per 1000 lines by the two collaborators in the maid’s tragedy: fletcher 239.2, beaumont 79.3: fletcher used enclitics three times more often than beaumont. look at shakespearefletcher collaboration in henry viii: shakespeare 68.6 enclitics per 1000 lines, fletcher 226.5, again three times more often than his co-author. a similar correlation is observed in the two noble kinsmen: fletcher’s portion has three times more enclitic phrases than shakespeare’s. fletcher often filled the enclitic slot at the end of the line (syllable 11, heavy compound feminine endings) with words of vague semantics and decreased accentual prominence: too, still, now, then, yet and addresses: sir, boy; e. g.: “and court her like a mistris? pray, your leave yet” (valentinian, 1.3.55). as mentioned above, fletcher liked “feminine rhythm” within and at the end of his lines: “as your poor mistresse | favour. | – i am made now” (monsieur thomas, 3.3.131). more about enclitics within and at the end of the line see below. 15fletcher’s versification 3.2. strong syntactic breaks (table 2). before 1600 kyd, shakespeare and other playwrights favoured the major syntactic break after syllable 4, e. g., romeo and juliet, 1594–95: “supper is done, /4/ and we shall come too late”; “some consequence, /4/ yet hanging in the stars” (romeo and juliet, 1.4.105, 107). in henry v (1598–99) the percentages of strong breaks after syllables 4 and 6 had become equal: the placement of strong breaks shows a transition from the earlier to the later style. the tempest (1610–11), as all of shakespeare’s post-1600 plays, shows the most frequent break after syllable 6. in the tempest we found 30.0% of breaks after syllable 6 and only 17.7% after syllable 7, e. g.: “against my very heart... /6/ poor souls, they perished”; “but are they, ariel, safe? /6/ – not a hair perished” (the tempest, 1.2.9, 217). most post-1600 authors preferred a break after syllable 6, however some playwrights placed the major break after syllable 7, e. g. webster, middleton, and early fletcher (1610–14). this is what we see in fletcher’s solo plays valentinian, bonduca and monsieur thomas (all three plays are of the years 1610–14); e. g.: “bears to oppose the huntsman, /7/ were it nothing”; “till thou wert such as they are? /7/ – chimney pieces” (valentinian, 1.2.20, 2.2.14). the break after syllable 7 often correlates with feminine line endings: there is more space for a second hemistich if the line has a feminine ending. in valentinian this tendency is particularly obvious: only 18.4% of breaks fall after syllable 6, 26.8% after syllable 7, and almost 74% feminine line endings. as mentioned above, fletcher preferred a feminine rhythm both within the line and at its end, e. g. “despair not, /3/ ’tis not manly /7/: one hours /9/ goodness /11/” (fletcher, monsieur thomas, 3.1.375). in fletcher’s collaborations with shakespeare and beaumont (1611–13), fletcher placed the major break after syllable 7, while his co-authors have most breaks after syllable 6. in fletcher’s later texts, the island princess (1619–21) and his portion in the false one (1620), the major break occurs after syllable 6: this signifies a change of the tendency compared to his earlier plays, valentinian, monsieur thomas and bonduca (1610–14). while in valentinian we found 28.8% of breaks after syllable 7 and only 18.4% after syllable 6, in the island princess we find 25.7% of breaks after syllable 6 and only 17.8% after syllable 7: the style has radically changed. the same correlation occurs in fletcher’s portion of the false one: 26.6% of breaks fall after syllable 6 and only 16.2% after syllable 7. massinger, fletcher’s coauthor in the false one (1620) places an equal number of breaks after syllables 6 and 7 (21.8 and 22.2%). in the maid’s tragedy (1610–11) by fletcher and beaumont, beaumont has two “peaks” of breaks, the major break after syllable 6 (28.5%) and another one 16 marina tarlinskaja after syllable 4 (23.4%): an earlier style. fletcher’s rhythm began to change in later plays. as shown above, in the island princess (1619–21) the major break moved one syllable back, to fall after syllable 6 as in “what would you have me do? /6/ reach me a chair” (fletcher, the island princess 1.3.1). this is a sign of changing tastes: at the end of the jacobean and the beginning of the carolinian epochs the authors began to smooth out the rhythm, and the major break moved from after syllable 7 to after 6. sometimes the number of breaks after syllables 6 and 7 becomes equal, as in massinger’s portion of the false one, or even equal after syllables 5–6–7, as in massinger’s solo plays a new way to pay old debts (1625) and the city madam (1632). this feature effaces the hemistich segmentation of massinger’s lines. the previously discussed trait of massinger’s verse was an equal number of stresses on positions 2–4–6, as in the maid of honour and the false one. equal stresses and equal breaks in midline efface the hemistich segmentation of massinger’s iamb. these traits, among others, probably made massinger’s verse sound like prose to ants oras. later, during the post-restoration period, and much later, during dryden’s lifetime and early classicism, the major break began to fall after syllable 4, e. g.: “to wives and slaves; /4/ and, wide as his command” (dryden, absalom and achitophel, 9); “beware of all, /4/ but most beware of man!” (pope, the rape of the lock, 1.114): a masculine rhythm prevails, and syllable count is precise: no cases of two syllables filling the same metrical position. in the later collaborated plays there is a mixture of tendencies that indicate a transitional period. in the false one (1620), as shown above, massinger’s portion has an equal percent of breaks after syllables 6 and 7 (21.8% and 22.2%), while in fletcher’s portion the major break falls only after syllable 6 (26.6%). in the maid in the mill (1623) fletcher again places the major break after syllable 6 (29.9%) and two minor ones after syllables 4 and 8 (26.1 and 25.1% of the lines). this correlation signifies a new trend: short syntactic units spread along the line. rowley’s iamb, on the contrary, has just one major break, after syllable 6. thus, fletcher’s style had changed from valentinian and two other earlier plays, with а break after syllable 7, to the island princess and the false one with major breaks after syllable 6 to the maid in the mill with prominent breaks after syllables 6, 4 and 8. massinger’s a new way to pay old debts (1625) has an equal number of breaks after syllables 5, 6 and 7: 20.8–20.7–21.8%. this line configuration effaced massinger’s hemistich line structure. recall that the syllabic structure of massinger’s plays also makes his verse sound prose-like: he regularly fits two syllables into the same metrical slot; e. g.: “i pawn’d you my land for the tenth part of the value” (massinger, the city madam, 1.2.69, 1.3.6). the line contains two cases of two syllables occupying the same metrical slot (syllabic positions 3 and 5); the line, in addition, contains an enclitic phrase within the line. 17fletcher’s versification here is another important feature that makes massinger’s verse sound prose-like: he often divided the line into two syntactic halves, and the second half-line ran into the next line. in the example below, the second half of line 61 (“entertain ’em →”)4 is a compound light feminine ending, and it runs-over onto line 62. the boundary between lines 61 and 62 is effaced: “i am visited by any, /7/ entertain ’em → as theretofore; /4/ but say, in my excuse” (massinger, a new way to pay old debts, 1.2.61–62) this kind of syllabic and syntactic line structure does not occur in the texts by other playwrights. in his three earlier solo plays fletcher prefers a break after syllable 7, and so he does in his early collaborations with shakespeare in henry viii and the two noble kinsmen, and in the maid’s tragedy with beaumont. in shakespeare’s portions the major break falls after syllable 6, and in beaumont’s portion there are two peaks, after syllables 6 (28.5%) and 4 (23.4%). beaumont’s verse structure vacillates between 6+4 and 4+6 syllables. in the later collaborations with other playwrights the picture begins to change: massinger in his portion of the false one (1620) has an almost equal number of breaks after syllables 6 and 7 (21.8 and 22.2% of the lines), while fletcher creates just one major break, after syllable 6 (26.6%). in the maid in the mill, rowley also has just one major break, again after syllable 6, while fletcher moves his breaks both ways: the main break still falls after syllable 6 (29.9% of all lines) and two minor ones occur after syllables 4 and 8 (26.6 and 25.1% of the lines). this is the result of changed line syntax: the utterances and phrases have become shorter, e. g.: “to me, sir? [4] from whom? /6/ – a friend, /8/, i dare vow, sir.” (fletcher, the maid in the mill, 2.2.336).5 “i dare” fill the same metrical slot, position 9. the line has four phrases; there is a missing syllable (syllable four, in square brackets), and a compound heavy feminine line ending. the first three collaborations, one by fletcher-beaumont and two by fletcher-shakespeare, were created during the years 1611–13, while the two other collaborations, the false one with massinger and the maid in the mill with rowley, were composed ten years later, 1619–23 and 1623. these were the 4 the arrow denotes an enjambment. 5 the number in square brackets (e.g. [4]) shows an omitted syllable in the iambic line, in this case an omitted syllable four, while the number in slanted brackets (e.g., /6/) shows – as everywhere else in this article – a word boundary, in this case, after syllabic position six. 18 marina tarlinskaja years when fletcher’s verse style began to change; in the island princess most breaks fall after syllable 6, not 7. the percent of breaks in the island princess is 25.7% after syllable 6 and only 17.8% after syllable 7. in the earlier valentinian the numbers are the reverse: 18.2% after syllable 6 and 26.8% after 7. beaumont in his portions of the maid’s tragedy, as mentioned above, placed syntactic breaks after syllables 6 (28.5%, the main break) and 4 (23.4%). this is a feature of beaumont’s old-fashioned style; the other features were a careful syllable count and an old-fashioned stressing pattern, as though twelve years earlier (cf. henry v). after beaumont died, the general style kept evolving, with a break falling first after syllable 6 (shakespeare), then after syllable 7 (early fletcher), then back again, after syllable 6 (the island princess). fletcher’s portion of the maid in the mill with its three peaks of breaks, after syllables 6, 4 and 8 illustrates the changing tendency in fletcher: from a break after syllable 7 – to a break after syllables 6 – to breaks after syllables 6, 4 and 8 in the maid in the mill (29.9, 26.1 and 25.1% of lines). syllabic and syntactic structure of the lines is looser here, and it affects the placement of breaks. an example: “give it me // again. /// come, come, /// fly, fly. /// i am all fire” (fletcher, the maid in the mill, 1.2.99). “give it” is squeezed into the same w slot. “i am all fire” may be interpreted as three syllables placed into the same w position (“i am all”). another variant of interpretation: the line has six strong syllabic positions (a hexameter line). then it must be discarded from our analysis. 3.3. line endings (table 3). we analyzed the syllabic and accentual composition of line endings and their syntactic features. from the point of view of their syllabic structure we differentiate masculine, feminine, and dactylic endings. feminine and dactylic endings can be simple (as in mur-der; mur-de-rer) or compound (kill-him, came-to-him). from the point of view of stressing, masculine endings can be stressed or unstressed. unstressed syllable 10 in masculine endings can be the end of a polysyllabic word (“o villains, chiron and demetrius!” – titus andronicus, 5.3.8) or an unstressed grammatical monosyllable; the latter cause run-on lines: “...perchance he spoke not, but → like a full-acorned boar, a german one...” (shakespeare, cymbeline, 4.5.15) run-on lines are a syntactic feature of mostly masculine line endings. feminine endings, as we shall see, avoid enjambments. 19fletcher’s versification 3.3.1. compound feminine and dactylic endings. compound feminine and dactylic endings can be light (unstressed on syllable 11 or 12) or heavy, stressed on syllables 11 or 12, as in “...worse, worse, and worse still” (fletcher, monsieur thomas, 1.3.111). here are lines with heavy dactylic endings: “and pray ye speak truly too. – i never lyde, lady” (“ye speak” fill the same syllabic position, three). “a thousand kisses. – take ten thousand back again” (the maid in the mill, 1.3.59, 124). both heavy feminine and heavy dactylic endings prefer words with a reduced phrasal accentuation: monosyllables too, so, still and direct addresses (sir, boy) on position 11 in heavy feminine endings, while heavy dactylic endings favor disyllabic adverbs of vague semantics and reduced stress: enough, again (“not good enough,” “got up again”), reflexive pronouns (“go clean yourself”) and phrase-final direct addresses (“don’t cry, lady”).6 yet even lighter dactylic endings avoid run-on lines: the end of the line must be marked either by its syllabic structure, or its accentual and syntactic composition. in shakespeare’s the tempest we found 42% lines with enjambments, only 35.6% feminine endings, and only a couple of heavy feminine endings. compare these numbers with fletcher’s valentinian, the same period: 73.5% feminine endings (more than twice as many as in the tempest), 7.3% heavy feminine endings, and only 13.5% enjambments, one-third of those in the tempest. in fletcher’s bonduca we found only 17.1% enjambments, but almost 67% feminine endings (almost twice as many as in the tempest) and 9% compound heavy feminine endings (but almost none in the tempest). thus, all fletcher’s solo plays have numerous feminine endings, including compound heavy feminine endings, and very few run-on lines. the number of enjambments decreased in later collaborations: fletcher in the false one: 8.1% run-on lines (and 80.9% feminine endings, 10.7% heavy feminine endings), in the maid in the mill there are only 6.2% enjambments, and 77.9 % feminine endings, 35% compound feminine endings, and 19.6% compound heavy feminine endings. feminine and dactylic endings preclude enjambments. only massinger frequently used compound light feminine endings together with enjambments (see below). let us look at the line endings in other collaborated plays. shakespeare’s scenes in henry viii contain 33.5% feminine endings, and fletcher’s scenes almost twice as many: 63.4%. the number of run-on lines is the reverse: 45.7% in shakespeare’s scenes, and only 28.3% in fletcher’s. this is a high number for 6 disyllabic enclitics in post-positional direct address occur in shakespeare’s texts in midline, not necessarily at the end of the line: “we are not safe, clarence, we are not safe” from richard iii, or “farewell, brother! –we split, we split, we split” from the tempest. 20 marina tarlinskaja fletcher: fletcher was undoubtedly influenced by his co-author. in fletcher’s monsieur thomas (1613–19) we find 80.3% feminine endings, 33.9% compound feminine endings, 17.7% of heavy feminine endings, and only 16.4% run-on lines. cf. with middleton’s a game at chess (1624): there are fewer feminine endings, only 59.4%, and consequently more run-on lines: 27.8%. look at the maid in the mill. here too fletcher has numerous feminine endings (almost 78%), 35% compound feminine endings, many heavy feminine endings (19.6%) and, consequently, very few run-on lines: only 6.2%. in rowley’s portion the situation is reversed: only 45.8% of feminine endings, only 7.5% heavy feminine endings (almost one-third of fletcher’s 19.6%) and 22.9% run-on lines (three times more than in fletcher’s portion). a similar tendency is observed in the false one by fletcher and massinger. we find only 8.1% run-on lines in fletcher’s scenes, and four times as many in massinger’s: 36.9%, while the percent of feminine endings is the reverse: 80.9% feminine endings in fletcher’s scenes and only 43.6% in massinger’s. thus, to reiterate, feminine endings, particularly compound heavy feminine endings, preclude enjambments. compound heavy feminine endings preclude enjambment even in massinger’s verse: the heavy feminine ending places a definite syntactic boundary between adjacent lines: “the fattest stag i ever cooked.” – “a stag, man?” “a stag, sir, part of it prepared for dinner –” (massinger, a new way to pay old debts, 1.3.19–20) line endings are a remarkable feature of massinger’s verse. the three solo plays have a close number of feminine endings, particularly a new way to pay old debts and the city madam: 52.6 and 57.1% of lines; and compound heavy endings are identical: the maid of honour 5.0% of all lines, a new way to pay old debts 5.5%, and the city madam 5.4%. 3.3.2. compound light feminine endings in adjacent lines efface the boundary between the lines, if the lines are linked syntactically. such lines are typical of massinger, but not of fletcher. here are some examples from massinger’s texts: “which we that are her servants /7/ ought to serve it → and not dispute. /4/ howe’er you are nobly welcome...” (massinger, a new way to pay old debts, 1.3.5–6) 21fletcher’s versification “cannot speak more effectually. /8/ shall i be → talk’d out of my money?” /5/ no, sir, but entreated...” (massinger, the city madam, 1.3.97–98) here “of my” occupy the same syllabic position, three; “effectually” is considered tetrasyllabic. thus, if the ending of the first line is compound light feminine, and if it runs into the second line, the line segmentation is effaced. this is the most important feature of massinger’s verse that might have reminded oras of prose. such lines do not occur in shakespeare. while feminine endings, and particularly compound heavy feminine endings, avoid enjambments, masculine endings are frequently paired with run-on lines, especially if position 10 is filled with an unstressed grammatical monosyllable, very frequent in late shakespeare. syllabic and syntactic types of line endings are two of the numerous factors that oppose fletcher and his co-authors (table 3). in spite of the genre difference and the persona of fletcher’s co-author, we see that fletcher strongly preferred feminine endings, especially heavy feminine endings, and avoided run-on lines both in solo plays and collaborations. in the false one with massinger the correlation between the feminine line endings is as follows: fletcher 80.9%, massinger 43.6%, while run-on lines show a reverse tendency: fletcher 8.1% and massinger 36.9% of all lines. the same tendency is revealed in other collaborations, the maid’s tragedy with beaumont, and particularly the maid in the mill with rowley: feminine endings in fletcher’s portion reach 77.9% of the lines, in rowley’s 45.8%, while run-on lines are the reverse: fletcher 6.2% and rowley almost 23%. let us go back to the two noble kinsmen by shakespeare and fletcher: compound feminine endings reach 22.9% in fletcher’s portion, and only 6.4% in shakespeare’s. heavy feminine endings reach 8.7% of lines in fletcher’s portion, and only 1% in shakespeare’s. the run-on lines reach 52.8% in shakespeare’s portion and only 21.5% in fletcher’s (and this is still too many for fletcher: here too he was influenced by his co-author shakespeare). 3.3.3. the syllabic and syntactic types of line endings (a summary). feminine endings. henry viii: shakespeare 33.5%, fletcher almost twice as many: 63.4%. the two noble kinsmen: shakespeare 32.6%, fletcher 58.4%: fletcher almost doubled the shakespearean number. the maid’s tragedy: fletcher 54.6%, beaumont only 15.0%, almost a quarter of fletcher’s number, and all beaumont’s feminine endings are simple. the false one: fletcher 80.9% 22 marina tarlinskaja of feminine endings and massinger 43.6%, almost one half of fletcher’s number. the maid in the mill: fletcher 77.9% lines with feminine endings, rowley 45.8%. thus, fletcher used feminine endings approximately 2-4 times more often than his co-authors. how do these data correlate with run-on lines? run-on lines. the picture is the reverse. look at fletcher and shakespeare in henry viii: fletcher 28.3% and shakespeare 45.7% of the lines: fletcher has almost half the number of run-on lines compared to his feminine endings (63.4%). shakespeare obviously had influenced fletcher: 28.3% is too many enjambments for fletcher. look at the two noble kinsmen: shakespeare has 2.5 times more run-on lines compared to fletcher: shakespeare 52.8% and fletcher 21.5%. in the false one massinger and fletcher are even farther apart: only 8.1% run-on lines in fletcher’s scenes (not unlike his solo plays) and four times more, 36.9% run-on lines in massinger’s. in the maid in the mill fletcher has only 6.2% enjambments, and rowley – 22.9%, almost four times more than fletcher. though fletcher uses more feminine endings and fewer run-on lines than his collaborators, co-authors influenced each other: cf. fletcher solo, valentinian 13.5% run-on lines, and fletcher in henry viii (the same period as valentinian) 28.3%: an influence of shakespeare, who has 45.7% run-on lines. in massinger’s three solo plays, the number of compound endings increases with time: 15.0, 18.1 and 20.6% while the ratio of heavy endings is very close: 5.0, 5.5 and 5.4%: about a third or one-fourth of the compound endings. fletcher always used few enjambments both in his solo plays and in collaborations; the island princess (1619–21 or 1623) particularly stands out for its few run-on lines: only 11.5% lines are run-on. the highest number of enjambments in fletcher’s solo plays is in bonduca: 17.1%, still much below shakespeare’s numbers: in the tempest, the last solo play by shakespeare, there are 42.0% run-on lines, and a similar number in henry viii: 45.7%. both plays were composed at about the same time. in shakespeare’s portion of two noble kinsmen there are particularly many run-on lines: 52.8%, and in fletcher’s portion only 21.5%, two and a half times less frequent than in shakespeare’s scenes, yet much more often than in his solo plays. shakespeare often composed run-on-lines placing grammatical words on position 10 in masculine endings: “had i been any god of power, i would → have sunk the sea within the earth...” (shakespeare, the tempest, 1.2.10) 23fletcher’s versification massinger, as pointed out above, unlike shakespeare and fletcher, often used compound light feminine endings that ran over onto the next line. here are three more examples: “with hopes above their birth and scale /8/ their dreams are → of being made countesses /6/ and they take state...” “that such as soar above their pitch /8/ and will not → be warn’d by my example, should like me...” “begotten on their bodies. /7/ – sir, you bind us → to very strict conditions. – you, my lord...” (massinger, the city madam, 1.1.17–18, 1.2.118–119, 2.2.5–6) this feature more than anything else makes massinger’s verse sound like prose. recall that fletcher favored syntactically complete lines with numerous feminine endings, including heavy feminine endings. below are three lines illustrating typical fletcher. as mentioned above, fletcher was fond not just of feminine endings, but of feminine rhythm within his lines. two of the three lines below have a heavy feminine ending, and in the second line there is, in addition, a heavy feminine ending of the first hemistich. “and court her // like a mistris? /// pray /// your leave yet” (fletcher, valentinian, 1.3.54) “as many // foolish / men doe, /// i should run mad” “despise not, /// ’tis not manly: /// one hour / goodness...” (fletcher, monsieur thomas, 1.1.153, 3.1.375) a striking difference opposes fletcher to his co-authors, shakespeare, beaumont, massinger and rowley. look at the difference in a later collaborated play, the false one. the difference is in the number of run-on lines: 36.9% in massinger’s portion and only 8.1% in fletcher’s. massinger, like rowley but unlike fletcher, regularly inserted two syllables into the same metrical slot; this makes some of his lines difficult to interpret. recall that we found three other important features of massinger’s versification style that make his verse prose-like: a similar percent of stresses on positions 2–4–6 (73.8–75.9–74.9% in the maid of honour, 72.4–76.3–75.4% in the false one), a similar percent of syntactic breaks after adjacent syllables 5–6–7, that 24 marina tarlinskaja is, in the middle of the line: a new way to pay the old debts 20.8–20.7–21.8%, the city madam 21.3–21.0–21.3%. thus, massinger’s hemistich segmentation is effaced. and the third important feature in massinger’s texts that makes it prose-like is a break in mid-line and a compound light feminine ending that runs over into the next line: the segmentation of massinger’s texts into lines is effaced. the number of run-on lines contrasts fletcher to his collaborators, particularly in the false one with massinger and the maid in the mill with rowley: only 8.1 and 6.2% run-on lines in fletcher’s portions, and 36.9% in massinger’s portion and 22.9% in rowley’s. the total percent of feminine endings in fletcher’s solo plays is the highest in the material analyzed: 66.9–80.3% of all lines (bonduca – monsieur thomas). the next in line, thomas middleton and john ford (tarlinskaja 2014: appendix b, table 4) never rise above 60% of feminine endings. the total number of feminine endings does not always correlate with the number of heavy feminine endings. in massinger’s three solo plays the percent of feminine endings increases with time (47.4, 52.6 and 57.1%) and so does the amount of compound feminine endings (15.0, 18.1 and 20.6% of all lines), while the amount of heavy feminine endings remains the same: 5.0, 5.5 and 5.4%. compared to the total number of feminine endings, the percentage of heavy endings in fletcher’s plays is relatively low: monsieur thomas 80.3% of feminine endings but only 17.7% lines with heavy endings; the island princess has 76.8% feminine endings and only 11.8% heavy feminine endings. however, if we count only compound feminine endings, the numbers rise in favor of heavy endings: monsieur thomas: 33.9% compound feminine endings and 17.7% heavy endings, half of the total; the island princess: 32.1% compound feminine endings and 11.8% compound heavy: one third of compound feminine endings are heavy. the same correlation is seen in valentinian: 20.3% lines with compound feminine endings and 7.3% of heavy feminine endings: one third of the compound endings are heavy. in the maid in the mill fletcher has 35% of compound feminine endings, and 19.6% lines with heavy feminine endings: more than half of the total. this might be another way of looking at the material. 3.4. enclitic phrases. we have been mentioning enclitic micro-phrases many times above. enclitics are often placed at the end of a longer phrase, creating a syncopated rhythm. compound heavy feminine line endings are at the same time enclitics. here is a line with a heavy ending (i. e. enclitic) of the first hemistich and a heavy ending of the line; it may be considered a feminine or a 25fletcher’s versification dactylic ending: the name alice is ambivalent, either monosyllabic or disyllabic (cf. arden of faversham): “he’ll catch no fish else. farewell doll – farewell alice” (monsieur thomas, 1.3.138). there are more enclitics in fletcher’s solo plays than in his collaborations. the lowest number of enclitics occurs in shakespeare’s portions of henry viii and the two noble kinsmen, and in beaumont’s portion of the maid’s tragedy (68.6, 89.2 and 79.3 per 1000 lines). the highest number of enclitics is in fletcher’s monsieur thomas: 410.5 per 1000 lines. co-authors often influence each other’s styles, but there are always more enclitic phrases in fletcher’s portions than in those of his collaborators. this is how shakespeare’s portions in henry viii and the two noble kinsmen were identified: henry viii, shakespeare 68.6 and fletcher 226.5 enclitics per 1000 lines, three times more than in shakespeare’s portion; the two noble kinsmen: shakespeare 89.2 and fletcher 290.1 enclitics per 1000 lines, also three times more often than in shakespeare’s portion. here are some examples of enclitic phrases in “the two noble kinsmen”:  like tall ships under sail; then start amongst 'em... and like an east wind leave 'em all behind us... like proud seas under us. our good swords now... but dead-cold winter must inhabit here still consider the maid’s tragedy: beaumont 79.8 and fletcher – 239.2 per 1000 lines, again three times more often than in his co-author. beaumont’s style was not unlike shakespeare’s. look at rowley and fletcher’s portions in the maid in the mill: rowley 74.8 and fletcher 307.7 enclitics per 1000 lines: fletcher’s enclitics are four times more frequent than rowley’s. the most frequent correlation between enclitic phrases as used by fletcher and his collaborators is 3:1. however, the correlation is 2:1 in the false one by massinger and fletcher: 118.3 and 234.9 per 1000 lines: fletcher’s enclitics occurred “only” twice as often as massinger’s (not three-four times more often): massinger used numerous run-on lines, and these preclude enclitics. only middleton can compare with fletcher in the ratio of enclitics: the witch 274.8, a game at chess 270.5 per 1000 lines. massinger in his solo plays uses relatively few enclitic phrases, and the number of enclitics increases from the earlier to the later play: 141.6 in the maid of honour, 174.1 in a new way to pay old debts, and 225.1 in the city madam. among fletcher’s solo plays bonduca and the island princess stand out. they portray the occupation of one country by another; it parallels the occupation by contemporary england of the virginia islands. structurally, bonduca 26 marina tarlinskaja is marked by syllabic regularity, many rhythmical italics (199.8 per 1000 lines, cf. the tempest and the shakespeare’s portion in henry viii), many alliterations (223.7 per 1000 lines; cf. valentinian 142.4 and monsieur thomas 107.4 per 1000 lines), and a relatively high number of the disyllabic suffixes -ion. all these features must have made oliphant conclude that bonduca was earlier than valentinian, itself considered an early play (compare: “i would assume that this play [bonduca] [...] was in its first form of very early date” – oliphant 1927: 131). martin wiggins dates bonduca 1613 when it was first staged. if not the date, there must be some other explanation why bonduca is so different from fletcher’s other solo plays. notice the enclitic phrase in the line from valentinian, 1.1.54 “that, that had made a saint start, well considered”; this enclitic phrase is syntactically a subject and a predicate. such syntactic patterns are rare and were used for emphasis (“the axe falls”, “the rock bleeds”). attributive and adverbial patterns and direct addresses are much more common as enclitics. end of the line enclitics that are at the same time heavy feminine endings were counted twice, as an enclitic and a heavy feminine ending. the difference in the number of enclitic phrases is also found in the fletcher-rowley’s the maid of the mill: rowley 74.8, fletcher 307.7 enclitics per 1000 lines, four times more often than rowley. the contrast between the co-authors in the false one is not as striking: fletcher 234.9 and massinger 118.3. massinger was fond of enclitic phrases, but never reached fletcher’s frequency: massinger has many run-on lines, and these, as we know, preclude heavy feminine endings. feminine endings and run-on lines are usually in inverse proportion: the more compound heavy feminine endings in the text, the fewer run-on lines. enclitic phrases, both in mid-line and at the end of the line, including heavy feminine line endings, tend to incorporate monosyllables with vague semantics and a reduced phrasal accentuation: else, too, then (“in love too”, “he’s dead then?”). heavy dactylic endings, as mentioned above, often contain disyllables with a vague semantics and reduced phrasal accentuation: postpositional addresses (“lady, caesar”); e. g. “go off, caesar” from massinger’s portion of the false one; reflexive pronouns yourselves, myself (“prepare yourself”) and adverbs again and enough (‘alive again, he’s well enough”). these were particularly typical of middleton. e. g.: “kept you this place still? did you not remove, lady?” “dare not once think awry, but must confess ourselves” “i speak not to thee – and you did prepare yourself ...” (middleton, a game at chess, 4.1.99, 9, 5.2.85) 27fletcher’s versification fletcher preferred heavy feminine endings, however, a few dactylic endings were found in fletcher’s portion of the maid of the mill: “though some deserv’d it – sure we were all to blame, lady” (1.2.76); “we were” serves as a single syllable. also: “i never lyde, lady” (1.3.79); “a thousand kisses – take ten thousand back again” (1.3.124). the maid of the mill is a comedy with numerous deviations in its syllabic and accentual composition, particularly in rowley’s portion. rowley often created lines with an omitted syllable on a syllabic position (especially often on syllabic positions 1 and 7), or with two syllables occupying the same syllabic position. rowley’s style probably influenced fletcher’s. here are two lines from rowley’s portion with omitted syllables on positions 7 and 4 (omitted syllables are marked by a number in square brackets): “no gill, i have been mad [7] these five hours” “and hear me? [4] the king’s neer by in progresse” (rowley, the maid in the mill, 3.1.45, 49) and here is an example of rowley’s line with two monosyllables on position 5 (underlined) and an omitted syllable seven (in square brackets): “the dogs shall eat him in lent, [7] there’s cats meat” (rowley, the maid in the mill, 3.1.57) it is remarkable how much alike are beaumont and shakespeare in their collaborations with fletcher: shakespeare, henry viii 68.6 enclitics per 1000, the two noble kinsmen 89.2, beaumont in the maid’s tragedy 79.3, while fletcher keeps to his high numbers: 226.5, 290.1 and 239.2 per 1000 lines. the enclitics test is particularly useful for attribution. a high number of enclitics is fletcher’s hallmark. disyllabic enclitics appear in shakespeare’s early plays in the middle of the line in the function of direct addresses: “we are not safe, clarence, we are not safe” “my lady gray his wife, clarence, ’tis she” (shakespeare, richard iii, 1.1.70, 65) disyllabic enclitics appear in the middle of the line if they follow a strong stress: “...they and the seconds of it are base people. believe them not, they lied” (fletcher, the maid’s tragedy, 4.1.43–44) 28 marina tarlinskaja 3.5. more additional features. we cannot discuss every “additional” feature, but here are two more. the first one is the frequency of pleonastic verb do (“that every word doth almost tell my name”, son. 76.7). this feature is important because it opposes shakespeare to fletcher, and beaumont to fletcher in solo plays and collaborations. there are numerous pleonastic verbs do in shakespeare and beaumont’s texts (table 3). for example, in the maid’s tragedy there are 29.4 per 1000 lines of the verb do in beaumont’s scenes and only 5.4 in fletcher’s. in shakespeare’s portion of henry viii there are 42.8 pleonastic do per 1000 lines, and only 3.7 in fletcher’s. in the two noble kinsmen fletcher has only 0.8 pleonastic do per 1000 lines, and shakespeare has 31.4. shakespeare used pleonastic do all his creative life, while fletcher didn’t, even in the earlier plays. even massinger and rowley are opposed to fletcher in the ratio of pleonastic do; e. g. in the false one fletcher uses only 3.9 pleonastic do per 1000 lines, and massinger 19.2. one more additional feature is the use of disyllabic variant of the suffix -ion. examples: “there lies the main con-si-de-ra-ti-on”; “my noble friend from whose in-struc-ti-ons”; “not thinke i speak it with am-bi-ti-ons” (fletcher, valentinian, 1.2.75, 1.3.32, 34). fletcher uses 9.5 disyllabic -ion per 1000 lines in bonduca, 5.9 in valentinian, 5.3 in the maid’s tragedy, 5.4 in the two noble kinsmen and 6.2 in the false one. massinger uses the disyllabic suffix -ion almost three times more often in the early maid of honour than in the later the city madam: 14.7 and 4.6 per 1000 lines. shakespeare used the disyllabic variant of the suffix 7.7 times per 1000 lines in romeo and juliet, and only 1.5 times in the tempest. the disyllabic variant of the suffix -ion was beginning to feel obsolete. earlier playwrights, such as marlowe, used the disyllabic variant of the suffix -ion much more frequently, to prolong the end of the line; later playwrights used disyllabic -ion to mark the genre of tragedy, e. g., shirley (cf. tarlinskaja 2014: appendix 4b). 4. conclusion in many ways fletcher’s versification stayed within the parameters of the jacobean period, e. g., the most frequent syntactic break after syllable 7, a stressing “dip” on syllable 8, a stressing “peak” on syllable 4. feminine endings, particularly compound heavy feminine endings are very frequent, and in inverse proportion to run-on-lines: the more compound feminine endings in the text, the fewer run-on lines. fletcher’s style has idiosyncratic features, by 29fletcher’s versification which his texts are easily recognized. the most specific features of fletcher’s versification are numerous feminine line endings, many enclitic phrases including heavy feminine line endings, and few run-on lines. fletcher’s verse style is not unlike thomas middleton’s. middleton, however, used heavy dactylic endings and run-on lines much bolder than fletcher. both fletcher and middleton composed heavy feminine endings using words of vague semantics and a lighter phrasal stress: too, so, then, still (as in “be sure then”, “and women you shall thank too,” “worse, worse, and worse still”) and phrase-final direct addresses, such as child, friend, sir. heavy dactylic endings prefer end-of-the phrase direct addresses (“i never lyde, lady”), reflexive pronouns (herself, yourself) and disyllabic adverbs of vague semantics (“back again”, “soon enough”). numerous enclitic phrases, many feminine endings including heavy feminine endings, and few enjambments helped to identify fletcher in collaborative plays. massinger’s verse is prose-like, as ants oras noticed: there are numerous cases of two syllables fitted into the same metrical slot; there is no visible hemistich segmentation: we found an equal number of breaks after syllables 5, 6, 7 and an equal number of stresses on syllabic positions 2–4–6. but the most important feature of massinger’s style is a frequent syntactic break in the middle of the line accompanied by a light feminine line ending; the light feminine ending creates an enjambment: the half-line with a light feminine ending runs over onto the next line, thus effacing the division of massinger’s texts into lines. this feature makes massinger’s verse sound even more like prose. references gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh. metrika i ritmika. moskva: nauka. jackson, macdonald p. 2015. ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse. in: studia metrica et poetica 2(2), 48–57. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.04 kazartsev, evgeny vladimirovich 2015. vvedenie v sravnitel’noe stikhovedenie: metody i osnovy analiza. sankt-petersburg: filologicheskij fakul’tet sankt-peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. kazartsev, evgeny vladimirovich 2017. sravnitel’noe stikhovedenie: metrika i ritmika. sankt-petersburg: izdatel’stvo rgpu im. a. i. gertsena. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 2015 [1968]. k osnovam russkoj klassicheskoj metriki. in: kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich 30 marina tarlinskaja 2015. trudy po stikhovedeniju. ed. by prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich. moskva: mtsnmo, 109–135. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 2015 [1985]. model’ ritmicheskogo stroenija russkoj rechi, prisposoblennaja k izucheniju metriki klassicheskogo russkogo stikha. in: kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich 2015. trudy po stikhovedeniju. ed. by prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich. moskva: mtsnmo, 163–180. oliphant, ernest h. c. 1927. the plays of beaumont and fletcher. an attempt to determine their respective shares and the shares of others. new haven: yale university press. oras, ants 1953. “extra monosyllables” in henry viii and the problem of authorship. in: journal of english and germanic philology 52(2), 198–213. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27713526 oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama (university of florida monographs, humanities 3). gainesville, fl: university of florida press. suckling, john. 1874. the poems, plays and other remains. london: lank & william kerslake. tarlinskaja, marina 1984. “rhythmical differentiation of shakespeare’s dramatis personae”. language and style 17(4), 287–301. tarlinskaja, marina 1987a. rhythm and meaning: “rhythmical figures” in english iambic pentameter, their grammar, and their link with semantics. in: style 21(1), 1–35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945629 tarlinskaja, marina 1987b. shakespeare’s verse: iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncrasies. new york: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina 2002. verse text: its meter and its oral rendition. in: christoph küper (ed.), meter, rhythm and performance – metrum, rhythmus, performanz: proceedings of the international conference on meter, rhythm and performance, held in may 1999 at vechta. bern, berlin, [etc.]: peter lang, 39–55. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama 1561– 1642. farnham, surrey and burlington, vt: ashgate. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha. leningrad: academia. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1966. introduction to metrics: the theory of verse. translated from the russian by c. f. brown. edited with an introduction by edward stankiewicz and walter n. vickery. london, the hague, paris: mouton. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27713526 https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945629 31fletcher’s versification addenda table 1. stressing on strong syllabic positions (in % from all lines) author, work date strong syllabic positions 2 4 6 8 10 kyd, the spanish tragedy 1586–87 56.7 87.2 69.2 75.7 82.8 shakespeare, romeo and juliet 1594–95 65.7 87.2 68.3 75.6 88.5 shakespeare, henry v 1598–99 63.5 81.7 70.8 71.9 86.9 shakespeare, the tempest 1610–11 67.9 80.1 77.7 70.4 87.6 fletcher, valentinian 1610–14 68.8 86.6 84.9 74.3 95.2 fletcher, monsieur thomas 1610–14 76.0 82.9 82.3 73.3 96.0 fletcher, bonduca <1613 67.8 85.2 82.3 75.5 94.1 fletcher, the island princess 1619–21 71.1 79.3 81.2 67.7 96.3 massinger, the maid of honor 1620–23 73.8 75.9 74.9 63.9 90.1 massinger, a new way 1625 73.7 81.7 76.6 68.0 94.7 massinger, the city madam 1632 74.5 83.3 76.8 65.6 93.7 shakespeare, henry viii 1612–13 68.3 80.2 77.6 68.6 88.1 fletcher, henry viii 63.7 82.4 75.1 71.5 91.6 shakespeare, noble kinsmen 1613 71.0 81.1 78.4 71.8 87.6 fletcher, noble kinsmen 64.8 82.2 78.8 69.5 92.5 fletcher, the maid’s tragedy 1611 58.9 82.5 79.3 70.2 95.2 beaumont, the maid’s tragedy 70.8 84.8 70.1 70.8 93.1 fletcher, the false one 1620 68.7 84.2 79.1 69.8 90.0 massinger, the false one 72.4 76.3 75.4 64.2 92.0 fletcher, the maid in the mill 1623 68.6 90.8 80.2 73.7 95.9 rowley, the maid in the mill 72.1 86.5 73.5 73.5 90.7 32 marina tarlinskaja table 2. strong syntactic breaks after syllables 2–11 (in % of all lines) author, work syllabic positions 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 kyd, the spanish tragedy 11.9 4.4 22.7 9.3 6.9 2.6 1.7 0.7 89.1 1.3 shakespeare, romeo and juliet 10.2 4.8 25.7 13.0 14.0 4.4 3.4 1.6 81.9 5.4 shakespeare, henry v 6.6 3.2 14.3 11.1 13.5 6.8 2.8 62.5 15.8 21.8 shakespeare, tempest 7.2 2.7 17.0 15.8 30.0 17.7 13.2 8.1 35.9 22.1 fletcher, valentinian 6.2 3.4 16.0 10.3 18.4 26.8 14.3 4.1 20.7 65.9 fletcher, monsieur thomas 7.4 7.2 19.3 14.2 23.5 28.8 15.2 3.2 13.6 70.1 fletcher, bonduca 8.6 5.1 18.0 15.5 23.9 29.3 18.0 8.0 25.3 57.6 fletcher, the island princess 5.1 3.8 15.4 10.4 25.7 17.8 11.3 4.4 12.9 75.6 massinger, the maid of honour 6.2 5.3 13.6 17.8 20.9 25.2 13.8 5.2 23.0 29.8 massinger, a new way to pay 7.4 4.7 17.5 20.8 20.7 21.8 12.9 3.3 30.1 39.6 massinger, the city madam 4.2 4.7 12.4 21.3 21.0 21.3 11.0 3.7 18.5 40.7 shakespeare, henry viii 5.7 2.7 12.9 14.5 28.0 23.2 13.6 6.6 35.6 18.8 fletcher, henry viii 9.8 4.5 17.3 16.5 20.5 24.6 15.7 4.0 30.9 48.1 shakespeare, kinsmen 6.1 1.8 15.0 14.9 29.8 22.3 12.1 6.6 29.4 17.8 fletcher, kinsmen 5.6 7.2 18.4 17.7 22.4 25.1 13.8 5.4 28.6 49.9 fletcher. the maid’s tragedy 6.5 3.8 13.2 18.3 21.0 25.8 15.6 5.1 32.5 45.1 beaumont, the maid’s tragedy 9.0 7.3 23.4 19.2 28.5 11.5 8.7 3.1 54.7 11.7 fletcher, the false one 6.7 3.2 19.1 14.0 26.6 16.2 12.7 3.4 15.4 76.5 massinger, the false one 6.3 4.6 15.4 17.0 21.8 22.2 9.4 1.8 31.5 31.6 fletcher, the maid in the mill 9.5 4.7 26.1 18.3 29.9 15.4 25.1 6.2 16.3 77.9 rowley, the maid in the mill 8.3 8.4 19.6 15.3 25.2 17.3 9.0 5.1 37.9 39.3 ta b le 3 . a d d it io n al p o in ts o f a n al ys is (c o lu m n s 1– 7 an d 1 4: d at a p er 1 00 0 lin es ; c o lu m n s 8– 13 : d at a in % o f a ll lin es ) a ut ho r, w or k pr oc l. en cl it. pl eo n. sy lla bi c d is yl la b. g ra m m . r hy th m . sy nt ac tic : fe m in in e fe m in in e en di ng s s tr uc tu re . st ru ct ur e in % a lli te r. li ne s ph ra se s ph ra se s “d o” ed , e th io n, io us in ve rs . ita lic s ru non s en di ng s si m pl e c om p. li gh t c . h ea vy c om p. a ll t ot al so lo p la y s sh ak es pe ar e, r om eo a nd ju lie t 37 0. 3 49 .0 36 .3 23 .5 7. 6 12 .8 62 .2 12 .7 6. 0 6. 0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 12 1. 4 25 09 sh ak es pe ar e, th e te m pe st 40 0. 0 92 .0 58 .6 8. 2 1. 5 23 .7 20 6. 2 42 .0 35 .6 26 .9 7. 4 0. 7 8. 1 15 4. 3 13 48 fl et ch er , v al en tin ia n 33 1. 7 23 8. 2 4. 9 2. 0 5. 9 2. 0 64 .0 13 .5 73 .5 52 .9 13 .4 7. 3 20 .3 14 2. 4 10 11 fl et ch er , b on du ca 42 7. 1 26 8. 7 5. 9 3. 6 9. 5 4. 1 19 9. 8 17 .1 66 .9 45 .9 12 .0 9. 0 21 .0 22 3. 7 22 22 fl et ch er , m on sie ur th om as 46 9. 5 41 0. 5 12 .6 0. 0 4. 2 4. 2 25 .3 16 .4 80 .3 45 .7 16 .2 17 .7 33 .9 10 7. 4 47 5 fl et ch er , th e is la nd p ri nc es s 43 2. 3 34 2. 9 2. 9 1. 4 4. 3 5. 8 70 .6 11 .5 76 .8 44 .7 20 .3 11 .8 32 .1 16 5. 7 69 4 m as si ng er , th e m ai d of h on ou r 27 2. 6 14 1. 6 7. 6 1. 3 14 .7 1. 8 83 .1 47 .3 47 .4 32 .4 10 .0 5. 0 15 .0 59 .4 22 38 m as sin ge r, a n ew w ay -o ld d eb ts 34 8. 8 17 4. 1 15 .0 1. 5 5. 3 2. 3 42 .8 30 .3 52 .6 34 .5 12 .6 5. 5 18 .1 56 .3 13 33 m as si ng er , th e c ity m ad am 38 5. 1 22 5. 1 9. 3 0. 0 4. 6 2. 3 69 .5 42 .0 57 .1 36 .2 15 .2 5. 4 20 .6 53 .0 43 1 c o ll a b o r a t iv e pl a y s fl et ch er , th e m ai d’s t ra ge dy 39 2. 5 23 9. 2 5. 4 8. 1 5. 4 0. 0 16 4. 0 22 .3 54 .6 35 .4 14 .8 4. 6 19 .4 78 .0 37 2 be au m on t, th e m ai d’s t ra ge dy 28 9. 4 79 .3 29 .4 7. 1 0. 0 5. 6 49 .0 33 .6 15 .0 15 .0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 85 .3 71 5 sh ak es pe ar e, h en ry v ii i 35 2. 2 68 .6 42 .8 1. 7 2. 6 12 .0 16 8. 8 45 .7 33 .5 28 .5 4. 2 0. 8 5. 0 11 8. 3 11 67 fl et ch er , h en ry v ii i 43 7. 7 22 6. 5 3. 7 0. 7 13 .9 3. 6 14 1. 5 28 .3 63 .4 44 .6 13 .4 5. 4 18 .8 14 7. 4 13 64 sh ak es pe ar e, th e n ob le k in sm en 35 7. 3 89 .2 31 .4 4. 1 0. 0 36 .4 10 6. 3 52 .8 32 .6 26 .2 5. 4 1. 0 6. 4 12 5. 0 96 0 fl et ch er , th e n ob le k in sm en 41 1. 3 29 0. 1 0. 8 0. 8 5. 4 2. 3 63 .3 21 .5 58 .4 35 .5 14 .2 8. 7 22 .9 97 .3 12 97 fl et ch er , th e fa lse o ne 41 0. 4 23 4. 9 3. 9 3. 1 6. 2 4. 6 73 .4 8. 1 80 .9 53 .3 16 .9 10 .7 27 .6 13 4. 5 12 94 m as si ng er , th e fa lse o ne 29 3. 5 11 8. 3 19 .2 2. 2 7. 8 7. 8 62 .5 36 .9 43 .6 33 .4 7. 1 3. 1 10 .2 74 .8 89 6 fl et ch er , th e m ai d in th e m ill 40 5. 3 30 7. 7 5. 9 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 44 .4 6. 2 77 .9 42 .9 15 .4 19 .6 35 .0 62 .1 33 8 r ow le y, th e m ai d in th e m ill 38 1. 0 74 .8 14 .0 4. 6 9. 3 0. 0 18 .6 22 .9 45 .8 25 .2 13 .1 7. 5 20 .6 65 .1 21 5 studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_2.indd norlyr: a scandinavian network in poetry research eva lilja due to an unavoidable conflict in schedule, i missed the 2017 tallinn conference. my nordic network for research in modernist poetry, a scandinavian group with the same research interests, happened to take place in turku during the very same days, and these meetings are important for me. background and members during its early years this network was called ‘normod’, short for nordic modernism. nowadays our home page is named ‘norlyr’1. ‘lyr’ is short for ‘lyrik’, which in swedish means all kinds of poems. this change is due to that focus little by little has moved to the examination of the very latest literary achievements, poetry after the millennium shift, more than only modernism. the network was founded in 2002 by idar stegane, a professor in the department of scandinavian languages and literatures at the university of bergen. strolling around at a nordistic conference, he noticed how the participants to a high degree lacked knowledge about literature from nordic countries other than their own. swedes knew little of norwegian poetry, danes knew little about swedish poems, and so on. thus, stegane decided to do something about it. his first step was to contact peter stein larsen in aalborg, denmark, per-erik ljung in lund, sweden, and hadle oftedal andersen in helsinki. these four experts were the founding fathers, but their network developed quickly. soon the group grew to include eva britta ståhl, härnösand, sweden, unni langås, kristiansand, norway, and louise mønster, aalborg, denmark. presently we number around twenty members, and every year new, young members turn up. we eagerly wanted members from outside the scandinavian main countries denmark, norway and sweden. an icelandic participant has been sought out, and for some time sveinn yngvi egilsson offered the icelandic viewpoint. but iceland in some way seems to be situated very far away out in the atlantic ocean, and it has been difficult to keep the contact. concerning the faroe 1 http://www.cgs.aau.dk/forskning/faglige-netvaerk/norlyr/ studia metrica et poetica 4.2, 2017, 138–143 https://doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.06 139norlyr: a scandinavian network in poetry research islands we have been more lucky, as we at an early stage got bergur djurhuus hansen as a member. finland’s membership has also been complicated. the finnish language is not a nordic language, but in finland there is a small swedish speaking minority which happens to have produced a vast body of high quality poetry. this minority, however, is poor in terms of travelling grants and support, which often restrains their participating. more about the members can be found at our home page2. it is in the danish language, not english, because one of our principles is to promote our nordic languages. here you may study the interests and publications of scandinavian researchers of poetry. at our meetings the social part is essential. evenings reserved for food, drink and friendly conversations promote friendship, something that in turn further quality in research. the safe environment of a group attracts good ideas and interesting talks. those who want to surprise the world with their research results should be nice to each other. similar and different the different scandinavian languages are of course distinct entities – however, scandinavian people understand each other without many difficulties. this is a treasure to be taken care of. looking backwards in history, these literatures sometimes have cooperated – for example, the middle age swedish “eufemia songs” were written in akershus, the capital now named oslo. and the region where i live was danish land until just three-hundred years ago, with many places names still in danish. one scandinavian poet who has been important for development in all the nordic countries is edith södergran (1892–1923), who lived in finland at the country’s very eastern border with russia but using swedish as her mother tongue. she published five thin books of modernistic poetry between 1916 and 1925. at the age of 31 södergran passed away suffering from tuberculosis. however, she became the prominent modernist figure, prefacing the change for all scandinavia. because of her illness, södergran happened to spend some years before the first world war at a sanatorium in switzerland, a place and a period burning with new ideas of literature. she happily sipped them in, and when she had to leave because of the out break of the war, she brought them home to finland. 2 http://www.cgs.aau.dk/forskning/faglige-netvaerk/norlyr/medlemmer/ 140 eva lilja because of a conservative cultural climate in finland and sweden at this period, it took some time before her poetry was acknowledged for its brilliance. however, once it happened her influence was overwhelming, and spread just as well over the borders to both denmark and norway. today her work is translated into languages from english to chinese, and everywhere in between. this time it happened to be a female poet, among other things producing a lovely free verse. reviewing poets of the early scandinavian modern movement you may notice how female poets often developed the new free versification more eagerly than male. i think this has to do with södergran as a primary model. during the last century a critic’s reference to södergran came to imply female quality, a new woman poet of true talent. however, södergran’s influence transcended gender. for example her affect was heavy on the prominent author gunnar ekelöf (1907–1968), who for his part meant much in the development of norwegian modernism. the details of this process, however, are in need of a better mapping, to be ready for literary scholars. exactly when did södergran reading cross borders to denmark and norway? what are the relationships between the early finno-swedish modernism and the poetics of the dane emil bønnelycke and the expressionism of the norwegian kristofer uppdal? here is also an aspect of literary critique where the dane torben brostrøm, the norwegian paal brekke, and the swede bengt holmquist all played important roles for crossing language borders. rules and books our network is governed by some rules. we meet once a year for a 2–3 day conference at a nordic university, where a member takes care of the arrangements. every year, there is a carefully prepared theme, such as translations, gender, political poetry and so on. but the most important rule is the crossing of at least one country border. as a swede, i have to work with poems from another nordic language as well as poems from my own one. this rule implies a quantity of comparative studies. the subject of this year, song lyrics, invited comparisons between danish and swedish hip hop, and faroen and norwegian psalms, among other things. you really learn something in this process, and i have been able to find new favorites in the literatures of my neighbour countries. the process also means a yearly, moderated challenge from colleagues who together represent a substantial part of the scandinavian research field. we are 141norlyr: a scandinavian network in poetry research stimulated to look into themes that are outside our usual competences, well aware that the others are in the same unstable situation. in that way we widen our frames of understanding. each meeting results in the publication of a collection of essays exploring the year’s subject. the host of the meeting is also charged with editing the next volume. the first four books in the series belong to the nordic department of helsinki university, “nordica helsingiensia”. after that we partnered with a norwegian editor, alvheim & eide academic publishers of bergen. the whole series is called “modernisme i nordisk lyrik” [“modernism in nordic poetry”]. to date, nine separate volumes have been published, with the following catalogue of titles: 1. andersen, hadle oftedal; stegane, idar (eds.) 2005. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 1. helsingfors: helsingfors universitet. [modernism in nordic poetry] 2. andersen, hadle oftedal; larsen, peter stein; mønster, louise (eds.) 2008. stedet. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 2. helsingfors: helsingfors universitet. [the place] 3. andersen, hadle oftedal; ljung, per erik; ståhl, eva-britta (eds.) 2009. nordisk lyrikktrafikk. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 3. helsingfors: helsingfors universitet. [nordic poetic traffic, translations] 4. bäckström, per; langås, unni; andersen, hadle oftedal (eds.) 2010. samspill mellom kunstartene. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 4. helsingfors: helsingfors universitet. [cooperation between art forms] 5. nielsen, ingrid; stegane, idar (eds.) 2012. poesi pm [post millennium]. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 5. bergen: alvheim og eide akademisk forlag. [poetry post millennium] 6. kjerkegaard, stefan; langås, unni (eds.) 2013. diktet udenfor diktsamlingen. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 6. bergen: alvheim og eide akademisk forlag. [poems outside the book] 7. andersen, hadle oftedal; kemp, susanne; alfredsson, johan (eds.) 2015. kjønnskrift, kjønskrift, könskrift. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 7. bergen: alvheim og eide akademisk forlag. [writing gender] 8. lilja, eva; hansen, bergur djurhuus; vest, rasmus dahl (eds.) 2016. långa dikter. berättelse, experiment, politik. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 8. bergen: alvheim og eide akademisk forlag. [long poems. narrative, experiment, politics] 142 eva lilja 9. larsen, peter stein; mønster, louise; rustad, hans kristian 2017. økopoesi. modernisme i nordisk lyrikk 9. bergen: alvheim og eide akademisk forlag. [ecological poetry] the themes that have been chosen come close to things commonly discussed during later years, like multimodality, gender, ecology and so on. one such topic, poetry connected to a place in the second volume, found significant success. obviously we had selected an actual theme in need of discussion. volume 7, focused on gender, turned out to be complicated with many conflicting perspectives. after the volume 9, with the topic ecology, some of the writers were inspired to go on and further develop their understanding within this field. contemporary poetry volume 5 directed a somewhat new orientation on contemporary conceptual or avant-garde poetry. this was a consequence of the establishment of centre for research in contemporary poetry (or for short cercop)3 in aalborg, financed with a grant from the danish council for independent research in humanities 2013 to the project “contemporary poetry between genres, art forms and media”. this project collected about ten poetry researchers from different scandinavian universities – some of them from norlyr – and some researchers even from outside nordic countries. at the same time the contemporary poetry scene in scandinavia went into a flourishing period. cercop looks for three different fields of tension: genre-decomposing, multimodality, and media outside the book. they also embrace an orientation towards the sound and performance in which poetry, drama and music have entered into new constellations. the technological development of the media has contributed to the development of new poetic forms of interaction on the internet. the aalborg project spread results and inspiration to our network. volume 5 (2012) was titled poesi pm [poetry post millennium], and plunged into the newest poetical texts of conceptualism and language materialism. also, the following volumes have been reoriented toward the contemporary scene, and nowadays our network finds itself at home in this very latest period. at first driven by curiosity, we now are competent interpreters of the latest ideas and trends in poetics. 3 http://www.en.cgs.aau.dk/research/research-groups/cercop 143norlyr: a scandinavian network in poetry research for the moment there is a strong tendency to a new wave of politics in poetry, and this will be our theme for next year. in october, we will meet again in lund, prepared with curiosity, collegiality, and the latest viewpoints on political poetry. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd conference on finnic runo-song tradition janika oras, mari sarv the series of biannual conferences devoted to finnic runo-song tradition in tartu, estonia had its ninth event “seven skins of runo-song: various views on finnic song tradition” on november 30 and december 1, 2016 at the estonian literary museum. the aim of the conference series that started in 2000 is to offer a regular forum to all the researchers studying finnic oral song tradition in broadest sense, and is open to the researchers of other older singing traditions. from many aspects runo-song has remained an enigma for the researchers. runo-songs have been noted down already in the rapidly modernizing and more and more literate society, and the focus has been mostly on the recording of texts. therefore our knowledge on the meaning and use of runo-song as a phenomenon of oral tradition is quite fragmentary. folklorists have made efforts to analyse the body of knowledge and the pieces of tradition again and again and from different angles, to reach the better understanding of the functioning of runo-song in the traditional society, but also on the reasons and ideas underneath the collection process as well as on the function of archival collections in the contemporary society. the participants were encouraged to discuss various aspects of runo-song, and to propose new hypotheses on the evolvement, functioning and changes in the tradition. conference was organized by the estonian folklore archives, organizers mari sarv and liina saarlo, and it was supported by institutional research grant iut 22-4 by the estonian ministry of education and research, and by the european union through the european regional development fund (centre of excellence in estonian studies). lotte tarkka (university of helsinki, finland) addressed the methodological and conceptual potential of imagination in the study of verbal art and performance, with special emphasis on the runo-song tradition. in the history of research, the creativity of individual subjects and imagination were long seen diametrically opposed and even detrimental to collective tradition. the role of imagination in creation of songs and myths has been severely overlooked in runo-song research tradition. vernacular imagination is related to language, culture, and genre. the paper discussed imaginary processes as a “pervasive structuring activity by means of which we achieve coherent, patterned, unified representations” (johnson 1987). tarkka highlighted how in mythic poems, studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 154–161 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.08 155conference on finnic runo-song tradition symbolism of the otherworld, and utopian discourse, the creation of unseen worlds dialogically structures the everyday and historical realities; mythic images are emotionally, cognitively and morally compelling representations that mediate the imaginal to tradition and conventions of expression. in his paper “some thoughts on the history of the common finnic tetrameter and poetic system: a late proto-finnic phenomenon?” frog (university of helsinki, finland) offered a new theory on the emergence of the metric and poetic system of runo-song. the author proposes that the runo-song meter emerged in late proto-finnic period, a.d. 200−500, as a result of changes in the prosodic system of finnic languages that led to clear distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables, and intensive scandinavian contacts. frog proposes that the contacts led to the hybridization of two poetic systems into a syllabic meter with tetrametric organization, contrastive stress, and unmetricalized alliteration. the paper “kalevala-melodies in the global perspective” presented by ilpo saastamoinen (independent researcher, finland) searched for parallels to typical karelian two-line runo-song melodies (of the length of two musical phrases, usually in 5/6 time) and outlined their position in the process of historical evolution and transformation of musical structures. saastamoinen pointed out several universal features of these melodies which are characteristic of the archaic musical cultures and at the same time reflect the universals of human cognition and (oral) expression: the descending contour of the phrases and the higher pitch of the initial phrase as compared to the final phrase; developing a simple one-phrase structure into a more complex two-phrase structure, greater variability of solo genres as compared to communal singing. he illustrated the topic with examples of melody contours very similar to kalevala melodies in the vocal and instrumental music of the world, for example, in the mansi bear wake ritual songs, the music of afghanistan and iran, the shamanic songs of the guna people in panama and colombia, etc. in her paper “playing with rhythm and language logic: the metrics of seto runo-songs” janika oras (estonian folklore archives, estonian literary museum) analysed the metrics of older seto runo-songs on the basis of recordings of three genres of seto songs: harvesting songs with lelo refrain (lelotamine), weddings songs with kaske-kanke refrain (kaaskõlõmine), and game songs with heiko-leiko refrain (horse game). these genres represent the older style of singing, in which the musical rhythm consists of notes of the same length, each corresponding to one text syllable and the musical structure directly interacts with the verse structure. although the metre of seto runo-songs is in various ways different from the kalevala metre, there are two important similarities. first, the seto songs contain a considerable number 156 janika oras, mari sarv of broken verse-like structures (broken verses with the stressed syllable in the weak position are characteristic of the kalevala metre): twoand threesyllabic accent groups form combinations 2+3+3, 2+3+2 and 2+2+3. the latter two combinations seem to have been derived from broken verse structures of 3+3+2 and 3+2+3 by shortening the initial group. these features are typical of songs with refrain, in which the verse line preceding the refrain consists of either 8 or 7 notes/verse positions (to which random or structural verseinitial extra syllables/notes are sometimes added). second, the syllable quantity is also taken into consideration in the positioning of words in seto songs. while words of a short and long quantity degree are positioned similarly, the positioning of words with the initial syllable of overlong quantity degree is different. these syllables of overlong degree could also be placed on two positions, like in the songs of the võru county, south-east estonia (sarv 2011). in her presentation “fussy boundaries of runo-song” kati kallio (finnish literature society) focused on the borderline areas of runo-song tradition, on the forms of runo-song that have not been valued, recorded or analysed in finnish (and karelian) scholarly tradition. in vernacular use there are evidences of the hybridization of the runo-song tradition and different poetic forms known and spread within the area, for example lament, stiihu/bylina, scandinavian accentual rhymed poetry / knittel-verse / eddic-style meters. as there evolved an evaluative opinion in scholarly tradition that runo-song in its purest kalevala-metric form is also most worthy as the reflection of national culture, the hybrid forms have attracted less scholarly interest and have been treated as corrupted forms of runo-songs and thus also remained largely unrecorded. kallio demonstrated that before the evolvement of the clear concept of kalevala meter as a norm of finnish and karelian runo-song tradition, the scholarly and literary writings on and in vernacular poetic form hybridly combined different poetic traditions with the runo-song tradition as well. in his paper “there comes toomas-boy from dome hill. what is the relation between traditional folksong and new compositions called runo-song?” aado lintrop (estonian folklore archives, estonian literary museum) raised the question of the basic features of the runo-song. although contemporary compositions aim to follow or imitate the poetic form of the runo-song, these usually differ notably from traditional runo-songs. first, the common knowledge of runo-song often confines itself with the most typical archaic grammatical forms, use of alliteration, trochaic meter, and repetition of lines in live performance. more detailed particulars of the runo-song style are usually jgnored in imitations: these would require thorough knowledge (and practice) of runo-song that the contemporary creators usually lack. as a most notable difference between the traditional runo-song and contemporary creations 157conference on finnic runo-song tradition lintrop pointed out a lack of formulaic language in the latter, whereas in tradition the songs are basically composed using formulaic elements of various lengths. the paper “seto themes in estonian classical music” presented by liisi laanemets (estonian national symphony orchestra) introduced the use and influences of seto folk music in the works of estonian composers. according to the database of estonian composers (http://emic.ee/eesti-heliloojad), the word ‘seto’ (alternatively, ‘setu’) is featured in the titles of 24 composers. the most famous of these, the works of veljo tormis and eduard tubin, continue to be performed, whereas the works of some other composers, such as riho päts, have been forgotten, even though the influence of seto themes in these are rather considerable. next to direct citations of folk melodies, musical elements characteristic of the seto tradition may be used—the seto one-three-semitone musical scale (e.g., pärtlas 2010), multipart singing, alternation of lead singer and choir, rapid downward modulations (kergütämine), specific rhythms, and timbre. the latter is the most problematic aspect because the result of an incompetent imitation of the traditional timbre could really be called “ugly voice”, which sounds rather different from the traditional one. the influences of seto music on the individual musical language of different composers are more difficult to determine unless the melodies are directly quoted or the abovementioned traditional musical elements are used in their works. in his paper “‘scarf heads, keep singing!’ the voices of women with covered heads” andreas kalkun (estonian folklore archives, estonian literary museum) observed how seto women have approached in their traditional songs the absolute obligation of married women to cover their heads from the moment they get married until they die, and also how the bodily experiences of wearing headdress are expressed in poetic texts. these questions assume new meanings in the context of the current discussion of muslim women covering their heads. the headdress of a married woman (a linen kerchief ), also other bridal headwear used during the wedding ritual, are most strongly featured in wedding songs and bridal laments, but also in epic songs, in which the decorated headdress served as a special sacrificial object or a valuable trade item. unlike narrative tradition, in which women covering their head are seen as a sign of the continuance of the divine and earthly order, in poetic tradition, which has a more intimate women-centred repertoire, women’s headwear possess an ambivalent, mostly negative meaning. while the linen kerchief was valued as a testament of the young woman’s handicraft skills, wearing it was still associated with the life of married women filled with responsibilities and restrictions as opposed to maidenhood with more freedom. the songs also mention the physical discomfort of having a long piece of linen cloth wrapped 158 janika oras, mari sarv around the head, especially during hard physical labour on a hot day: saa-ai pää päävä nätä’, hius tuulõ hel’otõlla (‘the head can’t see the sun, or hair wave in the wind’). in her paper “laments as a reflection of social processes through womens’ eyes” natalia ermakov analysed the use and transformation of the lament tradition in erzya tradition. ermakov pointed out that although the lament tradition has been dramatically fading away during the last 60 years, it is still a living tradition adapting itself to the changes in society. from the three main lament genres – wedding laments, war and recruit laments, and funeral laments – only the latter is still in the active use, the first two genres having been mainly transferred to the stage performance. ermakov also pointed out the role of the women with different statuses in the local communities in keeping alive the tradition, and thus an important part of the traditional knowledge of erzyas with a very short and limited literary history. in her paper “‘evil home’: analysis of a folk song from vaivara” ruth mirov (independent researcher, estonia) analysed a local individual development of the popular song type, ‘evil home’, recorded from vaivara parish in northeastern estonia, a kind of personal or individual song used by its (re)creator singer mari konsa (1832–1923) to describe his life by means of poetic devices. the lyrical songs about the evil home usually either compare a young wife’s troubled life in her husband’s home with the happy times in the childhood home, or the protagonist visits her former home farm now occupied by her brother and is treated there poorly. mirov titled mari konsa’s song “son wouldn’t invite mother inside”, because this dramatic tale on the border of the lyric and the epic tells how a widowed mother is estranged from her son’s family. the song is composed applying the traditional method, combining 13 to 14 different motifs of lyrical songs of sorrow, which rarely occur in the ‘evil home’ song type. according to the recollections of community members on the life of mari konsa, one may assume that she expresses the personal tragedy of the stage in her life as an aged widow in that song. kanni labi (estonian literary museum) presented a paper entitled “old songs collected by young people in narva, vaivara and elsewhere” in which she provided an overview of the collection history of songs collected in the town of narva and the vaivara parish in the northeastern corner of estonia and pointed out the uniqueness of the resulting body of material. together with ruth mirov, kanni labi is compiling the publication of runo-songs of this area as a volume of the academic runo-song publication series vana kannel (‘the old psaltery’). for the first time in the history of the series, the publication covers the runo-songs of a large town and its neighbouring rural region. a peculiarity of this area is that in addition to the mixed population developed 159conference on finnic runo-song tradition in the town, also votians, vepsians, and ingrians have lived in the area, geographically located on the border of ingermanland (ingria). kreenholmi manufaktuur, established in 1875, the largest textile factory in europe at the time, attracted people from the viru county and elsewhere in estonia. among the local volunteer folklore collectors there were predominantly rural intellectuals from outside the parish and the workers of the kreenholm factory, and the share of local peasants among the folklore collectors was very small compared to many other regions in estonia. the “mixed nature” of the song material is the inevitable result of the diverse origins of the songs (which are not entirely revealed in the information added by the collectors) and the influences of the tradition of the neighbouring areas. “the alders, flax and songs of laiuse”, the paper presented by kristi salve (independent researcher, estonia), characterised the regilaul tradition of the laiuse parish in the northern tartu county, which is adjacent to the viru county. the paper found its inspiration from the compilation of the volume in the vana kannel (‘the old psaltery’) series of runo-songs of the laiuse parish. according to the distribution of estonian folklore phenomena (oskar loorits: estonian folklore districts; arvo krikmann: the stereotypicality/uniqueness of proverb repertoire; herbert tampere: melody-based regilaul areas), the folklore of the laiuse parish represents the (north-)estonian average and the same applies to runo-songs in the area. this “average”, however, reveals some interesting details. of the latter, the paper discussed the geographical distribution and outstanding performers of the songs. the eastern part of the parish, the laius-tähkvere (sadala) commune, stands out with its considerably larger share of the material and the largest number of local volunteer collectors. this bias to the east could be explained with peculiarities of the area’s settlement and cultural history. the nineteenth-century written texts introduce several intriguing singers, such as mart kreos, a potter and a male singer with rich repertoire, or the married roma couple induses, who have performed highly traditional estonian runo-songs. in his paper “executions and burials in wetlands: connecting information found in runo-songs to the events in past” pikne kama (university of tartu, department of archaeology) discussed the possible connection between the events described in runo-songs, local legends, and archaeological finds. in several runo-song types burial or execution in swamp or bog is described, at the same time the archival records of local legends know the places where there are either found reminiscences of a dead body or, according to the legend, a person was buried or drowned. in some rare cases archaeologists have also found dead bodies in wetlands; due to the conditions there, the bodies have been preserved extremely well. there is a significant conflict between the songs 160 janika oras, mari sarv and the finds: whereas in songs usually boys have been buried in swamps, most of the finds of bog bodies have been women. as a conclusion kama pointed out that the phenomena or traditions that were in use in distant past, may be preserved in folkloric texts as well as in archaeological finds, either of which gives us different information about the phenomenon in question. the task of a researcher is to correlate the information gathered from different sources. jukka saarinen (finnish literature society) presented a paper “sledge of the songs and journey to the otherworld”, in which he reconsidered the interpretation of the ‘journey to the otherworld’ runo-song type, where the singer, usually väinämöinen goes to the otherworld to bring either tools or runo-song words necessary for building a sledge or a boat. usually the meaning of the song has been interpreted by researchers as a shamanistic journey to obtain information from the otherworld. the motif of a broken sledge has been interpreted on the basis of only two texts as missing words during the singing performance. saarinen analysed the texts about the broken sledge by other singers, and concluded that the widely accepted scholarly interpretation of this motif is based on an interpretation of a single singer only and cannot be considered as a general metaphorical meaning of this motif. saarinen raised the question of how and why certain interpretations get an overwhelmingly prominent position in the history of research. next to the papers the conference included a film by selma vilhunen on the last finnish karelian folksinger jussi huovinen and his student. eda-kai simmermann introduced her series of web publications for singers called “small harp”. map application for the runo-song database compiled by it students as their programming task was introduced by raina liiva and joosep hook. ingrid rüütel presented her fresh publication of songs and stories from muhu island collected by herself during several decades and belonging to the series “what has remained in my footsteps”. mari sarv made some concluding remarks on the conference and introduced further plans which include the tenth conference in the series of the runo-song conferences on november 26−30, 2018. this conference will be devoted to the oral song traditions in most general terms, and is open to the researchers of different singing traditions from all around the world. 161conference on finnic runo-song tradition references johnson, mark 1987. the body in the mind: the bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. chicago, london: university of chicago press. pärtlas, žanna 2010. setu multipart singing: comparison of written sources and sound recordings. in: ziegler, susanne; bareis, urban (eds.), historical sources and source criticism. stockholm: svenskt visarkiv, 227–237. sarv, mari 2011. possible foreign influences on the estonian regilaul metre: language or culture? in: mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman (eds.), frontiers in comparative prosody. bern, etc: peter lang, 207−226. editorial in 1905, young gustav suits, who later became a leading figure in estonian literary society, formulated the slogan: “let us remain estonians, but let us become europeans too”. this was printed in the programmatic opening album of the first estonian modernist literary group noor-eesti (young estonia). in deed, it was then that noor-eesti introduced the decadent european and russian literature to new estonian readers. ants oras belonged to the next generation of authors, but the ideas of noor-eesti were close to him. oras himself was not a member of any literary group, but he was an intellectual leader of the main literary group of his time, arbujad (sorcerers). ants oras played an essential role in the development of estonian literary studies, critique, both theory and practice of translation and in the transformation of poetic culture. he was a dazzling personality, who was afraid of neither paradoxes nor of bold hypotheses and trials. he was a known language reformer, following in the traditions of both villem grünthal-ridala and specifically johannes aavik. such activities sometimes met with harsh criticism, even taunting, but these neologisms, which flew in the face of conventional estonian literary thinking of the time, have since become rooted in the language’s neutral lexicon. yet not all of these, and there are passages in both aavik’s and oras’s texts which may seem estranging even today. that said, oras understood how language develops through poetry, and took seriously his role in the mission and responsibility of the innovative poet. one of the main means for the evolution and broadening of culture is translation, and to oras’s mind, first of all, poetry translation. oras significantly widened the horizons of the estonian literature by translating from greek, latin, french, russian, english, and german, as well as other languages. thereby, he held it important to convey not only the content of the literary works, but also the structure of verse, and not only the metre, but also the system of versification. the estonian language, where both accent and quantity are phonologically relevant, and where the reduction of syllables is absent, offered possibilities to create verses not only in syllabic-accentual versification, which was at the time the prevailing estonian system of versification, but also in quantitative and syllabic versification. oras created the tradition of translating french alexandrines into estonian syllabic verse. as regards the ancient verse, he translated these in quantitative versification. although there studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 7–9 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.01 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.01 8 are presently syllabic-accentual translations of french and ancient verse, now it is mainstream in estonian verse practice is to translate these in syllabic and quantitative versification, respectively. the oras phenomenon cannot be discussed without mention of his brilliant, and often astounding, personality. he could be regarded as the first estonian anglomaniac, as he tried to represent not just english spirit, but also appearance, while at the time, elegant estonian men copied either orderly germans or bohemian french. oras, however, had unmistakable english gentleman and even dandyish tendencies. when in 1920s he was with scholarship at oxford, he was materially hard-pressed, but when made to choose between dinner or elegant garb, oras would pick the latter. in the second half of the 1930s and the beginning of 1940s, oras was a professor at the university of tartu, while in 1943 he emigrated first to sweden, later to england and then to the usa. oras opposed both soviet power, which was established in estonia in 1940, and german occupation. in fact, oras had decided to leave estonia in 1943, not in 1944, when the red army was approaching the boarders and the dramatic mass flight from estonia began. during the re-established soviet occupation, most of the emigrated estonian authors were banned, and even leftist writers were considered ideological enemies. oras’s status was different. like several other authors, he was written out, excluded from the history of estonian culture. he was never mentioned, not even in a negative context. in the soviet history of the time, it was though he had never existed. perhaps the saddest thing was that some of his poetic disciples from the former arbujad started to use the oras heritage of translations. soviet culture, in the so-called people’s republics, was primarily russian culture, with the names of russian writers given not just to cultural centres, but also to streets. in 1949, pushkin’s 150th anniversary was grandly celebrated in the soviet union. on this occasion, many of his works were translated to estonian. the best translators of pushkin were former members of arbujad, betti alver and august sang. yet it was completely suppressed that in 1937, the 100th commemorated year of pushkin’s death, ants oras had already published the first collection of pushkin’s poetry, which included a number of oras’s own translation. several of the new translations in the volume of 1949 rather reminded more of revised oras’s texts than of new productions, but oras was never mentioned. after estonian independence was regained, oras was rehabilitated and collections of his papers were edited, his translations were published and a substantial biography (2004) by a contributor to this issue, anne lange, was compiled. at least a part of his language innovations and translation methods mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman 9editorial have been “rehabilitated”. this current issue, which is to celebrate oras’s 115th anniversary, is yet one more step on the journey to put ants oras in his rightful place, and recognize him as a founding father of estonian literary culture. the idea to dedicate a special issue in honour of ants oras came from the usa and belongs to professor emerita marina tarlinskaja, who used her contacts to find authors and was a constant advisor to the project. without her vision and energy, this issue would not have come into existence. the editors are also grateful to dr. anne lange, who deserves special thanks for her assistance and contributions. mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman acoustics and resonance in poetry: the psychological reality of rhyme in baudelaire’s “les chats” reuven tsur*1 abstract: this article uses the term “psychological reality” in this sense: the extent to which the constructs of linguistic theory can be taken to have a basis in the human mind, i.e., to somehow be reflected in human cognitive structures. this article explores the human cognitive structures in which the constructs of phonetic theory may be reflected. the last section is a critique of the psychological reality of sound patterns in baudelaire’s “les chats”, as discussed in three earlier articles. in physical terms, it defines “resonant” as “tending to reinforce or prolong sounds, especially by synchronous vibration”. in phonetic terms it defines “resonant” as “where intense precategorical auditory information lingers in short-term memory”. the effect of rhyme in poetry is carried by similar overtones vibrating in the rhyme fellows, resonating like similar overtones on the piano. in either case, we do not compare overtones item by item, just hear their synchronous vibration. i contrast this conception to three approaches: one that points out similar sounds of “internal rhymes”, irrespective of whether they may be contained within the span of short-term memory (i.e., whether they may have psychological relit); one that claims that syntactic complexity may cancel the psychological reality of “internal rhymes” (whereas i claim that it merely backgrounds rhyme); and one that found through an eye-tracking experiment that readers fixate longer on verse-final rhymes than on other words, assuming regressive eye-movement (i claim that rhyme is an acoustic not visual phenomenon; and that there is a tendency to indicate discontinuation by prolonging the last sounds in ordinary speech and blank verse too, as well as in music — where no rhyme is involved). keywords: rhyme, resonance, phonetic coding, psychological reality, tennyson, baudelaire i use the term “psychological reality” in this sense: the extent to which the constructs of linguistic theory can be taken to have a basis in the human mind, i.e., to somehow be reflected in human cognitive structures. the main part of this article explores at length the human cognitive structures in which the * reuven tsur was professor at tel aviv university, israel. unfortunately he passed away while this issue of smp was in preparation. studia metrica et poetica 8.1, 2021, 7–39 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.01 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.01 8 reuven tsur constructs of phonetic theory may be reflected. in the last section i discuss the psychological reality of sound patterns in baudelaire’s “les chats”.1 in physical terms, i define “resonant” as “tending to reinforce or prolong sounds, especially by synchronous vibration” (watch a video in which, on the piano, the overtones related to the notes pressed with the right hand resonate when a note with similar overtones is struck with the left hand: https://www.tau. ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/video@resonance%20(converted).mov); we do not compare overtones item by item, just hear their synchronous vibration. in phonetic terms i define “resonant” as “where intense precategorical auditory information lingers in short-term memory” (see below). speech perception and reading – vocal and subvocal what is the relationship between poetic language on the one hand, and acoustics and resonance on the other?2 i shall argue that ordinary speech is designed to suppress resonance, whereas poetic language is designed to enhance it. the experiencing of poetry, whether through listening to an oral performance, or through subvocal reading, begins with an act of speech perception. speech is transmitted through a stream of acoustic information that, on the computer screen, has no resemblance to the perceived speech categories. according to the motor theory of speech perception (liberman, mattingly 1982), this precategorical acoustic information does not reflect the intended speech sounds, but the articulatory gestures that produce them. this information is recoded into speech categories by the listener via his own articulatory system, and then excluded from consciousness. 1 the major part of this article is an article commissioned by a journal of applied physics for a special issue on acoustics and resonance in musical instruments. i concentrated in it what i had written on acoustics and resonance in poetry. eventually i added, for literary readers, the last section in which i apply this discussion to issues raised in three articles on baudelaire’s “les chats”. 2 this article summarizes what i have expounded at length in my earlier publications in a specific area of my research: the role of resonance in the sound patterns of poetry. the comprehensive theory underlying it has been propounded at book length in tsur (1992; tsur and gafni forthcoming). in addition, this article integrates much of my other publications, repurposing them for the present argument. the parts reporting the experiments on sound–shape symbolism and double-edgedness in speech perception are derived from tsur and gafni (2019a), with the kind permission of the editor of literary universals. https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/video@resonance%20(converted).mov https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/video@resonance%20(converted).mov 9acoustics and resonance in poetry recent brain research found that this process is somewhat more complex. patricia k. kuhl, rey r. ramírez, alexis bosseler, jo-fu lotus lin, and toshiaki imada (2014) investigated, using magnetoencephalography (meg), motor brain activation, as well as auditory brain activation, during discrimination of native and nonnative syllables in infants at two ages that straddle the developmental transition from language-universal to language-specific speech perception. […] meg data revealed that 7-mo-old infants activate auditory (superior temporal) as well as motor brain areas (broca’s area, cerebellum) in response to speech, and equivalently for native and nonnative syllables. however, in 11and 12-mo-old infants, native speech activates auditory brain areas to a greater degree than nonnative, whereas nonnative speech activates motor brain areas to a greater degree than native speech. my argument is based on the assumption that in certain circumstances the rich precategorical auditory information reverberates subliminally in short-term memory, and that certain well-known tasks and effects crucially depend on it, such as reading, versification and phonetic symbolism. first, as we shall see in the experiments with efficient and poor readers, during reading, the auditory information must subliminally reverberate in short-term memory, so as to render the phonetic material available while processing the text. second, the repeated sounds in versification, such as in rhyme and alliteration, enhance each other’s auditory information rendering them perceptually more salient and more memorable. third, “phonetic symbolism” refers to a significant interaction between the sound and meaning of words. for reasons to be explained below, depending on the meaning, repeated nasals may be perceived as imitating some lowlydifferentiated, continuous, low-pitch noise, as in “murmur”, or may be perceived as expressive of some tender emotion, as in “meek and mild” generating, in a text stretch of some length, an emotionally laden atmosphere. speech sounds have a wide range of sometimes conflicting meaning potentials; the meaning of the text picks out the relevant potential – then sound and meaning reinforce in each other their shared potentials. when the meaning has to do with sounds, it may sometimes amplify the auditory information so as to be perceived as resonating. the key to my ensuing discussion is phonetic coding. vowels can be uniquely identified by concentrations of overtones called “formants”. formants appear in a spectrogram one above the other, marked f1, f2, f3, etc. the upper window of figure 1 presents the spectrograms of the syllables [ba], [da], and [ga]. liberman et al. (1967) distinguish speech mode and nonspeech mode in aural perception. when we record sonar, we receive on the computer screen a pattern that is similar in shape to what we hear. this is the nonspeech 10 reuven tsur mode. in the speech mode, the perceived speech category does not resemble the precategorical auditory information that conveyed it and was excluded from awareness. this is called “encodedness”. some speech sounds are more encoded, some less; that is, in some speech sounds less auditory information reaches consciousness, in some more. thus, most people cannot discern which syllable is acoustically higher, /ba/, /da/, or /ga/; but can easily discern that /s/ is higher than /š/ and [i] is higher than [u]. ba da ga figure 1. spectrogram of the syllables /ba/, /da/ and /ga/. in certain artificial laboratory conditions, one can hear directly the precategorical auditory information. so, the reader may listen online to the sequence of syllables represented in figure 2, and to the sequence of isolated second formant transitions from an unpublished demo tape by terry halwes (“formants” are concentrations of overtones that uniquely identify vowels; “formant transitions” are the rapid change in frequency of a formant for a vowel immediately before or after a consonant, and give information about the vowel and the consonant simultaneously). see whether you can hear a gradual change between the steps, or a sudden change from /ba/ to /da/ to /ga/. 11acoustics and resonance in poetry [listen: https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/ba_da_ga.mp3] halwes then isolates the second formant transition, that piece of sound which differs across the series, so as to make it possible to listen to just those sounds alone. [listen: https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/glide_and_whistles.mp3] one may discern two main perceptual differences between the two series. first, in the ba-da-ga series we hear no pitch differences, whereas in the chirp series we hear gradual pitch change, even though the latter series is excised from the former one. secondly, most people who listen to that series of chirps report hearing what we would expect, judging from the appearance of the formant transition: upward glides, and falling whistles displaying a gradual change from one to the next; but not in the syllable series. since these are hand-painted spectrograms, wellcontrolled experiments can be conducted. participants who listen to the series of glides and whistles discriminate all the distances equally well. participants who listen to pairs of consecutive stimuli from the ba-da-ga series, discern better the same distance at category boundaries than within categories (mattingly et al. 1971). this is called “categorical perception”. the perception of the syllable series illustrates the speech mode, of the chirp series – the non-speech mode. figure 2. hand-painted spectrograms of the syllables ba, da, ga. the ba–da–ga pitch continuum of f 2 is divided into 14 steps instead of three. the two parallel regions of black indicate regions of energy concentration, f 1 and f 2 . notice that the onset frequency of f 2 of da is higher than that of ba; and the onset frequency of f 2 of ga is higher than that of da. only stimulus 14 represents its full duration. (replayed in the accompanying sound file). i have spoken of the “poetic mode of speech perception”, where some of the precategorical auditory information is perceived behind the speech categories. in some poetic contexts this precategorical auditory information is perceived as more than usually “resonant”. let us further illustrate the foregoing generalizations through the following figures. figure 3 is a natural speech spectrogram of the vowels [i] and [u]. https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/ba_da_ga.mp3 https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/glide_and_whistles.mp3 https://www.tau.ac.il/~tsurxx/ba-da-ga/glide_and_whistles.mp3 12 reuven tsur figure 3. spectrograms of the vowels [i] and [u] in natural speech formants, as we said, are overtones that uniquely define vowels. formants reach up to the upper limit of the hearing range, but only the first two formants determine the vowels uniquely; the rest merely affect the quality of the perceived vowel. simplified hand-painted spectrograms of vowels or syllables can be replayed through a computer. in the hand-painted spectrograms of figure 4, the parallel patterns reflect the first two formants of the vowels [i] and [u]. they are preceded by formant transitions. “formant transitions” are the rapid change in frequency of a formant for a vowel immediately before or after a consonant, and give information about the vowel and the consonant simultaneously – this is called “parallel transmission”. note that the formant transition that conveys [d] (marked by a dotted circle) is different before [i] and [u]; and the parallel lines do not resemble the vowels they convey. the same pitch differences at arbitrarily-chosen points are heard as two-sound chords, not as unitary speech sounds. briefly, as i said, there is no resemblance between the perceived speech sound and the sound wave that transmitted it. figures 3–4 may explain why [i] is heard as higher than [u], cross-culturally, irrespective of the fundamental pitch. likewise, figure 5 can explain why we hear [s] higher than [š]. 13acoustics and resonance in poetry figure 4. simplified spectrographic patterns sufficient to produce the syllables [di] and [du]. š s figure 5. sonograms of [š] and [s], indicating why [s] is somehow “higher”. i said above that the experiencing of poetry, whether through listening to an oral performance, or through subvocal reading, begins with an act of speech perception. most persons hear an inner voice even when reading silently (perrone-bertolotti et al. 2012). many people move their lips and tongues when reading. even silent movement of the vocal tract may be perceived as “hearing”, as the mcgurk effect may suggest. persons who see and hear a video showing the articulation of i but actually playing u hear something 10k 8k 6k 4k 2k 0k 14 reuven tsur like ü, between the two. preverbal infants who are shown two movies on two screens but hear only one or the other soundtrack, look at the screen whose soundtrack is played. they “know” which lip movements announce which sound series. verdi is reported that when finishing an opera, he ended up with a sore throat: he subvocally moved his vocal tract with the roles he was writing, for all voice registers. experiments with efficient and poor readers in elementary school revealed a cognitive mechanism based on phonetic coding and the reverberation of precategorical auditory information in short-term memory. in several of my earlier publications (e.g., tsur 1992; 2012; 2019), i summarised a series of experiments that revealed a cognitive mechanism supposed to be responsible for reading capabilities. researchers at the haskins laboratories (e.g., liberman, mann 1981: 128–129; brady et. al. 1983: 349–355; mann 1984: 1–10), investigated the possible causes of some children’s difficulty to learn to read, and revealed a deficiency in the use of phonetic coding by poor readers; efficient readers, by contrast, seem to make excellent use of it. in one experimental task, poor readers had greater difficulty than good readers in tapping once or three times in response to the number of syllables in such spoken words as pig or elephant, or once, twice or three times in response to the number of phonemes in such words as eye, pie or spy. this has been interpreted as a deficiency in the use of phonetic coding. in order to be able to count syllables or phonemes of words, the words must linger (that is, reverberate) in one’s short-term memory. in another task, they had to memorize groups of words – either rhymed or unrhymed, as in the following ones: chain train brain rain pain cat fly score meat scale good readers did consistently better with both kinds of groups than poor readers. however, with the rhymed groups, their performance seriously deteriorated. while their reliance on phonetic representation increased their overall performance, the similar sounds of the rhyming words reverberating in their acoustic memory seem to have caused confusion. good readers made efficient use of phonetic coding, whereas the poor readers made inefficient use of the acoustic information in short-term memory, and so were not penalized by the similar sounds of the rhyming words. the sound patterns of poetry in general, and rhyme in particular, typically exploit the precategorical acoustic information and, actually, enhance its memory traces. in the last section i will account for the psychological reality of rhyme in baudelaire’s “les chats” by this mechanism. 15acoustics and resonance in poetry in nonaesthetic memory experiments, this reliance on phonetic representation reveals two typical effects. it enables verbal material to linger for some time in short-term memory for more efficient processing, but also may cause acoustic confusion in certain circumstances. what in the nonaesthetic memory experiments is called acoustic confusion, in an aesthetic context cooccurs with a coherent text, and may be perceived in the background as “harmonious fusion”, “musicality”.  it is usually assumed that versification was developed in pre-literate societies as a memory aid: to verbatim memorize texts of cultural importance. paradoxically, in this experiment rhyme confused rather than aided memory. confusion occurs when the reverberating sound information of adjacent rhyme words mingle in short-term memory; rhyme aids memory when it organizes stretches of intervening, non-rhyming text: it chunks it into easilyperceptible chunks, and the “resonating” rhyme words enhance each other’s memory traces enhancing, by the same token, the unity of the text. poor readers have recourse to some other kind of coding. crowder and wagner (1992: 228–230) summarize an experiment by byrne and shea (1979) which strongly suggests that they are using a semantic code. in this experiment, subjects had to take a “reading test”, reading out lists of words and then, unexpectedly, were given a memory test. they were presented with the words read earlier, interspersed with a number of additional words, to which they had to respond “old” or “new”. the “new” words were either phonetically or semantically related to the “old” words. “assume the prior items were home and carpet: house and rug would be the semantically similar foils and comb and market would be the phonetically similar foils”. good readers tended to confuse both phonetically and semantically related words, poor readers semantically related words. this would suggest that good readers use both phonetic and semantic coding, poor readers mainly semantic coding. crowder and wagner insist: “the fact that poor readers seem to be using ‘too much’ meaningful processing does not imply that they are better at top-down processing than good readers. it is just that they may be so deficient in bottom-up processing they have no other recourse”. in plain english, this means that they are guessing rather than processing. such precategorical acoustic information is, then, a prerequisite of efficient reading. we have recourse to it only subliminally. the sound patterns of poetry may amplify that information, so as to be perceived as vague “musicality”. as we shall see, in some poetic contexts, such musicality may be further amplified, to be perceived as a resonant texture. that’s why voiced plosives may be perceived differently in excerpts 1 and 2 below. 16 reuven tsur the present argument makes it necessary to summarize a few distinctions of traditional phonetics. consonants can be abrupt (–continuant): plosives (p, t, k, b, d, g) or affricates (as ts [in tsar], dž [in john or george], or pf [in german pfuj]); or, they may be continuous (+continuant), as nasals (m, n), liquids (l, r), glides (w [as in wield], or y [as in yield]); or fricatives (f, v, s, š [as in shield]). continuous sounds may be periodic (nasals, liquids, glides) or aperiodic (fricatives). in periodic sounds, the same wave form is repeated indefinitely, while aperiodic sounds consist of streams of irregular sound stimuli. all vowels are continuous and periodic. consonants can be unvoiced or voiced. all nasals, liquids and glides are voiced by default. voiced plosives, fricatives and affricates (e.g. b, v, ž, and dž) consist, acoustically, of their unvoiced counterpart plus a stream of periodic voicing (cf. tsur, gafni 2019b). resonant and nonresonant speech sounds in the foregoing i described the cognitive mechanism underlying speech perception as well as vocal and subvocal reading. in what follows, i shall make four claims: that the same cognitive mechanism underlies the perception of resonance in poetry; that a resonant quality can be perceived in some poetic passages, in some it cannot; that the same speech sounds can be perceived as resonant in one context, but not in another; and that some persons are more sensitive to this difference than others. i have said that ordinary speech is designed to suppress resonance, whereas poetic language is designed to enhance it. to substantiate this claim, i turn to a set of experiments on lateral inhibition (e.g., crowder 1982a, 1982b), indicating that for biologically motivated reasons too, the same speech sounds are sometimes more and sometimes less reverberating. when speech sounds in proximity are very similar, they enhance each other’s precategorical sound information in perception; when they are slightly similar, they inhibit each other; when they are not similar at all, there is no mutual effect. in other words, in some instances alliterating speech sounds may enhance reverberation in each other, in some – inhibit it. in ordinary speech, we typically focus on the final referent of the verbal message; according to roman jakobson (1960), the poetic function forces us to attend back to the verbal message. i wish to emphasize: “message” does not have here the vulgar sense of ‘communicating some meaning’, but is a total verbal structure encompassing meaning, syntax and sound. jakobson’s statement must be interpreted as that rhyme and alliteration serve to shift attention back to the sound structure, figurative language, 17acoustics and resonance in poetry parallelism etc., to the meaning; briefly, to make the reader linger on the whole complex message. but, in view of crowder’s experiments, sound patterns do much more: they enhance the reverberation of the rich precategorical auditory information; figurative language involves the reader in active problem solving in meaning. lateral inhibition has at least two important tasks in speech perception: it enhances phoneme oppositions and, at the same time, it prevents sound patterns from distracting attention from meaning. the sound patterns of poetry, on the contrary, serve to enhance the reverberation of precategorical auditory information, encompassing meaning. robert g. crowder suggests (personal communication) that there would be precedent for the assumption that the total effect would be the larger for having had a repeated sound. this depends on his assumption that both inhibitory and enhancing interaction takes place within the formant energy of the words, even though they may be spoken at different pitches. consider excerpt 1: 1. and murmuring of innumerable bees. the liquids and nasals /m/, /n/, /l/ and and /r/ and vowels in general are much less encoded than, e.g., the voiceless plosives /p/ and /k/; that is, in this heavily alliterating phrase some intense precategorical auditory information is perceptible. furthermore, the meaning of the phrase foregrounds this precategorical auditory information, generating a very effective onomatopoeia. in this verse line, the syllable [mər] is repeated three times. the periodic sound waves perceived in the nasal, the liquids and the low back vowel are foregrounded by the meaning of “murmur”. however, [mər] in “innumerable” is shorter than (that is, only slightly similar to) its first two tokens. consequently, its reverberation tends to be inhibited and lost on the reader. performers of this line tend, therefore, to prolong this syllable, so as to resonate with the other two tokens. in the above line, we have both: “synchronous vibration” of precategorical auditory information; that is, much of the rich precategorical auditory information can be perceived in them, and in certain circumstances may be perceived as highly resonant. voiceless plosives, by contrast, are highly encoded, that is, no or little auditory information is perceptible in them. they are compact, “opaque”. voiced plosives consist of their unvoiced counterparts plus continuous, periodic voicing. they are ambiguous: in some contexts, voicing may bestow a massive presence on the plosive, in some – resonance. i have said that voiced plosives are ambiguous: in some contexts, voicing may bestow a massive presence on the plosive, in some – resonance. the 18 reuven tsur former is typically perceived as relatively hard, the latter as relatively soft, tender. a striking example of our third claim above (that the same speech sounds can be perceived as resonant in one context, but not in another) is provided by iván fónagy (1961), who in his classical paper, “communication in poetry”, explored in poems by four poets in three languages the speech sounds that occur in tender and aggressive poems with more than regular frequency. he found that /g/ occurs over one and a half times more frequently in verlaine’s tender poems than in his angry ones (1.63:1.07), whereas we find almost exactly the reverse proportion in hugo’s poems: 0.96% in his tender poems, and 1.35% in his angry ones. as to /d/, again, the same sound has opposite emotional tendencies for the two poets, but with reverse effects. for verlaine it has a basically aggressive quality (7.93:10.11), whereas for hugo it has a basically tender quality (7.09:5.76) – again, in almost the same reverse proportion. if one decides that anything goes, one is exempt from bothering with it. if, however, one believes that this is significant, one should try to find some explanation that is consistent with what we know about mental processes in general, and speech perception in particular. the reason seems to be this. if you attend to the /g/ or /d/ as a unitary abrupt stop consonant, it may have a strong aggressive potential; if you attend to the periodic voiced ingredient, it may contribute to a tender quality. obviously, verlaine and hugo applied the same cognitive mechanism to these voiced stops, but with a reverse focus. let us consider a minimal pair: tennyson’s line, with john crowe ransom’s re-writing exercise. 1. and murmuring of innumerable bees 2. and murdering of innumerable beeves there is general consensus that excerpt 1 is perceived differently from excerpt 2. excerpt 1 is perceived by many readers as particularly resonant. obviously, this is due to the repeated nasals [m] and [n] and the liquids [r] and [l], that are continuous, periodic, and lowly encoded. in excerpt 2, however, “the euphony is destroyed […] we lose the echoic effect” (abrams, harpham 2009). this is not only because in 1 there is one nasal more than in 2, but also because in 1 the meaning foregrounds the resonant quality of voicing, so that the nasals and the liquids have a fuller, richer, more resonant body. there is an intuition that even [b] is perceived as more resonant in excerpt 1 than in excerpt 2. to put it bluntly, in excerpt 2 it sounds hard and compact as plosives are supposed to sound; in excerpt 1 it drifts slightly toward the more resonant quality of [m]. here the question arises whether this difference has psychological reality, or this intuition results from mere transfer from the resounding meaning 19acoustics and resonance in poetry to the sound patterns. it cannot be tested explicitly by a stimulus–response questionnaire, because one cannot know whether participants respond to the meaning or the sound patterns of the line. thus, a “less resonant” response in 2 could be due to the perception of [b] or merely to the meaning. so, less direct modes of testing are required, which i will provide later. empirical evidence in an experiment reported in gafni, tsur (2019; summarized in tsur, gafni 2019a) we asked participants to read out aloud pairs of consonant-vowel sequences (e.g. ma-ba) and compare the consonants on various bipolar perceptual scales (e.g. whether m sounds smoother and b sounds jerkier, or vice versa). our experiment was designed specifically to test the hypothesis that voiced plosives are double-edged by contrasting them with voiceless plosives, on the one hand, and with nasals, on the other hand. our hypothesis was largely supported. on the smoothness scale, we obtained a three-way contrast that was statistically significant: nasals were perceived smoother than voiced plosives that, in turn, were perceived as smoother than voiceless plosives. on other scales, we obtained only partial contrasts (possibly due to lack of statistical power): nasals were perceived as having fuzzier boundaries than voiced plosives that, in turn, were perceived as having fuzzier boundaries than voiceless plosives. however, the latter contrast was only ‘near significant’. in addition, we received two one-sided contrasts: first, voiced plosives were perceived as harder than nasals, but voiceless plosives were not perceived as harder than voiced plosives. second, voiced plosives were perceived as thicker than voiceless plosives, but nasals were not perceived as thicker than voiced plosives. whether these imperfect results reflect the true state-of-affairs or not, they clearly demonstrate that voiced plosives are perceptually ambiguous: in certain contexts, they contrast with nasals and, in others, with voiceless plosives. more interestingly for present purposes, our experiment also yielded a puzzling finding. voiced plosives were perceived as having more resonance than voiceless plosives, though the result was only near significant. this was well expected. however, contrary to expectation, voiced plosives were also perceived as having more resonance than nasals (the result fell short of statistical significance after correction for multiple comparisons). a simple explanation for this unexpected result is that the task was not clear to the participants. as a matter of fact, two participants commented that they had trouble evaluating resonance, and, in general, it became clear to us that many people don’t know 20 reuven tsur what resonance means. however, there is also a possibility that the results are genuine, namely that voicing couples with plosion and endows voiced plosives with a resonating quality, which can be perceived, at least in controlled experiments, out of context. this hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence that voiced plosives are perceived as larger than voiceless plosives cross-linguistically (shinohara, kawahara 2016). to make sure that experimental results do not depend on participants’ understanding of a complicated task, one needs a more indirect experimental task, where simpler decisions must be made, and participants do not suspect that they are tested on the ambiguity of voiced plosives, that is, whether voiced plosives can be perceived as similar to voiceless plosives or, alternatively, to nasals. we, therefore, turn to a series of experiments in phonetic symbolism, repurposed to the issue in hand by tsur, gafni 2019a. the earliest of these experiments contained a forced-choice task, the later ones an interference task. one of the most discussed examples of phonetic symbolism is that of sound–shape symbolism. back in the nineteen twenties, köhler (1929) took two nonsense words, takete and baluma, and asked people to match them with two nonsense figures, one with angular edges and one with rounded edges (see figure 6). an overwhelming majority of respondents matched takete with the angular shape, baluma with the rounded shape.3 since köhler’s study, there were many replications of this effect, including a study by ramachandran and hubbard (2001), which used the nonsense words bouba and kiki. so, this effect came to be called the ‘bouba/kiki’ effect. figure 6. shapes used in ‘bouba/kiki’ experiments (from ramachandran, hubbard 2001). the bouba/kiki effect has been demonstrated cross-culturally, even with himba participants of northern namibia who had little exposure to western cultural and environmental influences, and who do not use a written language (bremner et al. 2013). thus, the tendency to associate certain shapes with certain speech sounds is a cross-cultural phenomenon. in all these experiments, the performance involved explicit decision-making. in what follows we shall present three more recent studies that attack the 3 in the second edition of his book, köhler (1947) changed baluma to maluma. 21acoustics and resonance in poetry problem at a pre-semantic, pre-conscious and pre-verbal level, respectively. there are quite a few studies that utilize interference tasks in exploring phonetic symbolism, that is, a demonstration of cognitive interference where a delay in the reaction time of a task occurs due to a mismatch in stimuli. none of them, however, set out to explore this issue of aspect switching between resounding and non-resounding voiced plosives. on the contrary, they are concerned with establishing phonetic symbolism as a consistent, involuntary, pre-rational phenomenon. but the various studies used the plosives in different experimental designs. taken together, they provide strong evidence that voiced plosives can be perceived as resonant when contrasted to voiceless plosives, and as an abrupt plosive when contrasted to continuants. in a study by westbury (2005), participants performed a pre-lexical decision task on words and nonwords presented within curvy and spiky frames (word/nonword). within each lexical category (word and nonword), some stimuli contained only stop consonants (e.g. toad and kide), some stimuli contained only continuous (e.g. moon and lole), and some stimuli that contained both stops and continuous sounds (e.g. flag and nuck). it was found that responses were faster for congruent shape-string pairs (continuous sounds in curvy shapes, plosives in spiky shapes) than for incongruent pairs. using a masking technique, hung, styles and hsieh (2017) showed that the mapping for the bouba/kiki effect occurs prior to conscious awareness of the visual stimuli. under continuous flash suppression, congruent stimuli (e.g. “kiki” inside a spiky shape) broke through to conscious awareness faster than incongruent stimuli. this suggests that “a word [can] sound like a shape before you have seen it.” this was true even for participants who were trained to pair unfamiliar letters with auditory word forms. these results show that the effect was driven by the phonology, not the visual features, of the letters. in another study ozturk, krehm and vouloumanos (2013) presented 4-month-old infants with pairs of shapes and auditory stimuli. they found that the infants looked longer at the screen during trials with incongruent pairs (i.e. ‘bubu’ with an angular shape or ‘kiki’ with a curvy shape) than during trials with congruent pairs (i.e. ‘bubu’ with a curvy shape or ‘kiki’ with an angular shape). this finding, together with cross-cultural evidence, suggests that at least some aspect of sound–shape symbolism is pre-linguistic, perhaps even innate. but which aspect exactly? i claim that what is innate is not the specific symbolic relation per se, but rather the propensity creatively to extract, contrast and compare abstract features from sensory stimuli. westbury put the voiced plosives in one bin with voiceless plosives, contrasting them to continuants. the other two interference tasks contrasted the voiced plosive of “bouba” with the voiceless plosives of “kiki” (köhler had file:///users/kalle/documents/tyk%20kujundused/s/smtp/studia%20metrica%20et%20poetica%208_1/x-dictionary:r:'reaction_time?lang=en&signature=com.apple.dictionaryapp.wikipedia' 22 reuven tsur put the voiced plosive /b/ in one word with a liquid and a nasal (“baluma”), contrasting it with a word consisting of voiceless plosives). thus, not only the participants, but even the experimenters were not aware that they were demonstrating the perceptual ambiguity of voiced plosives. sensitivity to resonating speech sounds finally, i assume (tsur 2012) that not all persons are equally sensitive to the distinction between resonant and nonresonant speech sounds. obviously, efficient readers, who make good use of phonetic coding in short-term memory, are more sensitive than poor readers, who make inefficient use of phonetic coding. but, paradoxically, there is also a group of particularly efficient readers who are less sensitive to this distinction: speed readers. this assumption is supported by recent brain research. most people may note that, when reading, an inner voice enunciates the words. perrone-bertolotti et al. (2012) explored the neural correlates of this “inner voice” in silent reading in four epileptic human patients recorded with intracranial electrodes in the auditory cortex for therapeutic purposes, and measured high-frequency (50–150 hz) “gamma” activity (gamma brain waves are the fastest brainwave frequency with the smallest amplitude). their findings are compatible with the assumption that relying on phonetic coding facilitates reading. but they also provide information about expert readers who tend to ignore the sound structure of poetry. in harmony with our foregoing discussion, they suggest that reading might rely more on phonological processes as texts become more difficult to read. phonological activation would be more active as linguistic complexity increases, or in nonproficient readers, and triggered by top-down attentional processes. auditory verbal imagery would thus facilitate verbal working memory, as suggested by several authors (smith et al. 1995; sato et al. 2004), to process the sentence as a whole, and not as a collection of unrelated pieces. simultaneously, the activation of phonological representations in tva [temporal voice-selective area] would produce the vivid experience of the inner voice. (2012: 17560) perrone-bertolotti et al.’s results relate to a long-standing debate as to whether expert readers automatically access phonological representation when reading since it would be difficult to think of a phonological representation that would not include an auditory imagery component: 23acoustics and resonance in poetry one neural possible explanation is that learning to read might strengthen the connectivity between visual and auditory areas (booth et al. 2008; richardson et al. 2011) based on hebbian plasticity: both regions would be repeatedly coactivated because of repeated associations between visual and auditory inputs during the learning period (the written word and the auditory percept of one’s own voice while reading overtly). with practice, this connectivity would allow for a direct activation of the auditory cortex by visual inputs through the visual cortex, in the absence of overt speech, very much like an automatic stimulusresponse association. (2012: 17560) note that we are confronted with a mess of inconsistent terminology. in our foregoing discussion we spoke of “efficient” readers (as opposed to “poor” readers), who rely on phonetic coding. perrone-bertolotti et al. speak of adult “non-proficient” readers who rely on phonological processes. there may be a difference of standards for young children and adults. these adult “non-proficient” readers, however, are contrasted here to highly expert readers. we should, perhaps, speak of a scale of three categories of readers, labeled with descriptive rather than evaluative labels: readers who rely mainly on semantic coding, readers who rely on phonetic and phonological coding, and speed readers. each later category is more efficient in reading than the preceding one. readers of the first of these categories make little use of the auditory information. readers of the other two categories make ample use of auditory information, but at different speeds. in speed readers, the relation between the visual grapheme and the auditory phoneme is over-practiced and becomes automatic, a quasi-synaesthetic relationship, in which the visual information triggers the phonological information. only a reading in which precategorical auditory information lingers for some time in short-term memory yields access to the musical dimension of poetry. both poor readers and expert readers tend to ignore the sound dimension in reading, for opposite reasons: inefficient use of phonetic coding, and having over-practiced the phonetic coding, respectively. perhaps, some speed readers can switch at will between reading styles: between dwelling on phonetic coding, and speed reading, according to the purpose of reading. the psychological reality of rhyme in baudelaire’s “les chats” this last section discusses the psychological reality of rhyme in baudelaire’s “les chats”. far in its background we find roman jakobson and claude lévistrauss’ article on this poem, who point out a huge number of parallelisms and oppositions on a large number of levels of this poem. this section was 24 reuven tsur triggered by two later articles that raise, in one way or other, the issue of psychological reality regarding jakobson and lévi-strauss’s argument ([1962] 1987): michael riffaterre’s on theoretical grounds (1966); and fechino, jacobs and lüdtke’s (2020) by conducting empirical tests. i will discuss only their comments on rhyme. neither riffaterre, nor fechino, jacobs and lüdtke use the explicit term “psychological reality”. the former uses “objective” terms: “can we not suppose, on the contrary, that the poem may contain certain structures that play no part in its function and effect as a literary work of art?” (2020: 202). in saying “play no part in its function and effect as a literary work of art”, he may have meant “effect on the reader”,4 that is, “somehow reflected in human cognitive structures”; also, “the structures described do not explain what establishes contact between poetry and reader” (2020: 213). in fact, his essay explores the limits of the psychological reality of poetic devices. the latter conduct eye-tracking experiments to establish how the human mind processes the various patterns pointed out by jakobson and lévi-strauss. while i enthusiastically welcome such attempts, i take exception to their interpretation of their findings on the sound patterns level. the argument put forward here evolved during decades. when i first read jakobson and lévi-strauss’ article, i had an uneasy feeling that all those patterns pointed out by them cannot be experienced in a reading. later, riffaterre’s article suggested an explanation to my intuition: not all linguistic patterns have aesthetic significance. luckily, just when i was writing my article on acoustics and resonance, i ran into fechino, jacobs and lüdtke’s article. this coincidence induced me to make my own suggestions how the human cognitive system works in baudelaire’s rhymes. translation from jakobson and levy-strauss’ article: 3. les amoureux fervents et les savants austères aiment également, dans leur mûre saison, les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison, qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires. amis de la science et de la volupté ils cherchent le silence et l’horreur des ténèbres; l’erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres, s’ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté. 4 i do not conceive of effects as of static features, out there, in a poem; i believe with wellek and warren (1949: 151) that a poem may be only “a potential cause of experience”, that may or may not be realized in the various readings. 25acoustics and resonance in poetry ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes, qui semblent s’endormir dans un rêve sans fin; leurs reins féconds sont pleins d’étincelles magiques, et des parcelles d’or, ainsi qu’un sable fin, etoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques. fervent lovers and austere scholars love equally, in their ripe season, powerful and gentle cats, the pride of the house, who like them are sensitive to cold and like them sedentary. friends of learning and of voluptuousness, they seek silence and the horror of the shadows; erebus would have taken them as his gloomy coursers, if they were able to incline their pride to servitude. they assume in dozing the majestic poses of grand sphinxes reclining in the depth of solitudes who seem to be asleep in a dream without end; their fertile loins are full of magic sparks, and particles of gold, like fine grains of sand, vaguely fleck their mystic pupils with stars i was very much impressed by fechino, jacobs and lüdtke’s article “following in jakobson and lévi-strauss’ footsteps: a neurocognitive poetics investigation of eye movements during the reading of baudelaire’s ‘les chats’”, but i have a few reservations too. fechino, jacobs and lüdtke tested the psychological reality of the linguistic patterns pointed out by jakobson and lévi-strauss, by tracking subjects’ eye movements while reading baudelaire’s poem, then while re-reading it, both in a verse condition and in a prose condition (eliminating lineation). the significant interaction between visual presentation and verse-last words and the results of separate analyses for verse and prose showed that the differences in the processing of rhyme words were only observed in the original verse form. in this verse condition, rhyme words dwelled upon longer, an effect visible in all duration-based eye tracking measures. in the prose condition, rhyme 26 reuven tsur words were presented at all possible line positions […], but never occurred at the final position. moreover, the words belonging to one rhyme pair did not occur at the same position in a line. arranged this way, no significant differences in duration-based eye tracking measures were observed. neither initial processing nor total reading time differed significantly between rhyme words and all other words. we therefore assume that readers identified rhyme pairs basically via regressive eye movements since the main effect for verse-last words was significant also for rereading. (2020: 12–13) this is an impressive, rigorous experiment. these researchers did not collect judgment, but tracked participants’ eye-movements, of which the participants themselves were unaware. the problem is that rigorous experiment is one thing, its interpretation another. this needs a hypothesis. reading poetry is a complex activity, involving visual, semantic, acoustic and phonetic processes. the authors derive their hypothesis from visual processes. in my view, poetic effects depend more on what we hear than what we see on the page, and working memory functions as an echo box; therefore, one may account for longer fixation time on rhyme words by “regressive eye movements” only if one has evidence for it in eye-tracking. otherwise, one must look for acoustic and phonetic reasons. (the authors state that they assume “regressive eye movements”, not that they rely on the findings of eye-tracking). my point of departure is “what our ear tells our mind”. i believe that we discover sound similarity not through item-by-item comparison, but through resonance, that is, the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by the synchronous vibration of a neighbouring object. jakobson and lévi-strauss point out in line 12 the internal rhyme “reins~pleins”. for some reason they ignore that this line is embraced between lines 11 and 13, that rhyme on the homonymous words “fin”. this close fourfold repetition of a nasal vowel generates an intensive texture of resonance, intensive musicality, pervading the whole “area”. (nasal vowels are exceptionally resonant, because in them, the breath resonates both in the oral cavity and the nose). likewise, there is a brilliant sporadic rhyme (cf. tartakovsky 2021) in lines 5–6: “science~silence”, and another internal rhyme: “fervents~savant”. fechino, jacobs and lüdtke provide a table where they underline the rhyme words. these three pairs of sporadic rhyme are not underlined, nor mentioned in the article. so, we cannot know whether they found what they regard as indications of “regressive eye movements” in these internal rhyme words. apparently, they did not. but the hypothesis of “regressive eye movements” ought to apply to them just as to formal rhymes. the authors do, indeed, quote from my work one sentence on resonance: “tsur (2002) stated that lines can be perceived as perceptual wholes (gestalts), 27acoustics and resonance in poetry if they can be contained in working memory, which functions in the acoustic mode like an echo box”; but this acoustic mode does not really influence their interpretation of their results. for me, the manipulation of duration is a problem-solving device, not merely a function of eye movements, both in speech and music. longer duration, that is, slowing down at the end of a musical unit, suggests, according to leonard b. meyer, that no further progression is to be expected. this is the case in ordinary speech too, not only in end rhyme. in ordinary speech, we usually cue sentence ending by redundant acoustic cues: pause, terminal intonation contour and slowing down the last word or speech sounds. since in verse the perceptual unity of the line crucially depends on its closure, these cues may be more emphatic in it than in ordinary speech. since the eye-tracking technique gives information only on duration, not the other cues, we must take comparison between verse-final and prose-final words with a grain of salt. the white visual space around the printed verse gives instructions that in vocal performance one must have recourse to those phonetic cues for discontinuation. this is the case, more emphatically, with blank verse and free verse, indicating line ending. we expose ourselves for a longer time to line-final words in blank verse and free verse too, where no rhyme is involved. the reason is that prolongation indicates line ending directly, rather than that it takes time to go back to compare the rhyme word to an earlier rhyme fellow. in patterns of sound repetition (rhyme and alliteration), the similarity effect is established not by “regressive eye movements”, but by the resonance of similar sound patterns that mingle spontaneously, enhancing each other in perception. when the distance between the repeated sound patterns exceeds the span of working memory, the sound pattern may have intellectual appeal but no psychological reality. riffaterre comments: “jakobson and lévi-strauss, [p. 191] see a paronomasia – to my mind very far-fetched – linking fervent and frileux” (1966: 219). there is here certainly an opposition between heat and cold. the question is whether the two words are close enough in the poem to resonate together in short-term memory. thus, for instance, jakobson and lévi-strauss write: “the two predicates, the first and last in the sonnet, are the only ones accompanied by adverbs, both of them derived from adjectives and linked to one another by a deep rhyme: 2aiment également – 14étoilent vaguement” ([1962] 1987: 184). the mid-rhyme in the second and last line of the sonnet is a conspicuous instance of a rhymepair that exceeds the span of resonance (but not the span of “regressive eye movements”) and has, therefore, no psychological reality, only intellectual appeal, if at all. also consider the phrase “both of them derived from adjectives and linked to one another by a deep rhyme”. intuitively, such fine-grained 28 reuven tsur description may exceed the reader’s limited channel capacity. more likely, he would respond to this rhyme (if its members were closer together) on a higher level of abstraction. jakobson’s distinction elsewhere, “grammatical and antigrammatical rhyme” might be more relevant here (jakobson, halle 1956: 82). the former consists of words belonging to the same word class, or of similar suffixes; the latter consists of words belonging to different word classes. on this level, the reader must make only a same~different judgement, without going into further distinctions. rhyme words consist of similar sounds and dissimilar meanings; in anti-grammatical rhyme, meaning is more different than in grammatical rhyme. rather than “deep rhyme” (whatever it means), wimsatt (1954: 160) calls grammatical rhymes “tame rhymes”. one of the differentia of poetic language is that one may find in it an intricate crisscross of relationships between its subtle elements. some critics call it multivalence, or multiple relationship. it is hard to determine the legitimate limits of such crisscrossing. one of the beauties of riffaterre’s essay is that he elegantly detects how jakobson and lévi-strauss transgress those limits. i cannot do here justice to riffaterre’s long and subtle essay; i will illustrate his conception by one illuminating example. “jakobson and lévi-strauss take literally the technical meaning of feminine as used in metrics and grammar and endow the formal feminine categories with esthetic and even ethical values. they are trying to prove a sexual ambiguity in the poem, the motif of the androgyne, and they find some evidence in the ‘paradoxical choice of feminine substantives [for] masculine rhymes’ [p. 197]” (1966: 209). i would say that “feminine” is part of the metalanguage, not of the poem. however, i disagree with him on two rhymes. on the internal rhyme eux– frileux, riffaterre writes: “in context the difference outweighs the similarities”: such an internal rhyme is obvious, “because identical stresses ‘confirm’” it. nevertheless, “any responsion to the rhyme in line 4 still appears purely theoretical” (1966: 207). he accounts for this by a longish argument based on the interaction of phrase structure, meter, and simile structure. in my mind, the explanation is simpler. the stresses on pronouns and content words are not “identical”. there is some evidence that the sound structure of function words tends to have less weight in the sound patterns of poetry. if one wishes to hear eux as rhyming, one must slightly prolong it. on the other rhyme, riffaterre says: “a natural reading of line 12 will have to take into account the tight unity of leurs reins féconds, which demands a pause after féconds, the normal caesura disappearing almost because pleins cannot be severed from d’étincelles; pleins is enclitic, which practically cancels out the rhyme” (1966: 207). we agree on the facts, but disagree on their interpretation. while riffaterre claims that the phrase structure “practically cancels out 29acoustics and resonance in poetry the rhyme”, i argue that the phrase structure “backgrounds the internal rhyme”. there is no reason on earth why should one stop after pleins in order to hear the resonance of the sound pattern in the background. if one wishes to foreground it, one may slightly isolate it without stopping, by prolonging the n. we are up against convergent and divergent style. in the former, language patterns converge with versification patterns, in the latter they diverge. this internal rhyme of baudelaire’s is mildly divergent. in the second stanza of his “correspondances”, sound repetition is exceptionally rich and exceptionally divergent. in english poetry, milton is one of the most divergent, but also of the most musical poets. tennyson wrote in his “milton”: “o mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies, / […] god-gifted organ-voice of england”. yet, milton’s poetry contains an unusual number of metric deviations and run-on lines. in the first 165 lines of paradise lost there are only three regular iambic pentameter lines. many critics are baffled by this. this paradox of exceptional musicality and exceptional divergence from versification can be settled by pointing out several aspects, of which i shall mention three. first, unconstrained deviation from versification leads to chaos; but deviation while observing certain constraints yields a weak gestalt, divergent style, characterized by an emotional quality and musicality. one of those constraints is effective closure of the line, generated by several acoustic cues, among them by slowing down the last speech sounds. in “les chats”, line endings are well articulated by syntax, but this specific internal rhyme is somewhat divergent. in many of milton’s lines, line endings are threatened by run-on lines, and sound repetitions are rich and highly divergent. in such run-on lines, experienced readers secure the perception of line endings without arresting, by slowing down the last speech sounds, and some additional acoustic cues (see below). second, in divergent style, alliterations are backgrounded. in the first few lines of paradise lost, the exceptionally rich alliteration escapes the attention of many readers, it just sounds very musical. in the second quatrain of baudelaire’s “correspondances”, alliteration is exceptionally rich and diffuse; yet, henri peyre, professor of french poetry at yale, said that there are no virtuoso sound effects in the octet, acknowledging, nevertheless, its overwhelming effect. the backgrounded sound repetitions escaped his attention. third, gestalt experiments indicate that colour interaction in paintings and overtone interaction in music is boosted within strong gestalt boundaries and inhibited across them; across weak gestalt boundaries, by contrast, it is boosted. the effect of rhyme and alliteration is achieved through overtone interaction in patterns of similar speech sounds that are backgrounded and boosted across the run-on line endings – hence its mysterious musicality. a single complex sentence runs through the second quatrain of “correspondances”, blurring 30 reuven tsur the line endings. the main clause begins with an adverbial in its first line, and ends with the subject and predicate in the last line, generating high predictive tension. in “leurs reins féconds sont pleins d’étincelles magiques”, by contrast, the end of the clause coincides with the end of the line, effectively closing it and boosting overtone interaction between similar words. the deviation of the sound pattern from the phrase structure in “reins féconds” weakens the gestalt; by the same token, it renders the sound pattern more elusive. what is more, one must lengthen the n of “pleins” in order to articulate the caesura without stopping. one important difference between behaviourism and cognitive studies is that the former is interested in the stimulus that goes into the system, and the response that comes out; it is not interested in the mediating structures in that black box, the skull. cognitive studies, by contrast, concentrate on the mediating structures and the information processing that connect between stimulus and response. eye-tracking techniques are powerful tools to explore the mediating structures and processes in the head. but to learn about what our ear tells our mind, we must interpret our eye-tracking findings within hypotheses drawn from acoustic and phonetic research. in the present case, longer fixation indicates that we slow down on line-final words even when reading sub-vocally; that is, that we hear what we read in poetry even when we do not vocalize. speed readers, i suppose, do not fixate longer on line-final words, and do not – i suppose – hear line endings. the same i profess about the authors’ discussion of “visual space” at the end of their article. in poetry, space management is a central feature deliberately shaped by the poet. as highlighted by derrida (1972), “spacing” is an active, productive characteristic of space which could become a medium of communication. while west-pavlov, the main advocate of space theory, did not consider the reader in its theory, other scholars, such as la charité (1987) considered both readers and eye movements. he proposed that space management could guide gaze path to build sentence semantics. indeed, the prose visual presentation does not take into account space managing. (fechino, jacobs, lüdtke 2020: 14) i argue, by contrast, that “space management” does not merely “guide gaze path”, but also gives a set of phonetic instructions to articulate line ending. considering that we are dealing with the sound effects of poetry, their article gives disproportionately little information about what our ear tells our mind, as compared to what our eye tells our mind. 31acoustics and resonance in poetry i am quoting from my article in style, “free verse, enjambment, irony”: in prose, the lines run from one margin of the page to the other; in poetry, it is the poet who decides where the line ends. fraser (1970: 29) writes about blank verse: “... we might often be uncertain (particularly when the sense is run on from line to line, without punctuational pauses at the end of the line) how the lines divide. this is what dr. johnson meant when he said that english blank verse is often verse for the eye”.5 if this were true, it would apply even more to free verse. indeed, the surrounding empty space that indicates line endings in printed verse is not available in vocal performance. i claim, however, that just as white spaces break up the series of black marks on the paper into smaller perceptual units whose end may or may not coincide with the end of syntactic units, in aural perception, certain vocal devices may break up the text into versification units, and even indicate conflicts of versification and syntactic units. indeed, dr. johnson does grant what fraser is tacit on: there are “a few skilful and happy readers of milton who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. in vocal performance there are other means to indicate line ending: first of all, “punctuational pauses”; but also intonation contour, and some more elusive cues, such as the lengthening of the last speech sounds or syllable, or over-articulation of the word boundaries, e.g., by inserting a stop release or a glottal stop where appropriate.6 such cues may act in conjunction – indicating unambiguous continuity or discontinuity; or in conflict – indicating continuity and discontinuity at the same time. (tsur 2015: 36) for the past twenty years or so, i have demonstrated how oral enjambment can be generated by inserting discontinuity electronically into continuous readings, without abolishing continuity. in my article (tsur 2015), i have shown how this works in enjambments in free verse. in our article “enjambment – irony, wit, emotion” in studia 5 “… there are only a few skilful and happy readers of milton who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. ‘blank verse,’ said an ingenious critick, ‘seems to be verse only to the eye’. […] he that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse, but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme” (johnson, “milton”, in lives of the poets). dr. johnson, as so often, seems to be ironical about that “ingenious critick”; frazer takes him literally. my work explores the devices by which those “skilful and happy readers of milton [...] enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin”. 6 a glottal stop is the sound we may insert in words beginning with a vowel, as in “i said ‘an aim’, not ‘a name’”. 32 reuven tsur metrica et poetica, chen gafni and i demonstrated this principle with reference to milton’s sonnets and blank verse (tsur, gafni 2018; included in tsur, gafni forthcoming). we found three recordings of milton’s sonnet “on his blindness”. we focused on the lines 4. who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. his state is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed one performance preserved the continuity of the sentence “his state/ is kingly”, suppressing the line ending (listen https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/ smp.2018.5.2.01/9658). the other two performances preserved the line ending by observing a pause and a rising-falling intonation contour on “state” – suppressing sentence continuity. we electronically manipulated the duration and intonation of “his state” in the continuous performance, without inserting a pause. lengthening the word “state” and changing its intonation contour suggested line ending, but the absence of pause suggested the continuity of the sentence. we also manipulated “thousands”, to ensure a caesura after it, without a pause (listen to the genuine and doctored performances of “his state”: https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9661; https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/ smp.2018.5.2.01/9662). milton’s blank verse abounds in longish run-on passages. james whaler found in his book (1956) counterpoint and symbol: an inquiry into the rhythm of milton’s epic style that quite a few of those run-on passages could be rearranged as non-enjambed passages, still preserving milton’s iambic pentameter (hence “counterpoint”). whaler didn’t quite know how to extract significance from this finding. but we dealt with one of his pairs of word-by-word identical passages in two ways. 5. but wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose? is pain to them less pain, less to be fled, or thou than they less hardy to endure? courageous chief, the first in flight from pain, had’st thou alleg’d to thy deserted host this cause of flight, thou surely had’st not come sole fugitive. (paradise lost iv. 917–923) https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9658 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9661 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9661 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9662) https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9662) 33acoustics and resonance in poetry 6. but wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee came not all hell broke loose? is pain to them less pain, less to be fled, or thou than they less hardy to endure? courageous chief, the first in flight from pain, had’st thou alleg’d to thy deserted host this cause of flight, thou surely had’st not come sole fugitive. we submitted a print-out of the two versions to a panel of judges, who perceived the ironic contents as more ironical in the run-on version; we offered a gestaltist hypothesis to account for this. leonard b. meyer, who applies gestalt theory to music, accounts for the association of strong gestalts with intellectual qualities as follows. “because good shape is intelligible in this sense, it creates a psychological atmosphere of certainty, security, and patent purpose, in which the listener feels a sense of control and power as well as a sense of specific tendency and definite direction” (meyer 1956: 160). the opposite applies to weak shapes and emotional qualities. we explain how such psychological atmospheres interact with meanings in poetry. the divergent structure in excerpt 5 seems to affect not only emotional qualities, but irony too, rendering it subtler. meyer’s formulation may account for this effect too. the ironist pretends to know nothing, not even that he is ironical. the “psychological atmosphere of certainty, security, and patent purpose” of strong gestalts subverts, therefore, the tone of elusive ignorance in irony. in addition, we asked experienced readers to perform the two versions. in the run-on version, one could hear at the line endings continuity and discontinuity at the same time. line discontinuity was indicated by word lengthening and some additional cues; sentence continuity was indicated mainly by the absence of a pause. thus, the same words were longer when they were line-final in one version than when they occurred in midline in the other version. briefly, we contrasted not a verse version and a prose version of the same text, but two literally identical verse versions that differed only in lineation (listen to the first one and the half lines in excerpts 4, https://ojs. utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9663 and 5, https://ojs. utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664). thee is considerably longer in excerpt 5, https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/ smp.2018.5.2.01/9665 than in excerpt 6, https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/ article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9666. “alone” ends a sentence in both versions; therefore there is no significant difference between them. so, i would not be so sure in fechino, jacobs and lüdtke’s conclusion: “we therefore assume that readers identified rhyme pairs basically via regressive https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9663 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9663 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9663 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9664 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9665 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9665 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9665 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9666 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9666 https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/smp.2018.5.2.01/9666 34 reuven tsur eye movements since the main effect for verse-last words was significant also for rereading.” one should not, therefore, necessarily assume “regressive eye movement” for “the main effect for verse-last words”, because the effect is inherent in the dynamics of the sound stream, even where no rhyme is involved, as in blank verse and free verse; and even where no words are involved at all, as in music. the need to foreground line ending would also explain why does fixation occur in re-reading too. moreover, even in rhymed verse we need not assume “regressive eye movements” (unless one gets explicit evidence from eye-tracking), because we discover sound similarity not through item-by-item comparison, but through resonance, that is, the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by the synchronous vibration of a neighbouring object. that is why the effect of sound patterns is immediate. to sum up we have explored poetic language and its relationship to acoustics and resonance, both in vocal recital and in subvocal reading. we started with the acoustic and motor mechanisms involved in speech perception. we have adduced evidence that some of those mechanisms are active even when no audible sound is produced. most readers hear an inner voice when reading silently, some even move their lips and tongues when reading; the neural correlates of this have even been traced in the brain (perrone-bertolotti et al. 2012). in many of our publications, chen gafni and i have emphasized the acoustic ingredient in phonetic symbolism (only briefly mentioned here) and in accommodating the conflicting patterns of language and versification in a vocal performance. i conceive of speech sounds as of bundles of acoustic, articulatory and phonological features. phonological features serve for arbitrary reference; emotive and sound-symbolic suggestions as well as rhythmical solutions are carried by the acoustic and articulatory features. based on the findings of speech research, i have assumed the “poetic mode of speech perception” (tsur 1992), where some of the rich precategorical auditory information that transmitted speech (usually excluded from awareness) does reach consciousness. with reference to excerpts 1–2 i have pointed out that in some contexts, owing to interaction with meaning, sound patterns are perceived as more than usually resonant. most critics agree that in excerpt 1, but not in 2, meaning exceptionally foregrounds in perception the periodic sound waves in the liquids and nasals, yielding stronger than usual reverberation. i claimed that in excerpt 1 even the voicing ingredient of the repeated 35acoustics and resonance in poetry [b] tends to be perceived as more reverberating than in excerpt 2. in a stimulus–response experiment we found, contrary to our expectations, that our participants perceived voiced plosives as more resonant than nasals. while we were pleased to obtain experimental support for the possibility that in excerpt 1 [b] is perceived as resonant, we did not rule out the possibility that some of our participants did not know what “resonant” means, or had difficulties with making resonance judgments. to our pleasant surprise, researchers who applied the stroop effect to test the bouba/kiki effect provided, without knowing, straightforward evidence for the perceptual ambiguity of voiced plosives. in the last section i discussed jakobson and lévi-strauss’ article on baudelaire’s “les chats”, and two later articles that raise the issue of the psychological reality of their arguments. though i accept generally, riffaterre’s criticism, i also have some reservations from it. fechino, jacobs and lüdtke’s eye-tracking technique is an efficient indirect way to find out what happens in that black box, the skull. but there are quite a few missing links to the sound effects of poetry. more importantly, they look for an explanation of the rhyme’s effect in eye movements and not in acoustic and phonetic processes. i don’t know enough about lévi-strauss and sounds. but jakobson believed that we hear the sound similarities. fechino, jacobs and lüdtke attribute to rhyme its effect by assuming regressive eye movements, do not rely on the findings of eye-tracking. when riffaterre criticized jakobson and lévi-strauss’ paper saying that some of those sound similarities cannot have psychological reality, he did not mean that readers are incapable of those regressive eye movements, but that syntactic structure prevents the reader from directly experiencing the sounds of some of those internal rhymes. briefly, without applying the researcher’s personal intuition to poetry, there is little chance that researchers would “hit” upon an adequate hypothesis to account for the poetic quality. jakobson and lévi-strauss as well as fechino et al. attempt to eliminate any personal bias, the former by pointing out an enormous number of linguistic parallelisms and oppositions, without asking whether they have psychological reality; the latter, by conducting objective eye-tracking experiments and performing “objective” statistics. by excluding their own personal experience, they looked for, and found, “scientific” support for far-fetched hypotheses. riffaterre and i myself start with a personal bias, what our ear hears, and then look for support in the text. the difference between us is that riffaterre acknowledges an either/or situation: the device either does, or does not have psychological reality; i distinguish two additional possibilities: the devices may be backgrounded or foregrounded, and i describe their respective conditions. thus, some devices that have no psychological reality for riffaterre, may be merely backgrounded for me. 36 reuven tsur references abrams, meyer howard; harpham, geoffrey 2014. a glossary of literary terms. andover, hampshire: cengage learning. brady, susan; shankweiler, donald; mann, virginia 1983. speech perception and memory coding in relation to reading ability. in: journal of experimental child psychology 35(2), 345–367. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(83)90087-5 bremner, andrew j.; caparos, serge; davidoff, jules; de fockert, jan: linnell, karina j.; spence, charles 2013. “bouba” and “kiki” in namibia? a remote culture make similar shape–sound matches, but different shape–taste matches to westerners. in: cognition 126(2), 165–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.09.007 charité, virginia a. l. 1987. dynamics of space: mallarmé’s un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard. lexington, kentucky: french forum publishers. crowder, robert g.; wagner, richard k. 1992. the psychology of reading. new york: oxford university press. crowder, robert g. 1982a. a common basis for auditory sensory storage in perception and immediate memory. in: perception & psychophysics 31(5), 477–483. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03204857 crowder, robert g. 1982b. disinhibition of masking in auditory sensory memory. in: memory & cognition 10(5), 424–433. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03197644 derrida, jacques [1966] 1978. structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. in his writing and difference. translated by alan bass. chicago: the university of chicago press, 278–293. fechino, marion; jacobs, arthur m.; lüdtke, jana 2020. following in jakobson and lévi-strauss’ footsteps: a neurocognitive poetics investigation of eye movements during the reading of baudelaire’s ‘les chats’. in: journal of eye movement research 13(3), 4. https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.13.3.4 fónagy, iván 1961. communication in poetry. in: word 17(2), 194–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1961.11659754 fónagy, iván; magdics, klara 1960. speed of utterance in phrases of different lengths. in: language and speech 3(4), 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383096000300401 fraser, george sutherland 1970. metre, rhyme and free verse. london: methuen. gafni, chen; tsur, reuven 2019. some experimental evidence for sound-emotion interaction. in: scientific study of literature 9(1), 53–71. https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19002.gaf https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(83)90087-5 37acoustics and resonance in poetry halwes, terry. unpublished demo tape. hung, shao-min; styles, suzy j.; hsieh, po-jang 2017. can a word sound like a shape before you have seen it? sound-shape mapping prior to conscious awareness. in: psychological science 28(3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616677313 jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language, 350–377. cambridge, ma: the mit press. jakobson, roman; lévi-strauss, claude [1962] 1987. baudelaire’s “les chats”., in: jakobson, roman. language in literature. cambridge, mass., and london: the belknap press of harvard university press, 180–197. jakobson, roman; halle, morris 1956. fundamentals of language. the hague: mouton. johnsson, dr. samuel. “life of milton” (1779, excerpt). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69382/from-lives-of-the-poets köhler, wolfgang 1929. gestalt psychology. new york: liveright. köhler, wolfgang 1947. gestalt psychology (2nd ed.). new york: liveright. kuhl, patricia k.; ramírez, rey r.; bosseler, alexis; lin, jo-fu lotus; imada, toshiaki 2014. infants’ brain responses to speech suggest analysis by synthesis. pnas 111(31): 11238–11245. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1410963111 liberman, alvin m.; cooper, franklin s. shankweiler, donald p.; studdert-kennedy, michael 1967. perception of the speech code. in: psychological review 74(6), 431–461. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020279 liberman, alvin m.; mattingly, ignatius g. 1985. the motor theory of speech perception revised. in: cognition 21(1), l–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90021-6 liberman, isabelle y.; mann, virginia a. 1981. should reading instruction and remediation vary with the sex of the child? in: status report on speech research sr-65. new haven, ct: haskins laboratories, 125–143. http://www.haskins.yale.edu/sr/sr065/sr065_06.pdf mann, virginia a. 1984. reading skill and language skill. in: developmental review 4(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/0273-2297(84)90014-5 mattingly, ignatius g.; liberman, alvin m.; syrdal, ann k.; halwes terry 1971. discrimination in speech and nonspeech mode. in: cognitive psychology 2(2), 131–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(71)90006-5 meyer, leonard b. 1956. emotion and meaning in music. chicago: university of chicago press. http://journals.sagepub.com/author/hung,+shao-min http://journals.sagepub.com/author/hung,+shao-min http://journals.sagepub.com/author/styles,+suzy+j http://journals.sagepub.com/author/hsieh,+po-jang https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90021-6 http://www.haskins.yale.edu/sr/sr065/sr065_06.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/0273-2297(84)90014-5 https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(71)90006-5 38 reuven tsur ozturk, ozge; krehm, madelaine; vouloumanos, athena 2013. sound symbolism in infancy: evidence for sound–shape cross-modal correspondences in 4-montholds. in: journal of experimental child psychology 114(2), 173–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.05.004 perrone-bertolotti, marcela; kujala, jan; vidal, juan r.; hamame, carlos m.; ossandon, tomas; bertrand, olivier; minotti, lorella; kahane, philippe; jerbi, karim; lachaux, jean-philippe 2012. how silent is silent reading? intracerebral evidence for topdown activation of temporal voice areas during reading. in: journal of neuroscience 32(49), 17554–17562. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.2982-12.2012 ramachandran, vilayanur s.; hubbard, edward m. 2001. synaesthesia – a window into perception, thought and language. in: journal of consciousness studies 8(12), 3–34. richardson, fiona m.; seghier mohamed l.; leff alex p.; thomas, michael s.; price, cathy j. 2011. multiple routes from occipital to temporal cortices during reading. in: j neurosci 31(22), 8239–8247. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.6519-10.2011 riffaterre, michael 1966. describing poetic structures: two approaches to baudelaire’s les chats. in: yale french studies 36/37, 200–242. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930407 sato, marc; baciu, monica; loevenbruck, hélène; schwartz, jean-luc; cathiard, marieagnès, segebarth, christoph; abry, christian 2004. multistable representation of speech forms: a functional mri study of verbal transformation. in: neuroimage 23(3), 1143–1151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.07.055 smith j. david; wilson, meg; reisberg, daniel 1995. the role of subvocalization in auditory imagery. in: neuropsychologia 33(11), 1433–1454. https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(95)00074-d tartakovsky, roi 2021. surprised by sound: rhyme’s inner workings. baton rouge: louisiana state university press. tsur, reuven 1992. what makes sound patterns expressive: the poetic mode of speech perception. durham, n. c.: duke university press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1131366 tsur, reuven 2012. playing by ear and the tip of the tongue: precategorial information in poetry. (linguistic approaches to literature, 14). amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.14 tsur, reuven 2015. issues in the instrumental study of poetry. in: journal of literary theory. 9, 1 (empirical methods in literary studies), 112–134. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2015-0006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.05.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(95)00074-d https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2019/07/20/phonetic-symbolism-double-edgedness-and-aspect-switching/ http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/issue/view/62 39acoustics and resonance in poetry tsur, reuven 2015. free verse, enjambment, irony: a case study. in: style 49, 35–46. https://doi.org/10.5325/style.49.1.0035 tsur, reuven 2019. statistical versus structural-cognitive approaches to phonetic symbolism: two case studies. in: style 53(3), 281–307. https://doi.org/10.5325/style.53.3.0281 tsur, reuven; gafni, chen 2018. enjambment – irony, wit, emotion. a case study suggesting wider principles. in: studia metrica et poetica 5(2), 7–28. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.2.01 tsur, reuven; chen gafni (forthcoming). sound–emotion relationship in poetry. amsterdam: john benjamins. tsur, reuven; gafni, chen 2019a. phonetic symbolism: double-edgedness and aspect-switching. in: literary universals project. https://literary-universals.uconn. edu/2019/07/20/phonetic-symbolism-double-edgedness-and-aspect-switching tsur, reuven; gafni, chen 2019b. methodological issues in the study of phonetic symbolism. in: scientific study of literature 9(2), 195–229. https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19001.tsu wellek, rené; warren, austin 1949. theory of literature. new york: harcourt, brace & co. west-pavlov, russell 2009. space in theory: kristeva, foucault, deleuze. (spatial practices 7). amsterdam, new york: rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042029132 westbury, chris 2005. implicit sound symbolism in lexical access: evidence from an interference task. in: brain and language 93(1), 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2004.07.006 whaler, james 1956. counterpoint and symbol: an inquiry into the rhythm of milton’s epic style. (anglistica 6). copenhagen: rosenkilde and bagger. wimsatt, william kurtz 1954. the verbal icon: studies in the meaning of poetry. lexington, ky: university of kentucky press. https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/person/reuven-tsur/ https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/person/reuven-tsur/ https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/person/chen-gafni/ https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2019/07/20/phonetic-symbolism-double-edgedness-and-aspect-switching https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2019/07/20/phonetic-symbolism-double-edgedness-and-aspect-switching https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/person/reuven-tsur/ https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/person/reuven-tsur/ https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/person/chen-gafni/ https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19001.tsu studia metrica et poetica sisu 6_1.indd graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation vladimir feshchenko*1 abstract: the article examines the problem of translating experimental poetic texts into other languages. the focus is on the transfer of verse’s spatial design between the source and the target languages. we analyze some cases of unconventional poetry translation with particular attention to verbal/visual properties of avant-garde poems. stéphane mallarmé’s, guillaume apollinaire’s, augusto de campos’ and dmitry a. prigov’s visual poetry provides examples of autographic (hand-written or hand-drawn) and allographic (typewritten or typeset) texts. the former, as we argue, are problematic for translation, just like pictures in painting, whereas the latter may be rendered in another language. the analysis of e. e. cummings’ allographic experimental verse allows to propose a special strategy for translating this kind of texts. by analogy with ‘phonetic translation’, this strategy can be called ‘graphic translation’. this type of translation preserves the visual and metagraphemic forms of the original text, rearranging its lexical elements in translation. it specifically applies to visually-oriented avant-garde and experimental texts. graphic translation ‘transcreates’ the text to a certain degree and this contributes to preserve and reinforce the experimental nature of avant-garde verse in languages other than its own. keywords: experimental poetry; spatial design; graphic translation; autographic/allographic text in translation theory as well as in poetics, scholars have paid little attention so far to the transfer of verse design between the source and the target languages. even well-grounded books on poetry translation, such as andrea kenesei’s reader (2010), for example, lack a chapter on verbal/visual intercrossings. the translation scholar lawrence venuti only mentions this issue passingly in his introductory article on poetry translation (2011). meanwhile, practicing translators constantly face this problem, especially in translating from non-cognate languages or languages with different writing systems. for forms of experimental verse oriented towards specifically visual means, apart from verbal elements, marjorie perloff ’s (2010: 69) term spatial design * author’s address: vladimir feshchenko, the institute of linguistics of the russian academy of sciences, bolshoi kislovsky pereulok, moscow 125009, russia. email: takovich2@gmail.com. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.1.04 studia metrica et poetica 6.1, 2019, 94–115 95graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation could be applicable. the spatial design of verse would mean the location of the text on the page, its configuration and the quantitative ratio of the text lengths and spaces, as well as its font-specific and punctuation characteristics. spatial design is not simply a means of expression, but also a way to create rhythm and, eventually, to make sense. according to katherine mccoy, graphic design in general is deeply involved with the problem of meaning and “the twentieth century has seen radical realignments in our assumptions of how functional printed forms and how ‘art forms’ communicate through words and images” (1988: 116). in what follows we will analyze some cases of unconventional poetry translation with particular attention to verbal/visual properties of avant-garde poems in the source and target languages. the central focus of the article is on how non-conventional spatial design in poetry can be transferred into another language. avant-garde poetry of the early twentieth century started to experiment with all linguistic and extralinguistic levels of verse, including the visual (graphic) plane. experimental verse suggested a deformation of the poem’s structure as a system of signs and, particularly, a deformation of iconicity as a property of a linguistic sign (see the pioneering article nänny 1986). as the russian futurist poet velimir khlebnikov put it, “the word followed boldly after painting”. to be more precise, the word followed abstract painting that broke up with pictorial conventions. this transition, or revolution, is most clearly visible in the case of poetic texts written by painters, such as wassily kandinsky who composed abstract verse to accompany his graphic art. poems from his album sounds deviate from the classical line-and-stanza verse forms. yet these graphic experiments still remain quite impressionistic and do not pose a problem for translation. kandinsky himself could easily indulge in self-translation of his own poems between two of his native tongues, russian and german. things get more complicated in translating radical avant-garde poetry that involved deformations on the level of metagraphemics. natalia fateeva defines metagraphemics as “the means and ways of the written text’s arrangement, which are complementary to the usual recording of a verbal message” (2010: 304). regular (unmarked) recording of the text becomes obsolete; graphic markedness creates new semantics and new pragmatics of the avant-garde text. 96 vladimir feshchenko stéphane mallarmé and guillaume apollinaire: allographic vs. autographic text in translation stéphane mallarmé (1842–1898) was the first poet who, long before the historical avant-garde, intentionally used metagraphemics. what happens in his poem a roll of the dice? the words abandon their usual positions in traditional poetic meter and scatter all across the page in various constellations. however, this scattering is not arbitrary. the new positions taken by words and phrases between numerous spaces and indents trigger new mechanisms of semantic association and coherence (as brilliantly analyzed in kristeva 1974). characteristically, the first translations of this poem into foreign languages followed the traditional strategy of translating horizontally “line after line”, from left to right, from top to bottom. these first translators followed classical techniques of reading poetry. in our times, over the last few years, a roll of the dice appeared in at least two new and innovative translations (mallarmé 2014, 2015). they go far beyond traditional techniques, in dissociating the text’s cohesion in the target text, which bridges mallarmé with contemporary poetry (cf. figure 1 – an excerpt from kirill korchagin’s new translation of un coup de dès into russian – with figure 2, a fragment of ivan sokolov’s recent visual poem). a series of poems under the title calligrams by guillaume apollinaire (1880–1918) made another important step in the graphic revolution of verse. calligraphy in east-asian cultures is a variety of painting rather than of literature, while in western-european cultures historically calligraphy had more to do with letters and writing. besides, we should distinguish between ideographic and pictographic types of writing. in the latter, the relation of sign to object is of iconic nature, whereas in the former symbolicity overwhelms iconicity, that is relation not only to an object, but also to an idea. apollinaire seems to have merged these two traditions and two ways of writing in his reformation of european prosody. katherine shingler (2011) rightfully argues that calligrams involve visual-verbal simultaneity on the part of the reader, making the textual and the pictorial aspects of the poem indissociable. the same holds true for the visuo-phonic correlation of ideograms, as anna whiteside-st leger lucas (1990) pointed out. apollinaire’s calligrams fall into two basic types: those set typographically and those drawn by hand. in this respect, translations of calligrams into other languages are faced with a dilemma: should one translate all of them or only a part of them? it would seem that only the typographical calligrams are translatable, whereas the hand-drawn stand closer to painting and thus do 97graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation figure 1. stéphane mallarmé, coup de dès, translated into russian by kirill korchagin э т о б ы л о ч и с л о ро ж де нн ое з ве зд ам и б ы л о л и ч то -т о ещ е за п ре де ла м и ли хо ра до чн ы х ра зр оз не нн ы х га лл ю ци на ци й н а ч а л о с ь л и о н о и п ре рв ет с я л и в оз ни ка ю щ ее н о от ве рг ае м ое и з ам кн ут ое в ы яв ля ем ое на ко не ц н зо би ли ем п ро яв ле нн ы м в н ех ва тк е п о д с ч и та н о л и о че ви дн ос ть с че та д аж е ос та но ви вш ег ос я на е ди ни це ра с к ры т о л и э т о б ы л б ы х уд ш ип ни б ал ьш е ни м ен ьш е в оз м ож но т ак оп ж е с л у ч а й ри т м ич но п ад ае т от ре ш ен но е пе ро к ат ас т ро ф ы с кр ы т ьс я в д ои ст ор ич ес ко й пе не от ку да н е т ак д ав но в оз ни кл о ег о бе зу м ие д ос т иг ш ее в ы цв ет ш ей в ер ш ин ы в н еи зм ен но м б ез ра зл ич ии б ез дн ы 98 vladimir feshchenko figure 2. a fragment of ivan sokolov’s visual poem и т о т о т о , па ра бо лы с ос т оя ни й в /р ос т и до ся га я ш аг и в т ем но те д ы ха ни я в ви де ть в ни м ан ье м о т ом кт о и те пе рь в сп ы ш ка -к ор он а у гл уб ин ы г ла за 99graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation not require translation. for example, the poem the bleeding-heart dove and the fountain lends itself to translation, as the russian version proves, see figures 3 and 4. figure 3. guillaume apollinaire, la colombe poignardée et le jet d’eau 100 vladimir feshchenko figure 4. guillaume apollinaire, la colombe poignardée et le jet d’eau in russian translation the english translation of eiffel tour, a poem exploiting complex translingual play, follows the same principle of language affinity in terms of iconicity, see figure 5. 101graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation figure 5. guillaume apollinaire, la tour eiffel, english translation by claudia habergham in these cases the text’s spatial design is transferrable and the language of the poem translatable. therefore, using nelson goodman’s (1976) terms, we should distinguish between two types of texts: the autographic and the allographic. the autographic (hand-drawn) text, similarly to painting, is not translatable as a whole, while the allographic (typeset) allows for verbal code switching to more or less cognate languages. the hand-drawn calligrams (see figures 6 and 7) could also hypothetically be translated, but that would require at least a redrawing of the author’s handwriting and would be a case of intersemiotic transposition (using roman jakobson’s term) rather than mere translation. of course, we can always translate the text of the autographic calligram, but not the entire body of the poem. as in case of any picture or painting, this kind of calligram needs not to be translated, as it is based primarily on the extralinguistic properties of signs and images. 102 vladimir feshchenko figure 6. guillaume apollinaire, fleurs figure 7. guillaume apollinaire, poème du 9 février 1915 103graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation the same dilemma persists in concrete and visual poetry of later times. again, we are dealing with two major types of texts. the first prioritizes the verbal matter, and in this case, translation is possible and may be productive for the target language (e. g., in texts by brazilian poets haroldo and augusto de campos, see figures 8 and 9). the second follows the pictographic, or analogic, principle (e. g. in more intricate ‘versograms’ by the russian conceptualist poet dmitry a. prigov, see figure 10). translation of this type of texts is unlikely to add something to the original. semantic augmentation only takes place in case of a different correlation between iconicity and symbolicity, which inevitably takes place in the target language. speech silver silence gold heads silver tails gold speech silence golden speech stop silver silence clarity figure 8. haroldo de campos, untitled poem 104 vladimir feshchenko figure 9. augusto de campos, “caracol” = “snail” c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a n a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a c o l o c a r a m a s c a r a 105graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation figure 10. versogram by dmitry a. prigov 106 vladimir feshchenko e. e. cummings’ experimental verse: between ‘graphic translation’ and ‘transcreation’ now we will discuss some examples of poems written by one author, where spatial design subtly interacts with verse’s semantic structures, which in translation can activate linguistic processes of the target language. alongside apollinaire, the american poet e. e. cummings (1894–1962) took up experiments with verse’s visual form. in 1916–1917, he already composed poems such as sky was candy. this poem exists in two variants. curiously, the first variant published posthumously from the manuscripts, seems and looks freer than the final one and resembles mallarmé’s word constellations. in the initial version of the poem, he arranges words and parts of words in a scattered fashion. its reading is not linear any more. furthermore, the words constitute a visual shape suggesting something of a portrait or an image of the flower. the second version, published in 1923, is already an adaptation to printed page; the spatial design is different here. the original manuscript variant might have seemed too freestyle either to the author himself, or to his publishers, see figures 11 and 12. figures 11 and 12. e. e. cummings, the sky was candy the sky was can dy lu mi nous ed i ble spry pinks shy lem ons greens cool choco lates un der a lo co mo tive s pout ing vi o lets the sky was can dy lu minous edible spry pinks shy lemons greens coo l choc olate s. un der, a lo co mo tive s pout ing vi o lets 107graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation one of cummings’ spatial design masterpieces is his 1932 poem known as grasshopper. let us take a closer look at how the iconic and other semiotic planes interact in this text in terms of its translatability into other national languages. the text is evidently iconic. rather than writing a poem about a grasshopper, the author, who was a “poet-and-painter” in his own words, literally draws a grasshopper graphically on the page, as a graph by max nänny (1985) schematically shows it, see figures 13 and 14: figure 13. e. e. cummings, grasshopper figure 14. a graph by max nänny cummings goes even further than that. to convey iconically the image of a grasshopper it would be enough to confine to this figurative and bodily portrayal. cummings renders the activity of a grasshopper in writing, specifically combining the letters and sounds in verse. indeed, the poem acts as a mimicry of the becoming and rearranging grasshopper in the movement of speech, in its articulations and dismemberments, in the abruptness of leaps, in the recomposition of the word by analogy with the body of the insect. the effect of this poem is not in its imitative or life-like nature, characteristic of figurative painting, but in its transsemiotic performativity where the very punctuation of typographical signs creates an equivalent of the object of representation. the poem ceases to be just a poem, transformed into poiesis as an event of the poem’s creation. it is interesting how cummings worked on this poem and its publication. the recent archival publications have revealed (see webster 2013) that he meticulously elaborated each graphic and linguistic detail of the poem, up to the point where he even drew a grid over the text. each word, part of word, letter, mark, character, space, indent, arrangement of words between r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r who a)s w(e loo)k upnowgath ppegorhrass eringint(o a the):l ea !p: s a (r rivivg .grreapsphos) to rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly ,grasshopper; athe): l ea !p s a (r riving .grreapsphos to 108 vladimir feshchenko each other occupied a particular cell in that grid resembling the periodic system of elements. for his personal typesetter he made a detailed analysis of each element of the text. he also gave instructions to his brazilian translator haroldo de campos. translation into portuguese was one of the first for this poem, followed by translations into french, german, dutch, russian, and other languages, see figures 15, 16, 17 and 18. figure 15. e. e. cummings, grasshopper, translated into french by d. jon grossman figure 16. e. e. cummings, grasshopper, translated into german by eva hesse figure 17. e. e. cummings, grasshopper, translated into portuguese by augusto de campos figure 18. e. e. cummings, grasshopper, translated into russian by vladimir feshchenko e-r-e-l-l-e-t-u-s-a qui aou)s n(os yeu)x sevoilàramass llesreaute antpou(r unle):b on !d: it a (r rivant .sealuleetr) pour réa(de)rran(veni)gea(r)mment ,sauterelle; translation into french by d. jon grossman r-ü-p-f-e-s-a-g-h-r der wi(e wi)r hinseh)n sichhochjetzt pfegürhras raff(tzum):s pru !ng: und (auf setzt .grrapfehüs) um sich(wie)zu(der)ord(zum)nen ,grashüpfer; translation into german by eva hesse o-h-o-t-n-a-f-g-a que s)e e(u olh)o paraoaltor hotgoafan eunindose(n umele:s al !t: a c (h egando .goatfoanh) a recom(tor)pon(n)d(ar-se)o ,gafanhoto; translation into portuguese by augusto de campos т – ч – о – ч – к – е – р – р – е – с – т к т о – т о с ) м о ( т р и к ) а н а в е р х у т а м с к л а ччесотктерр д ы в а я с ь в ( о – ч т о – т о – к т о – т о ) : с ко !к: с т (ре м гл а в . с тр е е ч к ч к о к в с т р ( к у з ) и д у ( н е ) л я ( ч и к а ) ц и ю , с т р е к о ч е т ; 109graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation in each of these versions, the translator seeks to bring all text levels together – iconic, phonic, and symbolic. the iconic level constitutes the spatial design of the poem; the phonic level reproduces the sound structure of the text; and the symbolic level makes the other two interact with the semantics of this verse. the russian translator (vladimir feshchenko) intentionally chose the courier new font because it allows making a regular grid measuring links between lines, letter, and characters. in fact, this font is the closest approximation to the mono-width spacing of the typewriter and cummings himself advocated for this typewriter advantage, as michael webster (2013) has clearly shown. figure 18 is not the only russian translation of this poem. another, better-known one, by vladimir britanishsky (see figure 19), does not take account of all levels of the text involved (see more on russian translations of this poem in janecek 2000. moreover, the other translator chose the russian word сверчок (cricket) as equivalent to grasshopper, which appears strange both formally and semantically. the length of the equivalent should be around eleven letters, сверчок has only seven and it actually signifies a different kind of insect. the newer translation uses the word стридуляция (stridulation) as having exactly the same number of letters, sounding more like grasshopper and actually signifying the sound produced by a grasshopper. figure 19. e. e. cummings, grasshopper, transl. into russian by vladimir britanishsky р-к-ч-е-с-в-о которое ка)к м(ы види)м приготавли чеокрвс в(а ется):п!р ыг а ет что (бы вот .верскоч вот перегр(превр)упптр(ат)ова(и)ться в :сверчок; 110 vladimir feshchenko the problem of interaction between the graphic and linguistic levels of verse arises in translating somewhat different poems by e. e. cummings, too. for example, in translating the poem fl into russian, the challenge is this. if the verse reduces itself to exquisite interplay of short egocentric words, such as articles, pronouns, prepositions, which in their turn disintegrate into yet smaller pieces of speech, is it possible to find translated equivalents to this interplay while preserving the graphic, sonic and semantic qualities of the source text? the point here is not about mere iconicity like in apollinaire’s calligrams. it would seem that the two languages could expose a kind of structural isomorphism between deictic and phonetic devices. the translator needs to undertake a similar procedure of rearrangement of egocentric words, not literal but isomorphic. instead of using exact equivalents to such words as i, my, he, them, we, that, in, on, is, are etc. on their identical positions in the poem’s space, the translator rearranged them across the text to preserve the graphic structure and at the same time to convey the deictic effects of cummings’ poem. the target version in this case gravitates as much as possible towards the chopped-word lengths of source lines, at the same time reproducing the disintegrated subjectivities of the source text. pronouns or similar words broken into shorter pronouns (wait → wa / it; spit → sp / i / t; these → t / he / s /e) acquire different but deictically identical equivalents in the russian version (спрямленные → спр / я / мле / нные; вон те → в / он / те; формы → ф / ор ор / мы). similarly to the reader of the text in english, the translator not only looks at the poem, but performs an assembly of its disintegrated grammatical texture, see figure 20 (hereinafter all translations of e. e. cummings’ poems into russian are by the author). the subject of another cummings’ poem, known as l(a, is the self ’s loneliness assimilated to the loneliness of a leaf falling from a tree. the word i at the top of the poem may also read as the numeral 1 and the first line together as the french definite article la. the word one below and the neologism iness at the bottom of the poem intensify the meaning of oneness. in russian, the translator used somewhat different signs, e. g. the roman numeral i that coincides graphically with the english pronoun i. instead of translating loneliness into the exact russian одиночество, the translator opted for the neological participle одиночествуя, which contains in itself three markers of subjectivity: один (one), оче (eye), я (i). оче in this experimental usage may read as an appellative case of the word око meaning “eye as sight organ”, see figure 21 (see more on e. e. cummings’ experiments with verbal and pictorial deixis in feshchenko 2015) 111graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation figure 20. e. e. cummings, fl, translated into russian by vladimir feshchenko спр fl я a мле tt нные ene с с d d онн ост reaml essn и esse суть s wa б it еѕсн sp а i и по t)(t дожди he бры s ѕг e и)(и f в он ooli те sh sh apes несу разные ccocoucougcoughcoughi ф ор ор ng with me мы n more o n than in the ччичихчиха m я со моим и больше на них чем в н их 112 vladimir feshchenko figure 21. e. e. cummings, l(a, translated into russian by vladimir feshchenko based on the analyzed examples of translations from mallarmé, apollinaire and cummings we could propose a new term for rendering the spatial design of a poem in another language. by analogy with “phonemic translation” (a term introduced in lefevere 1975) and “phonetic translation” (as exhaustively described in pilshchikov 2016), which preserves the sound texture of the poem sometimes at the expense of semantic fidelity, we would suggest to use the term graphic translation. this type of translation preserves the visual and metagraphemic forms of the original text, rearranging its lexical elements in translation. graphic translation specifically applies to visually-oriented avant-garde and experimental texts. this translation strategy is opposite to still another one, when the target text in a different language preserves the inner form of the original but appears in different metagraphemics. such is the example of giuseppe ungaretti’s (1888–1970) poem voyage self-translated by the author from italian into french, see figure 22. і(один l(a ли le ст af па fa да ll ет) s) one один l оче ству iness я 113graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation figure 22. giuseppe ungaretti, voyage in the french version, as we can see, the verse is more inclined towards the mallarméan tradition of free verse which reads vertically and diagonally, or even recursively, rather than horizontally. however, this is a specific case of self-translation, where the author is freer in his means than a regular translator is. both of these strategies fall within a more general approach to poetry translation called “transcreation” by the brazilian poet and translator haroldo de campos. in his essay on translation as creation and criticism he argued, “every translation of a creative text will always be a “re-creation”, a parallel and autonomous, although reciprocal, translation – ‘transcreation’. the more intricate the text is, the more seducing it is to ‘re-create’ it. of course, in a translation of this type, not only the signified but also the sign itself is translated, that is the sign’s tangible self, its very materiality (sonorous properties, girovago in nessuna parte di terra mi posso accasare a ogni nuovo clima che incontro mi trovo languente che una volta ià gli ero stato assuefatto e me ne stacco sempre straniero nascendo tornato da epoche troppo vissute godere un solo minuto di vita iniziale cerco un paese innocente voyage je ne peux m’établir à chaque nouveau climat je me retrouve une âme d’antan en étranger je m’en détache revenu en naissant d’époques trop vécues jouir une seule minute de vie initiale je cherche un pays innocent 114 vladimir feshchenko graphical-visual properties, all of that which forms, for charles morris, the iconicity of the aesthetic sign [...]). the signified, the sematic parameter, becomes just a kind of boundary marker for the ‘re-creative’ enterprise. we are, then, at the opposite end of the ‘spectrum’ from the so-called literal (or servile) translation” (2007: 315). graphic translation ‘transcreates’ the text to a certain degree, and this, as we have argued, contributes to preserve and reinforce the experimental nature of avant-garde verse in languages other than its own. references de campos, haroldo 2007. on translation as creation and criticism. in: de campos, haroldo, novas. selected writings. evanston, il: northwestern university press, 312–326. fateeva, natalia 2010. metagrafemika kak otrazhenie avangardnogo myshlenija [metagraphemics as expression of avant-garde thought]. in: russian literature 67(3/4), 303–317. feshchenko, vladimir 2015. telesnyj deiksis v eksperimentalnoj poezii: opyt e. e. kammingsa [bodily deixis in experimental poetry: a case of e. e. cummings]. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 135, 43–55. goodman, nelson 1976. languages of art: an approach to a theory of symbols. indianapolis: hackett publishing company. janecek, gerald 2000. tri kuznechika: khlebnikov, kammings, ajgi [three grasshoppers: khlebnikov, cummings, ajgi]. in: prżegląd rusycystyczny 1/89, 22–33. kenesei, andrea 2010. poetry translation through reception and cognition. the proof of translation is in the reading. cambridge: cambridge scholars publishing. kristeva, julia 1974. la révolution du langue poétique: l’avant-garde à la fin du xixe siècle: lautréamont et mallarmé. paris: seuil. lefevere, andré 1975. translating poetry: seven strategies and a blueprint. assen: van gorcum. mallarmé, stéphane 2014. brosok kostej [a roll of the dice]. translated into russian by kirill korchagin. in: nosorog 1, 153–175. mallarmé, stéphane 2015. a roll of the dice. translated into english by jeff clark and robert bononno. seattle, washington: wave books. 115graphic translation of experimental verse as a strategy of poetic text’s transcreation mccoy, katherine 1988. graphic design: sources of meaning in word and image. in: word & image 4(1), 116–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1988.10436227 nänny, max 1985. iconic dimensions in poetry. in: waswo, richard (ed.), on poetry and poetics. tübingen: gunter narr, 111–137. nänny, max 1986. iconicity in literature. in: word & image 2, 199–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1986.10435344 perloff, marjorie 2010. unoriginal genius: poetry by other means in the new century. chicago: university of chicago press. pilshchikov, igor 2016. the semiotics of phonetic translation. in: studia metrica et poetica 3(1), 53–104. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.03 shingler, katherine 2011. perceiving text and image in apollinaire’s calligrammes. in: paragraph 34(1), 66–85. https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2011.0006 venuti, lawrence 2011. introduction. poetry and translation. in: translation studies 4(2), 127–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2011.560014 webster, michael 2013. plotting the evolution of a r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r. in: spring: the journal of the e. e. cummings society 20, 116–143. whiteside-st leger lucas, anna 1990. apollinaire’s ideogrammes: sound, sense... and visible signs. in: word & image 6(2), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1990.10435427 studia metrica et poetica sisu 6_1.indd on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30 and in desmond hogan’s short story “the last time” ülar ploom* abstract: this essay discusses the interaction of the divine point of light and beatrice as the unattainable point of revelation for dante in paradiso 30. the two points with their respective circles of understanding and expression form a powerful figure which calls for conceptualisation both in the context of canto 30 but also the whole of the divina commedia. despite the different epochs, ideologies and contexts, a striking similarity as to the poetic of the double point and circle may be found also in hogan’s text. keywords: figure; conceptualisation; revelation; the poetic of unattainability. 1. this essay discusses some aspects of the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30 (10–36)1 and its intriguing parallel in desmond hogan’s short story “the last time”.2 i read and interpret the extract from dante’s text with reference to some other relevant places in the paradiso and the vita nuova. i am of the opinion that the interaction between the two points, the divine point encircled by the angelic spheres by which dante the pilgrim is overcome on his celestial journey, non altrimenti il triunfo che lude sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse, parendo inchiuso da quel ch’elli ’nchiude[,]3 (10–12) * author’s address: ülar ploom, school of humanities. s-522a, narva rd 29, 10120 tallinn, estonia. email: ular.ploom@tlu.ee. 1 i have written another essay (ploom 2019) on the same topic, but this essay extends the interpretative part of dante’s figure based on the double point and circle and compares it to a similar figure in desmond hogan’s story. 2 “the last time” was first published in 1980 (hogan 1980). i use the text from the collection the house of mourning and other stories (hogan 2013: 7–13). 3 the text of the paradiso is the standard critical italian edition by giorgio petrocchi with some graphic modifications by emilio pasquini and antonio enzo quaglio (2002). studia metrica et poetica 6.1, 2019, 79–93 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.1.03 80 ülar ploom so did the triumph that forever plays around the point that overcame me (point that seems enclosed by that which it encloses)4, and the impossible point of describing beatrice’s beauty, which dante as the lover and the poet can neither comprehend nor depict in a satisfactory way and which leaves him feeling more defeated than any other poet who has ever tackled a serious theme, da questo passo vinto mi concedo piú che già mai da punto di suo tema soprato fosse comico o tragedo: (22–24) i declare myself defeated at this point more than any poet, whether comic or tragic, was ever thwarted by a topic in his theme5, should be viewed as a key figure6 that requires due conceptualisation not only in the framework of canto 30 but also in relation to the whole commedia. in considering hogan’s short story, i shall focus on the image of a bridge as the central meeting point of two young lovers, the centre of an ideal circle of love, yet i rarely met him, just saw him. […] there at the bridge, a central point, beside which both of us paused, at different times, peripherally. [my emphases: ü.p.] (hogan, “the last time”, 2013: 9), which in interaction with another ideal circle, that of the marchers against the nuclear bomb in the 1960s in which the lovers unconsciously participate in the words of one of them, also constitutes a key figure to conceptualise 4 all the translations into english of the divina commedia, except for the one indicated in the next footnote, are by allen mandelbaum (1995). see also columbia university’s digital dante project, https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/. 5 robert and jean hollander’s translation from 2007 (available on the website of the princeton dante project, http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/). 6 i treat ‘figure’ in this essay as a narrative figure which, although aesthetically perceivable on the micro level, also asks for conceptualisation and interpretation on the macro level. we may say that it is this that leads from text to opus. 81on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... for the interpretation. i argue that for both narrators, dante and maria, the first-person narrator in hogan’s story, the ideal centre point of love remains unreachable and not fully interpretable, even though they both make an effort to do just that. 2. it is curious that many translators and commentators do not seem to pay much attention to the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s text. in mandelbaum’s translation for example, the second point is actually lost: i yield: i am defeated at this passage more than a comic or a tragic poet has ever been by a barrier in his theme; mandelbaum certainly stresses dante’s difficulty in understanding and expressing beatrice’s beauty, but instead of “point” he uses “barrier”. i do not think that there is just a linguistic coincidence and no more between the “punto” in “punto di [suo] tema” (“the point of [his] theme”) and the “punto che mi vinse” (“the point that defeated me”), which would justify the substitution. equally though, i am not convinced that jean and robert hollander’s “at this point”, which i quoted earlier, really saves the situation, or that the scholars really consider beatrice to be the second centre point surrounded by the circle of possible intenders and commentators. therefore it is very important to analyse the poetic of the two points and circles for the sake of further interpretations and translations.7 discussing the first point, the divine one, peter dronke (dronke 2007: 383) justly points out dante’s well-known connections with the texts of boethius, alan of lille and also refers to dante’s contemporary meister eckhart. of these connections the one with boethius seems to be especially relevant. boethius (consolatio philosophiae iv, vi) discusses the relationship of divine providence as the centre and fate as the circle and compares it to some other similar relationships: […] as is reasoning to pure intelligence, as that which is generated to that which is, time to eternity, a circle to its centre, so is the shifting series of fate to the steadfastness and simplicity of providence. (the consolation of philosophy iv, vi) 7 my own translation (not yet published) of these verses did not at first consider the interaction of the two points either, not until i had read peter dronke’s most illuminating essay on this canto (dronke 2007). 82 ülar ploom as to providence and fate, i very much agree with dronke’s observation that for both boethius and dante this distinction is of the utmost importance, because the nearer anyone gets to the “punto” or the centre, the “more they share in the divine simplicity and freedom” (dronke 2007: 383). this is how the commedia ends, when dante seems to give up even his free will, the biggest gift from god (par. 5, 19–24, beatrice’s lesson), so he may be free in god, in his freedom (33, 143–145). but it is also important to consider the equivalent relation of human reasoning to pure or divine intelligence. in the commedia dante moves through different stages of reasoning and understanding from rational intellection when he is guided by virgil in the inferno and the purgatory, and the revealed truths when he goes with the help of beatrice from mount purgatory to the empyrean in the cantos up to and including 30, to the contemplated truths that he receives with the help of st bernard and holy mary in cantos 31–33 of the paradiso, until his mind is finally struck by god’s lightning and is penetrated by pure intelligence (par. 33, 140–141). like the relationships cited by boethius in the passage quoted above, human love also stands to god’s love as the circle stands to its centre.8 dante himself certainly expresses this idea in the vita nuova, where the relationship between love and the lover is expressed by love in the following way: ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentie partes; tu autem non sic (xii, 4).9 8 the relation of the centre and the circle is surely quite complex, even uncanny, as god, boundless (non circunscritto), does not allow himself to be limited, but limits himself all things created. therefore god is the centre point logically, but it is not surrounded by anything physically. even though he might appear to be surrounded by angelic circles, he surrounds, in fact, them himself (see for example par. 30, 12). therefore god is paradoxically both the centre of all things and the encompassor of all things. the topic of non circunscritto appears also in purgatorio 11, 1–3 and paradiso 14, 28–30 and is theoretically postulated already in the convivio (iv, ix). in the convivio ii, xiii dante discusses, in connection of the heaven of jupiter, the point and the circle as the two extremes of geometry and concludes that neither allows itself to be measured for different reasons, the first being indivisible and not measurable [at all] and the second not allowing itself to be measured exactly because of its arc. 9 “i am like the centre of a circle, from which all parts of the circumference are equally distant; but it is not so with you.” all the english translations of the vita nuova are by william anderson (dante 1964). the original text is from the critical edition of domenico de robertis (1960). 83on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... dronke is also quite explicit about how the divine point of light is related to beatrice as dante’s point of theme in paradiso 30.10 i should only like to add that beatrice should also be considered a point of revelation. it is through her that dante moves closer to understanding love in the vita nuova and god’s light and love in the commedia. in the vita nuova love speaks in latin, which is figuratively a different code to the verbal tongue, which dante attempts to interpret and translate with the help of a series of cultural codes. he first describes beatrice as the number 9, the perfection of the rotating skies and the miraculous number, the root of which is 3, the number of the miraculous trinity (xxix [xxx], 3–4), but then, at one point, it appears that beatrice has moved to the very centre to occupy the position of love itself. in the sonnet of chapter xxiv about monna vanna and monna bice for example, love states, “quell’è primavera, / e quell’ha nome amor, sì mi somiglia” (13–14).11 monna vanna’s position in relation to monna bice is the same as john the baptist’s position in relation to christ, suggesting that beatrice and christ both have the beatifying function in love.12 there are other suggestions though that describe beatrice as the central point of the young dante’s world. in chapter xl (xli) for example, the pilgrims on their way to rome to see the veronica, the real face of christ, pass through the centre of florence, and for this occasion dante composes a sonnet where he declares: “deh peregrini […] che non piangete quando voi passate / per lo suo mezzo la città dolente, / come quelle persone che neente / par che ’ntendesser la sua gravitate? […] ell’ha perduta la sua beatrice[;]” (1, 5–8, 12).13 it appears that with beatrice’s death the town has lost its beatifying centre, at least for dante. the similarity between beatrice’s role and that of christ does not stop with the vita nuova but extends to the purgatorio and the paradiso, as has also been shown by joan ferrante (ferrante 2007: 193). in quite a few places dante refers to her using words which are usually applied to christ, such as “benedictus 10 “[i]f the punto at the center of the angelic rounds overcame dante the poet, so does the now consummate beauty of his beloved, which is the ineffable punto of his theme. […] thus the word punto brings together subjective and objective reality, the intuition of the divine and the literary artifact”. cf. dronke (2007: 384). 11 “the first is called spring; / the other’s name is love, she resembles me so.” monna (gio) vanna as primavera should rather be understood as the one who comes first. 12 see de robertis’ gloss in the vita nuova (1960: 169). 13 “o pilgrims [...] you do not weep when you pick your way / through the midst of the city of sorrow, even like people who cannot follow / the cause of her grave dismay. [...] the city has lost her beatrice.” i am not thoroughly happy with anderson’s translation, for the italian text states plainly that the city of florence has lost the centre of its beatitude. 84 ülar ploom qui venis!” (purg. 30, 19), or “modicum, et non videbitis me…;” (“a little while and you will not see me”; purg. 33, 10). however the revelational qualities of beatrice become especially evident in purgatorio 31, 118–123, where the gryphon (christ) reveals his dual nature by reflecting it to dante in beatrice’s eyes.14 beatrice as the “point of theme” and the divine point of light, that of god’s love and truth (par. 30, 23 and 11), should therefore be read as related. for example, beatrice functions as the revelation of god’s truth (par. 28, 1–12) when dante sees the divine light first in beatrice’s eyes and only then turns round to look at its source in the divine point. however, it is also in this function that beatrice’s beauty, in its scope and meaning, remains unattainable and not expressible to dante. dal primo giorno ch’i’ vidi il suo viso in questa vita, infino a questa vista, non m’è il seguire al mio cantar preciso; ma or convien che mio seguir desista piú dietro a sua bellezza, poetando, come a l’ultimo suo ciascuno artista. (28–33) from that first day when, in this life, i saw her face, until i had this vision, no thing ever cut the sequence of my song, but now i must desist from this pursuit, in verses, of her loveliness, just as each artist who has reached his limit must. a similar thing happens when dante is trying to understand the dual nature of christ in the second person of the holy trinity in the final canto. in canto 30 dante sees beatrice’s eyes and her smile, but is unable to depict it, and in canto 33 (127–139) he sees his own human face, indeed our own human face, in christ’s dual face, which is one of the three divine circles, but he does not understand this relation fully or is at least not able to express his understanding. it appears that only god himself understands the whole of beatrice’s beauty (“ma certo io credo / che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda” – “i think that, surely, 14 “a thousand longings burning more than flames / compelled my eyes to watch the radiant eyes / that, motionless, were still fixed on the griffin. / just like the sun within a mirror, so / the double-natured creature gleamed within, / now showing one, and now the other guise.” 85on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... / only its maker can enjoy it fully”; par. 30, 20–21), which for the others will transfigure and reveal itself completely only on doomsday when the angel’s trumpet expresses it in a much better way than dante ever can.15 for dante, or at least for dante the poet and the exegete, beatrice remains very much like those prefigurations, the “umbriferi prefazi” (par. 30, 78), the luminous sparks and rubies that dante the pilgrim sees instead of the angels and the blessed spirits (par. 30, 64–66). beatrice’s beauty not only exceeds dante’s visionary and exegetic capacities but also seems to undergo transformations. this is expressed by “la bellezza ch’io vidi si trasmoda / non pur di là da noi” (30, 19–20), translated by mandelbaum as “the loveliness i saw surpassed not only / our human measure”, but which in my opinion also connotes transfiguration.16 this is backed up when dante soon afterwards sees the real form of the two heavenly courts like painted icons in paradiso 31–32.17 the final representations of beatrice are also very much like those we see in medieval iconic paintings, and dante’s final address to beatrice is like an oration in front of an icon (par. 31, 79–90), when dante actually says “cosí orai” (91). beatrice is also crowned with a halo as the saints and the angels are in iconography, and she reflects the divine light (“e vidi lei che si facea corona / reflettendo da sé li etterni rai”18; par. 31, 71–72). in some extracts dante describes his vision of beatrice, the revelation of supreme love, in a very similar way to how he describes his own vision of christ. at the beginning of their heavenly flight in canto 1 for example, dante lets his look sink as deep into beatrice’s eyes (“nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei”19; par. 1, 67) as it does when he contemplates the dual nature in the image of christ (“per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo”20; par. 33, 132). the pronoun “lei” (“her”) in the second expression refers to “nostra effige” (“our image”) in verse 131, but dante certainly also attributes the feminine side to 15 “cotal qual io la lascio a maggior bando / che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce / l’ardüa sua matera terminando[,]” – “so she, in beauty (as i leave her to / a herald that is greater than my trumpet, / which nears the end of its hard theme) […]” (par. 30, 34–36). 16 towards the end of the commedia the divine point of light, which cannot change in itself, is also seen by dante as changing, because his vision of it changes (par. 33, 109 –113). 17 see especially the description of the iconostasis in paradiso 32, 4–87. 18 “[a]nd saw that round her now a crown took shape / as she reflected the eternal rays.” 19 mandelbaum has translated this line as “in watching her, within me i was changed”, but i suggest “i made myself go so much inside her look”. 20 mandelbaum’s translation goes as follows: “so that my sight was set on it completely”. i suggest “because my face was wholly absorbed into it”. 86 ülar ploom christ.21 the term “effige” is also used in reference to beatrice’s iconic expression (“ma nulla mi facea, ché sua effige / non discendea a me per mezzo mista, par. 31, 78”)22. thus it seems that dante contemplates the two icons, beatrice and christ, in a similar way, and beatrice as revelation is a milestone in dante’s cognitive route. she both reflects the divine and points the way to it, so in paradiso 31 dante sees beatrice turn her head in the paradisiac iconostasis to look at the divine source of light (par. 31, 93), an example that he himself follows under the auspices of st bernard and holy mary just a little later. already inside pure divine intelligence, dante the pilgrim understands for a moment the relation between the divine and the human in the circle of christ (par. 33, 140–141), but of course he is unable to express it (142). however, even now, dante does not seem to give up trying. the final image painted by dante the narrator of dante the pilgrim is of the pilgrim being moved in his personal longing and determination (“disio e ’l velle”)23 (par. 33, 143) by the eternal love, so that he is turning like a wheel, like the angelic circles, around the divine point. there is a wonderful poem by robert graves which might give us a code for understanding the importance of dante’s cognitive revolving around the centre point of divine light: we dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows. graves’ secret is surely comparable to dante’s divine point, the eternal light that resides in itself and understands itself (par. 30, 124–126). graves’ secret alone, just like dante’s truth alone, knows itself fully. in paradiso 21 dante has st pier damiano say that the divine providence is like an abyss which remains unfathomable even to the gaze of the seraphs and holy mary (par. 21, 91–96). however, it is the gaze and supposing of both the dancers and dante, as well as our own, that makes the secret and the truth reveal and perform itself.24 in dante’s case this is achieved through beatrice, but beatrice, the guide to it and dante’s “point 21 joan ferrante in her analysis of the kinship between beatrice and christ also refers to dante’s use of bi-gendered representation and the tradition of attributing the feminine side to god (ferrante 2003: passim). 22 “[b]ut distance was no hindrance, for her semblance / reached me – undimmed by any thing between.” 23 [d]esire and will. 24 see jonathan culler’s comment to this verse (culler 1997: 101–102). 87on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... of theme”, remains unattainable for dante the poet and the exegete, as revelation is never fully revealed and calls forth unendingly new interpretations. 3. i have no basis to suppose that hogan draws on dante or any other medieval text when making the centre and the circle his key figure in “the last time”. however, i intend to show that like dante, hogan also builds his narrative figure upon two points or centres, and their circles, one of which is love and the other is understanding of that love. the plot of the story is that maria, an orphan girl who is the daughter of a prostitute in ballinasloe, ireland, is brought up by the nuns in the local convent, and meets jamesy, an intelligent boy from a wealthy family of the same town. they are attracted to each other from the very first but their relationship is hindered by their different statuses and the social conventions of their time, and so it remains undeveloped in the modern understanding, as maria is caught in the arms of jamesy in the local cinema and sent away to work in the neighbouring town, while jamesy goes to dublin to study dentistry at his father’s bidding. this means they meet furtively just one last time at ballinasloe station in 1953, where jamesy seems to ignore the sight of maria, at least from her viewpoint, as she tells the story in the first person narrative. hogan’s short story begins with “the last time that i saw him […]” and ends with “i touch upon truth”, when maria is writing of what happened, so the story has a circular structure despite the continuous movement between the present and the past.25 when writing, maria makes a kind of circle round the centre point where the truth resides. the truth means understanding the nature and significance of love, the centre point of their relation, from which they were both equally distant, like dante was from understanding love in his relation with the young beatrice in the vita nuova. indeed maria and jamesy also meet only occasionally, first on the village green, where he instinctively shakes his fall of reed-coloured hair in a way she will never forget, then near a bridge or in the park by the river, where maria pushes the pram of a baby she is walking as part of her job and jamesy comes with the books that he, the bright boy, lends her to read. their relationship is at first “blindly educational” (hogan 2013: 8), as maria puts it, but later, each time, they also touch “a new 25 dante also moves between the two presents, the present of his writing as the poet of what happened to himself as the character, another present, but in the past. see for example paradiso 1, 4–6: nel ciel che piú de la sua luce prende / fu’io, e vidi cose che ridire / né sa né può chi di là sú discende; (i was within the heaven that receives / more of his light; and i saw things that he / who from that height descends, forgets or can / not speak;). of course dante’s movements between the present and the past are not as sharp as those that hogan gives to his narrator maria. 88 ülar ploom part of one another. an ankle, a finger, an ear lobe, something as ridiculous as that” (ibid.: 9), later on they embrace lightly and finally hug each other at the cinema show, from where she is dragged away and sent off to another town. maria’s narration is of course post factum, like that of dante or any other narrator, written in london years later26 as she tries to figure out why jamesy had pretended not to recognise her at the station. she uses a lot of figures, comparing him for example to a furtive motif of glenn miller, and her own attempt at understanding his raw wildness to the floating movement of a ballerina (“his hair, his face, his madness i’d hardly touched, merely fondled like a floating ballerina”; p.11), etc. yet there is one particular figure, the bridge by the river near the convent, which becomes a symbolical centre point of their circle of love, a centre point which they actually never reach, seeming to remain on its circumference: yet i rarely met him, just saw him. our relationship was blindly educational, little else. there at the bridge, a central point, beside which both of us paused, at different times, peripherally [my emphases: ü.p.]. (hogan 2013: 9) first, the bridge is the central point ideally, from which both jamesy and maria stand apart. it seems as if the bridge, which may be unison and love, stands out of time, but the lovers move in time. and they are also peripheral to that centre point. second, it is curious that just as dante likens beatrice to christ in the vita nuova and has beatrice become the centre of his theme in paradiso 30, hogan’s maria also has jamesy occupy the central position of the bridge, though perhaps less obviously: there he was that summer, standing on the bridge by the prom, sitting on a park bench or pawing a jaded copy of turgenev’s father and sons. (ibid.: 8) of course the circle as such is never mentioned explicitly, but if it remained at that, the bridge as a central point would be just one among several other images that hogan has maria use in her attempt at understanding her relationship with the boy. but there is also another centre point and circle which actually urges maria, now married and the mother of three children in london, to take up writing in order to understand what had happened at ballinasloe station far back in ireland and to resurrect jamesy, who she had already buried in her 26 “i couldn’t put words or emotions to it but now from a desk in london, staring into a battersea dawn, i see it was a womanly feeling. i wanted love.” (hogan 2013: 11). 89on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... mind there and then, at their last meeting at the station (“jamesy murphy, you’re dead”, i said – my head reeled. “jamesy murphy, you’re dead.”; p. 11). it is now the beginning of the sixties and young people are protesting against the threat of the nuclear bomb. of course, this is an altogether different circle with its dreadful nuclear centre of anti-love and the young people on the circumference in an age when they said “make love, not war”. hogan refers to the two circles, one of love and the other of anti-love, through maria: the world was exploding with young people – protests against nuclear bombs were daily reported – but in me the nuclear area [my emphasis: ü.p] of the town27 where i’d worked returned to me. jamesy and i had been the marchers, jamesy and i had been the protest! (ibid.: 12) it is here and now that maria begins to love jamesy again, in another circle, though she had buried him in her head.28 she now thinks of him and herself as the real marchers who had “warded off total calamity, total loss” (p. 12). jamesy reappears like a christ, just as beatrice is like christ in the vita nuova. he is, in a way, resurrected29 in maria’s mind: he was like a ravaged corpse in my head and the area between us opened; […] i began loving him again. (ibid.: 12) hogan’s maria uses different images connected with space, both physical and mental, just as dante does in his commedia. however, the image of the two centres or nucleuses, and the respective circles, is a decisive one and becomes the topical figure, just as the divine point of light and beatrice as the point of 27 curiously enough there was a power station (now destroyed) in another athlone, near cape town, south-africa. 28 both convent film shows and especially those films she may have seen in public cinemas, including some westerns (“duel in the sun” is mentioned – hogan 2013: 8), explain why maria says to herself, “jamesy murphy, you’re dead”, when she symbolically kills him. therefore the first part of the story may be read in the key of a western. maria imagines jamesy to be the crook from “duel in the sun” and herself as the heroine from the same film. 29 maria, even though she has a sympathy towards the sisters and her fellow orphans, definitely protests against her upbringing in the convent where she was resident when she was discovered in her affair with jamesy. however, her own imagery is basically catholic. for example she speaks of the dresses she had “resurrected from nowhere with patterns of sea lions or some such thing on them” (hogan 2013: 11). and she also says that she and jamesy were “active within a certain sacrifice” (ibid.: 12). on the other hand, “the ravaged corpse” may also be related to the imagery of a nuclear disaster. 90 ülar ploom revelation with their respective circles of love and understanding do for dante. we can imagine the mental circle of the anti-nuclear marchers, their centre point being not the explosive nucleus of anti-love, which in a way is comparable to dante’s lucifer in inferno 33 in the centre of the earth, but the nucleus of love and solidarity. the marchers’ circle is comparable to such circles as a circle of friends, a family circle, or a circle of young scientists, which all have love and truth as their centres. we may therefore presume that in maria’s imagination the young people themselves take hold of the ideal centre of the circle, the explosive position of love (“the world was exploding with young people”). however, there is also the centre and the circle of understanding and interpreting love. it does not matter so much whether jamesy ignored maria at their last meeting or whether maria herself was too uncertain to go and address him30; what matters is the circle of love and loss that maria tries to understand, to decipher. “i never reached him,” she says but adds: the gulf between me and jamesy narrows daily […] i say something i never said before, something i’ve never written before. i touch upon truth [my emphasis: ü.p.] (ibid.: 13) dante really never reaches so far as to describe beatrice worthily. he never understands completely the truth revealed to him through beatrice, at least not in the way he does through the direct intervention of god himself (see my discussion in section 2). hogan’s maria never reaches her beloved either. but what does the last sentence of the story “i touch upon truth” really mean? is it that maria is gradually going to understand the truth? or perhaps that she is only gradually moving nearer to it, which means that she will never understand what really happened or what jamesy really means to her as an educator, a christ, one who can be her saviour from a meaningless and loveless life. i never reached him; i just entertained him like as a child in an orphanage in the west of ireland i had held a picture of claudette colbert under my pillow to remind me of glamour. (ibid.: 13) 30 “there was a world of difference between us, a partition as deep as war and peace. then one morning i saw him. i had a scarf on and a slight breeze was blowing and it was the aftermath of a sullen summer and he was returning to dublin. he didn’t look behind. he stared – almost at the tracks – like a fisherman at the sea. i wanted to say something but my clothes were too drab; not the nice dresses of two years before, dresses i’d resurrected from nowhere with patterns of sea lions or some such thing on them.”(ibid.: 11). 91on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... thus jamesy may be seen as an icon for maria, very much like beatrice for dante, a sacred mental image.31 4. certainly, the epochs, ideologies and contexts of dante and hogan are far removed from one another. maria and jamesy actually protest with their innocent love against the social and religious conventions and military threats of their time.32 however, i insist on the comparability of dante’s and hogan’s poetic of the point and the circle,33 even if some of their accents are of course different where they concern the relationship between real space and ideal space. dante very often depicts ideal space and even non-space34 in terms of real space and quasi space.35 hogan’s maria, who certainly acts in a specific, albeit fictional, space, conceives and interprets her love by applying some imagery of ideal space.36 it is true that the idealness and abstractness of maria’s mental spaces is not as explicitly expressed37 as is that in several of the passages quoted from dante, yet it is still evident. whether hogan ever consciously thought of dante while writing this short story is really difficult to say. i have simply made an attempt to point out and analyse some striking similarities in their poetic imagery.38 31 we see, however, that maria’s explanation of jamesy’s function is dually overcoded: he is both a christ and a cinema icon. 32 of course dante is a great protestor against many social and religious conventions as well, but this cannot be discussed in this paper. 33 i do not claim that hogan’s figure could not be analysed in some other framework like centre-periphery models, but that was not the purpose of this paper. 34 see juri lotman’s treatment of space and non-space (lotman 1992: 386–406). 35 i have analysed the interaction of the real and the quasi-real in my translation of paradiso 24–26 and 30 (ploom 2016: 56–76). 36 there are for example the concrete spaces of ballinasloe, athlone and london with their realia, which are mostly described in a very fragmentary way, although hogan’s maria is a great master of minute observations, yet there is also the space of love between maria and jamesy that she attempts to figure out. maria’s attempt at conceiving this space may be analysed with henri lefvebre’s ideas of how social (bodily) practices of space are entwined with the conceptualisation of space. see, for example, the famous “perceived-conceived-lived triad” (lefvebre 1984: 40). 37 indeed maria very often mentions space as something very subjective and bodily: “the feeling between us was of summer and space” (hogan 2013: 7); “there was a world of difference between us” (11); “the area between us opened” (12) “tried to decipher an area of loss” (13). 38 i wish to thank michelangelo zaccarello for his careful reading of this essay and his useful comments. 92 ülar ploom references alighieri, dante 1960. vita nuova. a cura di domenico de robertis. in: alighieri, dante, opere minori. tomo i, parte i. a cura di domenico de robertis e di gianfranco contini. milano, napoli: riccardo ricciardi editore. alighieri, dante [1966–67] 1994. la commedia secondo l’antica vulgata. a cura di giorgio petrocchi. firenze: casa editrice le lettere. alighieri, dante 2002. commedia. paradiso. a cura di emilio pasquini e antonio enzo quaglio. milano: garzanti. alighieri, dante 1995. the divine comedy. translated by allen mandelbaum with an introduction by eugenio montale and notes by peter armour. london: everyman’s library. alighieri, dante 1990. il convivio (the banquet). translated by richard h. lansing. new york: garland library of medieval literature. alighieri, dante 1964. the new life. translated by w. anderson. penguin books. boethius, severinus. the consolation of philosophy. translated into english prose and verse by h. r. james. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14328 culler, jonathan 1997. literary theory. a very short introduction, oxford and new york: oxford university press. digital dante with the commento baroliniano. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/ dronke, peter 2007. symbolism and structure in paradiso 30. in: lansing, richard (ed.), dante. the critical complex. vol. 7: dante and interpretation. new york and london: routledge, 381–400. ferrante, joan 2007. dante’s beatrice. in: lansing, richard (ed.), dante. the critical complex. vol. 1: dante and interpretation. new york and london: routledge, 187–216. hogan, desmond 1980. the diamonds at the bottom of the sea and other stories. new york: georges braziller. hogan, desmond 2013. the last time. in: hogan, desmond, the house of mourning and other stories. champaign, london, and dublin: dalkey archive press, 7–13. lefvebre, henri [1974] 1991. the production of space. translated by donald nicholsonsmith, oxford, uk, and cambridge, usa: blackwell. 93on the poetic of the double point and circle in dante’s paradiso 30.... lotman, juri [1968] 1992. o metajazyke tipologicheskikh opisanij kul’tury. in: lotman, juri, izbrannye stat’i v trekh tomah. t. 1: stati po semiotike i tipologii kultury. tallinn: aleksandra, 386– 406. lotman, juri [1986] 1993. the journey of ulysses in dante’s divine commedia. in: lotman, juri, universe of the mind. a semiotic theory of culture. translated by ann shukman, introduction by umberto eco. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 177–185. ploom, ülar 2016. ajalooline realia sümboolses ajatus ruumis ehk kuidas ma olen [seni] tõlkinud mõnesid dante paradiisikujundeid [on the historical realia in the symbolic timeless space or how i have [hitherto] translated some of dante’s paradise imagery]. in: tõlkija hääl [translator’s voice] iv. tallinn: sa kultuurileht, 56–76. ploom, ülar 2019 (forthcoming). punto che mi vinse vs punto di suo tema (paradiso xxx 1–36): a double point for interpretation and translation. in: letteratura italiana antica. roma: aracne editore. the princeton dante project http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_2.indd fin-de-siècle yeats: artistry and affect in “the cap and bells” macdonald p. jackson*1 abstract: there have been various interpretations of w. b. yeats’s “the cap and bells”, but little attention has been paid to those elements of its organization which make it effective as poetry. this article is concerned less with what the poem means than with how it means, through the choice and placement of words, phrases, and images in a sequence that not only tells a story but shapes it so as to engage our feelings. the essence of this verbal artefact lies in the emotional progression, conveyed with consummate skill, from frustrated longing to fulfilment. comparison between the version that yeats first published in the national observer in 1894 and the revised version included in the wind among the reeds (1899) reveals yeats’s increased technical skill. keywords: w. b. yeats; “the cap and bells”; narrative; pattern; parallelism; technique; emotional progression; revision; artistry; tone; poetic development the cap and bells the jester walked in the garden: the garden had fallen still; he bade his soul rise upward and stand on her window-sill. it rose in a straight blue garment, when owls began to call: it had grown wise-tongued by thinking of a quiet and light footfall; but the young queen would not listen; she rose in her pale night-gown; she drew in the heavy casement and pushed the latches down. * author’s address: macdonald p. jackson, english department, university of auckland, private bag 92019, auckland mail centre, new zealand, email: m.jackson@auckland.ac.nz. studia metrica et poetica 4.2, 2017, 31–40 https://doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.02 32 macdonald p. jackson he bade his heart go to her, when the owls called out no more; in a red and quivering garment it sang to her through the door. it had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming of a flutter of flower-like hair; but she took up her fan from the table and waved it off on the air. ‘i have cap and bells,’ he pondered, ‘i will send them to her and die’; and when the morning whitened he left them where she went by. she laid them upon her bosom, under a cloud of her hair, and her red lips sang them a love-song till stars grew out of the air. she opened her door and her window, and the heart and the soul came through, to her right hand came the red one, to her left hand came the blue. they set up a noise like crickets, a chattering wise and sweet, and her hair was a folded flower and the quiet of love in her feet.1 “w. b. yeats begins as a pre-raphaelite, comes to think of himself as a symbolist, and finally sheds that to make himself ‘modern’; but he is never a ‘modernist’, if by ‘modernism’ we mean the revolution in english poetry represented by the work of eliot and pound”. so observes c. k. stead, who adds that yeats’s symbolism was drenched in “celtic glamour” (stead 1986: 10). in tracking yeats’s laborious progress towards his later style, associated with such enduring anthology-pieces as “easter 1916”, “sailing to byzantium”, 1 the text is from allt, alspachs 1966 [1957]: 159–161. the poem was first published in the national observer, 17 march 1894, having been composed the previous year. 33fin-de-siècle yeats: artistry and affect in “the cap and bells” and “leda and the swan”, stead singles out from the wind among the reeds (1899) “the cap and bells” as a poem “in which the poet’s imagination seems to rebel against the preciousness of the role [that has been] required of it”. stead describes “the cap and bells” as “neatly executed..., charming, inconsequential perhaps”, yet as marking “the beginning of the end of that ethereal, world-weary yeats of the celtic twilight”, because here it “is neither the heart nor soul that wins the lady but the symbols of mundane comedy” (stead 1986: 135–136). whether or not stead is right in seeing the poem as a pointer to yeats’s development, it is among the most striking of his nineteenth-century compositions, and a stand-out in the penguin poetry of the ’nineties (thornton 1970). its effect is more than charming, because its execution is more than neat. my aim here is to describe and account for that effect. the gist is simple. a jester sends first his soul and then his heart to a young queen, but she rejects them. he decides to give her his cap and bells, leaving them where she will find them. she takes them lovingly and the heart and the soul are also welcomed and sing to her. this little story has been variously interpreted,2 but the poetry resides in the way it is told – the choice and placement of words and images as they echo and chime, and the organization of the narrative as beginning, middle, and end. the responsive reader cares less about what the poem means than about how it means. its essence lies in the emotional progression, conveyed with consummate skill, from frustrated longing to fulfilment. explication – the decoding of a poem into the language of rational discourse – must always be secondary to experiencing the verbal artefact with all faculties alert. these include our sense of form. a salient element in the structure of “the cap and bells” is the careful chronicling of time: evening, night, morning, night. a night is devoted to the queen’s repudiation of the jester’s wooing, the following day to the queen’s capitulation. but the details by which the passage of time is registered are remarkably evocative: the garden in which the jester walks “had fallen still” (dusk), “when owls began to call” (night), “when the owls called out no more” (towards daybreak), “when the morning whitened” (morning), “stars grew out of the air” (night). we feel the stillness of the garden at dusk, hear the nocturnal calling of owls till they lapse into silence, see the whitening of morning as light replaces darkness, and watch the stars “grow” out of the air, 2 the following accounts are representative: ellmann 1954: 121; natterstad 1967; bloom 1970: 128–129; milne 1972: 69–79; cowart 1979: 38–44; coltrane 1990: 129–143; hamlin 1990: 203–205; wenzell 2007: 20–23. 34 macdonald p. jackson as though they were blooming in the night sky, like flowers in the garden: the verb not only conveys the stars’ gradual brightening but carries the sense of an organic process in a living, magical universe. further, the positive associations of “out of the air” are intensified by the contrast with the queen’s dismissal of the jester’s soul, as she “waved it off on the air”, and the fact that in both contexts “air” rhymes with “hair”. in the fifth stanza, the jester’s heart had dreamed of the queen’s “flutter of flower-like hair”, a symbol of her beauty; in the seventh stanza, his cap and bells are laid under “a cloud of her hair”; and in the final stanza her hair is “a folded flower”, picking up the simile in “flower-like” in a metaphor redolent of tranquillity and closure, since a flower of the right genus folds at night, when the garden is returned to its original stillness. in fact the last three stanzas transform to positives all the negatives of the first five. the queen, who rejected the heart’s singing to her, now sings a love song to both the heart and soul, which respond in kind. the closed window and door are opened and the previously debarred heart and soul enter. in the early stanzas the first emissary had been the soul (wearing blue), and the heart had been the second (wearing red), the parallelism of the lines describing them and their futile missions being very marked: “he bade his soul... / in a straight blue garment... / it had gown wise-tongued by thinking... / but the young queen...” and “he bade his heart... / in a red and quivering garment... / it had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming... / but she...”. now “the heart and the soul” come through the apertures in reverse order: “to her right hand came the red one, / to her left hand came the blue”. this not only creates a kind of chiasmus (soul...heart: heart...soul), but gives us clinching alliteration on “right...red” and, with the addition of the definite articles, the satisfying commonplace “heart and soul” of romantic devotion. window and door are included in the same reversal of order: “on her window-sill /... through the door” becomes “she opened her door and her window”. the “wise-tongued” soul and the “sweet-tongued” heart, formerly denied audience, now, in the queen’s presence, “set up a noise like crickets, / a chattering wise and sweet”. the young queen “would not listen” to the soul before, but now she does. previously she “took up” her fan to wave off the heart, but now heart and soul “set up” their duet. and the lady’s “quiet and light footfall”, which had imbued the soul with wisdom, transmutes into “the quiet of love in her feet”. in the opening line the jester “walked”, whereas these feet are motionless. the serene conclusion is compounded of such echoes. within this scheme there are lesser parallelisms and rhetorical constructions. for example, in “the jester walked in the garden: / the garden had fallen still”, the second line begins with the two words that had ended the first 35fin-de-siècle yeats: artistry and affect in “the cap and bells” line, in the figure known as anadiplosis, and each line begins with the definite article plus a noun. “she rose in” and “she drew in” head consecutive lines in the third stanza, “i have” and “i will” in the sixth. “she rose in” is anticipated by “it rose in” of the second stanza. “grew” in the seventh stanza is preceded by “grown” in stanzas two and five. alliteration adds aptness to the “flutter of flower-like hair” and the hair as “a folded flower”. at the close, we have “and her hair... / and the quiet”. the acoustic subtlety of all this elaborate patterning of sound and syntax gives the narrative its resonance, and directs the rise, fall, and modulation of the voice as the poem is read aloud. essential to this outcome is the rhythmical expressiveness. the quatrains consist of three-beat lines mainly composed of iambs and anapaests, but with each first and third line having a feminine ending (an extra unstressed syllable), and the second and fourth lines affording the rhymes. in each quatrain, the falling cadences of the feminine-endings tend to hover, awaiting the syntactical completion of the solidly end-stopped rhymes. metrical variations afford tiny frissons, as in “of a quiet and light footfall”, where the last word is normally accented on its first syllable rather than on the second, which the reader is encouraged to give equal stress, because it bears the rhyme. the same rhythmic ripple occurs in the last word of “she rose in her pale night-gown”, also referring to the queen, so that the effect is like that of an embryonic musical motif identifying her.3 the imagery carries the poem’s complex tonal register. when the queen dismisses the soul and the heart, the details of her actions are specific and realistic: she denies the soul admission by drawing in the heavy casement and pushing the latches down, and she takes up her fan from the table to wave off the heart. yet the pictures of the soul, dressed in ethereal blue, standing on her window-sill, of the heart in “a red and quivering garment” singing to her through the door, and of both in the last stanza chattering “like crickets” have elements of the bizarre that border on the comic. the image of the heart, clad in “quivering” blood-red, blends the physiological and the gothic, while casting over them an hallucinatory shimmer. however figurative the “heart” and the “soul” are taken to be, the images are unremittingly pictorial, though we may have trouble visualizing the soul, as distinct from its “straight blue garment”. yet the surrealistic strangeness does not detract from the lyrical flow of feeling. the fairy-tale loveliness of the queen herself is lightly sketched through her “flutter of flower-like hair”, her “quiet and light footfall”, suggestive of youthful 3 there is a complete metrical analysis of the poem, employing the russian formalist approach, by bailey 1975. 36 macdonald p. jackson grace and slimness, and her “red lips”, while mention of her “pale night gown” and “her bosom” enhances a mildly erotic allure. one more detail of yeats’s story-telling strategy is worth noting. in the opening stanza the object of the jester’s adoration is simply “her”. this arouses our curiosity: to whom does this pronoun refer? it is not until the third stanza that she is identified as “the young queen”. and of course the setting – the wooer below in the garden, his attention focused on the young woman’s chamber window above – borrows some of its glamour from romeo’s night-time courtship of juliet. further repetitions and oppositions are woven into the fabric of the verse. the heart is arrayed in red, the colour also of the queen’s lips as she sings to it. the young queen’s footfall is “light” but her casement is “heavy” and after the jester has bidden his soul to rise “upward” and stand “on” her window-sill, she pushes the latches “down”, and later she waves the heart “off ”. she lays cap and bells “upon” her bosom, “under” a cloud of her hair. significantly, the above account of the poem’s intricate design is based on the text that yeats included in the wind among the reeds in 1899. his first version, published in the national observer, 17 march 1894, lacks much of this technical virtuosity.4 it begins: a queen was loved by a jester, and once, when the owls grew still, he made his soul go upward and stand on her window-sill. no scene is set. the jester is not depicted as walking in the garden, so the poem’s final line cannot offer a contrast with his movement or return us to an initial evening stillness. curiosity is not aroused by the withholding till the third stanza of the beloved one’s identity, since the information is given at the very start. in the early version “her” in the fourth line has a clear referent: when he revised, yeats shrewdly retained the pronoun, though now it became proleptic. the anadiplosis of “the garden: / the garden” is missing. the second line of the early text makes “the owls”, rather than the garden, “still”, so that there is less romantic colouring from romeo and juliet, and the time-scheme signalled in yeats’s revision by the owls’ calling and reverting to silence is obscure. the parallelism involving the owls (“when the owls began to call” and “when the 4 the text can readily be reconstructed from the variorum collation in (alt, alspach 1966 [1957]: 159–161), where it is clear that the version printed in the second book of the rhymers’ club (1894) contained only trivial variants from the version in the national observer. 37fin-de-siècle yeats: artistry and affect in “the cap and bells” owls called out no more”) is absent. so also are the parallelisms in referring to the soul (“he bade his soul”, “it had grown wise-tongued by thinking”) and heart (“he bade his heart”, “it had gown sweet-tongued by dreaming”). in the national observer printing, the heart is bidden to “go to her, / when the bats cried out no more”, and this is the first mention of these squeaking creatures, connotatively so less apt that the owls. the second stanza originally ran: in a long and straight blue garment it talked ere the morn grew white it had grown most wise with thinking on a foot-fall hushed and light. here the soul evidently talks for a considerable time, and “ere the morn grew white” detracts from the quickening of dramatic expectancy in the alliterating “and when the morning whitened”, as the scene is set for the crucial, plotchanging gesture. yeats’s revised version avoids the prosaic mention of talking by simply indicating that the soul is “wise-tongued”, whereas “most” in “most wise” is mere padding for the sake of the metre. “on a foot-fall hushed and light” has none of the metrical subtlety of “of a quiet and light footfall”, and it was only after “hushed” had been replaced by “quiet”, that the line anticipated, and so gave extra resonance to, “the quiet of love in her feet” of the close. originally, in stanza three, the queen’s casement was not, in contrast to her footfall, “heavy” but “brightening”, so there she shuts it at daybreak, with the result that a reader remains uncertain about the chronology. but it is in the seventh stanza that the inferiority of the national observer version is most obvious: she took them into her bosom, in her heart she found a tune, her red lips sang them a love-song, the night smelled rich with june. the lack of the “upon”–“under” antithesis is relatively unimportant. but the stanza is rhythmical bric-à-brac, without fluency or cohesion. its last line tells us that the season is summer and the air fragrant, but it seems tacked on, gauchely furnishing a rhyme with the equally inept “in her heart she found a tune”. moreover, this conventional reference to the queen’s heart seems maladroit in a poem in which the jester’s heart is personified as a virtual member of the dramatis personae. the revised stanza, in contrast, is perfect, with its 38 macdonald p. jackson appealing metaphors, “under a cloud of her hair” and, where the time is of the essence, “till stars grew out of the air”, and the repetition, missing from the original version, of stanza five’s “hair”–“air” rhyme within this positive context enhances our response. “i believe in technique as the test of a man’s sincerity”, averred ezra pound (1960: 9). both versions of “the cap and bells” recount the same basic series of events, but by lavishing such technical artistry on his reworking of the text, as the century drew to a close, yeats gave it a poetic quality that it did not have before. “the cap and bells” originated, according to yeats, in a dream – which explains both its hallucinatory character and its emotional potency.5 dreams are despatches from the whole personality, dramatizing our most inward impulses, feelings, anxieties, conflicts, hopes, wishes, moods, and values.6 “the cap and bells” engages with the poet’s deep-seated preoccupations, and it expresses them through a mini-drama – characters, settings, and events. emotion finds its “objective correlative” in story. it is not hard to guess that informing “the cap and bells”, jostled in the wind among the reeds by numerous soft-focus poems to “his beloved”, is yeats’s infatuation with the regal beauty maude gonne. as all-round entertainer – singer and story-teller as well as clown – the court jester is an apt surrogate for the poet. since dreams literalize the figurative, the jester can offer the young queen his heart and soul, depicted as separate entities, while still living to make the final gift of his cap and bells, which seem more than “the symbols of mundane comedy”: they are the insignia of his very identity. in the wind among the reeds, only one short poem intervenes between “he gives his beloved certain rhymes” and “the cap and bells”, but the jester bestows not the products of his art and craft but the emblems of his essential self. “i will send them to her and die”, he decides. does “and die” merely register desperation,7 or is this an act of ultimate sacrifice? the vagaries of dream logic prevent us from being sure. the queen lays the cap and bells upon her bosom and sings them a love-song, and in the poem’s closing stanza the disembodied heart and the soul chatter a 5 yeats wrote: “i dreamed this story exactly as i have written it... the poem has always meant a great deal to me” (allt, alspach 1966 [1957]: 808). bloom believes that “ellmann, considering yeats’s revisions of the poem, is rightly skeptical of the poet’s claim that he wrote the poem exactly as he dreamed it” (1970: 128), but this distorts yeats’s statement: he says that he dreamed the “story” as written, not the words of the poem in which he relates it. the essence of what happens is unaffected by the verbal changes. 6 hall 1966; stevens 1996. these are among the best of the scores of books on this topic. 7 meaning something like “if this final gesture is unsuccessful, i shall die” or “i shall do this even if it means that i die”. 39fin-de-siècle yeats: artistry and affect in “the cap and bells” duet. if there is death at the close, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished. love has been requited. the passage from yearning to fulfilment is complete. and the achieved blend of wisdom and sweetness in the singing of the soul, which thinks, and the heart, which dreams, does indeed seem to intimate a new-found poetic power. yeats’s distinguished biographer, r. f. foster, writes that “the cap and bells” “presents the fulfilment of love as loss of potency and of life itself ”, but the feeling evoked at the end is far more positive than this formulation suggests.8 the jester’s last act has resulted in success, as stead’s comment implies, not defeat.9 if we prefer to read the mini-drama as tragedy, it must be of the uplifting kind attended by catharsis, “all passion spent”. yeats himself asserted that his dream “was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the sense of illumination and exaltation that one gets from visions” (allt, alspach 1966 [1957]: 808). whether or not we wish to believe, with david cowart, that the jester “who has loved his royal mistress unrequitedly in life achieves a mystical union in death”, the poem’s ending is suffused with an “exaltation” akin to bliss (cowart 1979: 38). 8 foster 1997: 215. bloom also believes that “the jester chooses death, or at least a kind of selfcastration” (1970: 128) and regards the jester at the end as “presumably deceased” (1970: 129). 9 ellmann also puts the emphasis on the fact that the queen “yields” but, unlike stead, adds that this is “when the jester sends what is most essential and individual in him” (1954: 251). ellmann notes that yeats used to claim that “the cap and bells” showed the way to win a lady and “he wishes for the cloths of heaven” the way to lose her. 40 macdonald p. jackson references allt, peter; alspach, russell k. (eds.) 1966 [1957]. the variorum edition of the poems of w. b. yeats. new york: macmillan. bailey, james 1975. linguistic givens and their metrical realization in a poem by yeats. in: language and style 8(1), 21–33. bloom, harold 1970. yeats. new york: oxford university press. coltrane, robert 1990. legend, autobiography and the occult in “the cap and bells”: a fusion of disparate entities. in: yeats: an annual of critical and textual studies 8, 129–143. cowart, david 1979. identity and sexuality: yeats’s “the cap and bells” and its contexts.” in: yeats eliot review 6(1), 38–44. ellmann, richard 1954. the identity of yeats. london: macmillan. foster, roy f. 1997. w. b. yeats: a life: i: the apprentice mage 1865–1914. oxford: oxford university press. hall, calvin s. 1966. the meaning of dreams. new york: mcgraw-hill. hamlin, margaret 1990. yeats’s “the cap and bells”. in: explicator 48(3), 203–205. milne, fred l. 1972. yeats’s “the cap and bells”: a probable indebtedness to tennyson’s “maud”. in: ariel 3(3), 69–79. natterstad, jerry h. 1967. yeats’ “the cap and bells”. in: explicator 25(9), 136–139. pound, ezra 1960 [1954]. literary essays of ezra pound. london: faber. stead, christian karlson 1986. pound, yeats, eliot and the modernist movement. basingstoke and london: macmillan. stevens, anthony 1996. private myths: dreams and dreaming. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. thornton, robert k. r. (ed.) 1970. poetry of the ’nineties. harmondsworth: penguin. wenzell, tim 2007. yeats and the celtic twilight: between the worlds. in: yeats eliot review 24(3), 20–23. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_2.indd frontiers in comparative metrics iii, 29–30 september 2017, tallinn, estonia kadri novikov, anni arukask on 29–30 september 2017, a conference titled frontiers in comparative metrics iii was held at tallinn university. the first conference in this series was held in 2008 in memory of mikhail gasparov, and the second in 2013 in memory of lucylla pszczołowska. this year’s conference was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the eminent estonian scholar, jaak põldmäe, who was the founder of scientific estonian verse theory. the conference hosted numerous scholars from all over the world, who discussed various aspects of metrics and prosody. the conference was opened by mihhail lotman, who gave an overview of the life of jaak põldmäe and his importance to estonian versification studies. jaak põldmäe was born in 1942 in tartu, but deported to siberia at the age of seven. in 1955 his family was allowed to return to estonia and põldmäe started his studies at the university of tartu, where he became acquainted with the russian statistical methods for studying versification; yet his academic supervisor, vyacheslav v. ivanov, inspired him to work with the axiomatic approach to versification systems. põldmäe’s monography about estonian verse is theretofore the most thorough treatment written on this subject. after graduating põldmäe taught at the university of tartu until his death in 1979. his works and ideas, however, were often criticised by other scholars of estonian verse, though admired internationally. both days of the conference started with keynote lectures. on the first day, marina tarlinskaja, of the university of washington, presented a paper (in cooperation with darren freebury-jones, cardiff university, and marcus dahl, the institute of english studies) about determining the authorship of the late elizabethan-early jacobean playwright john marston. as the plays at that time were often written in co-operation, it is difficult to attribute several plays to one or another author. marina tarlinskaja, darren freebury-jones and marcus dahl have been analysing spelling idiosyncrasies, vocabulary frequency, recurring collocations, and numerous versification features of four texts in john marston’s canon, where his authorship is not certain: lust’s dominion (1600), histriomastix (1602), the family of love (1607), and the insatiate countess (1610). they compared the plays with antonio and mellida – a play certainly written by marston – and thomas dekker’s the honest spanish soldier. the results showed that histriomastix (1602) and the insatiate countess (1610) studia metrica et poetica 4.2, 2017, 144–152 https://doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.05 145frontiers in comparative metrics iii were most probably written by marston, whereas lust’s dominion seems to be written by dekker. the authorship of the family of love remained uncertain. geoffrey russom (brown university) discussed the relations of the optimality theory and poetic form in three major language types: subjectobject-verb (early germanic), subject-verb-object (modern english), and verb-subject-object (old irish). he showed how the well-formedness rule is more important in metrical structure, changes appear rather on the linguistic level than in the metrical patterns, resolving sometimes e.g. in archaisms even after considerable language changes. faithfulness rules are metrically irrelevant, but well-formedness rules have effects that are registered by the principle of closure, which inhibits departures from optimal form toward the end of a metrical unit. bruno paoli (lumière university lyon 2) offered a new approach to analysing arabic metrics in addition to al-halīl’s classical theory, one which does not consider the actual practice of arab poets. bruno paoli introduced an analysis based on the poetry of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries of the ce, demonstrated the main verse-patterns employed by the poets, and concluded that a certain number of principles governed the internal organization of the poems of this period. he emphasised how the metrical analysis must regard four levels – external, internal, historical and comparative – in order to make theoretical interpretations and modelizations of versification types. chris golston (california state university, fresno) proposed that it is possible to reconstruct a proto indo-european quantitative tetrameter of 16 moras. he used the examples of four early indo-european meters (greek, sanskrit, and old english) as evidence: anapestic tetrameter from greek drama, a family of meters called ‘trochaic tetrameter’ in classical sanskrit, the āryās of sanskrit and prakrit, and the alliterative verse of old english. the following papers were presented in eight sessions during the two days of conference. session i started with the paper by peter grzybek (university of graz), who discussed the relations between the decasyllable used in south slavonic epic songs (deseterac, occurring as the male-deseterac with a caesura after the fourth syllable and the female-deseterac with a caesura after the fifth syllable) and the length of words used in the lines of this meter. he focused on the possibility of constructing a theoretical model of deseterac based on the frequencies of word lengths and the frequencies of certain word length sequences, as well as the patterns of word lengths in epic songs and their specific position within individual lines. in addition, the question of how that model relates to serbian and croatian prose texts was examined. michael vignola (ucla) explored the influences of anglo-saxon poetics in the poems by richard wilbur, concentrating on his poem “junk”, which can be regarded as a formal 146 kadri novikov, anni arukask and thematic adaption of the anglo-saxon fragment waldere. wilbur imitated the complex stress patterns and alliteration and transferred the anglo-saxon attitude toward material objects to the 20th-century american consumer culture. vignola also discussed the problems of adapting the old english poetics to modern english in general. finally, mirella de sisto (meertens institute) compared the french alexandrine and its adaption into dutch poetry during the renaissance period. their common feature is the caesura, which is always present in french and usually in dutch versions; however, the french alexandrine is divided into cola with one prominent position, while the dutch version is iambic-foot-based and has a clear stressed-unstressed sequence. de sisto supposed that the difference is due to phonological structures: in french the predominant prosodic level is the phonological phrase with the main stress at its right edge (=colon), but in dutch it is the phonological word which has a word-stress (=foot). session ii started with the paper by donka minkova (ucla), who discussed the different ways of marking the right-edge of prosodic domains in old, middle and present-day english. she introduced her project, which examines whether some testable prosodic and segmental signs of such boundaries in present-day english help to clarify two questions concerning old and middle english alliterative verse: 1) how can the apparent violations of kaluza’s law be explained; and 2) how does the “rule”, that every b-verse of the middle-english alliterative verse requires a single unstressed syllable at the end, correspond to the right-edge prosodic and metrical weight. megan hartman (university of nebraska at kearney) explored the hypermetric tools in the old saxon heliand, where the poet expands the average length of lines and employs them throughout the poem in new ways. he uses hypermetric meter also in single lines or individual verses, whereas the old english used it in extended groupings of verses. hartman examined why the heliand poet divided the verses in such a novel way and discussed the different poetic effects and semantic uses of the lone lines in contrast to longer groupings. teresa proto (leiden university center for linguistics) spoke about the most widely used meter both in italian literary and oral traditions – the endecasillabo. the oral and sung endecasillabi are often irregular in form, the latter displays a double structure combined with music. proto brought out the similarities and differences in the structure and performance of the sung and spoken endecasillabo from the standpoint of two tenants in current metrical theory and typology: verse to delivery and design to instances (jakobson 1960), and prosodic metrics to isochronous metrics (aroui 2009). she examined the possibilities for conciliating these two opposing views. 147frontiers in comparative metrics iii in session iii, anastasia belousova (lomonosov moscow state university; universidad nacional de colombia) showed in her presentation what kind of (metrical, rhythmical and especially syntactic) changes occurred when the italian terza rima was adopted into russian poetry, both in translations of dante and in original poetry. the presentation also focused on the semantic transformations, or the process of “nationalization” (=“domestication”) of this stanza in time. the same subject was discussed in the paper by anastasia belousova, svetlana bochaver, and vera polilova (all of lomonosov moscow state university), where they introduced the process of creating a digital database of the interlingual transfer of romance verse forms into russian poetry. the database will contain the collections of texts divided into translated and original texts, texts written using romance poetic forms, and texts including elements of romance languages. the metrical and stanzaic markup of the texts in the database (e.g. russian terza rima, alexandrin etc.) will enable search and data analysis. vera polilova continued with examining the origin, functioning and semantics of the spanish trochaic tetrameter in russian literature, which was adopted from german literature. the focus of the paper was on the process of canonization of the spanish trochaic meter and its functioning in conjunction with the genre of spanish romance in russian literature, as compared to the history of this genre and its descendants in europe. the last speaker at session iii was rebekka lotman (tallinn university), who gave a diachronic overview of the incidence of estonian sonnet as the most popular fixed form in estonian poetry. in addition, she outlined the various formal patterns (rhyme schemes and meter) used in sonnets, determined when the most experimental period in its history was, and examined whether the sonnets written in free world and in soviet estonia differ in form. jeremy scott ecke (university of arkansas at little rock) began session iv with a discussion of the phenomenon of concatenation or phrasal linking in middle scott and middle english stanzaic alliterative compositions. such linking occurs both within stanzas, between shorter wheel lines and the half-lines of the longer alliterative lines, as well as between stanzas. it also provides strong evidence for the foundational constituents of the metrical and prosodic hierarchies treated and advanced in later generative models of metrical form. mari sarv (estonian literary museum) spoke about the estonian indigenous singing tradition, called runosong, which acquired a special position as one of the representatives of estonian national culture during the awakening of national identity. this meter was also used in literature (the national epic kalevipoeg by fr. kreutzwald) serving as the ideological connection to estonian ancient “high culture”. these ideological influences can also be noticed in theoretical research of this meter, as well as in metrical varieties 148 kadri novikov, anni arukask depending on the topics of the songs. the differences were demonstrated by singing at the end of the presentation. singing played a part also in the presentation by jacqueline ekgren by demonstrating the structure of poetry and music with “free rhythm”. the focus of the paper was on the norwegian stev – a living tradition of the sung accentual poetry, which uses paired rhythmic patterns, which seem irregular, yet are predictable in closer examination. the paired rhythmic events are used also in other old germanic poetical works. in session v, kevin ryan (harvard university) argued that the final strictness in metrical units is not as solid as commonly regarded. he proposes that the explanation for final strictness is final strength: in traditions with final strictness, right branches are more prominent than left branches above the prosodic word. the analysis of kamban’s epic, the tamil language, having head-initial phonological phrases or intonation groups, shows rather initial strictness of metrical units. tatyana skulacheva (vinogradov institute of russian language of the russian academy of sciences) and alexander kostyuk (lomonosov moscow state university) presented a joint paper analysing various regularities at different levels of linguistic structure in verse and prose and their influence on the human brain. several experiments show how linguistic mechanisms found may be responsible for intensifying imaginative thinking at the expense of logical. petr plecháč (institute of czech literature of the academy of sciences of the czech republic), klemens bobenhausen (pearl communication & consulting gmbh) and benjamin hammerich (eth zurich) presented another collaborative paper introducing a new stylometrical possibility for authorship attribution of verse texts, which has until now been limited to a few case studies. when focusing on many boolean rhythmical variables (e.g. the frequencies of stressed syllables in particular metrical positions, frequency of isosyllabic rhyme words etc.), the results may be achieved by analysing smaller text units. the first results of such analysis on examples from czech and german poetry were described. also, a novel way of verse analysis was introduced by evgeny kazartsev (national research university higher school of economics in st. petersburg) who, in co-operation with victor vashchenkov, has developed a multifunctional program system, which, based on text prosody, allows to construct two types of probability models of versification mechanisms in different languages – either rigid (with a nonlinear verse line filling) or looser (allowing a linear formation of verse lines). they found that the realization of typologically common systems of metric versification depends less on language features than on cultural and historical conditions in which versification developed. session vi started with the presentation of jean-louis aroui (paris 8 university) who discussed the question: “why do we perceive text as lines in 149frontiers in comparative metrics iii folksongs and pop songs?” this seems to be supported by alliteration, rhymes, as well as by the printed forms of lyrics. aroui argued that the lines can be either created by text-setting or suggested by certain properties of music. this theory can be tested on different corpora of texts in different languages. next, mihhail lotman (university of tartu, tallinn university) posed the question of the existence of autonomous laws of verse rhythm. he presented the pro and counter-arguments, and demonstrated how the differentiation between different eras and meters has to be regarded and, in certain cases, the autonomous regularities of rhythm do not depend directly on language or meter. igor pilshchikov (tallinn university, ucla) examined russian accentual verse using mayakovsky’s poetry as example. mikhail gasparov opposed accentual verse to dolnik – a specific russian version of german strict stress-meter, and described the latter as a transitional form between syllabic-accentual verse to accentual verse properly. however, this definition can be argued. pilshchikov discussed several features of dolnik and accentual verse, questioned the supposed differences between them, and demonstrated similarities (in particular, they both can add extrametrical stresses and skip metrical stresses). according to pilshchikov, the prosodic basis of mayakovsky’s accentual verse is a sequence of metrical stresses (ictuses), rather than natural language stresses, therefore it cannot be described as “pure” accentual verse. finally, sergei liapin (voeikov main geophysical observatory, st. petersburg) discussed the differences between the rhythm of russian lyric poetry in the second half of the 19th century and the russian lyroepic verse of the same period (both written in iambic meter). the reason for these differences was the considerable weakening of the restriction on the syntactic closeness of the poetic line in the lyroepic verse, which led to an increase in the frequency of the rhythmic types of the line with an unstressed second foot. a quantitative analysis using andrei dobritsyn’s method of measuring rhythmic entropy (dobritsyn 2016) allows us to see such rhythmic diversities in different poetic texts, and can also be used for comparison of the same meter in different languages (a trial analysis on english and russian iambic tetrameter was presented in the closing part of liapin’s paper). session vii started with a presentation by andreas keränen (university of gothenburg) on resyllabification of words in latin poetic meter. the wordboundaries in latin meters are generally ignored, but according to the luch’s law the iambic word ends lh# can’t occur at certain positions in the line, the only exception being the fourth-paeon sequence lllh#. lev blumenfeld (2011) assumes that the resyllabification did not take place there and the paeon sequence was actually hllh. however, there are some problematic fourthpaeon words in early roman drama texts (like recipiat, operuit), which do 150 kadri novikov, anni arukask not correspond with this assumption. keränen showed that these words are amended in manuscripts and, when considering only secure readings, the remaining words are compounds of certain pre-fixes, which in the older stages of latin were consonant-final. therefore, their quantitative pattern might also be hllh. maria-kristiina lotman (university of tartu) presented a paper on behalf of a study group (anni arukask, kaidi kriisa, tuuli triin truusalu and martin uudevald, all of university of tartu; kristi viiding, under and tuglas literature centre of the estonian academy of sciences) on the meter and prosody of the verse texts in the latin inscriptions of estonian ecclesiastical space. the verse texts originated from a database of local lutheran and catholic pre-1918 latin inscriptions that is under construction as a part of the project ceile (corpus electronicum inscriptionum latinarum estoniae). the analysis showed how despite a few prosodic and metrical errors, the hexameters and elegiac distichs follow the ancient models and standards still quite accurately, and that appeared on all the observed levels: metrical, rhythmical and prosodic. annika mikkel (university of tartu) presented the statistical analysis of the occurrence of different types of cursus in dante alighieri’s italian prose books vita nuova and convivio. she examined which type of cursus is most commonly used in both texts and brought out some differences according to the content of the chapters. a comparative analysis was performed with other 14th century authors giovanni boccaccio, franco sacchetti and giovanni villani. mikhail trunin (tallinn university) gave a historical overview of the concept of the “semantic halo of meter” and discussed the semantics of osip mandelshtam’s poem “skilful lady of guilty glances…” (1934) written in trochaic pentameter. according to mikhail gasparov, trochaic pentameter has five semantic “shades”: night, landscape, love, death and the road. mandelshtam’s poem addresses most of these themes; thus the choice of meter must not have been a coincidence and it is surprising that it has not been noticed by scholars until now. trunin emphasised that the study of form and semantics should go hand in hand1. session viii began with marina akimova’s (lomonosov moscow state university) presentation of the statistic description of metrics and metrical composition of mikhail kuzmin’s polymetric poems. in the first part of her paper akimova described the metrical features of these poems and defined the quantity and content of music polymetry in kuzmin. in the second part she analysed the occurrence and patterns of changes of tenses in these polymetric texts, showing that in kuzmin’s poetry the grammatical expression 1 see his article “towards the concept of semantic halo” in the present volume. 151frontiers in comparative metrics iii of time and meter are connected as a distinctive feature of his poetry. this could be proved by equivalent tense-meter relations in his texts, and by the extratextual material. after that, grigori utgof (tallinn university) posed the question whether clausulae matter, on the example of david samoilov’s beatrice. he suggested that the generally accepted approach to the study of metrical line types sans clausulae is applicable to comparative research, e.g. the research of poets’ rhythmical preferences, yet such an approach becomes totally non-informative when the metric repertoire of a certain poetic cycle is investigated. therefore, in these cases, the analysis should be a lot more nuanced and detail-oriented. arina davydova and evgeny kazartsev (national research university higher school of economics in st. petersburg) compared different rhythmic characteristics of early ukranian iambic poems by ivan kotliarevski with some russian iambic texts of the 18th century, and taras shevchenko’s tetrameters with the tetrameters of his russian contemporaries. although russian and ukrainian tetrameters developed in a rather similar way, the study shows considerable differences in their rhythm. in large part, these differences arise from the fact that russian and ukrainian poets used different strategies in the realisation of metric schemes. lastly, evgeny kazartsev and ekaterina nakonechnaya (national research university higher school of economics in st. petersburg) examined the prosody of poets’ prose and the rhythm of verse by the example of pushkin’s the queen of spades. previous studies on verse-like fragments in pushkin’s the tales of belkin and the queen of spades had given contradictory results for the hypothesis that the experience of verse writing influences prose writing. such results are caused by a conflict in the criteria concerning the analysis of the syntagmatic integrity of “iambic” fragments. re-examination of the prosodic characteristics of the queen of spades on the basis of the sytagmatic approach revealed compatible results with the tales of belkin, where the rhythm of prose had shown certain connections with verse. the same can be observed in pushkin’s later prose works, yet in his unfinished first novel dubrovsky he seems to have tried to consciously diminish that influence. the authors of this article would like to express their gratitude to all the speakers for very interesting topics, novel ideas and stimulating presentations on various aspects of metrics, as well as to the organizers of the conference. the programme and abstracts of the conference are available on the web-page of the conference2. 2 http://www.tlu.ee/en/frontiersincomparativemetrics3 152 kadri novikov, anni arukask references blumenfeld, lev 2011. abstract similarities between greek and latin dialogue meters. in: lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.), frontiers in comparative prosody. bern [etc.]: peter lang, 269–288. dobritsyn, andrei 2016. rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic diversity (the example of the russian iambic tetrameter). in: studia metrica et poetica 3(1), 33–52. a note on translating pasternak’s verse1 ants oras one of the central facts about pasternak’s verse is that it is all of a piece, but no cameo-fashion: it is intensely alive, it moves and vibrates. not in any sense finicky, it is superb in the richness of its nuances. his verses may move rapidly or slowly, in a straight line or sinuously – as a rule, sinuously as well as rapidly – towards their predestined end, which generally seems to be reached suddenly, without calculation, but inescapably, with a turn that to us may seem unexpected and unexplainable until we go through the poems once more: then we fully recognize their logic, which before we only felt. the impression is almost invariably one of great spontaneity and naturalness; but most certainly not of confusion or chaos. the poetry’s tempo very often is torrential, but its cataracts have their definite direction, a shape determined by enclosing banks – a distinctive metrical form, a leading thought that moulds them, though often only implied – a river bed permitting some expansion as well as contraction but always forcing the poem onwards, towards a goal, frequently lying beyond the poem, only suggested by its end, which may point to infinitude. this is essentially disciplined romanticism – channelled but unsubdued energy. but it is channelled, and the source of this energy, the poet, is its guide and the inspired, unpedantic engineer of its channels. pasternak, like any major artist, always, if at times only half-instinctively, knows what he is doing. but he gives a sufficiently free rein to his impulses to let them flow vigorously and produce their own exciting patterns. he does not force them, although he never lets them get out of hand. here and there – very often, in fact – he perceptibly manipulates the flow without weakening it, usually with a view to intensifying its swirls and whirlpools, throwing in snags and rocks to keep it from streaming too evenly. the result is powerfully rushing, beautifully organic art retaining all the freshness of nature. despite the wide reading, the genuine learning of pasternak, he is not a bookish poet, not a hothouse plant like, say, his compatriot valery bryussov or like stefan george in germany. in an atmosphere of oppressive regimentation, he has learned the value of remaining genuinely and burningly alive. one of his post-dr zhivago poems states this very clearly: 1 the manuscript is preserved in the estonian literary museum, km ekla f. 237, m. 46:12. doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.08 studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 124–129 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.08 125a note on translating pasternak’s verse but stay alive, stay boldly living, stay freely living to the last. after a long career as a highly successful experimentalist, pasternak in his latest verse utilizes the results of his experiments for forging a firm but rich manner combining much traditional strictness with great and varied intensity. in his zhivago poems, and to an even greater extent in his most recent volume, kogda razgulyayetsa, he for the most part adopts formally built stanzaic structures at times closely approaching the almost eighteenth-century regularity of pushkin. but his trend is towards a more overwhelmingly dynamic, less obviously stylized total effect than that of the majority of pushkin’s poems. the stream of pushkin’s verse is nearly always limpid and transparent, with few stretches of clouded waters, even though it may become stormy. that of pasternak is not. his appeal to the irrational elements of the mind is more emphatic. he is quite willing to sacrifice some harmony for intensity, some perfection for spontaneity, to leave a good deal in his poems obscure, to create tangles of imagery and wording that are not easily unravelled, provided there is in them that immediacy of imaginative and emotional impact (for the perceptive reader) which is one of the basic elements of his art. pasternak may often be writing for “fit audience though few,” but he clearly wants really to move that audience, not merely to present it with puzzles, however sophisticated, ingenious, refined, rarified and flattering to the susceptibilities of a somewhat self-styled intellectual élite. he does want to get his poetry across. in this respect he does not differ from the very greatest poets of the past. this tendency towards turbulence, even turbidity for the sake of greater emotional force might seem to link pasternak, e.g. with gerard manly hopkins. but there is an essential difference. hopkins frequently seems far more deliberate, more feverishly labored, often somewhat too plainly overdoing the vividness of his verbal texture, and somewhat lacking in that large pasternakian generosity of mind which tend to waive anxious perfection of detail in order to achieve great over-all unity and flow. this generosity, this willingness to follow the flow, to yield to the kindling force of what perhaps may after all quite realistically be called inspiration is what makes pasternak such an excellent translator of shakespeare. he seems to me less successful with keats, who too insistently demanded of himself and others that all rifts be loaded with gold. an excess of gold would seem too ornamental, heavy and ostentatious for the more freely moving art that pasternak prefers. pasternak’s openness of mind to all expressions, all experiences – a goal keats aimed at but did not live long enough quite to achieve – is reflected in the shakespearean vastness and variety of his vocabulary. all elements of everyday 126 ants oras language, including technical and technological terms as well as slang and dialect, seem to fit easily into his verse side by side with the more strictly poetical diction of the romantic age and the symbolists or with the solemn church slavonic of the russian-orthodox bible. he has a full command both of the familiar and the sublime and knows how to embed even the seemingly low or vulgar in contexts dignifying and ennobling it. no difficulties of tone deter him, any more than difficulties of rhythmical accommodation. the russian language abounds in forms of six or seven syllables or more. since each word has only one strong accent, the secondary stresses being much weaker than in most western languages, there would appear to be insuperable obstacles to the use of such recalcitrant polysyllables, except in very free meters of the kind that, e.g., mayakovsky employed. most nineteenthand early twentiethcentury russian poets avoided them. pasternak does not seem to feel these difficulties. the strong over-all current of his rhythm carries everything along with it, the billowing surface of his verse being only brightened and enriched by these struggling swirls. this is a feature no translator could hope to reproduce with a comparable naturalness of effect, particularly as in english the longest words are mostly of latin origin and generally either too highly technical or too markedly literary to fit into diction of predominantly anglo-saxon derivation without standing out very sharply. russian, with its far greater lexical homogeneity, in employing even the most strikingly sesquipedalian terms runs less of a risk of becoming stiff and stilted. the vividness of pasternak’s verse is greatly enhanced by the virtuosity of his phonetic orchestration, his ‘instrumentovka’, his management of sound, onomatopoeia, innumerable echoes, both at line end and within the line. echoes, immediately perceptible or half-concealed – seldom very self-consciously hidden – sprinkle his poetry, much as they fill the verse of hopkins or of the later sections of t. s. eliot’s “ash-wednesday”. on the face of its completely effortless, even casual, they yet perform an essential function in the creation of atmosphere and tone – frequently a singing tone with many ripples and waves, but genuine bel canto, in places reminiscent of rilke, whom pasternak knew and admired and to whom he may owe something. they may occur in the most realistic passages, otherwise entirely colloquial but raised high above prose by their sound. such echoes may completely fill a stanza or verse paragraph, possibly to be continued in the next stanza, with transitional elements leading up to a new echoing sequence; or the echoes of contiguous stanzas may be sharply contrasted. in this respect, too, no translation will do full justice to pasternak’s art. these striking arabesques of sound may occasionally verge on the fanciful, but they invariably, to my mind, add to the pulsating 127a note on translating pasternak’s verse vividness of the whole. here and there one may feel that the poet has curtailed or slightly distorted his meaning for the sake of sound: his verse must sound. pasternak’s mastery of rhyme is almost unequalled. in his special manner of using it he has no serious rivals. here, too, he always steers clear of pedantry, freely opening his cornucopia. boldly choosing the means serving his immediate purposes, he yet never neglects the need for music. his rhymes may be very approximate near-rhymes but their decisive phonetic elements always stand out in vivid relief, impressive as well as expressive. in this area also he has means at his disposal with which english is only very scantily provided. since russian suffixes are often stressed, and in many instances long, they can be used for disyllabic, trisyllabic, tetrasyllabic and even pentasyllabic rhymes, all of which types pasternak makes use of to add to the richness of his sound effects and to produce those sinuous line-end rhythms which in english seldom occur in serious verse, largely because they tend to sound labored or savor too much of studied ingenuity. this attitude of writers of english verse is probably not fully justified, since it would seem that the potentialities even of only disyllabic – “feminine” – rhyme are largely unexplored. robert graves’s total rejection of any but masculine rhymes as cheap jingle is a typical example of that increasing taste for stern dryness in verse – if seldom elsewhere, viz. graves’s own prose and his mythological theories – which appears to be dominating the now prevalent school of poetry. this is plainly not pasternak’s way. he is a poet of abundance in his manner as in his matter, but he puts his translators in a difficult position: his practice can be profitably imitated only up to a point. in no instance was i able to carry through an entire poem his sequence of dactylic rhymes, although i have tried to keep his feminine rhymes wherever feasible. the play of wit, the complete absence of pompous solemnity seemed to make it permissible to indulge even in occasional gilbertianisms. in longer poems, e.g. “the star of the nativity” where there is a regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, i tend to reserve the feminine rhymes for passages of special musical intensity, elsewhere introducing them only now and then at carefully spaced intervals in order to break the un-pasternakian monotony of monosyllabic line endings. the rhymes of the translations are more regular, phonetically more exact than in the originals, at least according to standard british pronunciation, which still remains more familiar to me than the more varied american usages. this may seem contrary to the present fashion of inexact rhymes, widely observable even in translations of such meticulously rhymed verse as that of baudelaire, valéry or rilke. the reason for my approach lies in the difficulty of producing near-rhymes as striking and convincing as those of pasternak. near-rhymes in present anglo-american practice frequently are 128 ants oras hardly rhymes in any phonetic sense. they have a way of becoming vague echoes, barely sufficient to indicate links between lines, to suggest some sort of stanzaic structure. they may organize the rhythm, but their quality of immediate expressiveness seems on the point of dwindling almost to nil. in the case of pasternak the effect on the ear seemed too important to be disregarded: hence the choice of the unfashionable alternative of greater phonetic strictness. among the means used by pasternak to ensure musical unity for his poem – especially in those with stanzas of varying form – his long rhyme sequences play an important part. the same rhyme, mostly a masculine one, may be carried through long passages as a series of ever-repeated echoes, varied by interwoven shorter sequences. thus one stanza or paragraph is linked to the next, and possibly to one or two more, creating unity of musical tone. here the structure of russian helps pasternak, since it abounds in identical stressed monosyllabic endings, often with a final vowel not followed by any consonant. in such instances, the classical rule for russian rhyme, as for french, is that the identical vowels have to be preceded by identical, so-called ‘supporting’ consonants, producing ‘rich rhyme’. pasternak uses the device of following up long series of such rich monosyllabic rhymes with other sequences ending in the same vowel but with a different supporting consonant thus prolonging the reverberation almost indefinitely. he does this with great effectiveness, e.g. in “passiontide” and “the star of the nativity”. in this matter it seemed possible to imitate him only to a limited extent. paragraphs often had to be linked in a more economical fashion. inevitably, something of the ampleness of the originals thus got lost. some slight compensation may have been provided by the greater semantic weight which english rhymes generally have, particularly if mere suffix rhymes are avoided. meter was another vexing problem. in his zhivago poems pasternak throughout uses syllabo-accentual rather than only accentual meters, precisely counting the number of syllables in each line, save for some effective variation in the rhyming positions, where a trisyllabic ending sometimes may rhyme with a tetrasyllabic one. the measures he uses are often in triple feet – anapaests, amphibrachs or dactyls – which are notoriously difficult to employ consistently in english without falling into metronomic sameness and severely restricting one’s available resources of expression. while i have kept the triple feet in most cases, i have resorted to some of the traditional english licenses, such as varying the number of unstressed syllable or omitting such syllables altogether, that is, mingling amphibrachic beginnings with anapaestic and dactylic ones. in some poems – notably “the star of the nativity”, “indian summer” and “evil days” – i have made the meter accentual, keeping the stressed but sometimes omitting the unstressed syllables, in the manner 129a note on translating pasternak’s verse reintroduced by coleridge in “christabel”, with greater fullness of syllabism at focal points. in only one instance, “the miracle”, did i completely abandon the triple lilt. here the decisive line, the line containing the central idea, had, in my opinion, to be translated literally, if at all: “no chudo yest’ chudo, i chudo yest’ bog”: “but miracle is miracle, and miracle is god”. in english this is an iambic fourteener of the well-known ballad type. the rest of the poem had perforce to be built around this verse, that is, necessarily in iambics. by using the jog-trot of fourteeners throughout the poem, i felt i should have utterly ruined its tone, so i chose pentameters as the basic meter, interspersing a few alexandrines at points of special intensity in order to prepare the reader’s ear for the culminating length of the most important line, which comes shortly before the end. such were the stylistic and prosodical considerations and compromises guiding my procedures. they emerged as i went along. there is no theoretical panacea for translation, particularly for translation in verse that wants to be poetry. all one can do, it seems, is plunge into the work, soak oneself in the originals, understand them as fully and feel them as intensely as possible, and then try to write them again in another language in such a way as to reproduce as much of their characteristic features, their distinctive beauty, their individual force as one’s personal resources in the language chosen for translation permit. “beauty is audacious,” says pasternak, and some audacity on the part of the translator consequently seems indicated. of course not foolhardiness. the translator sometimes may be unable to distinguish between the two. in that case others will soon show him the error of his ways. the method can be judged only by its results. yet some comments on that method seemed necessary, if only because lately there has been much theoretical discussion of problems of translation, frequently leading to diametrically opposed but very categorical precepts for future workers in the field. i know i have disregarded much sage advice – mea culpa. notes on the otes anne lange in 1957 when il dottor živago was published in milan it became an iconic novel. within less than a year it was translated into english by max hayward and manya harari and its popularity soared in the west. by 1958, when boris pasternak was awarded the nobel prize for literature, his novel must have been read by many estonians in exile: a prize for a russian author who deviated from the soviet newspeak stood out against the backdrop of the realpolitik façade of the everyday. in early 1959, ivar ivask, the later editor-in-chief of world literature today, then teaching at st. olaf ’s college, northfield, minnesota, published in tulimuld, an estonian cultural magazine in exile, a lengthy article on pasternak. ants oras, writing to ivask on august 18, 1959, thanks ivask for the essay and adds, “dr. zhivago mõjus sügavalt, kuigi pisut vähem sügavalt kui ootasin. kõige paremad on selles siiski värsid!” = ‘dr zhivago impressed me deeply although a bit less than i had expected. it is the poems that are the best part of it!’ (letters 1997: 100).1 on october 3, 1959, he continues on the same subject: “nad on moodsa luule kulminatsiooninähteid. neis on seda lõpmatuse poole ulatumist, mida praegusel ajal leiab nii vähe. ja muidugi ka seda läbini-meisterlikkust, mis lõpmatuse püüule alles annab ta täie väärtuse” = ‘[the poems of zhivago] are a culmination of modern poetry. there is a reaching for infinity in them that is so rare nowadays. and of course, a perfect mastery that gives their aspirations its full value’ (ibid.: 104). the significance of the poems for the novel has been articulated by boris pasternak in his explanation to olga carlisle (1960): “the plan of the novel is outlined by the poems accompanying it. this is partly why i chose to publish them alongside the novel. they are there also to give the novel more body, more richness”. on january 3, 1960, oras sent ivask some of his translations of the zhivago poems. he was translating from russian into english, explaining to ivask that “prosoodia õpetajana pean siiski sellel alal ka inglise keeles praktiliselt sulge harjutama” = ‘as a teacher of prosody i have to practice my skills in english as well’ (letters 1997: 143). the translations were still meant to be more than a private exercise. olga carlisle (1960), publishing her interview with boris pasternak in the paris review series, has recorded her opinion, shared by 1 translations from estonian into english here and below are by the present writer. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 130–135 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.09 n http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.09 131notes on the notes “many others”, that “the translation [of the zhivago poems] into english did not do justice to [pasternak’s] work”. on february 24, 1960, oras received a letter from david v. erdman, the editor of the new york public library bulletin, who had read the translations of oras that had been sent to him by aleksis rannit, an estonian poet who also worked for the new york library. erdman wrote: “i – we – are delighted with your translations of the zhivago poems. indeed, i took a very dim view of them as poetry from what i could make out of the translations in the american edition, and now you persuade me that these are really poems. we would be very pleased to have the whole batch for our bulletin and to make a special pasternak issue with these and rannit’s next instalment and the essay which rannit tells me you are willing to write upon the difficulties of translating pasternak’s verse”.2 the project never materialized, primarily because pantheon press did not grant permission for the publication of new english versions of the poems (letters 1997: 160). oras, aware of the obstacle, still continued to translate. he had received positive feedback from erdman, and also ivask who had written to him: “pasternaki živago-värsse pole keegi veel nii idiomaatselt inglise keeled tõlkind – teie kujundusil on orgaanilist struktuuri; mõjuvad täiesti inglise originaalidena. […] kindlasti olete nende kolme tõlkega midagi suurepärast saavutand ja ma tahaksin kangesti neid autorile endale rõõmuks lähetada!” = ‘so far no one has translated pasternak’s zhivago poems into such idiomatic english. your solutions have an organic structure; these impress me as english originals. […] i have no doubt that with these three translations [that is, “the star of the nativity”, “the earth”, and “hamlet”] you have achieved something great and i would really like to send them to their author for his delight’ (ibid.: 144). ivask did send the translations to pasternak, but whether pasternak read them or not is not clear from the archives: there is no mention of them in pasternak’s last letter to ivask dated february 18, 1960; and on may 30, 1960, boris pasternak died. the translations of oras were redundant. pasternak was self-sufficient in terms of his resources; he had a good translator in the person of his younger sister lydia pasternak slater, chemist, translator and poet, who lived in oxford, england. in her 1963 tour of the united states she recalled her brother’s telegram comment on her translations: “translation excellent, at your disposal” (sheldon 1963). while formulating her task as a translator, lydia pasternak has spoken of her belief that the goal of the translator is “to keep the sound of the 2 the letters are now preserved in the estonian literary museum, km ekla f. 237, m. 9:23, l. 4/4. 132 anne lange original” (ibid.). on the occasion of the new translation of doctor zhivago by richard pevear and larissa volokhonsky decades later, ann pasternak slater (2010) elaborated her mother’s view: boris’s poetry is formally rich, regularly rhymed, and metrically precise. it is full of delectable assonances, at once musical and wholly natural. my mother’s first priority was to reproduce his aural effects. she did. this difficult demand inevitably exacted its own price. her english is flawed – it sounds russian. but it sings, as pasternak’s poetry does. its quaintness is authentic. as oras in the opening sentence of his comments on translating pasternak says, his reading was no different. pasternak’s verse is all of a piece; it has its melodic authenticity. the “richness” of the poems that pasternak himself has referred to in the paris review interview is valid on both the formal and the content plane – or the all-of-a-piece-quality would be lost. when commenting on his task as a translator, oras limits himself to the formal aspects of his craft – the stanza structure, the verbal texture of the poems, the variety of vocabulary registers, and the management of sound – although his explanations, particularly concerning the translation of “the miracle”, leave no doubt that his unit of translation was the text as a whole not its isolated prosodic qualities. but while aspiring to the unity of his craft, oras still had second thoughts about its mundane consequences. the translations were of special significance for him, as can be seen in his correspondence with rannit (preserved in the beinecke rare book and manuscript library at yale). in his letter of may 30, 1963 – that is, three years later – oras reminds rannit of his unused pasternak translations. he admits that his reminder is parmupirin = as boring as a gadfly. but “pärast pasternaki-tõlgete ilmumist oleks nimelt võib-olla kergem eesti luule tõlkeid avaldada” = ‘after the pasternak translations, it would be easier to publish my translations of estonian poetry as well’, as he had written to ivask when he began with his work’ (letters 1997: 164). neither of his translation series – his translations of pasternak or of estonian poetry into english – was published in his lifetime.3 3 oras’s translations of estonian poetry have not passed altogether unnoticed. in september 2014, when the us president barack obama, on his way to the nato summit in wales, stopped at tallinn to deliver his speech against the backdrop of the escalating military conflict in the ukraine, he quoted the estonian poet marie under in the translation of ants oras. 133notes on the notes references carlisle, olga 1960 = boris pasternak. the art of fiction no 25. in: the paris review 24. url: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4679/the-art-of-fiction-no25-boris-pasternak (accessed february 12, 2015). ivask, ivar 1959. boris pasternak: revolutsioon ja traditsioon vene kirjanduses [revolution and tradition in russian literature]. in: tulimuld 1–2, 60–68, 137–151. letters 1997 = akadeemia kirjades. ants orase ja ivar ivaski kirjavahetus 1957–1981 [academy in letters. correspondence of ants oras and ivar ivask 1957–1981]. compiled by sirje olesk. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum. pasternak slater, ann 2010. rereading doctor zhivago. in: the guardian, november 6. url: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/06/doctor-zhivago-borispasternak-translation (accessed february 12, 2015). sheldon, richard 1963. the poetry of pasternak. the sister of the russian writer brings critical perspective to his work. in: the michigan daily, august 27. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4679/the-art-of-fiction-no-25-boris-pasternak http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4679/the-art-of-fiction-no-25-boris-pasternak http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/06/doctor-zhivago-boris-pasternak-translation http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/06/doctor-zhivago-boris-pasternak-translation 134 anne lange hamlet the murmurs ebb; on to the stage i enter. i am trying, standing in the door, to discover in the distant echoes what the coming years may hold in store. the nocturnal darkness with a thousand binoculars is focused on to me. take away this cup, o abba, father, everything is possible to thee. i am fond of this thy stubborn project, and to play my part i am content. but another drama is in progress, and, this one, o let me be exempt. but the plan of action is determined, and the end irrevocably sealed. i am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood; life is not a walk across a field. translated by lydia pasternak slater from the michigan daily august 27, 1963 135notes on the notes hamlet hum. then silence. halting at the door, gazing far beyond the waiting stage, in the dying echoes from the floor i can hear what happens to my age. black binoculars are staring – rather night’s deep dusk in every staring glass now, if possible, have mercy, father, let for once this cup of torment pass. yes, i love thy plan, and none can shake it, i will play my part. but here the play points another way, so let me take it: this time, father, let me go my way. yet the goal is fixed – the one and only dark solution that the plot will yield. pharisees prevail, and i am lonely. life is more than passing through a field. translated by ants oras from km ekla f. 237, m. 37:3, l. 2, 59 editorial the latest research in the field of verbal art focuses on different issues related to content and ideology, while the technical aspects gain less attention. at the same time the latter have not lost their relevance and we can even notice some growth of interest in their study. this concerns both fresh ideas and methods as well as introduction of novel material. the newly launched journal intends to focus on these aspects of verbal art (in the widest sense, including both literature and folklore) which are related to different angles of techné, primarily to its linguistic dimension. included in this are all spheres of poetics and all studies in versification, but also areas such as narratology and rhetorics which are not directly involved in extrapoetical issues such as ideological or cultural implications, and so on. this will not exclude psychological issues nor different problems of reception, although these will not be the main topics of the journal. we are interested in the diversity of both material and methods. the main thematic areas of the new journal are comparative-historical problematics and typological studies, while one of the aims of the editors is to introduce various aspects of fenno-ugric verse tradition, as well as other non-european and non-indo-european traditions to international discussion. yet the thematic range of the journal will not only include narrow language families nor certain schools. as for the methods, studia metrica et poetica is not related to a particular school or methodology. the only restriction is that the papers have to meet the requirements of scholarly research, that is, the results must be verifiable. furthermore, the studies of single poems are also not favoured, although we do not completely exclude these when we are dealing either with an important question or a significant text. we do not insist on the terminological coherence (already the terms ‘metre’ and ‘rhythm’ are used in very different meanings, compare as well the usage of such problematic terms as ‘ictus’, and so on). we do, however, expect from our authors methodological and terminological clarity. if we are dealing with a specific approach or terminological innovation, these have to be clearly defined. the journal will continue the tradition of tartu university press publishing important works in the sphere of poetics. here, for example, walter anderson’s classical study of the estonian regiverse (1935), and jaak põldmäe’s monograph on classical verse and stanzaic forms (1974) deserve to be mentioned, as well as põldmäe’s papers in the series by tartu university press problems in studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 7–8 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.01 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.01 8 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman modeling language (for instance, 1975), and yuri lotman’s monograph lectures on structural poetics (1964). already in the soviet period it was understood that versification studies require a separate series and thus in 1976 the first volume of studia metrica et poetica was published, edited by jaak põldmäe (1942-1979). the series continued to be issued also after the death of the editor-in-chief and existed until 1990 (see põldmäe 1976, 1977, mints 1987, talvet 1982, 1985, 1990). the launched journal will carry forward this academic tradition as a peer reviewed english language journal, with distinguished scholars serving as members of its editorial board. mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman references anderson, walter 1935. studien zur wortsilbenstatistik der älteren estnischen volkslieder. acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis b xxxiv. tartu: k. mattiesen. lotman, jurij 1964. lekcii po struktural’noj poetike. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. mints, zara (ed.) 1987. studia metrica et poetica. poeetiliste süsteemide dünaamika = trudy po metrike i poetike. dinamika poeticheskikh sistem. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. põldmäe, jaak 1974. klassikalisi luuletusja stroofivorme. tartu: tartu riiklik ülikool. põldmäe, jaak 1975. eesti silbilis-rõhulise värsisüsteemi uurimise meetod ja betti alveri poeemide nelikjambi rütm. in: rätsep. huno (ed.) keele modelleerimise probleeme 5. tartu riikliku ülikooli toimetised 363, 163-233. põldmäe, jaak (ed.) 1976. studia metrica et poetica i. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. põldmäe, jaak (ed.) 1977. studia metrica et poetica ii. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. talvet, jüri (ed.) 1982. studia metrica et poetica. värsiõpetuse aktuaalseid probleeme ja soome-ugri värsitehnika küsimusi = aktual’nye problemy stikhovedenija i voprosy finno-ugorskogo stikhoslozhenija. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. talvet, jüri (ed.) 1985. studia metrica et poetica. poeetilise teksti tüpoloogia, tõlke ja retseptsiooni probleeme = trudy po metrike i poetike. problemy tipologii, perevoda i recepcii poeticheskogo teksta. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. talvet, jüri (ed.) 1990. studia metrica et poetica. žanri ja kujundi poeetika = trudy po metrike i poetike. poetika zhanra i obraza. tartu: [tartu riiklik ülikool]. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_2.indd plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading, 5–7 october 2017, basel, switzerland clara martínez cantón, petr plecháč, pablo ruiz fabo, levente seláf the international conference plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading was organised by anne-sophie bories, hugues marchal (both university of basel), and gérald purnelle (liège university) held in basel, switzerland from 5 to 7 october 2017. this conference comprised 26 presentations in english and french, delivered by scholars from eleven different countries and devoted to a wide range of projects in which poetry, poetics, and poeticity meet with computers and quantitative models. the conference was opened by keynote speaker franco moretti (stanford literary lab). his topic, “totentanz. operationalizing aby warburg’s pathosformeln”, focused on visual arts, and the speaker presented their achievements in a collaborative research with leo impett (epfl) aiming to build a well-defined model of the german art historian aby warburg’s key concept “pathos formula”. the authors proposed to model the body expression of pathos by measuring the sizes of 11 angles formed by the spine and the thighs, shins, shoulders, arms, forearms, and head of the central figures found in the warburg’s “picture atlas” mnemosyne – a series of thematically organised panels with nearly 1,000 photographs of paintings, sculptures, book pages, stamps, tarot cards and other types of images. processing these multidimensional data by means of principal component analysis and cluster analysis has shown that they are able to identify not only the prototypical expression found in some motifs (“nymphs” × “non-nymphs”) but also the pathos expression of human body in general. the second keynote of the conference, valérie beaudouin (télécom paristech) presented the methods and results of metrical analysis of hexameter in classical french drama and 19th century french poetry. the corpus analysed consists of ca. 120,000 verses. the three possible strategies of the overviewed computer-assisted analysis are parsing the graphic chain, using machine learning techniques, or the syntactic analysis of the verses and their phonetic transcription. the software metrometre developed by the speaker could identify metrical syllables, metrical vowels, ends of words, parts of speech and stresses, allowing the representation of the alexandrine patterns: the frequency and occurrences of the schwa, the distribution of ends of words or stresses along the verse-lines. the chronological representation of the data studia metrica et poetica 4.2, 2017, 126–137 https://doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.05 127plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading showed the evolution in the use of the schwa from corneille to mallarmé, with a higher number of “e muet faible” in the later period, and a much more frequent use of function words at the end of the first hemistich by rimbaud and mallarmé than any previous poets of the studied corpus. a text mining tool permitted the clustering of the statements of the corpus dramas, and by this the distinction of different “world views”. there are clusters like “glory and honour”, “victory or loss”, “love”, etc., and their correspondence with specific rhythmical units of the hemistichs could be also represented. the clustering helped to identify not only two major topics in racine’s tragedies (love and death), but also the stylistic and grammatical patterns of their textual representations. another result was the discovery of frequent word-plays with the rhymes of the protagonists’ names in these texts. the concluding remarks cautioned against the overestimation of the rule of digital tools in the interpretation of the texts. all hypotheses suggested by digital analysis must be confirmed by a close reading and manual verification of the data. on the other hand the computational analysis might be also a source of inspiration for poetical creation: poetic rules in form of algorithms shall be used for automatic generation of poems by computers, or they might be reused by authors in their artistic processes. two examples were given of such an inspiration, namely, two novels written by the authors of oulipo. jacques roubaud’ “poésie”: is built up as a structure of metasonnets, where each component consists of 14 elements. the order of the chapters in italo calvino’s if on a winter‘s night a traveler reproduces in a similar way the metrical structure of the endecasillabo, the most prestigious italian verse used by renaissance epics like ariosto’s orlando furioso, which was an important source of inspiration for calvino. muriel louâpre (paris descartes university) and hugues marchal (university of basel) delivered a presentation entitled “modeling and visualizing the evolution of modern french scientific poetry”. it took as a starting point the confrontation of the theoretical thinking of sainte-beuve (1835) and patin (1848) about the death of scientific poetry with romanticism, opposed to others like fusil (1917), who claims that scientific poetry has never stopped flourishing, or caro (1878), who stated that his contemporary poets were reviving it. louâpre and marchal’s proposal is focused in testing the validity of these perceptions and approaching the subject from different perspectives. doing so, they presented a historical overview of the genre, which can also be useful as a case-study for understanding the dynamics of genre development. they quantified and visualized the number of scientific poetry books published per year in the 19th century, comparing two different databases. both sources basically serve to highlight the growth of scientific poetry in the second half of the century. the authors also approached the genre 128 clara martínez cantón, petr plecháč, pablo ruiz fabo, levente seláf through a visualization of scientific poetry by discipline, in different periods of the nineteenth century, finding relevant and changing trends. whereas at the beginning of the century, scientific poetry books were mostly about engineering, from 1810 to 1840 scientific poetry focuses mainly on medicine. the industrial age increased the number of poetry books devoted to engineering and earth sciences, and at the end of the century there was a clear tendency towards the poetry of biology, closely linked to that of medicine. to give a more complete approach to scientific poetry during the 19th century, the study also considered a sociological approach, quantifying and visualising the authors’ occupations in the different disciplines of scientific poetry, their geographical origin, their age, etc. louâpre and marchal also pointed out the possibility of focusing quantitative analysis on the formal aspects of the genre and its evolution. overall, the talk traced a clear history of the scientific poetry genre in france in the 19th century, based on a quantitative method. the presentation by véronique montémont (atilf and item labs in nancy and paris) was called “machiner la poétique”, and offered a description of the poetics of the autobiography genre. formal and content features of autobiographies were described, such as the use of first-person vs. second-person pronouns and the use of lexical items related to the concept of “authenticity”. it was discussed how these traits vary depending on factors such as subgenre within the autobiography overall genre, authors’ gender and publication period. clémence jacquot spoke on the topic of the possibilities of a stylistic research of guillaume apollinaire’s poems assisted by textometrical tools. apollinaire expressed his wish to simplify poetic language. this assertion was examined with the help of the txm software developed at the ens of lyon. the frequency of relative pronouns was calculated, as well as the most frequent words and topics in the poet’s œuvre. the talk also discussed interpretation problems when assessing these results; the importance of human intervention in checking the results was emphasised. finally, the talk highlighted the hyperapollinaire project, which offers an annotated version of all poems, permitting also chronology-based queries in the corpus. isabelle parkinson (queen mary university of london) presented on a topic entitled “a poetics defined in the paratext. significant data in against expression: an anthology of conceptual writing”. she focused on a network analysis approach to the content of the anthology, edited by dworkin and goldsmith (2011). networks were shown depicting which authors are cited in the text introducing other authors’ sections in the anthology. the temporal distribution of cited authors (from the 1910s to the 2010s) was also analysed. 129plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading the talk of klemens bobenhausen (independent researcher, freiburg im breisgau) and benjamin hammerich (eth zürich) was entitled “analyzing poetry. who’s better? humans or machines?” and devoted to the error rate and typology of errors found in frank 1993, schlawe 1972, and in the output of automatic verse processing system metricalizer that is being developed by the speakers (http://metricalizer.de). comparing the data on german iambic pentameter from these three sources, the speakers concluded that, although error rates of manual and automatic scansion are estimated to be more or less equal, there is an important difference in the quality of these errors. while most of them in schlawe and frank are produced by inertia of the annotator towards changes in the poem’s structure and/or basing the annotation on scansion of just a piece of the poem, half of the errors produced by metricalizer were simply due to typos in the input data (the second half due to the wrong interpretation of prosodically ambiguous words). the speakers also provided a strong criticism to frank’s book for its lack of any reference to the underlying data and bias, probably caused by a very subjective way of collecting them. levente seláf’s (elte, budapest) speech contrasted two methods for building poetical databases. the best results in computer-assisted analysis are obtained with full-text databases, containing already pre-treated texts, simplified from a philological point of view, belonging to “closed corpora” according to the terminology of the author: in these experiments the textual and metrical variability of the poems attested in different versions is generally disregarded, the number of poems is fixed, and the major prosodic rules are evident. such a simplified, polished corpus can easily be transformed to tei-xml and the analysis can sometimes obtain spectacular results. but when the poetical rules which are supposed to give coherence to a corpus are not homogeneous, and not even clear enough, the automation of the analysis is almost desperate. the talk presented the experiences of working with an “open corpus” during the building of the database nouveau naetebus, poetical repertory of old french non-lyric strophic verse. although the corpus is rather small, less than 1000 poems, some of them have over 50 manuscripts and some consist of several hundreds of strophes. this makes it very hard to propose a set of description criteria large enough to take into account all the principles behind their creation. and, of course, if there is no full text database to support such an analysis, it will be impossible to automate the comparison of the poems’ structures. two methods were proposed to handle the difficulties due to the obscurity of the poetical rules in the case of this corpus. the first method was to adopt (and adjust where needed) the poetical terminology of the leys d’amors, the mid-14th century poetical treatise of the toulouse poetical school. this treatise is not only descriptive and prescriptive, but also contains some 130 clara martínez cantón, petr plecháč, pablo ruiz fabo, levente seláf combinatorial patterns, allowing us to describe poems that do not exactly fit the rules known from the poetical tradition. the second method proposed, which may also be valid for other “open” corpora, would be to prepare a set of all potential poetical constraints (on the levels of sounds, syllables, words, hemistichs, verses, strophes, and poems), whether they were ever practiced or not in poetry according to our knowledge. this second option is inspired from the poetics of the group oulipo, and its invention of the “tableau queneleieff ”, an imitation of mendeleev’s periodic table but for poetical rules. anne-sophie bories (universität basel) proposed a reading of metrical patterns in aimé césaire’s free verse poem cahier d’un retour au pays natal. a prominent characteristic of french versification is the use of specific, unstable syllables, most of them containing the “mute e” /ə/. the paper presented césaire’s use of this sound in the cahier, its role in the phonetic system of the text, and compared it to apollinaire’s use. whilst most of the poem uses more of this characteristic syllables than one would expect, the data reveals peaks of increased and valleys of decreased use at and around the occurrences of a highly significant word for the author, the word “nègre”. this word has a different meaning in french – where it bears the racist connotations we know – and in césaire’s native martinique creole – where it simply means “man”. the insulting meaning of the word is underlined many times by its phonetic environment, when a consonant follows the word and forces a twosyllable, ostentatiously french pronunciation. progressively, as this meaning is replaced in the poem by that of the proud négritude, the word begins to appear followed by a vowel, eventually appearing as a monosyllable, closer to the creole word “nèg”. this paper exemplifies how text mining and data analysis can be used for stylistic studies, in this case to uncover a political use of language as césaire overlaps several discordant voices in his poem. peter verhaar (leiden university) contrasted in his presentation, “the heresy of quantification”, the literary aspects studied by traditional criticism and those addressed by criticism based on distant reading. his talk proposes to develop statistical methods and visualisation techniques which can genuinely integrate in hermeneutic processes. as a case study, the poetry of louis macneice and w.b. yeats was analysed computationally, focusing on sound effects, such as rhymes (perfect, internal, slant and semi-rhymes) and alliteration. the main idea is to study within digital humanities, the stylistic devices, rather than parameters further away from traditional criticism, such as word frequency. verhaar carried out an interesting comparison of macneice and yeats, to arrive at a critical reflection on quantification: how can we quantify certain aspects of literature? are counts always objective? as a conclusion, verhaar pointed out that, since algorithms are created by human beings, they 131plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading carry a strong, subjective charge on the identification of textual phenomena and their analysis. his talk defended that the results of distant reading need to be well explained and interpreted. the talk by gérald purnelle (university of liège) was called “profilage métrique: projet de typologie automatisée en versification française moderne et contemporaine” [“metrical profiling: project for automated typology in modern and contemporary french versification”]. here he outlined several dimensions to characterize 20th century poetry in french, such as prosody, metrics and rhyme. several markers were defined for each of those dimensions, paying attention to where different characteristics stand with respect to classical french versification between the 17th and the 19th centuries: is a classical feature being respected, modified, or abandoned, in a given poem, collection or author’s corpus? for instance, one of the features proposed in the typology is the presence of hemistichs of unequal length, or the presence of lines with a ternary (rather than binary) prosodic scheme. statistical methods to profile authors based on characteristics like the above were presented, such as correspondence analysis and hierarchical clustering. the typology presented in the talk is intended as a starting point for developing a computational system that would automate the annotation of the characteristics on which the typology relies. david birnbaum (university of pittsburgh) and elise thorsen (novetta) proposed in their talk entitled “exploring inexact rhymes in russian verse” a way to automatically detect rhymes in russian poetic texts that comprise not only perfect matches but also imperfect ones. their algorithm decomposes the sequences of line-final sounds into distinctive features – each line is thus represented by a string of zeros and ones (bit string). in order to estimate the probability that two lines rhyme, the edit distance between their bit string representations is calculated (i. e. the number of positions where strings differ). the speakers also briefly discussed how to identify the location of stress (which is required for the decision about how many sounds to be taken into account) in the words not found in their annotated dictionary by the inference from recurring metrical patterns. natalie houston (university of massachusetts lowell), specialist in victorian poetry and print culture, presented a paper on historical poetics using a computational approach. given the historical contingency of many poetic features, her work intended to test different historical models of poetry over historical poetic practice. the talk was focused on rhyme as a historical practice with changing cultural significance. drawing on data sources like a rhyme dictionary of the 19th century, the computational analyses produced data about rhyme patterns and lists of rhyme syllables, as well as rhyme words 132 clara martínez cantón, petr plecháč, pablo ruiz fabo, levente seláf and percentages of perfect and near rhyme used in the 19th century. this work on rhyme represents an exploration of a formal feature departing from a historical theory, improving the understanding of the context and poetics of the time. another way of rhyme detection was proposed by petr plecháč (czech academy of sciences) in a talk entitled “collocation-driven method of discovering rhymes in a corpus of czech, english, and french poetic texts”. the described method relies on the fact that any large enough corpus of rhymed poetry inevitably contains repetition of rhyming pairs. the algorithm is thus able to identify certain portion of rhymes without any knowledge on their pronunciation by means of adaptation of the usual collocation extraction technique (line-final words that co-occur in neighbouring lines more often than would be expected by chance). this sample is then used as a training set for simple machine-learning. roel smeets (phd candidate at radboud university nijmegen) and lucas van der deijl (phd candidate at the university of amsterdam) presented a talk entitled “character centrality in bonita avenue”. their presentation examined the sociology of character relations in the fictional world, taking the novel bonita avenue (buwalda 2010) as a case-study. the authors carried out an analysis of the character relation networks in the novel, applying what they called a computationally assisted close reading, that is, a study of a single literary work with computational methods in order to reveal quantifiable patterns and confirm or contradict what traditional criticism points out. their work consisted in recreating the three main characters’ social networks focusing on how strongly connected these characters were to other characters in the novel, using ner for extracting characters, and gephi to visualize it. as a result, in this particular case, they could confirm what had been said about the male main character of the novel by critics who had performed close reading on the work. the presenters also pointed out how quantifiable data allows to provide evidence on relations such as power or influence. smeets and van der deijl defended the use of this kind of computational approach complementing close reading, and acknowledged the difficulty of using network analysis for a comparison of multiple novels, due to their different narrative structure. daniele silvi and fabio ciotti (both tor vergata university, rome) compared in their presentation two approaches to the analysis of themes present in a corpus: human annotation using a digital platform, and text analytics. their talk, entitled “computer aided thematic annotation vs. topic modeling: a comparison on italian vernacular poetry”, is based on work done within memorata poetis, a project focused on the thematic annotation of a corpus of latin, greek, italian, and arabic epigraphic and epigrammatic texts. the 133plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading project team carried out a thematic analysis of the texts, manually annotating motifs and thematic elements, based on a predefined thesaurus. this kind of annotation corresponds to a traditional approach of thematic analysis in literary studies, consisting in a critical activity based on human hermeneutical competence, which is a qualitative method. but the question that underlies this work is if topic modelling would yield similar results and, therefore, if it can be considered a proper proxy of literary thematic analysis. with that goal, the authors compared the sets of thematic annotations produced by human annotators, and the results of a lda topic modelling applied to a corpus of early italian poetry. the results of topic modeling partly coincided with those of manual annotation. however, the authors warned that lda topic modelling for poetry is still flawed, especially for short and linguistically diverse texts as the ones found in the corpus. it does not take into account specific features of the poetic form, such as the specific location of the topic in the text. in their conclusions, the authors stated that the application of topic modelling can be justified in exploratory contexts to test preliminary hypothesis. their results open the door to further explorations, both on the methodological and critical sides. the speech by christian erwich (vrije universiteit amsterdam) was devoted to a computer assisted analysis of psalm 89 of the hebrew bible. one of the most crucial problems in the interpretation of the psalms is the identification of the participants (god, humans, david, etc.) because of the continual shift in person, number and gender. the method of analysis consists in identifying similar shifts in the entire bible in order to find parallels to psalm 89, with the aim of identifying its specific genre and eventually the speaker of verses 2–5. the “longest common subsequences” were searched and identified in the biblical text in order to find grammatically parallel structures. the result of the research was the reduction of the possible speakers of the first verses of the psalm (but the identification remained unsolved), and also the determination of the precise literary genre of the poem: the linguistic analysis proves that it shares the most common features of the other psalms, and the calculation of the ratio of parallel verses shows the strongest similarity with the korahite psalms of the bible. numa vittoz (university of zurich) questioned the possibilities of analysing musicality of free-verse poems by the example of yves bonnefoy’s rive d’une autre mort. the talk presented all the difficulties that emerge in the process of identification of prosodic rules and effects in this corpus, because of the loose, unclear definition of the versification patterns in free (or semi-free) verse. as a solution the talk proposed the creation of a phonetic database of the syllables for such a corpus, enumerating also the obstacles: a software analysing the 134 clara martínez cantón, petr plecháč, pablo ruiz fabo, levente seláf data should take into account so many devices and particularities of the poetical text, besides its phonetic structure, all meaningful for its poetic strength and musicality, that it still seems to be too complicated to develop such a tool despite the wonderful achievements of the digital humanities. clara martínez cantón and pablo ruiz fabo (both uned university in madrid) presented their work carried out in collaboration with elena gonzález-blanco (uned) and thierry poibeau (cnrs, lattice lab). the talk was entitled “automatic enjambment detection as a new source of evidence in spanish versification”. a system to automatically detect enjambment in spanish, as characterized by a. quilis (1964) and k. spang (1983) was presented. the system relies on a natural-language-processing pipeline. based on this, detection rules identify morphosyntactic contexts for enjambment. data on the evolution of enjambment across line-positions in spanish sonnets (15th to 19th centuries) were presented based on the results of the automatic enjambment analysis system. éliane delente and richard renault (both university of caen normandy) presented the results and the limits of poetic analysis as they experienced it via the anamètre database, created at the university of caen. the textual corpus comprises 12,161 modern (mainly 19th century) french poems and 100 dramas (677,267 verses encoded in tei-xml). the metrical analysis of the texts is automated on the levels of verse lines and strophic forms. the database has so far allowed obtaining metrical statistics, rhyme dictionaries, diaereses, and drawing a repertory of metres and fixed forms. further steps of the project include the addition of stylometric and lexicometrical analysis of texts, and the application of the database for didactic purposes. the presentation also gave important examples when the automatic treatment of the corpus was not convenient, and established three categories: 1) when human interventions are necessary to obtain a correct analysis that could not be achieved with the help of the computer; 2) types of analyses that haven’t been implemented in the program but could still enrich the database (e.g. the representation of certain metrical ambiguities); and 3) phenomena that could hardly or never be treated automatically. the greatest number of human interventions was necessary in the case of the diaeresis, badly identified by the computer in case of 7,47 % of the verses. finally, the authors mentioned further problems that the automatic analysis of french verses may face, like the treatment of enjambments, and other rare metrical phenomena. caroline ardrey (university of birmingham) presented a talk entitled “lectures et relectures numériques de la poésie de baudelaire à travers la déclamation orale” [“digital readings and re-readings of baudelaire”]. she described current results at the baudelaire song project. the project is annotating audio 135plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading from poetry readings at several levels: syllable, word, line and stanza, sense units and musical phrases. the “voice visualisations” that result are helping students understand the rules of french versification. besides, the project is building up a public archive of performance. examples of annotated poems were presented as well as their representations on the “visualising voice” platform. burkhard meyer-sickendiek and hussein hussein (both free university of berlin) presented an ambitious project “rhythmicalizer: a digital tool to identify free verse prosody”. their research team aims to automatically discover and classify rhythmical patterns found in a large body of modern and postmodern poetry. the project deals with both written texts and recordings of their recitations. furthermore it employs text-to-speech models in order to identify specificities of poetic speech. it has been shown that the combined analysis of text and audio allows identifying philologically relevant clusters such as “cadenced rhythm”, “sprung rhythm”, or “staccato rhythm”. the presentation by christophe imperiali (university of bern) was entitled “structures du vers dit” [“structures of spoken verse”]. he presented a model to describe the structures for a given poet’s verse at a given time. three levels of analysis are considered, i. e. metrical, syntactic and prosodic analyses, and criteria for prominent positions are described within each level. the model takes into account both punctuation and whitespace as prosodic cues. the prosodic hierarchy is also considered as a source for identifying prominent positions. acoustic criteria are also part of the model, such as syllable length and intensity, pitch, and pause length. claus-michael schlesinger (university of stuttgart) presented a talk entitled “reading writing machines. text analysis and generative aesthetics in text generators (1955–1970).” the speaker focused not only on the algorithms of the early poem generators and the texts that they have produced (e.g. lutz 1959), but he also analysed the original “human-produced” texts that served as a basis for setting up the input vocabularies and offered a historical contextualisation of these experiments. antonio rodriguez (university of lausanne) presented “la machine lyrique ou l’incarnation du support” [“the lyrical machine or the incarnation of support”]. this was a thought-provoking talk about the role in society of poetry and of different actors related to poetry (e.g. poets themselves and academia), paying particular attention to the role of digital technology. in this respect, he introduced the concept of the “poetry network”, which comprises poetry-related actors, such as the internet, social media, software engineering, or academic, cultural and creative institutions, as well as poetry readers and writers interacting with the actors just mentioned. he also presented the 136 clara martínez cantón, petr plecháč, pablo ruiz fabo, levente seláf “printemps de la poésie” festival [“spring of the poets”], which has been taking place since 2016 in switzerland. this festival will involve 100 institutions in 2018 and 400 organizers. the final speaker christian hänggi (university of basel) presented in his talk entitled “the pynchon playlist: a statistical analysis” a structured overview of musical references in novels and short stories of thomas pynchon. the speaker collected nearly 1,000 such references (including very cryptic ones) and offered a detailed analysis of the musical genres and composers with which they are being associated. furthermore the speaker discussed the density of musical references in pynchon’s specific works and its correlation with the period in which the plot takes place.1 1 clara martínez and pablo ruiz were supported by the postdata project (starting grant erc-2015-stg-679528, pi elena gonzález-blanco). petr plecháč was supported by the czech science foundation, project ga17-01723s (stylometric analysis of poetic texts). all the authors contributed equally to this work. 137plotting poetry: on mechanically enhanced reading references buwalda, peter 2010. bonita avenue. amsterdam: de bezige bij. caro, elme-marie. 1878. la poésie scientifique au xixe siècle. in: revue des deux mondes, 1878. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k87077w/f524.item. dworkin, craig; goldsmith, kenneth 2011. against expression. an anthology of conceptual writing. northwestern university press. frank, horst j. 1993. handbuch der deutschen strophenformen. 2nd corrected edition. tübingen – basel: francke verlag. fusil, casimir alexandre 1917. la poésie scientifique de 1750 à nos jours. paris: scientifica. https://archive.org/details/laposiescienti00fusi. lutz, theo 1959. stochastische texte. in: augenblick 4(1), 3–9. patin, henri 1848. la poésie didactique à ses différens âges. in: revue des deux mondes, 15 february 1848. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k86906m/f716. item. quilis, antonio 1964. estructura del encabalgamiento en la lírica española. consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, patronato menéndez pelayo, instituto miguel de cervantes. sainte-beauve, charles agustin 1937. poètes et romanciers de france: jacques delille. in: revue des deux mondes, 1 august 1937. http://galica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ bpt6k868604/f274.item. schlawe, fritz 1972. die deutschen strophenformen: systematisch-chronologisches register zur deutschen ly rik 1600–1950. stuttgart: j. b. metzlersche verlagsbuchhandlung. spang, kurt 1983. ritmo y versificación: teoría y práctica del análisis métrico y rítmico. murcia: universidad de murcia. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe* mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja it is hard to imagine more versatile a scholar of poetry than jaak põldmäe (1942–1979). in the course of his short life (particularly short for a humanist scholar) he made a significant contribution to the development of various areas of verse theory and the dissemination of knowledge of poetics. põldmäe paid equal attention to both the development of verse theory (see his works on the typology of metrical systems,1 the theory and the typology of vers libre,2 methodological problems in the description of poetic rhythm,3 rhyme and stanzaic structures4) and the description of empirical material used in case studies such as his research on the metric repertoires of jaan kärner and lydia koidula,5 the rhythm of betti alver’s iambic tetrameter,6 and useful overviews of the metric repertoire and rhythm of estonian verse, primarily those of syllabicaccentual meters.7 põldmäe’s book eesti värsiõpetus [estonian verse theory]8 * this is a revised version of the paper which was first published in russian in 1987 (see gasparov, lotman, rudnev, tarlinskaja 1987). translation by igor pilshchikov and marina tarlinskaja. edited by igor pilshchikov. publication supported by the estonian research council grants put1231 and put634. we are grateful to ronald vroon, who thoroughly revised the draft manuscript and provided many necessary corrections. 1 põldmäe 1970a. 2 põldmäe 1970b, 1975a and 1977a. 3 see, for example, põldmäe 1975b (an earlier version of this article forms chapter 3 in the author’s candidate [phd] dissertation põldmäe 1971a), põldmäe 1971b, 1971c, and põldmäe, remmel 1974. 4 põldmäe 1974a; põldmäe, viitso 1970 and 1973. 5 põldmäe 1970c and appendix to põldmäe 1971a; põldmäe 1981. 6 põldmäe 1971a, 1971b, and 1975b. 7 põldmäe 1968, 1971a, and 1976a. 8 põldmäe 1978. studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 130–149 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.06 131approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe was a remarkable event not only in estonian poetics, but also in the general theory of verse. this book was to become põldmäe’s academic testament.9 põldmäe’s lectures and efforts to popularize verse studies deserve special mention. he regularly taught a special course on poetics at the department of estonian philology of the philological faculty of tartu university, which published some of his teaching materials.10 one of these publications, entitled klassikalisi luuletusja stroofivorme [classical poetic and stanzaic forms],11 is a valuable reference book which has no counterparts in other academic traditions. in addition, he directed the activities of the departmental undergraduate research society and edited the publications of this society.12 he was also a member of the editorial boards of several periodicals published by the university of tartu press (in particular, sign systems studies).13 põldmäe managed to become the founding editor of studia metrica et poetica, the only periodical in the soviet union fully devoted to the issues of prosody and poetics.14 he edited the first two volumes, and prepared two others for publication.15 it is impossible to characterize all the various aspects of jaak põldmäe’s academic activities and research in one short paper. we shall focus only on those issues that are of particular interest for general verse theory and therefore for the study of other poetic traditions besides estonian. some of these phenomena are similar in different poetic traditions, while others allow us to look at the particulars of russian, german, english etc. verse in a broader context. 9 he did not, however, consider this book as his final statement. the book is primarily devoted to the systemic aspect of estonian verse. põldmäe intended to present the results of his more detailed and descriptive research (including the statistical data) in a book devoted to a historical evolution of estonian verse. nevertheless, even the significance of estonian verse theory goes far beyond the problem described in its title. published in estonian, it is unfortunately available only to a relatively narrow circle of specialists. therefore it is highly desirable to translate it (in its entirety or at least in part) into other languages, in particular into english and russian. – põldmäe often revised his own earlier formulations. in this article we use the latest wordings taken mainly from põldmäe 1978. 10 põldmäe 1974b, 1974c, and 1977b. 11 põldmäe 1974b. 12 see, for example, põldmäe (ed.) 1976a. 13 sign systems studies started as a series within the general framework of acta universitatis tartuensis, and became an independent international journal in 1998. – ed. 14 studia metrica et poetica also started as a series of acta universitatis tartuensis, and was revived in its present form in 2014. – ed. 15 põldmäe (ed.) 1976b and 1977; talvet (ed.) 1981 and 1985. 132 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja the axioms of versification systems two tendencies are particularly conspicuous in the scholarly legacy of jaak põldmäe. although partially counter-directed, they both represent commonly acknowledged trends in contemporary scientific methodology. one is a tendency toward pluralism, the emphasis on the possibility of alternative solutions, the desire to liberate verse theory from the dogmas of the “once and for all” accepted formulations; the other is a tendency toward maximum consistency, explicitness, and unambiguous description. at the same time, põldmäe clearly (though not always explicitly) distinguishes between the area of axioms, on the one hand, and the area of conclusions and practical solutions, on the other. when we determine the axiomatic basis of a theory, the confrontations of ideas are fruitful, and the progress of knowledge is possible only through such confrontations. but after adopting a particular thesis as an axiom, we have to draw all the consequences with maximum consistency and completeness. any inconsistency will lead to inadequate results of the research. addressing such an important and complicated problem as the typology of metrical systems in estonian poetry, põldmäe cites sympathetically the words of john lotz, who pointed out that such typologies may be constructed in manifold ways (põldmäe 1978: 84). in contrast to his predecessors, põldmäe does not confine himself to compiling the list of versification systems which, in his opinion, are available in estonian poetry, but clearly states the aims and principles of his taxonomy beforehand, and outlines the main theoretical propositions that this taxonomy is designed to implement. unlike all previous concepts, the typology of versification systems suggested by põldmäe is constructed as a purely deductive calculus whose results are subsequently compared with the available poetic material. such an approach ensures the uniformity of the criteria for the identification of metrical systems and the consistency of their description. moreover, it becomes possible to describe not only those metrical systems that are manifested in poetic practice, but also those which are theoretically possible for the given poetic tradition. an axiomatic approach to the phenomena of versification was proposed by roman jakobson and john lotz, and exemplified by their description of the system of mordovian folk verse as early as 1941 (see jakobson, lotz 1941).16 independently of them, in the 1940s, mikhail p. shtokmar started (but did not finish) his work on the “mendeleev table of versification systems”: he advanced in the same direction, though using more traditional terminology. in a paper 16 cf. a revised english version: jakobson, lotz 1952. – ed. 133approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe presented at the conference on mathematical methods in analyzing literature, poetry and the poetic language held in gorky (now nizhny novgorod) on 23–27 september 1961, vyacheslav v. ivanov suggested the idea of using an axiomatic approach to deduce the features of possible metrical systems from the phonological features of the given language.17 põldmäe’s achievement was the implementation of this idea using, for the first time, a particular system of national (in his case, estonian) verse in its entirety. he identified all possible metrical systems allowed by this approach. põldmäe was one of those verse theorists who maintain that versification is determined by the properties of a national language. however, unlike many other supporters of this thesis who conceive of only one metrical system pertaining to each given language (on the basis of an analysis, often superficial, of the prosodic structure of this language), he succeeded in demonstrating that, for example, eight different metrical systems are equally natural for the estonian language. it should be noted at this point that põldmäe’s expertise in the prosody of the estonian language was on a par to that of a professional linguist: he developed his own point of view on many controversial issues of estonian prosody, and defended his positions in debates with other phonologists.18 any typology of verse is based on the fact that speech is divided into syllables [...]. the number of syllables is an essential feature of the estonian word because in estonian the vowels of unstressed syllables are not reduced. the inflection of a word depends on the number of its syllables, and the rhythmic segmentation of a word depends not only on the prosodic characteristics of its syllables, but also on their number. this makes the estonian syllable a psychologically relevant unit and creates the prerequisites for using the syllabic system in versification. (põldmäe 1978: 84) in addition to the perceptibility of the syllable, estonian prosody is characterized by a relative independence of both stress and quantity (there are at least three degrees of length), which can also construct a versification system. as a result, the following versification systems are identified: i. the syllabic system, in which the number of syllables in a verse line is regulated. 17 see an overview of ivanov’s paper in zholkovskij 1962: 96 and revzin 1962: 163. – ed. 18 see, for example, põldmäe 1975c. 134 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja ii. the prosodic systems, in which the arrangement of syllables characterized by a particular prosodic feature in a verse line (but not the total number of syllables) is regulated. a) t h e q u a n t i t a t i v e s y s t e m. the alternation of long and short vowels in a verse line is regulated. b) t h e a c c e n t u a l s y s t e m. the arrangement of those syllables in a verse line on which the primary stress is placed is regulated.19 c) t h e a c c e n t u a l q u a n t i t a t i v e s y s t e m. both the arrangement of the syllables on which the primary stress is placed and the alternation of long and short vowels in a verse line are regulated. iii. the syllabic-prosodic systems, in which both the arrangement of syllables characterized by a particular prosodic feature and the total number of syllables in a verse line are regulated. a) t h e s y l l a b i c a c c e n t u a l s y s t e m. both the arrangement of the syllables on which the primary stress is placed and the total number of syllables in a verse line are regulated. moreover, a change in the number of primary stresses in a verse line causes a change in the number of syllables. b) t h e s y l l a b i c q u a n t i t a t i v e s y s t e m. both the number of syllables and the alternation of long and short vowels in a verse line are regulated. c) t h e q u a n t i t a t i v e s y l l a b i c a c c e n t u a l s y s t e m. [three parameters] are regulated: the arrangement of the syllables on which the primary stress is placed, the total number of syllables in a verse line, and the alternation of long and short vowels. iv. free verse. neither the number of syllables or stresses in a verse line nor the alternation of long and short vowels are regulated. in addition to the differences in syntax, grammar, and vocabulary, this type of verse differs from prose in special rhythmic-intonational segmentation. (põldmäe 1978: 84–85) notably, although these versification systems were deduced in a speculative way, they are all found in estonian poetic practice. predictably, põldmäe’s approach not only proved its efficiency for the analysis of estonian verse, but also served as a model for similar studies in 19 in estonian, not only the primary stress but also the secondary stress is phonologically relevant. 135approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe other national poetic traditions. boris egorov modified põldmäe’s method and suggested a calculus of russian versification systems (see egorov 1973). vyacheslav shapovalov made an attempt at the application of this method to the analysis of kyrgyz verse (see shapovalov 1975). one of the most important prescriptions governing contemporary scientific research, is verifiability, or rather falsifiability (popper 1959: 41–42).20 unfalsifiabile statements are of minimal value to scientific knowledge: they are either too trivial or too general or too vague. põldmäe always aimed at the maximum falsifiability of his results: his argumentation is consistent and clear, his formulations are characterized by a precision bordering on polemical sharpness. therefore, it is not surprising that põldmäe’s works did not always meet enthusiastic responses. sometimes he had to defend his point of view in vigorous debates. põldmäe’s typology of versification systems also invites some questions. to pass them over in silence would be uncongenial to the spirit of his works. the assertion that any type of versification is necessarily based on syllable count leads to certain difficulties, particularly in the description of accentual verse. the russian tradition of verse studies initiated by aleksandr vostokov assumes that the main prosodic unit in tonic (accentual) verse is not the stressed syllable but the “phonetic word,” i. e. a set of syllables united by the main stress (or, in vostokov’s terminology, “the prosodic period”).21 this approach has some advantages, e. g. in the interpretation of “extra-metrical” stresses in accentual verse. it is not a coincidence, then, that the typology of põldmäe’s accentual verse is somewhat different from the taxonomy accepted in russian verse theory (see, for example, gasparov 1974: 16–17, 220–221, 398–400).22 põldmäe distinguished the following types of accentual verse: (1) the stress-meter23 (corresponding to the russian dolnik with a predominant trisyllabic metrical period) of three varieties: dactyloids, amphibrachoids, and anapestoids; 20 an explicit reference to popper is absent from the original russian publication of this article. – ed. 21 see vostokov 1817: 105–107. similarly, mikhail gasparov introduced the term “metrical word” to describe a phrase governed by one metrical stress (gasparov 1974: 145). – ed. 22 for a critical assessment of gasparov’s concept of accentual verse see lotman 1995: 330–334. – ed. 23 estonian: rõhkur; russian: udarnik. 136 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja (2) the dolnik with a predominant disyllabic metrical period,24 of two varieties: trochaids and iambids (in põldmäe’s earlier publications these varieties were not differentiated and were both called “tactoids”); (3) the paeanid (earlier called the “accentoid”), corresponding to the russian taktovik; (4) the phrase-meter25 (earlier called the “syntagmoid”), corresponding to russian accentual verse properly (aktsentnyj stikh). this taxonomy, quite interesting in its design and consistently developed, appears to be more “syllabic-accentual” in comparison with its russian counterpart: the initial syllabic-accentual metric forms are discernible through accentual meters. a terminological shift may also be noted: gasparov’s “dolnik” becomes põldmäe’s “tactoid”, gasparov’s “taktovik” becomes põldmäe’s “accentoid”, and both metrical forms are unconditionally qualified as varieties of accentual verse. classifying the varieties of tonic verse presents certain difficulties for russian verse theory as well. despite obvious accomplishments, there are still issues that have yet to be resolved. a purely negative definition of free verse cannot be considered sufficient. the reference to “special rhythmic-intonational segmentation” does not explain much because one does not know what determines this segmentation. põldmäe did not support ain kaalep’s attempt to approach vers libre in terms of its syntactic organization,26 which means that põldmäe rejected any possibility of either syntactically organized prosody or any kind of prosody based on anything but syllabification. põldmäe was well aware of this imperfection. in order to improve it he proposed a very attractive theory and typology of free verse. typology of free verse põldmäe expressed his concept of free verse in the following propositions: 1. vers libre is poetic speech, not prosaic speech. therefore [...] in the study of vers libre it is necessary to use the concepts of verse theory, applying them in accordance with the systemic features of free verse [...]. 24 in order to denote this type of the dolnik verse põldmäe used the term paisur (from the estonian paisuma ‘to expand, to swell’). 25 estonian: lausur; russian: frazovik. 26 cf. kaalep 1959; põldmäe 1976b: 332–335. 137approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe 2. a consideration of the rhythm of vers libre should start from the rhythmical impulse which embraces the whole text: the accidental patterns of individual verse lines [...] should not be perceived as a system.27 vers libre is not an exception from this rule: some verse lines in a tactoid can also fit the pattern of the syllabic-accentual trochee, dactyl etc., but this does not affect the recognition of the poem’s meter. [...] 3. as far as vers libre is concerned, there is no reason to speak of ictuses and non-ictuses, arses and theses.28 however, even in vers libre the beginning of the verse line and its ending perform special functions in comparison with the nucleus of the verse line. [...] in the typology of vers libre, the correspondences between those segments of verse lines which take part in the creation of the general rhythmical impulse of the poem can be taken into account. 4. [...] a vers libre poem can be a combination of segments of free verse of different types. therefore, a distinction between homogeneous and heterogeneous free verse might be fruitful; the latter consists of different homogeneous parts. 29 5. [...] free verse can be “stricter” [a little less free] and “looser” [a little more free]. 6. rhyme cannot distinguish between free and “non-free” verse. [...] the role of the rhyme in the classification of vers libre is the same as in the characterization of the rhythm of other mettrical systems. 7. [...] the sound orchestration and rhyme can be considered optional parameters in the typology of free verse. 8. a typology of free verse should obviously be based on its most common features. these should either be constant in all sytems of verse or change in a similar way in different sytems of verse. (põldmäe 1978: 169–172)30 27 the author wages hidden polemics with aleksandr zhovtis, who defined vers libre as a verse formed by optional repetitions (see, for example, zhovtis 1966). 28 in põldmäe’s terminology, “ictuses” and “non-ictuses” refer to the metrically strong and resp. metrically weak positions in a versification system based on the tonic (accentual) principle, whereas “arses” and “theses” refer to the same positions in a versification system based on the quantitative principle. 29 therefore the phenomenon of polymetrism is generalized: polymetric patterns can also be found within the scope of free verse. 30 the presentation of the same topic in põldmäe 1977: 85–90 is somewhat different. 138 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja põldmäe’s classification of estonian vers libre is constructed as a system of binary distinctive features: 1. homogeneous vs. heterogeneous. 2. short vs. long.31 3. with a large dispersion vs. with a small dispersion.32 4. metric vs. dismetric: a) with regular variation vs. with irregular variation; b) with regularly structured nuclear part of the verse line vs. with irregularly structured nuclear part of the verse line; c) with regular anacruses vs. with irregular anacruses; d) with regular clausulae vs. with irregular clausulae; 5. rhymed vs. blank [unrhymed]; 6. orchestrated vs. non-orchestrated. (põldmäe 1978: 172)33 perhaps not all the aforementioned solutions are indisputable, and not all the features of free verse are equally relevant (põldmäe himself emphasized the preliminary character of this typology). the effectiveness of põldmäe’s approach will be validated by future descriptive studies of estonian vers libre. he outlined the program of these studies but was not granted enough time to implement it. for the time being, we would like to point to some fundamental features of põldmäe’s approach which, in our opinion, show significant progress in comparison with more traditional views on the nature of vers libre. first, the very idea of a typology of free verse implies a rejection of the widespread view of vers libre as a rhythmically amorphous form. 31 the border between short verse and long verse is the threshold of 8–9 syllables which corresponds to an average length of a phrase in speech. this also applies to russian verse, as boris yarkho demonstrated (see lapshina, romanovich, yarkho 1934: 26). 32 the value of dispersion is calculated as the ratio of the standard dispersion and the mean number of syllables in a verse line. the standard dispersion (s) is determined by the formula: s = √ (x – x̄) 2k – 1 , where x is the length of the given verse line, x̄ is the mean length of the verse line, and k is the number of verse lines (põldmäe 1978: 173). if the standard dispersion exceeds the mean length of the verse line by more than 25%, then the dispersion is considered large, otherwise it is considered small. although põldmäe determined the length of the verse line by the number of its syllables, it is evident that it is possible and worthwhile to determine the value of the dispersion by the number of stresses. 33 in põldmäe 1977: 93, yet another feature is added: “strophoidal vs. astrophic”. 139approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe second, free verse is viewed in connection with other versification systems, and the features on which its typology is based are not invented ad hoc – they are relevant to other versification systems as well.34 põldmäe mentioned the possibility of verse forms which are transitional to vers libre (in total, “between eight [versification] systems there exist 28 transitional [...] forms”35). most importantly, the analysis of the rhythm of free verse ceases to be a matter of the researcher’s intuition. the use of an explicit analytical procedure allows for the replacement of intuitive knowledge with scientific knowledge. approaches to syllabic-accentual rhythm põldmäe was never interested in the problems of verse theory as such, but only insofar as their solution could contribute to a more accurate and adequate description of actual poetic material. no matter how significant the results of his theoretical investigations, they were of secondary interest for him: he believed that the development of analytical tools should not overshadow the results of the analysis. the description of the rhythmic phenomena of estonian verse was always among põldmäe’s main goals. using the type of stochastic-statistical analysis that had been successfully developed and applied by russian verse theorists for several decades, he studied various forms of estonian verse, primarily that of twentieth-century poetry: accentual and quantitative-accentual verse36 as well as syllabic-accentual verse. the rhythm of syllabic-accentual poems written between 1917 and 1940 was subject to the most detailed examination. (about 70% of texts and verse lines composed at that time were written using syllabicaccentual meters.) põldmäe paid particular attention to the most frequent meter of that period, iambic tetrameter. both the method of analysis and its results are highly instructive. 34 a similar approach to russian free verse was proposed by vadim baevskij (1972), although his typology is based on completely different features. 35 põldmäe 1971b: 9. the later formulation is even stronger: “between any two versification systems there lays an unlimited number of poems of the ‘transitional metrical forms’ type that differ in terms of their quantitative indicators. moreover, a transition from one feature to another is not discrete, but continuous” (põldmäe 1977: 91). 36 the results of this research were published only partially (see põldmäe 1969a and 1969b). in the last years of his life the scholar studied various forms of estonian hexameter, primarily quantitative hexameter. 140 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja one of the main difficulties encountered in the analysis of rhythm is the difference in the intensity of stresses. the need to explicate these differences was pointed out more than once, in particular, by viktor zhirmunskij (1925: ch. 3). however, in practical statistical calculations scholars usually limit themselves to a conventional division of syllables into two categories, stressed and unstressed, because the use of more differentiated rhythmic transcriptions (as in kolmogorov, prokhorov 1968) makes counting difficult. quantitative measuring of the intensity of stresses (as in baevskij 1966 and 1967) impede – or, according to põldmäe, exclude – the application of “typological characteristics” (põldmäe 1971b: 4) because of the incomparability and incommensurability of syllable strengths in languages with different prosodic structures. in order to solve this problem, põldmäe proposed an ingenious and effective method. the verse rhythm is described on different levels (at least two): on the level of metrical variations and the level of rhythmic variations. to quote: the rhythm analysis based on metric variations corresponds to the phonological analysis of words outside their context. (põldmäe 1971b: 27–28) this type of analysis corresponds chiefly to traditional analysis, the only difference being that it leaves much less room for arbitrariness thanks to the explicit criterion of stressability: the syllables are divided into stressed and unstressed. in the analysis of rhythmic variations, differences in the intensity of stresses are taken into account.37 a comparison of these empirical results with each other and with theoretically calculated probabilities allowed põldmäe to discover “the law of weighting” and “the centrifuge principle” in the rhythm of estonian syllabic-accentual verse. according to “the law of weighting” the intensity of stress increases toward the end of the verse line, toward the end of a group of verse lines united by the same rhyme, and at the absolute end of the stanza. “the centrifuge principle” is particularly fascinating. it results from the collision of “the law of weighting” with the tendency toward a decrease in the overall percentage of stresses at the end of the verse line, which was revealed in the analysis of the metrical variations. in other words, there are fewer stresses at the end of the verse line, but they are more intense there. obviously, without 37 the method for determining the intensity of stress is close to the one suggested in tarlinskaja 1967. the difference is that the stress in an estonian word also depends on the length of the stressed syllable. 141approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe the “double counting” of the metrical variations and the rhythmic variations, the discovery of “the centrifuge principle” would not have been possible.38 the discovery and systematization of such principles as “the law of weighting” and “the centrifuge principle” are of great importance for the typological studies of poetic rhythm. such studies promise to become an important new branch of comparative prosody in the nearest future. different traditions in estonian versification different metrical systems in estonian poetry are something more than differently organized phonetic material: they embody and materialize semantic and cultural-historical differences. at the same time, they all form a certain unity – the unity of estonian national versification. how do different traditions in a national versification interact? what are the semantic differences between the meters belonging to different versification systems? these complicated issues of contemporary poetics are particularly relevant for studies of estonian poetry in view of the rich potential of estonian prosody and a cultural situation that favours the development of diverse poetic forms. in the last years of his life põldmäe worked intensively on these problems. unfortunately, he did not have time to present the results of these studies as an integral picture. it is still possible that the relevant materials are preserved in his archive. but even the fragments found in his published works are very impressive; particularly interesting are põldmäe 1971a, 1974b and 1978. for estonian poetry, as well as for many other modern european literatures, two problems are especially significant: the relationship between literary and folk versification, and the ways of rendering the particulars of classical versification using the means available in estonian versification. these problems are typologically related: unlike estonian literary verse of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, both the versification of greek and latin antiquity and the versification of estonian folk poetry are, in one way or another, based on the quantitative principle. the study of the relationship between estonian folk verse and estonian literary verse is largely hindered by an insufficient knowledge of the former. the traditional interpretation of the so-called runic (or alliterative) verse as 38 an analysis of russian syllabic-accentual rhythm (gasparov 1977; 1980 [1977]) does not reveal any such tendencies. evidently, the “constant” stress on the last ictus of a russian verse line excludes any possible similarity to “the centrifuge principle”. 142 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja a quantitative trochaic tetrameter (the approach had been borrowed from finnish folklore studies) seems, at best, insufficient because the quantity rules governing the verse of estonian folksongs are very different from those used in classical versification, which is most familiar to the european poetic consciousness, or those used in the ˁarūḍ. in estonian folksongs the strong (i. e. metrically long) positions cannot be occupied by stressed short syllables and the weak (i. e. metrically short) positions cannot be occupied by stressed long syllables, whereas the unstressed syllables (either long or short) may be found in any position, in the same way as the metrically long and metrically short positions may fall on either stressed or unstressed syllables. however, põldmäe demonstrated that such a description does not explain all features of runic verse and cannot be deemed adequate. in contrast to the traditional interpretation of runic verse as metrically and prosodically homogeneous, põldmäe developed its typology and showed the difference between folk verse and literary runic verse, including “pseudo-runic” verse. in particular, he managed to establish the territorial differentiation of runic verse: the south estonian (more accentual) type differs from the north estonian (more quantitative) type to an even larger extent than the latter differs from the finnish type. põldmäe also planned to undertake a statistical survey of folk verse. bringing this project to fruition should be recognized as the most important task of estonian poetics today. estonian folk verse greatly influenced the development of literary verse. moreover, the nature of this influence was largely determined by the poetological concepts prevailing at the time. thus, at the end of the nineteenth century it was generally believed that runic verse was composed in (syllabic-)accentual trochaic tetrameter. hence trochaic tetrameter was regarded as the most appropriate meter for estonian literary poetry. the majority of estonian poems composed between 1883 and 1905 were written in trochaic tetrameters grouped in quatrains. the reason for such uniformity was, among other factors, jaan bergmann’s prescriptive article “the art of poetry”, in which the trochee is identified as the original estonian meter, and the author openly states that the ideal form of estonian verse is a quatrain consisting of four-ictus trochaic lines. (põldmäe 1971b: 17) a more faithful imitation of runic verse invented at that time was “pseudorunic” verse, in which the accentual rhythm of folk verse was reproduced, but its quantitative structure was not taken into account. this verse was interpreted 143approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe as a four-foot trochee (trochaic tetrameter) “animated” by dactyls. the popularity of this verse form was promoted by jaan bergmann in the article mentioned above and the authority of the poetic practice of f. r. kreutzwald. typologically, the pseudo-runic verse is a transitional form between the syllabicaccentual and the accentual (and/or syllabic) system. (põldmäe 1978: 156) in the early twentieth century the achievements of estonian studies in phonetics enabled scholars to revise the theory of folk versification and demonstrate its quantitative nature. accordingly, the literary imitations of runic verse began to take the quantitative principle into account (see the poems of gustav suits, villem grünthal-ridala, august annist, and others). the history of estonian imitations of classical greek and roman meters is worth noting. it repeats to a large extent the history of the literary imitations of runic verse but in some aspects it remains unique among other poetic traditions in europe. as we know, in the vast majority of modern european poetic systems attempts were initially made to quantitatively reproduce the rhythm of classical verse. these attempts turned out to be unproductive, and subsequently the various forms of quantitative verse were replaced everywhere by various types of accentual and syllabic-accentual verse. aage kabell, a fine connoisseur of classical and medieval versification, called this process “niederlage der wissenschaft und triumph der barbarei” (kabell 1960: 235). in estonian poetry the equivalents of classical forms evolved in the opposite direction: from the accentual principle to the quantitative principle. the first samples of estonian imitations of classical meters followed either syllabicaccentual or accentual versification systems (this reflects to a great extent the influence of german and russian translation practice). the most significant among them were translations and original poems by f. r. faehlmann and jaan bergmann (the latter, in particular, translated five books of the odyssey and the batrachomyomachia). however, just as in the case of runic verse, in the early twentieth century scholars and translators discovered that in estonian a more adequate rendition of classical verse was possible: a verse form based on the quantitative principle. moreover, august annist, for example, claimed that the quantitative principle used in imitation of classical verse should be the same as in folk verse. in actual practice, however, even in annist’s works the quantitative principle of classical meters is quite unlike the one used in estonian folksongs. it should be noted that most poets who used the quantitative principle in their imitations of runic verse also tried to use it, though differently, in their imitations of classical meters (examples are the works of suits, ridala and annist). 144 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja recently, different varieties of quantitative imitations of classical meters (belonging, in põldmäe’s classification, either to the quantitative or the quantitative-accentual or the quantitative-syllabic-accentual versification system) have enriched the metric repertoire of estonian poetry. these forms are widely used both in translations and in original poems; here, ain kaalep has been especially active. according to aage kabell’s typological periodization of the ways classical forms have been assimilated in european poetic systems, the contemporary stage of this process in estonian poetry should be defined as “die hohe schule der antikisierung” (kabell 1960: 119). * * * jaak põldmäe’s academic career was prematurely cut short. many of his plans remained unfulfilled. many hopes cherished by his colleagues and friends were not destined to be realized. however, what he accomplished is enough to ensure that his name will always be remembered in the history of poetics. the true intellectual merit of a humanist scholar is often inseparable from his or her outstanding human qualities. this is absolutely true with respect to jaak põldmäe. deeply devoted to scholarship, he was devoid of either academic selfishness or professional clannishness. he took as much joy in the success of his associates as in his own discoveries. he was very receptive to fresh insights and readily revised his own ideas when he came to deeper conclusions. as a reviewer and a participant in disputes and discussions he was noted for his open-mindedness and often provided invaluable assistance to his colleagues. every person is irreplaceable. it is impossible to find a substitute for jaak põldmäe, but it is possible and necessary to continue his work. this is the best possible monument to the memory of this exceptional scholar. 145approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe references baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1966. o chislovoj otsenke sily slogov v stikhe al’ternirujushchego ritma [the numerical evaluation of syllable strength in verse with alternating rhythm]. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 84–89. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1967. chislovye znachenija sily slogov v stikhe al’ternirujushchego ritma [numerical indications of syllable strength in verse with alternating rhythm]. in: filologicheskie nauki 3, 50–55. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1972. stikh russkoj sovetskoj poezii [the verse of soviet russian poetry]. smolensk: the karl marx pedagogical institute in smolensk. egorov, boris fedorovich 1973. aksiomaticheskoe opisanie russkikh sistem stikhoslozhenija [an axiomatic description of russian versification systems]. in: pigarev, kirill vasil’evich (ed.), iskusstvo slova: sbornik statej k 80-letiju chlenakorrespondenta an sssr dimitrija dimitrievicha blagogo. moskva: nauka, 388– 392. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh. metrika i ritmika [contemporary russian verse. metrics and rhythmics]. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1977. legkij stikh i tjazhelyj stikh [light and heavy verse lines]. in: põldmäe (ed.) 1977, 3–20. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1980 [1977]. light and heavy verse lines. translated by gerald stanton smith. in: russian poetics in translation 7, 31–44. gasparov, mikhail leonovich; lotman, mihhail jur’evich; rudnev, petr aleksandrovich; tarlinskaja, marina grigor’evna 1987. problemy stikhovedenija v rabotakh ja. r. põldmäe [approaches to verse theory in the works of ja. r. põldmäe]. in: studia metrica et poetica [v]: poeetiliste süsteemide dünaamika / dinamika poeticheskikh sistem [the dynamics of poetic systems] (acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis 780). tartu: the university of tartu, 99–115. jakobson, roman; lotz, john 1941. axiomatik eines verssystems am mordwinischen volkslied dargelegt (thesen zu einem vortrag im ungarischen institut am achten april 1941). stockholm: ungerska institutet. jakobson, roman; lotz, john 1952. axioms of a versification system: exemplified by the mordvinian folksong. in: acta instituti hungarici universitatis holmiensis. series b. linguistica 1. stockholm: ungerska institutet, 5–13. [republished in roman jakobson’s selected writings v: on verse, its masters and explorers. the hague, paris, new york: mouton, 1979, 160–166.] 146 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja kaalep, ain 1959. teoreetilisi märkmeid vabavärsist [theoretical notes on free verse]. in: keel ja kirjandus 5, 257–273. [republished with amendments in: kirjanduse radadelt: artikleid ja arvustusi 1959. tallinn: eesti riiklik kirjastus, 1961, 152– 174.] kabell, aage 1960. metrische studien ii: antiker form sich nähernd (acta universitatis upsaliensis 1960:6). uppsala: lundequistska bokhandeln. kolmogorov, andrej nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1968. k osnovam russkoj klassicheskoj metriki [toward the foundations of russian classical metrics]. in: mejlakh, boris solomonovich (ed.), sodruzhestvo nauk i tajny tvorchestva. moskva: iskusstvo, 397–432. lapshina, nadezhda vasil’evna; romanovich, igor’ konstantinovich; yarkho, boris isaakovich 1934. metricheskij spravochnik k stikhotvorenijam a. s. pushkina [a metrical guide-book to a. s. pushkin’s poems]. moskva, leningrad: academia. lotman, mihhail 1995. russkij stikh: osnovnye razmery, vkhodjashchie v evropejskij metricheskij fond [russian verse: the most important meters of the european metrical fund of russian poetry]. in: pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.), europejskie wcorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich (słowiańska metryka porównawcza vi). warszsawa: institute of literary studies of the polish academy of sciences, 259–340. põldmäe, jaak 1968. eesti silbilis-rõhulisest värsisüsteemist aastail 1917–1929 [estonian syllabic-accentual verse in 1917–1929]. in: keel ja kirjandus 8, 449–459; 9, 533–542. põldmäe, jaak 1969a. eesti rõhulisest värsisüsteemist [on estonian accentual verse]. in: looming 6, 928–940. põldmäe, jaak 1969b. ob estonskom aktsentnom stikhe [on estonian accentual verse]. in: trudy po znakovym sistemam [sign systems studies] iv (acta universitatis tartuensis 236). tartu: the university of tartu, 345–367. põldmäe, jaak 1970a. o tipologii sistem stikhoslozhenija [on the typology of versification systems]. in: lotman, jurij mikhajlovich (ed.), tezisy dokladov iv letnej shkoly po vtorichnym modelirujushchim sistemam, 17–24 avgusta 1970 g. tartu: the university of tartu, 145–147. põldmäe, jaak 1970b. eshche raz o kriterijakh tipologicheskoj kharakteristiki verlibra [more on the criteria of the typological characteristics of vers libre]. ibid., 148–149. põldmäe, jaak 1970c. jaan kärneri meetrika [the metrics of jaan kärner’s poems]. in: töid eesti filoloogia alalt [works on estonian philology] iii (acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis 259). tartu: the university of tartu, 201–272. 147approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe põldmäe, jaak 1971a. eesti värsisüsteem ja silbilis-rõhulise värsisüsteemi arengujooni xx sajandil [the system of estonian verse and the main features of the development of the syllabic-accentual verse in the 20th century]. tartu (unpublished phd dissertation defended at the university of tartu). põldmäe, jaak 1971b. sistemy estonskogo stikhoslozhenija i cherty razvitija sillabotonicheskoj sistemy xx veka [estonian systems of versification and the main features of the development of the syllabic-accentual verse in the 20th century]. avtoreferat dissertatsii ... kandidata nauk [published summary of unpublished phd dissertation]. tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak 1971c. o printsipakh analiza ritma estonskogo sillabo-tonicheskogo stikha [on the principles of the analysis of the rhythm of estonian syllabicaccentual verse]. in: rudnev, petr aleksandrovich; sigalov, pavel samojlovich (eds.) materialy xxvi nauchnoj studencheskoj konferentsii. tartu: the university of tartu, 71–73. põldmäe, jaak 1974a. o ritmiko-kompozitsionnoj transkriptsii rifmy pri opisanii strofiki [on the rhythmical-compositional transcription of rhymes in the description of stanzaic structures]. in: lotman, jurij mikhajlovich (ed.), materialy vsesojuznogo simpoziuma po vtorichnym modelirujushchim sistemam i (5). tartu: the university of tartu, 176–180. põldmäe, jaak 1974b. klassikalisi luuletusja stroofivorme [classical poetic and stanzaic forms]. tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak 1974c. abimaterjale poeetika kursuse juurde i [teaching materials for the course on poetics i].tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak 1975a. diskussioon nõukogude vabavärsi ümber ja vabavärsi tüpoloogia [the soviet discussion about vers libre and the typology of free verse]. in: looming 2, 310–335. põldmäe, jaak 1975b. eesti silbilis-rõhulise värsisüsteemi uurimise meetod ja betti alveri poeemide nelikjambi rütm [a research method for analyzing estonian syllabic-accentual verse and the rhythm of the iambic tetrameter in the poems of betti alver]. in: keele modelleerimise probleeme [problems of language modelling] 5 (acta universitatis tartuensis 363). tartu: the university of tartu, 163–233. põldmäe, jaak 1975c. värsiteoreetilisi marginaale sõnafonoloogia köite juurde [a verse theorist’s notes on the margins of a book devoted to estonian word phonology]: [a review of: hint, mati. eesti keele sõnafonoloogia: i. rõhusüsteemi fonoloogia ja morfofonoloogia põhiprobleemid. tallinn: the institute of language and literature of the academy of sciences of the estonian ssr, 1973]. in: keel ja kirjandus 1, 52–59. 148 mikhail gasparov, mihhail lotman, pyotr rudnev, marina tarlinskaja põldmäe, jaak 1976a. silbilis-rõhulisest värsisüsteemist eesti lüürikas aastail 1930– 1940 [syllabic-accentual verse in estonian lyric poetry of 1930–1940]. in: põldmäe (ed.) 1976, 86–121. põldmäe, jaak 1976b. ain kaalepi luuleteoreetiliste vaadete kajasid tema loomingus (kollaaž, segatehnika) [ain kaalep’s theoretical views as they are echoed in his poetry (collage and mixed techniques)]. in: keel ja kirjandus 6, 329–335. põldmäe, jaak 1977a. tipologija svobodnogo stikha [the typology of free verse]. in: trudy po znakovym sistemam [sign systems studies] ix (acta universitatis tartuensis 422). tartu: the university of tartu, 85–98. põldmäe, jaak 1977b. abimaterjale poeetika kursuse juurde ii [teaching materials for the course on poetics ii].tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak 1978. eesti värsiõpetus: monograafia [estonian verse theory: a monograph]. tallinn: eesti raamat. [republished by eesti keele sihtasutus (eksa) in 2002.] põldmäe, jaak 1981. lydia koidula meetrikast [the metrics of lydia koidula’s poems]. in: talvet (ed.) 1981, 82–119. põldmäe, jaak (ed.) 1976a. kirjanduse ja rahvaluule radadelt ii (üliõpilastööde kogumik) [the paths of literature and folklore ii (undergraduate papers)]. tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak (ed.) 1976b. studia metrica et poetica i (acta universitatis tartuensis 396). tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak (ed.) 1977. studia metrica et poetica ii (acta universitatis tartuensis 420). tartu: the university of tartu. põldmäe, jaak; remmel, mart 1974. k probleme verojatnostnoj kharakteristiki ritma estonskogo stikha [on the stochastic characteristics of the rhythm of estonian verse]. in: lotman, jurij mikhajlovich (ed.), materialy vsesojuznogo simpoziuma po vtorichnym modelirujushchim sistemam i (5). tartu: the university of tartu, 180–181. põldmäe jaak; viitso, tiit-rein 1970. k aksiomatike i transkriptsii rifmy [on the axioms and transcription of the rhyme]. in: lotman, jurij mikhajlovich (ed.), tezisy dokladov iv letnej shkoly po vtorichnym modelirujushchim sistemam, 17–24 avgusta 1970 g. tartu: the university of tartu, 155–158. põldmäe jaak; viitso, tiit-rein 1973. o metodike sostavlenija slovarja rifm [on the methods of compiling a dictionary of rhymes], in: lotman, jurij mikhajlovich (ed.), sbornik statej po vtorichnym modelirujushchim sistemam. tartu: the university of tartu, 163–166. 149approaches to verse theory in the works of jaak põldmäe popper, karl r. 1959. the logic of scientific discovery. new york: basic books. revzin, isaak iosifovich 1962. “s 23 po 27 sentjabrja 1961 g. v gor’kom prokhodilo nauchnoe soveshchanie...” [“a conference was held in gorky on 23–27 september 1961...”]. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 161–165. shapovalov, vyacheslav ivanovich 1975. k voprosu ob aksiomaticheskoj kharakteristike kirgizskogo stikha [on the axiomatic characterization of kyrgyz verse]. in: voprosy poetiki ii (trudy kirgizskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. serija iv: filologicheskie nauki xix). frunze: kyrgyz state university, 127–138. talvet, jüri (ed.) 1981. studia metrica et poetica [iii]: värsiõpetuse aktuaalseid probleeme ja soome-ugri värsitehnika küsimusi / aktual’nye problemy stikhovedenija i voprosy finno-ugorskogo stikhoslozhenija [topical problems of verse theory and the issues of finno-ugric versification] (acta universitatis tartuensis 587). tartu: the university of tartu. talvet, jüri (ed.) 1985. studia metrica et poetica [iv]: poeetilise teksti tüpoloogia, tõlke ja retseptsiooni probleeme / problemy tipologii, perevoda i retseptsii poeticheskogo teksta [the poetic text: typology, translation, and reader-response] (acta universitatis tartuensis 709). tartu: the university of tartu. tarlinskaja, marina grigor’evna 1967. aktsentnye osobennosti anglijskogo sillabotonicheskogo stikha [the accentual characteristics of english syllabic-accentual verse]. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 81–91. vostokov, aleksandr khristoforovich 1817. opyt o russkom stikhoslozhenii. second edition, considerably enlarged and revised. sankt-peterburg: v morskoj tipografii. zhirmunskij, viktor [maksimovich] 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha [introduction to metrics: verse theory] (voprosy poetiki vi). leningrad: academia. zholkovskij, aleksandr konstantinovich 1962. soveshchanie po izucheniju poeticheskogo jazyka (obzor dokladov) [a conference on the study of the poetic language (overview of papers)]. in: mashinnyj perevod i prikladnaja lingvistika 7, 88–101. zhovtis, aleksandr lazarevich 1966. granitsy svobodnogo stikha [the limits of free verse]. in: voprosy literatury 5, 105–123. rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms igor pilshchikov*1 abstract: in undertaking the statistical analysis of the rhythm of russian syllabic-accentual verse, one confronts a problem: how to accentuate words whose natural-language stress is weaker than that of fully-stressed words. zhirmunsky called such words “ambiguous” and formulated a rule: they should be considered stressed in “strong” (ictic) positions and unstressed in “weak” (non-ictic) positions. gasparov, who accepted and elaborated on zhirmunsky’s rule, pointed out that “this difference in the quality of stress in strong positions [...] has a significant impact on the rhythm of verse, especially that of ternary meters.” the main point of the present paper is that this ambiguity equally impacts russian binary meters. in the case of iambic tetrameter, for example, fully-stressed lines that contain rhythmically ambiguous words are often isomorphic with the predominating rhythmical form. in the present paper, this phenomenon is explored in connection with jakobson’s hypothesis that rhythmically ambiguous words gravitate toward “weak” (i.e. less frequently stressed) ictuses. although jakobson’s view of accentual ambiguity was different from zhirmunsky’s, and jakobson’s calculation was, in fact, methodologically inaccurate, a cross-pollination of their approaches may prove fruitful. keywords: syllabic-accentual meters; rhythmical varieties; rhythmical ambiguity 1. the problem in undertaking the statistical analysis of the rhythm of russian syllabic-accentual verse, one confronts a specific problem: how to accentuate words whose natural-language stress is weaker than that of fully-stressed words. this group includes monosyllabic pronouns, monosyllabic verbal copulas, disyllabic possessive pronouns in the post-nominal position, disyllabic prepositions, and the like. * author’s addresses: igor pilshchikov, university of california, los angeles, department of slavic, east european and eurasian languages and cultures, 320 kaplan hall, ucla, los angeles, ca 90095; tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee. studia metrica et poetica 6.2, 2019, 53–73 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.02 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.02 54 igor pilshchikov viktor zhirmunsky called these words “metrically ambiguous” (“metricheski dvojstvennye”) and formulated a rule: they should be considered stressed in “strong” (ictic) positions and unstressed in “weak” (non-ictic) positions (zhirmunsky 1925: 95–120 [§§ 17–19]; english translation: zhirmunsky 1966: 93–113). in other words, their rhythmical interpretation depends on the metrical scheme. it would therefore be more reasonable to describe such words as “rhythmically ambiguous” rather than “metrically ambiguous”, because they never alter or violate the metrical interpretation of a line but indeed affect its rhythmical interpretation. mikhail l. gasparov, who accepted and elaborated on zhirmunsky’s rule (see gasparov 1974: 132–137), issued an important caveat: he pointed out that “schematic stresses may have different strengths depending on whether they are represented by an unconditionally stressed word or an accentually ambiguous word. this difference in the quality of stress in strong positions has not yet been studied by verse theorists, though it has a significant impact on the rhythm of verse, especially that of ternary meters” (gasparov 1974: 148–149).1 the main point of the present paper is that this ambiguity equally affects russian binary meters, and therefore is all the more deserving of examination. to demonstrate this claim, i will target the best studied russian meter, iambic tetrameter. in the rhythmical compositions of many poems, the fully-stressed lines (form i), which contain rhythmically ambiguous words, often tend to be isomorphic with the predominating rhythmical form.2 to put it simply, if we mark the rhythmically ambiguous words on ictic positions as unstressed, the resulting rhythmical forms could theoretically coincide with any of the other seven rhythmical forms of iambic tetrameter. in practice, however, rhythmically ambiguous lines often coincide with the form that predominates in the poem. in particular, this applies to poems with a high level of “rhythmical monotony”, i.e. the poems (or fragments thereof ) in which one or two forms constitute extensive homogeneous groups (see beglov 1996a, 1996b, 1997; liapin 2001). in terms of the jakobsonian dichotomy of verse instance and delivery instance (jakobson 1960 [1958]: 364–367), almost all such rhythmically ambiguous lines can be “delivered” (i.e. recited) in two different ways: either with or without 1 translations from russian are mine unless otherwise noted. 2 it is generally accepted to use the form numbers proposed by georgii shengeli (see shengeli 1923: 139–141). the unstressed ictuses are underlined here and in all later examples: xxxxxxxx(x) i xxxxxxxx(x) v xxxxxxxx(x) ii xxxxxxxx(x) vi xxxxxxxx(x) iii xxxxxxxx(x) vii xxxxxxxx(x) iv xxxxxxxx(x) viii 55rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms skipping the stress on the rhythmically ambiguous word. even if such words do not completely lose stress in the course of recitation, they can bear a “lighter” stress in comparison with fully-stressed words (gasparov 1974: 133–135). 2. examples 2.1. konstantin batiushkov’s “moj genij” (1815) many of batiushkov’s four-foot-iambic poems of 1815–17 have a two-mode rhythm: forms i and iv add up to almost 87% of the total (57.5% are form iv and 29% are of form i; see taranovski 1953: table ii; dobritsyn 2016: 42–43). a typical example is batiushkov’s “moj genij” (“my genius”, 1815), where forms i and iv are used throughout the poem, while form ii in the concluding line serves as a kind of “rhythmical italics” (“ritmicheskij kursiv”). however, out of six fully-stressed lines two can be considered ambiguous, and both are isomorphic with form iv (see figure 1). in form iv, the third ictic stress is skipped. correspondingly, in the ambiguous lines, the monosyllabic rhythmically ambiguous words fall on the third ictus: o pámjat’ sérdtsa, ty sil’néj... [‘o memory of the heart, you are more powerful...’] (line 1); khranítel’ génij moj – ljubóvju... [‘my guardian genius <given> by love...’] (line 13). o pámjat’ sérdtsa! ty sil’néj i(iv) rassúdka pámjati pechál’noj, iv i chásto sládost’ju svoéj iv menjà v strané plenjáesh’ dál’noj. i(ii) ja pómnju gólos mílykh slóv, i ja pómnju óchi golubýe, iv ja pómnju lókony zlatýe iv nebrézhno v’júshchikhsja vlasóv. iv moèj pastúshki nesravnénnoj iv(vi) ja pómnju vés’ narjád prostój,3 i 3 ‘i remember all her simple dress’. i do not consider vés’ [‘all’] as rhythmically ambiguous here (cf. kolmogorov, prokhorov 1968: 422) because it carries the logical (tonal) stress of the phrase. 56 igor pilshchikov i óbraz míloj, nezabvénnoj, iv povsjúdu stránstvuet so mnój. iv khranítel’ génij moj – ljubóv’ju i(iv) v utékhu dán razlúke ón: i zasnú l’? priníknet k izgolóv’ju iv i usladít pechál’noj són. ii i(iv) — iv — iv — i i(ii) — iv — iv — iv iv(vi) — i — iv — iv i(iv) — i — iv — ii figure 1: the rhythmical composition of batiushkov’s “moj genij” note, though, that form ii in the last line is heralded by lines 4 and 9, in which we find the disyllabic rhythmically ambiguous pronouns menjà [‘me’] and moèj [‘my’, gen. fem.] on the first foot (see figure 1). these pronouns can hardly be considered pure clitics but they surely carry a “lighter” stress in comparison with fully-stressed content-words. i will elaborate more on that below, in section 3. 2.2. joseph brodsky’s “soznan’e, kak shestoj urok...” (1960s) “brodsky is the most monotonous poet in russian” (beglov 1996b: 124). a typical example is his 24-line poem “soznan’e, kak shestoj urok...” (“consciousness, like the sixth lesson...”, 1960s), in which 75% of the lines belong to form iii (beglov 1996a: 113). the rest (25%, i.e. six lines) consists of two lines corresponding to forms i, three to form iv and one to form ii. the form ii line and two form iv lines are found in the concluding quatrain, whereas both fully-stressed lines are isomorphic with form iii (see figure 2). in form iii, the second ictic stress is skipped. correspondingly, in the ambiguous lines, the rhythmically ambiguous words fall on the second ictus: v prostránstve mezhdu dvúkh desníts [‘in a space between two right hands’] (line 11); zovjót ego, kak pút’ nazád [‘...calls him, like a way back...’] (line 19). 57rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms soznán’e, kak shestój urók, iii vyvódit iz kazjónnykh stén iii rebjónka na nochnój poróg. iii on táshchitsja vo t’mú zatém, iii chtob, túcham pokazáv perstóm iii na tónushchij v snegú pogóst, iii sebjá zdes’ osenít’ krestóm iii u tsérkvi v chelovéchij róst. iii skoplén’e mertvetsóv i ptíts. iii no zhízni ostajótsja míg iii v prostránstve mezhdu dvúkh desníts i(iii) i v stórony ot nikh. ot níkh. iii(vii) odnáko zhe, stremjás’ vperjód, iii tak tjázhek naprjazhónnyj vzór, iii tak sérdtse sdávleno, chto rót iv ne próbuet vdokhnút’ prostór. iii i tól’ko za spinóju sád iii pokínut’ neizvéstnyj kráj iii zovjót ego, kak pút’ nazád, i(iii) znakómyj, kak sobáchij láj. iii da v túchakh iz kholódnykh dýr iii luná staráetsja blesnút’, iv chtob podskazát’, chto v nóvyj mír ii zabór ukázyvaet pút’. iv iii — iii — iii — iii iii — iii — iii — iii iii — iii — i(iii) — iii(vii) iii — iii — iv — iii iii — iii — i(iii) — iii iii — iv — ii — iv figure 2: the rhythmical composition of brodsky’s “soznan’e, kak shestoj urok...” in lines 11 and 12, form i and form vii are both isomorphic with form iii which predominates in the poem. 58 igor pilshchikov 2.3. batiushkov’s “otvet gnedichu”: redactions 1810–17 batiushkov wrote “otvet gnedichu” (“reply to gnedich”) in 1810 and then reworked it twice, in 1815 and 1817. besides the predominant forms iv and i (as is usual in russian iambic tetrameter of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), the poem features forms ii (one occurrence) and iii (five or six occurrences, depending on the redaction). the share of form iii is here as high as that of the fully-stressed form (form i). it is instructive to compare the rhythm of the edited lines in subsequent versions. in this case, the isomorphism of forms i and iii bears, so to speak, a diachronic character. the first line is rhythmically ambiguous, and it remains the same in all redactions: tvoj drúg tebe navék otnýne i(iii) [‘your friend <gives> you forever now...’] line 10 has form iii in the first redaction and form i in the last redaction: pod nébo gromozdít svoj dóm iii (redaction 1810) [‘up to the skies he builds his house’] brosáet s mársom ógn’ i gróm i (redaction 1817) [‘he throws fire and thunder with mars’] the final line was rewritten twice: nasýtivshis’, ostávlju mír iii (redaction 1810) [‘sated, i’ll abandon the world’] ostávlju zhízn’ i krásnyj mír i (redaction 1815) [‘i’ll abandon my life and the beautiful world’] pokínu ravnodúshno mír! iii (redaction 1817) [‘i’ll indifferently leave the world!’] therefore, the invariable rhythmical structure of these lines manifests itself in a series of transformations, in which each rhythmic variant (jakobson’s verse instance) follows the same rhythmical pattern – more individual and concrete than the general metrical invariant of the iambic tetrameter (jakobson’s verse design). 59rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms 2.4. aleksandr pushkin’s “otvet” (1830) a more sophisticated compositional design is developed in aleksandr pushkin’s playful 16-line madrigal “otvet” (“response”, 1830). the first part of the poem is based on form vi with its “paeanic” rhythm (the first and the third ictic stresses skipped), as it was described by andrei belyi (1910: 265– 266). in pushkin’s late period, form vi is the third most preferred form after forms iv and i (taranovsky 1953: table iii). in “otvet”, the share of form vi (43.8%) is even higher than in pushkin’s other poems of 1829 and 1830 (and much higher than in any theoretical model of russian iambic tetrameter – either the stochastic model or the model based on the distribution of stresses in russian nineteenth-century prose) and exceeds the shares of forms iv and i (beglov 1997: 57–58, tables 5 and 6; liapin 2001: 90; see table 1 below). table 1: rhythmical forms of iambic tetrameter in pushkin’s lyrical poems of 1830 (from beglov 1997: 54, 58, tables 3 and 6, and taranovsky 1953: table iii) poems i ii iii iv vi lines “tsiklop” (1830) 100% – – – – 6 “chto v imeni tebe mojom?” (1830) 31.3% 12.5% 6.3% 43.8% 6.3% 16 “otvet” (1830) 18.8% 6.3% – 31.3% 43.8% 16 “v chasy zabav...” (1830) 30.0% 5.0% 10.0% 55.0% – 20 “na bulgarina” (1830) 83.3% – – 16.7% – 6 “novosel’e” (1830) 50.0% 12.5% – 12.5% 25.0% 8 “proshchanie” (1830) 33.3% 6.7% 6.7% 40.0% 13.3% 15 “epigramma” (1830) 80.0% 20.0% – – – 5 “zaklinanie” (1830) 25.0% 12.5% – 54.2% 8.3% 24 “stambul gjaury nynche slavjat” (1830) 33.3% 8.9% 2.2% 46.7% 8.9% 45 “geroj” (1830) 26.8% 9.0% 17.9% 37.3% 7.5% 674 “moja rodoslovnaja” (1830) 21.4% 4.8% 6.0% 57.1% 10.7% 84 lyrical poems 1830 30.5% 7.7% 7.1% 44.2% 10.3% 3125 lyrical poems 1828–29 30.5% 7.8% 6.8% 45.3% 9.1% 629 lyrical poems 1830–33 34.3% 8.0% 4.7% 44.9% 8.1% 1195 4 other rhythmical forms: 1.5% (an incomplete line – the last line of the poem). 5 other rhythmical forms: 0.3% (one incomplete line in “geroj”, see the previous note). 60 igor pilshchikov the first line of the poem is rhythmically ambiguous: form i, which is isomorphic with form vi. an unexpected turn awaits us in the middle of the poem. lines 7 and 8 are rhythmically ambiguous. both are isomorphic with form vi, but the location of the rhythmically ambiguous words is different: line 7 can be recited as either form vi or form ii, whereas line 8 can be read as either form vi or form iv (see figure 3). according to taranovsky, form ii often supports the “bipartite rhythmic inertia” of form vi, and poets like to use them together (taranovsky 1953: 89). a similar impression of “non-contrast difference” is produced by the combination of forms iv and vi (see liapin 2001: 89–90 and esp. 99, endnote 26). at the same time, form iv in combination with form i is a different type of rhythm – the one we have already met in batiushkov’s “moj genij”. therefore, the rhythmical composition of “otvet” can be described as a transition from predominant form vi to predominant form iv (see also pertsov 1999). ja vas uznál, o moj orákul, i(vi) ne po uzórnoj pestroté vi sikh nepodpísannykh karákul, vi no po vesjóloj ostroté, vi no po privétstvijam lukávym, vi no po nasméshlivosti zlój vi i po uprjókam… stol’ neprávym, ii(vi) i etoj prélesti zhivój. iv(vi) s toskój nevól’noj, s voskhishchén’em iv ja perechítyvaju vás vi i vosklitsáju s neterpén’em: vi porá! v moskvú, v moskvú sejchás! i zdes’ górod chópornyj, unýlyj, iv zdes’ réchi – ljód, serdtsá – granít; i zdes’ net ni vétrenosti míloj, iv(vi) ni múz, ni présni, ni kharít. iv i(vi) — vi — vi — vi vi — vi — ii(vi) — iv(vi) iv — vi — vi — i iv — i — iv(vi) — iv figure 3: the rhythmical composition of pushkin’s “otvet” 61rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms besides two fully-stressed lines of form i, the two last quatrains contain three lines of form iv, two lines of form vi and an ambiguous line that can be recited as either form iv or form vi. form iv first appears in line 8 as an ambiguous transitional form (iv/vi), and immediately becomes the “hero” of the second half of the poem, where it competes with form vi and eventually “wins” in the last quatrain (see figure 3). just as in a heterometric poem “[metrically] ambiguous lines can serve as a convenient transition between fragments written in different meters” (gasparov 1974: 253), rhythmically ambiguous lines in a monometric poem can serve as a transition between fragments that use different rhythmical patterns. 3. roman jakobson’s approach the phenomenon discussed above may be considered in connection with roman jakobson’s hypothesis that monosyllabic words gravitate toward “weak” (i.e. less frequently stressed) ictuses (jakobson 1973). the very last ictus is always the “strongest” because it is compulsorily stressed in classical russian verse (jakobson 1960 [1958]: 361). the “weakest”, i.e. the least frequently stressed ictus in russian iambic tetrameter is supposed to be the third (penultimate) one – precisely because the next ictus is compulsorily stressed and every polysyllabic word at the end of the line produces a skipped stress on the penultimate ictus (tomashevsky 1923a: 37). according to jakobson’s calculations, the percentage of stresses produced by monosyllables is the highest on the third ictus and the lowest on the last. he attempted to explain this fact by the non-phonological nature of stress in the stressed monosyllables: the nonphonological stress allegedly functions in the same way as the absence of stress (rudy 1976: 493–495; krasnoperova 2001: 51–52). although jakobson’s view of accentual ambiguity was different from zhirmunsky’s, a cross-pollination of their approaches may prove fruitful. caveat lector: it has been demonstrated that jakobson’s calculations are methodologically inaccurate and monosyllables, either stressed or unstressed, are not most frequent on the weak ictuses. jakobson used taranovsky’s data on russian iambic and trochaic tetrameters but did not exclude from his data set the trochaic lines with feminine endings where monosyllables on the last ictus are impossible, so that his figures for the last ictus are not reliable (gasparov, skulacheva 2003: 38–39). in trochaic tetrameter with uniform masculine endings the percentage of monosyllables on the last and penultimate ictuses is equal (golovastikov 2011: 44–45). moreover, both in trochee and iamb the 62 igor pilshchikov monosyllables are usually either equally frequent on both ictuses or even more frequent on the last ictus than on the penultimate (liapin 2010; golovastikov 2011: 46–47). however, jakobson’s insight may nevertheless be correct if we could prove that the words that gravitate toward the less frequently stressed ictuses are not necessarily monosyllabic, but rhythmically ambiguous, and they can be either monoor disyllabic (or even trisyllabic: compare the three forms of the preposition pred / pered / peredo ‘before, in front of ’). or, as gasparov put it on another occasion – that “the rhythm of light stresses in verse follows the same pattern as the rhythm of skipped stresses: light stresses act as ‘substitutes’ for skipped stresses” (gasparov 1974: 155).6 the list of rhythmically ambiguous disyllabic words includes, for example, the prepositions sredì [‘among’], pròtiv/protìv [‘against’], mèzhdu/mezhdù [‘between’] etc.; the personal/possessive pronouns egò [‘him; his’] and eë (ejò) [‘her; hers’]; the possessive pronouns mojà [‘my’, nom. fem.], tvojù [‘your’, acc. fem.], svoèj [‘his/her/its/their’, oblique cases, fem.] etc. – especially if they are used as enclitics, i.e. in the post-nominal position; and others. their special accentual status was already emphasized by viktor zhirmunsky, boris tomashevsky, kiril taranovsky and roman jakobson. in particular, these words may generate the forbidden trochaic “trans-accentuation” (or “accentual reversal”) of an iambic foot (jakobson 1979a [1955]: 168; 1979b: 583–584). an excursus on “trans-accentuation” is needed here. in syllabic-accentual verse, stresses can be skipped and extrametrical (extra-schematic) stresses added. however, the possibility of skipping and adding stresses depends on the word-boundaries: a (phonetic) word in a syllabic-accentual line can either skip a metrical stress or add an extrametrical stress, but cannot do both simultaneously. as aleksandr iliushin put it, in classical russian verse “a word cannot be a double violator”, i.e. it cannot violate the metrical schema twice at the same time (iliushin 1988: 49). this rule is known as “the jakobson-tomashevsky thesis about the impossibility of shifting the accent in russian [poetry] within a word” (erlich 1965: 220), or “the law of inadmissibility of trans-accentuation in verse” (kolmogorov, prokhorov 1968: 405), or “the trans-accentuation ban” (gasparov 1974: 14). one version of this rule is widely known from jakobson’s “linguistics and poetics”: “...a stressed syllable cannot fall on the upbeat if a downbeat is fulfilled by an unstressed syllable of the same word unit (so that a word stress 6 this formula should be treated with caution: it can be applied to a homogeneous group of poetic lines (such as a single poem with a sufficiently monotonous rhythm), but not to a heterogeneous group of texts even if they are written by one poet (see gasparov’s own caveats in gasparov, skulacheva 2003: 44–45). 63rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms can coincide with an upbeat only as far as it belongs to a monosyllabic word unit)” (jakobson 1960 [1958]: 361). to use tomashevsky’s well-known example (tomashevsky 1928: 16), of the following two lines, both of which are phonetically identical, one is an iambic line and the other is not – because of different word-boundaries: brát uprosíl nagrádu dát’ (a perfect iambic line) vs. brátu prosíl nagrádu dát’ (the line violates the rules of russian iambus). the crucial difference is where the second syllable -ubelongs. in the first case, it is a prefix of the second (trisyllabic) word, whereas in the second it is an ending of the first (disyllabic) word. in the first case, the first word is monosyllabic, whereas in the second it is disyllabic. the line brát uprosíl nagrádu dát’ (x | xxx | xxx | x) is a perfect iamb, because each word is “a single violator”, whereas the line brátu prosíl nagrádu dát’ (xx | xx | xxx | x) is not iambic, because the first word is “a double violator”, and we are faced with a “trochaic trans-accentuation of an iambic foot”, which is prohibited in classical russian iamb (see also garzonio 1985: 305–306, and tarlinskaja 1987: 643–644). jakobson formulated his version of the rule only in regard to binary meters (iambs and trochees): thus, according to jakobson, only monosyllabic words could bear an extra-schematic stress. however, as early as 1919, at the same time as jakobson (and, in fact, at the same meeting of the moscow linguistic circle to which they both belonged) tomashevsky suggested a general solution applicable to both binary and ternary meters: “a more general law should be deduced: a word with an extra-schematic stress should be shorter than a foot period” (quoted in pilshchikov 2017b: 161; see also pilshchikov, starostin 2015: 94–95). tomashevsky developed this thesis further in his 1923 treatise on russian versification. in russian syllabic-accentual verse, he explained, “non-metrical stress can fall on words that fit within a merically unstressed interval and do not extend to the metrically stressed syllables. to put it another way, in classical [russian] verse non-metrical stresses are only allowed on monosyllabic words in iamb and trochee, whereas in dactyl, anapaest and amphibrach, they are allowed on both monosyllabic and disyllabic words” (tomashevsky 1923b: 62). compare gasparov’s later restatement: “in russian syllabic-accentual verse, extrametrical stress and skipping of metrical stress cannot occur in one word (‘the trans-accentuation ban’). therefore, extrametrical stresses can fall only on those words whose size does not exceed the inter-ictic interval – monosyllabic words in iamb and trochee, monoand disyllabic words in dactyl, amphibrach and anapaest” (gasparov 1974: 14). 64 igor pilshchikov therefore, monosyllabic words can bear an extra-schematic stress in binary and ternary meters, and disyllabic words can bear an extra-schematic stress in ternary meters if both syllables occupy weak positions (otherwise the transaccentuation ban would be violated). both version of the rule (jakobson’s and tomashevsky’s) were first published in russian in 1923 (see jakobson 1923: 29;7 tomashevsky 1923b: 62), but jakobson’s is more widely known because of his anglophone “linguistics and poetics”. moreover, this rule is applicable not only to binary and ternary meters, but also to the meters with variable inter-icitic interval, such as dolnik (pilshchikov, starostin 2010; pilshchikov 2017b: 159). it should, however, be taken into account that the trans-accentuation ban is not absolute, but probabilistic: its violation is very unlikely, but nevertheless possible (pilshchikov, starostin 2015: 95). trans-accentuation is much less common in russian poetry than, say, in english poetry. but even in russian verse there are meters and positions, in which the forbidden trans-accentuation is “less forbidden” (i.e. more acceptable) than in others – in particular, in russian folk trochee, especially at the beginning of the line. however, the classical russian iamb does not tolerate non-ictic stresses produced by polysyllables (tarlinskaja 1987: 634–635). tomashevsky noticed that the only example of such trans-accentuation in pushkin’s iambs involves the possessive pronoun egò [‘his’]: ja predlagáju výpit’ v egò pámjat’ [‘i suggest we should drink to his memory’]8 (tomashevsky 1923a: 55). pushkin treats the disyllabic personal pronoun egò [‘his’] “as if ” it is unstressed – or, in fact, he uses it as rhythmically ambiguous (kolmogorov, prokhorov 1968: 422). if pushkin had considered it completely unstressed, there would have been many examples of this kind in his poetry, rather than only one (shapir 2005: 50; english translation: shapir 2019: 125). taranovsky showed that the more numerous trans-accentuations in aleksandr radishchev and some other eighteenthand nineteenth-century poets are of the same nature. they involve the pronouns egò [‘him; his’], svojù [‘his/her/its/their’, acc. fem.], tvoìm [‘your’, instr. masc. or dat. pl.] and the like: ispólni sérdtse tvoìm zhárom [‘fill my heart with your ardor’], etc. (taranovsky 1953: 19). such examples are especially frequent in radishchev. his renowned ode “vol’nost’” (“liberty”, 1780s) features eight lines (1.5%), in which several parts of speech are trans-accentuated: the possessive pronouns tvoìm [‘your’, see 7 a preliminary and not very distinct formulation is found in jakobson 1922: 229–230 (see rudy 1976: 483; uspensky 1997: 134). 8 the original line from john wilson’s “the city of the plague” (1816) that pushkin translates here, in “pir vo vremja chumy” (“a feast in time of plague”, 1830), reads: therefore let us drink unto his memory. 65rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms above], tvoè [‘your’, nom./acc. neut.] and svoì [‘his/her/its/their’, nom./acc. pl.], the pronouns mnòju [‘by me’, instr. of ja ‘i’ ], (za) tò (‘[for] that/this’) and sebè [a reflexive pronoun], and even the adverb vsegdá [‘always’], which is, moreover, trans-accentuated twice (shapir 2005: 50; 2019: 125). however, the fact that all of radishchev’s trans-accentuations are of the same kind suggests that these words are rhythmically ambiguous – he did not allow himself to “trans-accentuate” fully-stressed words. characteristically, they all fall on the penultimate (third) ictus, the weakest in the ode. the ode’s stressing profile is 97%–82%–54%–100% (taranovsky 1953: table ii). the predominant forms are form iv (42.5%) and form i (36.5%)9. all the irregular forms can be considered as form iv (and one – as form vi) if the rhythmically ambiguous word is recited as unstressed: ispólni sérdtse tvoìm zhárom [‘fill my heart with your ardor’] i v neizménnom vsegdà víde [‘and in a form that is always intact’] veshcháj, zlodéj, mnòju venchánnyj [‘speak, villain, who is by me crowned’] edínoj smérti za tò málo [‘one death is not for this enough’] iskhódit s vídom vsegdà zlóbnym [‘comes with an appearance always malicious’] sebé vsjak séjet, sebè zhnet [‘for himself everyone sows and for himself reaps’] otrávy pólny svoì strély [‘full of poison, its arrows...’] bljustí vsjak búdet svojù chást’ [‘everyone will guard his own part’] togdá slozhén’je tvoè brénno [‘then, perishable, your body...’] compare brodsky’s rhythmically ambiguous disyllabic words on the weak ictus: v prostránstve mèzhdu dvúkh desníts; zovjót egò, kak pút’ nazád. these lines can be recited as either form i or iii. although no trans-accentuation is observed here, the second ictus is “weak” (because form iii, in which the second ictic stress is skipped, predominates in the poem) – and rhythmically ambiguous words appear on the second ictus. similarly, in pushkin’s “otvet”, with its stressing profile 50%–100%–25%–100%, rhythmically ambiguous words gravitate toward the first and third ictuses.10 9 the average figures for the eighteenth-century iambic tetrameter are quite similar: 93%– 80%–53%–100%, with form iv at 41.9% and form i at 31.1% (taranovsky 1953: table ii). 10 the frequency of stresses on the first ictus in “otvet” is significantly lower than in pushkin’s lyrics of that period on the average: the overall stressing profile of pushkin’s lyrics 1830–33 is 84%–95%–47%–100%, compare 83%–93%–45%–100% for pushkin’s lyrics 1828–29 (taranovsky 1953: table iii). 66 igor pilshchikov 4. rhythmical impulse the presence of rhythmically ambiguous lines is one of the manifestations of what russian verse theorists of the 1920s referred to as “rhythmical impulse” (“ritmicheskij impul’s”). tomashevsky and zhirmunsky thus described it in their treatises on russian versification: when initially conceiving a poem, the poet adopts a metrical scheme which he feels to be a kind of rhythmical-melodical contour, a framework, into which words are “inserted”. as it is realized in words, the rhythmical impulse finds expression in the actual rhythm of individual lines. [...] the listener perceives the rhythm in inverse order. first he is confronted with the actual verse-line rhythm. then, under the impression of the reiteration of rhythmical configurations, due to his perception of a sequence of verse-lines, the listener grasps the rhythmical impulse [...] at a still higher degree of abstraction from the rhythmical pattern he grasps the metrical scheme which may be uncovered by scanning. (tomashevsky 1923b: 83) only the entire poem exhibits that inertia of rhythm, that general rhythmical impulse, those regularities of rhythmic movement, which we call meter. [...] the presence of a metrical scheme in verse is perceived by the reader as the inertia of rhythm [...]. from the point of view of the author or the performer of the poem this metrical scheme or law can be described as a sort of impulse dominating the given linguistic material. in more abstract terminology we speak of a metrical design [zadanie] or a metrical law [zakon]. (zhirmunsky 1925: 67, 71; translation quoted from zhirmunsky 1966: 67, 71; author’s emphasis) the concept of rhythmical impulse describes a stochastic, not deterministic, norm (červenka 1984: 30). scholars of russian verse have defined this phenomenon in statistical terms: as a rhythmic tendency in the works of taranovsky and as an “image of the meter” (“obraz metra”) in the works of andrei kolmogorov (kolmogorov, prokhorov 1963: 84–85, kolmogorov 2015 [1961]: 239–243; see also gasparov 2015: 12, 16; pilshchikov 2017a: 16–17).11 taranovsky’s stressing profile (as a particular case of a rhythmic tendency) and gasparov’s rhythmic profile of the meter are also statistical characteristics, but they are not identical to the statistics of rhythmical forms and do not 11 kolmogorov, one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, was among the partisans of the statistical-probabilistic approach to the study of verse. 67rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms always reflect the differences between individual types or patterns (or, to use kolmogorov’s definition, “images”) of the meter (see dobritsyn 2016: 35–38). a rhythmic or stressing profile of the meter in a single poem or a group of poems is the percentage of non-skipped stresses on each ictus (taranovsky 1953: 4 et passim; 1971: 424, 426; taranovsky, prokhorov 1982: 156). very often the scholars ignore the important fact that the same stressing profile can be produced by different sets of rhythmic forms that sound completely differently. for example, a poem consisting of 50% of forms iii (xxxxxxxx) and 50% of forms iv (xxxxxxxx) would have the same u-shaped rhythmic profile as the poem consisting of 50% of forms i (xxxxxxxx) and 50% of forms vii (xxxxxxxx): 100%–50%–50%–100%. however, the latter has a recognizable rhythm of “bending iambus”, as vladimir nabokov described the rhythm of andrei belyi’s experimental verses abounding in form vii with its five unstressed syllables in the middle (dobritsyn 2016: 34–35), whereas the former would have a completely different type of rhythm with no super-long unstressed intervals. “i tried, for the sake of curiosity, to write a few stanzas using this rare line form” (belyi 1910: 294). this is andrei belyi’s explanation of how he composed a 20-line poem “noch’ju na kladbishche” (“graveyard at night”, 1908), which contains 15 lines of form vii (75%), two lines of form vi (10%), two lines of form iii (10%), and one line of form iv (5%) (see figure 4). correspondingly, its stressing profile is 90%–15%–10%–100%. or, by quatrains: 75%–25%–25%–100% 100%–0%–0%–100% 100%–0%–0%–100% 100%–0%–0%–100% 50%–50%–25%–100% belyi made every effort to avoid metrically ambiguous words in order to produce “pure” and “perfect” lines with two skipped stresses. the only disyllabic preposition in the poem is found in line 10, but it should be considered an unstressed proclitic rather than a rhythmically ambiguous word: kolébljutsja iz-za ogrády [‘they flutter from behind the fence’]. at the same time he did not avoid extrametrical stresses on non-ambiguous monosyllables, such as khràm [‘the temple’] and v nòch’ [‘in(to) the night’] in lines 7–8 because these stresses on non-ictic syllables (marked here as “lightly” stressed) do not affect the super-long unstressed intervals in the middle of the line: khràm jásnitsja, otsepenév / v nòch’ výrezannymi krestami [‘the temple is glowing, numb / in the night, into which its crosses are carved’]. 68 igor pilshchikov kladbíshchenskij ubógij sád iii i zelenéjushchie kóchki. vi nad pámjatnikami drozhát, vii potréskivajut ogonjóchki. vii nad zárosljami iz derév, vii proplákavshi kolokolámi, vii khràm jásnitsja, otsepenév vii v nòch’ výrezannymi krestámi. vii serébrjanye topoljá vii kolébljutsja iz-za ogrády, vii razmjótyvaja na poljá vii bushújushchie listopády. vii v kolébljushchemsja serebré vii besshúmnoe vozniknovén’e vii vzletájushchikh netopyréj, – vii ikh zhálobnoe shelesten’e, vii o sérdtse tíkhoe mojó, iv sozhzhónnoe v poldnévnom znóe, – iii ty pogruzháesh’sja v rodnóe, vi v kholódnoe nebytijó. vii iii — vi — vii — vii vii — vii — vii — vii vii — vii — vii — vii vii — vii — vii — vii iv — iii — vi — vii figure 4: the rhythmical composition of andrei belyi’s “noch’ju na kladbishche” therefore, a joint analysis of rhythmical forms and stressing profiles can help us to grasp and describe the rhythmical impulse of verse. in particular, rhythmical impulse manifests itself in the placement of rhythmically ambiguous words on particular ictuses and extrametrical stresses on particular non-icitic syllables. 69rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms 5. conclusion the statistics of rhythmical forms may be complemented with an analysis of ambiguous forms, better reflecting the rhythmical impulse of the poem. batiushkov’s iambic tetrameter in 1815–17 has a two-mode rhythm (with predominating forms iv and i), but a single rhythmical impulse, which makes both modes isomorphic. form i in batiushkov’s “moj genij” sounds different from brodsky’s because it is governed by a different rhythmical impulse. forms i and iii in different redactions of batiushkov’s “otvet gnedichu” can replace each other because they both fit the same rhythmical impulse. gasparov conducted an experiment: he counted separately the minimum and the maximum number of stresses in rhythmically ambiguous lines (gasparov 1965: 77–78; 1967: 329–330; 1974: 376–377, 407–409; see also baevsky 1970: 157–166). his conclusion was that “the divergences [between the values] are negligible” (gasparov 1967: 329; 1974: 408). however, the statistics of ambiguous forms may prove useful in the analysis of the rhythmical predilections of particular poets (my examples 2.1 and 2.2), in the analysis of the rhythmical impulse of a single poem that remains invariable in its various redactions (example 2.3), and – most obviously – in the analysis of the rhythmical composition of a particular poem, where ambiguous forms can constitute a “transition zone” between adjacent compositional parts (example 2.4).12 12 this paper is part of a research project based at lomonosov moscow state university and supported by russian science foundation grant № 17-18-01701. i am grateful to sergei liapin, gail lenhoff, ronald vroon and the participants in the quantitative approaches to versification conference (prague, june 24–26, 2019) for criticism and suggestions. preliminary theses were published in the proceedings of the aforementioned conference (pilshchikov 2019). 70 igor pilshchikov references baevsky, vadim solomonovich 1970. k izucheniju ritmiki (aktsentuatsii) russkogo stikha. in: uchenye zapiski smolenskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta im. karla marksa i novozybkovskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta 10, 157–168. beglov, aleksei l’vovich 1996a. iosif brodskij: monotonija poeticheskoj rechi (na materiale 4-stopnogo jamba). in: philologica 3(5/7), 109–123. beglov, aleksei l’vovich 1996b. joseph brodsky: the monotony of poetic speech (based on the material of his iambic tetrameters). in: philologica 3(5/7), 124. [a summary of beglov 1996a.] beglov, aleksei l’vovich 1997. monotonija poeticheskoj rechi (na materiale russkogo 4-stopnogo jamba xviii–xx vv.) diplomnaja rabota studenta v kursa (unpublished ba thesis). moskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet imeni m. v. lomonosova. filologicheskij fakul’tet. belyi, andrei 1910. simvolizm: kniga statej. moskva: musaget. červenka, miroslav 1984. rhythmical impulse: notes and commentaries. in: wiener slawistischer almanach 14, 23–53. dobritsyn, andrei 2016. rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic diversity (the example of the russian iambic tetrameter). in: studia metrica et poetica 3(1), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.02 erlich, victor 1965. russian formalism: history – doctrine. second revised edition. the hague: mouton. garzonio, stefano 1985. nuovi studi sul verso russo. in: europa orientalis 4, 297–307. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1965. vol’nyj khorej i vol’nyj jamb majakovskogo. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 76–88. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1967. aktsentnyj stikh rannego majakovskogo. in: trudy po znakovym sistemam 3 (uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 198), 324–360. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh: metrika i ritmika. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2015. a. n. kolmogorov v russkom stikhovedenii. in: kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich 2015. trudy po stikhovedeniju. ed. by prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich. moskva: mtsnmo, 10–20. 71rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tat’jana vladimirovna 2003. odnoslozhnye slova v stikhe: ritm i chast’ rechi. in: russkij jazyk v nauchnom osveshchenii 5, 35–50. golovastikov, kirill andreevich 2011. odnoslozhnye slova v russkoj sillabo-tonike: ritm i grammatika. in: studia slavica: sbornik nauchnykh trudov molodykh filologov, vol. x. tallinn, 42–53. iliushin, aleksandr anatol’evich 1988. russkoe stikhoslozhenie. moskva: vysshaja shkola. jakobson, roman 1922. brjusovskaja stikhologija i nauka o stikhe. in: akademicheskij tsentr narkomprosa. nauchnye izvestija, vol. 2: filosofija. literatura. iskusstvo. moskva: giz, 222–240. jakobson, roman 1923. o cheshskom stikhe preimushchestvenno v sopostavlenii srusskim. moskva, berlin: opojaz – m.l.k. jakobson, roman 1960 [1958]. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas albert (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: m.i.t. press, 350–377. jakobson, roman 1973. ob odnoslozhnykh slovakh v russkom stikhe. in: jakobson, roman; van schooneveld, cornelis h.; worth, dean s. (eds.), slavic poetics: essays in honor of kiril taranovsky. the hague, paris: mouton, 239–252. jakobson, roman 1979a [1955]. russian binary meters. in his selected writings, vol. 5: on verse, its masters and explorers. the hague, paris: mouton, 167–169. jakobson, roman 1979b. retrospect. in his selected writings, vol. 5: on verse, its masters and explorers. the hague, paris: mouton, 569–601. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich 2015 [1961]. metr kak obraz: vvedenie. in his trudy po stikhovedeniju. ed. by prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich. moskva: mtsnmo, 239–251. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1963. o dol’nike sovremennoj russkoj poezii (obshchaja kharakteristika). in: voprosy jazykoznanija 6, 84–95. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1968. k osnovam russkoj klassicheskoj metriki. in: meylakh, boris solomonovich (ed.), sodruzhestvo nauk i tajny tvorchestva. moskva: iskusstvo, 397–432. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 2001. teorija nedopustimosti pereaktsentuatsii i odnoslozhnye slova v russkom stikhe. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tat’jana vladimirovna (eds.), slavianskij stikh. lingvisticheskaja i prikladnaja poetika: materialy mezhdunarodnoj konferentsii 23–27 ijunja 1998 goda. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury, 50–62. 72 igor pilshchikov liapin, sergei evgen’evich 2001. ritmicheskie povtory i pereboi ritma v chetyrekhstopnom jambe pushkina. in: scherr, barry p.; kazartsev, evgenii viacheslavovich (eds.), formal’nye metody v lingvisticheskoj poetike: sbornik nauchnykh trudov, posvjashchennyj 65-letiju professora spbgu m. a. krasnoperovoj. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo sankt-peterburgskogo universiteta, 82–99. liapin, sergei evgen’evich 2010. mestoimenie v stikhe pushkina: sintaksis – ritm – poetika (preimushchestvenno na materiale monosillabov). in: vekshin, georgii viktorovich (ed.), poetika i fonostilistika: brikovskij sbornik 1. moskva: mgup, 50–54. pertsov, nikolai viktorovich 1999. raznoobrazie v ramkakh odnoobrazija (o stikhotvorenii pushkina “otvet”). in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 58(3), 36–42. pilshchikov, igor [igor’ alekseevich] 2017a. ponjatija “stikh”, “metr” i “ritm” v russkom stikhovedenii xx veka. in: trudy instituta russkogo jazyka im. v.v. vinogradova, vol. xi: slavjanskij stikh. moskva, 12–30. pilshchikov, igor 2017b. zasedanie moskovskogo lingvisticheskogo kruzhka 1  ijunja 1919 goda i zarozhdenie stikhovedcheskikh kontseptsij o.  brika, b. tomashevskogo i r. jakobsona. in: revue des études slaves 88(1/2), 151–175. https://doi.org/10.4000/res.956 pilshchikov, igor 2019. rhythmically ambiguous words or rhythmically ambiguous lines? in search of new approaches to an analysis of the rhythmical varieties of syllabic-accentual meters. in: plecháč, petr; scherr, barry p.; skulacheva, tatyana; bermúdez-sabel, helena; kolár, robert (eds.), quantitative approaches to versification. prague: the institute of czech literature of the czech academy of sciencies, 193–200. pilshchikov, igor [igor’ alekseevich]; starostin, anatolii sergeevich 2010. problema avtomaticheskogo raspoznavanija metra: sillabotonika, dol’nik, taktovik. in: bogdanov, sergei igorevich; khvorost’ianova, elena viktorovna (eds.), otechestvennoe stikhovedenie: 100-letnie itogi i perspektivy razvitija: materialy mezhdunarodnoj nauchnoj konferentsii 25–27 nojabrja 2010 g. sankt-peterburg. sankt-peterburg: filologicheskij fakul’tet spbgu, 397–406. pilshchikov, igor; starostin, anatolii 2015. reconnaissance automatique des mètres des vers russes: une approche statistique sur corpus. traduit par éliane delente. in: langages 199, 89–105. https://doi.org/10.3917/lang.199.0089 rudy, stephen 1976. jakobson’s inquiry into verse and the emergence of structural poetics. in: matejka, ladislav (ed.), sound, sign and meaning: quinquagenary of the prague linguistic circle. ann arbor: michigan slavic contributions, 477–520. https://doi.org/10.4000/res.956 73rhythmical ambiguity: verbal forms and verse forms shapir, maksim il’ich 2005. “tebe chisla i mery net”: o vozmozhnostjakh i granitsakh “tochnykh metodov” v gumanitarnykh naukakh. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 43–62. shapir, maksim il’ich 2019. “for thee there is no weight nor measure”: the possibilities and limitations of “exact” methods in the humanities. translated by craig saunders. in: journal of literary theory 13(1), 116–144. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0004 shengeli, georgii arkad’evich (1923). traktat o russkom stikhe. chast’ 1: organicheskaja metrika. second revised edition. moskva, petrograd: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. taranovsky, kiril 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1971. o ritmicheskoj strukture russkikh dvuslozhnykh razmerov. in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), poetika i stilistika russkoj literatury: pamjati akademika viktora vladimirovicha vinogradova. leningrad: nauka, 420–429. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich]; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1982. k kharakteristike russkogo chetyrekhstopnogo jamba xviii veka: lomonosov, trediakovskij, sumarokov. in: russian literature 12(2), 145–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0304-3479(82)80007-0 tarlinskaja, marina 1987. meter and language: binary and ternary meters in english and russian. in: style 21(4), 626–649. https://doi.org/10.2307/1771165 tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1923a. pjatistopnyj jamb pushkina. in: ocherki po poetike pushkina. berlin: epokha, 7–143 tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1923b. russkoe stikhoslozhenie: metrika. petrograd: academia. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1928. stikh i ritm: metodologicheskie zamechanija. in: poetika 4. leningrad: academia, 5–25. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha. leningrad: academia. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1966. introduction to metrics: the theory of verse. translated from the russian by c. f. brown. edited with an introduction by edward stankiewicz and walter n. vickery. london, the hague, paris: mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0004 https://doi.org/10.2307/1771165 ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse macdonald p. jackson*1 abstract: ants oras’s contribution to the study of early modern english dramatic verse is of enduring value. in 1956 his article on extra monosyllables in henry viii gave much needed support to the view that both this play of the shakespeare first folio (1623) and the two noble kinsmen (first published in a quarto of 1634) were works in which shakespeare had collaborated with john fletcher. oras’s pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama (1960), with its huge amount of quantitative data and readily intelligible graphs, greatly enhanced understanding of how blank verse developed from the 1580s to the closing of the london theatres in 1642. moreover, use of oras’s techniques of analysis has continued to throw light on questions of chronology and authorship surrounding shakespeare and his fellow playwrights. among plays illuminated in this way have been the revenger’s tragedy, pericles, thomas of woodstock, sir thomas more, and arden of faversham. keywords: ants oras, early modern, english drama, shakespeare, blank verse, extra monosyllables, pause patterns, chronology, authorship, marina tarlinskaja mark antony’s address to his “friends, romans, countrymen”, after caesar’s assassination, has seldom been more effectively delivered than by marlon brando in joseph mankiewicz’s movie of 1953. but in the week leading up to the filming brando was anxious. he had no sense of how shakespeare’s blank verse should be spoken, or of the principles on which it was based. he sought help from the production’s cassius, john gielgud, who explained the basic pattern of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. only after repeated lessons did brando begin to hear the iambic beat (gielgud 1979: 193–194). brando is celebrated as among the greatest stars of the screen, rather than of the stage. he was wise to seek instruction on shakespeare’s verse from a master of the art of speaking it. but these days many professional theatre actors, even at london’s restored shakespeare’s globe, have a poor grasp of the workings of iambic pentameter, without even realizing their ignorance. mispronunciations that an ear for the metre would have deterred are common: “like nióbe all * author’s address: macdonald p. jackson, english department, university of auckland, private bag 92019, auckland mail centre, new zealand, email: m.jackson@auckland.ac.nz. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 48–57 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2. .042 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.04 49ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse tears”, with the accent on the second syllable, instead of the first, for example. gielgud or olivier would never have made such mistakes. an interest in prosody has not characterized the last fifty years of shakespeare studies, though there have been a few good books on the subject, notably by george t. wright and peter l. groves. but the most comprehensive and impressive analyses of early modern english dramatic blank verse have been by the russian-trained marina tarlinskaja, and in one major aspect of her research her most illuminating predecessor was the great estonian scholar ants oras. i have admired his work for over half a century. among my earliest publications was an analysis of affirmative particles in henry viii, included in the shakespeare first folio of 1623, and the two noble kinsmen, attributed to shakespeare and fletcher in a quarto of 1634 (jackson 1962). several prominent shakespeareans – including peter alexander, hardin craig, g. wilson knight, and r. a. foakes – had challenged the long-established view that fletcher had, during shakespeare’s final years as a dramatist, collaborated with him on these plays. i showed that throughout his playwriting career shakespeare preferred “ay” to “yes”, reserving the latter for special emphasis and the contradiction of negatives, whereas the younger fletcher avoided “ay” and favoured “yes” in all situations. the distribution of the two forms, and of the intensive “yea”, within henry viii and the two noble kinsmen supported the orthodox division of scenes between the two authors. familiarizing myself with the relevant academic publications, i had encountered oras’s excellent article on “extra monosyllables” in the two collaborative plays (oras 1953). it was well known that fletcher was far fonder than shakespeare of the feminine ending, an extra unstressed syllable at the end of an iambic pentameter line, and that fletcher’s fondness seemed to be reflected in certain scenes of henry viii and the two noble kinsmen that also exhibited traces of his phraseology. but alexander and others had argued that a tendency for feminine endings to appear more frequently during shakespeare’s late period was intensified in henry viii, which followed the tempest. oras set out to show that this explanation would not serve. examining the three shakespeare plays written immediately before henry viii (which can be dated 1613) and the two noble kinsmen (1613–1614)1 and three fletcher plays of the same period, oras demonstrated that there was a highly significant difference between the two playwrights in their proportions of feminine endings that were composed of monosyllables, rather than of the 1 when dates in parentheses are not clearly of publication, they are for first performance as determined in wells and taylor 1987 (for plays by shakespeare) or harbage et al. 1987 (for other plays). 50 macdonald p. jackson final syllable of a word of two or more syllables; and that to the quantitative difference could be added a qualitative one: fletcher often, but shakespeare never, employed words of some weight, such as nouns, as the redundant end-ofline monosyllable. and these and further distinctions carried over into those scenes that had been ascribed on other grounds to fletcher or shakespeare in the plays whose authorship was now in dispute. there could be no doubt that the scenes fell into two contrasting authorial groups. oras’s article was a model of clear, detailed, logical exposition. oras’s supreme contribution, however, to the study of dramatic blank verse was his monograph, pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama (1960). his aim was “to examine verse as such, for its own sake, as one of the principal elements contributing to the total impact of renaissance drama and determining the special nature of the impression that drama creates” (oras 1960: 1). working from the early printed texts, he counted, in the plays of all the main dramatists and several of the lesser ones, the number of times in which punctuation marked pauses within each of the nine syllabic positions within iambic pentameter lines. he obtained separate figures for (a) all punctuation, (b) punctuation heavier than commas, and (c) syntactical breaks caused by the sharing of lines between two or more speakers. he was well aware that scribes and compositors were responsible for much of the punctuation in the surviving texts, but rightly believed that authorial syntax and rhythm underlay their choices. moreover, the decision to divide a line between speakers was clearly the author’s, and pauses created in this way formed patterns closely resembling those indicated by commas, semi-colons, colons, and so on. his interest was in the percentages of all internal pauses that fell in each position. authors and agents in the transmission of the text might, he believed, deliberately choose to use little or much pausation in their verse, but the patterns formed by the placing of pauses would be less subject to conscious control and so might be as personal as “cardiograms” (oras 1960: 2). oras proved beyond doubt that – from the opening of the theatre in 1576 to the closing of the theatres in 1642 – there was an overall development in dramatic verse, in which individual playwrights participated in their own distinctive ways. graphs illustrated his results. for instance, shakespeare’s early plays displayed a high peak in the proportion of pauses after position four; for his middle plays there were two lower and roughly equal peaks after positions four and six; while his late plays exhibited a dominant peak after position six. the general trend was for pauses to occupy later and more diverse positions in the line. the proportions after uneven syllables increased. oras preceded his analysis of dramatic verse with illuminating figures and graphs for some french and italian poets and from chaucer and spenser, and 51ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse he discussed the implications of his findings with characteristic astuteness. his data are a rich mine of information for those concerned with questions of attribution and chronology. there are mathematical methods, described in all textbooks on statistics, for calculating the degrees of likeness between any two of oras’s graphs. one is the basic linear correlation.2 in 1993, oxford university computing services, provided with oras’s raw figures for type-a pauses, created for me a matrix of correlation coefficients between every pairing of plays by shakespeare. in 2002 i finally reported these results (jackson 2002a). they were astonishing. when the plays were listed in chronological order of their dates of composition according to the oxford edition of shakespeare’s complete works, ranging from 1590–1591 to 1613–1614, in twenty-eight out of thirty-eight cases a play’s pause patterns were most closely correlated to those of another that had been written within a year and a half of it, the average distance being less than a year (wells and taylor 1987: 109–134). for a further five the closest correlation was with a play separated from it by not more than three years. for only five plays were the results slightly anomalous, and the anomalies were easily explained. for example, the merry wives of windsor (dated 1597) was most similar to troilus and cressida (1602): not only does merry wives contain very little verse, and the smaller the sample the greater the influence of purely random factors, but also the revised chronology of the forthcoming new oxford shakespeare makes the two plays adjacent.3 it would be idle to suppose that artistic change must always be a matter of steady, linear, one-way progression, but something approaching this kind of regularity evidently governed shakespeare’s disposition of pauses within his blank verse lines. antony and cleopatra (1606) was most closely correlated to the tempest (1611) and vice versa, but a glance at the inter-correlations among plays from 1606 onwards reveals that antony and cleopatra ushered in a final phase of shakespeare’s rhythmical style, so that even the five-year gap between antony and the tempest, so similar in their pause patterns, is unsurprising. among the problems of authorship on which oras’s data threw light was that of the revenger’s tragedy.4 the traditional attribution to cyril tourneur originated in an utterly unreliable seventeenth-century bookseller’s catalogue, but in the 1960s resistance to the case that had been made for identifying 2 the test is described at vassarstats (see references), where calculations can be carried out electronically. 3 private communication from gary taylor, 28 march 2015. 4 full details about the play are available in taylor and lavagnino 2007: 360–363. 52 macdonald p. jackson middleton as the author remained strong. oras’s graph of the pause patterns in the one extant play undoubtedly tourneur’s assumed an almost unique shape, quite unlike that for the revenger’s tragedy, which was very like graphs for middleton’s comedies of the appropriate period (oras 1960: 58). calculating correlation coefficients, i found that in fact every one of middleton’s thirteen unaided plays provided a closer fit to the revenger’s tragedy than did the atheist’s tragedy, and that closest of all was a trick to catch the old one, which had been coupled with the revenger’s tragedy in a stationer’s register entry of 7 october 1607 – a coupling that appeared to be confined to plays by the same author (jackson 1983: 28–29). oras’s figures again supplied me with useful material with which to bolster the case for regarding pericles – excluded from the first folio (1623) collection of shakespeare’s plays but published as his in a quarto of 1609 – as a work of co-authorship, to which the minor playwright george wilkins had contributed the first two acts. competing hypotheses were that shakespeare was solely responsible, but had some special reason for beginning the play in an unusual style, or that the first two acts were remnants from a version he had written at the beginning of his career. oras’s gave separate figures for the first two and last three acts of pericles (dated 1607), but he did not offer any for the miseries of enforced marriage (1606), the only surviving play entirely by wilkins. but oras carefully defined his principles of computation and in trials of my own i found that i could replicate his results, so was able to compile type-a figures for miseries. when these were graphed, in oras’s manner, alongside those for shakespeare’s coriolanus (1608), it was obvious that pericles, 1–2, matched miseries and was unlike pericles, 3–5, and coriolanus, which were almost identical to each other. the shape of the graph for pericles, 1–2, with its double peak for positions four and six also undermined the theory that this was early shakespearean writing (jackson 2003: 87). computing pause patterns in oras’s manner also furnished me with ammunition in arguing that the anonymous manuscript play thomas of woodstock, usually dated 1592–1593 and supposed to have been a “source” for shakespeare’s richard ii (1595), was in fact written in the seventeenth-century, probably by samuel rowley (jackson 2002b). david j. lake had proved that the existing manuscript must have been penned no earlier than 1600, but, accepting the orthodox dating of the play, he had assumed that the contractions and other linguistic forms that established as much had been introduced by a scribe who subjected the original script to “creative revision” (lake 1983). i put forward evidence that not only the linguistic forms of thomas of woodstock but also its metrical characteristics and its vocabulary pointed to its having been first composed long after the early 1590s. among features of the verse at odds 53ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse with the orthodox dating was the distribution of internal pauses. here again, a graph displayed peaks in positions four and six. none of oras’s graphs for plays written in the 1580s or early 1590s had a remotely similar configuration. greene, kyd, lodge, lyly, marlowe, peele, the early shakespeare, wilmot, and the anonymous contemporary playwrights whose verse oras scrutinized all had very different graphs, with peaks at position four. the twin peaks of thomas of woodstock also emerged from an examination of the manuscript of the original sir thomas more, which was revised by several playwrights, including shakespeare, who contributed a new scene (jackson 2002b). the unrevised script of more had also been dated to the early 1590s. john jowett had given good reasons for thinking that it was the joint work of antony munday, in whose handwriting it survived, and henry chettle (jowett 1989). in chettle’s share the highest number of pauses, counted in oras’s manner, came after the sixth syllable, which suggested a date closer to 1600. shakespeare’s evolution in this matter was fairly typical: the first play of his in which pauses after the sixth syllable exceeded pauses after the fourth was twelfth night (1601). munday’s share of the original more was metrically less advanced than chettle’s, but the pausation was nevertheless suggestive of a date nearer to 1600 than to 1590. in this case too, linguistic forms supported the later dating. oras triumphantly succeeded in his aim of enhancing “the understanding of what renaissance verse is and of the factors that made it develop the way it did” (oras 1960: 1). decades beforehand, e. h. c. oliphant had proclaimed the importance to his pronouncements on questions of authorship in the drama of shakespeare’s time of various idiosyncrasies of vocabulary, syntax, and “the facture of the verse into which [...] sentences are moulded”, above all “the indefinite music that permeates it all” or “the rise and fall of the melody, proceeding one hardly knows whence, but mainly doubtless from the distribution of stresses” (oliphant 1927: 30–31). oras discovered a means of quantifying and defining one aspect of oliphant’s “indefinite music”, but not that derived from “the distribution of stresses”. the task of methodically analysing patterns of stress was taken up by marina tarlinskaja, who has also refined oras’s research on pauses, and has added quantitative data on “word boundaries” and many miscellaneous elements to the prosodist’s armoury (tarlinskaja 1987; 2014). whereas oras relied on punctuation as an indicator of pausation, tarlinskaja has studied “strong syntactic breaks” in iambic pentameter verse, relying on a linguist’s sense of the actual syntax. the overall patterns of tarlinskaja’s breaks and oras’s pauses are not dissimilar, but the diversity of tarlinskaja’s measures of versification make for greater confidence in her judgements on the date and 54 macdonald p. jackson authorship of any shorter piece of verse, in particular. she undertakes a much fuller analysis of munday, chettle, and their shares of the original sir thomas more than application of oras’s methods, cited above. her research confirms my own conclusion, reported by taylor (1989: 120) that pause patterns assign the famous shakespearean “hand d” addition to more was made within the period from twelfth night (1601–1602) to macbeth (1604–1605): she settles on 1603–1604 as a probable date (tarlinskaja 2014: 176–192). tarlinskaja’s wider range of tests may yet help solve the problem posed by the melbourne ms, a four-page fragmentary draft of a play-scene discovered in 1985 at melbourne hall, derbyshire (jackson 2006). it bears some relation to james shirley’s the traitor (1631), 1.2, and a range of evidence suggests that it is shirley’s discarded draft. but arguments have also been advanced for denying it to shirley and concluding that john webster wrote it around 1606–1609. we have absolutely no handwriting by webster, and a palaeographical case for shirley, trained as a scrivener, founders on the instability and variety of his penmanship. a graph of the fragment’s pause patterns more closely resembles oras’s graph for shirley’s hyde park (1632) than any of his graphs for webster, but this is a “poor likelihood”. the manuscript scene was clearly composed by an exceptionally talented dramatist. it is desirable that he be more securely identified. let me end with an illustration of the efficacy of tarlinskaja’s refined version of oras’s pause patterns (namely “strong syntactic breaks”), along with word boundaries, stressing on “strong syllabic positions”, and miscellaneous additional features as aids to the determination of authorship. the case study is the domestic tragedy arden of faversham, published anonymously in 1592. employing computerized stylometric tests, based on lexical words and highfrequency function words used more and less often by shakespeare than by other playwrights, hugh craig and arthur f. kinney (2009: 78–99), came to the decision that scenes 3–9 of the tragedy arden of faversham (published anonymously in 1592) were largely, if not wholly, by shakespeare. in a recent study i advanced independent reasons for endorsing this verdict (jackson 2014). tarlinskaja herself proposes that the versification of scenes 3–8 is compatible with a shakespearean provenance (2014: 105–111). she also accepts the conclusions of recent attribution studies that titus andronicus and 1, 2, and 3 henry vi are collaborative works, and that the anonymous edward iii (published 1596) was partly shakespeare’s. she gives separate data for the “shakespearean” and “non-shakespearean” portions of these plays, and for 1 henry vi separate figures for act 1, attributed to thomas nashe, and the remaining scenes that are not judged to be by shakespeare (tarlinskaja 2014: tables b.1–b.4). in a forthcoming article i report the outcome when 55ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse statistical tests are applied to her figures, in order to determine whether the shakespearean scenes of arden of faversham are closer to the shakespearean or non-shakespearean scenes of the five early shakespearean collaborations (jackson, forthcoming). the measure of likeness was the basic linear correlation. in twenty out of twenty-four comparisons (since 1 henry vi offered two categories of non-shakespearean material), arden, 3–8, turned out to be closer to shakespeare’s share of an early collaborative play than to the non-shakespearean share. this is like tossing a coin and getting twenty heads in twenty-four throws. such a large deviation from chance expectation has a probability of occurring only once in 650 occasions. the obvious inference to be drawn is that shakespeare’s contributions to all six plays have been fairly accurately determined. we may also conclude that meticulous analysis of versification, based on the accumulation of quantitative data, remains a key to the understanding of individual playwrights’ styles. approaches to literature come in and out of fashion and much criticism is ephemeral, but good scholarship endures. oras’s work on english dramatic verse stands as a lasting monument to his industry and insight. references craig, hugh; kinney, arthur f. (eds.) 2009. shakespeare, computers, and the mystery of authorship. cambridge: cambridge university press. gielgud, john 1979. an actor and his time. london: sidgwick & jackson. groves, peter l. 2013. rhythm and meaning in shakespeare: a guide for readers and actors. clayton, australia: monash university publishing. harbage, alfred; rev. schoenbaum, samuel; rev. waggonheim, s. 1989. annals of english drama 975–1700. london; new york: methuen. jackson, macd. p. 1962. affirmative particles in “henry viii”. in: notes and queries 207, 372–374. jackson, macd. p. (ed.) 1983. the revenger’s tragedy: attributed to thomas middleton: a facsimile of the 1607/8 quarto. east brunswick, nj; london; toronto: associated university presses. jackson, macd. p. 2002a. pause patterns in shakespeare’s verse: canon and chronology. in: linguistic and literary computing 17, 37–46. 56 macdonald p. jackson jackson, macd. p. 2002b. shakespeare’s richard ii and the anonymous thomas of woodstock. in: medieval and renaissance drama in england 14, 17–65. jackson, macd. p. 2003. defining shakespeare: “pericles” as test case. oxford: oxford university press. jackson, macd. p. 2006. john webster, james shirley, and the melbourne manuscript. in: medieval and renaissance drama in england 19, 21–44. jackson, macd. p. 2014. determining the shakespeare canon: “arden of faversham” and “a lover’s complaint”. oxford: oxford university press. jackson, macd. p. (forthcoming). arden of faversham and shakespeare’s early collaborations: the evidence of metre. jowett, john 1989. henry chettle and the original text of sir thomas more. in: howard-hill, t. h. (ed.), shakespeare and “sir thomas more”: essays on the play and its shakespearian interest. cambridge: cambridge university press, 131–149. lake, david j. 1983. three seventeenth-century revisions: thomas of woodstock, the jew of malta, and faustus b. in: notes and queries 228, 133–143. oliphant, ernest henry clark 1927. the plays of beaumont and fletcher: an attempt to determine their respective shares and the shares of others. new haven: yale university press. oras, ants 1953. “extra monosyllables” in henry viii and the problem of authorship. in: journal of english and germanic philology 52, 198–213. oras, ants. 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. gainesville, fl: university of florida press. tarlinskaja, marina. 1987. shakespeare’s verse: iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncracies. new york: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina. 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama, 1561– 1642. farnham, surrey; burlington, vt: ashgate. taylor, gary. 1989. the date and auspices of the additions to sir thomas more. in: howard-hill, t. h. (ed.), shakespeare and “sir thomas more”: essays on the play and its shakespearian interest. cambridge: cambridge university press, 101–129. taylor, gary; lavagnino, john (eds.) 2007. thomas middleton and early modern textual culture: a companion to the collected works. oxford: clarendon press. vassarstats: website for statistical computation. vassarstats.net. (last accessed 3 april 2015). 57ants oras and the analysis of early modern english dramatic verse wells, stanley; taylor, gary 1987. william shakespeare: a textual companion. oxford: clarendon press. wright, george t. 1980. shakespeare’s metrical art. berkeley: university of california press. on rendering french syllabic verse in estonian language: reflections and proposals1 ants oras 1 in recent times we have witnessed – most notably due to the popular work of johannes semper – an increase in the number of estonian renditions of french verse. this, however, raises issues concerning the method of translation. i have been interested for a long time in the question of how to render french meter, especially alexandrine (that is, the iambic hexameter, according to the conventional definition). the main difference in the general use of versification methods lies between the french practice of the so-called syllabic and our practice of tonic meter (with the exception of folklore). according to the most common understanding, this means that the french count the number of syllables, whereas we count the number of stresses. the stress placement in verse lines for us is mostly predetermined, while in french verse both the number and position of stress varies. it has been widely held that our traditional and indigenous method cannot be altered even when translating french verse, and that therefore the most classical and well-known form of french verse – the alexandrine – must be bent into conformity with our schemes and rules. the scheme for the estonian iambic hexameter is plain and simple: ∪  ∪  ∪  ∪  ∪  ∪  (∪). this is the very form that has been used in most cases for rendering french poetry into estonian. i will illustrate this by juxtaposing the first two stanzas of johannes semper’s translation of baudelaire with the original: la nature est un temple où de vivants piliers laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; l’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles qui l’observent avec des regards familiers. 1 the paper was published in 1931 in estonian literary journal “eesti kirjandus” and was translated from estonian by miikael-aadam lotman. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 136–144 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.10 137on rendering french syllabic verse in estonian language comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent. on loodus tempel elavate sammastega, kust sõnu vahel poetub ebamääraseid. käib inimene hiien keset sümboleid, mis vaatavad teda tuttavate pilkudega. kui ühineksid kaugel pikad vastuhelid ja sulaksid kõik sügavusen üksuseks, mis suur kui öö, kuid ometi liig kauge seks, nii vastavad üksteist lõhnad, värvid, helid. the difference is radical. it stems mainly from two aspects: first, there is no consistent caesura in estonian verse that divides each line after the third foot (that is, after the sixth syllable) into two hemistiches, secondly, there is a remarkable variety of rhythm types in french verse, but the rather monotonous scheme that permeates estonian verse (albeit varying in terms of specific word-length, and so on) does not generally capacitate conversion techniques equivalent to french language. i must emphasise that the divergence is caused by the general scheme rather than its particular realisation. even though french meter is called “syllabic”, the tonic aspects seem to play substantially into the equation, since the syllables cannot be read without using the natural word-stresses. such feature can be expressed in terms of tonic versification. when each line from baudelaire’s example is divided into hemistiches, we get a total of sixteen units. analysis reveals that ten units out of sixteen are anapaestic: la natùre est un tèmple de confùses paròles, etc. three of the sixteen units can be considered iambic, if we take into account the secondary stresses and certain ramifications of the general scheme. the three remaining units could be called iambic, were it not for the first (trochaic) foot, which is inverted with respect to the second. in some cases this adds special emphasis and gravity to the word corresponding to the inverted trochaic foot, as can be seen here: vaste comme la nuit (incidentally, in this case both feet are trochaic) – ‘vaste’, an already weighty and significant word, is brought more vigorously to the fore. experiments i have conducted with a whole number of 138 ants oras other poems by baudelaire indicate that the ratio is quite similar to the poem analyzed above: anapaestic rhythm is the most common, even though fully anapaestic alexandrine lines hardly ever exceed 50%. mixed-type alexandrines seem to predominate, that is, lines where only the first or second half is anapaestic and the corresponding other halves mostly – though not always – consisting of a purely or nearly iambic structure with frequent inversions of singular verse feet. cases where an anapaestic foot appears only in the second hemistich seem to predominate, giving me a general impression that the rhythm of the french alexandrine is closer to anapaest rather than to iamb. since this tentative conclusion is supported by extremely limited statistical material, it should not be expected to hold true for baudelaire’s poetry in general, much less for the whole of french poetry. in any case, anapaest is seemingly more frequent than iamb in alexandrine, which is characterised above all by a shifting from meter to meter. the shift: iamb > anapaest induces acceleration of movement, whereas the reverse induces deceleration. this is mostly due to the reduction of stressed syllables to two units in anapaestic parts, as opposed to the three stresses in iambic half-lines. thus the number of stressed syllables fluctuates between four and six stresses in the typical alexandrine. below are a couple of lines from the poem cited above illustrating acceleration: laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles… comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent… an illustration of deceleration: la nature est un temple où de vivants piliers… these two types seem to be the most common in french, or at least baudelaire’s, alexandrine. the most compelling cases of acceleration and retardation can be seen, however, when a purely anapaestic line is followed by a uniformly slow line, or vice versa. i will give a few more examples, also from baudelaire: heureux celui qui peut d’une aile vigoreuse s’élancer vers les champs lumineux et sereins! (“élévation”) [tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses] la douceur du foyer et le charme des soirs, mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses! (“le balcon”) 139on rendering french syllabic verse in estonian language let us now compare the cited french lines with a few original – and intrinsically appealing – alexandrines from gustav suits: veel purskab tuld ja suitseb sõja kuri kraater, kui valguse uus andja avand alma mater siin oma uksed vanad veerul vaikse mäe, mis esimest, ei viimast rõõmupidu näe. (“õnnesoov” [felicitation]) here are a few lines from “leconte de lisle’i läkitusest sõbrale” [leconte de lisle’s message to a friend] nüüd revolutsiooni üle võime panna ristid, louis, sõber õiguse, töötoa ja raamatu, kui asutavas kogus koos legitimistid, töövabariik me pelvis kättesaamatu. bourboni saartele me taoline tõtku, provintsi prantsuse pääkurat ise võtku! bretagne’i mullust kui veel sõitu mälestan, me rahva juhmust-jahmust jälestan. alliterations, novel rhymes, internal rhymes, borrowed words and inversions in word order make the estonian verses, which otherwise sound rather monotonous, more interesting. this is apparently the impetus behind accelerated shortenings and retarding lengths of lines as illustrated in the second example. such possibilities are ever-present in the typical french form, but as we have already seen, there is an additional array of diverse possibilities that are lacking in our alexandrine. our alexandrine is, quite understandably, far less acclimatised than the corresponding form in france. 2 similar, or roughly similar, constraints seem to bind generally all literatures that share the tonic meter. many different paths have been pursued in order to overcome such difficulties. the english, with their time-honored techniques, were unable to find a suitable counterpart for rhymed alexandrine couplets in the form of nuanced yet less expressive heroic distiches. in recent times, all manner of longer metric forms have come to be substituted, depending on the mood. the monotony of shorter lines has been aptly avoided by introducing vibrations similar to french verse with the help of stress inversions – an 140 ants oras english versification technique acculturated since long ago – and short, barely discernible, additional syllables: … and charles the seventh, that worthy one? even with the good knight charlemain. (swinburne’s translation of villon) seventh can occur either as a monoor disyllabic word: a slight trembling of a syllable is felt in normal pronunciation. the beginning of the second line contains a stress inversion. germans – with some interesting exceptions, such as the translations by otto hauser – tend either to hold on to their humdrum iambic hexameter or to use a form in which the amount of stresses remains the same while the number of syllables varies. the latter can add dynamism, but it reduces the general impression of balance and orderliness, which accounts for some of the major traditional appeals of french verse. this, in my opinion, is one of the contributing reasons why stefan george’s oft admired translation of baudelaire isn’t completely satisfactory. sophisticated though it may be, at times it misses the original’s dynamism, at times its measured buoyancy, depending on whether he prefers a clear iamb or drifts into a more chaotic verse instrumentation that does not keep exact count of syllables. our language has had to face the same dilemma. johannes aavik’s estonian renditions of baudelaire are composed in clear-cut iambs with a more or less demarcated caesura. the form in the translation of une charogne [raibe], published in the iii edition of the proceedings of “noor-eesti”, does not pall because the alexandrine regularly alternates with an altogether shorter verse. in the same volume, gustav suits published his estonian version of elévation [prantsuse bukett] too. his translation has an anapaestic meter that befits the said poem. in a longer piece such meter might have become tedious, but in this case it is enthralling: au-dessus des étangs, au-dessus des vallées, des montagnes, des bois, des nuages, des mers, par delà le soleil, par delà les éthers, par delà les confins des sphères étoilées… üle tiikide, loikude, nõgude nõre, üle metsade, mägede, pilvede, kaudu eeterimere ja päikese, läbi viimaste tähtede laotuse õre… 141on rendering french syllabic verse in estonian language as we can see, this form corresponds to the strong rise in the onset of the original. semper’s later rendition of bénédiction [õnnistus] is amphibrachic throughout (with an occasionally omitted syllable) and has the same forceful effect as the original, but some of its diversity is lost due to the very choice of form, at least in the more lyrical or subtle parts: – soyez béni, mon dieu, qui donnez la souffrance comme un divin remède à nos impuretés et comme la meilleure et la plus pure essence qui prépare les forts aux saintes voluptés! “oo issand, sind kiidan, sult kannatust saad, see jumalik rohi, mis puhastab rooja, see lõhnav õli, mil säilitav laad, see pühale himule aseme looja.” it seems to be the relative inflexibility of the form that forces semper into simplifying the substantial features of the poem and delineating its contours more robustly. on the one hand, baudelaire’s priestly abstractness has been reduced, but on the other hand, semper’s verses stand out with a particularly concrete freshness. we can conclude from all of the above observations that verse forms chosen thus far to substitute french alexandrine do make it possible to write fine estonian poetry, but fail to adequately reflect the amply vibrant manner of the original. 3 the question arises whether there are any possibilities for a more accurate reproduction of the french rhythms. all of the rhythm types mentioned in the first part of this article are present in the estonian language, thus, they can be employed for translating verse. caesura presents a more formidable difficulty and its consistent implementation is not an easy task, since our language does not have strong final stresses to mark pauses. i suggest that it should be implemented at least to the extent of establishing a mental image of the scheme. this also applies to anapaestic lines, where the caesura can be omitted in quite a few cases, without the fear of forgetting the general structure. anapaestic lines that have a caesura would compensate for lines that lack it. they would be accommodated into the scheme by analogy. anapaestic lines 142 ants oras have to be treated with the most care in this regard. caesuras in iambic parts can also be marked with a weak secondary stress where necessary, at least in cases where it is succeeded by a weighty punctuation mark, although this is unfortunately impossible for fast-paced anapaests. in general, it seems likely that an alexandrine composed in this way is more lenient in the placement of pause than its classical french counterpart, resembling to a certain extent the type of alexandrine used by french romanticists. the main rule would consist in the identical number of syllables + the maintained predominance of verses with caesurae. the rhythm is not necessarily less diverse than in french language, although some cases, for instance, the collision of two strongly stressed syllables, are less likely to become a characteristic of estonian verse. should the proposed form become customary, it would result in a considerable increase in the liberty of movement without conceding the impression of regularity. i have conducted experiments in an attempt to implement the aforementioned principles. at first i experimented with some of the more characteristic types of alexandrine. thus, i translated baudelaire’s harmonie du soir [õhtu harmoonia] according to the scheme: 3 iambs + 2 anapaests. näe õhtu saabumist, nüüd, mil tuulingu haar õisrühmist viirukit tõstleb hilju ja sala; hõng tiirleb, sõõrleb ses hääle hämara hala; sünk valss, mu valule videv, peidukas saar! however, i soon abandoned that plan, giving a freer rein to the rhythm, as can be seen, for example, in the following lines from the poem que diras-tu ce soir: keset üksildast ööd, kitsast tänavakurdu, kesk mõtlust vaikivat ja rahvaparve murdu tantsleb ta viirastus õhus kui tunglatoit mõnikord lausub see: “rada mu pälvurkonna viib vaid ilule, ilu ta, nälgiva, toit! olen ingel ja kaitsja ja muus ja madonna! (que ce soit dans la nuit et dans la solitude, que ce soit dans la rue et dans la multitude, son fantôme dans l’air danse comme un flambeau. 143on rendering french syllabic verse in estonian language parfois il parle et dit : “je suis belle, et j’ordonne que pour l’amour de moi vous n’aimiez que le beau ; je suis l’ange gardien, la muse et la madone!”) the estonian text should indicate that even the inversion of stress within verse feet can be implemented without ruining the unity. “tantsleb ta viirastus õhus kui tunglatoit…” corresponds to the trochaic beginning in the half-line … danse comme un flambeau and most probably helps to highlight the fluttering rhythm described therein. most of the novelty of the current proposal lies in methodological persistency. undoubtedly the techniques described in this paper have been implemented in separate cases, but as far as i know, nobody has ever tried to organise them with the purpose of devising a regular type of verse, much less for the rendition of french verse. this method will probably take some getting used to and it obviously needs refinement and diversification. thus far merely its contours have been outlined. i will add a few shorter translations from “the flowers of evil”, which has been our sole material for illustrations, in order to draw a rough sketch of what the end result would look like. i must stress here that a far greater diversity (alongside with more satisfactory caesuras and more precise adherence to the model of french verse) could be achieved in more adept hands. with the following i will merely present a few fumbling attempts: eksootiline lõhn kui uimastab mind hõng su rinnast, hõrk ja palav, sügisõhtuti, ilm mil hääletu ja kuum, kinnisilmade ees kauge ranniku ruum üle päikene, üksluiselt helendust valav; saar õnnelik ja laisk, kus loodus üliküllas toodab saledaid puid, mil võõraid vilju murd; kus väike meestetõug näib visa ja turd, ja naiste kiirgav pilk imejulge ja üllas. ning kauneid valgmaid näen su hõngust, mille kais maste otsatu hulk, lõtvuv purjede pais veel väsind iilidest, millest merestik puljas, kuna lõhn, mille levitab lai tamarind, mis sõõrmeid paisutab, millest oakitseb rind, liitub lauluga laevult, mis kutsuv ja uljas. 144 ants oras albatross vahel naljale isukas madruste summ saab kätte albatrossi, vete võimsa looma, kes õhus tiireldes, loid saatja, suur ja tumm, jälgis liugleva purjeka valkavat jooma. vaevalt laskus, kel uhkena sirutus kael, alla laotuse vürst, kui äratav vaid naeru! kui raskelt lohiseb laeva tõrvasel lael ta valge tiivapaar – kaks nii abitut aeru! taeva kartmatu poeg, kes eetris hõljendab, kuis nüüd mannetuks jäänd, kuis saamatuks ja lonkab! siin komberdades mees ta käiku jäljendab, sääl teine narrides tal piibu näkku tonkab. nagu pilvede vürst, nii ka sina, poeet! ei tend heidutatand torm, ei nool hukkuva ammu, ent, alla kõrgustest naerukärasse veet, tema hiiglasetiib tal vaid takistab sammu. pontes ad fontes – bridges to sources kadri novikov, anni arukask the 2015 colloquium balticum took place at the university of tartu from 5 to 7 november. this annual colloquium first held in 2001 at lund university, has continued to bring together antiquity scholars from sweden, germany, estonia, latvia, lithuania, poland, finland and russia. while participants come mainly from classical studies, researchers from a variety of disciplines have also recognised the conference’s merit. over the years, the programme has addressed disciplines such as philosophy, greek and latin literature, as well as, for instance, the greek and latin education or the influences of ancient mythology in contemporary literature. the delivered papers are authored by both recognised scholars and by maand phd-students presenting their first academic achievements. the subtitle of this year’s colloquium balticum xiv tartuense was pontes ad fontes (bridges to sources), aiming to draw attention to methodological questions in researching classical antiquity and reception of ancient culture. as expressed in the conference invitation, a wide variety of activities could be considered pontes (bridges) to antiquity: discovery, interpretation, translation, commentaries and teaching of ancient heritage. this subtitle offered an opportunity to include papers on poetry and poetics, methods and possibilities of textual analysis, themes and forms of ancient poetry in contemporary literature, and so on. we will give a short overview of such papers presented during the eight sessions on the colloquium in tartu. during the first session on 5 november, anna strode from the university of latvia discussed the themes of 17th century occasional poetry in riga and their relation to the history of livonia. due to the domination of swedish empire at the time in livonia, the level of education improved, and in 1631 the riga academic gymnasium was founded and soon scientific texts started to appear. hand in hand with the growing importance of latin and greek language in education, occasional poetry in these languages began to bloom. in order to graduate from the gymnasium, students had to take part in various disputations (disputationes) held in school as well as in public. texts of these disputations were printed before the disputations themselves took place; the printed versions included occasional poems congratulating the respondents (that is, students of the gymnasium, who were the authors of the disputations), which were added to the end of the texts. strode described how the main doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.11 studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 146–151 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.11 147pontes ad fontes – bridges to sources themes of occasional poems appended to theological disputations concerned man and god, piety and belief, the kingdom of god, and heresy. therewith, the mentioning of greek gods was not regarded as heresy as they were seen as mythological characters and portrayals of certain values. the purpose of writing this kind of poetry was to express the writers’ beliefs, to congratulate the addressee, and to give indirect instructions to potential listeners, combined into one short poem. sometimes the content of the poem was directly influenced by the theme of the disputation, and even direct quotations occurred. occasional poems appended to philosophical disputations, however, concerned themes such as virtue, justice, honesty, modesty, and they were less often influenced by the theme of the disputation. many allusions to ancient philosophy were made in which education was praised as a precondition of a happy life. in the second session, xenia hering from the university of marburg focused on the sources of the comic in latin comedy and presented plautus (on the basis of the analysis of his pseudolus) as the borderline author of italian improvisational theatre and the greek new comedy. plautus accepts the principles of the new comedy, but takes the action to the roman environment and makes some modifications, often breaking the consistency of the storyline (discontinuity dominates instead of linearity of the storyline) and emphasising pathos instead of logos. in his comedy, elements of the italian improvisational theatre (fabula atellana and mimus) can be observed. for instance, in comic situations more emphasis is put on dialogues, contestations, word-plays, in order to play to the audience who was accustomed to the entertainment of the improvisational theatre. however, the comic is not inserted only for amusement, but is also integrated into the events in the storyline. by analysing three passages from plautus’ pseudolus, hering described how it is characteristic to plautus’ style to break the standard storyline in order to insert a comic dialogue or a comic situation, which can be regarded as a digression and a static element. it is highlighted from the rest of the storyline with its absurdity and sometimes helps to create suspension. furthermore, humour can be seen as dominating over the logical movement of the storyline, occasionally intensified by the meta-theatrical effects (for example, characters watching others and commenting on their actions). she showed how comic situations were also used to expose the true nature of characters. thus, plautus can be regarded as the creator of a unique form of entertainment merging two different forms of comedy which played to the expectations and taste of his audience. the next speaker in this session was manuel reith, also from the university of marburg, who analysed the function of fables in the poetry of horace. compared to works of earlier latin authors, whose texts included only one or two fables, we can see a much more frequent occurrence of fables in the 148 kadri novikov, anni arukask works by horace, especially in his satires and epistles. in the satires, as a combination of different motives, texts and themes, the fables stand out as a vivid element of composition. difference of the function of fables in horace from earlier authors was demonstrated by reith with the example of the fable the bird in borrowed feathers, known also from phaedrus, which occurs in horace’s epistles 1.3.18–20. horace accuses the poet celsus in plagiarising other authors, and encourages him to look for his own strength. to this warning horace adds allusion to the fable about the bird. here it can be seen that horace adjusts the use of the fable to his own intentions, and does not bring it as a mere example or literary illustration according to the rhetorical exercises or progymnasmata. in this epistle horace does not bring forth the common aspect of accepting oneself as one is – instead, he emphasises the aspect of stealing. through the allusion to the fable, the allegation becomes part of the wit, created through ambiguity of the meaning of words in the previous verses, but is at the same time strengthened by the allusion. hereby, it becomes clear, that horace uses fables not as mere stories for children or as literary ornamentation any more, but as something much more complex and purposeful. on 6 november, in the third session of colloquium balticum tartuense, kadri novikov, from the university of tartu, discussed the function and form of narrative speeches in the ancient greek novel leucippe and clitophon by achilles tatius. in the novel, 10 such speeches function as internal analepseis (looking back to events in the main storyline), and one speech as a mixed analepsis (events narrated in it start before the main storyline, but merge with it eventually). thematically, novikov identifies five groups of speeches: description of the death of the beloved; explanations of the apparent deaths of the protagonist leucippe; speeches preparing the reader for the following events; speeches advancing the plot; and, speeches leading towards happy ending. the occurrence of rhetorical figures was also analysed in these speeches, with the results showing a similarity between speeches describing the death of the beloved, and in others the similarities less conspicuous. however, within longer speeches sections with different functions can be distinguished  – for instance, purely narrative, or descriptive, or sections quoting dialogues between other characters. in all these sections a slightly different use of rhetorical figures can be discerned, as within the novel as a whole (for instance the combination of structural, lexical and sound-repetitions is often used in descriptive sections, whereas in purely narrative passages the keywords are highlighted mainly with the help of lexical and sound-repetitions). thus, we can regard narrative speeches, themselves part of the larger work, as sort of “micronarratives” combining different forms and functions and expressed using different poetical devices. 149pontes ad fontes – bridges to sources next, annika mikkel, also from the university of tartu, analysed the occurrences of cursus in the 14th century italian prose by the example of vita nuova and convivio by dante alighieri. the term clausulae in ancient rhetorical theory denotes rhythmical units at the end of sentences, based on specific alternation of short and long syllables. this type of prose rhythm was used by many ancient authors (for instance, livy, sallust, cicero), with their preference to use one or another type of clausula proven by analyses. in time, the word stress became more significant and a type called cursus mixtus, where the quantity as well as word stress were important, was developed. this in turn evolved into medieval latin prose rhythm called cursus, where only word stress was important. four different patterns were used (cursus planus, velox, tardus and trispondaicus), whereas the cursus had to consist of at least two words, the last word had to be at least three syllables long (although some modifications were allowed). dante alighieri began to use the cursus also in the new popular language – italian. the occurrence of cursus had been analysed in alighieri’s latin books, but mikkel has begun the analysis of dante’s italian books vita nuova and convivio. the results show that 59% of vita nuova is written using cursus, whereas cursus planus occurs in 32% of the text. it is also one of the most natural types in the popular language (together with cursus trispondaicus). a higher occurrence of cursus velox and cursus tardus, however, can be noticed in some chapters, where it may be connected to the theme and content. in the first two books of dante’s convivio, the use of cursus is rather similar – again cursus velox and tardus, otherwise less used, occur more in some chapters. in conclusion, it can be said, that dante used cursus rather extensively also in his works in italian, but adjusts it to the requirements of the natural language, resulting in the dominance of different types of cursus than in latin prose, where cursus velox was used most extensively. session four was entirely devoted to poetry and poetics. vita paparinska from the university of latvia talked about the beginning of the phenomenon of occasional poetry that emerged as a distinct literary genre in the texts of publius papinius statius (1st century ad). his collection of occasional poetry, silvae, consists of 32 poems, which, according to the poet himself, were of improvisational nature, quite long texts written in 1–2 days. however, these poems are full of conscious display of learning, and this claim of the improvisational nature and the rapid composition of these texts should not be taken too earnestly – some of them may have been written due to the wish of the patron, and prepared over a longer period of time. the poems vary in character; there are funerary laments, poems of consolation, for birthdays, a wedding poem, a farewell poem, descriptions, poetic epistles, and so on. as statius wrote for pay, each occasion covered is directly and concretely 150 kadri novikov, anni arukask connected with people of importance in the poet’s life, most often but not exclusively dedicated to the patron. in his presentation, “construction poetics and poetic constructions: bridging between homer, blues, and lihtuanian folk songs”, gintaras dautartas from the university of vilnius applied construction grammar, combined with the parry-lord and immanent art theories, to establish a framework for a thorough linguistic and literary analysis of oral formulaic poetry, which he illustrated with examples from such composition-in-performance genres as lithuanian folk songs, homer’s epics and commercial blues. this model of analysis is currently being developed by cristóbal pagán and mihailo antović, while dautartas suggested some improvements to the framework. dautartas regarded poetic constructions as pairings of form and poetic meaning and/or function. analysing poetic constructions that all vary in size, complexity and the degree of generalisation in different song genres, he concluded that composition-in-performance is not a fixed attribute, but a gradable feature that can be expressed on a scale. the degree of composition-in-performance among different genres of lithuanian folk songs is dependent on the type of constructions that are used by the singer. for example, lithuanian dainos, as well as commercial blues, are mainly (but not entirely) created during their performances and use macroconstructions, which is a learned combination of different constructions with a small amount of modifiable slots. on the other hand, the funeral lamentations use mainly microconstructions and the degree of composition on the spot is higher. in preserved epic poetry we can recognise a wide assortment of constructions and degree of improvisation variety, each performance, however, was probably unique depending on the performer and the context. ilona gorņeva from the university of latvia talked about visual poetry and focused on the example of mariagrammas (2013), a collection of poems by leons briedis (born 1949), where many ancient reminiscences can be found among texts of cultural and historical scenes significant to the latvian public. here she illustrated how briedis introduced ancient culture expressed through ideas, images, visual associations, choice of vocabulary, and so on. the poet stresses the significance of the synthesis in the formation of the collection and in the perception of poetry. these ancient signs have acquired new original forms and meanings in briedis’s interpretation. many titles of the poems in the collection are latin sententiae or phrases in latvian carrying an ancient allusion. in all these cases, the visual shape is an important elaborating detail although some visuals in the collection cannot be unequivocally interpreted. in addition, briedis has borrowed the axe-shape and numerical organisation from simias’s visual poem pelekys for a poem on the trojan horse. however, 151pontes ad fontes – bridges to sources by applying different reading-strategies, one can get two different versions and two different meanings of this one poem. in the poem called heritage, shaped like two columns under a slogan, ancient reminiscences might be represented in the most powerful manner. the first slogan-shaped line of the poem refers to the ancient greek aphorism γνῶθι σεαυτόν or know thyself. the shape itself is generally not self-sufficient, the poems preserve rhymes and rhythmic picture, and offer pleasure in reading. however, the visual shape is a detail that matters. all the papers presented at the colloquium balticum tartuense showed that studying ancient literature and culture is crucial in understanding the sources of our contemporary culture, and each speaker managed to build a small bridge towards this understanding. the recordings of all the session are available for viewing from the link http://www.uttv.ee/otsing#sona=colloquium, the programme of the conference together with abstracts can be found from http://www.maailmakeeled. ut.ee/et/programme-colloquium-balticum-xiv-tartuense. ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? marina tarlinskaja*1 abstract: the article compares two approaches to studying line segmentation in verse. line segmentation probably corresponded to pauses in declamation. the estonian scholar ants oras studied syntactic breaks in elizabethan dramas using punctuation as a signal of a “pause”. his research yielded valuable results, and his method has recently been followed by professors mac donald p. jackson and douglas bruster: places of punctuation can be quickly found by a computer. however, punctuation came from the random choices of copiers, editors and typesetters, therefore it is not too reliable. the russian school of thought to which i belong looks for places of syntactic breaks of various strength. these do not change from edition to edition. ants oras’s tables at first glance remind us of those by russian “formalists”, for example, boris tomashevsky. however, no russian scholar is quoted in oras’s works, so the question is: did he know about the russian works? keywords: syntax, punctuation, pause, syntactic break, gradation of syntactic breaks, formalists when i first looked through ants oras’s book pause pattern in elizabethan and jacobean drama (1960), i immediately had a feeling of déjà vu: i have seen such graphs and this approach before. his name suggested that oras was estonian. i googled him and discovered some particulars of his background. his portrait showed a strong, intelligent face of a reserved person. oras turned out to be indeed an estonian, born in tallinn in 1900, died in gainesville, florida, in 1982, professor emeritus of english at the university of florida. this was hardly enough to cover the whole life. but i got interested in ants oras, an estonian patriot and a great scholar. i went back online and lucked into his book, the baltic eclipse, oras’s memoirs published in 1948 in london: he and his wife livia had escaped from tallinn in 1943 in a small fishing boat during the change of occupation – the germans were retreating and the red army advancing. the orases went first to finland, then to sweden, next to london, and finally to the united states where oras became a professor of the english department at the university of florida, gainesville. * author’s address: marina tarlinskaja, department of linguistics, university of washington, seattle, box 354340 seattle, wa 98195-4340. e-mail: marinat@uw.edu. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 10–24 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.02 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.02 11ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? ants oras writes in his baltic eclipse a short introduction “about himself ”. he was the son of an estonian schoolmaster, but his education until 1917 was exclusively in russian: the tsarist russia had occupied estonia since the times of peter the great, and since the 1890s russian replaced german and estonian as languages of instruction. oras studied at the university of tartu, one of the oldest universities in europe, and graduated in 1923 with the degree of master of philosophy. he also obtained a bachelor of literature degree from oxford university. ants oras became a professor of the university of tartu and eventually the head of the department of western european languages and literatures. in 1918 estonia became independent of russia, and for less than a quarter of a century flourished as an advanced democratic country. however, as a result of the molotov-ribbentrop pact estonia was once again occupied by the russians and unwillingly became estonian socialist republic. in the chapters “sovietization of the university” and “the deportations” oras described the horrors of the soviet occupation of his country, the arrests, executions and deportations to siberia in cattle-cars full of men, women and children. because oras expected an arrest and deportation at any moment, he and his wife got divorced, so that livia, his wife, could acquire her maiden name and, hopefully, escape deportation. later, in emigration, they re-married. the soviet commissars’ aim was complete disintegration and annihilation of the estonian people. russian again became the official language of instruction; to avoid this, oras, a professor of west european languages and literatures, lectured in english. however, in spite of the inhumane conditions forced on his people by the soviet n.k.v.d. (in later times, k.g.b.) ants oras continued to work and follow the development of belle-letters and scholarly thought in “the east” as, of course, “in the west”. he was one of the founders of the estonian p.e.n. whose secretary he had been for many years, and he translated poetry from nine languages, including latin, german and russian. when asked during an all-night-long interrogation, “aren’t you anti-russian?” oras answered, “by no means. i have translated enough russian literature to prove the contrary” (oras 1948: 87). the direction of his work, so much like the road taken by russian scholars from the nineteen-twenties might have been a coincidence. i found no mention of russian scholars, either in any notes to his works, or in the “select list of publications by ants oras” in kõressaar, terras 1965: 13–24. viktor zhirmunsky published his seminal book vvedenie v metriku [an introduction to metrics] in 1925, and it was translated into english. zhirmunsky also published books on byron and goethe, whom oras loved: he translated faust into estonian. in 1929 boris tomashevsky published his groundbreaking collection of articles o stikhe. stat’i [on verse. articles]. o stikhe was reprinted in 1970 (wilhelm 12 marina tarlinskaja fink verlag, münchen). some references to russian scholar ship might exist in oras’s estonian letters to friends and colleagues, but i don’t read estonian. the ideas, however, might have been “in the air”. oras probably communicated with his colleagues from the slavic department. american structuralism in the nineteen-fifties widely relied on empirical data, and numerous scholars did a lot of counting, for example, josephine miles who published an important book on word frequency in english poetry of different epochs (miles 1951). boris tomashevsky was the first to undertake the statistical examination of word boundaries in verse. the legend has it that during the first world war he, a young soldier, took with him to the front a small volume of pushkin’s poetry, and during the lulls, while reading and re-reading pushkin, he began to mark where stresses and word boundaries “prefer” to fall in pushkin’s poetry of different epochs. russian words are considerably longer than english, and the most frequent russian meter is not iambic pentameter, as in english poetry, but iambic tetrameter. thus, shorter lines and longer words in russian classical poetry made word boundaries more relevant than in english poetry, while syntactic breaks in midline are relatively rare. it turned out that the places of most frequent word boundaries differentiated early pushkin from late. tomashevsky eventually proved that the end scene of pushkin’s unfinished drama rusalka [the mermaid] supplied and published by a counterfeiter zuev was exactly that – a counterfeit; pushkin of the period of rusalka preferred the placement of word boundaries that differed from zuev’s fake. because boris tomashevsky had never been mentioned in oras’s correspondence or references, we have to assume that he had come to the idea of studying “pauses” in renaissance verse all by himself, and yet oras’s research went in the same direction as in the scholarly “east”, and the diagrams in his books of 1960 and 1966 are “sisters” of tomashevsky’s in his books o stikhe [about the verse] (1929) and stilistika i stikhoslozhenie [stylistics and versification] (1959). could ants oras have felt bitterness against all things russian? “no nations long more desperately for liberation from russia than the baltic nations. world opinion has been curiously oblivious of the fate of the baltic countries”, wrote oras indignantly in his baltic eclipse (1948: 306). he always remained an estonian in exile, though by the nature of his creative work ants oras was a true internationalist. he was a historian of european poetries, and at the same time the son of his epoch. the title of aleksander aspel’s essay in estonian poetry and language is “ants oras au coeur de son temps” (1965: 32–66). for many years ants oras’s work got little notice by the scholarly community in england or america. the years when his seminal works came out, “extra monosyllable in ‘henry viii’ and the problem of authorship” (1953), 13ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? pause pattern in elizabethan and jacobean dramas: an experiment in prosody (1960) and blank verse and chronology in milton (1966) corresponded to the beginning of the chomsky revolution in the united states and europe. empirical studies were held in contempt, so the western colleagues did not pay much attention to oras’s discoveries during his lifetime. “i think he did not correspond with the great names of russia because he felt he could be seen as a minor name from a russian province. the situation could have been parallel to what he had written about oxford: he felt great while studying there but later, in exile, working as a librarian for the bodleian, he was always made to feel that he was redundant”. this is what anne lange, a scholar who studies oras’s translations into estonian wrote to me in a private online exchange (quoted with lange’s permission). also, oras knew better than to send letters to stalin’s russia, or expect a response. eventually macdonald p. jackson discovered ants oras, but during his lifetime, as mentioned above, oras’s works on stressed feminine endings in henry viii and pause patterns in renaissance dramas, though innovative, were hardly noticed. i know exactly how he felt: not a slavist to be in touch with roman jakobson et al., and not quite “their own” to be famous among british and american scholars doing “their” language and “their” literature. this is what i have felt for decades: what can she tell us about “our” shakespeare? in his book on milton’s chronology ants oras, in passing, complained of a literary critic named j. t. shawcross who in 1961 published an article “the chronology of milton’s major poems” (1961: 345–358): “some of the matter included in my essay [on milton’s chronology – mt] he passed over as irrelevant” (oras 1966: 9). in his research on pause patterns in english renaissance plays ants oras was relying on punctuation of the earliest editions of elizabethan and jacobean playwrights, and yet the punctuation could have been supplied by the whims of a scribe, prompter, typesetter or editor, as was the case with shakespeare’s first folio edited after the poet’s death by his friends john heminges and henry condell. it is more consistent to rely on syntax, particularly in english, where major breaks between a sentence and a clause (and possible “pauses” in declamation?) are not marked by punctuation. examples from modern editions come immediately. in the examples below bars [|] mark places of major syntactic breaks not marked by punctuation. if thy soul check thee | that i come so near, swear to thy blind soul | that i was thy ‘will’… and then thou lov’st me | for my name is will. (son. 136.1–2, 135.14, cambridge shakespeare, ed. john dover wilson) 14 marina tarlinskaja so thou | being rich in will | add to thy will… if thy soul checks thee | that i come too near, swear to thy blind soul | that i was thy will… (son. 135.11, 136.1–2, the riverside shakespeare, ed. blakemore evans) if thou soul checks thee | that i come so near, swear to thy blind soul | that i was thy will… and then thou lov’st me | for my name is will. (son. 136.1–2, 14, the oxford shakespeare, ed. john jowett, william montgomery, gary taylor and stanley wells) yet, ants oras’s work on pauses was groundbreaking in the study of english versification. he analysed hundreds of dramas of english renaissance and, because he counted only punctuation marks that he identified with “pauses”, he calculated percent of pauses not from the total number of lines (as is the tradition in the russian school of versification) but from the total number of pauses. he clearly felt that “the pauses” were not equal in strength, so subdivided them into three classes: marked by a comma, by all other punctuation marks, and by the change of speakers within a line. m. l. gasparov and i know how much headache commas may cause, for example, separating homogeneous sentence component in enumeration. oras showed for the first time in english criticism that not only epochs and poets have specific pause patterns, but that a poet has different pattern of pauses at different periods of his writing career. he demonstrated that “early”, “middle” and “late” shakespeare had different distribution of the most frequent pause within the line, thus clarifying shakespeare’s chronology. in his book of 1966 blank verse and chronology in milton, oras went further in his research. he showed the development of the “pause pattern” in comus, paradise lost, paradise regained and samson agonistes and refuted opinions claiming that the tragedy samson agonistes was milton’s earliest work left unfinished (harris fletcher in his edition of milton’s poetical works in 1941, and john t. shawcross in 1961). in the book on milton’s chronology oras also analysed the use of adjectives and adjectival participles: their number in milton’s poetical works, the syllabic use of the suffix -ed, and the position of monosyllabic and polysyllabic modifiers in relation to the modified nouns. in addition, oras studied the evolution of word length in milton and the position of monosyllables and polysyllabic words in the first hemistich, the second hemistich, and “words bridging the middle point” (oras 1966: 32); cf. the much later work by richard 15ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? proudfoot who tested the length of polysyllables in the line when dealing with the authorship of the contested play double falsehood (proudfoot 2012). in a short chapter on line endings (1966: 36–37) oras analysed the frequency of feminine endings and of what he called “pyrrhic endings” in milton’s works, that is, unstressed syllables on position 10 in masculine endings of lines, something that i did in greater detail in my books (tarlinskaja 1976, 1987 and 2014). he also noted, in passing, milton’s use of disyllabic suffix -ion in such words as appariti-on and self-delusi-on (1966: 37), one more parameter that i used later (tarlinskaja 2014). he noticed, perceptively, that disyllabic -ion was not a mere archaism but a marker of an elevated, sonorous style (oras 1966: 37). he also noted that “pyrrhic” endings and disyllabic form of the suffix -ion were particularly frequent in milton’s earlier work, comus. oras, similarly to the russian school of critical thought, differentiated the abstract metrical scheme from stressing in individual lines: he wrote that what he called “pyrrhic” endings have “only a light, barely felt secondary stress on the tenth metrical syllable of the line” (oras 1966: 37). now we know that there are instances when stress is completely omitted on metrical position 10, as is the case with unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words or unstressed grammatical monosyllables, such as prepositions in, for, with and conjunctions and, but, or; for example: off ’ring to every weary traveller (milton, comus, 64), shall set thee on triumphant chariot and (put garlands on your head) (shakespeare, antony and cleopatra 3.1.10–11). oras insisted that although statistics helps to discover features of authorship and chronology, in his research “the human mind was not viewed as a mechanical appliance never subject to seemingly anomalous fluctuation and changes. not all of these changes can be fully explained” (oras 1966: 38). this is exactly the concern that i voiced to douglas bruster discussing his recent essay on shakespeare’s chronology (bruster 2014): it is hard to expect shakespeare’s evolution of “pauses” to proceed smoothly without temporary returns to an earlier practice (private communication). oras did not believe that “a line of development need constantly move in just one direction” (oras 1966: 38); and on the next page he wrote: “having made some extensive inquiries in connection with my study of renaissance pause patterns, i believe i am in a position to suggest what might happen to shakespeare chronology if such an almost completely unadulterated mathematical method were applied”. studying the versification of english drama was exactly what v. m. zhirmunsky recommended me to do in our one and only interview in moscow, 1968. zhirmunsky was a very old man, the last living lion of the “russian formalism” of the nineteen-twenties and thirties, and i was a young phd student who had the audacity to send my first essay to the lead scholarly journal voprosy 16 marina tarlinskaja jazykoznanija [problems of linguistics]. zhirmunsky was asked to look at the paper. he said, “publish”, and expressed a desire to meet the young author. zhirmunsky lived in leningrad and had come to moscow on scholarly business. yet he found the time and encouraging words for a beginner. ants oras, as v. m. zhirmunsky and m. l. gasparov, had been one of my guides and teachers. however, commenting on oras’s work on “pauses” i must emphasise again that russian scholars have traditionally relied not on punctuation but on syntax, as did m. l. gasparov in his first approach to the “staircase line”, the graphical way a great russian poet of the nineteen-twenties vladimir mayakovsky used to publish his lines. it turned out that the poet did not mark “steps” in places of weak syntactic links between adjacent words, but rather consistently disrupted close syntactic cohesion, something like of all people walking on the earth… we hit them with a dime; all is fine! (see gasparov 1974: 439). in his later article, “mayakovsky’s ‘staircase’ line” (gasparov 2012: 47) gasparov writes: “[mayakovsky’s] desire to place the staircase step boundary after the second word [of the line] is fully explained by syntax” [translated by mt]. gasparov assumes that the closest links bind a modifier and a modified noun and the verb with its direct object, and the weakest link falls between two separate sentences. a weak syntactic link within a sentence occurs between phrases, such as a verb phrase and its prepositional adverbial modifier, something like “to wake up | in the middle of the night”. in his works on mayakovsky’s syntax m. l. gasparov measured the relative strength of syntactic links between adjacent words within a line, number one being the weakest link, and number three the strongest. for example, in mayakovsky’s lines consisting of three metrical words1 the syntactic type 1 + 2 (the first and the second words have a weaker link while the second and the third have a stronger link) is more frequent than 2 + 1 (a stronger link – a 1 a metrical word is a phonetic word or a group of words whose unifying stress coincides with a strong metrical position of the line. here is, for example, an iambic pentameter line broken down into metrical words: thrice rung | the bell, | the slipper | knock’d | the ground (pope, the rape of the lock, 1.17) (see tarlinskaja 2014: 379). 17ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? weaker link). the constructed line above would be syntactically segmented in the following way: “to wake up |1| in the middle |2| of the night”. in my work on the syntactic structure of english iambic pentameter i divided syntactic links between adjacent words into three syntactic categories: the closest link designated [/], for example, between a modifier and a modified noun (the vivid / stars; belinda’s / lock), a verb and its object (decide / their doom; …and sweeps / the board) and a noun and its complement (the thirst / of fame; the jaws / of ruin). the medium link, which is also a medium break, is designated [//]. it occurs, for example, between a subject and a predicate (the nymphs // resort; the skilful / nymph // reviews / her force), a verb and its prepositional adverbial modifier of time or place (returns // in peace; ariel // perch’d // upon a matadore), or any two words that have no immediate syntactic link (each band // the number // of the sacred / nine; at ev’ry / word // a reputation // dies; …reviews / her force // with care). the weakest link that is also a strong break is designated [///]. it occurs, for example, between two sentences, a sentence and a clause, or an author’s and direct speech, for example, let spades / be trumps! /// she said, /// and trumps / they were; belinda // frown’d, /// thalestris // call’d her / prude (all the examples above come from alexander pope’s poem the rape of the lock). david lake distinguishes more degrees of syntactic cohesion: six (lake 1975: 261). because i calculate all the three types of syntactic cohesion between adjacent words, the sum of the three for each metrical position yields the total of word boundaries that fall after each metrical position, and the numbers of links, medium breaks and strong breaks that fall after position 10 and 11 (if any) yield the total number of lines in the analysed text. thus, i calculated percent of all word boundaries, and separately, of strong syntactic breaks, medium breaks, and close links after each metrical position. it is instructive to see how strong links gravitate to the end of the line, after positions 7, 8 and particularly 9. this observation supports gasparov’s, and can be assumed to be a general feature of european verse – to increase strong links towards the end of the line. here are two random examples: boast not // my fall /// (he cry’d) /// insulting / foe! then in a bodkin // grac’d // her mother’s / hair (pope, the rape of the lock, 5.97, 95). the placement of the most frequent strong break varied both in the course of evolution of the whole new english iambic poetry, and in shakespeare’s oeuvre in particular. early elizabethans placed the most frequent syntactic break after position 4 (kyd, peele, early shakespeare), after 1600 the break began to fall first after positions 4 and 6 equally often, in jacobean plays it fell after position 6, and some jacobean playwrights, such as fletcher, webster and middleton placed the most frequent break after position 7 (chart 1). 18 marina tarlinskaja           0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 syllabic position kyd: "the spanish tragedy" webster: "the duchess of malfi" 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 2 4 6 8 10 syllabic position kyd: "the spanish tragedy" webster: "the duchess of malfi" chart 1. evolution of strong breaks after positions 2–11 in early and late renaissance plays.           0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 syllabic position kyd: "the spanish tragedy" webster: "the duchess of malfi" 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 2 4 6 8 10 syllabic position kyd: "the spanish tragedy" webster: "the duchess of malfi" chart 2. evolution of stressing in early and late renaissance plays 19ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? after the restoration, the augustan verse began to shift the break again, closer to the elizabethan tradition, and during classicism it fell decisively after position 4 (dryden, pope, addison). romanticism with its “liberated” rhythm began to move the break closer to the end of the line, and the new tradition got consolidated in post-romanticism (browning, tennyson, arnold) (tarlinskaja 1976). shakespeare’s evolution proceeded from the most frequent break after position 4 (as in romeo and juliet) to a transition period of equal percent of breaks after positions 4 and 6 (henry v) to the most frequent break falling after position 6 (cymbeline). as ants oras showed with his “pauses”, shakespeare’s evolution did not proceed smoothly: hamlet has a “peak” of syntactic breaks after position 6 while troilus and cressida, a later play, went back to an equal percent of breaks after positions 4 and 6 (tarlinskaja 2014, cf. with bruster 2014). a similar evolution took place in the stressing of lines. the “dip” in stressing went from position 6 in early elizabethan verse (kyd, marlowe), to a “dip” on 8 in jacobean plays and poems (webster, middleton), then to a “dip” on 6 in classicism and early romanticism (pope; byron) and a “dip” on 8 in postromantic and the twentieth-century iambic pentameter poetry (arnold; frost) (tarlinskaja 1976, table 41; tarlinskaja 2014). shakespeare’s evolution went with trends of the epoch: from a “dip” on position 6 (romeo and juliet) – to an equal stressing on positions 6 and 8 (troilus and cressida) – to a “dip” on position 8 (cymbeline) (tarlinskaja 1987, 2014). english stressing is intertwined with the placement of syntactic breaks. english phrases tend to begin with one or several grammatical words: the bells / she jingled, /// and the whistle / blew (pope, the rape of the lock, 5.94); if a syntactic break falls after positions 4 or 5, the next phrase tends to begin with unstressed grammatical words that create a stressing “dip” on position 6, as in the example above where the unstressed and on position 6 is in bold and underlined (tarlinskaja 1989, 2014). i also noticed that morphological structure of polysyllabic words relates to their place of stress and as a result, the rhythm of lines. for example, adjectives and attributive participles have long unstressed “tails”, their suffixes: his haughty mien, the barb’rous pride, the neighb’ring hampton, unconquerable lord, while verbs tend to have unstressed “necks”, the prefixes: prepare in arms to join, the gods destroy, approve my lays. attributes are usually placed before the modified nouns, and verbs precede their objects or adverbial modifiers; thus, the stressing, the morphology and the syntax of an english iambic pentameter line are intertwined, and feed into each other. the most frequent stressing placement and word boundary line pattern call for the most frequent grammatical structures. thus, the title of my 1984 article is 20 marina tarlinskaja “rhythm-morphology-syntax-rhythm”. for example, five-stress iambic pentameter lines with a word boundary rhythm f-m-m-f-m or f-f-m-f-m frequently accompany a syntactic pattern “an attributive phrase (the subject) – a verbal phrase (a predicate) – another attributive phrase (a complement to the verb). the whole pattern is an example of rhythmical-grammatical clichés; for example: his drumming | heart | cheers up | his burning | eye; unwholesome | weeds | take root | with precious | flowers; or tyrant | folly | lurk | in gentle breasts; the secret | pleasure | turns | to open | shame (shakespeare, the rape of lucrece, 415, 870, 851, 890); while china’s | earth | receives | the smoking | tyde; the busy | sylphs | surround | their darling | care (pope, the rape of the lock, 2.110, 1.145), his early | youth | misspent | in maddest | whim, his gory | chest | unveils | life’s panting | source (byron, childe harold, 1.27.8, 1.77.7). in english poetry, grammar is closely linked to the line rhythm. moreover, rhythmical-grammatical clichés are sometimes filled with recurring lexicon, thus generating rhythmical-grammatical-lexical “formulas” (cf. parry 1971, tarlinskaja 1989, gasparov 1999, 2004), for example: power of the mind, and feelings of the heart (cowper, hope, 654) hand on the heart, and forehead to the knee (browning, colombe’s birthday, 1.178) strength of his heart, dominion in his nod (cowper, truth, 409) fear in her heart, and anguish in her face (pope, iliad, 22.593) caps on their heads, and halberds in their hand (pope, the rape of the lock, 3.42) law in his voice, and fortune in his hand (johnson, the vanity of human wishes, 10.100) rhythmical-grammatical clichés and “formulaic” patterns were particularly frequent in augustan poetry but occurred also in elizabethan (peele), romantic and post-romantic verse. clichés and formulas do not compromise poets, but show how art and craft intertwine with language (see gasparov and tarlinskaja 2008). a syntactic break after positions 4 and 5 and an omitted stress on 6 often lead to grammatically symmetrical half-lines; these too often occurred in 21ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? elizabethan poetry and were particularly typical of classicism. below are a few examples: the louring tempest of your home-bred hate the heavy accent of thy moving tongue to dim the glory, and to stain the track (shakespeare, richard ii, 1.3.187, 5.1.47, 3.3.66) how safe is treason, and how sacred ill the fighting warrier, and recording muse for him he suffer’d, and with him return’d (dryden, absalom and achitophel, 182, 829, 844) by force to ravish, or by fraud betray thin glitt’ring textures of the filmy dew the giddy motion of the whirling mill (pope, the rape of the lock, 2.32, 64, 134) with quivering pinions in the genial blaze to weeping grottos, and to hoary caves the windows rattle, and the hinges creak (thomson, winter, 24, 76, 185) to form new battles, and support his crime a feeble army, and an empty senate puzzled in mazes, and perplex’d with errors (addison, cato, 1.1.10, 3 ants oras also led me to examining the so-called enclitic phrases. in metrical verse a stress that occurs on a weak syllabic position that precedes a stress on s constitutes an enclitic, and the word combination is called an enclitic phrase, as in2 within thy own bud buriest thy content; to eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee; will be a tattered weed of small worth held; and see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold (shakespeare, son. 1.11, 14, son. 2.4, 2 the syllable in capitals fills a strong metrical position, and the emphasised syllable following it is an enclitic. 22 marina tarlinskaja 14). in his essay on the authorship of henry viii (1953) ants oras studied “extra syllables” on metrical position 11, that is, in common terminology, feminine endings. he noticed that some of them carried a potential stress, as in i’ll show your grace the strangest sight. – what’s that, butts? (henry viii, 5.1.20). i discovered that enclitic phrases occur both at the end of the line and in the middle, for example, remember your bold life too. – this is too much (henry viii, 5.3.86); stressed feminine endings are, in fact, enclitic phrases. it turned out that the ratio of enclitic phrases is a good test of authorship. for example, shakespeare’s portion of henry viii contains 68.6 enclitics per 1000 lines, and fletcher’s portion 226.5 (tarlinskaja 2014, table b–4). thus, ants oras paved the way for a powerful test of poetic authorship. i did not find any record of connection between oras and the scholarly world of “russian formalism” as i hoped i might. but even if the link did not exist, oras must be all the more given credit for his strong hand and perceptive mind in the study of versification, for contributing several ingenious ways of analysing poetic style and for inventing tests probing into chronology and authorship of poetical works. he has found at least three followers that i know of, macdonald p. jackson, douglas bruster and marina tarlinskaja. references aspel, aleksander 1965. ants oras au coeur de son temps. in: estonian poetry and language: studies in honor of ants oras. stockholm: tryckeri ab esto, 32–70. bruster, douglas; smith, genevieve 2014. a new chronology for shakespeare’s plays. in: digital scholarship in the humanities, december 8, 1–20. fletcher, harris f. (ed.) 1941. the complete poetical works of john milton. cambridge: riverside press. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh. metrika i ritmika. [contemporary russian verse. metrics and rhythmics]. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2004. “ritmiko-sintaksicheskie klishe v 4-stopnom jambe [rhythmical-syntactic clichés in iambic tetrameter]. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna, stat’i o lingvistike stikha [articles on verse linguistics]. moscow: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury, 202–225. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2012. izbrannye trudy. tom iv. lingvistika stikha. analizy i interpretacii [selected writings. volume iv. linguistics of verse. analyses and interpretations]. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury. 23ants oras: did he know russian “formalists”? gasparov, mikhail leonovich; tarlinskaja; marina 2008. the linguistics of verse. in: slavic and east european journal 52(2): 198–207. jackson, macdonald p. 2014. determining shakespeare canon: arden of faversham and a lover’s complaint. oxford: oxford university press. kõressaar, viktor; rannit, aleksis (eds) 1965. select list of publications by ants oras. in: estonian poetry and language: studies in honor of ants oras. stockholm: tryckeri ab esto, 13–24. lake, david j. 1975. the canon of thomas middleton’s plays. london: cambridge university press. miles, josephine 1951. the continuity of poetic language: studies in english poetry from the 1540’s to the 1940’s. berkeley and los angeles: the university of california press. oras, ants 1948. baltic eclipse. london: victor gollancz. oras, ants 1953. extra monosyllable in “henry viii” and the problem of authorship. in: journal of english and germanic philology 52, 198–213. oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama. an experiment in prosody. (university of florida monographs, humanities 3). gainesville: university of florida press. oras, ants 1966. blank verse and chronology in milton. gainesville: university of florida press. parry, milman 1971. the making of homeric verse: the collected papers of milman parry. oxford: clarendon press. proudfoot, richard 2012. will the real cardenio please stand up? in: carnegie, david; taylor, gary (eds.), the quest for cardenio. oxford: oxford university press, 352–355. shawcross, john t. 1961. the chronology of milton’s major poems. in: pmla: publications of the modern language association of america 76: 345–358. tarlinskaja, marina 1976. english verse: theory and history. the hague and paris: mouton. tarlinskaja, marina 1984. rhythm-morphology-syntax-rhythm. style 18(1): 1–26. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. shakespeare’s verse: iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncrasies. new york: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina 1989. formulas in english literary verse. in: language and style 22.(2): 115–130. 24 marina tarlinskaja tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama 1561– 1642. surrey, england, and vermont, usa: ashgate. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1929. o stikhe: stat’i [on verse: articles]. leningrad: priboj. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1959. stilistika i stikhoslozhenie [stylistics and versification]. leningrad: uchpedgiz. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku. teorija stikha [an introduction to metrics. theory of verse]. leningrad: academia. martin litchfield west (1937–2015) almut fries in the late 1950s a gifted classics undergraduate at oxford was advised by e. r. dodds, then regius professor of greek, that he should turn his attention to prose works rather than poetry on the ground that little remained to be done there in the field of textual studies. fortunately, the young man did not follow this no doubt honest and well-intentioned recommendation – for his name was martin west. this is one of the many anecdotes that circulate in oxford about martin west, whom i knew for nearly fifteen years and whose friendship i enjoyed for the last eight or so. the story is true – he himself recounted it, with characteristic self-irony, in his acceptance speech for the 2000 balzan prize (reprinted in hesperos (2007), the festschrift for his 70th birthday) – but even if it were not, it is a good one because it encapsulates the scholarly personality of the man who long before his sudden death, on 13 july 2015, had become the world’s foremost expert on early greek poetry and its manifold connections in space and time. never subject to changing intellectual fashions or afraid of challenging established doctrines (or of being challenged himself ), martin pursued his chosen path to the point of leaving a legacy which easily proves dodds’ opinion wrong and which few, if any, can ever hope to emulate. born in hampton, middlesex, on 23 september 1937, martin went to st. paul’s school in london, still one of the leading independent schools for boys in britain, before he came up to balliol college oxford to read classics in 1955. classical education in those days, both at school and initially at university, largely consisted of translation from and into greek and latin, prose and verse. it was this rigorous training, combined with supreme talent (even ‘genius’ would not be too grand a word), that provided the basis for his extraordinary feeling for language and style. in oxford he soon came to attend the legendary text-based seminars which eduard fraenkel had introduced on the german model. taught by wilamowitz and leo, among others, fraenkel not only impressed his students with his immense learning and love of ancient literature, but also led them to understand the essence of classical philology (in the continental sense). throughout his life martin saw himself as standing in this tradition – a portrait of wilamowitz hung above his desk at home, and he often returned to studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 152–158 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.12 153martin litchfield west (1937–2015) pre-20th-century scholarly literature for useful information or to resurrect a clever conjecture – yet almost from the beginning he also went far beyond the conventional boundaries of altertumswissenschaft. fraenkel’s seminars proved life-changing for him in another respect: it was there that he met his wife, stephanie, a distinguished hellenist herself, who is affectionately mentioned in the prefaces to several of his books and to whom he dedicated his last one (the making of the odyssey, oxford 2014) in gratitude for a lifetime of support. martin’s attachment to german scholarship was strengthened in 1960 during a summer spent in erlangen with reinhold merkelbach, who was so impressed with his visiting student that not much later they began to collaborate on a new edition of the hesiodic fragments, which appeared in 1967. at erlangen he was also befriended by walter burkert and rudolf kassel. the latter was important in his own way, but merkelbach and burkert were already interested in near eastern and egyptian influences on greek literature and culture, and their openness towards this line of inquiry had an enduring effect. martin’s doctoral thesis, which was supervised by hugh lloyd-jones and examined by kenneth dover and denys page, resulted in the publication of his first book, an edition with introduction and commentary of hesiod’s theogony (1966). both this volume and its later counterpart on hesiod’s works and days (1978) abound with fundamental insights into the relationship between the greek poems and mesopotamian, ugaritic, phoenician, hebrew and hurrohittite narrative and myth, in addition to everything one would expect of a traditional commentary. nineteen years after works and days, and twenty-six after early greek philosophy and the orient (1971), martin published what many would consider to be his greatest individual achievement – the east face of helicon. west asiatic elements in greek poetry and myth (1997), a monumental compendium of near eastern echoes in early greek literature, for which he learnt several oriental languages in order to be able to read the relevant texts in the original. it is the starting point for any further research in the field. but martin did not stop there. in 2007 a similar volume, exploring an even more ancient heritage, saw the light of day: indo-european poetry and myth. again he “furnished [himself ] with a working knowledge of some of the relevant languages” (‘preface’, v), to the point that a new translation of the hymns of zoroaster and a treatise on old avestan syntax and stylistics appeared in 2010 and 2011 respectively. a recent hittite reading class in oxford benefited greatly from his presence (as did many comparative philology graduate seminars over the years), and when one evening it had fallen to him to preside over dinner at his college, all souls, he replaced the customary latin grace with one of his own composition – in vedic sanskrit – which came as such a 154 almut fries surprise that even the resident specialist in indian religions did not recognise the language before it was over. martin’s total academic output amounts to thirty-five books (editions, commentaries, translations and monographs) and more than 450 articles and reviews, ninety-three of which were re-published in three volumes of selected papers (hellenica: selected papers on greek literature and thought, oxford 2011–2013); plus his new teubner edition of the odyssey, and several articles that have appeared or will do so posthumously. as robert parker, wykeham professor of ancient history in oxford, observed in his memorial address on 24 october 2015, “if we consider the whole field of greek poetry down to the death of aeschylus minus a single genre, lyric, once the text of the odyssey is published, the whole of greek poetry of those centuries will be available in an edition by martin; and authoritative comment by martin is available on all that ocean of poetry except the homeric hymns. lyric is missed out only because it was already well served, but martin also made innumerable contributions in that field”. add to this a delightful aris & phillips commentary on euripides’ orestes (the fastest ever produced, according to the series editor, christopher collard), standard manuals on textual criticism (1973) and greek metre (1982, 1987), an extensive study of ancient greek music (1992), an edition of the extant greek musical fragments (2001, with egert pöhlmann of erlangen) and a comparatively slender volume on orphic poetry (1983), which somehow makes these murky waters look clearer than usual. what unites this enormous oeuvre is a mind that combined artistic sensitivity with a brilliant sense of formal logic (at school martin also excelled in mathematics). what made it possible is a matter for speculation: self-discipline, ruthless efficiency and a staggering capacity for concentration. martin’s career was correspondingly stellar. after being the first holder of the woodhouse junior research fellowship at st. john’s college oxford (1960–1963) he became fellow and praelector in classics at university college oxford (1963–1974) and professor of greek at bedford (later royal holloway and bedford) college london (1974–1991), before he returned to oxford as a senior research fellow at all souls college (emeritus fellow 2004, honorary fellow 2014). in 1973 he was elected fellow of the british academy (the second-youngest in its history), and a host of other distinctions followed: honorary doctorates and membership of foreign academies, honorary fellowships in all his oxford colleges, the runciman award (1998, for the east face of helicon), the international balzan prize (2000, ten years after his friend walter burkert) and the british academy’s kenyon medal for classical studies (2002). but all these were surpassed by his appointment, in the 2014 new year’s honours list, to the order of merit (om), which lies in the gift 155martin litchfield west (1937–2015) of the british monarch and is restricted to twenty-four members at any one time. it moved him deeply, but like the other accolades he wore it lightly, with the modesty that was part of his character. to everybody’s amusement at the reception with which the oxford classics faculty marked the occasion, the celebratory cake that had been ordered for him sported a textual error in its inscription. martin deftly excised the obnoxious passage – with a cake knife. personally, martin was a quiet man. but behind his extreme reserve, which together with his scholarly eminence and a considerable talent for put-down remarks could make him seem a forbidding figure, lay an uncommonly kind and generous spirit and a splendidly zany sense of humour. he lectured to undergraduate classics societies and other student bodies as well as audiences of distinguished academics, was always ready to comment on the work of friends and colleagues all over the world (sometimes without being explicitly asked), and gladly gave advice, encouragement and spare books to young scholars (provided they met his rigorous standards). while praise and criticism were dispensed with equal honesty, the former was much the rarer and could come in a form that required translation (“now what you told me today was all quite sensible”). but precisely for that reason one could be genuinely proud of having received it. it made a difference. martin’s verbal wit will be evident to anyone who leafs through the obiter dicta at the end of the third volume of his hellenica. examples are easily multiplied, both from his prefaces and the texts themselves; they adorn his crisp and lucid prose like so many hidden gems (“i would have been more ashamed of the opposite fault” was his response to anticipated charges of excessive brevity in the preface to his studies in greek elegy and iambus (1974)). journal articles were not safe either, as one can see from titles like “two lunatic notes” (zeitschrift für papyrologie und epigraphik 50 (1983): 46), which proposes emendations for two mythical passages to do with the moon and is anything but ‘lunatic’ in the more common metaphorical sense of the word. astronomy was one of martin’s pastime interests since his teenage years, and he typically carried it to a high level; his first three publications were in the journal of the british astronomical association, and he regularly returned to the subject in academic writings. he also left behind several published and unpublished jeux d’esprit, including two versions of lewis carroll’s jabberwocky, one in homeric and one in nonnian hexameters (greece & rome 2nd series 11 (1964): 185–187) and, somewhat more seriously, a charming account of how the iliad was composed. written in german as a conference paper, it adopts the style of an ancient homeric biography (featuring a rhapsode called meli, short for meliglōssos) and parodies the notion that one can know exactly how the 156 almut fries poem came into being (in c. ulf – r. rollinger (eds.), lag troja in kilikien? der aktuelle streit um homers ilias, darmstadt 2011, 329–340). away from the page, older colleagues also report a certain propensity for practical jokes, such as placing a large artificial spider on his shoulder during a classics dinner at university college to see how his fellow-banqueters would react. more recently martin delighted in wearing one of the most elaborate and colourful academic robes – that which came with his honorary doctorate from the university of cyprus – at the annual garden party following encaenia (the ceremony at which oxford’s honorary degrees are awarded). finally, he was an enthusiastic lord mallard, the holder of an unofficial post at all souls college, whose main function is to lead the twice-yearly singing of a raucous song that commemorates the supposed appearance of a gigantic mallard duck when the college was being built. and martin would not have been martin had he not marked the recurrence of the great centennial mallard feast and procession in 2001 with a comprehensive academic study of the legend. “i am a part of all that i have met”, says tennyson’s ulysses in the section of the poem that was selected for reading at martin’s memorial service. it was an excellent choice. no one who has ever encountered martin west, the scholar or the man, is likely to forget the experience. like the subjects and creators of his beloved early greek poetry, he has earned himself imperishable fame by ensuring that they are better understood by posterity. ὣς σὺ μὲν οὐδὲ θανὼν ὄνομ᾽ ὤλεσας, ἀλλά τοι αἰεί πάντας ἐπ᾽ ἀνθρώπους κλέος ἔσσεται ἐσθλὸν ὀπίσσω. so not even in death did you lose your name, but always you shall have noble fame among all men in times to come. hom. od. 24.93–4 (adapted)1 references finglass, patrick j.; collard, christopher; richardson, nicholas j. (eds.) 2007. hesperos: studies in ancient greek poetry presented to m. l. west on his seventieth birthday. oxford: oxford university press. 1 i am grateful to stephanie west and robert parker for providing support and background information, to christopher collard and simon hornblower for much good advice, and to the editors of studia metrica et poetica for giving me the opportunity to write this memoir. 157martin litchfield west (1937–2015) merkelbach, reinhold; west, martin l. (eds.) 1967. fragmenta hesiodea. oxford: oxford university press. pöhlmann, egert; west, martin l. 2001. documents of ancient greek music. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1960. anaxagoras and the meteorite of 467 b.c. in: journal of the british astronomical association 70: 368–369. west, martin l. 1961. an ancient reference to the quadrantids. in: journal of the british astronomical association 71: 206. west, martin l. 1961. alleged apparitions of halley’s comet in the eighteenth century b.c. and earlier. in: journal of the british astronomical association 71: 324–326. west, martin l. 1964. two versions of jabberwocky. greece & rome 2nd series 11: 185–187. west, martin l. (ed.) 1966. hesiod, theogony. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1971. early greek philosophy and the orient. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1973. textual criticism and editorial technique applicable to greek and latin texts. stuttgart: teubner. west, martin l. 1974. studies in greek elegy and iambus. berlin and new york: walter de gruyter. west, martin l. (ed.) 1978. hesiod, works and days. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1982. greek metre. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1983. the orphic poems. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1983. two lunatic notes. in: zeitschrift für papyrologie und epigraphik 50: 46. west, martin l. (ed.) 1987. euripides, orestes. warminster: aris & phillips. west, martin l. 1987. introduction to greek metre. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 1992. ancient greek music. oxford: oxford university press west, martin l. 1997. the east face of helicon: west asiatic elements in greek poetry and myth. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 2001. the all souls mallard: song, procession, and legend. oxford: all souls college. 158 almut fries west, martin l. 2007. indo-european poetry and myth. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 2010. the hymns of zoroaster: a new translation of the most ancient sacred texts of iran. london: i. b. tauris. west, martin l. 2011. old avestan syntax and stylistics: with an edition of the texts. berlin and boston: walter de gruyter. west, martin l. 2011. die entstehung der ilias: ein roman. in: ulf, christoph, rollinger, robert (eds.), lag troja in kilikien? der aktuelle streit um homers ilias. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft, 329–340. west, martin l. 2011–2013. hellenica: selected papers on greek literature and thought, 3 vols. oxford: oxford university press. west, martin l. 2014. the making of the odyssey. oxford: oxford university press. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_2.indd daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century david chisholm*1 abstract: the word “knittelvers” has been used since the eighteenth century to describe four-stress rhyming couplets which seem to be rather simply and awkwardly constructed, and whose content is frequently comical, course, vulgar or obscene. today german knittelvers is perhaps best known from the works of goethe and schiller, as well as other late eighteenth and early nineteenth century writers. well-known examples occur together with other verse forms in goethe’s faust and schiller’s wallensteins lager, as well as in ballads and occasional poems by both poets. while literary critics have shown considerable interest in knittelvers written from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, there has been almost no discussion of the further use and development of this verse form from the nineteenth century to the present, despite the fact that it continues to appear in both humorous and serious works by many contemporary german writers. this article focuses on an example of dramatic knittelvers in a late twentieth century play, namely daniel call’s comedy schocker, a modern parody of goethe’s faust. among other things, call’s play, as well as other examples of knittelvers in works by twentieth and early twenty-first century poets, demonstrates that while this verse form has undergone some changes and variations, it still retains metrical characteristics which have remained constant since the fifteenth century. today these four-stress couplets continue to function as a means of depicting comic, mock-heroic and tragicomic situations by means of parody, farce and burlesque satire. keywords: knittelvers; verse form; couplet; rhyme; satire; parody; daniel call; schocker; faust since the eighteenth century the word “knittelvers” has been used to describe four-stress rhyming couplets which are seemingly rather simply and awkwardly constructed, and whose content is often comical, satirical, course, vulgar or obscene. today german knittelvers is perhaps best known from the dramatic and non-dramatic verse of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when, after being recommended by gottsched in his critische dichtkunst in 1737, it was used together with other verse forms by poets such as herder, * author’s address: david chisholm, department of german studies, university of arizona, tucson, arizona 85721, usa, email: chisholm@email.arizona.edu. studia metrica et poetica 4.2, 2017, 7–30 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.01 8 david chisholm goethe, schiller, tieck and novalis. well-known examples are the knittelvers lines in goethe’s faust drama and schiller’s play wallensteins lager, as well as in ballads and occasional poems by both poets. while literary critics have shown considerable interest in knittelvers written by poets from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, there has been almost no discussion of its further use and development from the nineteenth century to the present, despite the fact that german poets have continued to use this verse form in many different contexts to achieve a wide variety of effects, both humorous and serious. in the twentieth century alone it has been used effectively in both dramatic and non-dramatic verse by writers such as gerhart hauptmann, hugo von hofmannsthal, karl kraus, joachim ringelnatz, gottfried benn, kurt tucholsky, karl valentin, walter mehring, bertolt brecht, peter huchel, peter weiss, ingeborg bachmann, peter hacks, robert gernhardt, peter ensikat, wolfgang schaller, peter schneider and many others. to mention just a few examples, hofmannsthal uses knittelvers in his morality play jedermann: das spiel vom sterben des reichen mannes, first performed in berlin in 1911 under the direction of max reinhardt, and performed every year since 1920 (except for the years 1938–1945) as part of the salzburger festspiele. karl kraus uses it in many poems as well as in his play wolkenkuckucksheim, a modern german version of aristophanes’ satirical play the birds. peter weiss uses his own variant of this verse form in marat/sade and most of his other plays, robert gernhardt in humorous poems such as “du”, “malade ballade” and “die stürmung der stadtbücherei von fort worth”, and peter ensikat and wolfgang schaller in texts written for german cabaret performances in die distel, the leipziger pfeffermühle and die herkuleskeule. as an example of the use of knittelvers at the end of the twentieth century, i will focus here on a few scenes from daniel call’s hair-raising and shockingly funny burlesque comedy schocker, written in 1992 as a modern parody of goethe’s faust, erster teil.1 throughout most of call’s play, knittelvers is featured not only as a verse form, but also figuratively as a means of depicting the arrogance and incompetence of the main character, who has difficulty using this flexible and allegedly “easy” verse form, and whose infelicitous, awkward rhymes occasionally betray the subconscious desires and urges of his depraved and lewd mind. call replaces goethe’s mephisto by the handsome young man schocker, who first appears as a cocker spaniel rather than a poodle, and faust by a sleazy, 1 daniel call, schocker. text available for download on galissas verlag’s webpage: www. gallissas-verlag.de/play/schocker. page numbers refer to this text. 9daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century seedy, untalented and brutally ambitious austrian provincial theatre manager, aptly named dr. viel, whose ultimate goal is to take over the directorship of the venerated, world-famous vienna burgtheater, also known by austrians and referred to in this play as “die wiener burg”. related to this overarching goal is dr. viel’s desire to have a sexual relationship with susannchen, a young aspiring actress of minimal talent whom he selects to play the role of gretchen in his “faust-musical”, a pepped up “modern” version of goethe’s faust. call’s play contrasts the idealistic striving of goethe’s faust with dr. viel’s petty ambitions and lewd desires, and there are many obvious structural and thematic parallels between the two plays. the eighteen scenes (“bilder”) of schocker include – in a different sequence than in goethe’s play – “prolog im himmel”, “vorspiel auf dem theater”, “dr. viel am schreibpulte” (a reference to the stage direction at the beginning of goethe’s opening “nacht” scene), “spaziergang,” two “studierzimmer” scenes, “kantine im keller” (a play on goethe’s scene “auerbachs keller in leipzig”), “talentschmiede” (with obvious references to goethe’s “hexenküche“ scene), “foyer” (with some parallels to goethe’s “garten”, “gartenhäuschen” and “marthens garten” scenes), “garderobe” (with clear parallels between call’s character “fräulein umlaut” and goethes “marthe schwerdtlein”), and “garten” (in which schocker persuades fräulein umlaut to kick susannchen out of her house so that she must go back and stay with dr. viel, where he will more easily be able to seduce her). in addition to fifteen scenes which refer in various oblique ways to goethe’s play, there are also three rehearsal scenes of dr. viel’s “faust-musical” directed by himself: in the first scene, susannchen rehearses the role of gretchen, while dr. viel imagines that he is faust, and tells schocker that he (dr. viel) should play that role. the second scene is a modernized version of goethe’s cathedral scene (“dom”), and the third is a rehearsal of the duel between valentin (played by an actor named herr beppi) and faust (played by an actor named herr beppo). in the prolog im himmel, the opening scene of call’s play, the recently deceased provincial austrian theatre manager dr. viel finds himself at the gate of theater-heaven, where the archangels raphael, gabriel and michael of goethe’s faust are replaced by the theatergötter peter, michael and gerhard. while the theatre gods speak in verse, dr. viel speaks mostly prose in his austrian dialect. he is furious to discover that he is already dead, for this second-rate provincial dramaturg had great plans for the future: aber meine – meine pläne! intendant wollt i wer’n, weil – jeder dramaturg wird doch mal intendant! ganz was neu’s wollt i schaffen, ganz – innovativ, verdammt nochmal! hätts mir noch a paar johr g’lassen, 10 david chisholm ein – paar – jährchen – bloß! i wär an der burg g’landet! ganz sicher! mit allem drum und dran! paßts auf: wann ihr mich nochamal runterlassts, ganz ganz kurz – sagen wir: dreißig johr? – dann versprech ich euch – ein abo an der wiener burg – wenn i erstmal intendant bin da... (p. 6) dr. viel, who aspires to nothing less than the directorship of the venerable viennese burgtheater, tries to bribe the theatre gods with offers of a bottle of champagne at each premiere, a vip lounge, and the opportunity to have sex with the young actresses: eine flaschen champus versprech ich euch – pro premiere. und eine echte viplounge. und – ihr könnts die anfängerinnen bumsen wanns wollt! i will doch nur eine chance – eine klitzekleine chance. (p. 7) since the almighty theatre-god turns out to be an austrian from graz, dr. viel hopes that this god will sympathize with his plight and this will work to his advantage: der herrgott is a östreicher! i hab’s g’wusst! allmächtiger! hör mich an! i komm aus demselben land wie du! schau da muessens mir zusammenhalten! the almighty, however, tired of dr. viel’s babbling and wanting to get rid of him, tells the theatre gods to give him a little provincial theatre somewhere with a five year probationary period. the theatre gods transmit this message to dr. viel in four-stress rhyming couplets: peter: weils unserm herrgott so gefällt führt dich dein weg zurück zur welt michael: dort darfst den spielplan du gestalten nach herzenslust ein haus verwalten gerhard: und hast du unsre gunst behalten wirst weiter schalten du und walten die theatergötter: bedenk, dass die fünfjahresfrist des intendanten hürde ist. (p. 8) this scene is followed in call’s play by the vorspiel auf dem theater. although dr. viel now has his own provincial theatre, he has failed to come up with an idea that will attract an audience, with the result that the press and theatre critics stopped attending performances after the first year. in the next scene, a parody of the “nacht” scene in goethe’s faust, call ridicules universities by 11daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century suggesting that dr. viel’s university education has not stimulated his creativity or imagination. calling on the gods to help him achieve success as a theatre director, he simply can’t understand why he doesn’t have any brilliant ideas, for after all he studied theatre, german language and literature, an introductory course in sinology, and even got his doctoral degree! we hear thunder whenever dr. viel utters an expletive, but when he calls on the gods directly they do not react. he is frustrated not only in his ridiculously high and overblown ambition to become director of the vienna burgtheater, but also in his sexual desires, a parallel theme that runs throughout the play: ihr götter!... i bleib net an so einer provinzschmieren kleben! da könnts ihr einen darauf lassen!... wann i nur mal wos zum bumsen hätt. da hat man schon so a schwanzerl und weiss net wohin damit... (p. 10) when the gods do not respond to his entreaties, he calls in desperation on some of the great actors and stage directors of the nineteenth and twentieth century to come to his aid: brecht! reinhaaaardt! stanislawskiii! hoerts mich net? nestroy! altes haus! (keine reaktion) noch immer nix. gründgens! gründgens, du schwule sau! the only one to respond to his desperate call is gustav gründgens, whose portrayal of mephistopheles in goethe’s faust is widely considered to have been one of the greatest performances in german theatre. the great actor appears in the midst of thunder, lightning and fog, and proceeds to insult and humiliate dr. viel with epithets such as “wurm”, “kreatur”, “kröte”, “wicht”, “nullgesicht” and so forth. dr. viel harbors the illusion that even if gründgens can’t help him become director of the vienna burgtheater, the great actor can at least use his connections to get him a theatre directorship in hamburg. but gründgens, speaking in knittelvers, continues to insult him both as a person and as a would-be theatre director: du schmier’ger wicht, du nullgesicht – erringst erfolg im leben nicht! wirst nimmer gross, bleibst ewig klein, wirst wie die meisten schlusslicht sein. (p. 11) 12 david chisholm gründgens then broadens his criticism and scorn toward all the untalented epigones who look backward rather than forward and try to imitate the great writers, actors and theatre directors of the past: bleibst einer von den intendanten, den jämmerlichen dilettanten , den frühen greisen, jungen siechen, die ausgetretne pfade kriechen, die andere vor jahren bauten die inspiriert nach vorne schauten... after further ranting against pitiful “beamtenseelen” like dr. viel who think they are artists, gründgens vanishes as mysteriously as he appeared. as if to emphasize the contrast between the truly great personages of the theatre with those in dr. viel’s theatre, call now introduces the theatre trainee helmuth, who, like wagner in goethe’s faust, greatly admires his “master”: ich bin so voller hochachtung voll inständiger bewunderung für euer schaffen, doktor viel – zu sein wie ihr, dies ist mein ziel. (p. 13) in contrast to goethe’s wagner, however, hellmuth’s admiration also reveals his homosexual attraction toward his master: was bin ich wohl in euren augen? ach! könnte ich nur in euch tauchen, könnt tief und tiefer in euch krauchen! ... wie gern würd ich mich in euch puhlen, in eurem geist voll wonne suhlen! ... in jede hirneswindung bohren um teil zu sein von allen poren! dr. viel, in a parody of faust’s “o sähst du, voller mondenschein” speech, picks up on the sexual imagery in his response to helmuth: da schau her! vollmond! bleckts runter wie a grosser, runder arsch. da wird man richtig melancholisch, gell? i mein, so konzeptlos... (p. 14) 13daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century in a humorous persiflage of faust’s serious thoughts of suicide in goethe’s opening “nacht” scene, dr. viel, flattered by hellmuth’s adulation, but feeling sentimental and melancholy due to his lack of any original artistic imagination, contemplates suicide as a way to get back at the theatre gods who have failed to respond to his desperate entreaties for inspiration and helpful ideas. in his inflated sense of self-importance, he imagines his funeral staged by no less than the great twentieth century german theatre and film director peter zadek: i bring mich um! leckts mich alle mal am arsch! speziell ihr da drob’n! (es donnert) ich mach euch einen strich durch die rechnung! i mach mir selbst den garaus! und mein begräbnis inszeniert der zadek!... (er geht daran, sich umzubringen) this is followed by a parody of the scene “vor dem tor” in faust. in goethe’s play, dr. faust feels refreshed and inspired by his walk with his assistant wagner among the common, everyday people of the village: ich höre schon des dorfs getümmel, hier ist des volkes wahrer himmel, zufrieden jauchzet gross und klein: hier bin ich mensch, hier darf ich’s sein! (faust 937–940) as he hears the sounds of the people outside, dr. viel’s reaction is equally enthusiastic, but couched in terminology which was used at times by antisemites in germany and austria in the first half of the 20th century: die volksseele – i werd verrückt! du sitzt jahrelang in deinem büro und trotzdem gehts leben weiter draussen! und plötzlich merkst, dass sie noch immer wallt und pocht, die seele, die völkische! (p. 15)2 whereas faust is disuaded from commiting suicide by the sound of the easter churchbells, dr. viel is restrained by the sound of the beer-drinking songs of “das volk”: des hat fleisch! des hat blut! des hat leben! da verschieben wir den selbstmord und gehn raus! (p. 15) 2 for a critique of this nationalist ideology see springer 1926. 14 david chisholm dr. viel’s trainee hellmuth’s negative reaction to “the people” recalls that of faust’s assistant. wagner says to faust: mit euch, herr doktor, zu spazieren ist ehrenvoll und ist gewinn; doch würd ich nicht allein mich hier verlieren, weil ich ein feind von allem rohen bin. das fiedeln, schreien, kegelschieben ist mir ein gar verhasster klang ... (faust 941–946) similarly helmuth complains to dr. viel: mich schreckt des volkes dümmlich wesen – lasst uns ‘theater heute’ lesen.3 (p. 15) dr. viel’s final words to hellmuth in the third scene of schocker unambiguously reveal that he, in contrast to goethe’s faust, is a petty tyrant with an inflated image of himself, easily susceptible to false flattery: nun hörst mir mal zu, freundchen! i mag dich wirklich, weil du der einzige bist, wo massgebliche persönlichkeiten richtig einschätzt! des gefällt mir! aber wannst was werden willst als hospitant, als popliger, dann hast deinen intendanten wortlos zu gehorchen, verstanden? dass das mal klar ist, mein herr!! the contrast to goethe’s faust becomes even more stark when we compare goethe’s scene “vor dem tor” with call’s “spaziergang” scene above, in which he directly depicts the most basic physiological urges of the “volk” in the crudest possible way: goethe, faust, vor dem tor: vierter handwerksbursch: nach burgdorf kommt herauf, gewiss dort findet ihr die schönsten mädchen und das beste bier ... schüler: blitz, wie die wachern dirnen schreiten! herr bruder, komm! wir müssen sie begleiten. ein starkes bier, ein beizender tobak 3 incidentally another play by daniel call was selected to appear in the german theatre magazine theater heute five years after he wrote schocker. 15daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century und eine magd im putz, das ist nun mein geschmack. (814–815, 828–831) compare this with call’s spaziergang scene: 1. bürger: ficken? 1. bürgerin: fünfzig mark. 1. bürger: ficken. 2. bürger: bier? 1. bürger: ficken. 1. bürgerin: gummi. 1. bürger: ohne. 1. bürgerin: hundert mark. 2. bürger: bier? 3. bürger: saufen. ... (p. 15f.) in contrast to arthur schnitzler’s play reigen, in which most of the dialogues preceding and following the sex acts are elaborate, indirect and “elevated,” call’s spaziergang scene depicts “das volk” in a type of linguistic reigen or round-dance in which language has been reduced to the barest minimum necessary to communicate human urges for sex and alcohol, and to carry out negotiations for the former. dr. viel is so inspired and refreshed by this crude sexual propositioning and desire for drinking that he gets carried away and cries out ecstatically: ihr lieben leut, was haltets denn davon, zur abwechslung mal ins theater zu gehen? ihr könnts auch gleich ein konzepterl mitbringen... and then quotes the famous phrase from martin luther’s sendbrief vom dolmetschen in a slightly different version: “des is dem volk aufs maul geschaut!” unfortunately, the “volk” mistakes his last word “geschaut” for “gehaut”: die bürger: aufs maul! hellmuth: ihr scheint das volk nicht zu entzücken – wir sollten lieber uns verdrücken. die bürger: aufs maul! aufs maul! haut ihm aufs maul! (p. 20) 16 david chisholm in a humorous reference to don giovanni and leporello in mozart’s opera, dr. viel deflects the people’s anger to hellmuth by casually pointing to him and deceitfully crying out: “das ist der chef, den müssts vertrimmen,” so that they fall upon helmut and start pommeling him so viciously that he loses his teeth and can no longer speak without lisping. the poodle, which follows faust into his study in goethe’s play, is represented here by the cocker spaniel “schocker,” who initially arouses dr. viel’s sexual desires by masturbating against his leg and licking dr. viel’s crotch. rather than repelling the dog, dr. viel kisses it, and amidst an explosion with lots of vapors and stage magic, the cocker spaniel is transformed into a beautiful young man whom dr. viel assumes is a homosexual: dr. viel: i werd verrückt! du bist ja gar kein hund! du bist – eine tunte! du bist schon der zweite heut! ihr müssts mich falsch verstanden haben, jungs! i bin net so einer! (p. 22) whereas dr. viel speaks in rather inelegant prose, the handsome young schocker , like almost all of the other characters in this play, speaks only in four-stress rhyming couplets as he appeals to dr. viel’s overwhelming urge for sexual gratification and his ardent desire to become a successful and powerful theatre director: nun bin ich hier, mich euch zu fügen – und fügen ist mir ein vergnügen! ihr spürt, wie euch die lust anschwillt? ich bins, der diesen hunger stillt! ... ihr spürt, euch schwinden zeit und macht? ich bins, der euch erfolgreich macht!... what follows is a delightfully comic parody of mephistopheles’ self-description in goethe’s faust. whereas mephisto describes himself there as “fliegengott, verderber, lügner”, schocker simply calls himself a consultant or advisor: bei mir, mein herr, lässt sich das wesen gewöhnlich aus dem namen lesen, wo es sich allzu deutlich weist wenn man mich referent nur heisst. 17daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century schocker than tells dr. viel that he will make him the powerful director of the vienna burgtheater, and that all he requires as a fee for his services is dr. viel’s soul: ihr seid der herr, gebt die befehle, ich werde euch die massen ziehn. als gage nehm ich eure seele und bring euch an die burg nach wien. (p. 23) not realizing that schocker was sent to him by the princes of hell (“die fürsten”), dr. viel, naively assuming that the almighty theatre-god has answered his prayers, is totally unaware of his blasphemy as he thanks him for hearing his entreaties, and simultaneously signs the pact with the devil in his own blood. he then cries out: “herrgott, du hast meine gebete erhört!” and thunder is heard from above. in the second “studierzimmer” scene (bild vi), schocker presents his “konzept” and his “erfolgsrezept” to dr. viel. schocker, like mephistopheles in faust, has a very low opinion of humanity, including theatre audiences: der mensch ist böse, stur und blöd. und er ist ganz besonders dumm sitzt klatschend er im publikum. (p. 25) since people’s lust for the sensational is satisfied by movies, television, videos, and so forth, they feel no need to go to the theatre. i.e. unless the theatre can provide something even more sensational. schocker’s drastic, bloody solution is simply to publicly shoot down the “opposition” in all the other theatres during the curtain call at the end of each premiere: wir müssen alle regisseure, bühnenbildner und akteure all der andern deutschen bühnen – hoch vom norden in den süden – blut verspritzen und vergiessen, sie coram publico erschiessen. ... wir blasen ihre lichter aus in der premieren schlussapplaus (p. 27) 18 david chisholm in the meantime dr. viel will stage his “faustical”, a modernized version of goethe’s faust with pop music: dieweil müsst ihr euch konzentrieren ums faustical zu inszenieren die sensation, die wir erstreben ist der premiere überleben. in this context “surviving the premiere” means not only getting an enthusiastic audience response and good reviews, but also – quite literally – not getting shot at and killed during the applause at the end of their own opening performance. for the audience, the “sensation” will be the possibility that the director, actors, set designers and stage crew at dr. viel’s theatre will also be publicly murdered, as will already have happened at all the other german-language theatres: dr. viel: du meinst, i soll ein massaker anrichten nur, dass die leute bei mir zur premieren rennen und hoffen, dass i auch d’erschossen wird? (p. 27) at first dr. viel vehemently opposes this plan, telling schocker among other things that he is a psychotic killer and a maniac. but then the “wiener burg” appears in the background, beckoning and winking so promisingly that dr. viel gives in and asks schocker for a revolver. part of the dialog in the next scene (vii. bild: kantine im keller), in which dr. viel sees susannchen for the first time, is a crude, crass version of a similar dialog in goethe’s faust. compare these two conversations: goethe: faust (to mephisto): hör, du musst mir die dirne schaffen! (faust, line 2619) ... mephistopheles: es ist ein gar unschuldig ding, das eben für nichts zur beichte ging; über die hab ich keine gewalt! (faust, lines 2624–2626) ... faust: wenn nicht das süsse junge blut heut nacht in meinen armen ruht, so sind wir um mitternacht geschieden. (faust, lines 2636–2638) 19daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century daniel call: schocker: das kind in der jungfräulichkeit kennt schuld nicht und verdorbenheit. dr. viel: die will i ficken. schocker: ich kann zwar vieles für euch tun doch krieg ich solche maid nicht rum. dr. viel: bist jetzt meine referent oder wos? wann i die will, musst mir die auch besorgen, und wannst sie mit einer hauptrolle nach der anderen köderst! (p. 31) whereas goethe blends knittelvers with many other verse forms in his faust drama, call uses these four-stress rhyme-pairs throughout his play for almost all of his characters, with the notable exception of dr. viel, who speaks throughout most of the play in his austrian prose dialect, except when he unsuccessfully tries to employ knittelvers in speaking to susannchen. (does he perhaps subconsciously feel that speaking to her in rhyming couplets will make him more attractive and appealing to her?). the only other characters to speak in prose are the “voice of the almighty”, who also speaks with an austrian accent, and the common citizens (“das volk”) in call’s “spaziergang” scene. as we have seen, however, the “prose” of the citizens – if we can even call it that – is reduced to one-word utterances – the bare minimum needed to communicate their basic urges and desires. in the twelfth scene even the almighty theatre-god seems to become infected as his indignant prose morphs into knittelvers at the end of his short prose tirade against frl. umlaut and susannchen: ja, wos ist jetzt? beten tuts wie die bläden und machts eh wos wollt! kinder, nein, was soll der kitsch? des is ja wie bei millowitsch! (my emphasis) (p. 49) here call, speaking through the almighty, gets in a jab at willy millowitsch (1909–1999), a german stage and tv actor who directed the “volkstheater millowitsch” in cologne until a few years before his death. in the “talentschmiede” scene [viii. bild], which is somewhat analogous to the “hexenküche” scene in goethe’s faust, the “hexe” is a female consul who reveals that dr. viel’s lust for susannchen is intertwined with his ambition to become director of the vienna burgtheater. by means of both force and deception, he clearly wants to conquer and “take over” both susannchen and the famous theatre. when the consul asks him to show her his yearnings and desires, the stage direction reveals what dr. viel really wants: 20 david chisholm (in kassandras feuer erscheint, sich lasziv windend, die wiener burg. sie hat auffallende ähnlichkeit mit susannchen gewonnen.) (p.34) the “konsulin” then hypnotizes dr. viel and encourages him to rhyme by having him repeat the lines of her magic formula. having noticed his sloppy speech habits, she advises schocker to improve dr. viel’s diction by teaching him how to rhyme: das schlimmste ist die sabbelei mein rat, bring ihm das reimen bei. (p. 36) just as the witch transforms the aging faust into a handsome young man in goethe’s drama, the consul – with the aid of a pipe and new clothing from the leading designers of men’s apparel, perfumes and eyewear – casts magic spells which greatly enhance the outward appearance of dr. viel: konsulin: ... besorge ihm was anzuziehen – am besten von armani, boss, parfüm von kern, bloss nicht von moss! dazu ne brille von dior (die gaukelt intellekt ihm vor) zur krönung dient dann eine pfeife als zeichen seriöser reife... in summary the consul observes: mit frischem glanz und neuem kleid wird selbst dies nichts persönlichkeit. (p. 36) after his transformation dr. viel, dressed in his new outfit (“in neuer montur”), meets susannchen in the foyer of the theatre, and in an attempt to arouse her interest tries to “chat her up” by speaking in knittelvers for the first time in the play. it is immediately obvious, however, that he has great difficulty using this relatively “easy” verse form, and his infelicitous, awkward rhymes betray the subconscious desires and urges of his depraved, lewd mind. in his frustration he slips back into his familiar austrian prose, complaining to himself that he gets tongue-tied when he tries to speak in knittelvers: 21daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century dr. viel: auch mir kam der skandal zu – öhren doch solls net meine proben stören. i mach da nämlich gerade eine produktion die wird der renner der – session. i werd den faust als musical in szene setzen und muss das greterl noch besetzen. da hab i gleich an sie gedacht und sie telefonisch – herrgott (es donnert), wos reimt sich jetzt auf “gedacht”? angemacht – angelacht – ein kreuz ist des mit die knittelreimen! dass man net einfach so reden kann, wie einem der schnabel gewachsen ist, wannst erfolg haben willst! ich dacht, dass sie die rolle ziert, und hab sie gleich antelefoniert. susannchen (für sich): der mann spricht reichlich sonderbar – verwirrt mir herz und sinne gar. (p. 37) susannchen’s reaction to dr. viel’s words is reminiscent of gretchen’s reaction to faust, the difference being that dr. viel gets tongue-tied in his clumsy attempt to impress and deceive susannchen, whereas faust’s words to gretchen are sincere and convincing, even if she doesn’t completely understand what he says. dr. viel, accustomed to speaking prose in his austrian dialect, finds it extremely difficult to speak in knittelvers. finding appropriate words and rhyme-words, which come naturally to schocker and most of the other characters, is a great challenge for him, as evidenced by the following lines spoken to susannchen: in diesen zeiten solch furchtbarer verbrechen ist des risiko von einer premieren fast net zu berechnen. da brauchts als intendant viel mut bei solcher – flut – theater – blut ...herrgottsakrament (es donnert) i wird noch wahnsinnig!... (p.38) his utterance of the words “flut” and “blut” appears to be a freudian slip, for after all he has been murdering the directors and actors in all the other theatres. he continues: 22 david chisholm und wannst in der dramatik schaust gibts eh nix bessres als den faust. i habs ein bißerl neugefaßt dem text mit musi pep verpaßt. morgen fangen die proben an premiere in neun monaten – hat sich des jetzt gereimt oder net? wohnen kannst bei mir im haus ich klapp das gästesofa aus. (p.38) dr. viel senses that something is wrong when he tries to rhyme the final unstressed syllable of monaten with the stressed prefix an, and his words reveal his subconscious awareness that he will make susannchen pregnant. he is well aware of the difficulty he has trying to speak in knittelvers and nail down its four-stress rhyme-pairs: “nun red i schon so verschraubt, dass i einen knoten krieg in der zungen, und lauf herum wie eine schaufensterpuppen – und lassts sich noch immer net nageln von mir! des hab i jetzt von dem pakt! nix! (p.39) for him one of the worst aspects of his pact with schocker is that he feels compelled to try to speak in knittelvers! fräulein umlaut is the counterpart of marthe schwerdtlein in goethe’s faust. she warns susannchen not to stay at dr. viel’s house, since, as she expresses it, all men just want to “force themselves between your legs”. she suggests that since men want nothing but sex, susannchen might just as well further her career by making good use of this male compulsion. when susannchen tells her fellow actress that she is living at dr. viel’s house, fräulein umlaut replies with her characteristic bluntness: geholt hat dich der wilde mann damit er mit dir vögeln kann! (p. 40) the overwhelming effect of faust’s words on gretchen in goethe’s play is echoed in susannchen’s innocent reply to fräulein umlaut: dass er so schlecht ist, glaub ich nicht dieweil er gar romantisch spricht. 23daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century to this fräulein umlaut replies that once dr. viel gets her pregnant, he’ll leave her for other women: hast erst ’nen braten du im ofen geht der mit andern weibern schwofen! (p. 41) in order to shield susannchen from dr. viel’s lust, fräulein umlaut offers to let her live at her house. call’s eleventh scene is the first of three “rehearsal” scenes directed by dr. viel. at the beginning he speaks to susannchen in four-stress couplets, but when he consults his “advisor” schocker he slips back into his familiar austrian prose. as in the knittelvers of earlier german poets, call creates a humorous effect through the use of improbable, clumsy or unexpected rhymes, in this case rhyming the german word eckchen with the english word action. in dr. viel’s modernized, “pepped up” version of faust, gretchen utters the words: “er macht mich tierisch an, der mann” which ironically applies to dr. viel himself as well as to faust. daniel call also utilizes phrases from pop music. when gretchen finds the little casket which schocker has left in her room, the chorus creates a humorous atmosphere of pure kitsch with a variation on the words from the 1988 album “look sharp!” by the swedish pop music duo “roxette”: listen to your heart listen to your love listen to your soul (p. 42) it is revealing to compare gretchen’s famous song “am spinnrad” in goethe’s faust with the increasingly explicit and graphic sexual imagery in the lines sung by susannchen in dr. viel’s version: susannchen: (singt) wie fühl ich mich berührt wie bin ich angerührt als hätt ein mixerstab sich tief in mich gequirlt ich kann ihn nicht vergessen! chor: sie will sich an ihn pressen! susannchen: er hat mein herz geklaut ach könnt ich seine haut 24 david chisholm nur auf der meinen spüren könnt ich ihn nur berühren könnt ich mich an ihm reiben chor: sie will es mit ihm treiben – (p. 43) dr. viel’s new text for gretchen reveals his own sexual fantasies about susannchen. as she and the chorus sing these words of lust and desire – in which she describes faust as “ein mann wie stahl” – dr. viel egotistically imagines that he is faust, and that her words refer specifically to him. turning to schocker, he says: “des is jetzt ein ganz neues gretchen, verstehst? weil die is von anfang an scharf auf ihn, weil er so ein mannsbild is. eigentlich musste i den spielen.” [my emphasis] dr. viel’s sexual fantasies are even more explicitly revealed as susannchen continues her song: ich will mich an ihn verschenken mich unter ihm verrenken seinen dödel küssen! (p. 44) in his arrogant attempts to “improve upon” what he calls goethe’s “empty chatter”, dr. viel again reveals his lascivious, perverse, deviant imagination. when he says to schocker: “i hab dacht, i mach sie ein bisserl pervers, dass der ganze schmus was verruchtes kriegt ... könnt ja sonstwas drin sein in dem kästerl. reizwäschen oder handschellen, hab i mir denkt ...” schocker’s reply indicates that he completely understands what dr. viel is thinking: ich denke – interpretation ist – subjektive – intention – for dr. viel’s “interpretation” of goethe’s faust clearly reveals his lascisious intentions toward susannchen. in a reference to the scenes “der nachbarin haus” and “garten” in faust, where mephisto keeps marthe’s attention focused on himself while faust converses with gretchen, schocker has to find a way 25daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century of undermining the solidarity between fräulein umlaut (who plays marthe schwerdtlein in dr. viel’s version) and susannchen. he therefore flatters her to such a degree that she wants him to stay and spend the night at her house so they can become more intimate. by means of this ruse schocker subtly persuades her to kick susannchen out of her house, so that the young actress has no choice but to return to dr. viel: frl. umlaut: ein tässchen tee und ein likör? zur lockerung ein aquavit? das hält uns locker, stark und fit! nun kommen sie doch schon herein! schocker: ja, leben gnädigste allein? frl. umlaut: das mädchen, das bei mir logiert... wird heute einfach ausquartiert! (p. 47) initially fräulein umlaut has moral qualms about abandoning susannchen to dr. viel’s lust, but her ethical struggle doesn’t last long, and she quickly yields to the temptation represented by the handsome young schocker. dr. viel, of course, is right at hand ready to “rescue” susannchen and take her to his house. she has little choice, and in a parody of gretchen’s prayers in the zwinger scene in goethe’s faust, she prays to god: herrgott! gib mir mut und kraft dass ers nicht in mein bettchen schafft! (p. 49) at this point the almighty (theatre-god) complains that people such as fräulein umlaut and susannchen pray like imbeciles, and then just do whatever they please anyway. to him their prayers, words and actions are nothing more than a corny melodrama. meanwhile schocker “prays” to his god, the “prince of darkness”, also known as satan, to release him from his service to dr. viel and his consequent unwelcome sexual entanglement with fräulein umlaut, whom he refers to as an “old tart”. but satan does not respond, and schocker is condemned to continue the night of drinking and debauchery with fräulein umlaut: schocker: nur gebe mir ein zeichen, meister! (kein zeichen) ich hab verstanden. scheibenkleister. frl. umlaut: willst du dann nicht das weinchen trinken? schocker: viel tiefer kann ich nicht mehr sinken. (p. 49) 26 david chisholm the second rehearsal scene (scene thirteen in call’s play) corresponds to the “cathedral” (“dom”) scene in goethe’s faust. whereas the choir there sings the dies irae in latin, the pop music chorus of nuns in dr. viel’s version sings in english: oh! ohohohohh – heavenly father, she killed her mother! oh! ohohohohh – heavenly father, what says her brother? daniel call casts the words of the chorus in the form of english strong-stress meter, analogous to the german knittelvers which predominates throughout this play. in dr. viel’s version of this scene, which also reflects his own relationship with susannchen, we find out that “goethens heinrich faust” has gotten gretchen pregnant: ich bete hier in deinem haus: heut blieb die periode aus! gebär ich bald ‘nen kleinen klaus als kind von goethens heinrich faust? (p. 50) call’s use of the old eighteenth and nineteenth century genitive form “goethens” adds an archaic touch to this passage, and in fact throughout this play, call blends modern colloquial german, dialect and slang with the language of the goethezeit. for example, although dr. viel addresses schocker with “du”, schocker addresses him with the formal ihr-form, and dr. viel uses the third person singular eror sie-form in speaking to those he considers to be his subordinates, such as helmut (and susannchen when he is angry with her). at the end of this scene, dr. viel outrageously and ridiculously changes the meaning of gretchen’s remark: “nachbarin, eurer fläschchen!.” in goethe’s play gretchen, about to faint, asks the woman next to her in church for her flask of smelling salts. in dr. viel’s version, gretchen is accusing the woman next to her of having provided the bottle of poison which killed her mother: susannchen (schlicht): die mutti liegt in schutt und asche das gift zog ich aus meiner tasche frau nachbarin, s’war eure flasche in his desperate effort to find rhyme-words, dr. viel comes up with lines that are nonsensical and ludicrous. 27daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century concerning the death of her mother, compare gretchen’s words in faust with dr. viel’s casual “modern” version: gretchen: sie schlief, damit wir uns freuten. (goethe, faust, line 4572) gretchen: die mutter starb für eine nummer! (dr. viel’s version (p. 51) the end of this rehearsal scene reveals dr. viel’s egotistical, tyrannical, and brutal authoritarianism toward those he considers to be beneath him. in his post-rehearsal “evaluation” he humiliates susannchen in front of the other actors and actresses, calling her “lustlos” and referring to her sarcastically as “fräulein susannchen”: ganz deutschland stierts mich an zur premieren! da will i mich net blamieren wegen so einer bläden kuh! und ein bisserl mehr dankbarkeit, fräulein susannchen, dass sie dran teilhat an die sensation! doppeltes tempo! doppelte kraft! und vergessens die zwischentön net, weils davon lebt, das texterl von mir and herrn goethe!... dass das mal klar ist! (p. 52) the evening of the premiere of dr. viel’s “faust – das musical” finally arrives, and even linda, the pretty tv moderator, speaks in knittelvers to her audience of millions. one of the most humorous passages in call’s play is her capsule summary of dr. viel’s “faust-musical:” der alte faust, ein hochbewährter professor, doktor und gelehrter, wie einstein ein allround-genie, übt sich in schwärzester magie weil er so unzufrieden ist, in bücherwust das fleisch vermisst. so tut den teufel er beschwören, der teufel tut den ruf erhören, und tut ihm einen diener geben, der tut ihm auf ein neues leben. der gibt die jugend ihm zurück, verspricht zerstreuung ihm und mehr, und jetzt wirds tragisch in dem stück, denn faust gibt seine seele her. es folgen spass und spannungen und allerhand verwicklungen bis hin zum rührgen happy-end, 28 david chisholm das bisher nur der autor kennt, der goethens faust neu adaptierte, an seinem haus selbst inszenierte, dazu die titelrolle spielt, ich stell vor: herrn dr. viel! (p. 62) in the final dungeon scene (“kerker”) there is a ludicrous discrepancy between susannchen’s physical condition – she is now visibly “hochschwanger” – and her role in goethe’s faust as the mother who drowned her child. accompanied by “schmalzige musik,” she sings: wenn, kindlein, ich dir blumen pflück dann leg ich sie dir auf dein grab, weil, mutter ich, kein kind mehr hab! (p. 67) this laughably absurd and incongruous situation corresponds well with the burlesque characteristics of knittelvers. dr. viel’s “faust musical” ends as a total farce in which all the supposedly dead characters surprize the audience and appear gathered together alive and well in gretchen’s cell: alle: überraschung! dr. viel: des baby is doch gar net tot und auch net valentin, der idiot – ... frl. umlaut: ach gretchen, wie mich alles reut! das mit der mama tut mir leid! doch lebt auch sie, ist nicht hinüber, mit einem mann in rom am tiber! (p. 69) ... das ärzteteam der notaufnahme: das kind war beinah schon erfroren! ihm sausten seine kleine ohren! doch ist der zuckersüsse zwerg schon längstens wieder übern berg! (p. 70) the real surprise is yet to come however. as the actors come to the front of the stage to take their bows, goethe, who has taken a leave of absence from heaven and entered the theater in disguise, stands up in the audience and assassinates dr. viel with a revolver. in the afterworld schocker informs the dead dr. viel that goethe took revenge on him for desecrating his work: 29daniel call’s schocker: german knittelvers in the late twentieth century schocker: er sagt, ihr habt sein werk geschändet, wie niemals es ein mensch zuvor. (p. 71) in the concluding scene in the afterworld, the final words of goethe’s faust, erster teil, mephisto’s “sie ist gerichtet!” and the voice from above “ist gerettet!”, are condensed into just two words spoken by the greatly relieved wiener burg, “gerichtet – gerettet”, meaning that dr. viel has been judged, and that the vienna burgtheater has been rescued from the certain disaster that would have befallen it if dr. viel had become its director. daniel call’s play, along with both dramatic and non-dramatic knittelvers by other twentieth and early twenty-first century writers, demonstrates that while its rhythmic structure has undergone some changes and variations, this verse form still retains formal and semantic characteristics which have remained constant since the fifteenth century. these rough and rugged fourstress couplets retain a comic, course, crude, sometimes vulgar character, and as in daniel call’s play, continue to function as a medium to depict mockheroic and tragicomic situations through farce, parody and burlesque satire. 30 david chisholm references behrmann, alfred 1989. einführung in den neueren deutschen vers. stuttgart: metzler. burdorf, dieter 1995. einführung in die gedichteanalyse. stuttgart: metzler. call, daniel [s. a.]. schocker. text available for download on galissas verlag’s webpage: www.gallissas-verlag.de/play/schocker. page numbers refer to this text. chisholm, david 1975. goethe’s knittelvers: a prosodic analysis. bonn: bouvier verlag. chisholm, david 1986. “der deutsche knittelvers  – alt und neu”, akten des vii. kongreßes der internationalen vereinigung für germanische sprachund literaturewissenschaft, göttingen 1985. tübingen: niemeyer, 153–158. flohr, otto 1893. geschichte des knittelverses von 17. jahrhundert bis zur jugend goethes. berlin: c. vogt. springer, brunold 1926. die seele der völkischen. berlin: verlag der neuen generation. wagenknecht, christian 1989. deutsche metrik: eine historische einführung. münchen: beck. breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony mihhail lotman*1 abstract: ants oras’s innovation was not confined to the sphere of language, he also has an important role in the enrichment of estonian metrics and systems of versification. his sources were mainly the forms of different european poetic cultures, which he introduced in his translations. in the paper, two meters are studied, which oras tried to create in his translation of goethe’s faust, in order to adequately convey the original’s rhythm. these verse meters are german national form, knittelvers, and adoneus derived from ancient and medieval verse. one common characteristic for these meters is the breaking of syllabic-accentual monotony. keywords: ants oras, knittelvers, adoneus, estonian verse, faust, translation 1. the estonian verse culture developed in the second half of the 19th century under the influence of two traditions. the more important of the two is the adaptation of german syllabic-accentual verse with the means of the estonian language. the second was the estonian folklore tradition. these two foundations were not independent from each other, since estonian folklore verse had entered estonian literary poetry through the german prism. on the other hand, it was not as much influenced by the german high culture as it was by secondary authors and song books, both ecclesiastical and secular. the main verse meter was syllabic-accentual trochee which, since the epic “kalevipoeg” (1862), had already been closely associated with popular poetry. from german poetry, rhyme and the alteration of clauses were transplanted. thus, in the end of the 19th century the estonian metrical and stanzaic repertoire seemed rather ascetic, if not to say meagre. the quatrains of trochaic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme abab (where capital letters mark feminine rhymes, lowercase latter masculine rhymes) prevailed nearly absolutely (the incidence of all other forms was less than 25%, including the other stanzaic forms of trochaic tetrameter, compare peep 1969: 433–434; põldmäe 1978: 116). such paucity of verse forms was in harmony with the realist poetic world, as well as with poetry oriented on singing. * author’s address: mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail.lotman@gmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 102–122 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.07 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.07 103breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony not only were meter and stanzas monotonous, but so was rhythm. this had also been proliferated by the german verse tradition, since the meter of folklore regisong (even if conditionally classified as trochaic tetrameter) is rich in rhythmic variations. german syllabic-accentual verse (both iambic and trochaic) is, in comparison with english, russian and even estonian verse, very monotonous, because in almost 100% of cases all strong positions bear stress. few rhythmical modulations occur from the contrast between syllables with primary and secondary stress. there are two reasons why the german iamb was that rigorous, particularly as compared to english iamb where numerous rhythmical licences are admitted. the first reason is historical. while the english iamb developed in evolutionary way, when the syllabic-accentual verse was derived from the old-english accentual verse, to which syllabic constraints were added under the influence of italian verse (in this context, first of all, geoffrey chaucer has to be mentioned); however, the german iamb was born like athena from zeus’s head in its readymade form from the treatise by martin opitz (1624). the norms and rules of english iamb followed the actual practice, although classicist authors tried to considerably limit its rhythmical freedom with their prescriptions. nevertheless, the strictest english iamb is freer than the freest german iamb. the other reason is synchronic. english iamb eventually replaced the older meter, and, when in the 19th century the attempts were made to recreate the archaic verse, it was no longer associated with iamb. the situation was different in germany, where, first, knittelvers became syllabic in hans sachs’s poetry, and, second, in parallel the accentual verse at least partly retained its position. opitz’s newly reformed iamb superseded the syllabic verse typical of hans sachs, while the accentual knittelvers continued to be used even though the iamb significantly restricted its practice1. existing in parallel with knittelvers, the iamb had to become clearly distinguishable from it, and, since from the standpoint of metrics we are dealing with almost identical forms, the differences were, primarily, in the degree of rhythmical freedom. this is demonstrated in these lines by goethe: (1) habe nun, ach! philosophie, juristerei und medizin, und leider auch theologie […] 1 andreas heusler distinguishes between two types of knittelvers: a strict syllabic form in hans sachs, were 8and 9-syllabic verses (depending on the ending) alternate, and a free or accentual form, where the number of syllables is not fixed (heusler 1929: 42–60, 327–354). 104 mihhail lotman from not only the english perspective, but also from a considerably stricter russian verse culture, these are correct iambs in every way. in german iamb, however, such rhythmical moves, where the strong position is filled with the pre-stress syllable (compare philosophie, juristerei, medizin, theologie), which are not allowed, such rhythmical modulations indicate that we are dealing not with iamb, but with knittelvers (chisholm 1975: 20, 77, 129–130)2. when we speak of the estonian iamb, such rhythmical moves as in the citation above are not possible for purely linguistic reasons, since in estonian, the word stress is fixed on the first syllable. 2. modernism was slightly late in coming to estonian culture, and entered poetry in the first decade of the 20th century. in verse culture it meant, first, the dramatic increase of different metrical and stanzaic forms, while at the same time the possibilities of quantitative verse were discovered and experimented with in various verse forms. second, in the already established forms, new ways of expression and breaking the monotony were sought out (lotman, lotman 2013, 2014). the horizon was broadened, and in looking for new modes of expression the orientations shifted from the german tradition, first of all, to french and russian poetic culture. simultaneously, other romance verse traditions played a certain part as well, in particular, in stanzaic structures. from that point on, attempts were made to convey the ancient verse with authentic models, not only through the prism of the german tradition (compare the 19th century accentual-syllabic hexameter by jaan bergmann). ants oras, one of the leading figures of the arbujad (sorcerers), was one of the main ideologists of this reorientation and enrichment of estonian verse, which first started with such literary groups as noor-eesti (young estonia) and arbujad. all the more interesting is the fact that, in order to break the syllabic-accentual monotony, oras turned also to german sources, first of all, in his translation of faust. goethe’s faust is a polymetrical work with a sophisticated composition. the majority of the verses consist of syllabic-accentual lines, but there are some meters which break the syllabic-accentual monotony. one of these is knittelvers, the meter of germanic origin, the other adoneus which was used already in the antiquity (it is primarily known as the last part of the sapphic 2 in the statistics of german iambic tetrameter provided by evgeny kazartzev there occur such lines as xxxxxxxx(x), yet in none of his examples does the pre-stress syllable occur in the second position, compare um von eugén bestánd zu lérnen (kazartzev 2011: 259), where the secondary stress occurs on the second syllable. 105breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony stanza3). here goethe had probably oriented already toward the medieval latin tradition, where adonic verses were used also in stichic hymns. even more exciting is the fact that both meters are often not distinguished as compositional units, but are smoothly integrated into syllabic-accentual context. let us start with the knittelvers. knittelvers in faust proceeds from the same metrical structure as the iambic tetrameter. this structure (ms) can be presented in the following way: (ms1) abababab(a), where a and b are abstract elements, about which nothing positive can be claimed. the only thing that characterises them is: a≠b. german iamb has very simple and strict correspondence rules (cr): (cri1) each position a or b corresponds to one, and only one, syllable. (cri2) each position a corresponds to an unstressed syllable of a polysyllabic word or a monosyllabic clitic. (cri3) each position b corresponds to a syllable carrying the primary or secondary stress (nebenton) or to an unstressed syllable in post-stress position. consider the following verses: (2) die sonne tönt, nach alter weise, in brudersphären wettgesang, und ihre vorgeschriebne reise vollendet sie mit donnergang. ihr anblick gibt den engeln stärke, wenn keiner sie ergründen mag; die unbegreiflich hohen werke sind herrlich wie am ersten tag. (prolog im himmel) such verse may seem a little monotonous, but is solemn and is associated with opitz’s and günther’s odic tradition. knittelvers with its loose rhythm harmonising with faust’s fickle mood is in contrast with it: 3 according to the contemporary approach, sapphic stanza is often interpreted as a threelined structure (see, for example, webster 1970: 76), while adonic verse is the last unit of the third verse. in goethe’s time it was interpreted as a four-lined stanza, while the first three lines were sapphic hendecasyllables and the fourth adoneus. 106 mihhail lotman (3) habe nun, ach! philosophie, juristerei und medizin, und leider auch theologie durchaus studiert, mit heißem bemühn. da steh ich nun, ich armer tor! und bin so klug als wie zuvor; heiße magister, heiße doktor gar und ziehe schon an die zehen jahr herauf, herab und quer und krumm meine schüler an der nase herum – und sehe, daß wir nichts wissen können! das will mir schier das herz verbrennen. (erster teil) (underlined are the places where the rules of iamb are violated.) differently from the german iamb, in faust’s knittelvers the number of syllables, varying in the interval 8–10, as well as the placement of stresses and even the number of accentual positions are not strictly fixed here (in this fragment, the verse heiße magister, heiße doktor gar has five beats). let us focus on four-beat lines, which should be considered the main variant of knittelvers. the metrical scheme of this passage is the same ms1, but there are major differences in the correspondence rules: (crk1) each position b corresponds to one and only one syllable. (crk2) each position a corresponds to one or two syllables. (crk3) each position a corresponds to an unstressed syllable as well as the stressed syllable of a monoor even disyllabic word. (crk4) each position b corresponds to an optional syllable. here are some examples of violations of iambic rules in goethe’s knittelvers: habe nun, ach! philosophie xx xx xxxx both the first two syllables (habe) and the sixth syllable (philosophie) violate the accentual principle of iamb: the first syllable carries the stress of the disyllabic word, the sixth position is filled with the pre-stress syllable of the polysyllabic word. durchaus studiert, mit heißem bemühn. xx xx xxx xx in this verse the syllabic principle of iamb is violated: the fourth a-position is filled with two syllables (heißem bemühn). 107breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony the rhythm of knittelvers is more ambiguous, as compared to iamb, and some lines are ambivalent in principle: meine schüler an der nase herum xx xx xxxx xx in three of the four disyllabic words (meine, schüler and nase) the stressed syllable occurs on position a, with the main problem being the trisyllabic interval between stresses. since the rules of knittelvers do not allow it, it is possible to treat this verse as nonmetrical. however, in freer type of knittelvers, the rules are not deterministic, but statistical. a more probable explanation is another interpretation, albeit complicated, according to which, this line is still metrical: position a3 corresponds to two (and not three) syllables: meine schüler an der nase herum 3. knittelvers has to be distinguished not only from iamb, but also from the four-stressed meter which, in russian verse theory, is called dolnik (tarlinskaja 1992). if we proceed only from the surface structure, we are dealing with the same model, where anacrusis can vary from 0–2 syllables, that is, the beginning of verse can be dactylic, amphibrachic or even anapaestic, 1–2 syllables can be put between the strong positions, and the end of line can be masculine, feminine or even dactylic: (x)(x)xx(x)xx(x)xx(x)x(x)(x) the difference is that knittelvers is a binary meter (iamb) in its deep structure, while dolnik is based on ternary meters. some versification scholars, who extrapolate only from the surface structure, disregard this difference, and thus, goethe’s erlkönig is treated as knittelvers (compare altmann, altmann 2005). such interpretation is, however, problematic, and it would be more correct here to speak of accentual verse (bailey 1969) or, more accurately, dolnik (tarlinskaja 1993: 13). it is a rather delicate, but fundamental problem, which cannot be resolved, for example, statistically. in dolnik, the incidence of monosyllabic intervals can be even higher than that of disyllabic intervals. what is decisive is not the quantity, but the deep structure, on the background of which we perceive this verse, as a verse meter is a gestalt in its own way (lotman 2011). 108 mihhail lotman (4) wer reitet so spät durch nacht und wind? xxxxxxxxx es ist der vater mit seinem kind; xxxxxxxxx er hat den knaben wohl in dem arm, xxxxxxxxx er fasst ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm. xxxxxxxxx theoretically, this poem can also be read against the background of iamb, thus the interpretation of the meter is ambivalent. an amphibrachic interpretation is, however, preferable because, among other things, differently from knittelvers, in this interpretation the unstressed syllables do not occur in stressed positions. lines with a rhythm such as ‘juristerei und medizin’ are not possible in “erlkönig”. both in knittelvers and dolnik, purely iambic (or even trochaic) verses as well as verses in ternary meters can occur. consider, for example, a purely iambic initial line in heine’s poem, “die schlesischen weber”: (5) im düstern auge keine thräne, xxxxxxxxx sie sitzen am webstuhl und fletschen die zähne: xxxxxxxxxxxx deutschland, wir weben dein leichentuch, xxxxxxxxx wir weben hinein den dreifachen fluch – xxxxxxxxxx just like in the case of erlkönig, the meter of this text is dolnik and not knittelvers4. it is important to note that this difference was clearly perceived by goethe, as well. although he used to write in both meters, in faust only knittelvers occurs. the contrast between knittelvers and the “pure” iamb is much weaker than the contrast between iamb and dolnik, and when goethe uses knittelvers, he mitigates the rhythmic contrast. furthermore, more important is the difference between the semantic connotations of the iamb and the knittelvers of faust (arndt 1968: 37–38). 4. goethe’s faust is a popular work in estonia. several poets have translated its various fragments, but there are three full translations: the first by anton jürgenstein (1920), the second by ants oras (1955), and the third by august sang (1972). 4 “generally speaking, the meter of the first poem [goethe’s hans sachens poetische sendung] is basically iambic, while that of the second [erlkönig] is more like the dactylic meter which goethe occasionally used in ballads” (chisholm 1975: 22). in german versification, the term ‘dactyl’ sometimes designates all ternary meters. 109breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony all three translators make an attempt to convey the contrast between the syllabic-accentual verse and knittelvers, yet, while each of the models of knittelvers are different from the aspect of rhythmics, oras’s version is the freest. the estonian tradition has no equivalent to knittelvers. however, as a peculiar case, the so-called vemmalvärss could be mentioned as an exception. vemmalvärss means the same as knüttelvers (vemmal is ‘club, cudgel’, värss is ‘verse’). just like knittelvers, it developed when the versification of the folklore tradition became syllabic-accentual, in the course of which quantity substantially lost its significance, while the importance of stress grew. in a parallel process, similarly to germanic verse, alliteration was replaced with end rhyme, and just like in knittelvers, the rhyming couplets prevailed. an important difference is that the deep structure of knittelvers is iambic, while that of vemmalvärss is trochaic. furthermore, it is not clear how the term ‘vemmalvärss’ evolved and how it is related to knittelvers. hence, the estonian translators could not use knittelvers in its ready-made form, but had to construct it. every translator solved this problem in his own way. the first translator, anton jürgenstein, created a minimum contrast between iamb and knittelvers, compare the same verses from the prologue in heaven (6) and faust’s monologue (7): (6) waat, päikest kõlab endist moodu suur wennas-ilma wõidulaul, ja seatud käigul ühte soodu ta lendab piksemaru aul. (7) küll mõttetarkust olen ma ja õigust, rohuteadust uurind, ja kahjuks teoloogia ja kõik, kõik kangest läbi puurin’d. the main difference between iamb and knittelvers in jürgenstein’s translation is not metrical nor even rhythmical, but prosodical: knittelvers is prosodically more free. compare the inconsistent treatment of diphthongs – for jürgenstein, these are at places disyllabic, for instance: ja wean kümme aastat ma xx and at places, diphthongs (that is, in one syllable): oh saaksin mäele kõrgele x siin purke, pudeleid näeb silm x secondly, there are the syncopes: waatsid pro waatasid, kangest pro kangesti, puurin’d pro puurinud. he allows such licences in iambs, too, but in knittelvers the incidence of these is much higher. 110 mihhail lotman (8) siis, kurblik sõber, waatsid sa x xx xx xx x ja kõik, kõik kangest läbi puurin’d. xx x xx xx x though there are also knittelvers-like rhythmic moves which contain redundant syllables from the aspect of iamb: (9) ja näen, et me midagi ei tea xx xx xxx xx mustkunst, su wõtan nüüd käsile xx xxx x xxx kuid rõõmust olen ka üsna lahti xxx xx x xx xx ei mingist täitsa aru saada mahti xxx xx xxxx xx ei usu, et tarkust wõin edasi kanda xxx xxx x xxx xx ehk teistele paremaid mõtteid anda xxxx xxx xx xx oras solves this issue in a different way. for him, iamb and knittelvers are much more clearly distinguished, and in the latter the accentual principle is strengthened. as a result, the heterometrical stress meter evolves, in which verses with three or four stresses prevail. for example, in the beginning of faust’s monologue, some lines can be interpreted as different syllabic-accentual meters, while in the general context the interpretation as stress meter is preferable. (10) olen nüüd, ah, filosoofiat, (t4 = do2) juurat ja meditsiinigi uurind, (do3) ja kahjuks ka teoloogiat (ia4 = do2) kibedal õhinal õppind ja puurind – (d4 = do4) ning siin ma, rumal, vilets vend, (ia4 = do4) näen sama targalt kui ennegi end... (do4) (d4 – dactylic tetrameter; do2, do4 – twoand four-stressed dolnik; ia4 – iambic tetrameter, t4 – trochaic tetrameter) already the german knittelvers is much more ambivalent, as compared to strict syllabic-accentual verses (chisholm 1975: 80–85). in oras’s verse the iambic support is weakened and the ambivalence is even higher. for example, the first line, olen nüüd, ah, filosoofiat, can be interpreted as trochaic (xxxxxxxx), stress-meter (xxxxxxxxx, but also xxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx and so on), but under no circumstances as iambic. although the fifth line is a pure iamb, in this passage the iambic impulse is poorly perceived. the most interesting solution is offered by oras’s disciple august sang, the only translator who tried to gain a footing from the tradition of vemmalvärss. 111breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony since vemmalvärss is not based on iambic but on trochaic impulse, it is his translation where the contrast between iamb and knittelvers is particularly strong. (11) olen, ah, kõik läbi uurind: xx x x xx xx mõtte-, arsti-, ja õigusteadust xx xx x xxxx ja ka uut ja vana seadust x x x xxx xx kaua palehigis puurind. xx xxxx xx these lines are written in almost pure trochees, only one foot contains a vemmalvärss-like redundant syllable. the pattern of knittelvers is broader than the iambic tetrameter, that is, purely iambic lines can be in composition with passages which, as a whole, can be interpreted as knittelvers. the proportion of such iambic verses varies in passages in knittelvers by different translators. in goethe’s original, the incidence of iambic verses in the context of knittelvers is 75%. the closest to it is sang, in whose text the proportion of iamb is 76%, while even closer to the pure iamb is jürgenstein, whose index here is 83%. and the freest is ants oras, who has iambic lines in only 69% of the cases, consider chart 1. it means that it was oras who made an effort to bring to the fore the specific features of knittelvers, distinguishing it from the iambic context. 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 85% goethe jürgenstein oras sang chart 1. the proportion of iambic verses in passages written in knittelvers in faust. it can be generally said that in his imitation of knittelvers, jürgenstein bends the iambic scheme yet mostly keeps the same system of versification; in oras’s translation, however, iamb and knittelvers represent different systems of versification, respectively, syllabic-accentual and accentual. as concerns sang, 112 mihhail lotman his changes are primarily in the metrical scheme. his knittelvers is not based on iamb, but on trochee; even if trochaic verses are not statistically prevailing, his rhythm and style indicate the tradition of vemmalvärss. this solution is the closest to goethe’s idea of the contrast between literary and popular verse. 5. let us focus now on just oras’s knittelvers. syllable count in lines varies from 8 to 12 syllables, which is very much similar to what we find in goethe’s original, where the variation between 7 and 12 syllables is observed (i have not found the statistics of faust, ernst feise studies the knittelvers of young goethe; feise 1908: 43). just like in the original, eight-syllabic lines prevail, most of which are iambs with masculine endings, representing approximately 50% of the cases. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 8‐syll 9‐syll 10‐syll 11‐syll 12‐syll chart 2. syllabic composition of oras’s knittelvers in regards to anacrusis, he clearly prefers monosyllabic “iambic” anacruses, whereas verses without the anacrusis (“trochaic”) and with disyllabic anacrusis (“anapaestic”) are in minority (both ca 10% of the cases). 113breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% a=0 a=1 a=2 chart 3. anacruses in oras’s knittelvers verses with masculine (catalectic) ending prevail (65%), feminine (acatalectic) verses occur in 32% of the cases and only two verses (0.1%) have dactylic (hypercatalectic) ending. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% masculine feminine dactylic chart 4. line endings in oras’s knittelvers the most important parameter is connected with filling the interval between stresses, that is, positions b1–b3. there were only three verses in my material, which did not have four beats. the corresponding data are presented in table 1. 114 mihhail lotman b1 b2 b3 1-syll 77.4% 69.9% 84.9% 2-syll 21.9% 30.1% 15.1% 3-syll 0.7% 0.0% 0.0% table 1. syllable count in positions b 1 –b 3 only one verse contains a trisyllabic interval, and it occurs in position b1: ninapidi õppureid, õnnetuid hingi (xxxx xxx xxx xx) monosyllabic intervals prevail which, together with a monosyllabic anacrusis, create the iambic inertia, while the proportion of such intervals in higher in positions b1 and b3. (for the distribution of rhythmic forms in oras’s knittelvers see appendix 1.) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% b1 b2 b3 1‐syll 2‐syll 3‐syll chart 5. number of syllables in positions b 1 , b 2 and b 3 . 6. faust also contains other meters which depart from the syllabic-accentual monotony, like, for instance, freie rhythmen. here we will treat only one of these, the so-called adoneus or adonic verse. the ancient adoneus was almost exclusively used as the final part of the sapphic stanza, yet in the medieval poetry it was also used in a stichic form (norberg 2004: 72–74), usually in hymns. this was the very tradition goethe continued with his choir of angels in faust. the metrical scheme of the ancient and medieval latin adoneus is the following: (ms2) abbab 115breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony there are simple correspondence rules: (cra1) one and only one syllable corresponds to each position a and b. (cra2) a heavy syllable corresponds to position a. (cra3) a light syllable corresponds to position b. (cra4) a syllable with optional quantity corresponds to position b3. both in the case of sapphic and stichic adoneus we are dealing with a syllabic-quantitative verse with a very stable structure:  ∪ ∪ x the transition from the quantitative principle to the accentual principle was, at first, limited to the reformulation of cr2 and cr3: (cra5) a stressed syllable corresponds to position a. (cra6) an unstressed syllable corresponds to position b. as a result, the following form evolved: xxxxx differently from the quantitative adoneus, the stressed version of adoneus is highly variable and ambivalent. monoand disyllabic words at the beginning of verse created an opportunity to interpret these both as dactylic and iambic5: xxxxx → xxxxx for example, lines such as tormavaid püüdeid can be interpreted only as dactylic, verses such as et sa ei lange or et meeleheitu can be either dactylic or iambic, while it would be more natural to interpret the lines such as miks taevaid taotad? as iambic. nevertheless, all these cases were primarily interpreted as dactylic. the reason is that, in the estonian dactyl and triple meters in general, it is possible to fill the interval between stresses with a disyllabic word carrying a strong stress, while its adjacent position can be filled with a monosyllabic word carrying a weak stress. the following developments were specific to accentual and syllabic-accentual verse. first, in these systems of versification, especially when dealing with the rhymed verse, often a variation of line endings occurs. thus, on the one hand, verses with masculine ending evolved, while on the other hand there are verses with dactylic endings: xxxxx → xxxx xxxxx → xxxxxx 5 such rhythmical moves were known already in medieval rhythmic adonic verses (norberg 2004: 91). 116 mihhail lotman consider, for example, goethe’s choir of angels, where the feminine endings vary with the dactylic ones (endings of the same type are rhymed with one another). (12) christ ist erstanden! freude dem sterblichen, den die verderblichen, schleichenden, erblichen mängel unwanden. next, in verses with “iambic” anacrusis an additional syllable was introduced to the interval between stresses, allowing these to better fit into the context of triple meters. xxxxx → xxxxx → xxxxxx the last transformation was related to the circumstance that dactylic ending, in turn, can end with a monosyllabic word, which sometimes carries the main stress, consider the last three verses (especially the penultimate one) of the following passage from faust: (12) hat der begrabene schon sich nach oben, lebend erhabene, herrlich erhoben; ist er in werdeluft schaffender freude nah: ach! an der erde brust sind wir zum leide da. xxxxx → xxxxxx → xxxxxx as a result of all these transformations, the interval between stresses started to vary in the range of 1 to 2 syllables, the anacrusis varied from 0 to 2 syllables and the ending between 0 and 2 syllables. thus, among the verses with two stresses, verses with three stresses occurred: (x)(x)xx(x)x(x)(x) and (x)xx(x)x(x)(x). 117breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony all the possible variants are actually present, but in oras’s translation of faust adonic verses and disyllabic trochees are distinguished, that is, lines like xxxx and xxx occur, but not in adonic context. for this reason such lines were not included in the current statistics. (for the distribution of rhythmic forms in oras’s adoneus see appendix 2.) the syllabic structure of the adoneus in oras is demonstrated on the following chart. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 4‐syll 5‐syll 6‐syll 7+syll chart 6. the syllabic structure of oras’s adoneus lines with five syllables are absolutely prevailing, which is in accordance with the structure of adoneus. yet there is also a substantial amount of lines with six syllables. the distribution of different rhythmic structures is showed in chart 7 (it has to be kept in mind, that all these names – iambs, dactyls, and so on, are purely conditional, these are not verse meters, but homonymic rhythmic forms). 118 mihhail lotman 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% d2f d2d d2m am2f am2m an2f ia3m chart 7. the distribution of different rhythmic structures in oras’s adoneus (d – dactyl, am – amphibrachiac, an – anapaest, ia – iamb; f, m and d – respectively, feminine, masculine and dactylic endings). finally, adoneus in general and, in particular, oras’s adoneus is an ambivalent form, which allows the interpretation of most verse lines in two and sometimes even in three different ways. such ambivalent verses make up more than half of the analysed sample (54,8%). 7. knittelvers and adoneus are two verse meters with completely different origins and stylistic qualities. the first is associated with the german tradition and has a vulgar connotation, the second is related with the antiquity and the middle ages and has mostly literary connotations. nevertheless, already goethe used adoneus both for the choir of angels and the soldiers’ song, maintaining their hymnic intonations. differently from german poetry, in estonia, knittelvers and adoneus did not become independent verse meters: oras’s experiments described above did not find imitators. yet what connects these verse meters, is not their non syllabic-accentual versification. already klopstock claimed that the nature of classical forms is close to old german “polymetrical” poetry (altdeutsche polymetrie). when goethe wrote his faust, the usage of non-syllabic accentual meters was not rare in high literary forms. in estonian poetry the situation was different and thus, in order to fight german-like syllabic-accentual monotony, oras turned to both french syllabic verse and ancient quantitative verse. however, and paradoxically in a way, he found models for diversification of verse also from german poetry itself, that is, from goethe’s faust. 119breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony references arndt, erwin 1968. deutsche verslehre. berlin: volk und wissen volkseigener verlag. altmann, vivien; altmann, gabriel 2005. erlkönig und mathematik. in: quantitative linguistics 61. http://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2005/325/pdf/erlkoenig0.pdf (accessed december 10, 2015) bailey, james 1969. the stress-meter of goethe’s der erlkönig. in: language and style 2(4): 339–351. chisholm, david 1975. goethe’s knittelvers: a prosodic analysis. bonn: bouvier. feise, ernst 1908. der knittelvers des jungen goethe. leipzig: roth und schunke. goethe, johann wolfgang 1920. faust. j.w. goethe kurbmäng. eestistanud a[nton]. jürgenstein. tartu: postimees. goethe, johann wolfgang 1955. faust: tragöödia esimene osa. tõlkinud ants oras. lund: eesti kirjanike kooperatiiv. goethe, johann wolfgang 1962. faust: tragöödia teine osa. tõlkinud ants oras. [lund]: eesti kirjanike kooperatiiv. goethe, johann wolfgang 1972. faust. tõlkinud august sang. tallinn: eesti raamat. heusler, andreas 1929. deutsche versgeschichte mit einschluss des altenglischen und altnordischen stabreimverses. bd. iii. berlin und leipzig: walter de gruyter co. kazartsev, evgeny 2011. zur rhythmik der frühen niederländischen und deutschen jamben. in: küper, christoph (ed.), current trends in metrical analysis. (littera: studies in language and literature 2). bern, etc.: peter lang, 251–263. lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail 2013. the quantitative structure of estonian syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter. in: trames: journal of the humanities and social sciences 17(67/62): 243–272. lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail 2014. the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter. in: studia metrica et poetica 1.2: 71–102. lotman, mihhail 2011. verse structure and its cognitive model (hexameter and septenary). in: küper, christoph (ed.), current trends in metrical analysis. (littera: studies in language and literature 2). bern, etc.: peter lang, 307–328. norberg, dag 2004. an introduction to the study of medieval latin versification. washington, d. c.: catholic university of america press. opitz, martin 1624. buch von der deutschen poeterey. breslau: müller. 120 mihhail lotman peep, harald 1969. eesti lüürika kujunemislugu aastail 1917–1929. tartu [unpublished dissertation]. põldmäe, jaak 1978. eesti värsiõpetus. tallinn: eesti raamat. tarlinskaja, marina 1992. metrical typology: english, german, and russian dolnik verse. in: comparative literature 44(1): 1–21. tarlinskaja, marina 1993. strict stress-meter in english poetry: compared with german and russian. calgary: university of calgary press. webster, thomas b. l. 1970. the greek chorus. london: methuen. 121breaking the syllabic-accentual monotony appendix 1. the distribution of rhythmical forms in knittelvers (goethe’s faust in oras’s translation) 1 ning siin ma, rumal, vilets vend xxxxxxxx 48.32% 2 ei ilge vadada täis vaeva xxxxxxxxx 14.77% 2a. olen nüüd, ah, filosoofiat xxxxxxxx 0.67% 4 pean rusikaid kokku pigistama xxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 5 kui ma ei eksi, näen kahte meest xxxxxxxxx 3.36% 5a. härra urianile aukoht ant xxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 6 ja lehviks luhal su pehmes looris xxxxxxxxxx 4.03% 8 lööks pihuks-puruks sellise sohi xxxxxxxxxx 1.34% 9 veel pole siin olnud mu olek pikk xxxxxxxxxx 2.68% 9a. kuis juba kümmekond aastaid vean xxxxxxxxx 0.67% 9b. nõiad brocheni poole viib öine õhk xxxxxxxxxxx 4.03% 10a. pole ka usku, et inimsoole xxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 10b. üsna hädaga sain ema käe alt lahti xxxxxxxxxxxx 2.68% 11a. andkem ausale au ja väärsele palk! xxxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 12 kas on teil ju mõnd siin vaadata jõutud? xxxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 12a. see siin su maailm, see olla maailm! xxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 13 näen sama targalt kui ennegi end xxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 13a. peame lugu emisest – emast ja seast xxxxxxxxxxx 1.34% 14 ma palun, aidake teie mind nõutut! xxxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 15 see tunne mul põletab südame seest xxxxxxxxxxx 2.01% 15a. koeralgi oleks see elu liig hull! xxxxxxxxxx 2.01% 16 magistrid, professorid, doktorid, papid xxxxxxxxxxxx 0.67% 16a. kibedal õhinal õppind ja puurind xxxxxxxxxxx 3.36% 16b. ninapidi õppureid, õnnetuid hingi xxxxxxxxxxxx 0.67% table shows only verses actually present in the sample. 122 mihhail lotman appendix 2. the distribution of rhythmical forms in adoneus (goethe’s faust in oras’s translation) 1 kõik, kes meil jalus xxxxx 59.5% 1a kõik, mis neis ribades xxxxxx 24.5% 1b varjavas maas xxxx 9.5% 2 me mõõka ja oda xxxxxx 3.5% 2a ja kütkete all xxxxx 1.0% 3 mis meil riitadeks laotud xxxxxxx 0.5% 4 õiged me rütm ja viis? xxxxxx 0.5% 5 kas on kõik paarid reas xxxxxx 1.0% table shows only verses actually present in the sample. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd prototypes and structures in eddic poetry seiichi suzuki, the meters of old norse eddic poetry: common germanic inheritance and north germanic innovation (ergänzungsbände zum reallexikon der germanischen altertumskunde, band 86). berlin: walter de gruyter, 2014. xlv+1096 pp. kristján árnason*1 introduction the volume entitled the meters of old norse eddic poetry (hence monep) is an impressive book, more than 1100 pages in all, and it can truly be called a landmark in the field of nordic poetics. it is the latest contribution to a series of publications by the same author in the field of germanic metrics. in a series of publications (e. g. suzuki 1995, 1996, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016) suzuki has developed a model for how different germanic cultures (old english, german and nordic) developed different styles and metrical patterns, each creating, so to speak, its own variant or variants of the common metrical proto-form. the most important of these works are the volumes on old english beowulf (1996) and old saxon poetry (2004), and monep closes the cycle. the model carries on the sievers tradition, but it provides a new and, in some respects at least, more theoretically sophisticated interpretation. sievers’ five type system sievers’ five-type model has practically dominated the field of old germanic metre since late nineteenth century, not least in english philological scholarship (cf. bliss 1967, fulk 1992; for a recent presentation of the model see terasawa 2011). in spite of some attempts at replacing the model, such as russom’s word foot theory (russom 1998, 2009) or cable’s theory of positions and strength relations (cable 1974: 84 ff.), the five type model is still going * author’s address: kristján árnason, the university of iceland, árnagarði v. suðurgötu, 101 reykjavík, iceland. e-mail address: kristarn@hi.is. studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 104–128 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.05 105prototypes and structures in eddic poetry strong. the later models and revisions are designed to describe the metre of beowulf, but mutatis mutandis they should also be applicable to german and icelandic. still, in a recent handbook of eddic poetry (larrington et al. 2016), fulk’s description of the eddic metres basically follows sievers, hardly mentioning other approaches or insights. this shows the strength of the paradigm, at least in some circles. the original five type system was intended to improve earlier theories about the structure of traditional germanic poetry, basically what was called die zweihebungstheorie, or with respect to the long line: vierhebungstheorie. this two or four lift model had been developed by scholars like lachmann and wackernagel, but sievers pointed out that the putative “regellosigkeit in der behandlung des auftakts und der senkungen” (‘the unsystematic treatment of the anacrusis (upbeat) and the low’, sievers 1893: 8) implied by the simple four lift model is not what the text shows. sievers maintains that the form of the drop is not as free as the model would predict. according to sievers, each short line had four glieder (or positions), two lifts and two drops in addition to an optional upbeat (auftakt), and certain principles prevail regarding their form and distribution (cf. sievers 1893: 29 ff.). the lifts and drops combine to form feet of different shapes and sizes; the relation between the composition of lifts and drops was not free, nor the relation between the two feet within the line. and in a way the basic unit of analysis is the half-line (verse, first: a-verse and second: b-verse), which can be realized in different ways according to the five-type system. it is clear, however, that the five-type system was not meant to reject the earlier insights, and in fact sievers seems hesitant to call his analysis a theory. before this could be done, he says: “[müsste mann] in der durchgeführten einordnung gewisser vielleicht mehrdeutiger einzelformen in bestimmte typenschemata etwas besonders theoretisches finden wollen”1 (sievers 1893: 8–9, italics mine). and he calls for insights about musical characteristics and recitation or performance of the text. the type system is then basically a descriptive tool, and not a proper theory. also, bliss (1967: 106 ff.) acknowledges the limits of the typology and the statistics. the weaknesses of the theoretical foundations of sievers’ system, as pointed out many times (cf. e. g. russom 1998, yakovlev 2008, goering 2016), are several. to take an example, although in the original model the verses (or half-lines) were divided into two feet, there seems to be some sort of “global” 1 ‘one would have to find something specifically theoretical behind the actual arrangements of certain perhaps ambiguous forms into specific type-schemata’. 106 kristján árnason view on the line, so that lack of material in one part of the line may be compensated for by extra material in the other. this is the case in types d and e; in sievers’ words: “[w]eil dem einen fusse die senkung fehlt, der andere dafür eine zweigliedrige senkung, genauer gesagt eine nebenhebung und eine eigentliche senkung besitzt”2 (1885: 3). this global view on the relation between the metrical constituents means that the shape of the whole line is a structural parameter, which raises the question of the foot as an independently motivated unit of structure (cf. e. g. suzuki 1996: 35–44, where it is concluded that the foot is not a significant part of the structure). what are the limits on the combination of feet within lines: since we have trisyllabic feet like / \ x and / x \, why do we not have lines like / \ x | / x \ , and so on? these questions are not answered (and should not be, according to sievers, if we follow the interpretation that the system is only descriptive). on top of this, many of the lines that occur, e. g. in eddic fornyrðislag, do not actually fit any of the basic five type patterns. thus, as shown in árnason (2016: 93), there are 138 (2.1%) trisyllabic lines in the fornyrðislag poems in the codex regius of the poetic edda. to account for these lines, as well as lines which have only two positions, new types would have to be assumed (f and g, cf. sievers 1893: 67–68), clearly breaking the five-type frame. another similar fact, not covered, is the relation between the two half-lines, forming the long line. this is not quite symmetrical, since generally the on-line (a-verse) shows more freedom in composition than the off-line (b-verse) (cf. sievers 1893: 24). it is not clear exactly how these “global” relations or compensation between feet and lines is governed. thus, it seems that, for sievers, the type model was basically a taxonomic tool, describing the text, whereas the ultimate aim of the metrical analysis, what he calls (op. cit., p. 24) vollständige rhythmisierung, which would involve an account of scansion and recitation (vortrag), should be based, in addition to the text itself, on insights from history or the evolution of the forms, and the history of music (entwicklungsund musikgeschichtliche gesichtspunkte). the work presented in his book from 1893 was clearly not intended to reach this goal, as shown by the following quote: “die folgenden darstellungen beschränken sich … absichtlich auf die positiven bestimmungen, die sich aus der untersuchung des sprachlichen substrats der verse (des rhythmizómenon) ergeben”3 (op. cit., p. 24). that is, the intention is to give a detailed description 2 ‘since one foot lacks a low, therefore the other has a double low or more precisely a secondary lift and a proper low’. 3 ‘the following presentation is intentionally limited to the positive conclusions which can 107prototypes and structures in eddic poetry of the rhythmic or “rhythmisized” text, or what might be called composition, rather than to give a full account of the form and the actual performance (vortrag) (cf. allen 1973: 105, árnason 2000 [1991]: 4). and already early scholars like henry sweet (cf. bliss 1967: 3) and andreas heusler (1969 [1889]: 693) agree with sievers: the five-type system is not a theory, but a typical pretheoretical taxonomy. the description of variation within the normal metrical forms given by sievers (1893: 25–31 for germanic verse in general, and 65–66 ff. for nordic verse) is often far from clear or explicit. to mention a case of such confusion: in the mapping between metrical form and linguistic form, the main principle is that lifts (hebungen) are represented (vertreten) by a heavy (or long) syllable. but there are at least two types of exceptions from this. one is resolution (auflösung, cf. op. cit., p. 27). according to this principle the lift is represented by a short syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. this is made possible in performance by some sort of compression of the two syllables, named verschleifung. other instances of “shortening of the lift” (verkürzung der hebung), which occur in nordic poetry, are listed later (op. cit., p. 65). one is when the first syllable of words like konungar ‘kings’, a short first syllable followed by a heavy one, is allowed to form a lift. here the law of quantity is broken in order to “preserve the secondary stress” (das quantitätsgesetz [wird] vernachlässigt, um den nebenton wehren zu können). another instance is when secondarily stressed light syllables of words like krǫpturligan ‘powerful-acc’ are allowed to form lifts. this is said to be due to a tendency to avoid resolution in the second lift of a line. sievers subsumes these “licenses” under the heading of a shortening of the lift (verkürzung der hebung, p. 65), but there seems to be a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, the formation of the lift by two syllables, and its representation by a single light syllable (which has been called “suspension of resolution”). the term auflösung (translated into english as ‘resolution’) implies that the lift is not weaker or shortened, since it is filled by two syllables (sievers does not refer to moras). on the other hand, lifts formed by short (or light) syllables, seem to be weaker or “shorter” than normal ones. it is not clear how this should be interpreted. we do not know whether this is a special type of lift (defined by some metrical rule or licence), or whether the lift is made shorter (textually or in performance) by the use of the light syllable. adding to the confusion, secondary lifts (nebenhebungen) are assumed for trisyllabic be drawn from the linguistic substrate of the verse (the rhythmizómenon)’, cf. also heusler 1969 [1889]: 693, where this point is emphasized. 108 kristján árnason feet. and still other exceptions allow for relatively strong drops (nebentoninge senkungen), beside the variation in the number of syllables in weak positions. these complications in the mapping relations have in later scholarship been used to produce what look (to the outsider at least) like an endless number of different realisations and subtypes. in spite of sievers’ warning, the comments on variation in composition have been taken as deductive rules for generating the different types, the modesty of the original claims seemingly being forgotten. some scholars have of course noted the imperfections of the model, and alternative approaches have been suggested, e. g. cable’s four-position theory (cable 1974, yakovlev 2008), and russom’s word-foot theory (russom 1998, goering 2016). yet, central figures in the field of old germanic metrics (e. g. bliss 1967, cable 1974 and fulk 1992) basically interpret the system in a deductive way, it seems. a special characteristic of the type-model as it is applied in later scholarship is that it is meant to account with the same terminology for poetry from all branches of germanic, high german, saxon and english, as well as nordic. and for some scholars at least, the agenda was to reconstruct some original germanic poetic structure, much in the same way as germanic protoforms have been reconstructed in order to account for the historical relations between the germanic dialects and later languages. the similarity between the nordic and west germanic poetic forms are of course obvious and testify to a common heritage, e. g. regarding alliteration and the four-beat rhythm of the long line with a caesura between the a-verse and the b-verse. yet, the different styles of e. g. völuspá vis a vis beowulf, heliand and hildbebrandslied must raise the question whether these genres should be analysed and explained as variants of the same form. to mention just one important difference, which seems often to be overlooked or downplayed in this historical perspective, is the fact that nordic poetry is stanzaic, i. e. dividing longer poems into basically quadrilinear units, based on formal patterns (such as quadruple rhythm and alliteration), and divisions in content, giving the stanza a clear formal and functional status, whereas the west germanic corpus is “stichic” in structure, making the line the fundamental unit of the form. the development of different eddic varieties like ljóðaháttr, fornyrðislag and málaháttr, not to mention the skaldic dróttkvætt is part of this story. 109prototypes and structures in eddic poetry suzuki’s work: the stochastic approach and prototypes as already emphasised, and regardless of general issues, monep is an impressive contribution to the study of old icelandic poetic form. although some of the results seem to the present reviewer to be doubtful, the sheer amount of information contained in the book makes it a “must read” for any scholar studying the form and structure of old icelandic poetry. the book is beautifully laid out and written in a very clear (if lengthy) style, and its organisation makes it relatively easy to use, although obviously the sheer weight of the volume prevents it from being any kind of bedtime reading. the book is divided into three main parts, each devoted to one of the three nordic metres, fornyrðislag, málaháttr and ljóðaháttr. the longest by far is the one on the fornyrðislag, consisting of six chapters (2–7): chapter 2 “verse types and their realizations”, chapter 3 “anacrusis and catalexis”, chapter 4 “resolution”, chapter 5 “the cadence”, chapter 6 “alliteration”, and chapter 7 “the stanza”. the part devoted to the málaháttr contains four chapters, chapter 8 “the prototype of málaháttr: atlamál in grœnlenzco”, analysing the only undisputed instance of a whole poem in the metre, and then there are three chapters on as many “peripheral variants of fornyrðislag/málaháttr”: atlakviða (hin gænlenzka), hamðismál and hárbarðsljóð. the part on ljóðaháttr is three chapters, entitled “the a-verse” (ch. 12), “the c-verse” (ch. 13), and “the stanza” (ch. 14). the book ends with two appendices and a four part index (scansion, authors, subjects and verses). all of this, its thoroughness in covering the material and the various aspects of the poetic texts, makes monep a useful handbook on the subject. in his earlier publications suzuki has applied a statistical model which shows how different germanic cultures (english, german and nordic) developed different styles and metrical types, each creating, so to speak, its own variant or variants of the common metrical proto-form. the “leitmotif ” in this work is an interesting theoretical twist referring to (and probably inspired by) ideas which have developed in theoretical linguistics as an alternative to the generative paradigm, known under such labels as “usage based grammar”, “prototype theory” or “exemplar theory”. in fact this forms an explanatory model which, in some sense at least, seems to legitimise the proliferation of types and subtypes, putting the data in an interesting theoretical perspective. although based on the type system, and making use of and modifying sievers’ classification, there are some rather substantial differences from the original model in the approach, and methodology. the idea promoted is that “meter constitutes a prototype-based, cognitive system of rules, constraints and representations, much as its linguistic 110 kristján árnason foundations do”, and this is “a stochastic organizing system with varying realizations, […] and subject to variation […]” (monep: 13–14). in this context the type system acquires a more interesting status, somewhat in the vein of modern usage based theories (bybee 2001). the metrical prototypes develop through a sort of stylisation of linguistic forms and what might be called new or changing “poetic habits”. but at the same time suzuki makes a clear distinction between metrical form and linguistic form. and this means that “linguistic development” and “metrical development” occur in separate spheres. the metrical system, although reflecting linguistic structure, can thus undergo change as such. thus we learn that the nordic form fornyrðislag became “sharply distinct” from its west germanic cognates due to three metrical innovations. for one thing, the realisation of the cadence by a heavy disyllable of the type kindir ‘people’ occurred “with such conspicuous frequency that it became closest to being an optimal cadence form” (suzuki 2011: 378). a second nordic innovation, according to suzuki, was the development of catalexis, which gave lines with only three positions, which can be “derived from the normal counterpart through realization of the verse final drop by zero” (suzuki 2011: 377, cf. suzuki 2009). this amounts to the emergence of a new type as a metrical entity, involving a change in metrical form. a third nordic innovation is the “generalisation of suspension of resolution whereby the string of a short syllable and an unstressed syllable of any length (px) is permitted to fill the concatenation of lift + drop in verse final position without notable restriction” (suzuki 2011: 377). among new subtypes or type realizations are types like ljósast fyrir (grsp 21.3), which is seen as a variant of a1 (/ x / x) with the second lift realised by a light disyllable, and nú em ek svá fegin (hh ii 43.1) xxxxpx, classified as a3(a catalectic version of a3), with the first lift unrealised (cf. suzuki 2014: 73; 2016). also, “suspension of resolution” in type c: fyr mold neðan (vsp. 2,8) gives lines with the second lift realised by a single light syllable, and catalexis gives lines ending in two lifts: þeir er miðgarð (vsp 4,3), which is something not allowed in the original five-type model. thus new structures and types develop, and suzuki systematically looks for statistical significance, which (it seems) would justify setting up a separate type or subtype. the aim is to identify significant verse types at the underlying level of metrical representation, determine their manifold variations at the surface level of realization, and explore the formal and functional organization of these verse types and tokens largely on a stochastic basis. while the number and kinds of metrical positions and their linear sequencing determine a restricted set of verse types, a broad 111prototypes and structures in eddic poetry latitude of alignment of these invariant metrical positions to diverse language materials results in a wide-ranging variation of verse types on the surface. (suzuki 2014: 25) the aim is thus to analyse and classify the types and subtypes and to describe their distribution (between a-verse and b-verse) and the alliterative patterns (whether or not there is double alliteration in the a-verse). interestingly enough, this statistical approach is to some extent foreshadowed in bliss’ classification and description (1967: 180–187) of the proportional distribution of types between a-verse, and b-verse and double or single alliteration in the a-verse in beowulf. the types chapter 2 of the book deals with the verse types and their realizations, and appropriately, the account starts with the type a1 (/ x / x), which might be considered the most prototypical of all eddic and germanic patterns. but there is variation in the realizations of both the lifts (/) and the drops (x). thus it may happen that the drops are ‘heavy’ or occupied by more than one syllable, and the lifts may be resolved (realized by two syllables) or light (realized by a light or short syllable by ‘suspension of resolution’). to take an example of the statistical analysis, it turns out that there is significantly more freedom in the realisation of the first drop in the a-verse compared to the b-verse, although this is not seen as motivating the postulation of new types or subtypes. the general question regarding the a-types seems to be twofold: how do we delimit the set of a-types (or rather the class of a-types), and what significance is there to be assigned to the label a? and in relation to that, we may ask how many different (proto-)types we want to have. an example of the argumentation is to be found on pp. 43–45, where a motivation is given for distinguishing a special subtype a2a ( / \ / x), where the second position is filled by a second component of a compound (e. g. sg 61.3 frumver sínum). it turns out that this configuration (ps#px) differs significantly from a1-lines with the configuration px#px (e. g. vsp. 1.2 helgar kindir). there is thus a significant difference “both in terms of verse distinction”, i. e. in that the distribution between a-verses and b-verses is not equal, and as regards the alliterative pattern. thus the former type (involving compounds) “fails to show the marked preference for the b-verse and single alliteration” (p. 44), which is characteristic of a1. and there is a tendency for the a2-type to have 112 kristján árnason double alliteration whereas the opposite is the case for the normal a1-type, which seems to prefer single alliteration. the basic reasoning is, then, that if a significantly different distribution can be found between two types, there is reason to assume different types or subtypes, such as a1 vs. a2. but an obvious question in this connection would be to ask whether there is an explanation (e. g. a structural one) for the statistical differences in distribution, between a1 and a2, in other words, we might want to look for the substantive reasons for the statistical patterns. two types of consideration come to mind. for one thing, it would seem that the preference for the most basic type (a1) to occur in the b-verse might be due to the very well-known fact that metrical regularity normally increases toward the end of constituents. the trochaic pattern of the a1 type is by far the most common verse type, and it can also be seen as the most natural one, both from the linguistic point of view (e. g. in terms of stress patterns of words, disyllabic trochaic words, e. g. involving stems and inflectional endings) and metrical one (since a strong – weak rhythm forms a good basis for creating rhythmic regularity in a text). many cases of this phenomenon have been observed in the literature (cf. e. g. hayes & mceachern 1998). the other consideration which seems to be relevant here is the function of alliteration and its relation to metrical strength. it seems to be a dictum amongst many scholars in the sieversian tradition that there is a fixed relation between alliteration and strength or ictus, which would mean that an alliterating syllable should be stronger than a corresponding or otherwise “equal” one which does not alliterate. but as i have argued (árnason 2007) the function of alliteration (and rhyme) is not a rhythmic one to do with accentuation: like other rhyme, it serves the function of connecting parts of the text and forming constituents, in the case of eddic and dróttkvætt a pair of lines, and in the case of west germanic, the long line. the rhythmic implications of this binding function are only indirect. it is not clear that alliteration as such implies added strength or emphasis, so that the alliterating staves necessarily have stronger stress in performance or that the lifts containing them have to be stronger than the ones that do not. since the function of alliteration is to form a connection between aand b-verse, it is only to be expected that more “material” in the a-line should be conducive to additional marking of this type. an interesting case when it comes to defining subtypes belonging to the a-class is the one labelled a1s by suzuki (sievers’ a2k). this type is characterised as realizing the second lift by a short (light) stressed syllable. examples are lines like hym 4.7 ástráð mikit, gðr ii 41.7 sorgmóðs sefa, bdr 9.2 hróðrbarm þinig (p. 33), where the first foot is realised by a compound (ps#px), and hh ii 11.6 hildings synir, grp 12.5 leið at huga hdl 1.6 ríða við scolom (p. 36), 113prototypes and structures in eddic poetry where the first drop is, according to suzuki, realized by a weak syllable (i. e. with the composition px#px). in the former case the second lift is realized by a short stressed syllable on its own “through suspension of resolution”, and this is motivated “by compensation a reallocation of the otherwise expected, stress bearing second mora to the preceding drop, resulting thereby in its bimoraic stressed realization” (p. 33). this description of the suspension of resolution echoes the one given in suzuki (1996) for old english. as can be seen, the phenomenon is analysed, using linguistic terminology, in particular some sort of moraic theory, and it also reflects the traditional understanding in english historical scholarship of the phenomon of resolution and its suspension. but several questions unavoidably arise here. the idea seems to be that a mora which should normally be required for a regular lift is somehow moved to the preceding drop, which is then heavier and more prominent (cf. sivers’ idea of nebenhebung). it is not clear how this relates to the “standard” view within metrical phonology (cf. e. g. hayes 1995) that moras belong to syllables (or even segments) within stress feet or words. the mechanism of moving these moras between constituents in a metrical line inevitably leads us into the realm of phrasal phonology, where, to my knowledge, moras have not been called upon in the same way as within words. and from the point of view of the type-system, one might ask whether a different interpretation would be appropriate. since (part of ?) the stress or realisation of the lift seems to be moved to the left or into the drop by some sort of syncopation, the obvious question would be whether this compositional type (e. g. hym 4.7 ástráð mikit, alliterating on the first syllable) should not be moved to the d-class, i. e. / / x x, i. e. with two stresses at the beginning realised by the two constituents of the compound: ást-ráð ‘love-advice’. this of course recalls bliss’ interpretation (1967: 108) that the “musical” force behind the array of types is based on the displacement of stresses. according to bliss, the norm for old english verse is the a-type rhythm / x / x, with an alternation between stresses and non-stresses, but sometimes displacing the stresses to the left (forwards) or to the right (backwards). “if the first stress is placed forwards the result is […] type c; if the second stress is displaced forwards the result is […] type e; if both stresses are displaced forwards the result is […] type b; if the second stress is placed backwards the result is […] type d”. thus the variation is based on some sort of syncopation, i. e. variation based on the movement of accents away from their most normal place in the trochaic type. however this may be, suspension of resolution or some sort of displacement of stress, compensating for the light lift by a heavy drop, does not tell the whole story about a1s, according to suzuki. when it comes to lines like hh ii 11.6 hildings synir, grp. 12.5 leið at huga and hdl. 1.6 ríða við skulum, he 114 kristján árnason hesitates to assume heavy drops in the second position (which is what sievers did, assigning these lines to the a2 subclass a2k). in fact suzuki argues that in these lines the drop is a normal one (x) and this is why he gives the lines the label a1s; this is then not a variant of a2 with a heavy drop (which was sievers’ motivation for labelling them a2k), but a subtype of a1. in suzuki (1996: 82 ff.) several arguments are presented in favour of this position regarding the beowulf corpus. the main argument seems to be that the distribution and alliteration pattern of these lines are different from a2 proper and more like that of normal a1. thus on p. 37 we learn that “the lack of significant difference along the two parameters between the two minimal pairs of configurations may justify us in identifying the configuration px#px as a variant of subtype a1s, and the whole variety of px…px may by implication be subsumed under the same subtype”. the implication is that in lines like hh ii 11.6 hildings synir, grp. 12.5 leið at huga and hdl. 1.6 ríða við skulum the positions before the light short lift, is in fact basically a normal drop. taken literally, this would seem to be a rather radical departure from the sievers-model. the half-lift or heavy drop, compensating for the shortness of the second lift, is no longer necessary, and in general this may seem to open the way for a lift to be interpreted without satisfying the basic requirement of being long or resolved, or suspended from resolution by some special conditions. the argumentation is rather complicated indeed, but the general finding seems to be that this suspension is an optional operation (transformation if you like), which does not create a new type. and the whole thing raises a bigger question, which is the interpretation of the role of length or syllabic quantity in the metre. one may wonder whether the whole structure of the type model as a deductive system is crumbling and falling to the ground. type a3 a further instance, where it seems that the system is stretched to its limits and away from the original model, is the case of a3. the origin of this type lies in lines with alliteration only in the second lift (sievers 1885: 11), e. g. a-verses like vsp. 17.5 fundu á landi, but also b-verses like vsp. 9.4 ok um þat gættusk. if it is assumed that alliteration is a necessary condition for a lift, such lines would have to do with just one lift, but it seems that this was not sievers’ understanding, since e. g. he marks vsp. 9.4 as an a3 type having a resolved (verschleifbar) first position, implying a scansion like |ok um þat |gættusk (sievers 1885: 18, see also p. 24, where vsp. 37.1 stóð fyr norðan is 115prototypes and structures in eddic poetry classified as a3). however, bliss (1967: 61) characterises a3 in beowulf as a light type: “light verses are those which contain only one stressed element” (= kuhn’s satzteile). thus it seems that another important foundation of the typology is no longer sound. and this has led to alternative interpretations of the metre, cf. e. g. goering’s (2016: 72) conclusion, that “[t]he rhythm of old english verse is not “zweihebig”, or indeed “hebig” at all”. in his analysis, goering adopts russom’s word-foot model; in other words lifts are not part of the structure. according to suzuki, the type a3 occurs in all germanic genres, but in a different shape. in english and old saxon, the type is characterised by “demotisation” of the first lift to a drop, whereas in nordic it is characterised by an “unrealized initial position which must be identified as a lift” (cf. suzuki 2016: 133). the type is thus characterised in fornyrðislag by the absence of the first lift in its explicit form, since there is only one lift on the surface, located in the penultimate position. the typical configuration is x…px, in which the last two positions are realized by a simplex word. for suzuki, this zero realization is some sort of mirror image or reflection of catalexis, i. e. there is a silent strong, somehow unrealised beat at the beginning of lines, similar to the silent weak one at the end of a catalectic line (giving his types like a1-, cand d-). like most deviations from the prototypical trochaic pattern, the a3 type (e. g. vsp 19.5 þaðan koma dǫggvar; hh 6.1 stendr í brynio; sg 35.4 riðut at garði) is subject to some distributional restrictions. in west germanic, the type seems to be banned from the b-verse altogether, whereas in eddic this is only a statistical tendency. according to suzuki, the relaxation of the categorical prohibition against the occurrence in the b-verse in fornyrðislag can be ascribed to the development in nordic of a new underlying structure with a lift (albeit unrealised: [/]x / x), which makes the metrical representation conform to the requirement that the b-verse must have two lifts (even if one is empty) and two drops. the difference between fornyrðislag and beowulf, according to suzuki, is thus that in the latter, the line begins with a “demoted lift”, by some sort of transformation (swsw → wwsw), whereas for fornyrðislag there is simply an option for a structure with an empty lift or strong beat. this conclusion is based on the difference between west germanic and nordic, that a minimum of two syllables is required before the only lift in the a3-type in the former, whereas just one is needed in nordic lines like vsp. 64.4 á gimlé, vkv. 9.1 gecc brúnni [x#px] (monep, p. 60). such lines are taken as evidence that the first lift may be skipped altogether. but all is not said regarding this type, since the lack of material which would be implied by the absence of a lift is often compensated for (also in nordic, but obviously not always). thus the type a3 116 kristján árnason requires a “substantially greater number of syllables” than type a1 by way of compensation; what the verse lacks in stress it makes up in length. needless to say, disbelievers would be likely to raise questions about the limits of the system, or its power of analysis: what sort of transformation defines the relation between basic type / x / x and the variant missing the first lift? as mentioned before, it is suggested that this is in some way similar to catalexis, where a drop is skipped at the end, but there seems to be a substantial difference between a silent strong beat at the beginning and a silent weak one at the end. of course suzuki is aware of such questions, and some of them are addressed in the quite lengthy presentation. we cannot go through all of this in this review, nor the details of the motivation for the conclusion at the end of chapter 2 (pp. l62–163) with the first approximation of an overview of the system of verse types. the bottom line is that we have the traditional five classes a-e, but some of them have subtypes. in particular class a is listed as having 7 types (a1, a2a, a2b, a3, a1-, a2a-, a3-), class c as having two (basic and c-), and class d has three types (basic, dand d*), whereas class b and class e have no variant types. but after having considered anacrusis and catalexis in a special chapter, a revised version is presented on p. 204, basically assuming that the operation of catalexis does not create special types (a1-, a2and a3-). “increased” variants are generated by anacrusis and heavy lifts, and reduced ones by “zero realization” of lifts (giving e. g. a3 as a subtype). the final result is, then, that the proliferation of types is controlled or governed by these metrical operations or transformations. thus the a-type has a basic variant, labelled a1, plus two increased variants: a2a with a heavy first lift, and a2b with a heavy second lift, and furthermore the reduced a3 type. and the catalectic lines are simply classified as subtypes of the respective basic types, so that a1 is the basic one with two subtypes, a catalectic and noncatalectic one etc. what we have is then a conscious attempt at developing a model by which subtypes are defined on the basis of mapping relations based on the basic ones instead of by ad hoc repairs. the metrical mapping: resolution and its suspension this brings us to the next level in the relation between form and text, which is the way in which linguistic form relates to metrical form in the individual types and subtypes. again, one of the basic questions is whether the same conditions prevail in the different cultures, e. g. the english and the icelandic one. 117prototypes and structures in eddic poetry although there is a common thread in the theoretical frame of suzuki’s work on west germanic and norse, it seems that a change can be seen, at least in emphasis, between the treatment of beowulf (1996) and the present analysis of the nordic metres. in 1996 the first two chapters are devoted to metre, text and production and the linguistic foundations of metre: linguistic structures (language material in suzuki’s terms), poetic structures, composition, and performance. in moned, the emphasis seems, as we have seen, to be more on the statistics and the development of prototypes. the conception of “usage based grammar”, emphasises actual linguistic expressions or “outputs”, rather than underlying structures and derivations when it comes to analysing sentences, words and phonological structure. thus according to bybee (2006: 714) “constructions are the basic units of morphosyntax”, and grammar is “emergent from experience, ever coming into being rather than static, categorical and fixed”. the idea of metrical prototypes would then seem to imply that the distinction between types and subtypes does not have to be categorical, allowing for alternative interpretations of similar expressions (in this case actual verses and lines in poetry). but the distinction between metrical form and its “language material”, which constitutes the text, is still categorical according to monep. and in every instance, principles or rules for the mapping between the “language material” and the metrical form must be followed. thus throughout the book a clear distinction is made between metrical forms like a1, represented by formulae like / x / x and the linguistic structure or composition of text, represented by formulae like px#px (p = “primary stressed long syllable”; x = unstressed short syllable # = word boundary), see e. g. vsp.1.2 helgar kindir. and other such linguistic strings are defined, e. g. ps#px (s = secondarystressed long syllable), e. g. hym 24.1 hlǫðvés dóttir, which is metrically analysed as / \ / x (a lift – a heavy drop – a lift – a drop). one of the principles accounting for the mapping between linguistic and metrical form is the above mentioned resolution (german auflösung), which is said to be a “metrical convention” by which a short linguistically stressed syllable and a following unstressed syllable are treated as equal to a long stressed syllable (i. e. ᴗ ́x = ̶́ ). this is exemplified by lines like grp 16.1 brotin er brynja (p. 213), which is type a1 with a resolved first lift, and the line has five syllables. monep (p. 309 ff.) in fact provides an interesting discussion of the conception of resolution, pointing out several unclarities and confusion in the use of the concept in the literature. one such problem regarding the equation two short = one long is its application in connection with what sievers calls verschleifung, which suzuki translates as “slur”. this is, as suzuki points out, at least sometimes understood 118 kristján árnason by sievers and others as a performance phenomenon involving the contraction or compression of two weak syllables into one in the drop. (this interpretation is then similar to what snorri sturluson (1991: 8) calls bragarmál, i. e. when e. g. þar es ‘there where’ is contracted to þar’s in performance.) this is obviously something quite different from the metrical equivalence of two light or short syllables to one long or heavy one in the lift. a typical example of this type of contraction from eddic would be vsp. 1.3 meiri ok minni, where the final -i of meiri and the oof ok might be contracted in performance, or the first one deleted, to something like meir’ok minni. yet, this performance phenomenon has, as suzuki puts it, sometimes “encroached on the conceptual domain of resolution” through the term verschleifbar referring to two syllables which could function as one position in metre, a lift or a drop. thus in earlier scholarship resolved drops are sometimes referred to as somehow being on a par with resolved lifts, and we have to agree with suzuki that this is wrong. in fact there is still another phenomenon, which should be considered in this context, at least when dealing with icelandic poetry. this is the license of placing two weak syllables in an otherwise regular trochaic pattern without their necessarily being verschleifbar or contractible in performance. this is called neutralization in árnason (2000 [1991]: 126–130), and an example from dróttkvætt is: |sverðs nema |hefndir |verði. here one of the weak positions in a basically trochaic line is permitted to have two unstressed syllables instead of one, making an exception in the mora counting structure of the line. there is no reason to assume that in these circumstances a slurring or contraction of the two syllables to make one takes place in performance. (we have no evidence for contracted forms like n’ma or anything similar.) eddic examples like vsp. 6.7 undorn ok aptann might fall into this category. this interpretation of the licence of extra, rhythmically neutral, syllables in the drop strengthens the case for agreeing with suzuki when he argues against extending the metrical notion of resolution to the drop, concluding that “resolution is […] a privilege of the lift” (p. 213). this also fits the linguistic interpretation that resolution of the strong position is based on disyllabic stress (moraic trochee, cf. hayes 1995; allen 1973: 170 ff. talks about disyllabic stress matrices) in words like brotin ‘broken’, whereas the verschleifung or slur and neutralization allow sequences of more than one syllable to fill the drop without doing much metrical harm. the conclusion is, then, that resolution only takes place in lifts in icelandic, and the bulk of chapter 4 (p. 213 ff.) is devoted to a detailed statistical description of the distribution of resolved lifts in the different types in the eddic material. it turns out that there are many statistically significant trends and differences in the distribution of the different configurations. thus for the type a1, 119prototypes and structures in eddic poetry resolution is common in the first lift, but quite rare in the second one. for type b, there is only a single example of resolved first lift, none of the second one, or rather it is proposed that candidates for such a scansion should be analysed as a1s (e. g. vkv. 18.8 æ fjarri borinn, cf. p. 238). the discussion is quite lengthy and, for the present reviewer, often rather difficult to follow. there is thus a rather elaborate discussion about the fact that the first lift of the c-type is commonly resolved but not the second one. it is concluded that first lift of the c-type can be resolved if the second lift is a normal long monosyllable. on the other hand “resolution of the first lift is incompatible with suspension of resolution on the second”, since then “relative to the immediately preceding most prominent position in the verse, the following one can hardly be perceived as fully prominent” (pp. 219–220). we learn that “[t]he extra prominence of the first lift through resolution […] enables the perceptually diminished second lift to be realized in relatively stronger shape by virtue of the now increased differential from the preceding position. as a consequence the cadence px comes closest to its optimal form in manifestation”. there is thus an inverse relation regarding the realisation of the lifts: “the closer degree of approximation to the prototype of the cadence px […] favors the configuration x…pxpx over x…ppx, thereby resulting in the conspicuous presence of the resolved first lift in the b-verse […]” (p. 220). and we also see the overarching tendency for the cadence to be regularly trochaic. the general trend shown in chapter 4.2 (ending p. 241) is thus that the first lift of any type is more prone to resolution than the second one. but there is also a clear difference between the different types in this respect. the two (sub-)types showing the largest proportion of resolved first lifts are type c (36.20%) and the catalectic or shortened dtype (d-, 36.67%). (compared to this, type a1 has a resolved first lift in only 4.92% of its occurrences.) there is quite a bit of deliberation as to the causes of these statistical differences. for example on p. 230 it is suggested that the first lift is more susceptible to resolution in the c and dtype because of its proximity to another equally prominent lift (since these types, respectively x / / x and / / x, have two adjacent lifts). and it is said that “[r]esolution effects an increase in prominence through the resulting disyllabicity, which obviously contributes to a sharper differentiation from the following, potentially competing position” (p. 230). the outcome of all of this is that although resolution is initially defined as a simple equation (generative rule if you like) between light disyllables like vini ‘friend-dat’ and monosyllables like ferð ‘travel’, there are several factors which prevent these forms from being classifiable as totally equal. several forces seem to interfere and affect the application of the principle. these conditions are quite complex and unclear, and the relation or ‘operation’ of resolution ends up 120 kristján árnason looking quite mysterious to the outsider. the idea is of course an inheritance from earlier scholars and has been applied to poetry from different times and cultures, and the questions must be asked, whether it is appropriate to look on it as a coherent concept at all. do we assume that the “convention” has been passed on as some sort of artistic device, from one generation of poets to another, irrespective of the different linguistic and cultural conditions? as mentioned above, resolution may, under certain conditions, be “suspended”, so that lifts are formed without being either long or resolved and thus satisfying the requirement of minimal bimoraicity. in suzuki (1996: 81 ff.) there is a description of the phenomenon, which is said to be conditioned by the strength or weight of neighbouring syllables. according to this interpretation “the non-occurrence of resolution is compensated for by the stress on the preceding drop” (suzuki 1996: 85). and “the demand for a long stressed syllable is carried over to the first drop, which in turn is required to be matched with the remaining stressed mora”. in some way the second lift is exempted from filling the requirement of having two moras, “and the immediately preceding metrical position (the first drop) is instead invoked for its satisfaction. a stressed mora, however, is incapable of occurring in isolation. this amounts to the stipulation that the first drop be filled by a long stressed syllable, the second mora of which serves as a substitute for the missing mora of the penultimate syllable associated with the second lift. thus “the sequence of a long stressed syllable and a short stressed syllable is made equivalent to the sequence of an unstressed syllable (of arbitrary length) and a long stressed syllable” (ibid.). this formulation of the compensation of the shortness of the lift by the extra mora in the drop is echoed in monep (p. 33) in a statement to the effect that the realization of a lift on a short syllable “motivates by compensation a reallocation of the otherwise expected stress bearing second mora to the preceding drop” (p. 33). examples of such lines are: hym 4.7 ástráð mikit. so, the drop is somehow made responsible for realising the lift, which is (metrically?) assigned to the short syllable. although not stated clearly, this motivation would seem to have to be some sort of performance phenomenon or a phrasal sadhi, connecting moras from different words. and some sort of movement or shift of prominence from right to left would seem to be involved. an obvious question here seems to be whether we should not assume an allusion in the poetic text to a ssvv rhythm (i. e. with inversion of the type found in dróttkvætt: (cf. gnýskerðandi verða; hjálmfylli spekr hilmir, árnason 2000 [1991]: 124 ff.). in fact the moraic interpretation of the suspension of resolution seems to be played down in the discussion in monep, and in some way the road 121prototypes and structures in eddic poetry is opened for short syllables more generally forming lifts on their own, i. e. without the support of moras. thus on p. 258 we learn that lines ending in words containing short stressed syllables “are all suspended from resolution in such a pervasive and consistent way in fornyrðislag that implementation of resolution […] is categorically excluded as an alternative metrical operation”. this leads to the following rule stated on p. 259: “the short stressed syllable must constitute a lift on its own only when it is followed by the verse final strings –x# or -xx#”. irrespective of how this is to be interpreted exactly (is this an “obligation” or a “permission”), it implies that the conditions for the application or suspension of resolution in icelandic are quite different from (and even more complicated than) the conditions in old english. one of the complications in the workings of resolution is kaluza’s law. in old english, this law defines a restriction to the effect that under certain conditions a disyllable is resolved only when it ends in a short vocalic ending derived from a pre-old-english short vowel (pgmc. *i or *u). a resolved form has to have some stress (primary, secondary or tertiary?). this phenomenon gets its share of discussion in monep and it is said to constrain the operation of resolution, so that “after a stressed syllable, only the least sonorous disyllable [i. e. consisting of a short stressed syllable followed by a short unstressed one] was qualified for resolution and hence constituted a single position” (pp. 305–306). this is basically equivalent to saying that, at least under certain conditions, the resolved form must be strictly bimoraic, i. e. having two short syllables. the long discussion which follows concludes that although there are some indirect correspondences, the metrical and linguistic conditions are different, and the law cannot be applied in the same way in nordic as in english. metrical innovations: málaháttr and ljóðaháttr the final chapters of part i dealing with fornyrðislag contain additional observations and statistics regarding the emergent tendency in nordic for regularity in the cadence, taking the form of lift + drop (with catalexis as an option), the distribution of alliteration, and the line-types within the stanza. recognizing the stanza as a “higher metrical unit over the line”, chapter 7 is devoted to a thorough statistical overview of the distribution of textual differences or types within the stanza (verse 1–8), and similarities, e. g. between verse no. 1 and no. 5. this is all quite informative, but it seems a bit surprising that more attention is not paid to the fundamental question of how and why stanzaic structure developed in nordic. the 8 verses and four long lines obviously form a 4 × 122 kristján árnason 4 structure, which as i have pointed out, makes the eddic stanzas look like quatrains counting phrasal stresses. and this fits well with the development of ljóðaháttr as a special type of quatrain with truncation (skipping a foot) in even numbered lines (cf. árnason 2006). dealing with related issues, the last two main parts of the book are devoted to the specifically nordic metres, málaháttr (part ii, chapters 8–11) and ljóðaháttr (part iii, chapters 12–14). the treatment is similar to that of fornyrðislag: after rather superficial remarks regarding the basic differences of these new metres compared to the fornyrðislag, statistical overviews are given of the compositional types. the málaháttr is simply said to have five positions per verse, compared to the four of fornyrðislag, being expanded with an extra drop. a further feature of this metre is that the trochaic cadence / x is “maximized in its organizing power so that the two verse classes – b and e – … are almost entirely eliminated from the inventory of legitimate classes” (p. 429). as is well known, the status of málaháttr as a separate form basically depends on just one poem, atlamál hin grænlenzku, whereas three “peripheral variants” of the metre, illustrated respectively by atlakviða, hamðismál and hárbarðzljóð, are also described in monep. here the question obviously rises, how stringent the metrical definitions are. an alternative might be to include these forms under the same heading as fornyrðislag, for example if it could be shown that they all have two lifts to a line, but obviously this would lead to a still greater proliferation of types for the model to handle. the treatment of ljóðaháttr follows a similar pattern: a brief general characterization is given of the main features, i. e. two verses (aand b-) forming a long line, and a “full line”, labelled c-verse; the main text is devoted to a statistical description of the composition. this is done in two chapters, one devoted to the pair of verses (aand b-) forming the long line (chapter 12), and another (chapter 13) to the c-verse. the treatment of ljóðaháttr ends by a clear and useful overview (chapter 14) of the stanzaic structure of the metre. this involves both an account of the varying regularity of individual poems and of the different compositional types. and the prototype model once more forms the backdrop of the analysis, so that the six line stanza, divided into two half stanzas is seen as prototypical, but various divergent actualisations of the form are allowed for. all in all this turns out to give a clearly presented and useful overview of the whole corpus. the final chapter, no. 15, entitled conclusion, at the same time as summarising the general findings, presents an “evolutionary trajectory of the eddic metres as they divergently developed from their common germanic and north germanic ancestors” (p. 773), creating the new forms málaháttr and ljóðaháttr beside the basic fornyrðislag. 123prototypes and structures in eddic poetry like other parts of the book, this last chapter is “wagnerian” in length and form. it starts its 26 pages by considering the effects of the specifically nordic linguistic development, and then moves on to stage the emergence of the new forms. the reduction in the number of syllables in words has an effect on the correspondence between linguistic syllables and metrical positions, moving closer to one-to-one correspondence, and at the same time there is a “decreased distinguishability of the two opposite metrical positions, the lift and the drop”. one effect of these changes is the “removal of the heavy drop” from the d-type. this lead to a “weakened identity” of the heavy drop, and at the same time resolution “becomes closest to being moribund”, although it operates “more vigorously” in certain contexts, e. g. in the c-type (p. 773–774). this has the effect that the constraint for lifts to be heavy (i. e. be filled by long syllables) is relaxed to a great extent, (since e. g. the novel configuration px…px, with a short second lift becomes a variant of the basic a1-type). thus there is a proliferation of short lifts. another development is that the “four-position principle was strictly obeyed in the norse meter [i. e. fornyrðislag]”. one of the effects of this is that “anacrusis is allowed to occur only on the shortest and least prominent variants of type a1” (p. 777). adherence to this principle is also seen as responsible for the restriction on expanded types like d* and the development of catalexis. the nordic syncope leads to “a massive emergence of verses […] which apparently end in lifted words” (p. 778). this leads to the reinterpretation of the change in linguistic structure as a metrical principle of catalexis, namely the option for a1as a variant of trochaic a1 etc. this means that a metrical position “a verse final drop is actually there in underlying representation and that it is simply realized as zero on the surface through alignment to null language material” (p. 779). another instance of this sort of null realization of linguistic material gives type a3, “which leaves the initial lift immaterialized”. these new phenomena interplay with traditional “conventions inherited from the old germanic metrical tradition”, according to which positions at the beginning of a verse count as more prominent, making the “b-verse […] unmarked in opposition to the a-verse” and the principle that “increase in prominence of a verse promotes use of double alliteration in the a-verse” (p. 780). one effect of this is that catalectic lines are equipped with a lower prominence and therefore tend to occur at the end of lines. one more event in this history is that the “increasing standardization of the cadence heightened awareness of the line as a higher unit over the verse” and this also contributed to the “the emergence of the stanza” (p. 784) as a significant unit. but, like in a wagnerian handlung, there are some disturbing and even contradicting forces affecting the development, which among other things lead 124 kristján árnason to the creation of two new and quite different metres. although málaháttr and ljóðaháttr go in different directions in their development and structure, their development is at least partly due to the same impetus, which comes from west germanic. this would then be something of the sort that was seen by hans kuhn (1939) as marking the fremstofflieder, involving greater variation in the length of lines, but most importantly the non-application of his own, kuhn’s laws in some fornyrðislag poems and those composed under ljóðaháttr. for the málaháttr the innovation was the addition of the fifth position as a legitimate one in the line. for the ljóðaháttr it was the other way around, since the innovation involved shortening, i. e. increase in the incidence of shorter lines (aand b-verses), but at the same time the development of the longer c-verse, which actually is a shortened long line. the two metres also went in different directions regarding the cadence, málaháttr favouring the trochaic ending, but ljóðaháttr the catalectic one. the result of all of this is the above mentioned trajectory for nordic metrical development (fornyrðslag > málaháttr > ljóðaháttr, p. 797). this projection is meant to be interpreted temporally, so that first the málaháttr developed (through west germanic influence), and then the ljóðaháttr, making different use of the same influence. we must agree with the implication that ljóðaháttr is not an archaic metre as had been suggested by some scholars. but the way in which west germanic influence was responsible for the metrical innovations is not too clear. an alternative account of the development of ljóðaháttr, as well as the general introduction of the stanza, is to see it as due to the 4 × 4 principle. this implies that the eddic stanza is a quatrain, made of four four-beat lines (cf. árnason 2006). this innovation might well, through its naturalness, be home spun, or due to influence from younger european genres. conclusion the body of work on old germanic poetic forms is immense, and for the outsider it may look like an impenetrable jungle where all sorts of rules and principles have kept scholars busy devising complicated rules, types and subtypes. although there are some basic theoretical issues which can be focussed on, many of the fundamental questions connected with the material seem often to have been forgotten or shrouded by attention to all kinds of detail. and it remains an open question to what extent the whole corpus of germanic verse, english, german and icelandic, can be subsumed under one heading. 125prototypes and structures in eddic poetry in these circumstances, the resilience of the sievers-typology derives from its usefulness as a pre-theoretical taxonomic tool, which is precisely the original characterization given to it by its founder, although later scholars have tended to reify the types as some sort of axiomatic formulae (reminiscent of generative syntax). suzuki’s work fits into this tradition with interesting additional twists by invoking insights from generative phonology and the conception of prototypes. but this is not simple, and there would seem to be some problems or even contradictions because of the differences between the two theoretical frameworks. the idea of prototypes is more salient in monep than in older work by suzuki. but the conversion is only half-hearted, because there is still talk of underlying structure: the metrical system and the linguistic one are kept apart, so much so that empty categories (lifts or drops) are allowed without being filled by linguistic material. one may wonder how that would fit the general idea or theory of prototypes, usage based grammar or exemplar theory, as defined by the proponents of that theory. do empty positions or abstract, underlying structures fit at all into that framework? the value of monep lies primarily in that it is a well-organized and thorough presentation of the compositional characteristics of old norse eddic poetry compared to its west germanic relatives. we are constantly reminded of the theoretical grounding of the account, and the statistical analysis is very informative, if rather lengthy at times. this is not (to the present reviewer at least) an easy book to read; it takes quite an effort to discern the general patterns, and the wood is often quite difficult to see because of the close attention paid to the endless number of trees of types and subtypes. but in spite of the overwhelming detail and lengthy deliberations, monep has a clear focus, and it raises many issues which will help us on the way to fuller understanding of the metrical and linguistic foundations of old norse poetic forms. the careful presentation of the material, the book’s very professional production, layout and organization make it a most reliable companion to the study of nordic metrics. but for all its merits, like many other works in the field, it seems to fall short of reaching the more explanatory goals foreseen by eduard sievers regarding the musical or rhythmic foundations of the forms, their relation to performance, as well as linguistic structure. this is perhaps just as well, since otherwise a number of very learned scholars might be out of a job! 126 kristján árnason references allen, w. sidney 1973. accent and rhythm. cambridge: cambridge university press. árnason, kristján 2000 [1991]. the rythms of dróttkvætt and other old icelandic metres. reykjavík: institute of linguistics. árnason, kristján 2006. the rise of the quatrain in germanic: musicality and word based rhythm in eddic metres. in: dresher, elan; friedberg, nila (eds.), formal approaches to poetry: recent developments in metrics. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 151–169. árnason, kristján 2007. on the principles of nordic rhyme and alliteration. in: arkiv för nordisk filologi 122, 79–114. árnason, kristján 2016. text and form in the eddic metres: four lifts and how many types. in: árnason [et al.] (eds.) 2016, 63–115. árnason, kristján; carey, stephen; kim dewey, tonya; þorgeirsson, haukur; aðalsteinsson; ragnar ingi; eyþórssons, þórhallur (eds.) 2016. approaches to nordic and germanic poetry. reykjavík: university of iceland press. bliss, alan joseph 1967. the metre of beowulf. oxford: blackwell. bybee, joan 2006. from usage to grammar: the mind’s response to repetition. in: language 82(4), 711–733. cable, thomas 1974. the meter and melody of beowulf. urbana, chicago, london: university of illinois press. fulk, robert dennis 1992. a history of english meter. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. fulk, robert dennis 2016. eddic metres. in: larrington, carolyne; quinn, judy; schorn, brittany (eds.), a handbook to eddic poetry: myths and legends of early scandinavia. cambridge: cambridge university press, 252–270. goering, nelson 2016. the linguistic elements of old germanic metre: phonology, metrical theory, and the development of alliterative verse. d. phil. thesis. the university of oxford. hayes, bruce 1995. metrical stress theory: principles and case studies. chicago: the university of chicago press. hayes, bruce; mceachern, margaret 1998. quatrain form in english folk verse. in: language 74, 473–507. 127prototypes and structures in eddic poetry heusler, andreas 1969 [1889]. der ljóðaháttr: eine metrische untersuchung. in his kleine schriften ii. berlin: de gruyter, 690–750. [first published in: acta germanica 1(2), 89–174.] kuhn, hans 1939. westgermanisches in der altnordischen verskunst. in: beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 63, 178–236. [reprinted in kuhn 1969, 485–527.] kuhn, hans 1969. kleine schriften i. berlin: de gruyter. larrington, carolyne; quinn, judy; schorn, brittany (eds.) 2016. a handbook to eddic poetry: myths and legends of early scandinavia. cambridge: cambridge university press. russom, geoffrey 1998. beowulf and old germanic metre (cambridge studies in anglo-saxon england 23). cambridge: cambridge university press. russom, geoffrey 2009. why there are three eddic meters. in: kilipö, matti; kahlastarkka, leena; roberts, jane; timofeeva, olga (eds.), anglo-saxons and the north. tempe, az: arizona centre for medieval studies, 69–88. sievers, eduard 1885. proben einer metrischen herstellung der eddalieder. tübingen: königliche eberhard-karls-universität. sievers, eduard 1893. atlgermanische metrik. halle: max niemeyer. snorri sturluson 1991. edda, háttatal. edited by anthony faulkes. london: viking society for northern research. suzuki, seiichi 1995. resolution and mora counting in old english. in: american journal of germanic linguistics and literatures 7, 1–28. suzuki, seiichi 1996. the metrical organization of beowulf: prototype and isomorphism. berlin: walter de gruyter. suzuki, seiichi 2004. the metre of old saxon poetry: the remaking of alliterative tradition. cambridge: brewer. suzuki, seiichi 2008. on the emergent trochaic cadence / x in old norse fornyrðislag meter: statistical and comparative perspectives. in: journal of germanic linguistics 20(1), 53–79. suzuki, seiichi 2009. three-position verses in old norse fornyrðislag meter: statistical and comparative perspectives. in: nowele 56, 3–40. suzuki, seiichi 2010. anacrusis in eddic meters fornyrðislag and málaháttr: reevaluation and reinvigoration. in: beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 132, 159–176. 128 kristján árnason suzuki, seiichi 2011. catalexis, suspension of resolution, and the organization of the cadence in eddic meters. in: lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.), frontiers in comparative prosody. bern: peter lang, 373–400. suzuki, seiichi 2014. the meters of old norse poetry (ergänzungsbände zum reallexikon der germanischen altertumskunde 86). berlin: walter de gruyter. suzuki, seiichi 2016. toward a formal account of a3 in fornyrðislag. in: árnason [et al.] (eds.) 2016, 117–145. terasawa, jun 2011. old english metre: an introduction. toronto: university of toronto press. yakovlev, nikolay 2008. the development of alliterative metre from old to middle english. d. phil. thesis. the university of oxford. reuven tsur poetic rhythm. structure and performance. an empirical study in cognitive poetics. 2nd ed. brighton, sussex academic press, 2012 (a review article) eva lilja the second edition of reuven tsur’s poetic rhythm exceeds the old one from 1998 with a hundred pages. only minor changes have been added to the first ten chapters but the four new ones give a broader and also more relaxed extension to his subject. the new last chapter specifies his critique against older versification studies and gives more room for discussing the problem of meaning production in versification. poetic rhythm aims at giving empirical evidence for a cognitive theory of versification, as presented in tsur’s book of 1977, perception-oriented theory of metre. nowadays, this book is almost impossible to get a hold of – for example, no library in sweden owns it. nevertheless, this is tsur’s first important publication where he establishes cognitive poetics, a hot subject in aesthetic discussions today. he repudiates the idea that poetic rhythm might be analysed as a kind of object and instead asserts its character as grounded in perception. to prove this, he uses gestalt psychology and findings in neuroscience with a focus on short time memory. if poetic rhythm takes place in the human perception, where is it possible to investigate? the performance offers a possibility to study poetic rhythm. tsur has collected an impressive amount of interesting poetry readings that demonstrate complicated solutions to contradictory formulations. we are presented with a huge amount of details concerning tone curves, peakings, delays and so on. a competent reading should strengthen both unity and complexity of an expression – something that shows the quality of the poem as well as that of the performer. tsur is the leading scholar today in versification studies as well as in cognitive poetics. what makes him extra important is that he has taken sides with versification as aesthetics and not as a kind of linguistics. he explores the poem as a complex net of formal and semantic devices, where you have to examine a great deal of details to understand meaning and beauty. in that way, studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 142–148 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.07 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.07 143review article he might be seen as a follower of the russian formalists and roman jakobson, who also promoted the importance of versification studies. they claimed that versification is organized violence against language, but tsur speaks instead of the poem as organized violence against cognitive processes. this formulation catches the development from verse looked upon as language to verse as aesthetic experience. today cognitive poetics develops rapidly and we can distinguish at least two schools. tsur’s followers are interested in things as emotion and memory studies as well as neurology. on the other side, there is an english school developing the findings of cognitive linguistics. here lakoff & johnson’s theory of conceptual cognitive metaphors is a dominating theme. but tsur remarks that poetic metaphors have little in common with the entities called conceptual metaphors that serve to understand the deep structure of thought rather than the perceived delicacy of a poem. schools of metrics tsur was educated into the generative school of metrics. this can still be noticed in his occupation with the english iambic pentameter. more than that, many pages in the new book are devoted to discussions with certain generative scholars, morris halle & samuel j. kayser (whom he respects) and paul kiparsky (whom he calls into question). it is obvious that tsur would like to have the blessing of his forerunners, or at least wants to convince them that aesthetic quality cannot be found in a set of rules. a poem can never be just a static object of investigation. if you believe that you are bound to miss the main point. how do we distinguish a metrical from an unmetrical line, the generative school asks. underlying this question is a presumption of a dominating binary structure in language. tsur repeats time after time that he writes about english syllabo-tonic poetry and nothing else. nevertheless, his findings are of interest for all kinds of poetry, while the problem of the so called unmetrical line belongs to english iambic versification. the peculiarities of english pentameter might be historically explained. you can see that this measure is a co-operation between two different verse systems, french syllabic verse and english disyllabic meter. the solution often appears with the help of yet another verse system, the older four-beat line. the irregular pentameter is a historical phenomenon that is understood if you consider the english history of language. it is not quite certain that the “unmetrical” problem is of any interest outside this historical context. 144 review article tsur’s observations of peculiar speech rhythms help us to explain rhythms in all kinds of poetry. beside the pentameter, he has worked also with hebraic and hungarian poems. his method functions excellently even for modernistic poetry from all corners of europe. tsur argues that iambic pentameter gives the ideal length of a verse line, 10–11 syllables, and this should be a reason for concentrating on this kind of verse. but the four-beat line has the same extension of around ten syllables, a measure that is even more spread than the pentameter and a covered pattern in most free verse. in many literatures the pentameter was never common, but the older four-beat pattern seems to dominate through centuries in northern europe. this can be seen in gasparov’s history of european versification – and in reality. however, tsur has concentrated on the pentameter, mostly from the english baroque epoch. in this way he is able to keep an ongoing discussion with generative scholars. in the book, you will find names of forerunners like chatman, levin and wellek & warren, but you will miss the names of the great tradition in metrics like tynjanov, heusler and gasparov. the problem the rule of iambic pentameter is almost never confirmed in the poetic text. nevertheless, the reader seems to be convinced of the existence of this pattern. tsur’s standing example is the first 165 lines of milton’s paradise lost where only two ones are regular. despite this, the schema is intact in the mind of the reader. how come? in the mismatch between language and pattern a problem appears for readers. tsur draws the conclusion that our study should concentrate on performances of poetry, where it is possible to notice how the reader overcomes the differences, accommodating pattern as well as speech. in such a performance, conflicting patterns are simultaneously perceptible. tsur’s book aims at investigating how and when a performance reinforces both unity and complexity of an expression, and thus promotes aesthetic quality. tsur’s concept of rhythm is in a way conventional and rather narrow – poetic rhythm appears in the combination of tactus and speech, when the pattern becomes modulated by word pronunciation. poetic rhythm is determined by an abstract pattern which can successively be confirmed, disconfirmed and reasserted by language. in another way, his understanding of rhythm really is a revolution, as he locates it to the reader’s perception and not to language as an object. a performance is rhythmical when the sequences of versification 145review article units and linguistic units are simultaneously perceived. both the conflicting patterns can thus be apprehended. the main theoretical background to this book is a renewed gestalt psychology. in the fifties, rudolf arnheim (picture) and l.b. meyer (music) developed the original gestalt psychology in new ways. cognitive poetics looks back to their apprehension of perceptions, accepts their results but equips them with another theory. tsur uses their findings and adds more himself. the verse line is understood as a system that determines the character of its parts. the so called gestalt laws turn out to be an important possibility for understanding poetic rhythm – one of them, similarity, seems to be a key concept already in jakobson’s principle of equivalence. meyer, working with temporal lapses, calls it ‘the law of return.’ a verse line takes three seconds to pronounce, approximately. this is, approximately, also the extension of the short time memory. a famous paper by frederick turner and ernst pöppel from 1983 established this 3-secondinterval according to short time memory in poetry from different cultures. tsur is aware of this cognitive limit without mentioning the article. instead, he goes back to another classic in the field, the so called ‘magic seven’ of george a. miller from 1956. the human mind seems to be able to keep seven items on-line at the same time, approximately. seven syllables, approximately, are a usual size of a speech phrase, and three seconds goes well together with the 10–11 syllables of a pentameter line. both the turner & pöppel paper and the miller book are very old in this context. neuroscience is developing very fast today. nevertheless, their results seem to be right, or almost right. new research confirms these limits, items and seconds, approximately. tsur made a lasting contribution for aesthetic brain research when he initiated relevant measurements at haskins laboratories thirty years ago. the results are collected in his book of 1992, what makes sound patterns expressive? one hopes for possibilities to repeat all these aesthetic motivated measurements in the light of recent research. a distinct result of using gestalt theory in poetics is tsur’s so called backstructuring. in the perceptual process, you will interpret the gestalt first as it is closed. tsur presents many convincing examples of this in phonetic details. what you actually hear will change according to gestalt laws in the very perception. back-structuring also explains a detail in jakobson’s thinking in equivalences, namely why the second rhyme word evidently keeps the first one alive in the reading mind. to me, this has always been a mystery, and the usual explanation in terms of associations is not very trustworthy. but if you think of the rhyming line pair as a closed gestalt, it is obvious that two similar parts of this gestalt go together according to the gestalt law of similarity. 146 review article method and objectivity tsur aims at giving empirical evidence for a cognitive theory. how to do, then, when the process takes place in the perception? he uses recordings where actors perform classical texts, and the investigation treats these interpretations. tsur examines how the actors have solved a range of different problems they have met in the versification. in that way, he has obtained a stable body of material with all the objectivity you may wish for. sometimes he discusses several readings of the same text. but there is no objective solution to the conflicts between speech and rule, there are only different performances telling us about the actors’ choices when handling the difficulties of versification. so, this book analyses the readings of actors, which means that it does not discuss aspects of silent readings. the listening to recitations does not belong to the agenda either, leaving out the fact that listeners tend to simplify the rhythmical figures. here are two problems that cannot be solved with the kind of methodical accuracy that tsur tries to attain. nevertheless, in future they must be discussed somewhere. so, you can say that tsur’s method has developed a stability that perhaps could be used for more intricate research problems further on. the performances give rise to phonetic registrations where you can examine small details in length and tone of different phonemes. one peculiarity within versification studies is that the shape of sound and meaning production depend on very small units, milliseconds that nevertheless are easily perceived. in practice they are plenty of such units, something that considerably limits what is possible to investigate. you must choose very good examples, and hereby we can trust tsur, but you need both patience and watchfulness to follow him sometimes. discussions of, for example, “stress maximum in the 5th position” last for several pages, but when you have grasped the point it is no doubt worthwhile. the so called late-peaking seems to be one of the most important news of this volume. maximum takes place in different positions within a vowel – and even some consonants. if the peak comes late this will create a strong forward direction within the actual gestalt. another main theme is the importance of grouping and articulation in a performance. those are the tools the reader uses when he tries to overcome the conflict between speech and pattern. grouping and articulation produce necessary parsing, the boarders between gestalts. special interest is also given to enjambments, consecutive stresses, caesuras and stress maximum in weak positions. tsur looks for scientific stability with the help of sound registration, a stable body of thorough investigations. but there are differences between a registration and the sound perception of it – you don’t hear what you actually hear. 147review article tsur is of course aware of this, not least when he discusses the reasons for perceived tactus. we think that the time span between stress maxima of a metered line is (rather) even, but registration shows that we are wrong. the time span between maxima is almost as irregular as in ordinary speech. tsur presents a possible explanation for this illusion. the so-called metrical set is a strong gestalt structure in the mind of the reader – strong enough to dominate. cognitive economy tsur explains divergences like this with the help of something he calls cognitive economy, a specification of the gestalt law of simplicity, a key term in gestalt theory. strong, independent patterns are simple with clear cut contrasts. since it is not possible to change one single phoneme in a poem, the only way to influence sound patterns in performance is grouping and articulation – in order to make the sound stream more efficient according to meaning and beauty. tsur says that this will save, what he calls, mental processing space. hereby i think he is right, but i am not sure of his explanation, the so called limited channel capacity hypothesis. he has taken this theory from neisser’s classical textbook in cognitive psychology from 1968, and tsur’s idea of channel capacity is coloured by the communication theory of the seventies. neisser means that there is a limited amount of mental space, and i don’t think that brain research of today would express it that way. nevertheless it is obvious that the brain chooses effective solutions, considering basic evolutionary aspects. tsur often speaks of two kinds of versification as well as two kinds of performance, convergent and divergent. in the first case simplicity is central and meaning is easily grasped. in the second case the poetic mode of speech perception is delayed, something that produces more meaning, more feeling. the delay burdens the memory system as well as it feeds an expectation of closure and strengthens the metrical pattern. this is bad cognitive economy but maybe a good poem. however, grouping and articulation could just as well help the performer to give room for the complications of a divergent text. the complexity of sound and meaning is possible to perform observing cognitive economy, with the help of frequency and length. the metrical set is one strong component in this complex performance process. it seems to function much in the same way as the so called image schema does for mark johnson – a gestalt pattern in perception deciding among possible forms. it is obvious that perception adds some kind of pattern that finally determines the form of a performance. the metrical set governs the 148 review article tactus of a pentameter poem, while the concept of image schema is broader. there are many vivid patterns to govern your performances also when no tactus is present to lead the process – as is the case in free verse. tsur calls the image schemas reductive. i would say that it depends on how the critic handles this tool. just as the metrical set never can or should be distinct, nor can this be the case with an image schema. both these kinds of perception pattern are only one component in the process of articulation and listening. yes, something in this lapse is reductive, and that reduction might be labelled cognitive economy – the perception process contains a reductive moment. the critic, however, must use his big ears not to be reductive in his analytic work. summing-up with the entrance of cognitive poetics versification studies has become a central issue. from a position as an odd kingdom of nerds, metrics now is an important field in poetics, a discipline where basic questions of aesthetics and artistic language can be studied. and poetic rhythm must be said to be the main subject of versification. gestalt psychology is of necessary significance even today. tsur’s measurements differ from the old gestalt school exploring a new theory that was badly needed. gestalt theory is corroborated by findings in neurology combined with phonetics. here aesthetic observations are strengthened by hard facts, but those hard facts will not tell us anything of importance without aesthetic competence. this book is an achievement in the great tradition of roman jakobson, jurij lotman and mikhail gasparov. it represents a considerable progress in versification studies as well as poetics, a real milestone. we are happy to see this second edition. on the relevance of research to translation anne lange* 1 abstract: the paper examines the interrelation of the critical, academic, and translational heritage of ants oras. as his abundant translations, critical interpretations, and statistical analysis of versification were done in socially and politically highly different contexts, the paper asks for the possibility of integrity in all those endeavors. this can be assumed from the cognitive needs of his multiple roles as a critic, a researcher, and a translator. keywords: ants oras, pause patterns, statistical analysis, rhythm as a discourse, henri meschonnic, translation oras the critic while writing an intellectual biography of ants oras (1900–1982), whose texts on estonian culture and poetry establish an age and a tradition of their own in estonian literary history, one of my tasks was to bring together all of his work, including translations and academic research produced in estonia as well as in exile where he spent about half of his life. although recognised as “one of the most distinguished estonian scholars and writers of the [20th] century” (seymour-smith 1985: 202), the scope of oras’s heritage was only partially known in estonia due to the artificial split of estonian culture into its exile and soviet branches on opposite sides of the iron curtain. restrictive measures in his native land – publications kept in depositories that were closed to the public, librarians prohibited from ordering his books – were cardinal and unyielding, for he had not left estonia as a refugee: his departure in 1943 was organised by the estonian diplomats who had not returned to estonia after the 1940 soviet coup and who wanted him to work for the government in exile that was attempting to regain independence in estonia. furthermore, oras had adopted an unwavering political stance in his 1948 book, baltic eclipse, published by victor gollancz in london. this book, one of the few contemporaneous written testimonies of the soviet and german occupations of estonia, made little distinction between the two red banners that had governed estonia in early * author’s address: anne lange, tallinn university, narva mnt 25, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: anne.lange@tlu.ee. doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.05 studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 58–72 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.05 59on the relevance of research to translation 1940s, and deplored the crimes of communism. it goes without saying that the author of baltic eclipse was deplored in soviet estonia, to such an extent that in 2000, when i was invited to write oras’s biography, the only way to gain access to his post-war work was through interlibrary loans of his publications from the libraries outside estonia. at first sight oras’s concerns during the post-war period, the predominantly statistical prosodic studies written in gainesville and published by the university of florida, seem to have little in common with those of the estonian context. oras himself admits as much in one of his personal letters dated august 18, 1959, in which he describes his ongoing research as “kõige selle vastand, mis võiks tunduda minu esseedest” = ‘the opposite of everything that might be expected from my essays’ (letters 1997: 99). oras, the man of letters, takes his place in estonian literary history primarily on account of his literary compositions, which frequently centred on the shaping of estonian culture. hence at the presentation of my ants oras, one of the estonian literary critics who spoke about the book turned to the final pages where i had reproduced some of the statistical tables and graphs of oras’s prosodic studies and showed them to the audience saying, “we know who oras is, but this is science”. he had come to the presentation without having had a chance to read the book beforehand, as it had just come from the printer’s, and he assumed that the graphs were my analyses of oras’s translations of shakespeare. this misconception was founded on the logic of estonian cultural history. oras belonged to a generation that could, for the first time in the history of the country, take up professional careers in the newly independent republic of estonia established in 1918, the year that oras took his school-leaving exams. he was the third student to be matriculated in the university of tartu after it had been reformed to include instruction in estonian – also for the first time in its history. by the 1930s, having completed his studies at tartu and at oxford, with his thesis on the 18th century commented editions of milton,1 oras had the standing needed to perform his perceived mission: to construct for his people an identity that would see beyond obtrusive geographic, linguistic and historical differences. he was out to prove that estonia had a vital unity with the western culture. oras is one of those extraordinary critics who occur in all national traditions, who are cosmopolitan in their interests and who study the world culture primarily in order to better understand their own cultural identity. 1 oras’s 384-page thesis milton’s editors and commentators from patrick hume to henry john todd (1695–1801): a study in critical views and methods was published by both oxford and tartu universities. it was republished by oup in 1969 and issued by the us haskell house in 1964 and 1967. 60 anne lange oras’s estonian texts have recently been republished in five volumes (2003, 2004, 2007, and two in 2009), the first three under the shared title luulekool [the school of poetry]. the first two volumes were included in the monumental series eesti mõttelugu [estonian history of ideas]. oras wrote primarily on poetry, which for him was never simply a genre but an agent of change in the reader. he developed in estonian ideas that could be coupled with those that shelley had proposed in his a defence of poetry (oras’s ma thesis defended at the university of tartu in 1923 was entitled statistical inquiry into the use of colour names in the longer poems of shelley). that poetry is a reservoir of the oldest, most intensive and most enduring layers of the human mind is what oras reveals in the criticism and essays that accompany his translations of english, finnish, french, german, latin, russian and swedish poetry, predominantly by writers whose work is of particular significance in their home cultures (including, among other works, shakespeare’s sonnets and plays, heine’s germany, goethe’s faust, virgil’s aeneid, and poems by baudelaire, pushkin, eino leino and otto manninen). in 1938 oras compiled an anthology of a new generation of estonian poets entitled arbujad (translated variably as ‘conjurers’, ‘soothsayers’ or ‘logomancers’); it included eight poets in whom he identified a new verse culture, a vigilant intellect and human sincerity. as this anthology was one of the last widely resonant manifestations of estonian poetry before the collapse of democratic europe, it has become legendary in estonian literary history, in addition to everything else because it presented a foreboding vision of the subsequent years. judging by the warmth, quiet pride – and later pain – with which oras regards the poetry in the anthology, both in his introduction in 1938 and in his later writings in exile, it is clear that he felt responsible for its emergence. writing on heiti talvik, a key figure in the group, he says (oras 2004 [1957]: 423), “[e]esti kirjandus on senini paratamatult olnud võitleva rahva kirjandus” = ‘out of necessity, estonian literature has been the literature of a combatant people’. thus he speaks of his poets as prophets who depicted the spiritual disorder not only in estonia but in europe as a whole, while holding high affirmative ideals. oras the researcher nothing of a charismatic nature can be found in the academic research oras conducted in gainesville. while he never sank to the level of producing “dull reading”, a quality of writing he had been objecting to since his oxford thesis (oras 1930: 219), 32 pages of text versus 56 pages of tables and graphs – as in 61on the relevance of research to translation his pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama – seems like the work of someone with a mindset quite different from that of oras the great critic of estonian literature. admittedly, the format is different, but when confronted with pages that count pauses in elizabethan verse drama as marked by punctuation, a reader would be justified in wondering whether this experiment in prosody was undertaken in order to justify himself in an age of science and keep his job in exile. closer examination of the graphs and the conclusions that can be reached from them, however, cause one to reconsider: oras’s texts, be they essays, translations or academic studies, are still “all of a piece”, to borrow the phrase he himself uses to describe boris pasternak’s poetry in his notes on translating pasternak, which are published for the first time in the present issue of the journal. oras had not lost his integrity; it endured throughout his forty years of exile. proof of this can be found in the same letter of august 18, 1959 quoted above. in this letter to ivar ivask, oras speaks of his academic work of recent years. as the archival record is of explanatory value in many respects, it bears extensive quotation: olen imelikus olukorras. aasta algusest pääle on kogu aja – välja arvat küll ainult uneks, loengupidamiseks ja mõneks muuks paratamatuks toiminguks kulund tunnid ja hetked – olnud painajana pääl prosoodiline uurimus, mis kogu seda vaeva vist päriselt väärt ei ole, kuid mille ümber mõtted palavikuliselt hakkasid lõpuks käima isegi unenägudes. see oli erakordselt vaeva-nõudev – selline, et iga lõtvumine võinuks tähendada selle lõppu. oma neli-viis aastat tagasi ma selle katkestasingi tüdimuse ja väsimuse tõttu. nüüd on tulnud mõni väike, kuid otsustav mõte lisaks, ja ajumasin hakkas varsti käima automaatselt ja väga tülikalt, kuigi asjast muidugi mõnevõrra oli ka rõõmu. […] see protsess näib minul olevat iseloomupärane – kordub ikka jälle mõne aja tagant, ja siis vaid heitlen lainetes. ei näi tähendavat midagi, kas tegemist luule tõlkimisega, esseedega või rangema “teadusega”. igal sellisel korral olen manninen’i sõnadega “ollut ja mennyt mies”, mind ennast enam nagu polekski. praegusel korral on asi juba üsna lõpu lähedal. on jäänud küll veel vaevalisi, kuid siiski vaid tehnilisi detaile. üritus on õieti soomepäraselt-hullumeelselt filoloogiline ja statistiline (kõige selle vastand, mis võiks tunduda minu esseedest). olen läbi uurind umbes 250 renessansiaegse näidendi sisepauside süsteemid ja esitan need matemaatiliselt ja ka piltidena – iga teose kohta protsentide joonis (pausid esimeses, teises, kolmandas jne silbis [s.o silbi järel], kokku üheksa protsentarvu, mis näitavad sageduste omavahelist suhet). [...] need kujundid on hämmastavalt säädusepärased, kajastades ajajärku ning sagedasti ka autorit. neist saab välja lugeda mõndagi ja 62 anne lange nad on muidugi seoses kõige muu luules leiduvaga. kuid kas see kõik – kuigi see vähemalt inglise prosoodia alal on täiesti uus – tasub vaeva, on lahtine küsimus. igatahes saan selle asja varsti matta.2 (letters 1997: 98–99) research in poetic rhythm can never be worthless for a professor of poetry specialised in prosody. besides, issues of rhythm were on the agenda in the academic context in which oras was working. in 1957 columbia university press had issued a collection of articles, sound and poetry, edited by northrop frye, who introduces the collection with an article entitled “lexis and melos” that focuses on rhythm patterns in poetry. in frye’s interpretation rhythm is a combination of (1) metrical or prosodic rhythm, (2) accentual rhythm, (3) semantic or prose rhythm, the rhythm of the sense, (4) the mimetic rhythm of a reader imitating “the mood of the piece he is reading”, and (5) the rhythm “emerging from the coincidences of the sound-pattern” (frye 1957: xxvi). the collection included an article by oras entitled “spenser and milton: some parallels and contrasts in the handling of sound”. in his article oras compares the use of vowels – the variations in their phonetic quality – and consonant clusters in the faerie queen and paradise lost. his conclusion is that spenser is more “vocal” while milton is a “consonantal” poet. the handling of sound by poets has been the subject of many of oras’s articles: his 1951 “surrey’s technique of phonetic echoes: a method and its 2 i am in an odd situation. since the beginning of the year my life has been nightmarish – except for the hours and moments of sleep, lectures or other necessities – because of a prosodic study that is probably not worth all this trouble but which still plagues my thoughts even while asleep. it was extremely painstaking – of the kind that any easing up would have meant its end. about four or five years ago i did interrupt it, as i was fed up and exhausted. now a tiny but decisive idea has emerged and my mind-machine has been operating automatically and in a disturbing way – although there is some joy in it too. […] the process seems to be characteristic of me – it repeats itself now and again and i am just wrestling in the waves. there seems to be no difference whether it is the translating of poetry, the writing of essays or more rigid “science”. in each case i am, in the words of manninen, ollut ja mennyt mies [a man been and gone], there seems to be no me anymore. right now, it all is nearing an end. there are still a few troublesome technical details. the enterprise in general is a crazy philological and statistical one in the finnish style (the opposite of everything that might be expected from my essays). i have researched the internal pause systems of about 250 renaissance plays and present them mathematically and in pictures – a figure for the percentages of all the works (pauses on the first, second, third, etc. syllable [that is, after the syllable], altogether nine of them showing the ratio of their frequencies). [...] the patterns are surprisingly regular, reflecting the period and often also the author. they can be used to explain a great deal and, of course, the pauses are related to every other aspect of poetry. but whether it is all worth the trouble – even though it is totally new, at least as far as english prosody is concerned – is an open question. anyhow, soon i can bury it. 63on the relevance of research to translation background” studies henry howard earl of surrey’s translation of the aeneid and observes that the translator has tried to imitate the echoing quality of his source text, linking the syllables preceding the caesura by assonance or (near) rhyme. oras describes surrey’s instrumentation as more obvious that can be detected visually, and thus his technique loses the charm of discretion – unlike that of virgil. in 1953 oras published a study on echoing verse endings in paradise lost that focused on the various types of rhyme that milton used to shape the rhythm of his epic. in the same year, 1953, he published an article on the instrumentation of christopher marlowe’s verse dramas. in 1954 oras returned to milton, studying his early rhyme schemes in “lycidas”. he showed that milton’s early poetry imitates the rhyme schemes of italian madrigals but downplayed the rhythmic regularity produced by rhymes: the english poet varied the length of lines and used enjambments. characteristically, oras cherished the unobtrusive quality of milton’s rhymes as a sign of refined art that knows how to veil those devices that have an effect on the reader’s unconscious. by limiting his 1960 research to pause patterns, oras was also tracing those variations that tend to become unconscious – unlike meter. he was less interested in how often pauses occur in a work (because the abundance or absence of pauses can often be a conscious artistic choice depending on the subject matter) than which internal positions they occupy in a line, excluding lineend pauses. although there may still be much deliberation within a line, for example, the position of the caesura should be in the position of the caesura, the overall patterns, oras (1960: 2)3 states in his introduction, are “likely to reveal much over which the person concerned has little or no control, almost as people are unable to control their cardiograms”. his graphs (which do look like cardiograms) show in black and white the differences in the breathing of different authors, periods, and genres, and render some information that is significant for translators, who all too often pay little or no attention to punctuation, treating it as a part of orthography. but the rhythm of pauses has its semantics, as oras aptly observes in the case of shakespeare, in whose work the frequency of feminine pauses (in the middle of the foot) increases steadily as he moves from histories to comedies and from earlier to later periods: “feminine pauses with the opportunities they afford for suggesting unobtrusive grace contribute to that air of effortless ease which shakespeare seems to be deliberately seeking, and certainly soon achieves, in his earlier work” (15). in other words, the meter is increasingly less marked and the dramatic verse closer to colloquial speech. 3 further references to the pages of the study are given after quotations in the text. 64 anne lange for oras, it was the punctuation in the original editions that marked the pauses and constituted the phrasing of a text. considering the fact that all the texts of his corpus had been first published prior to the establishment of modern so-called syntactic punctuation, oras could indeed take the commas and full stops in marlowe or shakespeare as reading suggestions, the commas of the rhythm rather than those determined by the rules of orthography. although aware of the fact that these editions were subject to the intervention of scribes and printers, oras relied on the original folios as maps of simultaneous relations and meanings. in this way he avoided injecting “into the play something of his own rhythm – a twentieth-century rhythm” (2), a practice he had detected in modern editions of shakespeare that present an editor’s reading of a text, lifting it out of its original “rhythmical climate”(3). the most conspicuous tendency that the graphs render visible is the gradual shift of pauses from the initial part of the verse to the end and from the end of the foot to within the foot (that is, from the even position to the uneven). the run-on lines increase in frequency and the meter becomes more and more subdued. in shakespeare’s early works more than a third of the pauses are in the fourth position; in hamlet the fourth and the sixth positions are of equal importance; and in cymbeline pauses in the second half of the verse-line, after the sixth position, predominate. the cognitive mapping of the rhythm of elizabethan and jacobean drama by oras cannot still be without its dubious injections. what oras had taken on with his rigorous empirical description was in principle an essentialist quest for the true “nature” (30) of his period and his poets. the quest is something no translator can completely avoid without risking that his translational solutions will be incoherent. oras’s academic studies pose the questions of a translator – just as his essays stem from his professional research. his prosodic studies, even of the most minute poetic detail, focus on the questions every translator must ask and answer with due consideration for the differences between natural prosodies, metrical schemes and their application, and the writers either observing or violating the rules in order to make their statement. a focused and restricted study of verse was not something that oras only took up in the us. in 1931 he had published in estonian a six-page article on the french alexandrine, one of his most influential texts, recognised as the theoretical foundation for the syllabic system in estonian. the latter had hitherto been traditionally rendered – as in the german translation pattern proposed by martin opitz (1597–1639) – as accentual-syllabic. the article recommends treating the alexandrine not as an iambic hexameter but as a twelve-syllable verse-line combining iambic and anapestic feet divided by a masculine caesura after the sixth syllable. the material for this statement comes from his analysis 65on the relevance of research to translation of a limited number of baudelaire’s originals and relies on a description of their rhythm. to put his finger on the pulse of the french alexandrine, oras makes use of the terms of the accentual meter – the word stress inevitably shapes the general rhythm impression of a poem – and describes baudelaire’s alexandrine as mixing anapests and iambs, the latter often inverted. as all the rhythm types are present in the estonian language, he proposed the application of all of them alongside iambs, presenting two of his translations by way of example. in the earlier estonian translations of baudelaire, the number of syllables in a line had been carefully counted and in this respect the translations were “syllabic”, but a comparative reading of the two sets of texts, the originals and the translations, revealed that the scheme behind the translations must have been more monotonous than that behind the originals. this meticulous reading of rhythm in baudelaire had not been undertaken for the sake of metrical research per se. oras found that the less flexible form of earlier translations had also simplified the content, drawing only its rough contours. baudelaire’s abstraction had been diminished and the translations were remarkable for their steady beat. in addition, by replacing the syllabic meter with the accentual, the french verse loses its “klassikalist tasakaalu” = ‘classical balance’, its “traditsioonilisima veetluse” = ‘traditional charm’, writes oras (1931: 376), who favoured imitative form not primarily on account of the then imitative norms of translational practice in estonia but prompted by the realisation that form reflects the workings of the mind. his own translations of baudelaire annexed to the article (and indeed many of his translations) impress as instructive in tone, underlining the point under discussion and aiming at changing that particular aspect of the prevailing translational practice. oras the translator oras as a translator into estonian has often been described as a translator of rhythm, meaning that while he might depart from the original on the lexical level, he tries to keep as close as possible to the rhythmic (including metrical) peculiarities of his source text. it is the rhythm that makes a poem, oras frequently declares in his correspondence and reveals in his translational practice. how did he work while translating? in one of his 1959 letters, written to ivar ivask, oras explains his process: olen otse vastupidisel arvamusel neile, kes väidavad, et tõlkijal ei tohi olla oma käekirja. asi on just ümberpöördud: tõeline tõlkija peab omama käekirja, kuid 66 anne lange see peab olema nõtke, sensitiivne, väga laia figuuride amplituudiga, kuid siiski isikupärane. ainult omaenese isiku kaudu on võimalik sukelduda teistesse isiksustesse, ning see, mis toodetakse, peab olema veenvalt isikupärane, sest muidu see ei oleks täiekaaluline luule! see peab olema kirglikult läbi elat ja kirglikult – kuigi distsiplineeritult – väljendet. […] tõlkegeenius on […] sukelduja, kes täiesti süüvib tõlgitavasse, säestub oma maaelemendist mereelementi, kuid siiski jääb endaks – transformeerunud, võib olla kirgastet endaks, „undergoing a sea-change. into something rich and strange“. kuid ta jääb endaks. ta on võtnud endasse teise, suurema vaimu ja ise suureneb selle elamuse kaudu. seda elamust ta väljendab – enesena, kuigi muutudes, nagu muutub suur, tõesti inspireerit näitleja. ta peab tegema rohkem kui näitleja, sest oma originaalist jätab ta ainult luustiku – ja siiski see peab olema samavereline originaal – põhiinspiratsioon, põhiekstaas (kui on ekstaasi) peab säilima. kuid see peab käima teissuguseid teid, viies siiski samale […] sihile. lugejale peab tulemus andma sama sisikonnani ulatuva elamuse – just sisikonnani ulatuva elamuse. alles siis suudab kõik muu tõeliselt mõjuda.teadmised, teadused võivad aidata kaasa, distsipliini peab olema. kuid peab olema ka seda „stirb und werde“ hoiakut, millest alles tõuseb tõeline elu ja mis on võimatu, kui ei panda mängu kogu oma mina (mitte oma minatust).4 (letters 1997: 115–116) oras came from a generation that believed that “a man’s rhythm must be interpretative, it will be, therefore, in the end, his own, uncounterfeiting, uncounterfeitable” (pound 1968 [1913]: 9). the question of rhythm, therefore, bringing together the subjective and the objective, was for oras important 4 contrary to those who say that a translator should not reveal his own hand, i think that a true translator must do so – but flexibly, sensitively and with an abundance of figures, yet still a personal hand. it is only through one’s own person that it is possible to dive into another’s personality and the product must be persuasively personal, otherwise it will not be poetry in its own right! it has to be passionately experienced and passionately expressed – albeit in a disciplined way. […] the translator-genius is […] a diver who immerses himself fully in the text to be translated, subsiding from his earth-element into the sea-element, while still remaining himself – transformed, perhaps transfigured, “undergoing a sea-change. into something rich and strange”. but still himself. he has absorbed another, a greater mind, becoming greater in the process. this is the experience he has to express – as himself, though changing, just as a great and truly inspired actor does. he must do more than an actor, because what is left of the original is only the skeleton – and yet it has to be of the same blood as the original – the basic inspiration, the basic ecstasy (if it is ecstasy) must be preserved. but it has to travel different paths leading to the same […] objective. the reader must get from the result a similar experience to their very core – right to the core. only then can it have an effect. knowledge and research may help, one must have discipline. but also that stirb und werde attitude that gives birth to true life and that is impossible unless you put at stake your very self, not your selflessness. 67on the relevance of research to translation enough to invest in it in both his translations and his research. although he often focused on only one aspect of rhythm – rhyme, accents, pauses, or meter – the sum total of his work supported the tenet le style c’est l’homme. in his anatomy of criticism, northrop frye (1990 [1957]: 268) writes: “in all literary structures we are aware of a quality that we may call the quality of a verbal personality or a speaking voice – something different from direct address, though related to it. […] every writer has his own rhythm, as distinctive as his handwriting”. this is not far from oras’s (2003 [1940]: 250) credo that “stiil on kujundava, loova printsiibi kõige nähtavam väljendus” = ‘style is the visible expression of the formative, creative principle’. thus it cannot be prescribed: it is possible, oras wrote in his 1940 “arvustajaist ja arvustusest” [on critics and criticism] for the grammar or the verse to be “faulty” but the style still good (ibid.) as already mentioned, there is an essentialist element in his claim to be able to specify the nature of a poem/poet, and this essentialism is related to the task of a translator as he perceived it. an illustration of oras’s disposition can be observed in his post-war translations of estonian poetry into german. in 1964 in sweden oras issued a collection of estonian poetry entitled acht estnische dichter, preserving the full rhymes of the originals – as if he had not noticed that rhymed poetry (for example, that of baudelaire or valéry) was seldom rendered in rhymed translations at the time. when asked about his rationale for the poetics of the collection, oras told ivask (letters 1997: 214): “see on mõeldud tervikuna – võib-olla mitte päris ‘kaasaegsena’ – ja ilmugu sellisena” = ‘it is conceived of as a whole – perhaps not exactly “contemporary” – and has to be published like this’. so, w.h. auden (1967: 1039) was not postulating an all-embracing truth when he wrote “in this age poetry [...] can no longer be written in the high, even in the golden style, only in drab style [...] which deliberately avoids drawing attention to itself as poetry with a capital p”. oras, a student of milton, could hardly forget the preface that milton had added to paradise lost, in which he called rhyme “the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meeter […] hindrance, and constraint, to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have express them”. all true, unless rhyme is the only way of making your statement at all, which was, for oras, his solidarity with times gone by that he wanted to remember. by translating estonian end-rhymed patriotic poetry of firm declarations into german (and later into english), keeping as close to the rhythm of the original as possible, oras was creating a “discrepancy between the original central literature and the translated literature” (even-zohar 2002 [1978]: 195), underlining the historical and political realities that alone help to make sense of his translational poetics, which stood 68 anne lange out from its context. an element of phenomenological recognition that the questions of meaning, subjectivity and time cannot be separated has always been present in the literary exegesis of oras. this also seems to hold true for his own writing. the contingency of rewriting rewriting (translating, reviewing, criticism) is cognitive travelling. from the translator, it demands a performative initiative of the nature of i-here-now kind, but rewriting must also take into account all the sedimentary values of the poetics of literature. this is the perception of ants oras which finds its counterpart in the perception of henri meschonnic (1932–2009), a poet, translator and scholar who is internationally better known. the sediments in question are of temporal and spatial origin, and cannot be reduced to language alone, at least not to language understood in terms of an innate linguistic competence and individual aesthetic creativity. instead, these are discursive histories, the histories of displacement, of writing of what (and where) one is not. “maybe the poem consists in making that ‘other place’ gradually what takes up the whole place”, meschonnic (1988: 108) proposes in an interview, resorting to spatial terms in order to elucidate his concept of writing a poem, which he defines as a place one has to go to by way of a “historical adventure of a subject” (meschonnic 2003: 341). the equipment for the adventure includes at the very least maps of literary, linguistic, historical and anthropological discourses. meschonnic’s theoretical practice of translation has been developed in order to defend historical thought against the ahistorical, the latter being combined with the strategies of power. his instrumental device is rhythm – the continuous movement of signifiance, a special semantic meaning, and the dynamic in language. in his 1982 critique du rythme: anthropologie historique du langage, meschonnic, contrary to traditional metrical or rhythmic analysis, aims at engaging “all” of language and the subject; he argues that rhythm governs meaning while the subject constructs itself in and through a text. he develops this idea in his later poétique du traduire (1999: 99), treating rhythm as an instrument of language with which to organise the subject as well as an instrument of the subject with which to organise language: it is rhythm that specifies the historicity of a text, and this must be the primary object of translation. alongside the historicity of rhythm, there is one more aspect of translation that is of importance for meschonnic: if the subject is not only influenced by 69on the relevance of research to translation discursive necessities but also determines language by transferring it from one container to another, one has to recognise the “movability” of language, irrespective of the differences of natural prosodies. the difference in a translation can never be pure; the rhythmic impulse of the source could be carried over to the target, while the rhythm detected depends largely on the observer and his competence and expectations. as anything in language or in history depends on the observer, any recognition is a tie which modifies what one observes (meschonnic 1982: 30). in other words, meschonnic is arguing for the subjected nature of writing, its subjectivity. the translator’s self for oras, as quoted above, is a meeting point of a minimum of two minds. his 1960 study, which takes the verse as such as its object (not prosodic analysis as a means of solving problems of chronology or of authorship, as was the case with his research (oras 1966) on milton’s blank verse), also considers the possible influence exercised upon an “original” verse by other genres, and in his background research, oras goes as far back as chaucer and his foreign models, and sixteenth-century french and italian verse. he realises that dramatic verse cannot be researched in isolation, without considering the possible influence of other genres. this is an unrealistic approach. spenser, who never produced a play, will be found to be one of the principal figures in the present essay, a poet whose pause patterning decisively influenced the dramatic verse of the 1590s. similarly, some important developments in blank verse would probably have been different but for the strongly anti-spenserian influence of john donne’s early verse. (oras 1960: 4) as nothing can exist in a void, and poetry is often born out of contacts across linguistic and spatial barriers, the list of his sources, beginning with eustache deschamps, the author of the first treatise on french versification (l’art de dictier, 1392), is long, yet relevant for the stated subject, an aspect of elizabethan and jacobean prosody. so while writing a poem, the writer considers not only the genre conventions but also the fashionable diction of the period, irrespective of its linguistic or cultural origin. oras’s aim as a translator or as a literary scholar seems to have been to observe the historicity of his texts. the helpful fact(or) of his geographic displacement in the second half of his life made him keenly aware of all the possible conflicts present in a poetic text – not only the conflicts between the meter and the natural prosody, the meter and the syntax, etc., but also conflicts arising from the rewriter working in an intercultural space. all of these, he seems to say in his critical and poetic choices, are still a vital part of a text, its physical quality in its situational dependencies. or rather, a rewriter in his 70 anne lange physical body inevitably brings together – in an actual time and place – the languages and cultures he is working with (pym 1998: 181), and the physical reality cannot help but be manifest. the language in which a poet, a translator or a scholar writes can only be the language of specificity, and not a language dependent on the mainstream discourses of the receiving context. the latter can be modified only if the writer has viable arguments (at least for himself ) for violating them. to have such arguments and to master the technicalities, there seems to be no alternative for a translator of poetry but to move away from poetry to analytical research that is able to map meticulously the poetics of the original; this alone can convince that rhythm is a discourse rather than regularity and that it has to be translated – unless we want to re-ideologise the original. there is a utopian dimension to translation, a text of obscure origin. translation is a space in which new perceptions resulting from the mental travelling of the writers that is relevant for the text can be imposed. due to cultural differences, translated texts acquire resonances that may not have been present in the original. due to the differences between natural languages, it is impossible to copy the rhythm of the original. but the epistemology of poetry cannot be the epistemology of its sound, of its physics. rather, poetry, its analysis and translation can teach us that everything is translatable, just as any artefact can be transported from one place to another. a translator might just select the most cost-effective means of transport considering the present state of cartography. the concept of total translation (torop 1995), which includes both textual and metatextual translation, opens up multiple options to choose from when translating poetry and “invents within language new ways of being with oneself, others and the world – a continuous invention of the social and of poetry, and therefore a form of utopia” (meschonnic 1988: 106). utopia, traditionally employed as a device for criticism, has to consider – in the case of its poetic manifestation – that human perception presupposes, first, a meaning in the natural language that may be supplemented with extra meanings achieved by poetic idiosyncrasies (lotman 2006: 315–316). but once a poem can be followed on an elementary linguistic level, that is, lexically and syntactically, a translation is, as i believe, justified in presenting the differences of the place and the discourses of the original. this is what oras the translator does: the sense of foreignness encountered in his translations is to be understood not as a clumsy transporting of the reader into the source text but as showing the working(s) of language and a wish to modify the receiving culture. this is most obvious in the metatextual comments which accompany his translations, and of course in his meticulous work with new rhythmic possibilities. the presence of syllabic and also of 71on the relevance of research to translation quantitative meters adjusted to the prosody of the estonian language is largely related to his work. although working with metrical schemes with a long tradition, his translations express the modern subtlety and awareness that every poet and poem worthy of translation is a rhythmical variation of a scheme, and it is the variation, not the scheme, that must be translated. travelling and mapping the world as a metaphoric way of describing the workings of the human mind – which has been the approach in this article – is both relevant and tarnished. just like any cliché, it can be used as a substitute for clear thinking, while in the case of a literary scholar and a translator working with texts that are far from each other in time and place, it has a descriptive function: it recognises not only the structural patterning of a text but also its social production in a particular place and at a particular time. literary scholarship and translation are both concerned with the poetics of the original and network a translator with research that combines the poetic and the academic. references auden, wystan hugh 1967. the mythical world of opera. in: the times literary supplement, 2 november, 1039–1040. even-zohar, itamar 2002 [1978]. the position of translated literature within the literary polysystem. in: venuti, lawrence (ed.), the translation studies reader. london and new york: routledge, 192–197. frye, northrop 1957. introduction. lexis and melos. in: frye, northrop (ed.), sound and poetry: english institute essays 1956. new york and london: columbia university press, ix–xxvii. frye, northrop 1990 [1957]. anatomy of criticism: four essays. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. letters 1997 = akadeemia kirjades: ants orase ja ivar ivaski kirjavahetus 1957–1981 [academy in letters: correspondence of ants oras and ivar ivask 1957–1981]. compiled by sirje olesk. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum. lotman, juri 2006. kunstilise teksti struktuur [the structure of the artistic text]. tallinn: tänapäev. meschonnic, henri 1982. critique du rythme: anthropologie historique du langage. lagrasse: verdier. meschonnic, henri 1988. interview. in: diacritics 18: 93–111. 72 anne lange meschonnic, henri 1999. poétique du traduire. lagrasse: verdier. meschonnic, henri 2003. texts on translation. in: target 15(2): 337–353. oras, ants 1930. milton’s editors and commentators from patrick hume to henry john todd (1695–1801). a study in critical views and methods, part i. (acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis, b, xx.1). tartu: [k. mattiesen]. oras, ants 1931. prantsuse süllaabilise värsimõõdu, eriti aleksandriini, edasiandmisest eesti keeles. in: keel ja kirjandus 7: 373–379. oras, ants 1951. surrey’s technique of phonetic echoes: a method and its background. in: journal of english and germanic philology 50: 289–308. oras, ants 1953a. echoing verse endings in paradise lost. in: south atlantic studies for sturgis e. leavitt. washington, d.c., 175–187. oras, ants 1953b. lyrical instrumentation in marlowe: a step towards shakespeare. in: matthews arthur d.; emery clark m. (eds.), studies in shakespeare. coral gables: university of miami press, 74–87. oras, ants 1954. milton’s early rhyme schemes and the structure of “lycidas”. in: modern philology 52: 12–22. oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. (university of florida monographs, humanities 3). gainesville: university of florida press. oras, ants 1966. blank verse and chronology in milton. (university of florida monographs, humanities 20). gainesville: university of florida press. oras, ants 2004 [1957]. luuletaja ja tema missioon [the poet and his mission]. in: luulekool ii. meistriklass [school of poetry ii. master class]. tartu: ilmamaa, 423–439. pound, ezra 1968. a retrospect. in: hollander, john (ed.), modern poetry: essays in criticism. london, oxford, and new york: oxford university press, 3–14. pym, anthony 1998. method in translation history. manchester, uk: st. jerome publishing. seymour-smith, martin 1985. the new guide to modern world literature. new york: peter bedrick. torop, peeter 1995. total’nyi perevod [total translation]. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology douglas bruster*1 abstract. this paper explores the implications of ants oras’s pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody (oras 1960) for the chronology and authorship of plays in early modern england. oras’s brief monograph has been noticed by a relatively few scholars, mainly those interested in changes to shakespeare’s pentameter line. recent developments in the field, however, have rendered his data newly attractive. compiled by hand, oras’s figures on the punctuated pauses in pentameter verse offer computational approaches a wealth of information by which writers’ stylistic profiles and changes can be measured. oras’s data for a large number of playwrights and poets, as well as his methodology generally, may prove instrumental in constructing a portrait of the aesthetic environment for writers of pentameter verse during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in england. in particular, pause percentages may lend context to our attributions of texts of uncertain authorship. a hypothetical chronology is offered for shakespeare’s earliest writing, including his contributions to arden of faversham, 1 henry vi, and edward iii. keywords: william shakespeare, attribution, authorship, ants oras, prosody, metrics, pause patterns, caesura, iambic pentameter, chronology, arden of faversham, 1 henry vi, edward iii, 2 henry vi, 3 henry vi, marina tarlinskaja 1. oras and pause patterns in 1960, ants oras published a short book in the university of florida monographs series (‘humanities’) titled pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. compiled by hand and largely forgotten by the field, oras’s data has become newly useful owing to the rise of the digital humanities and a related interest in the statistical analysis of literary style. this paper examines oras’s pause-pattern research, and considers various possible objections to his procedures. it is my argument that oras’s findings, as well as his methodology, offer a rewarding way of understanding the structure and development of iambic pentameter in shakespeare and in * author’s address: douglas bruster, department of english, the university of texas at austin, 208 w. 21st st. austin, texas 78712. usa, email: bruster@austin.utexas.edu. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 25–47 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.03 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.03 26 douglas bruster early modern drama generally. further, oras’s procedure can provide valuable information regarding both chronology and authorship. at only ninety pages, oras’s book has been overlooked by many but has influenced others in a manner that belies its size. employed in attribution studies by such scholars as brian vickers (vickers 2002) and macdonald p. jackson (jackson 2002), oras’s research has also been cited approvingly in the oxford middleton (taylor and lavagnino 2007: 93–94), the quest for cardenio (jackson 2012: 137–138) and, perhaps most consequentially, the influential ‘canon and chronology’ section of oxford’s textual companion (taylor 1987: 107–108), where it has something like pride of place among the metrical tests consulted. the title of oras’s study is slightly misleading, as he surveys continental and english writers, from machaut and marot through massinger, who produced decasyllabic verse over a span of nearly three centuries. he offers discrete figures for various canterbury tales, the books and cantos of spenser’s faerie queene, the differing versions of jonson’s every man plays, and subdivides such collaborative plays as henry viii, the two noble kinsmen, and pericles. his aim is to demonstrate historical and personal patterns in iambic pentameter by tabulating where punctuated pauses fall within its first nine syllables (punctuation after the tenth syllable is not counted). with almost two-thirds of its pages devoted to figures and graphs, pause patterns can be said to emphasise evidence over interpretation, although oras is insightful in his concise commentary. pauses can be counted in three different ways in oras’s tabulation; he labels these a, b, and c pauses. a pauses are those signaled by punctuation of any kind within a pentameter line (oras counts short lines, but not their terminal punctuation). b pauses, a sub-group of the a pause, are so-called ‘strong’ pauses within the line: pauses signaled by any punctuation mark other than a comma, including periods, question marks, colons, semi-colons, and dashes. c pauses are comprised of punctuation marks dividing ‘split-’ or ‘shared’ lines. almost by definition, c pauses are a sub-group of the b pause: the punctuation dividing shared lines is invariably ‘strong’ in nature, rather than a comma. to summarise, then; in oras’s methodology, a pauses are all pauses, b pauses strong pauses, and c pauses those that divide a line or lines amongst two or more speakers. all b and c pauses are also a pauses, with c pauses representing the smallest (because most heavily specified) of the groups. oras counted a, b, and c pauses for thirty-eight shakespeare plays, adding the a and b figures as well for venus and adonis, the rape of lucrece, and the sonnets. he also tabulated a, b, and c pauses for approximately fifty nonshakespearean plays from the era, as well as major poems by these and other 27shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology authors. additionally, he provides figures for c pauses (though only c pauses) for a large number of seventeenth-century playwrights, from chapman and heywood through shirley and davenant. all of this data is presented in the appendix to pause patterns (oras 1960: 61–88). assigning each title a row in his appendix’s tables, for example, oras records the number of pauses in each position, followed by the total for each work. at the far right of the landscape-oriented page, he calculates the percentages for each pause position, rounding to one place after the decimal. between these strings of figures, oras also supplies an entry for ‘first half ’ percentages (that is, the ratio of pauses falling in the first-through-fourth positions to those in the whole line minus the ‘middle’ fifth pause) and an entry for ‘even’ percentages (the percent of pauses falling on even-numbered positions – that is, second, fourth, sixth, eighth). finally, oras provides line graphs (oras 1960: 33–60) in which each title’s relevant pauses are represented as (in most cases) a slender but steep set of peaks and valleys. the mechanical nature of such scholarship – at once its strength and weakness – has been noted by at least one observer. as vincent leitch has described oras’s work in another study, an inquiry into the manifestation of sound patterns in the poetry of spenser and milton, “it is rather like the study of subatomic particles, turning up new entities like neutrinos and quarks” (leitch 2008: 19). oras himself analogised his pause-pattern results to the output of a piece of medical technology that had come into general use during his lifetime: “the total patterns are likely to reveal much over which the person concerned has little or no control, almost as people are unable to control their cardiograms” (oras 1960: 2). extending oras’s metaphor, we might say that his pause patterns monograph seeks to graph the heartbeat of iambic pentameter as it was manifested by a variety of texts written across a considerable number of years. just as any individual’s electrocardiographic results are likely to change over time (and, as oras posits, not be under an individual’s control), so do pause patterns develop in appreciable ways. by gathering this information, oras put himself and others in a position to trace verse’s meaningful patterns – and, by extension, the formal careers of poets, genres, and cultures. 2. shakespeare’s pauses over time oras’s compilation of figures for shakespeare’s work confirms something that the playwright’s readers have traditionally recognised: shakespeare’s lines 28 douglas bruster become longer as his career unfolds. we could take as representative instances three lines from, respectively, the early, middle, and later parts of his career: thou art a fool; if echo were as fleet, (taming of the shrew, ind.1.26) to be, or not to be, that is the question. (hamlet, 3.1.55) unto my end of stealing them. but, gracious sir, (cymbeline, 5.5.347) 1 the lines here grow, syllabically, from an even pentameter in the early comedy to an 11-syllable line in hamlet and a 12-syllable line in his late romance. the syntactical pause that seems built into the structure of substantial verse lines shifts, accordingly and progressively, later in each line. in these examples, as shakespeare’s lines lengthen, the units that introduce each line (‘thou art a fool,’ etc.) grow in both length and complexity: thou art a fool if echo were as fleet, to be, or not to be that is the question. unto my end of stealing them but, gracious sir, these lines ‘break’ at increasing distances; an early play is more likely to feature a pause after the fourth syllable while a later play is more likely to have a pause in the second half of the line. in line graphs of the type that oras constructed (oras 1960: 33–60), pause percentages for the taming of the shrew, hamlet, and cymbeline would appear as in charts 1–3. even a cursory examination reveals that, as represented in these plays, the dominant pause position shifts, from early to late in shakespeare’s career, from after the fourth syllable to after the sixth. during the 1590s, most of the pauses in shakespeare’s plays come in the first half of his line – that is, before the fifth syllable. after 1600, the majority of the pauses shift to the second half of his pentameter line. consequently, one could nearly ‘flip’ the first chart, left to right, and produce something more at home after 1600 than before. 1 as reproduced above, the lines follow evans, ed., in the riverside text (shakespeare 1997). in the first folio of 1623 (shakespeare 1968), the shrew punctuation is a comma, the hamlet marking is identical to that above, and the cymbeline punctuation similar save that the folio has no comma after ‘but’. later in this essay i discuss the relation of compositors to punctuation. 29shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology   charts 1–3. pause patterns, as percentages, in three shakespeare plays however familiar, this story is also somewhat circular. while i have selected the three lines and three plays above as representative of ‘early’, ‘middle’, and ‘later’ shakespeare, and used them to narrate his development as a writer, our chronology of his works  – our very sense of early, middle, and later shakespeare – is not independent of line length and prosody. to the contrary, we have long relied on these features to date his plays in the first place. this potential tautology traces to an idea articulated in a monograph from the victorian era. remarks on the differences in shakespeare’s versification in different periods of his life and on the like points of differences in poetry generally was published anonymously in 1857, but has since been identified as the work of charles bathurst. there he observes: it must have been remarked by most readers of shakespeare who are not very unobserving, that his versification, in respect of the cæsura, as it is called, or division of the pauses, differs most exceedingly in different places. this difference is not as between one passage and another, or one scene and another, but generally, and in its extremes always, as between one play and another; and it depends on the time of his life (bathurst 1857: 1). echoing his title, bathurst correlates chronology and caesura, with shakespeare’s pauses revealing a veritable law of his verse: “in metre,” he continues, “shakespeare changed very nearly regularly and gradually, always in the same direction” (bathurst 1857: 6). more nuanced than such a law suggests, the story of this change is also much larger than shakespeare. readers who make their way through the pages of any 30 douglas bruster anthology of renaissance drama feel the differences in pentameter verse as the even beats and ten-syllable lines of the late 1580s begin to give way to something less predictable early in the next century. whether referring to this transformation as an ‘unscrewing’ (saintsbury 1906, 2: 302) or an ‘evolution’ (tarlinskaja 1987: 44), scholars agree that iambic pentameter became less iambic, and less clearly pentameter, in a process that commenced within a decade after its establishment as the dominant vehicle for plays in london’s commercial theaters.2 told many times and from various angles, the narrative of blank verse’s transformation depends in part on the sensitive readings of individual phrases, lines, and speeches by such scholars as marina tarlinskaja, george t. wright, coburn freer, and russ mcdonald, to name only these. also crucial, however, has been evidence of a more extensive nature: statistical information relating to meter and vocabulary and typically surviving in tables that grace handbooks and the appendices of collected works. in its nearly 100 pages of data, for example, tarlinskaja’s detailed study of dramatic verse in the playhouses of early modern england (tarlinskaja 2014: 287–375) provides a compendium of this kind of information. oras’s pause patterns study anticipates such ‘panoramic’ (spevack 1976) scholarship with its broad examination of the punctuated pauses of early verse. using oras’s figures, and data like that which he provided, we can better place works of early modern drama in chronological order. a play from the early 1590s, for example, is likely to possess a different pause profile than a play written a decade or more later. one can see a stark example of this in two plays based on the same content: the anonymous true chronicle history of king leir, thought to have been written in the late 1580s or early 1590s, and shakespeare’s king lear, commonly dated to 1605–1606. to compare their pause patterns, as in charts 4–5, is to see a difference in stylistic eras. if we lacked any other information about the two plays, these graphs would suggest that king leir is more likely to have come from earlier in the playhouses’ tenure: as we will see, its profile most resembles kyd’s composite in its steady decline from the fourth position. with its higher sixth-position pauses, in contrast, king lear looks like the jacobean text we know it to be. 2 saintsbury characterised beaumont and fletcher as “the first noteworthy examples of that ‘unscrewing’ of dramatic blank verse which led, before long, to the break-up of its whole structure as a dramatic medium” (saintsbury 1906, 2: 302). shortly thereafter saintsbury noted that shakespeare “in his own later plays eased the screws very freely, and rather hazardously in appearance” (saintsbury 1906, 2: 303). tarlinskaja observes that ‘the dramatic iambic penta meter of the elizabethan-jacobean epoch evolved from a more rigid to a looser form’ (tarlinskaja 1987: 44), returning to the metaphor of evolution on 54, 82, and 218. tarlinskaja’s 2014 study represents the state of the art on dramatic pentameter during the early modern period in england. 31shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology   charts 4–5. pauses in king leir and king lear oras did not offer a chronology on the basis of his research, even though his figures suggested obvious modifications to the chambers timeline. a number of options existed, including sorting by the ratio of ‘first half ’ pauses, the ‘even’ pauses, or some arrangement of his a, b, and c pauses. had he made such an attempt, he would have needed to address the discrepancies between his results and the chronology he started with (wherein titus andronicus and the comedy of errors are the first two plays). it is worth noting, too, that a simple arrangement of oras’s figures would lead to some counter-intuitive placements: 2 henry iv would come before 1 henry iv, for example, in an ordering based on both ‘first half ’ and ‘even’ pauses;3 antony and cleopatra would come apparently too late, and the tempest earlier than we think it was written. ideally, then, a chronology based on oras’s figures would need to address whatever in them led to such counter-intuitive placements. it would also need to incorporate the most recent state of knowledge concerning shakespeare’s collaboration with others, employing oras’s methodology on the parts of texts that scholars believe shakespeare wrote. finally, such a chronology would be buttressed by a statistical test or tests to analyse both the interrelation of the pause data and the movement of shakespeare’s style over time.4 3 as henri suhamy notes: “il est inutile d’autre part de souligner longuement que les preuves internes que contient le texte de shakespeare ne permettent pas de dater les œuvres avec une précision rigoureuse. si l’on se fiait aveuglément aux chiffres on en arriverait à affirmer que par exemple la seconde partie de henry iv a pu être écrite avant la première” (377). 4 for a chronological study of this kind, see bruster and smith 2014. 32 douglas bruster 3. pause patterns and authorship oras’s study shows us that although the rhythmical environment of a literary marketplace changes over time, differences among writers often obtained regardless of when they wrote their works. an unremarkable observation on its face, this nonetheless has important implications for understanding authorship and even for attributing shares of various collaborative texts. how different were the practices of various playwrights? the following charts represent the pause-pattern percentages of single plays by christopher marlowe, thomas kyd, and robert greene, respectively. all three playwrights wrote for the professional playhouses during the late 1580s and early 1590s.   charts 6–8. pause patterns in plays by marlowe, kyd, and greene even with this chronological proximity, one can note differences among the syntactic patterns of their lines. no play of marlowe’s, for instance, features a fourth position percentage higher than kyd’s lowest figure (from his translation, cornelia); likewise, the spanish tragedy’s figure of 39.1% for its fourth position is higher than only one of greene’s plays – friar bacon and friar bungay, at 38.5%. indeed, charts of greene’s pause patterns reveal an extremely high ‘peak’, betraying a regular punctuated pause after his fourth syllables, and, not surprisingly a high percentage of pauses after even syllables. high figures for even-syllable pauses are the sign of a thoroughly iambic poet. greene’s composite for even-syllabled pauses is in the 70s. kyd’s percentage is in the 60s (as is marston’s), marlowe’s in the upper 50s, and shakespeare’s – owing to the length of his career – from the upper 60s in titus andronicus through the upper 50s in such late plays as henry viii and the two noble kinsmen. jonson 33shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology is the least concerned with metrical fluidity; unsurprisingly, his percentages range from the midto lower 50s (oras 1960: 68). while far from a fingerprint, in certain instances of synchronic collaboration – texts written virtually simultaneously by two or more hands – pause patterns may help to indicate which parts of a text came from which author. to give one example: scholars have long considered pericles, a play published in 1608, as partly by shakespeare, and partly by george wilkins (see jackson 2003). usually acts 1 and 2 are given to wilkins, and acts 3–5 to shakespeare. the following charts set out the pauses, from oras’s count, for this traditional division of pericles. charts 9–10. pause patterns of two pericles dramatists writing at approximately the same time, wilkins and shakespeare nonetheless display markedly divergent syntactical profiles. wilkins, born in 1576, was shakespeare’s junior by 12 years; significantly, he was not as experienced a playwright. perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the pause profile of his iambic pentameter in pericles is closer to something that shakespeare would have done almost a decade earlier in his career, with hamlet (see chart 2, above). if the wilkins share of pericles looks backward, stylistically, toward the late 1590s, shakespeare’s leans forward into the emerging, more flexible style of such contemporaries as thomas middleton and john fletcher. pauses percentages can enrich our conversations about attribution even when they do not resolve specific questions. the chart below, for example, sets out the pause profiles of sections of the first part of henry vi (1h6) that have been ascribed to various playwrights by gary taylor (taylor 1995). 34 douglas bruster   chart 11. hypothesised shares of 1 henry vi (after taylor 1995) taylor attributes the ‘x’ portion to shakespeare and the ‘z’ to thomas nashe, who – taylor suggests – wrote the first act of this history play. although these two sections feature a visible uptick after the sixth syllable, the ‘x’ section (shakespeare’s, in the taylor attribution) does not feature the highest (which belongs to author ‘y’) or even second highest ‘even’ count (author ‘z’, nashe). nevertheless, a pause analysis beginning with taylor’s attributions would linger over the sixth-position differences between, on one hand, x and z and, on the other, w and y. while such variation is not unprecedented in the data that oras gathered, it nonetheless seems especially meaningful given taylor’s identification of other patterns of difference amongst these sections. if we believe that 1h6 was written at approximately a single moment – rather than as a process, over a number of years – the discrepancies in these pause patterns might be attributable to multiple authorship. the longstanding arguments concerning collaborative authorship in 1 henry vi have recently been joined by similar observations about 2 henry vi and 3 henry vi. hugh craig (craig 2009: 40–77) has argued that vocabulary – in particular, divergences in the percentages of function words and lexical words – indicates the likelihood of multiple hands in 2 henry vi. together with john burrows, craig has explored a similar divergence of vocabulary in 3 henry vi (craig and burrows 2012). without subscribing to craig’s identification of marlowe as the 2 henry vi coauthor, tarlinskaja confirms craig’s sense of linguistic variety in that play, as well as in 3 henry vi (tarlinskaja 2014: 112–116). what might we learn about these plays, and the possibility 35shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology of multiple authorship, by looking at their pause patterns? particularly if we divide them along the lines that craig, along with burrows, has offered? the following charts, charts 12 and 13, present the pause patterns of 2 henry vi and 3 henry vi. charts 12–13. hypothesised shares of 2 henry vi (after craig 2009) and 3 henry vi (after craig and burrows 2012). while the uncontestably shakespearean sections have a (just) slightly more pronounced development following the fifth and sixth syllables, both charts present pause figures so closely aligned that it is difficult, on the basis of pause data above, to ascribe their respective sections to multiple authors. such leaves us with various possibilities, including but not limited to the following: (1) both plays are the product of a single hand; (2) any collaborators had the same pause patterns as shakespeare; or (3) the pause patterns here are the product not of the author(s) but of scribe(s) or compositor(s) who homogenised the texts. given the evidence, the first of these possibilities seems worth strong consideration. 4. pauses and early shakespeare pause patterns may shed light on two other plays from early in shakespeare’s career, each of disputed authorship. the following charts represent the pause patterns in arden of faversham and edward iii, respectively. each of these plays 36 douglas bruster has been attributed, at least in part, to shakespeare. for arden of faversham, i have used macdonald p. jackson’s suggestions in determining the shakespeare canon (jackson 2014) to divide the play into ‘shakespeare’ and ‘non-shakespeare’ scenes; for edward iii i have employed the division suggested by the research of ward elliott and robert valenza (elliott, valenza 2010). charts 14–15. hypothesised shares of arden of faversham (after jackson 2014) and edward iii (after elliott and valenza) in certain aspects, the pause patterns that these graphs represent may diverge more than one would expect from chance. for instance, the arden chart, chart 14, reveals a higher fourth-position figure in the ostensibly shakespearean section, and the edward iii chart, chart 15, a lower, less-developed sixth-position figure for the ostensibly non-shakespearean section. but, taking into account the real divergences we have seen in the various shares of 1 henry vi and pericles, can we say, on the basis of the data above, that either arden or edward iii is likely to have been written by multiple playwrights? perhaps both plays were written by the same author, and some other factor is responsible for the slight if perceptible differences in pause patterns visible in the charts here. it is possible for instance, that these differences trace to diachronic composition – to having been composed by the same hand over an interval during which, for whatever reason or reasons, the writer’s style developed in appreciable ways. it is also possible that these differences are owing to the nature of the materials used for printing: judging from the sir thomas more pages, shakespeare’s manuscripts (to name only these) were probably punctuated very differently than a professional scribe’s. (in this regard, it seems potentially significant that the shakespearean segment of arden features a smaller 37shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology proportion of punctuated pauses, per verse line, than the non-shakespearean section – what we might expect if copy for that segment of the quarto were closer to his pen.) whatever the reason, we could note that, in relation to the more iambic second-half syntax we have seen in various playwrights, the ostensibly non-shakespearean material of edward iii is the least developed of the four sections examined. it is worth pointing out that eliot slater believed edward iii to feature distinct parts (‘a’ and ‘b’) which nonetheless both trace to shakespeare; slater argued that much of what is defined above as nonshakespearean writing (part ‘b’) was composed by shakespeare earlier in his career (slater 1988: 124–125, 134–135). the possibility of shakespeare generating same-text material at various times may confirm and qualify a suggestion that tarlinskaja makes concerning various sections in arden of faversham, 2 henry vi, and 3 henry vi. noting similar prosodic textures in the ostensibly non-shakespearean sections of these works, she offers that the dramatist – whom she calls ‘y’ – “seems to be a poet of an older generation, and [...] is the collaborator in arden, and 2, 3 henry vi” (tarlinskaja 2014: 116). could the pause patterns in these texts indicate that author ‘y’ is shakespeare himself, writing at an earlier phase of his development as a stylist? before we consider this possibility, it seems right to acknowledge other playwrights who could be considered as potential authors of this material. pause-pattern evidence for the few texts we have of undisputed authorship suggests that kyd is unlikely to have written any of the arden material: his fifth-position percentages are always higher than his sixth, producing a kind of ski-slope pattern to graphs of his verse. nothing we believe that kyd wrote has the fifth-position notch or the sixth-position uptick. marlowe remains a possibility, at least in terms of pause patterns; the graph for the non-shakespearean sections of arden is not unlike his profile in edward ii and the massacre at paris. if tarlinskaja’s author ‘y’ is indeed shakespeare, such would imply that the pause profiles of shakespeare’s pentameter lines went through at least one stage before reaching the familiar sawtooth formation we see in the great majority of his verse. it is necessary to say ‘great majority’ here because the graphs of a midsummer night’s dream and king john (oras 1960: 46) have an idiosyncratic shape; they demonstrate a transitional phase during which shakespeare slid his pauses across the middle of the line, through the 5th position and toward the 6th. with an eye toward such variation, and in an entirely speculative vein, the three charts below group the pause profiles of some shakespearean and disputed texts, and parts of these texts, along with dates that would imply an even development. all these profiles have been featured earlier in this essay. the chart on the left, chart 16, features pause profiles for the ostensibly 38 douglas bruster non-shakespearean section of edward iii, and taylor’s ‘w’ and ‘y’ sections for 1 henry vi (taylor 1995). chart 17, in the middle, has profiles for 1 henry vi’s author ‘x’, the taming of the shrew, the shakespearean section of edward iii, and 3 henry vi (complete). the chart on the right, chart 18, displays data for both parts of arden (the shakespearean and ostensibly non-shakespearean) as well as the undisputed section of 2 henry vi. charts 16–18. three phases in shakespeare’s development? this three-stage arrangement hinges, obviously, on the appearance of the notch at the fifth position and the related rise of pauses after the sixth. the sequence imagined here – and it must be stressed, again, that this illustration is purely conjectural – implies a poet developing longer and longer phrases in his pentameter line, so that ultimately (as in his career generally) he is pausing further into his sentences – from ‘thou art a fool’ (fourth) to ‘to be, or not to be’ (sixth as well as second). while it is a difference of only a few percentage points across a text, the long duration of shakespeare’s career allows us to see the kind of development imagined here as both measurable and chronologically significant. if these charts bear any relation to historical reality, shakespeare’s first writing may have included the ostensibly non-shakespearean portion of edward iii and perhaps the ‘w’ and ‘y’ sections of 1 henry vi (chart 16); he may have next written shrew, the ‘x’ section of 1 henry vi, the shakespearean portion of edward iii, and 3 henry vi (chart 17, where the texts mentioned last are responsible for the two lines flagging a fifth position notch); titus andronicus may have followed (see chart 19, below); and then he may have written (in whatever sequence before the spring of 1592) both parts of arden and revised the text of 2 henry vi (which had almost certainly existed, in some 39shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology form, prior to the 3 henry vi material) – thus lending the unrevised portion a comparatively earlier pause profile as well as, perhaps, divergent vocabulary. while conjecture, and dependent on the idea of an even stylistic development to shakespeare’s practice, the sequence sketched here would go some ways toward accounting for these otherwise puzzling materials. it is thus offered as a possible narrative for further investigation. 5. collaborative plays either accommodation or divergence in the style of collaborators could qualify the value of pause data. is it possible that the mere fact of writing together somehow blends two writers’ styles? or perhaps that, when prepared for print, various contributions were made more uniform by a scribe or scribes, compositor or compositors? to address this question, the series of charts below traces, first, the differences between shakespeare and his collaborators in two plays – titus andronicus and timon of athens – then considers whether the shares accorded these collaborators in the shakespeare plays square with their practice in two plays of their own composition.   charts 19–20. peele and shakespeare in titus andronicus and middleton and shakespeare in timon of athens (after jowett) these charts represent the pause patterns in two collaborative plays of shakespeare according to our best sense of how authorship was divided. what is interesting is how close the peele section of titus seems to be to shakespeare’s practice. we could also note the general similarity between middleton’s section 40 douglas bruster of timon and shakespeare’s. although the timon graph presents a greater divergence than the titus figures, a comparison of peele’s and middleton’s style in those texts with their style in sole-authored plays suggests that, on the basis of pause profiles, our timon attribution may be more questionable than that for titus. charts 21–22. peele in titus andronicus, the arraignment of paris, and the battle of alcazar; middleton in timon of athens and the lady’s tragedy. chart 21 implies that the peele profile in titus (1590–1591?) is a decent fit for his practice in the arraignment of paris (early 1580s?) and the battle of alcazar (1589?). in contrast, the middleton chart, chart 22, shows significant divergence between the profile from the timon-attributed writing and that from the lady’s tragedy (also known as the second maiden’s tragedy, from around 1611). middleton’s syntactical pattern in the latter is closer to fletcher than to shakespeare, and asks us to revisit the broad similarity in chart 20, which sets out the shakespeare and middleton parts of timon (1606?) side-by-side. the similarity we see in chart 20 is not there in chart 22. in fact, the patterns in chart 22 diverge substantially. how to account for this? at least four possibilities advance themselves: (1) middleton’s style is inconsistent, or changed considerably between 1606 and 1611; (2) his style accommodated itself to shakespeare’s as they collaborated; (3) a scribe or compositor, or multiple agents of this kind, were responsible for imposing a uniformity of punctuated pauses in timon; or (4) our current attributions overestimate middleton’s share of timon of athens. without more information concerning middleton’s prosody, it is difficult to say which of these possibilities is most likely. 41shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology two late plays by shakespeare, henry viii and the two noble kinsmen, provide additional information about differences between collaborators. both of these plays are known to have been written with john fletcher, an experienced playwright 15 years shakespeare’s junior. charts 23 and 24 provide the pause patterns for the two playwrights’ respective shares of these dramas. charts 23–24. fletcher and shakespeare in henry viii and the two noble kinsmen both charts reveal a tight similarity in the patterns for these two plays up to and including the fifth position. the sixth and seventh positions, however, show a sharp divergence in the percentage of punctuated pauses. shakespeare’s more iambic practice gives his lines a higher percentage after the sixth syllable, whereas fletcher displays an idiosyncratic affection for the seventh position, frequently to underwrite line splits (oras 1960: 25). if shakespeare and fletcher are writing like one another in terms of syntax, that similarity is tempered by an individuality that becomes more apparent later in the pentameter line. 6. objections and qualifications the clear exposition of his methodology and “breathtakingly exhaustive” (wright 1988: 317 n.2) analysis of hundreds of thousands of lines of verse lend oras’s study the air of the empirical. yet, as oras was himself aware, his research – perhaps any such prosodic analysis – depends on a number of assumptions that qualify the findings. as even a casual student of metrics realises, prosody is in certain respects as much an art as a science: experienced 42 douglas bruster readers can and do disagree about what counts as syllable, not to mention a stress. thus an eleven-syllable line to one scholar can seem perfectly decasyllabic to another. such variability has obvious implications for the repeatability of a tabulation like oras’s. even more uncertain is the status of the text. oras is careful to cite the editions he uses for his research; for the most part, these are facsimiles of the texts as they were first published. yet we have learned too much about the conditions of early modern print culture to suppose that these texts represent anything like a direct recording of an author’s practice in iambic pentameter: scribes, compositors, printers, and publishers can all be imagined as potential influences on, and even collaborators in the production of, the appearance of pentameter in these printed works. anyone who opens the first folio, for example, can soon find punctuation marks that seem misplaced, or superfluous; still other lines will seem to lack punctuation that grammar, logic, or clarity calls for. other influences are internal to the texts themselves: genre, rhyme, prose, characterological idiolect, and dramatic subgenres such as wit combats, declarations, and plays-within-the-play (including masques) all have a potential claim on the style of a work’s verse.5 to be considered, too, is the fact that a text may not represent a single ‘event’ of composition, but rather reveal layers of continuation and revision. last in what is admittedly an abbreviated list of qualifying factors is the dubious assumption that bathurst made (bathurst 1857): namely, that patterns move inexorably in one direction. authors can and do choose to modify the style of their writing, as we are reminded by julius caesar – apparently written in the midst of plays very unlike it in many elements of style. if we are tempted to read pause-pattern data as a cardiogram, then, we should be aware of its limitations. rather than an unmediated record of a single writer’s single event of writing, a text may be a composite of many hands, and many times. it may also be shaped by unknown contingencies of form or occasion. to interpret oras’s findings without acknowledging their limitations is to ignore his own cautions, relayed in the study. what evidence is there, then, concerning the potential influence of various external factors, literary and industrial, on the pause profiles of early modern drama? the following chart, chart 22, plots the pause percentages for five editions of a midsummer night’s dream. these editions, it should be pointed out, were not generated independently from some platonic idea of the play; by and large they represent tradition rather than innovation, as editors and printers use previous texts for their models. 5 on the metrical differentiation of character, see tarlinskaja 1987: 135–176. 43shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology charts 25–26. a midsummer night’s dream in five editions; dream’s three compositors in f1 1623 even granting such interwoven practice, however, the consistency of percentages across the five texts, as shown in chart 25, is remarkable – if partly in suggesting the inertia of punctuation in received materials. a further observation could be made on the closeness of chart 25’s profiles. the first quarto of a midsummer night’s dream seems to be one of the more heavily punctuated playbooks of the english renaissance. commas – particularly mid-line commas – abound, lending it 43% more punctuation marks than the first folio dream of 1623. yet even with this extreme overabundance of punctuation, the percentages for q1 dream are not radically different from the texts that came in its wake. glancing across at chart 26, we see the percentages for three compositors – b, c, and d – commonly ascribed with setting the type of a midsummer night’s dream for the first folio of 1623. of the three figures, compositor d diverges the most, yet, even so, the pause profile of his material matches that of the text generally. while further research might confirm or deny an individualised pattern in other folio plays, the profile here suggests that, at least in this text, the material has a pause profile regardless of who sets it into type. 7. conclusions as we have seen, pause pattern analysis in the style of oras offers useful vantages on questions of authorship and chronology. yoked with studies of vocabulary, meter, and imagery, and as an ancillary to these genres of analysis, pause profiles can strengthen cases for attribution. a virtue of the procedure involves the binary nature of its evidence: in a text, a space either has or does 44 douglas bruster not have a punctuation mark. as such, oras’s pause procedure is more reproducible than more sensitive tests of metrical emphasis and stress. while the latter have the apparent advantage of tapping directly into an author’s linguistic rhythm at some distance from the determining agency of a scribe, compositor, or other editorial agent, such tests often seem difficult to recreate in an objective way. as with all such procedures, oras’s methodology depends on the existence of large numbers of verse lines. shorter texts – such as, say, a single sonnet or even a lover’s complaint – lack sufficient pauses for confident pronouncements to be made about their date or authorship. (the shorter the text, the more tests are needed). at the same time, pause profiles add to our understanding of the rhythmical climate of early modern literature, as well as the personal styles of various writers. they thus can complicate, in the best sense of that word, arguments concerning authorship and writing.6 references [bathurst, charles] 1857. remarks on the differences in shakespeare’s versification in different periods of his life and on the like points of differences in poetry generally. london: john w. parker and son. bruster, douglas; smith, geneviève 2014. a new chronology for shakespeare’s plays. digital scholarship in the humanities. published 8 december 2014. http://dsh. oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/12/08/llc.fqu068 accessed 30 may 2015. carnegie, david; taylor, gary (eds.) 2012. the quest for cardenio: shakespeare, fletcher, cervantes, and the lost play. oxford: oxford university press. craig, hugh 2009. the three parts of henry vi. in: craig, hugh; kinney, arthur f. (eds.), shakespeare, computers, and the mystery of authorship. cambridge: cambridge university press, 40–77. craig, hugh; burrows, john 2012. a collaboration about a collaboration: the authorship of king henry vi, part three. in: deegan, marilyn; mccarty, willard (eds.), collaborative research in the digital humanities: a volume in honour of harold short, on the occasion of his 65th birthday and his retirement september 2010. farnham, surrey and burlington, vt: ashgate, 27–65. 6 for their generous assistance with this research, the author would like to acknowledge and thank yasmine jassal, anand jayanti, and kelsi tyler. 45shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology elliott, ward; robert, valenza 2010. two tough nuts to crack: did shakespeare write the ‘shakespeare’ portions of sir thomas more and edward iii? in: linguistic and literary computing 25(1–2): 67–83, 165–177. freer, coburn 1981. the poetics of jacobean drama. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. jackson, macdonald p. 2002. pause patterns in shakespeare’s verse: canon and chronology. in: literary and linguistic computing 17(1): 37–46. jackson, macdonald p. 2003. defining shakespeare: pericles as test case. oxford: oxford university press. jackson, macdonald p. 2012. looking for shakespeare in double falsehood: stylistic evidence. in: carnegie, david; taylor, gary (eds.), the quest for cardenio: shakespeare, fletcher, cervantes, and the lost play. oxford: oxford university press, 133–161. jackson, macdonald p. 2014. determining the shakespeare canon: “arden of faversham” and “a lover’s complaint”. oxford: oxford university press. jowett, john (ed.) 2004. the life of timon of athens. oxford: oxford university press. leitch, vincent b. 2008. widening circles: the postwar critical work of ants oras. in: aunin, tiina; lange, anne (eds.), widening circles: the critical heritage of ants oras. tallinn: tlü kirjastus, 15–32. mcdonald, russ 2006. shakespeare’s late style. cambridge: cambridge university press. oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. gainesville: university of florida press. saintsbury, george 1906. a history of english prosody: from the twelfth century to the present day, 3 vols. london: macmillan and co. shakespeare, william 1968. the first folio of shakespeare. new york: w.w. norton. shakespeare, william 1997. the riverside shakespeare, 2nd ed., evans, g. blakemore et al. (eds.). boston: houghton mifflin. slater, eliot 1988. the problem of “the reign of king edward iii”: a statistical approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. spevack, marvin 1976. shakespeare microscopic and panoramic. in: mosaic 10(3): 117–127. suhamy, henri 1984. le vers de shakespeare. paris: didier erudition. 46 douglas bruster tarlinskaja, marina 1976. english verse: theory and history. the hague and paris: mouton. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. shakespeare’s verse: iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncrasies. new york: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versification of english drama 1561– 1642. surrey, england, and vermont, usa: ashgate. taylor, gary 1987. the canon and chronology of shakespeare’s plays. in: wells, stanley; taylor, gary; jowett, john; montgomery, william. william shakespeare: a textual companion. oxford: clarendon press, 69–144. taylor, gary 1995. shakespeare and others: the authorship of henry the sixth, part one. in: medieval and renaissance drama in england 7: 145–205. taylor, gary; lavagnino, john (eds.) 2007. thomas middleton and early modern textual culture. oxford: oxford university press. vickers, brian 2002. shakespeare co-author: a historical study of five collaborative plays. oxford: clarendon press. wright, george t. 1988. shakespeare’s metrical art. berkeley: university of california press. 47shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology appendix table 1. raw counts for pauses from texts cited. figures from oras (oras 1960) unless indicated; tabulations from asterisked titles are by author. shrew 63 117 52 422 228 206 58 33 8 hamlet 43 121 65 461 254 470 195 71 19 cymbeline 61 159 104 493 389 796 473 445 192 1h6 w* 16 55 18 109 63 43 24 17 2 1h6 x* 20 25 7 82 54 50 27 4 3 1h6 y* 37 61 32 165 114 70 46 27 3 1h6 z* 17 46 21 107 64 65 24 9 2 arden non-sh* 19 33 38 219 112 128 31 10 1 arden sh* 4 6 8 73 27 34 6 3 0 king leir 178 184 57 490 187 117 68 53 5 king lear 40 104 56 405 160 547 223 131 40 e3 non-sh* 3 20 22 139 79 36 27 3 0 e3 sh* 8 24 13 133 63 58 25 4 3 2h6 non-sh* 6 11 10 39 19 22 8 3 2 2h6 sh* 78 156 80 445 229 295 106 32 8 3h6 non-sh* 44 86 55 232 127 125 58 30 1 3h6 sh* 100 128 87 465 211 223 91 52 7 titus peele* 17 51 23 134 73 72 22 10 1 titus sh* 45 89 53 282 149 166 45 11 3 timon midd* 21 38 25 95 62 97 70 33 15 timon sh* 16 45 45 204 170 285 170 86 24 h8 fletcher 23 92 57 233 213 275 347 178 35 h8 sh 25 34 26 177 157 328 246 131 71 tnk fletcher 29 52 60 241 216 306 303 159 43 tnk sh 10 34 13 127 122 232 163 97 38 lady’s tragedy 21 48 32 166 206 424 340 84 21 1 tamburlaine 26 59 40 194 119 80 26 19 4 span tragedy 60 127 48 332 129 97 36 16 3 james iv 14 61 41 434 97 187 30 15 1 pericles wilkins 13 23 13 141 55 130 35 16 4 pericles sh 5 26 17 97 60 168 79 47 23 arraignment 17 53 40 117 43 63 17 13 1 battle of alcazar 7 45 30 137 47 64 9 3 0 mnd comp b* 7 14 7 60 49 33 12 9 4 mnd comp c* 13 40 16 148 110 80 40 19 3 mnd comp d* 16 37 19 97 78 70 34 11 7 studia metrica et poetica sisu 5_1.indd optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics geoffrey russom*1 abstract: in russom (2011), i defended a universalist hypothesis that the constituents of poetic form are abstracted from natural linguistic constituents: metrical positions from phonological constituents, usually syllables; metrical feet from morphological constituents, usually words; and metrical lines from syntactic constituents, usually sentences. an important corollary to this hypothesis is that norms for realization of a metrical constituent are based on norms for the corresponding linguistic constituent. optimality theory provides a universalist account of relevant linguistic norms and deals effectively with situations in which norms conflict, employing ranked violable rules. language typology provides a universalist account of relevant syntactic norms. in this paper i integrate these independently grounded methodologies and use them to explain the distribution of constituents within the line, identifying a variety of important facts that seem to have escaped previous notice. universalist claims are tested against meters from each of the major language types: subject-verb-object (svo), subject-object-verb (sov) and verb-subject-object (vso). my findings are incompatible with the claim that “lines are sequences of syllables, rather than of words or phrases” (fabb, halle 2008: 11). keywords: verse structure; universalist metrics; optimality theory; language typology; literary universals; alliterative meter; iambic meter; irish gaelic meters; old germanic meters optimality theory (ot) posits an inventory of universal constraints on linguistic form, expressed as violable rules (prince and smolensky 2004). within a given language, ot rules are ranked in a hierarchy of influence. a rule will be violated if it conflicts with a rule of higher rank. differences among languages are explained as ranking differences. there are two kinds of rules and both are typically formulated as prohibitions. well-formedness rules prohibit departures from norms of linguistic structure. the no-coda rule prohibits closed syllables, for example, and the stress-to-weight rule prohibits short stressed syllables. faithfulness rules prohibit change to underlying forms, * author’s address: geoffrey russom, department of english, brown university, rhode island 02912, usa. e-mail: geoffrey_russom@brown.edu. studia metrica et poetica 5.1, 2018, 7–27 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2018.5.1.01 8 g. russom facilitating recovery of meaning from the acoustic signal. when a well-formedness rule conflicts with a faithfulness rule, there is no change if the faithfulness rule ranks higher. if the well-formedness rule ranks higher, the faithfulness rule is violated and the underlying form is changed. the language-specific hierarchies of ot are structured to select one and only one of the surface forms that could be derived from a given underlying form by the universal rules. ot has been most fully elaborated within phonology and morphology but has also proved useful within syntax (kager 1999: 341–369). metrical rules differ in some ways from linguistic rules. consider iambic pentameter. its rules do not select one and only one surface form as a realization for the underlying pattern of five iambic feet. what metrical rules do is restrict mismatches to a metrical prototype (youmans 1989). several kinds of mismatch are typically permissible but the number of mismatches within a line is restricted. each mismatch inhibits other mismatches nearby, and certain combinations of mismatches may be ruled out altogether (kiparsky 1977). restrictions on mismatch to a prototype can be formulated as violable rules that resemble ot rules but can be violated under different conditions and combine to exert their influence in an additive way. this approach turns out to be quite helpful in dealing with intricate metrical problems. i have found it most convenient to formulate metrical rules as norms that allow for exceptions at a cost in complexity. as we shall see, departures from these norms have detectable consequences. my initial hypothesis for study of poetic form is that the constituents of a metrical prototype are abstracted from optimal linguistic constituents. for analysis of iambic pentameter, i posit metrical positions abstracted from syllables, metrical feet abstracted from words, and metrical lines abstracted from sentences (russom 2011: 353–355; russom 2017: 22–28).1 an important corollary to my initial hypothesis is that norms for realization of a metrical constituent are abstracted from norms for the corresponding linguistic constituent. within this theoretical framework, it is obvious what constitutes an optimal match between an abstract metrical pattern and the language used to realize that pattern by a poet. item (1) is an optimal realization of the iambic pentameter prototype with its underlying metrical pattern notated below. 1 in the unmarked case, a line pattern can accommodate a typical sentence from the poet’s stylistic register (russom 2017: 15–19). line patterns are marked to the extent that they fall short of typical sentence length. 9optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics (1) refíned / gourméts // demánd / supérb / cuisíne. xs / xs // xs / xs / xs in the notation, “s” represents a strong position normally occupied by a stressed syllable and “x” represents a weak position normally occupied by an unstressed syllable. foot boundaries are represented by a forward slash (/). the caesura is represented by a double slash (//). each x position in (1) is realized as an unstressed syllable, each s position is realized as a stressed syllable, each foot is realized as a word, and the line is realized as a sentence with subject-verb-object word order, the basic word order in modern english. the caesura falls at the major syntactic break of the sentence, between the subject noun phrase (refined gourmets) and the predicate verb phrase (demand superb cuisine). the metrical location of this caesura, between positions four and five, is the unmarked location in iambic pentameter (kiparsky 1977: 230). all traditional meters employ the line, but the smaller constituents are optional (russom 2011: 338–350; russom 2017: 29–33). one irish meter specifies the number of words per line but has no rules for syllable count or stress patterning (carney 1989: 44–46). this meter employs feet but no metrical positions. the serbo-croatian decasyllable counts syllables but has no rules for syllable length, stress, or word count. this meter employs metrical positions but no feet. the meter of the biblical psalms employs a line with no metrical positions and no feet. adjacent lines in a biblical couplet match one another in syntax and propositional semantics. these are the characteristic features of the sentence as distinct from the word and the syllable (chierchia, mcconnellginet 1990: 6–7). in this parallelistic meter, each line of the couplet takes the adjacent line as its semantic-syntactic prototype. lines within a couplet are complex to the extent that they differ syntactically and semantically. in meters with a fixed prototype, the prototype incorporates optimal features of the relevant language and each non-optimal feature in a line constructed by the poet increases metrical complexity. in a meter preserved over a long period of time for its cultural value, the prototype may incorporate optimal features of the era in which the meter was born, and linguistic innovations of the poet’s era may cause metrical complexity. poets can fix certain features of the line arbitrarily, for example the number of feet or metrical positions. the most interesting metrical rules are based on native speaker intuitions, however, and normally operate below the horizon of consciousness, for the poet as well as the audience. in some meters there is a metrical domain between the foot and the line. the old english line, for example, is divided into two verses, the first called the a-verse and the second called the b-verse. these metrical constituents are abstracted from two-word phrases below the level of the sentence. 10 g. russom as defined within the field of language typology (greenberg 1963), a prototypical sentence pattern has the normal word order of a declarative sentence with a lexical noun subject, a finite main verb, and a lexical noun object. many features of a given language can be predicted from the normal order of these constituents. like main verbs, prepositions govern objects and may assign special case forms to them. prepositions are typically placed like finite verbs relative to their lexical objects. finite verbs and prepositions are less prominent than the lexical objects they govern, having the weaker phrasal stress in stressbased phonological systems. like prepositions in these respects are articles, demonstratives, auxiliary verbs, and other governors with largely grammatical function. they are less prominent than the lexical words they govern and the order of governor and governed tends to follow the order of verb and object (dryer 2007). the three major language types are subject-object-verb (sov), subject-verb-object (svo), and verb-subject-object (vso). these are the three possible types with the subject preceding the object. correspondences between sentence structure and the poetic line are highlighted by sound echoes like rhyme and alliteration, which are strongly associated with linguistic prominence. the last stressed word of a prototypical sentence has prominent phrasal stress in svo languages like english. linefinal rhyme is ideally suited to a stress-based svo language. in sov languages like proto-germanic, the word at the end of a prototypical sentence is a finite verb with relatively low prominence; and there is a rule against alliteration on the last stressed syllable of the line in all the meters that originated in the late proto-germanic era, which include old english, old norse, old saxon, and old high german meters (sievers 1893: 38).2 the first word in a late protogermanic phrase is normally the most prominent one; and in each verse of the old germanic line, alliteration is required on the first word with metrically significant stress (russom 1998: 65–69). vso languages like old irish have the weakest stress on the first word of a prototypical sentence. in old irish regulated word-foot meter, the line is composed of two verses, resembling old germanic meter in this and other respects, such as employment of alliteration and of metrical feet normally realized as words (travis 1973). in the irish meter, however, the first alliteration normally falls on the second stressed word. alliteration is permissible on the first stressed word but is not required. alliteration usually comes after the first stress in an otherwise quite different irish meter as well, one in which the line does not divide into two 2 this rule ranks lower than the rule requiring an alliterative link between the a-verse and the b-verse. when the last stress of the line is the only stress in the b-verse, it must alliterate. see item (5) for discussion of b-verses with one stress. 11optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics verses (lehmann, r., lehmann, w. 1975: 134–137, 144–145). as with stressbased svo languages, vso languages like irish have prominent phrasal stress on lexical objects in sentence-final position. end rhyme is well suited to a line abstracted from a prototypical irish sentence. it is not surprising that irish syllabic poets were among the first in europe to develop schemes of end rhyme that regulated stressed root syllables (murphy 1961: 13–17). correspondences between the line and the sentence provide independent evidence that the prototypical sentence patterns posited by typologists are encoded in human linguistic systems and are accessible in real time with automatic facility. a prototypical old english verse has two metrical feet abstracted from optimal words. item (2) provides representative examples from beowulf.3 (2) (a) wuldres / waldend (183a) ‘the lord of glory’ (sx/sx) (b) bēagas / dǣlde (80b) ‘distributed rings’ (sx/sx) example (2a) is an a-verse, the first verse of its line. example (2b) is a b-verse placed at the end of its line. in these optimal verses, each s position is realized by a stressed syllable of normal length,4 each x position is realized by an unstressed syllable, and each word has the optimal stress pattern for old english, which is well known to be trochaic (dresher, lahiri 1991).5 sievers (1893) sorted verses with acceptable linguistic patterns into categories called verse types. his taxonomy has been widely used as a guide to the metrical facts, but he did not claim to have formulated general rules for the meter. sievers did discover important trends within particular types. these findings can be captured with violable rules that apply across the board to all types. consider for example rules r1-r8, which apply some universal 3 all old english examples are cited from fulk, bjork, and niles (2008), with suppression of diacritics not required for scansion. 4 in old english meter there are no positions abstracted from short stressed syllables, which violate the universal stress-to-weight rule. such non-optimal syllables sometimes share an s position with an unstressed syllable (matching normal length) and sometimes occupy a position by themselves (matching syllable count in the prototype). see russom (1998: 97–117). 5 by the late middle english period, the literary language was flooded with iambic words borrowed from france and unstressed inflectional endings were rapidly being lost from old english trochaic forms. indispensable functions of the old endings were usually shifted to unstressed monosyllabic words placed before the new stressed monosyllables, which had no inherent word rhythm. the french iamb replaced the trochee as optimal because it was equally suitable for iambic words and for closely bound iambic word groups. such word groups are treated much like iambic words by shakespeare (kiparsky 1977: 206–11). 12 g. russom principles of verse construction to old english meter. these rules are also valid for the cognate old germanic meters in old norse, old saxon, and old high german. r1. an optimal line has the falling prominence contour of a prototypical sov sentence, which ends with its least prominent constituent, a finite verb. finite verbs normally appear in a non-alliterating location at the end of the line. r2. the verse normally has the falling prominence contour of an sov phrase, with the most prominent stressed word preceding any stressed word of lesser prominence. r3. an optimal verse has two feet with the optimal word pattern (see r4 and r5). the optimal verse establishes norms for all verses, including a norm of four metrical positions and a norm of two primary word stresses (with no other stresses). r4. a foot is normally realized as a word. there are foot patterns for compounds and unstressed function words as well as for stressed simplexes.6 r5. the optimal foot pattern corresponds to the optimal trochaic word pattern, which has a long stressed root syllable followed by an unstressed inflectional syllable. r6. a metrical position is normally occupied by one syllable. elision and resolution add to complexity. r7. all syllables of stressed words must occupy metrical positions, including any unstressed syllables such as inflectional endings (a rule of highest rank). r8. unstressed prefixes and function words normally occupy metrical positions but may occur as extrametrical syllables, subject to well-defined constraints (russom 1998: 45–59). 6 every native word has a corresponding foot pattern, except for large compounds that fill a whole verse, with one constituent in each foot. the following examples of word patterns are followed by the corresponding foot patterns in parentheses: ond ‘and’ (x), oþþe ‘or’ (xx), gōd ‘good’ (s), dryhten ‘lord’ (sx), feohgift ‘treasure gift’ (ss), sorhfulne ‘sorrowful,’ acc. sg. (ssx), middangeard ‘middle earth’ (sxs), and sibbegedryht ‘kindred band’ (sxxs). a lower-case “s” notates a metrical position normally occupied by a syllable with secondary word stress. vowel length is marked by a macron, as in gōd. a word boundary within a foot is marked by a colon. 13optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics metrical complexity has detectable consequences. all other things being equal, a mismatch will restrict the frequency of verses in which it occurs. an important aid to assessment of metrical complexity is the principle of closure, a universal tendency to restrict complexity toward the end of a metrical unit (hayes 1983: 373). in old english poetry, the less complex verses tend to appear at the end of the line, as b-verses; and the more complex verses tend to appear at the beginning, as a-verses. assessing complexity can be tricky because metrical rules sometimes conflict with one another, like the rules of optimality theory. in such cases we need to determine which rule exerts the strongest influence. to see how complexity is assessed, we begin with two metrically simple verses, appropriately classified as type a1 by sievers. alliterating syllables are in boldface. the proportion of a-verses to b-verses in beowulf is specified within parentheses to the right. (3) (a) aldrum / nēðdon (538a) sx/sx, type a1 (17:89) ‘risked their lives’ (b) scyldas / bǣran (2850b) ‘carried shields’ examples (3a) and (3b) obey most of the rules. in both, a finite main verb follows a more prominent word that bears the alliteration (r2) and there are two primary word stresses, with no other stresses (r3). each foot is realized as a single word (r4) and has a trochaic pattern corresponding to the optimal word pattern (r5). each metrical position is realized as a single syllable, with no elision or resolution (r6). all syllables of stressed words occupy metrical positions (r7) and there are no extrametrical syllables (r8). although example (3a) is not very complex, its placement in the a-verse makes it more complex than (3b), which situates its finite verb in a line-final location where alliteration is ruled out (r1). verses like those in item (3) appear most often in the closing half of the line. there are only 17 a-verse instances like (3a), as compared with 89 b-verse instances like (3b).7 linguistic rules applying at higher levels of structure can modify the effects of lower-level rules. the most prominent stress assigned at word level can be 7 every effort has been made to exclude from the verse counts instances with irrelevant features that would obscure the effects of the features under inspection. the counts are from my electronic scansions, which have been available gratis since 1998. updated copies of these scansions and instructions for their use can be requested at my email address, currently geoffrey_russom@brown.edu. 14 g. russom subordinated by higher-level rules applying within small phrases. in modern english phrases like òld mán, the primary word stress of the adjective is subordinated to the primary word stress of the noun. small phrases can be affected by rules applying at the level of the clause or sentence, for example by the nuclear stress rule, which subordinates every stressed syllable before the final stress. within the old english line, similarly, line-level rules take precedence over verse-level rules, which in turn take precedence over foot-level rules. consider example (4a), which ends with a lexical noun but is otherwise like the verses in item (3). (4) (a) lēofne / þēoden 34b sx/sx (198:178) ‘beloved lord (acc. sg.)’ (b) hrēow on / hreðre 2328a s:x/sx (84:17) ‘sorrow in the heart’ (c) forð on/sendon 45b s:x/sx (8:43) ‘sent forth’ realizations like (4a) are less strongly attracted to the b-verse than the realizations in item (3), which end with a finite verb. in (4b), which also ends with a lexical noun, the first trochaic foot is realized as group of constituents rather than as a single word. this violation of r4 has an additive effect, further inhibiting placement in the b-verse. like (4b), (4c) has a constituent group in the first foot but it ends with a finite verb, satisfying r1. in realizations like (4c), the violation of foot-level r4 is overridden by conformity to line-level r1, which creates a strong attraction to the b-verse. example (5a) is a type c verse with an unstressed function word in the first foot and a compound word in the second foot.8 (5) (a) on / bēorsele 492a x/ssx, type c (363:124) ‘in the beer hall’ (b) on / bearm scipes 35b x/s:sx (25:83) ‘into the hold of the ship’ (c) swā / rīxode 144a x/sxx (12:4) ‘thus he ruled’ 8 extrametrical unstressed syllables create irrelevant metrical complexity in types a and d, but not in type c (russom 1998: 45–59). instances with extrametrical syllables are included in the counts for type c. realization of a light x or xx foot as a prefix does increase complexity in type c, and instances with this irrelevant feature are excluded. 15optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics verses like (5a) have one primary word stress and one secondary word stress. such verses realize the second foot as a word, in accord with r4, but fall below the normal weight of two primary word stresses, violating r3. violation of verse-level r3 overrides conformity to foot-level r4, and realizations like (5a) have highest frequency in the a-verse. realizations like (5b) end with an independent noun or adjective rather than with the secondary constituent of a compound. they realize the second foot as a constituent group, violating r4, but have the optimal weight of two primary word stresses. here conformity to the verse-level weight norm in r3 overrides the violation of foot-level r4. realizations like (5b) have highest frequency in the b-verse. in the light type c pattern realized by (5c), the second foot is occupied by a trisyllabic finite verb of weak class ii with no stress on the medial syllable, and the verse has only one stress. this violation of r3 inhibits placement of realizations like (5c) in the b-verse. although (5c) has a finite verb in line-final position, the verb alliterates, contrary to r1. realizations like (5c) are not strongly attracted to the b-verse. in type da verses like (6a-b), the second foot has the same ssx pattern that appears in (5a-b), but the first foot contains an s position.9 (6) (a) scearp / scyldwiga 288a s/ssx, type da (26:4) ‘keen shield-warrior’ (b) sweord / bīowulfes 2681b s/ssx (10:14) ‘the sword of beowulf ’ (c) secg / wīsade 208b s/sxx (0:38) ‘the man led the way’ type da verses like (6a) are heavy relative to the norm of two primary word stresses because they have an additional secondary stress in the ssx foot. due to this violation of r3, such realizations have highest frequency in the a-verse. in type c, as we just observed, realizing the second foot as a word group brings the verse up to normal weight. in type da, realizing the second foot as a word group makes the verse even more abnormally heavy. word groups ending in a noun or adjective occupy the second foot in only three instances of type da, all of which are a-verses (896a, 1485a, and 3077a). secondary stress is reduced to tertiary stress in old english compound proper names. in example (6b), reduction of the secondary stress in bīowulfes brings a type da verse closer to 9 examples with resolution or extrametrical syllables are excluded (as in type a1). expanded da verses are excluded because their abnormal length of five positions violates r3 and creates an irrelevant attraction to the a-verse. 16 g. russom normal weight. realizations like (6b) have enhanced frequency in the b-verse. in the lightest d subtype, represented by (6c), the second foot is realized as an sxx finite verb of weak class ii. as we observed, type c realizations like (5c) have subnormal weight and alliteration on the finite verb. most are a-verses. type d realizations like (6c) have normal weight, realize each foot as a word, and have the finite verb in a non-alliterating location. here r1, r3, and r4 work together to create a strong additive effect. all 38 realizations like (6c) are b-verses.10 alliteration is often regarded as an ornamental feature distinct from the metrical pattern of the line. this view has recently been endorsed by cornelius (2017: 37, 62), who discusses its history in studies of poetic form. within the universalist theory employed here, alliteration is defined as a metrical prominence abstracted from linguistic prominence in a prototypical sentence pattern. rhyme is defined in the same way. on this view, rhyme and alliteration are included within the abstract line pattern just as phrasal stresses are included within the sound pattern of the sentence. as we have seen, rules based on sentence structure play a very prominent role in old english meter. if our language-based approach is valid, we would expect to find similar rules in the iambic meters that came into fashion as svo became the predominant word order and rhyme added metrical prominence to the last s position of the line. sir gawain and the green knight, a poem of the late fourteenth century, consists of narrative passages in middle english alliterative verse followed by small rhymed passages that summarize the preceding action.11 the transition from alliteration to rhyme is illustrated in item (7). (7) “gladly i wolde alliterative verses see that segge in sight and with himself speke resoun.” “bob” to knightes he cast his iye “wheel” and reled hem up and doun; he stemmed and con studie who walt there most renoun. 10 verse placement and overall frequency provide two ways to highlight metrical norms. the two-word norm, for example, can be highlighted by frequency in the a-verse even when violation of higher-level norms inhibits placement of a two-word realization in the b-verse, as with examples (5a) and (6a). 11 for comprehensive philological analysis of gawain and similar poems, see putter, jefferson, stokes (2007). middle english lines are cited from putter, stokes (2014), which partially modernizes the manuscript spellings. 17optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics “i would gladly / see that man with my own eyes / and with him speak / sense.” / he cast his eyes on the knights / and rolled them up and down. / he paused and began to ponder / who there had most renown” (lines 225–31). all the poet’s alliterative lines have a trochaic constituent in line-final position (yakovlev 2008: 142-154). archaic sov order is still used with significant frequency to satisfy the strict requirements of the b-verse, but that frequency falls off sharply in the a-verse, where svo order predominates (russom 2017: 134–258). each rhymed passage begins with a short line consisting of one iambic foot, called the “bob.”12 then comes the “wheel”, which consists of four lines in iambic trimeter (xs//xs/xs). all 101 bobs in the poem begin with an unstressed syllable. rising rhythm is obligatory at the point of transition. at the end of the trimeter line, where the principle of closure applies, the gawain poet makes a special effort to realize the iambic foot as an iambic word (russom 2017: 262–271). the same kind of effort can be detected in iambic pentameter. in a sample of 7339 lines from milton’s blank verse, youmans (1989) discovered that the poet will depart from ordinary word order to place an iambic word at the end of the pentameter line, but seldom to remove an iambic word from that position. youmans concluded that “milton’s prototype for the iambic foot is the iambic word” (1989: 362). transitioning successfully from the line-final trochee of an alliterative passage requires rather strict conformity to the iambic prototype at the beginnings of metrical units, in the wheel as well as the bob. compared with shakespeare, milton, or pope, the gawain poet allows more extrametrical unstressed syllables into the line, but these are placed with care. use of extrametrical syllables is restricted before the first foot of the trimeter and also before the third foot, where the principle of closure applies. the best site for extrametrical syllables is before the second foot, after iambic rhythm has been established but before the closure. in old english sov meter, as we have seen, the influence of a metrical norm depends on the level at which it applies. svo iambic trimeter is a very different form, but its norms also exert greater influence at higher levels. realization of the foot as an iambic word is desirable, but it is still more 12 i analyze the bob as a one-foot line because it rhymes, like the four lines of the wheel. even smaller rhymed lines consisting of monosyllabic words can be found in an irish stanzaic form that exploits the abnormal bluntness of such lines for satiric effect. strict rules of the form make it clear that the monosyllabic line is simultaneously a foot and a metrical position (russom 2017: 33). 18 g. russom desirable to realize the line as a sentence (or as a clause transparently derived from a sentence). this occurs in about 60% of the 404 trimeters.13 in a prototypical english sentence with svo order, the lexical subject is more prominent than the main verb; and the lexical object at the end, which bears nuclear stress, is more prominent than the lexical subject. the optimal prominence contour for the trimeter is accordingly 231, where 2 is intermediate, 3 is lowest, and 1 is highest. preference for a 231 contour shows up in patterns of optional alliteration, which can be found in about half of the trimeter lines. table i shows frequencies for placement of alliteration on the three s positions. table i. patterns of alliteration on the s positions of the trimeter (xs//xs/xs) first and last s (axa): 75 instances best match for 231 contour all s positions (aaa): 52 instances middle s not deemphasized last two s positions (xaa): 45 instances opening s deemphasized first two s positions (aax): 32 instances closing s deemphasized total lines with alliteration: 204 total trimeter lines: 404 as kiparsky observes (1973: 231), alliteration is universally linked to linguistic prominence. placement of alliteration provides good evidence for relative metrical prominence in the iambic trimeter prototype, a metrical analogue of sentences like gawáin // admìts / deféat. in about 25% of the trimeters, the gawain poet departs from ordinary word order to place the rhyming word at the end of the line. in another 7%, marked word order that has no effect on rhyme placement optimizes foot structure, filling empty x positions or moving stressed syllables from x positions to s positions.14 in items (8) through (11), i consider all other lines with a marked word order that has no effect on rhyme placement, adapting the methodology of youmans (1989) to a different metrical problem. in every one of these lines, marked word order brings the prominence contour closer to the 231 norm, resituates an extrametrical syllable before the second foot, or performs both functions at once. 13 the examples in items (8) through (11) are representative. most are realized as sentences like (8a) or as clauses like (8b). 14 lines 19, 82, 84, 127, 231, 465, 737, 738, 900, 1077, 1146, 1207, 1240, 1288, 1315, 1401, 1579, 1748, 1749, 1791, 1918, 2065, 2115, 2138, 2158, 2138, and 2476. general principles of scansion for the trimeter are presented in russom (2017: 262–270). 19optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics examples (8a) through (8e) illustrate the poet’s use of object movement to optimize the line pattern. the objects as they stand in the manuscript are italicized. the bracketed instances, marked with a superscript ‘1,’ show the unmarked positions from which the objects have been moved. (8) (a) burnes him broght [him]1 to bent 1599 [men brought him to the field] (b) when he hit schuld(e) schew(e) [hit]1 for scham(e) 2504 [when he had to show it for shame] (c) the lappes thay laus(e) [the lappes]1 bihind(e) 1350 [they remove the folds at the rear] (d) much mirth(e) he mas [much mirth]1 withall(e) 106 [he makes much mirth as well] (e) much solac(e) set thay [much solace]1 sam(e) 131815 [they made much joy together] (f ) thagh i nad(e) oght of youres 1815 (*thagh noght had i of youres) [though i did not have anything of yours] (g) couples huntes of kest [couples]1 1147 [huntsmen cast off leashes (from their dogs)] in example (8a), the bracketed instance of him would have been an extrametrical syllable in the dispreferred location before the closing foot. in fronting the italicized instance of him, the poet has resituated the extrametrical syllable before the middle foot, its best location. the same kind of movement occurs in example (8b) and places the extrametrical pronoun hit in its best location. in the gawain manuscript, unstressed e, when not purely scribal, represents a weak schwa vowel that was gradually being eliminated from english. this non-optimal vowel is rarely necessary in the rhymed lines. parenthesized e should be ignored in (8b) and in subsequent examples.16 weak e is still syllabic when protected by a word-final consonant, however, as in inflections like -es 15 fronting sometimes triggers other kinds of movement. in (8e), inversion of subject and verb avoids adjacent stress mismatches. translations follow the unmarked word order, ignoring such secondary movement. 16 in the trimeter, as in iambic pentameter, the first weak position may be left empty but all other metrical positions must be filled. weak final -e appears hundreds of times in the 404 trimeter lines but would be required to fill a position only in lines 34, 532, 586, 687, 736, 1078, 1177, 1316, 1769, 1868, 2136, and 2357. when ordinary syllables are available for weak positions, constraints on word placement ignore weak final e. lexical amphibrachs with final -e are concentrated in the closing foot, for example, like iambic words (russom 2017: 263-66). 20 g. russom and -ed. in examples (8c) through (8e), fronting enhances the 231 contour, placing a prominent object in the first foot and a finite verb in the second foot. in (8c), fronting of the lappes also results in best placement of the extrametrical inflection -es. when there is little or no metrical improvement, the poet defaults to ordinary word order, as in example (8f ). the poet does not use the starred word order to the right because it would not improve placement of unstressed syllables and would not significantly change the relative prominence of the first two feet, neither of which has a prominent syllable on its s position.17 in (8g), both couples and huntes are trochaic lexical nouns. ordinary word order would also place prominent noun roots in both feet, but since couples is rendered still more prominent by alliteration, object fronting improves the metrical contour.18 in some trimeter lines, object fronting to the first available location, marked by the bracketed expression with a superscript ‘2’, would place the rhyme word correctly but would miss an opportunity for metrical improvement. (9) (a) this dint that thou [this dint]2 schal driv(e) [this dint]1 389 [that you will strike this blow] (b) that chapel er(e) he myght [that chapel]2 sen(e) [that chapel]1 712 [before he could see that chapel] (c) such chaffer and ye [such chaffer]2 draw(e) [such chaffer]1 1647 [if you acquire such merchandise] (d) my lif thagh i [my lif ]2 forgo [my lif ]1 2210 [though i forfeit my life] (e) a semloker that e(ve)r he [a semloker]2 sy(e) [a semloker]1 83 [that he ever saw a seemlier (one)] (f ) the bok(e) as i [the boke]2 herd(e) [the book]1 say 690 [as i heard the book say] in examples (9a-e), the poet moves a direct object farther to the left, immediately before the subordinating conjunction. this highly marked word order is used only to optimize metrical form. the additional movement places a lexical 17 as in old english poetry, three salient prominence distinctions can be identified with textual evidence (sievers 1893: 41–46; momma 1997; russom 2009). lexical nouns and adjectives generally have the most prominent phrasal stress. finite main verbs and some adverbs generally have intermediate prominence. function words have lowest prominence. apparent instances of alliteration on function words must often be ignored for normal scansion. 18 in old germanic meter, similarly, assignment of alliteration mimics a stress assignment rule that subordinates the following stress (russom 1998: 65–86). 21optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics noun or adjective root in the first foot and a less prominent word in the second foot.19 example (9f ) shows additional movement of a logical subject raised to object position, which improves the prominence contour in the same way. in (9a) and (9e), additional movement also creates an optimal axa pattern of alliteration. item (10) illustrates placement of prepositional phrases to optimize the meter.20 (10) (a) to soper thay yed(e) [to soper]1 as swyth(e) 1400 [they went to supper in haste] (b) thurgh playnes thay pass(e) [thurgh playnes]1 in spac(e) 1418 [they pass through plains in due course] (c) by sythes has wont [by sythes]2 ther(e)inn(e) [by sythes]1 17 [has lived therein at times] (d) to knightes he cast [to knightes]2 his iy(e) [to knightes]1 228 [he cast his eyes on the knights] (e) to bed yet er(e) [to bed]2 thay yed(e) [to bed]1 1122 [yet before they went to bed (they discussed their plans)] (f ) for woth(e) that thou [for wothe]2 ne wond(e) [for wothe]1 488 [that you do not retreat because of danger] (g) by non way that he [be non way]2 myght [be non way]1 1045 [that he could in no way (do so)] in (10a-d), fronting the prepositional phrase shifts the extrametrical unstressed syllables of soper, playnes, sythes, and knightes from the dispreferred location before the closing foot to the best location. in these lines fronting also places a lexical noun root on the first s position and a less prominent finite verb root on the second s position, improving the prominence contour. examples (10e-g) move a prepositional phrase before a subordinating conjunction. in (10e-f ), this highly marked construction situates a prominent noun in the opening foot and a less prominent word in the middle foot. in (10f ), movement also creates the optimal axa alliterative contour. in (10g), way is subordinated to 19 in (9e), e(ve)r scans as a monosyllable, like the form spelled e’er in later english poems; and similarly with ne(ve)r in (11b). these words must scan as monosyllables in some alliterative lines as well (russom 2017: 141–142). 20 fronting from the first available location does not yield significantly more unusual word order in lines 35, 178, 340, 809, 1102, 1666, 1667, 1718, 2159, 2238, and 2258. i exclude these lines from item (10). the frontings improve the meter, but with no significant cost in syntactic complexity. 22 g. russom non, which occupies the first s position, and non is more prominent than the conjunction that, which occupies the second s position.21 the examples in item (11) show fronting of constituents other than objects and prepositional phrases.22 (11) (a) and nedes hit [nedes]2 most [nedes]1 be don(e) 1287 [and it must necessarily be done] (b) thus mery he was ne(ve)r [thus mery]1 ar(e) 1892 [he was never so merry before] (c) ful erly ho was [ful erly]2 him at [ful erly]1 1474 [she was with him very early] (d) that brem(e) was [breme]1 and braynwod both(e) 1580 [that was mighty and maddened as well] (e) and all thay wer(e) [all]1 biwyled 2425 [and they were all beguiled] (f ) that both wer(e) [both]1 bryght and broun 618 [that were both bright and shining (said of more than two objects)] in (11a-c), fronting of adverbials improves the prominence contour and the placement of extrametrical syllables. in (11d), fronting of a predicate adjective performs the same two functions. since all vowel-initial stressed syllables alliterate with one another, fronting creates axa alliteration in (11c). in (11e), which has no extrametrical syllables, fronting of all improves the prominence contour. in (11f ), both is moved from proclitic position to an s position between unstressed words, enhancing its linguistic and metrical prominence. a more prominent both provides salient alliteration with bright and broun, creating an aaa alliterative pattern from the less favored pattern xaa. if the gawain poet uses marked word order to avoid certain departures from the trimeter prototype, we would expect the same departures to be avoided if possible by techniques that are more difficult to use and less conspicuous within a single line – paraphrasing and substitution of synonyms, for example. detailed analysis of such techniques would take us far beyond the scope of this article, but the influence of the prototype shows up in total frequencies. table ii summarizes syllable placement and prominence in all 404 21 note that non would also appear on an s position in *that he be non way myght. an audience expecting stress on s positions would subordinate way in this word order as well, and the second s would then be more prominent than the first. 22 here as well i ignore movement that does not create a more highly marked word order. excluded from item (11) are lines 465, 534, 666, 1206, 1789, 1816, 1976, and 2305. 23optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics trimeter lines.23 separate counts are provided for verses with the prominence contours 231, 321, and 221. the 221 category is for verses with no salient prominence distinction between the syllables on the first two s positions (as defined in note 17). table ii. the boldface heading at the left of each row specifies a prominence contour. the boldface heading above each column specifies the number of syllables before the first, second, and third s positions of the trimeter. 1/1/1 1/2/1 2/1/1 1/1/2 0/2/1 0/1/1 1/2/2 1/3/1 0/1/2 rare totals 231 109 56 15 6 6 6 3 3 1 4 209 321 53 25 3 7 4 3 4 1 3 5 108 221 44 27 5 3 2 2 0 2 1 1 87 totals 206 108 23 16 12 11 7 6 5 10 404 the trimeter provides especially informative evidence for our language-based approach because it has just one foot for each word in a prototypical svo sentence: an initial foot with intermediate prominence, a middle foot with lower prominence, and a closing foot marked as most prominent by rhyme (and often highlighted by alliteration as well). our sample of 404 lines is quite sufficient and can readily be surveyed by anyone who reads middle english.24 departures from the prototype clearly restrict frequency. lines with a 231 contour have nearly twice the frequency of lines with a 321 contour (209 total instances versus 108). lines free of extrametrical syllables – the 206 total instances in the 1/1/1 column – are more common than all other lines combined. lines with one extrametrical syllable placed before the second s (108 instances) are more than four times as common as lines with the extrametrical syllable before the first s (23 instances) or the third s (16 instances). as in iambic pentameter, lines with every position filled are strongly preferred to “headless” lines with the first weak position left empty (28 total instances of 0/2/1, 0/1/1, and 0/1/2, plus 2 instances of 0/3/1 from the “rare” category). all 23 relative prominence is assessed as in items (8) through (11). see note 17. i ignore weak -e unless it must fill a position, as before. see note 16. to declutter the table, i have combined in one column frequencies for the rare patterns 2/2/1 (lines 341, 1842, 2186, 2477), 0/3/1 (2387, 2454), 2/2/2 (840, 2478), 1/3/2 (1452), and 2/1/2 (1577). 24 although trimeter lines are not common in middle english, my findings might generalize to other forms of middle english rhymed poetry. this is a topic for further research requiring new methods of verification. my scansions of the trimeters are now available gratis to researchers (see note 7). 24 g. russom these metrical facts are explained by the hypothesis that the trimeter prototype corresponds to the sentence pattern of gawáin // admìts / deféat. this hypothesis also explains why iambic words are concentrated in the closing foot, why 60% of the trimeters are sentences or clauses, and why metrical positions are so seldom realized as non-optimal weak e. as we have seen, a variety of metrical facts in sov and vso meters can be explained by our more general hypothesis that the metrical constituents of the prototype are abstracted from optimal linguistic constituents. fabb and halle (2008: 11) assume that “lines are sequences of syllables, rather than of words or phrases.” such an initial hypothesis may not seem too implausible when we confine attention to the kinds of poetry most thoroughly analyzed in western scholarship: vedic sanskrit poetry, sappho’s lyrics, homer’s dactylic hexameter, and shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, for example. as watson observes (2005: 98), it is the “lack of regular meter”, as commonly understood, that seems most jarring to metrists when they encounter the hebrew psalms. although fabb and halle concede that lines of hebrew poetry are parallel syntactic constituents rather than sequences of syllables, they assign the psalms to a category of non-metrical poetry that includes free verse (2008: 1–3). this category seems incoherent. hebrew poetry is an important medium of cultural preservation that employs a formulaic diction. it is conspicuously patterned and sufficiently infectious, even in translation, to inspire a tradition of parallelistic preaching in america (rosenberg 1970). free verse is programmatically opposed to traditional diction and to all forms of traditional patterning. it belongs in a different category. i posit a universal category for all patterned verse forms, including lines with syntactic-semantic patterning based on defining characteristics of the sentence. significant differences among patterned forms are attributable to differing characteristics of the relevant languages and to differing selection of linguistic constituents as prototypes for metrical constituents. defining the line as a sequence of syllables makes it impossibly awkward to explain meters that integrate syllabic constraints with strict morphological constraints. in irish regulated word-foot meter, every verse in a poem must have a fixed number of words, generally two (travis 1973). the syllabic pattern of the verse changes unpredictably but according to general rules: each pattern must be repeated in one or more adjacent verses, and patterns must be fixed at the level of the word. after a run of verses with two trochaic words, for example, the poet may shift to a run of verses with a trochaic word followed by a stressed monosyllable. the syllabic pattern of the verse has no independent significance. it is a secondary effect of constraints on morphological patterns. verses and lines in this meter are sequences of words; and every syllable of 25optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics each word is regulated, whether stressed or unstressed. similar problems arise in old english meter, which also has foot patterns based on word patterns. what is said about this meter in fabb and halle (2008: 263–267) is taken unchanged from an older analysis (halle and keyser 1971: 147–164), an analysis that simply brushes aside constraints on unstressed syllables discovered by sievers and thoroughly validated by fulk (1992). in saying that old english meter “systematically ignores unstressed syllables” (2008: 267), fabb and halle fail to confront widely acknowledged metrical facts that need to be explained by any theory of the meter. for poetic forms that regulate syllables, fabb and halle provide analyses that deserve attention. their definition of “metrical” cannot serve the needs of universalist metrics, however. conclusion ranked violable rules provide ideal formulations for important metrical constraints. characteristic features of poetic line patterns in sov, svo, and vso meters can be explained by the hypothesis that these line patterns are abstracted from prototypical sentences, as defined within language typology. my overarching hypothesis is that metrical constituents are abstracted from linguistic constituents. since this hypothesis is presented as a universal, the obvious next step is to test it within a larger sample of the world’s metrical traditions – something i cannot hope to achieve with the required philological precision. i hope that researchers who work on other meters will find my approach sufficiently promising to try it themselves. 26 g. russom references carney, james 1989. the dating of archaic irish verse. in: tranter, stephen n.; tristram, hildegard l. c. (eds.), early irish literature – media and communication / mündlichheit und schriftlichkeit in der frühen irischen literatur. tübingen: gunter narr, 39–55. chierchia, gennaro; mcconnel-ginet, sally 1990. an introduction to semantics. cambridge, ma: mit press. cornelius, ian 2017. reconstructing alliterative verse: the pursuit of a medieval meter. cambridge: cambridge university press. dresher, elan; lahiri, aditi 1991. the germanic foot: metrical coherence in old english. in: linguistic inquiry 22, 251–286. dryer, matthew s. 2007. word order. in: shopen, timothy (ed.), language typology and syntactic description. 2nd edn., vol. 1 of 3. cambridge: cambridge university press, 61–131. fabb, nigel; halle, morris 2008. meter in poetry: a new theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. fulk, robert d. 1992. a history of old english meter. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. fulk, robert d.; bjork, robert e.; niles, john d. (eds.) 2008. klaeber’s “beowulf and the fight at finnsburg.” 4th edn. toronto: university of toronto press. greenberg, joseph h. 1966. some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. in: greenberg, joseph h. (ed.), universals of language. cambridge, ma: mit press, 73–113. halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1971. english stress: its form, its growth, and its role in verse. new york: harper and row. hayes, bruce 1983. a grid-based theory of english meter. in: linguistic inquiry 14, 357–393. kager, rené 1999. optimality theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. kiparsky, paul 1973. the role of linguistics in a theory of poetry. in: dædalus 102, 231–244. kiparsky, paul 1977. the rhythmic structure of english verse. in: linguistic inquiry 8, 189–247. 27optimality theory, language typology, and universalist metrics lehmann, ruth p. m.; lehmann, winfred p. 1975. an introduction to old irish. new york: modern language association of america. momma, haruko 1997. the composition of old english poetry. cambridge: cambridge university press. murphy, gerard 1961. early irish metrics. dublin: royal irish academy. prince, alan; smolensky, paul 2004. optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. malden, ma: blackwell. putter, ad; jefferson, judith; stokes, myra 2007. studies in the metre of alliterative verse. oxford: society for the study of medieval languages and literature. putter, ad; stokes, myra (eds.) 2014. the works of the gawain poet. london: penguin. rosenberg, bruce 1970. the art of the american folk-preacher. new york: oxford university press. russom, geoffrey 1998. ‘beowulf ’ and old germanic meter. cambridge: cambridge university press. russom, geoffrey 2009. some unnoticed constraints on the a-verse in sir gawain and the green knight. in: jefferson, judith; putter, ad (eds.), approaches to the metres of alliterative verse. leeds: leeds texts and monographs. russom, geoffrey 2011. word patterns and phrase patterns in universalist metrics. in: lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.), frontiers in comparative prosody. bern: peter lang, 337–371. russom, geoffrey 2017. the evolution of verse structure in old and middle english poetry: from the earliest alliterative poems to iambic pentameter. cambridge: cambridge university press. sievers, eduard 1893. altgermanische metrik. halle: niemeyer. travis, james 1973. early celtic versecraft: origin, development, diffusion. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. watson, wilfred g. e. 2005. classical hebrew poetry: a guide to its techniques. corrected edn. london: t&t clark. yakovlev, nicolay 2008. the development of alliterative meter from old to middle english. diss., university of oxford. youmans, gilbert 1989. milton’s meter. in: kiparsky, paul; youmans, gilbert (eds.), phonetics and phonology, vol. 1: rhythm and meter. san diego: academic press, 341–379. summa versologica květa sgallová, o českém verši. praha: karolinum, 2015, 436 pp. jakub říha* the volume reviewed herein summarizes twenty-two texts by květa sgallová (*1929), an expert in czech verse theory, who laid the foundations for modern research into this field alongside miroslav červenka (1932–2005). the works selected come from the years 1964–2012 and vary in genre (conference papers, analyses of specific subtopics, extensive synthesizing studies) and extent (from 6 to 60 pages). the published texts are preceded by an author’s preface, and they are accompanied by a bibliography of her works and an afterword, both by robert kolár, a disciple of sgallová and červenka. květa sgallová engaged in verse theory towards the end of the 1950s.1 according to her own words, she was attracted by its empirical approach, its rationality, and its resistance to (at the time obligatorily marxist) ideology. her theoretical and methodological views were shaped by prague structuralism, and especially by the interwar works of jan mukařovský and roman jakobson. sgallová’s first contribution to research into czech verse was a review of josef hrabák’s studie o českém verši [studies on czech verse] (1959). her reviews in the 1960s – of seymour chatman’s a theory of meter (1965) and of two anthologies, mathematik und dichtung and poetyka i matematyka (both 1965), among others – betray a keen interest in the application of mathematical methods in literary scholarship. this was a trend in the czech environment promoted by jiří levý, a renowned anglicist and metrician (see his paralipomena [1971], comprising papers in english, polish, and russian). this tendency is also apparent in sgallová’s first article, which deals with the use of punch cards in researching declamatory verse (trochaic verse with a variable number of syllables) of the czech national revival. this research culminated in her thesis český deklamační verš v obrozenské literatuře [declamatory verse * author’s address: jakub říha, institute of czech literature of the cas, na florenci 3/1420, 110 00 praha 1. e-mail address: riha@ucl.cas.cz. 1 basic information about the author are contained in an interview “trápí mě, jak málo se literární historici zajímají o verš...” [it worries me how little literary historians are interested in verse] (česká literatura, vol. 60, 2012, no. 3, pp. 385–397; questioner robert kolár) and kolár’s afterword. studia metrica et poetica 3.1, 2016, 122–126 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.05 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.05 123summa versologica in the literature of the czech national revival] (1967). thus we find květa sgallová at the very beginnings of the use of computers in analyzing verse. similar efforts are being made today by petr plecháč and robert kolár, members of the versification research group at the institute of czech literature of the academy of sciences of the czech republic (cf. www.versologie.cz/en). by naming their program for automatic verse analysis květa, they have declared their strong allegiance to sgallová’s work. in the mid-60s, sgallová’s cooperation with literary theorist and metrician miroslav červenka (who published an important work on czech symbolist free verse in 1963) began; it lasted until červenka’s death in 2005. according to sgallová, červenka outlined the direction of the research, while she was responsible for processing extensive primary material for this research. in the same period, their collaboration with the warsaw-based group of metricians, and specifically lucylla pszczołowska and zdislawa kopczyńska, began. this gave rise to a project for comparative slavic metrics. over the years, the group expanded to include other slavic scholars (bulgarian, russian, slovenian, and eventually serbo-croatian), and their joint work brought forth the nine collections known as słowiańska metryka porównawacza (1978–2011) – a rare example of methodologically conscious teamwork in the field of comparative metrics. a chapter on czech verse can be found in each of the nine volumes of smp. it is most often authored by květa sgallová and miroslav červenka (1st to 5th volume, 7th volume), once by these two authors along with petr kaiser (6th volume), and once each by červenka alone (8th volume) and sgallová alone (9th volume). for ideological reasons, sgallová and červenka were not allowed to continue their scientific activities professionally in the 1970s and 1980s. working meetings in warsaw in this period were for them the only forum for scholarly discussion. cooperation with the warsaw circle continued in a freer atmosphere after 1989. in the 1990s, institutional patronage of the institute of czech literature enabled květa sgallová and miroslav červenka to revive their efforts to use computers for verse research and gave birth to the online metrical database thesaurus českých meter 1795–1825 [thesaurus of czech metres] (http:// isis.ucl.cas.cz/?form=cme). červenka’s opus kapitoly o českém verši [chapters on czech verse] (2006), posthumously edited by květa sgallová, is a synthesis of their joint efforts. its postscript (2012) is sgallová's most recent article on long trochaic verses; červenka originally intended it as a part of his book, but never wrote it. sgallová’s collection o českém verši [on czech verse] – whose title echoes the title of červenka’s book mentioned above – brings together her essential works on czech verse. only occasional articles, scholarly reviews, and a few 124 jakub říha studies were left out. this collection omits one early work “on a probabilistic model of czech verse” (1967, together with miroslav červenka), which was described by the author herself as “a blind alley” and was already problematically received at the time of its release. furthermore, works with more than two authors were probably omitted (i write “probably” because the book formulates its selection criteria quite vaguely). these are the very inspiring study “rhyme, stanza, and rhythmic types” (1973, co-authored by miroslav červenka, stanislava mazáčová, and pavel vašák), investigating the distribution of rhythmic types (i. e. the configurations of accents in verses) within a stanza (namely a quatrain), and a chapter from the sixth volume of smp (2006, co-authored by miroslav červenka and petr kaiser). the reason for omitting the chapter “přízvukový rytmus v krátkých rozměrech českého verše” [accentual rhythm in czech short metres] from the eighth volume of smp (2004, co-authored by miroslav červenka) remains unclear. the book is divided into five sections. the last one is the only one with a title – “studies from the volumes of smp co-authored by miroslav červenka”. it occupies 3/5 of the book, and i will address it later. the first four sections are identified only by numbers; the principle behind their delimitation is not specified. the first section contains two papers focused on the use of computational technology for processing and analyzing metrical data (punch cards), and presenting it in an online database. the second section summarizes studies dealing with the czech accentual-syllabic metres (a comparison of the distribution of phonetic words [speech measures] in verse and in prose; the function of monosyllabic words in czech accentual-syllabic verse; the characteristics of czech trochaic verse; long trochaic verses in czech poetry). these works mostly come from the mid-to-late 1960s and the early 1970s, and can be considered as preparatory studies for a chapter on the rhythmic vocabulary of czech verse in the first volume of smp. the last study of the second section discusses the quantitative metres of the czech national revival. it is exceptional within this section both for its purely historical focus, and for the fact that it was originally published in the ninth volume of spm (2011). the third section focuses on analyzing the verse of individual authors. it consists partly of a comprehensive analysis of individual verse technique (jan kollár, františek hrubín’s children’s verses) and partly of an analysis of a single feature (non-metricality in k. h. mácha’s verse). the section closes with a survey of czech accentual-syllabic translations of heine’s tonic verse in the 19th century. the fourth section is reserved for studies dealing with rhyme. rhyme is květa sgallová’s key topic. one can find an unusually extensive chapter dedicated to research on rhyme quite soon into her work: in her thesis on declamatory verse (pp. 95–109). her program paper – delivered at a verse-theory conference in 125summa versologica brno (1966) – set out the areas for exhaustive research into (czech) rhyme, which until then had occupied a marginal position within research on czech verse and had been studied in a way that lacked the needed methodological sophistication (the chapter on rhyme in josef hrabák’s prominent verse-theory handbook is one of the weakest in the entire book). other studies in this section are devoted to problems special to czech rhyme: the relation of rhyme with the grammatical structure of the czech language, vocalic quantity in rhyme, and the forms and function of rhyme within the poetry of the czech national revival. the section’s last study offers a comprehensive analysis of the rhyming technique of leading czech avant-garde poet vítězslav nezval. the last section, as i mentioned earlier, summarizes the chapters on czech verse – co-authored by miroslav červenka – that were originally published as part of the smp volumes. this section comprises these chapters from the first five volumes of smp: i. słownik rytmiczny i sposoby jego wykorzystania (1978); ii. organizacja składniowa (1984); iii. semantyka form wierszovych (1988); iv. wiersze przekładu. mickiewicz i puszkin (1992); v. sonnet (1993). a chapter from the ninth volume (heksametr. antyczne wzorce wiersza i strofy w literaturach słowiańskich), covering czech versification’s adaptations of classical quantitative metres and stanzas, was included in the third section, as mentioned above. in the preface, the author presents her sole selection criterion: the section comprises “articles focused on the relationship between the system of language and that of verse” (p. 7). but this actually holds true only in the case of the first two volumes, exploring the bidirectional relationship between language (on the one hand its rhythmic structures, on the other hand its syntactic structures) and verse. on the contrary, the focus of the third through the fifth volume is generally on the “sign function” of metrical units (cf. l. pszczołowska, “słowiańska metryka porównawacza...,” p. 166). extracting the texts from their original context – comprising mainly a methodological introduction and an (english) summary comparing the results from individual chapters – has deprived them of a comparative and general perspective, but it has not in any way weakened the author’s interpretation of the principles of czech verse. however, any person interested in the comparative dimension will have to still reach for the original volumes. the methodological and theoretical principles for the research into a particular area are comprehensively formulated at the beginning of each study, after which extensive sets of verses (mostly accentual-syllabic verses from the 19th century) are examined pursuant to these principles. each article is oriented towards a typological generalization and/or historical synthesis. regarding the research into czech verse, the immense quantity of material processed – unprecedented until then – should be emphasized. the articles in the last section are the 126 jakub říha cornerstones for our current knowledge of the czech accentual-syllabic verse of the 19th century, and we can only regret that the two remaining chapters were not included. the book reviewed here summarizes texts that originated over the course of nearly fifty years. naturally, as these studies come from such a long period of time, they illustrate transformations of terminology and methods, and perhaps even their fadings into obsolescence – especially where they are linked to the rapidly evolving area of computing technology. for this reason, some of them can not be regarded as relevant today (e.g. punch cards). yet their publishing can still be regarded as useful, either because they document the history of the discipline and manifest its continuity, or because they contain a wealth of valuable and inspiring observations and insights, untarnished by the passing of time. the merit of the volume under review consists mainly in how it collects and provides a new presentation for texts scattered throughout journals and anthologies. together with červenka’s chapters..., sgallová’s book defines what has been done in the last half century in the field of czech verse theory. and what, despite the admirable diligence of both researchers, has not. the nearly exclusive focus on accentual-syllabic verse caused the vast area of czech syllabic verse (the 9th–18th century in the history of czech verse) to be disregarded. also one of the four traditional areas of verse research – stanzaic forms – has remained on the periphery of interest. likewise, although the area of czech rhyme has been sgallová’s reigning topic, it has failed to be crowned with a synthetic work (as sgallová herself complained in the interview with robert kolár). i do not mean these facts as criticism, but rather as a challenge for current researchers. almost half a century passed since the publication of květa sagllová’s debut. on czech verse is only her second book so far. her work in the field of czech verse is presented through these two publications in relative completeness. and it is a body of work that deserves our recognition.2 2 this study was created within the framework of the program for the long-term conceptual development of the research institution no. 68378068. this study is a result of the research funded by the czech science foundation as the project ga čr ga15-19820s “the metrical structure of neruda’s verse”. the sources of the czech literary bibliography research infrastructure (http://clb.ucl.cas.cz) were used throughout this study. versification at the 2015 aseees convention (november 2015, philadelphia, usa) barry p. scherr*1 in 2015, as in 2014, there were two panels on verse theory at the annual convention of the association for slavic, east european and eurasian studies (aseees), which was held in philadelphia. the following remarks are devoted to those two sessions. it should also be noted, however, that during the several days of the conference several hundred panels were held and more than 1000 individual papers were read, dealing with all fields related to the study of central europe, russia, and eurasia. among those panels were several individual papers that touched on aspects of verse theory, particularly at a session dealing with the poetics of translation. on the whole, then, there was a greater level of interest paid to poetics in 2015 than at most other aseees conferences over the past decade. the first of the panels that focused on verse theory, “russian poetry: forms and functions”, began with a paper by michael wachtel, of princeton university, on “the problem with hypermetrical stress.” he noted at the outset that scholars have for the most part not accounted for hypermetrical stress in their statistical analysis of verse, even though they recognize that it can have a significant impact on the rhythm. he then provided several examples of poems in which hypermetrical stress either creates variation in the rhythm or complicates the perception of meter, citing instances in works by khodasevich, tsvetaeva (who, as many have observed, makes extensive use of hypermetrical stress) and gippius. for instance, in the case of tsvetaeva’s «читатели газет» hypermetrical stress plays an important role in imparting variety to the poem’s otherwise insistent iambic trimeter rhythm. special attention was paid to «что есть грех?» by gippius. the iambic rhythm that characterizes the poem as a whole does not become clear until the third stanza; indeed, thanks to omission of stress on the second, sixth and eighth syllables along with the presence of hypermetrical stress on the first syllable, the first line (“грех – маломыслие и малодеянье”) is more readily perceived as dactylic tetrameter with omitted stress on the third ictus. line 5 has exactly the same stressing as line 1, while the remaining six lines in the first two stanzas are stressed only on the * author’s address: barry p. scherr, dartmouth college, russian department, 6085 reed hall, hanover, new hampshire 03755-3562. e-mail address: barry.scherr@dartmouth.edu. studia metrica et poetica 3.1, 2016, 128–131 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.06 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.06 129versification at the 2015 aseees convention fourth and tenth syllables and thus also can be seen as dactylic rather than iambic. wachtel’s more general points were twofold: first, that verse scholars need to pay greater attention to hypermetrical stressing when describing the rhythmical tendencies of russian verse, and, second, that the broad statistical data, in and of themselves, are not always adequate to describe what occurs in specific poems. barry scherr (dartmouth college) then gave a paper titled “to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure”. he examined the ways in which the formal qualities of a poem may vary depending on whether and how frequently a graphic division between rhyme units appears on the page. one aspect of this issue arises when a rhyme pattern is repeated within a stanza: for example, is a stanza rhyming ababcdcd in fact two abab quatrains that have been arbitrarily joined together, or does it exhibit additional formal qualities indicating that, structurally, it is indeed an integral eightline stanza? a related problem concerns poems in which a rhyme scheme is repeated throughout the poem, but there are no graphic divisions into discrete stanzas. do a poet’s poems written in stanza form differ from those written without breaks between the rhyme units? the presenter noted that his paper offers only a preliminary discussion of these matters and that further research will be required to draw broadly applicable conclusions. however, he found that in the cases he had examined poets tended to use additional formal means to underscore the structural integrity of the stanzas created by the divisions on the page. additionally, when poets use repeated rhyme units but do not make graphic divisions between stanzas, they appear to create more varied structures and to experiment more radically with verse forms. the third and final paper at this panel, “a hypothesis for the semantic structure of verse”, was given by elena vladimirovna uryson of the russian language institute at the russian academy of sciences. she pointed out that the repetition of lexical components in verse occurs not randomly, but in such a way as to underscore the semantic coherence of the text. of particular importance in this regard are the strong sets of semantic components, with a “strong set” defined as containing at least one strong component. to be strong, a component must either appear in a semantically strong verse position (such as by occupying the end of a verse line or violating the usual word order in some way) or in a semantically strong syntactic position (such as the end of a sentence). uryson emphasized that these semantic repetitions involve lexemes rather than words as such. that is, different words that refer to the same notion will register as lexical repetitions. after her introductory remarks she presented a detailed analysis of a brief poem for children by agniia barto, «идет бычок, качается...», pointing out the semantically strong positions in 130 barry p. scherr each of the work’s four lines and then listing the repeated components. she concluded by pointing out that a prose presentation of the poem would lead to the perception of only the “objective content”. in perceiving verse, on the other hand, the mind grasps the repeating elements, so that a sequence of strong semantic components influences the comprehension of a poem and the entire complex of such sequences creates a poem’s “lyrical mood.” the second versification panel was titled “slavic verse: analysis and taxonomy”. petr plecháč, from the institute of czech literature, czech academy of sciences, opened that session with a paper titled “19th-century czech verse”. his talk was based on a computer analysis of the corpus of czech verse that explored the features and development of trochaic verse with feminine endings. he first described the metrical features of this verse, where the weak positions are always unstressed and the strong positions arbitrarily stressed, and then outlined developments in this verse from 1710 to 1920. in particular, he singled out trends during the period when romanticism was predominant, noting that the frequency of irregular line endings became significantly higher at the time. he observed as well that isosyllabic rhymes peaked early in the 19th century, before decreasing. in the latter part of his paper plecháč illustrated the way in which computer analysis of formal features can be used to examine questions of authorship. there has long been a suspicion that jan neruda in fact wrote a book attributed to his contemporary, josef barák. in 1960 an examination of the two writers’ style, based on sentence length, found significant differences. however, a recent comparison of their work in trochaic verse with feminine endings revealed that the two have a very similar style. while the results do not prove that neruda was in fact the author, they do point to that possibility and suggest that the 1960 findings were not definitive. the second paper at the panel, “how to differentiate meters in nonclassical verse”, was given by tatyana vladimirovna skulacheva, from the russian language institute at the russian academy of sciences. she began by remarking that while certain words in russian are never stressed and others have a single fixed stress, the class of words that are “ambiguously” stressed has been the cause of the greatest difficulty in dealing with non-classical verse. in classical verse, these words are considered stressed when they fall a strong position according to the metrical scheme and as unstressed when they fall on a weak position. she then pointed to a couple of ways in which these ambiguously stressed words are to be handled when they appear between stressed words in non-classical verse. if the ambiguously stressed word appears within a long interval of unstressed syllables, then it may be regarded as carrying a stress. conversely, if there is no interval between such a word and a 131versification at the 2015 aseees convention stressed syllable, then the ambiguously stressed word should be considered as unstressed. skulacheva briefly discussed the differences among various kinds of non-classical verse (dolnik, taktovik, tonic verse , accentual verse and free verse), and as an example of how to deal with stress in non-classical verse she provided an analysis of khlebnikov’s «как стадо овец мирно дремлет...». oleg mikhailovich anshakov, from the russian state university for the humanities, gave the final presentation at this panel. his paper was titled “can verse study become an exact science”? he outlined the conditions for arriving at scientifically rigorous results in a field such as verse studies, and pointed to the value of collaboration, in which verse scholars can bring their expertise to the issues involved while mathematicians can bring their sophistication in dealing with statistics. working individually is difficult; for instance, verse scholars would either have to obtain a thorough knowledge of the necessary mathematics, or they would need to work with experts in statistics. at the same time, collaboration poses its own challenges, since each field has its own approaches to particular problems. a significant moment occurred in the 1960s, when the prominent mathematician, andrei kolmogorov, pursued an interest in verse studies. within the department of probability theory at moscow state university he led a seminar that included both philologists and linguists as well as mathematicians, thereby making possible important collaborations and providing philologists and linguists with the background needed to apply statistical approaches in a knowledgeable way. meanwhile, kolmogorov himself wrote wrote a series of articles on russian verse that have now (in 2015) been published in a collection edited by his frequent collaborator, aleksandr prokhorov. the use of statistical methods in these articles provided general methods for constructing theoretical models of various meters and was based on the notion that verse rhythm is subject to basic statistical laws, which can be calculated by using probability theory. the chief problem in finally making verse an exact science remains the complexity of both the entities that are being analyzed in verse and of their relationship to each other. the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot suren zolyan* abstract. the plot can be considered as the content, as well as the pattern of semantic organization of the text. in this regard we suggest making a distinction between deep and surface levels of the plot. in respect to the armenian epic the daredevils of sassoun this distinction provides real opportunity to reveal the integrity and coherence of the epic viewed as a unified set of all of its various branches, versions, episodes and even variants, – despite that, on the surface level, the cohesion between and within the various branches of the epic is rather weak. the underlying semantic structure is based on two associated axes (patrilineage – matrilineage; patrilocality – matrilocality) and two fundamental oppositions (masculine – feminine; own – alien). the deep plot of the epic can be understood as a representation of the transition from the matrilineal (matrilocal) system in its radical form (denying men’s role in childbirth) to the opposing radical patrilineal system denying women’s role in its absolute and, therefore, tragic form (denying continuation of life). the well-known lévi-straussian quasi-algebraic formula of the semantics of myth can be used as an instrument for examining a formal representation of this plot. key words: armenian epic, daredevils of sassoun, epic as multisemantic and multidimensional set of semantic varieties, deep and surfaces structures of the plot, lévistraussian formula and its application for epic. 0. the armenian heroic epic the daredevils of sassoun is an outstanding poetic work which is reasonably associated with the very spirit of the armenian people and its historical destiny. on 5 dec 2012 the epic poem the daredevils of sassoun was included on the unesco intangible cultural heritage list. despite the fact that it was recorded in a relatively late period,1 * author’s address: suren zolyan, national academy of sciences of the republic of armenia, institute of philosophy and law, yerevan 0010, republic of armenia, 44 aram str. e-mail address: surenzolyan@gmail.com. 1 the epic was orally transmitted over the centuries (approximately from ix century), and it was only recorded for the first time in 1873 by bishop g. srvandzatyan. however, there were some earliest references to the epic made by the portuguese traveller mestre afonso (xvi century) and the kurdish historian sharaf khan bitlis (xvi century) – see harutiynyan 1977: 619–620; 626–628. studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 55–67 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.04 mailto:surenzolyan@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.04 56 suren zolyan immediately after its recognition the poem had a great impact on the armenian mind, literature and ideological patterns. the main heroes of the epic, especially the central hero – david of sassoun –, are considered as everlasting symbols of armenian identity. even during the latest presidential elections one of the candidates used this epic as a political platform for his presidency. however, the curiosity of that fact reflects the highest degree of embodiment of these heroes even within the everyday ideological patterning of modern armenia. 1. such a close connection between the epic poem and the current state of affairs demonstrates the obvious impact it has on perception. like the legend of hayk, the poem is considered mainly from patriotic stance – as a victorious fight of the armenian people against foreign invaders for independence, identity, religion, and the very existence. on the other hand, the traditional philological approach is concentrated on revealing the manifestation of historical data in the poem: of course, having some historical facts as grounds, the poem transformed these facts in to narrative or poetic folklore patterns. the third direction is the comparative etymological analysis of the poem, which is oriented towards the explication of the mythological genesis of main characters. 2. however, the epic is worthy enough to be studied for itself – not as a sometimes incomplete and controversial reflection of other systems (historical or mythological), but as a coherent, comprehensive and consistent self-sufficient semantic system. paradoxically, there have been very few attempts to study this poem as it is – first of all, as a poem and a text, which should be studied by the methodological means of poetics and text-linguistics. to some extent this lacuna was examined by azat eghiazaryan (eghiazaryan 1999; 2009; see also: bardakchyan 2011, lint 2011). we, too, will focus on the poetics of the poem, but, in comparison with a. eghiazaryan, our study intends to represent the structural aspects of the poem and its inner semantics. the application of modern conceptions and methods of text-linguistics and semiotics of text allows us to identify the structural consistency of the poem and to view it from a new perspective. this approach will thus aim to reveal the deep formal semantics of the poem. 3. however, there is a serious obstacle which comes to question – are the methods of text-analysis applicable to the epic poem? and, if they are, to what extent and how? as a matter of fact, there is no complete text of the 57 daredevils of sassoun2 – usually, such function is performed through the composite text compiled in 1939 by the prominent scholar of armenian folklore and literature manuk abeghyan with the assistance of gevork abov and aram ganalanyan. of course, he completed his work by combining different versions and episodes within a consistent fabula in the best way he could manage. but in any case, it is a philological reconstruction, not the original story. on the one hand, one cannot find any version that includes all four branches, as it was represented only in abeghyan’s composite text. on the other hand, there are many very interesting episodes and details that were excluded from it. however, we do not intend to evaluate the work as perfectly accomplished by m. abeghyan and his colleagues – up to date it remains unchallenged. our main objective is to study all existing versions and to reveal the inner organization of different variants and the deeper semantic cohesion even between non-connected versions and episodes. 4. first of all, such an approach presupposes a new way for considering text and the mechanisms of its structuring and functioning. we have to abandon the traditional mode for treating text as a linear concatenation of episodes interconnected through causal and temporal interrelations. for us, one should distinguish text as a ready product and text as a generative model for creating such products. the usual literary works create the illusion that there is that complete and final version, which is the text itself, and all the other versions are non-perfect attempts in the process of drafting the last and best version. however, such an approach is not applicable to folklore text, especially to mythology. so it was myth that was used for introducing a new way of textanalysis. in his pioneer work, “the structural study of myth”, lévi-strauss 2 there are about 160 versions and episodes which were recorded and published in the 19th and 20th centuries. a scholarly edition of the collection of different versions was published as a four-volume work in five parts (vol. i, 1936; vol. ii, part 1, 1944 and part 2, 1951; vol. iii, 1979; and vol. iv, 1999, all in yerevan, publishing house of the academy of sciences of armenia). even at the very beginning of recording this poem, there were serious difficulties to find narrators who knew a more or less complete story. as bishop g. srvandzatyan mentioned in preface to the first publication (1873): for three years i tried to find somebody who knew the entire story, but nobody seemed to know all of it until i met gurbo from a village on the moush plain. i learned that his master had two pupils who also knew the tale by heart, singing verses in it, although gurbo himself had not recited it for so long that he had forgotten a good deal of it. nevertheless, i kept him with me for three days, i begged him, cajoled him, honored him, rewarded him, and when he felt better and was in the proper mood, he recited the tale for me in his own village dialect, and i wrote it all down in his own words. the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot 58 suren zolyan suggests to consider myth as multidimensional structure, like a musical text,3 where the linearity of the speech is overcome by semantic and structural means. on the semantic level text can be considered as a model for creation of different compositions and it should be interpreted as a set of interconnected possible worlds. in the case of the epic the daredevils of sassoun it is possible to describe some configurations of relations, structures and meanings which can be considered as a deep template for certain semantic models. the semantic model is a set of basic semantic objects, events and relationships which are reproduced in different ways in various branches, versions and episodes. the variations and transformations of the same semantic model appears as a manifestation of the same deep structure in the text of epic poem, where epic is understood as an ordered set of all semantic variants. 5. now, after recent development of text-linguistics and modal semantics it is possible to give solid linguistic grounds for the lévi-straussian ideas about myth as a multidimensional non-linear structure (and even more, his idea that myth is considered an instrument for overcoming the linearity of time). in our previous publications (zolyan 1991; 2012; 2013) we tried to describe the inner formal structure of the text from the same viewpoint. in brief: when referring to the semantics of text, its substantial distinction from the semantics of other units should be taken into consideration. unlike an utterance, text does not have fixed pragmasemantics, i.e. its dependence on a certain communicative context. herewith, text is liable to semantization assuming a correlation with the other domains of reference (possible worlds). it presupposes the description of text as relations (functions or correlation mechanism) correlating a set of possible worlds (some state of affairs) with a set of possible contexts, whereby such worlds and contexts in which the value of constituent utterances acquires the value of “true”. text thus acts as a peculiar analogy of the concept of a model and of model structure in modal logic (kripke 1963); that is, it is a procedure of correlating propositions and possible worlds within this or that model structure formed by the text itself, as well as within the correlation of contexts where the text is actualized. it is noteworthy though, that leo tolstoy approached the idea closely and expressed it through a fine metaphor (about his novel anna karenina): “endless labyrinth of linkages” (tolstoy 1876). text value is chiefly polysemantic, and the metaphor comes to elucidate that the novel semantics cannot be reduced to even a very complex linear structure. instead it should be understood as an infinite set оf possible 3 “the myth will be treated as would be an orchestra score perversely presented as a unilinear series and where our task is to re-establish the correct disposition” (lévi-strauss 1955: 432). 59 interpretаtions – transworld relations. such an approach has been replacing the traditional notion of text, which defines text as a verbal composition, isolated from the other compositions through definite and easily recognized boundaries (beginning – end of the text) 6. from this point of view, in the case of the daredevils of sassoun the set of possible interpretations is given, but not as a different reader’s responses – this set is formed by the different versions of the main semantic template. so, it does not matter whether there is such a thing as a final version of the text, but the main issue is – to what degree it is possible to consider all the versions as transformations of the same underlying structure. are the textual worlds of different versions compatible with each other, and what types of semantic relations are set up between them? the consistency should be established both within the textual structures and between them, taking into account the paradigmatic cohesion between different versions of the poem. from such a theoretical stance the epic the daredevils of sassoun can be considered a proper instance of text, which has not been reduced to any one of its occasional manifestations (composition of branches. episodes, stances, etc.), but, let’s repeat, as an “endless labyrinth of linkages”. however, such linkages are not chaotic and voluntary, and have their inherent logic that maintains the construction as a whole. 7. two approaches to a plot are possible: one addresses a plot as an ideology, and the other, as a form of text organization. the first is visible to both the author and the reader, while the second is not obvious and can only be uncovered through meta-textual analysis. it is not so much content but the semantic form that organizes content as such. this situation calls for a linguistic analogy: these aspects of semantics (content vs semantic form of content) appear as its surface vs. deep levels (structures). the surface level of the plot is more ideological by its nature, it is what the reader is able to perceive immediately. the deep structure of the plot is a semantic frame or formal structure for bonding and organizing varieties of events and characters on the surface level. the deep level is unconscious and can be described only through meta-textual procedures. on this level meaning that can be assigned to the text appears to be invariant resulting from the surface transformations. this does not mean that the deep level expresses a deeper content; rather, it represents an invariant that is reflected at the surface level as a result of its reframing and transformation. as it seems, the first time the distinction between deep and surface structures of text (without using such terms) was drawn by vladimir propp (1928a/b). in post-folklore literature invariant deep structures are characteristic features of the genre rather than individual texts, while in folklore, they are, as a rule, the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot 60 suren zolyan textual semantic structures inherited from the previous stage and organized as a semantic pattern of plot. as v. propp showed later (1959), it is especially evident at the stage of the transition from myth to epic, when the semantic systems of the previous stage turn out to be a form for expressing other content and mind, while retaining the system of previous oppositions. 8. this distinction between deep and surface structures has very interesting consequences for the epic – it shows rather strong degree of textual cohesion and coherence on the deep level regardless of a relatively low degree of coherence on the surface level. when applied to david of sassoun, this distinction makes it possible to see the integrity and coherence of the epic viewed as a unified set of all its various branches, versions, episodes, and even variants of the same episodes. thus, on the surface level, the cohesion between various branches (cycles) of the epic is rather weak and is maintained exclusively by the genealogy of the main characters (the character of the following branch is a son of the character of the previous branch), as well as due to the fact that all the events are connected with the same central locus (sassoun). inside the branches, the plot also is divided into a number of poorly interconnected episodes, which can be arranged and re-arranged rather freely; furthermore, significant variations and differences are evident between the existing versions of the epic. at the same time, the deep level shows exclusive integrity and cohesion, not only between the branches, but also between various fragments and variants of the epic. the factor holding it together as a sort of a carcass is the semantic pattern reflecting the structure of the archaic society and its transformations. this pattern is based on two associated, but not always coinciding, axes (patrilineage – matrilineage; patrilocality – matrilocality) and two fundamental oppositions (masculine – feminine; own – alien). 9. from this point of view diversity of the numerous versions is a great advantage for the aforementioned approach. the relatively late time of recorded epic provides an additional opportunity for emerging new variants. in the course of its functioning exclusively in the oral form, the text has permanently been subject to significant changes. the absence of fixation caused free variations of the basic thematic structures. various versions represent the possibilities of different developments of the same semantic structure. so, instead of the non-existing “original” text or the “true” version, there is a paradigm of the mutually interchangeable and complementary variants. syntagmatic connectivity of the plot is complicated and enriched by its paradigmatic dimension. for instance: there is no constant kinship between main hero david and his antagonist msra melik. in different versions msra melik appears as david’s 61 step-father, step-uncle, step-brother, or as the son of the step-mother of david and even as a bastard (շ ո ւ ն մ ե լ ի ք, shun melik’) – son of the lover of the second (young) wife of mher the lion (=david’s step-mother). however, we can reveal the main pattern (msra melik is david’s step-father or elder step-brother) and its various transformations. these transformations do not change the main invariant features, i.e. msra melik’s affiliation to the clan and locus of the matrilocal (second) wife of david’s father (mher the lion). on the surface level, only one of the possible relations can be chosen, i.e. either that of a step-father or step-brother, step-uncle, etc. but on a deep level, all the relations are possible should they meet the invariant features. so the same set of semantic entities is relevant on both levels – but on the deep level there is a conjunction of features and disjunction that takes place on the surface level. the other semantic features (first of all, ideological) can be combined with this deep invariant. ideological features should justify the inner alien relations between patrilocal sassoun and matrilocal msir, and this unsolved controversy on the observable surface level is interpreted as a patriotic or religious fight of armenian christians against foreign conquerors and/or idolaters. however, there are some ”non-patriotic” versions (f.e., narrated by arakel shakoyan from nor bayazet) – after his victory david left sassoun and moved to msir as a legitimate king4. so the ancient oedipus’s pattern of obtaining power has still 4 the same pattern of obtaining power is also presented in “ultra-patriotic” variant , but in this case david has rejected such option: մեր կասի. վորդի, սպանիր յեմ տղեն’ զմըսրա մելիք, զարար չկա, դուն ել իմ տղեմ ես, արի, ինու կնիկ առ’ թագավորություն մնա քի, մսըրն էլ թագավորություն արա, սասուն զաթի քոնն ի: դավիթ կ’ասի. յես մորե վոր ծնվեր եմ, գառնարատ եմ , <գառն անարատ> յես յեմ խալալ լեշ ձեր խարամ լեշերու չըմ խառնի: (mer kasi. vordi, spanir yem tghen’ zmysra melik’, zarar ch’ka, dun yel im tghem yes, ari, inu knik arr’ t’agavorut’yun mna k’i, msyrn el t’agavorut’yun ara, sasun zat’i k’vonn i: davit’ k’asi. yes more vor tsnver yem, garrnarat yem , <garrn anarat> yes yem khalal lesh dzer kharam lesheru ch’ym kharrni:) – the mother [of msra-melik] says, “my son, you have killed my son msramelik, no matter, you are also my son. let’s take his wife and will get msra-melik’s kingdom to you, as sassoon already is yours.” david answers, “since i was born from my mother i have been sinless (innocent) lamb, and i do not mix my pure (khalal) flesh with your dirty (kharam) fleshes (narrator mktrtich harutunyan from shatakh).” paradoxically the narrator uses both the islamic (khalal – kharam) and christian (sinless lamb) terms for designating purity and unputity. the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot 62 suren zolyan prevailed in this case. such cases are exemptions from the surface ideological level, but they are in line with general logic of the deep plot. 10. the scene of fight between david and msra melik is just an example for drawing distinctions between deep and surface semantic levels and functions of the same semantic elements within the different interpretative frameworks. it demonstrates that for the explanation of the isolated episode a general system should be constructed, and only within such framework all the components will obtain their meanings and functions. the semantic organization of the daredevils of sassoun is similar to the main principles of myth, which were described by lévi-strauss as follows: 1. if there is meaning to be found in mythology, this cannot reside in the isolated elements which enter into the composition of a myth, but only in the way those elements are combined…. 3. those properties are only to be found above the ordinary linguistic level; that is, they exhibit more complex features beside those which are to be found in any kind of linguistic expression” (lévi-strauss 1955: 430, 431). at the same time, lévi-strauss suggested there is a universal pattern of the mythological plot – it is a way of resolution of irresolvable contradictions. using the linguistic technique of structural analysis, lévi-strauss describes the dynamics of events as consequences of binary oppositions. it is due to them that the initial irresolvable semantic opposition still remains, but in a softer form – controversial, but not contradictory. the process of bringing together the most fundamental oppositions is mediation – finding the common ground within the binary oppositions and transition to the new pairs of less radical opposition. as a final step, the semantics and structure of the last opposition is something like a mirror’s reflection of the initial pair. according to lévistrauss, this process determines the underlying structure of any myth, and it can be modeled by quasi-algebraic means: finally, when we have succeeded in organizing a whole series of variants in a kind of permutation group, we are in a position to formulate the law of that group. it seems that every myth (considered as the collection of all its variants) corresponds to a formula of the following type: fx(a) : fy(b) = fx (b) : fa-1(y) where two terms being given as well as two functions of these terms, it is stated that a relation of equivalences still exists between two situations, when terms and relations are inverted, under two conditions: i.e. 1. that one term be replaced by its 63 contrary; 2. that an inversion be made between the function and the term value of two elements (lévi-strauss 1955: 441, 442). 11. of course, this formula should be used only as a carcass, or as a guideline which shows the direction of semantic operations. however, there is an astonishing correspondence between this lévi-straussian formula and the structural organization of the daredevils of sassoun epic’s content. maybe, vladimir propp’s theory can explain such strong correlation between deep semantics of the daredevils of sassoun and lévi-strauss formula: that is how the transition from myth to epic transforms the content system of myth, – meanwhile the system of semantic oppositions and categories which is inherited from the previous stage remains unchangeable and has been becoming a formal means of expression for the new content and new ideological patterns. as it was shown in the aforementioned example, the opposition ”matrilocality vs patrilocality” ceased to be realized for narrators and theirs audience, but it still remains actual as a structural bond for the new surface semantic oppositions: armenian vs turks (տաճիկ, tatch’ik); christian (խաչապաշտ, khachapasht, literally – worshipper of cross) vs idolater (կռապաշտ, kr’apasht; literally – worshipper of idol). 12. when we consider the correspondences between the epic and the lévistraussian formula, first of all, there is obvious compliance between the number of terms within the formula and the number of branches: it is an exceptional case, when the epic describes the activities of four generations, when in the other cases a maximum three generations are present (nekludov 2011). then, there is an ordered group of semantic oppositions which determine the gradual transition from the initial situation to its inversed form at the finality of the epic. the main pattern which has regulated the whole structure of the epic can be represented by the lévi-straussian formula fx(a):fy(b) = fx(b):fa-1(y), which is semantically interpreted in the following way: a: – + women; (feminine) b: + man (masculine) fx: + childbirth fy: absence of childbirth fa-1: absence of women the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot 64 suren zolyan the semantic matrix of the first branch can be described as: | + woman | | man | vs | + childbirth | | childbirth | it is formal representation of the matrilineal (matrilocal) system in its radical form (denial of men’s role in childbirth; progenetress tsovinar’s conception from water, her leaving husband’s home and return to father’s home; killing of the father by the sons; the emerging of sassoun house). the matrix of the fourth branch can be represented as the mirror inversion of the first5: + childbirth | | absence of women | vs + masculine | | absence of childbirth | (mher’s sterility and his capture in the cave; father’s condemnation – symbolic killing of his son6, mher’s killing (sometimes unmotivated) of women, the delivery of mher’s wife gohar’s dead body from her home to sassoun7; the end 5 as it was shown by james russell, there is strong mirror symmetry and inversion between initial and final episodes even on the surface level, and it is also represented by the timing: the timing of the ending of the episode of pokr mher is itself of a great interest in resolving the issue of the integrity of the epic as a single work. the action of epic opens on ascension day, when the maiden tsovinar goes out for a last walk on the shores of the lake van before being send away to baghdad in marriage the arab caliph. she is thirsty and drinks one-andhalf handfuls of a milky liquid that gushes from a phallic rock. nine months later the unequal twins, sanasar and baghdasar , are born: the former founds the fortress sassoun. at the end, mher is immured in his cave, which opens on the eve of ascension day… the action of the epic can thus be seen as taking place within the cycle of an archaic ring composition; and this is a strong argument for its narrative integrity as something much more intricate than a collection of different legends (russell, forthcoming; see also: russell 2007). 6 in some version mher cowardly killed his son hovhanes (narrator – sargis hakopyan from kavar) certainly, this episode is against the general line of the surface plot (mher’s father david condemns his son mher to be childless and immortal), but it completes the main deep scheme of the epic – the killing of father by his step son (initial situation) is replaced by killing of prodigal son by his biological father. 7 <մհեր > գնաց, մտավ իր տուն, տեսավ՝ կնիկ կո թախտին մեռեր է։ ձեռ էտու կնկան ձեռ, 65 of the history of the sassoun house: սասուն են ավիրն եր, վուր ավիրվավ: (sasun yen avirn yer, vur avirvav: – sasun was ruined and ruined – completely). it is the opposition to the first matrix the radical patrilineal and patrilocal system in its absolute, and, therefore, tragic form: denying women’s roles imply the ceasing of life. thus the semantic structure of the epic can be described as a gradual transition from the initial matrix of the first branch to its opposite mirror inversion, and that rather strongly correlates with abovementioned logics of mythological plot. the end of the epic – the imprisonment of sterile mher in the cave – can be considered a meditative form of a mythological thinking opposition: (life vs death) vs im-mortality the absence of death in association with the absence of offspring (that is, life) is the negation of both members of the opposition. thus, the incompatible members of opposition, life and death, are aligned in their inverted form. the absence of death is paired with the lack of offspring8, and the presence of offspring – with death9. it is easy to see that this opposition is a deep structure also for the above-mentioned semantic formula of epic, and, in its turn, this formula is its meta-manifestation. տեսավ՝ թուղթ մի կա էնտեղ, մեջ գրուկ. «քենե կը խնդրեմ՝ ինչ ժամանակ դու գաս, ինձի տեսնես, ինձի տանես սասուն, խանդութ խանումի կուշտ թաղես»: մհեր էլավ, էբարձ գոհարի մարմին, առեց, տարավ սասնա տուն. էկավ, տեսավ՝ հրողբեր մեռած. գերեզման շինեց, զգոհար խանդութի կուշտ թաղեց: <mher> gnats’, mtav ir tun, tesav՝ knik ko t’akhtin merrer e։ dzerr etu knkan dzerr, tesav՝ t’ught’ mi ka entegh, mej gruk. «k’yene ky khndrem՝ inch’ zhamanak du gas, indzi tesnes, indzi tanes sasun, khandut’ khanumi kusht t’aghes»։ mher elav, ebardz gohari marmin, arrets’, tarav sasna tun… gerezman shinets’, zgohar khandut’i kusht t’aghets’ – <mher> went into his house and saw that his wife who was lying on the couch had died. mher took her hand and saw the paper, where it was written: “i beg you – whenever you shall come to see me gohar. take me to the sassoon and bury near khandut khanum. mher took gohar’s body and set out for sassoun... he dug a grave next to khandut tomb, there inherited.” 8 ոչ ժառանգ կա ինձի, ոչ մահ ունիմ (voch’ zharrang ka indzi, voch’ mah unim) – i’ll have neither heir nor shall i have death. 9 իմ ցեց իմ անձից է, էդ իմ սերմն էր, որ ինձի սպանեց (im ts’yets’ im andzits’ e, ed im sermn er, vor indzi spanets’) – my moth is from my very own body. it is my very own seed that killed me. the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot 66 suren zolyan references bardakjian, kevork b. 2011. daredevils of sasun: poetics of an epic, by azat yeghiazaryan, trans. s peter cowe. in: middle eastern literatures 14, 3, 324–327. eghiazaryan, azat 2008. daredevils of sasun: poetics of an epic, trans. s. peter cowe. costa mesa, ca: mazda publishers. harut’yunyan, sargis 1977. hay zhoghovrdakan vepy [սարգիս հարությունյան։ հայ ժողովրդական վեպը]. in: sasna tsrrer [սասնա ծռեր]. yerevan: sovetakan grogh, 619–642. kripke, saul 1963. semantical analysis of modal logic i. normal modal propositional calculi. in: zeitschrift für mathematische logik und grundlagen der mathematik 9, 67–96. lévi-strauss, claude 1955. the structural study of myth. in: the journal of american folklore 68, 270, 428–444. lint, van theo m. 2010. review: daredevils of sasun: poetics of an epic, by azat yeghiazaryan, trans. s peter cowe. in: comparative literature studies 47, 4, 558–561. nekljudov, sergej 2003. tipologija i istorija v pamjatnikakh geroicheskogo eposa. in: the armenian epic “daredevils of sassoun” and the world epic heritage. 4-6 november, 2004 [=2003] tsakhkadzor. yerevan: national academy of sciences of armenia, 17–24. propp, vladimir 1928. transformacii volshebnykh skazok. in: poetika iv. leningrad: academia, 70–89. propp, vladimir 1928. morfologija skazki. leningrad: academia. propp, vladimir 1958. russkij geroicheskij epos. мoskva: gihl. russell, james 2007. the shrine beneath the waves. in: res, antropology and aesthetics 51. cambridge, ma, 136–156. russell, james (forthcoming). mithra in the epic of sasun: armenian apocalypse. in: proceedings of the conference on armenian apocalyptic. jerusalem: hebrew university of jerusalem. tolstoj, lev 1984. pis’mo l. n. tolstogo k n. n. strakhovu (jasnaja poljana, 1876, aprel’, 23 i 26). in: tolstoj, lev. sobranie sochinenij v 22 t., t. 18. moskva: hudozhestvennaja literatura, 784–785. zolyan, suren 1991. semantika i struktura poeticheskogo teksta. erevan: izdatel’stvo erevanskogo universiteta. http://muse.jhu.edu/results?section1=author&search1=theo m. van lint http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_literature_studies http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_literature_studies/toc/cls.47.4.html 67 zolyan, suren 2012. text as a multisemantic entity – a prolegomenon to formalization. in: international congress cultural polyglotism tо the anniversary of juri lotman’ s 90-th birthday tartu, february 28 – march 2, 2012. abstracts. tartu: university press, 57–62. zolyan, suren 2013. tekst kak mul’tisemanticheskij ob’ekt. in: čuždoezikovo obučenie xl, 2 (foreign language teaching 40, 2), 145–172. the daredevils of sassoun: the deep structure of the plot studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_2.indd towards the concept of semantic halo mikhail trunin*1 abstract: this paper is focused on the “semantic halo of meter” («семантический ореол метра»), one of the most recognizable, popular, and widely used concepts in russian verse studies. after the publication of kiril taranovsky’s article “on the relationships between verse rhythm and theme” (1963), in which the author addresses the issue by looking at the russian trochaic pentameter and deals with one particular rhythmic variation of the specific meter, most scholars who have adopted taranovsky’s perspective have overlooked this emphasis therefore effectively shifting focus from rhythm to meter. mikhail l. gasparov pointed out that “five semantic shades” are observed around trochaic pentameter. “these are (in the reverse order of relevance): night, landscape, love, death (triumphant or defied), and road”. from this perspective, the author analyzes osip mandelshtam’s poem “skilful lady of guilty glances…” (1934; «мастерица виноватых взоров…»). this poem has attracted a significant number of monographic studies; however, scholars have never examined the poem’s meter and its connection with the semantic halo of trochaic pentameter. keywords: semantic halo of meter; trochaic pentameter; poetic language; osip mandelshtam; kiril taranovsky; mikhail l. gasparov; history of science in memoriam aleksandr iliushin (1940–2016) 1. the “semantic halo of meter” is among today’s most recognizable, popular, and widely used concepts in verse study. it refers to the ability of specific meters – apparently not any meter, however, – to carry along specific semantic associations or evoke emotive frames. in other words, such meter will have a meaning of its own. as mikhail l. gasparov has put it, every verse meter, and at times its every variety, has a semantic halo of its own, which is made up of semantic shades (just as the overall meaning of a word is made up of it contextual meanings). these semantic shades are in fact clusters of associations evoked by prior uses of this meter in certain genres, in connection with certain subject matter, and in certain types of register. for the reader, a poem’s * author’s address: mikhail trunin, school of humanities, tallinn university, uus-sadama 5, m-320, 10120, tallinn, estonia; email: mikhail@tlu.ee. studia metrica et poetica 4.2, 2017, 41–66 https://doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.2.03 42 mikhail trunin meter works as a type of subtitle: it helps make predictions about the imagery, motifs, emotions and thoughts which it is built on (gasparov 1984b: 105).1 the historical trajectory of the concept, which is in itself captivating and revealing, was traced by maksim shapir in his article “the semantic halo of meter: the term and the concept” (1991). kiril taranovsky is credited with coining the phrase “the semantic halo of meter”. its emergence is bound to the appearance of taranovsky’s article, “on the relationships between verse rhythm and theme” (published only in russian in 1963), in which he addresses the issue by looking at the russian trochaic pentameter. since its publication, the meter, as indeed the article, has become a classic in how exemplary its treatment of the link between rhythm and content is. one should bear in mind that taranovsky’s article deals with one particular rhythmic variation of a specific meter. the scholar approaches the rhythmic and syntactic aspects of this verse form, discusses the position of the main word stress, and the emergence of regular word boundaries after the third syllable in the line, which is augmented by the typical location of verbs of motion. at the same time, most scholars who have adopted taranovsky’s perspective – including gasparov, who wrote mostly about the semantic halo of meter in general – have overlooked this emphasis, therefore effectively shifting the focus from rhythm to meter (cf. lotman 1995: 304–305). the present essay also looks at the semantics of the trochaic pentameter, with its certain rhythmic peculiarities which we address in the concluding part of the paper. in the first section i will give an overview of how trochaic pentameter developed historically and how it was studied, and then i shall offer an interpretation of the metrical semantics of trochaic tetramater which somewhat differs from taranovsky’s original vision. gasparov describes taranovsky’s work as “having given impetus to the lively scholarly developments in the field” (gasparov 1984b: 107, cf. also gasparov 1979: 282); shapir points out that coming to think in terms of “semantic halo of meter” “was reached […] by rediscovering what was long since discovered” (shapir 2015a: 402). according to gasparov, taranovsky, when studying the semantics of the russian trochaic pentameter, considered a number of poems composed in this meter (which are quite famous but rarely compared: “i go out alone onto the road” [«выхожу один я на дорогу…»], “here i am walking [sic!] along a wide road” [«вот иду (sic!) я вдоль большой дороги...»], “across the mountains, along dark gorges” [«по 1 translations from languages other than english are mine unless otherwise stated. 43towards the concept of semantic halo горам среди ущелий темных...»], “i am setting off on a journey, exposed for everyone’s gaze” [«выхожу я в путь, открытый взорам...»], “katiusha was coming on the shore” [«выходила на берег катюша...»], “the din has gone quiet. i have come onto the stage” [«гул затих. я вышел на подмостки...»] and so on) and showed that the meter and rhythm of the poem (including rhythmic and syntactic formulas) and its semantics (the “theme of the road”, both the real and the figurative road, “the journey on the road of life”) mutually converge. he argued that this connection was brought about primarily by the powerful impression that was made on readers and writers by the original model – lermontov’s “i go out alone onto the road” (gasparov 1979: 282). shapir notes that “the connection between the ‘patterns of rhythm and syntax’ of trochaic pentameter with its ‘theme of the road’ had been discussed academically before 1963 a number of times, including […] a study by taranovsky himself ” (shapir 2015a: 397). taranovsky had pointed to this connection already in his well-known phd thesis he had defended in 1941, later to come out as a monograph in serbia in 1953 (see taranovsky 1953: 274). besides, taranovsky refers to roman jakobson, who “expressed an opinion that the movement of the rhythm keeps pace with the poem’s thought” (taranovsky 2000: 374). jakobson touches on the semantic function of the trochaic pentameter in his czech monograph on the verse of the romantic poet karel hynek mácha, which he finished in 1937 and published in 1938. despite his sweeping general statement that “the connection between the metrical and semantic aspects of verse is far from being a general rule”, jakobson also points out that “in the framework of a given poetic tradition, there is a tendency to connect meters with a particular semantic sphere and emotional coloring” (jakobson 1979: 464–465). in particular, he stresses how “already in russian folklore this clearcut form is used for the depiction of the dramatic wanderings of strolling players (skomoroxi)”. he continues his idea: we encounter a folklorizing verse oriented toward trochaic pentameter in the xviiith century in sumarokov’s satirical poem “priletela na bereg sinica”, eloquently opposing a traveller’s impressions from abroad to the situation in his homeland. a peculiar cycle of lyrical mediations sharply interesting the dynamic theme of the road with the sorrowful, static motifs of lonely existence robbed of aspirations and leading to extinction begins in russian poetry with lermontov’s poem. lermontov (1841): vyxožu odin ja na dorogu (alone i walk out on the road) […]. 44 mikhail trunin tjutčev (1865): vot bredu ja vdol’ bol’šoj dorogi (thus i drag myself along a wide road) […]. a. blok (1905): vyxožu ja v put’, otkrytyj vzoram (i walk out on the way open to my gaze) […]. the poem of esenin written just before his suicide (1925): do svidanja, drug moj, do svidanja (farewell, my friend, farewell) […]. b. poplavskij, a young poet recently deceased (1936): sneg idet nad goloj esplanadoj. kak drev’jam xolodno nagim! im dolžno byt’ ničego ne nado. tol’ko by zasnut’ xotelos’ im (snow is falling on the bare esplanade. how cold the naked trees must be! perhaps they need nothing, they wish no more than to fall asleep) […]. without any doubt, the more recent poems reveal the operation of the order thematic, verbal, metrical and compositional models (that is the external relation), but the intrusiveness of echoes from this models is prompted by an internal relation, namely by the actual suitability of the meter for a certain imagery: verse structure becomes a direct component of symbolism; meter in itself gains meaning (jakobson 1979: 465–466). in his 1963 study, taranovsky on two occasions makes reference to jakobson’s article quoted above (see taranovsky 2000: 374, 381–382). in his letter to shapir from 12–14 june 1991 the senior scholar is quite explicit: he “didn’t really consider the link between the theme [of the road] and the rhythmic movement of the trochaic pentameter”, and “came across the link in jakobson’s major 1938 czech article” (see shapir 2015a: 399). after making an analysis of lermontov’s famous poem, “i go out alone onto the road”, where he develops his colleague’s line of thought, taranovsky concludes that it evoked not only a whole series of “variations on the theme”, in which the dynamic motif of the road is opposed to the static motif of life, but also a whole series of poetic meditations on life and death in the direct contact of a lonely individual with the “indifferent nature” (which is at times replaced with an indifferent urban landscape) (taranovsky 2000: 381). jakobson, however, was not the first “to trace the link between rhythm, syntax, and the semantics of this particular meter”, as shapir shows (shapir 2015a: 399). the evidence seems to suggest that osip brik was the first who pointed out the connection between the russian trochaic pentameter and the “theme of the road” during the discussion of his talk delivered at a meeting of the moscow linguistic circle on 1 june 1919. shapir made a transcript of the proceedings of this meeting in the late 1980s and quoted a relevant passage 45towards the concept of semantic halo in his article “the semantic halo of meter: the term and the concept”. igor pilshchikov published the proceedings of the meeting with an extensive commentary in 2017. brik’s contribution goes like this: about the trochaic pentameter it is interesting to note that it evokes a specific sort of association. see lermontov’s “i go out alone onto the road”, or blok’s “i am setting off on a journey, exposed for everyone’s gaze”, or tiutchev’s “here i am trudging along a wide road” (pilshchikov 2017b: 169). to be sure, brik did not introduce the “theme of the road” directly; he used a more general phrasing. still, all the three examples brik adduced were later repeated by jakobson (see above for quotation) and taranovsky, with reference to the former. however, while jakobson took an active part in the session of the moscow linguistic circle where brik’s talk was discussed – although he omits to acknowledge his colleague and forerunner in his work – taranovsky did not learn about brik’s observations before 1991’s insight coming to him from shapir. taranovsky was rather sceptical about how original these observations could be. he neglected the point about a possible thematic link between the poems of lermontov, tiutchev, and blok, as apparently the scholar thought the shared rhythmic pattern to be of larger importance. even this point, in taranovsky’s argument, is framed in this manner: “[brik] noted the tendency for weaker stress in the first ictus, while the second is fully stressed. the contrast is so dramatic that one cannot fail to notice it” (taranovsky’s letter to shapir of 12–14 june 1991)2. among writers and students of verse from the epoch of late 1910s – early 1920s, it was sergei bobrov, rather than brik, who mattered more to taranovsky from this perspective (see taranovsky 2000: 378, note 13; 402, note 44). later on, according to gasparov, taranovsky “expanded his scope, systematized his material, offered an explanation” and therefore elaborated “a new approach […] to the problem of the relationship between form and content in a poetic text” (gasparov 2000: 419). shapir is more sceptical in justification: he describes taranovsky’s contribution as “merely expanding the range of instances illustrative of the different aspects of the semantics of the trochaic pentameter”. as shapir, the radical polemicist, puts it: “taranovsky’s assemblage is quite far from being exhaustive” (see shapir 2015a: 398–399). this assemblage has been further expanded by other scholars, including those who are critical of taranovsky’s vision. thus, kirill vishnevsky, who once 2 photocopy of the letter from shapir’s personal archive courtesy of tataiana levina. 46 mikhail trunin claimed that “no element of verse has intrinsic semantic features” (vishnevsky 1977: 159), elsewhere broadens the corpus of trochaic pentameters to 168 texts, including five-foot-trochaic lines from poems with lines of variable lengths3, although he accounts for the larger share of the “lermontovian cycle” (taranovsky’s coinage) by reference to “particular historical circumstances”, including lermontov’s direct influence on the subsequent poetic tradition. in contradiction of sceptics, gasparov replies that this case is not of simple, direct, one-way influence, as “not only can a meter be a sign of a number of themes; a theme can be signified through a number of meters […]. in every meter, however, it tends to present itself in a somewhat modified mode” (gasparov 1979: 284; cf. tarlinskaja, oganesova 1986 and tarlinskaja 1989). defining the semantics of a meter is similar to defining the semantics of a word, so it can be ascertained by inductively selecting, grouping, and systematizing as many as possible instances of its use […]. in some cases subject matter comes to the fore, in others – emotive emphases (gasparov 1979: 284–285). summing up his argument about the making of a meter’s semantics, gasparov takes one step further in the analogy between lexical meaning of a word and the emergence of the semantic halo of a meter out of a range of semantic shades: no writer coins his/her own words; s/he receives them from the forerunners, marked by earlier usages; the writer’s success is about putting those earlier usages to his/her own end. similarly a verse meter, with extremely rare exceptions, can only be “someone else’s”, can only be received from forerunners […]. this is typical of how historical and cultural continuity works. we often use figurative phrases like “memory of the word”, “memory of the genre” etc.; there is no smaller reason to speak of “memory of the meter”, which in turn is also part of “cultural memory” (gasparov 2012: 12–13). in his article “dobroliubov’s art of verse”, aleksandr iliushin made his own contribution to compiling the corpus of trochaic pentameters with relevant semantics by pointing out two poems by nikolai dobroliubov (a famous russian literary critic, poet and revolutionary democrat). in these poems, 3 this is, strictly speaking, not entirely admissible, as when analyzing verse, most scholars leave out lines of poems of the same meter but with variable lengths, deeming them different in rhythmical terms. there are 137 instances of regular five-foot trochees to have been indexed – see vishnevsky 1985: 97, 99, 110–113. 47towards the concept of semantic halo trochaic pentameters are mixed with other meters. iliushin also added four more poetic texts featuring pure trochaic pentameters which had not been acknowledged before. the reference to lermontov’s source made in the ironic key is obvious “i am leaving pensively the classroom…” [«выхожу задумчиво из класса…»]. the other three texts contain build on the same set of motifs: life vs. death, travelling vs. sedentary life, love. such are “i have come to you, ardent with passion” [«я пришел к тебе, сгорая страстью…»], “the sun has cast its light on mountains’ summits” [«солнце осветило гор вершины…»], “you have fallen like the grass of the field” [«пала ты, как травка полевая…»] (see iliushin 1986: 27). the love motif merits special emphasis, as neither brik nor jakobson or taranovsky have highlighted it. as it is obviously present in a number of “lermontovian cycle” poems in the later poetic tradition, the semantics of the meter in question should be broadened to include extra motifs. gasparov points out the erotic element surfacing in its semantic halo beyond lermontov’s direct influence – it is rather driven by a generically elegiac tone: the theme of love is inherited from lermontov’s two poems: they shaped the theme which would surface, more often than others, in elegiac trochaic pentameters: landscape description (typically nocturnal, which is usually – and independently of lermontov – augmented by erotic motifs) and meditation on the life’s journey and on death (gasparov 1984a: 170). mihhail lotman, who spent considerable time working on the semantics of meter in russian poetry of the second half of the nineteenth century (predominantly in afanasy fet’s and nikolai nekrasov’s compositions), devotes one section of his work to trochaic pentameters. he remarks: a considerable proportion of elegiac poems in trochaic pentameters are built around a complex opposition (the so-called “ambivalent antithesis”) between the themes of motion vs. immobility, the temporal vs. the eternal, the disharmonious vs. the harmonized. typically in describing this semantic shade, only the theme of the road is stressed (although taranovsky highlights the antithesis of “motion” vs. “immobility”), but quite often the “lermontovian cycle” includes – even in trochaic pentameters – poems where the theme of the road does not surface (thus, for example, fet has an entire set of poems which follow closely lermontov’s elegiac frame and include such images as “night”, “stars”, “grave”, and even “oak”, but lack the motif of motion) while the theme of the road may appear in texts totally alien to lermontov’s tradition (as e.g. in most of nekrasov’s trochaic pentameters) (lotman 1988: 134–135). 48 mikhail trunin although gasparov did state that “the peculiar character of shaping today’s semantic haloes of meters does not yield itself easily to generalizations at present; it is alive and in flux, and has not yet become history” (gasparov 1984b: 111). in his major work (which, as he puts it, “must have offered a reconsideration of the central charges brought against the entire framework of studying semantic haloes of meters”) he singles out, for trochaic pentameter, five semantic shades which are more specifically construed than most meters considered earlier. these are (in the reverse order of relevance): night, landscape, love, death (triumphant or defied) and road (gasparov 2012: 368). one should bear in mind that this study analyzes “more than two hundred russian poems written in trochaic pentameters in the nineteenth century”. twentieth-century poetry is left deliberately beyond the scope of gasparov’s study; as the scholar explains, “the material is overabundant, singling out the ‘lermontovian tradition’ is easy, but describing how it relates to other traditions is significantly more difficult” (gasparov 2012: 336). the russian national corpus lists 1167 texts whose meter is indicated as trochaic pentameter and which, similarly to lermontov’s “i go out alone onto the road” has alternate rhymes, where the first line has a feminine clausula and the second line has a masculine clausula. 2. in what follows, i will discuss osip mandelshtam’s poem “skilful lady of guilty glances…” (1934; «мастерица виноватых взоров…», henceforth “masteritsa...”). anna akhmatova considered it “the best love poem of the twentieth century”, and tamara silman, who studied the poem’s multi-layered lexical semantics, described it as “belonging among the most powerful pieces of love poetry” by mandelshtam (see sil’man 1977: 164 ff ). this poetic work has attracted a significant number of monographic studies: as is typical in mandelshtam studies, every major poem is treated in at least a few articles. at the same time – and quite surprisingly – there has been no study of the poem’s meter. patriarchs of verse theory taranovsky and gasparov failed to address the topic despite their sustained interest in mandelshtam’s poetry, which they address in dozens of publications. taranovsky limited his discussion of “masteritsa...” by one remark (though an extended one) where he makes a few targeted points about the semantics of its meter: the poem “masterica vinovatyx vzorov” reflects mandel’štam’s brief infatuation with a young poetess, marija petrovyx, in 1934. […] the water in “masterica” has erotic connotations (for example, poluxleb ploti). this aspect of water symbolism 49towards the concept of semantic halo is frequently found both in western european poetry […] and in russian […]. the most puzzling problem of “masterica” is the fish imagery. […] fish became, in the poet’s imagery, an analogue of his human wishes: he asks his addressee to feed them with poluxleb ploti. in this poem, too, the water imagery is connected with the motif of death (“nužno [sic!] smert’ predupredit’, usnut’”). this is not surprising: the themes of water, dream (or sleep), and death are inseparable in poetry (see already in the first quatrain: utoplennica-reč). in the last quatrain, the poet calls his beloved: “ty, marija, – gibnuščim podmoga”. thus, he compares his beloved to the holy virgin hodigitria [sic! meaning hodegetria]. there are several famous icons of bogorodica-odigitrija (putevoditel’nica) in russia (taranovsky 1976: 149). as one can see, however, the key motifs i discussed in connection with the trochaic pentameter – love, death and road – are present here. another prominent student of mandelshtam’s poetry, yuri levin addresses the semantics of “masteritsa...” in a dedicated article; his discussion is now considered classic. the possible link between semantics and meter, however, is not discussed in levin’s study. this is all the more baffling as, firstly, levin made his own contribution to the elaboration of the concept of the “semantic halo of meter” (see levin 1982; i discuss this article below), and secondly, while looking at another poem by mandelshtam “we’ll sit awhile together in the kitchen” (1934; «мы с тобой на кухне посидим…»), the scholar remarked, making a reference to taranovsky, that “the ‘wanderer’s’ trochaic pentameter may have contributed” to the overall “vagabond mood” of the poem (levin 1998a: 26, note 9). it may be important also that the poem “we’ll sit awhile together in the kitchen” is written in a different variation of the trochaic pentameter – the one with masculine clausulae, while in his article taranovsky studied “trochaic decasyllabic verse (trochaic pentameter with feminine clausulae)” (taranovsky 2000: 373). see below the text of mandelshtam’s poem in full with its interlinear translation: 50 mikhail trunin мастерица виноватых взоров, маленьких держательница плеч, усмирен мужской опасный норов, не звучит утопленница-речь. ходят рыбы, рдея плавниками, раздувая жабры. на, возьми, их, бесшумно охающих ртами, полухлебом плоти накорми! мы не рыбы красно-золотые, наш обычай сестринский таков: в теплом теле ребрышки худые и напрасный влажный блеск зрачков. маком бровки мечен путь опасный… что же мне, как янычару, люб этот крошечный, летуче-красный, этот жалкий полумесяц губ… не серчай, турчанка дорогая: я с тобой в глухой мешок зашьюсь, твои речи темные глотая, за тебя кривой воды напьюсь. ты, мария – гибнущим подмога, надо смерть предупредить, уснуть. я стою у твердого порога. уходи. уйди. еще побудь. 13–14 февраля 1934 (mandelshtam 2009: 194). skilful lady of guilty glances, proprietress of small shoulders, [you] pacified the man’s dangerous spirit, drowned speech no longer sounds. fish move, flashing their fins, breathing with their gills. here you take them, with their silently groaning mouths, feed them with the half-bread of your flesh! we are not red-gold fish, our sisterly custom is this: thin ribs in a warm body and the vain, wet glow of eyes. the journey on the dangerous road is marked by the brow’s poppy-arch... so why am i, as a janissary, in love with this tiny, flying-red, miserable half-moon of your lips?.. do not be angry, my dear turkish girl: i will sew myself with you into a blind sack, swallowing you obscure speeches, i will drink my fill with wry water in your name. you, maria, are salvation for those who are about to perish, i need to sleep in order to forestall death. i am standing at the firm threshold. go away. just go. yet stay awhile. 13–14 february 1934 51towards the concept of semantic halo as gasparov notes, “the vocabulary shapes the semantics of a particular poem, while the meter creates a more general background of the semantic tradition against which we read it” (gasparov 1979: 283). is it a pure coincidence that mandelshtam should have chosen trochaic pentameter for a poem on unrequited love which clearly features the themes of journey on the road of life and death, and also incorporates a whole series of verbs of motion at the beginning of verse lines (“fish move”, “i am standing”, “go away. just go”)? in his analysis of the poem, levin notes that its vocabulary groups together into “quite distinct semantic fields” (levin 1998: 43). at the same time, the scholar underlines the fundamental ambiguity of mandelshtam’s text: everything in the poem performs a balancing act on the hardly perceptible borderline between the inner and outer worlds, between introspection and extraspection, which is the hallmark of its semantic structure (levin 1998: 36–37). according to levin, the key semantic nods of the poem are the mutually opposed themes of the “female” (with such attributes as being“weak”, “small”, “guilty”) and the “male” (with such attributes as being “dangerous”); the themes of muteness and the theme of the “underwater”, and of death, which is linked to the latter (levin 1998: 37). however, the scholar is mystified by the poem’s ending: the last lines [of the poem] brim with contradictions and uncertainties. what does it mean – after what has been said – “i need to sleep in order to forestall death”? does falling asleep mean “to die” or not? what is the “firm threshold” – salvation or death? (levin 1998: 39). mihhail lotman offers a number of corrections and qualifications to levin’s analysis; his insights, first published in 1982, were expanded 30 years later. giving an overview of levin’s argument, lotman points out that “[levin’s] article uses, implicitly yet coherently, the method of establishing semantic oppositions intrinsic to the text, [i. e.] the method developed by literary structuralism”. he also notes that “as a description of the semantic structure of mandelshtam’s poetry which defies any sort of unambiguity, such an approach can hardly be considered an adequate approach to the object” (lotman 2012: 130). as a more relevant lens, lotman offers 52 mikhail trunin the method of contextual and subtextual analysis developed by taranovsky. […] taranovsky builds on the assumption (or, rather, the programmatic statement by the akmeist poets) that words, as well as other meaningful elements of a poetic text, possess a sort of “memory” of their earlier usages, both in the poetic texts of the same writer and in the earlier literary tradition […]. the contexts of prior usages of a given word, though not manifestly present in the text, can retain relevance and have an impact on how its semantics is interpreted (lotman 2012: 130–131). lotman limits his discussion with the semantics of the vocabulary of mandelshtam’s challenging poem and omits to consider the meaning of its meter. lotman’s analysis and the “semantic map” of the poem he draws (lotman 2012: 134) contribute, however, to a clearer understanding of the semantic shades which have been already described by the scholars as intimately associated with trochaic pentameter. the three strands of the meaning of the poem which lotman puts into the centre of his “semantic map” are the intricately interwoven elements of “speech” (importantly, not any sort of speech but primarily a lie, untruth), “death”, and “water”. they all work towards the making of the distinctive semantics of trochaic pentameter. lotman concludes his analysis by stating that “the other semantic centre, which is not revealed on the lexical level, is love” (lotman 2012: 139). while not introduced directly, “love” turns out to be closely connected with “water”: […] particularly prominent are the contexts coming from the poems, to which [“masteritsa…” is linked with] other contextual allusions […]. no less important, somewhat surprisingly, are [mandelshtam’s] translations: “this is water ebbing” (from barbier) and “when the earth falls asleep and the sweltering day ends” (from petrarch). these are the relevant passages (italics added): water is inconsistent in speech, half-hard, half-sweet; how is it that one and the same beloved lady is double-faced? a thousand times a day, to my own astonishment, i must die, in reality… (“when the earth falls asleep” [«когда уснет земля и жар отпышет…»], 1934–1935). semantic motifs here are the same as in “masteritsa...”: water – speech – love – deception – death (lotman 2012: 132–133). 53towards the concept of semantic halo sofia poliakova draws attention to the same aspect of the semantics of water in the poem under consideration; she believes that “[mandelshtam’s] poem is entirely reliant on the erotic theme; its tragic trajectory is between ‘just go’ and ‘yet stay awhile’” (poliakova 1997: 100): water is symbolically ambivalent in poetry: it is simultaneously love, life, light, warmth, speech (as manifestation of life) and death, darkness, muteness (as manifestation of death), coldness (poliakova 1997: 92). concluding the discussion of the love theme, which remains practically unseen on the lexical level of “masteritsa...”, it is important to quote sergei averintsev’s judgement: “if we describe the elementary principles of mandelshtam’s poetics […], the ‘centre of gravity’ will move to the negative assertions; it is crucial what mandelshtam has not” (averintsev 1990: 213). shapir suggested one correction: “mandelshtam is predominantly characterized by what he has in small quantity” (shapir 2015b: 33). to sum up the scholarship thus far, we understand, at least to a certain extent, mandelshtam’s complex antinomy between love and death (both semantic shades are very important for russian trochaic pentameter). we may also added an (indirect) theme of the road: cf. taranovsky’s remark, where the line “you, maria, are salvation for those who are about to perish” (which is, inter alia, a paraphrase of the title of a famous church in venice santa maria della salute – see levin 1998: 44, note 27; taranovsky 1976: 149; taranovsky 2000a: 100) is interpreted as a reference to the icon image of virgin hodegetria (‘she who shows the way’ [«путеводительница»]): the second line of the last stanza (“i need to sleep in order to forestall death”) is not entirely clear. the “firm threshold” refers to a solidly made decision; the resolutely sounding line suggests it is a decision to forsake love. the author’s excited and doubting tone in the next line, however, speaks against this (poliakova 1997: 99). it is revealing that these words are the verbs of motion which are prominent in other poems by mandelshtam: [...] “go away” and “just go” form a natural connection in the semantic net. on the one hand, “ruining myself […] as moth flying to a midnight light, / i want to go away” (“to german speech” [«к немецкой речи»], 1932), or “how can i escape from this festive death?” (“venice life” [«веницейская жизнь»], 1920); 54 mikhail trunin cf. however “to stay for a while and to play with people!” (“stanzas” [«стансы» («я не хочу средь юношей тепличных...»)], 1935) (lotman 2012: 139). it is common knowledge in mandelshtam studies that his poetics is based on shifts: supplanting one nominal element for another (often a proper name: “not helena – another one” [«не елена – другая»]); on change (often motivated by phonetic considerations: “not salome, no, but a straw” [«не саломея, нет, соломинка скорей»]); and, on confusing or forgetting words (“i have forgotten the word i was about to say” [«я слово позабыл, что я хотел сказать»]). these are hallmarks of mandelshtam’s style. in “masteritsa...”, the poet follows the same strategy of concealing the central themes and placing them all into the subtext, disguising them through misguiding vocabulary: […] in such cases, it is useful to think in terms of a “semantic anagram” […]. thus, the semantic structure of the poem in question is to a large degree mapped onto the intersection of two oppositions: “life” vs. “death” and “truth” vs. “untruth”. however, the entire narrative and, consequently, the vocabulary is centred exclusively around the second members of the oppositions (lotman 2012: 139). lastly, we should always bear in mind the core feature of mandelshtam’s poetics; for him, not only is text the ultimate goal for the word, but the opposite is also true: the word is the ultimate goal for text. more than that: word is the ultimate goal for the entire enterprise of writing (lotman 1996: 61). in this light, the verse “the journey on the dangerous road is marked by the brow’s poppy-arch” [«маком бровки мечен путь опасный»] may be interpreted as a direct reference to the theme of the road, which bears all the relevant connotations of the semantics of the trochaic pentameter. as levin notes, “in terms of narrative development, the 5th [stanza of the poem] adds specificity to what has been said in the 4th [stanza] about the journey on the dangerous road: the journey proves detrimental […], as it has to do with the untruth” (levin 1998: 39). evgeny soshkin points out that this line simultaneously encrypts and stands for a number of idiomatic phrases which connote challenging one’s fate (i.e. a variation of life viewed as a road/journey): 55towards the concept of semantic halo the “brovka” [“brow/edge”] has a strong correlation with the “put’ opasnyj” [“journey on the dangerous road”] as implied in the idiom “khodit’ po brovke” [“to walk on edge”]. because of the “half-moon”, “janissary”, and the yataghan concealed in the “mechen” [“mech” – sword], the other hyponym of the same idiom is brought into equation – “run the blade” (soshkin 2015: 250). the very character of the poem’s ambiguous message comes as the ultimate intellectual challenge for the critics and scholars may have contributed to their partial neglect of the meter of “masteritsa...” this is also a characteristic example of how the two directions of research – studying the poetic text as a set of formal features, on the one hand, and as a complex semantic unity, on the other, – did not meet each other before. in his article on how petrograd and moscow formalists interpreted aleksandr potebnja’s concept of the “inner form of the word”, igor pilshchikov notes that “the polemics of the formalists against potebnja resulted eventually in the delineation of poetic semantics and verse semantics” (pilshchikov 2017a: 53). speaking about mandelshtam’s “masteritsa...” we can see, on the one hand, such scholars as taranovsky and gasparov, who deal with the semantics of verse forms and the concept of the “semantic halo” (at the same time both are experts in mandelshtam’s poetics). on the other hand, however, such prominent researchers as yuri levin and mihhail lotman analyze mandelshtam’s poem only from the point of view of its poetic semantics (meanwhile both are high professionals in verse studies). at the same time, let us emphasize that we are dealing with a poem in trochaic pentameter featuring the theme of a turbulent (“dangerous”) journey on the road of life, which is also apparently pernicious in its deathly manner. the latter is “not only opposed to the static theme of desperation of life, but also […] is furnished with other emphases, such as e.g. the theme of love [in our case unrequited. – m. t.] and separation” (taranovsky 2000: 391). 3. concluding his article, taranovsky asks a question of whether the link between meter and semantics is the one made “naturally” or “conventionally”. both theoretic possibilities were already formulated by jakobson: there are many cases where the same author uses identical metrical and strophic form in poems of entirely heterogeneous types, and of quite different emotional tuning and themes. on the other hand, in the framework of a given poetic tradition, there is a tendency to connect certain meters with a particular semantic sphere and emotional coloring […]. a particular poetic form can – either because of its origin or through mere convention – be so closely associated with a particular literary school, with a certain poetic genre, with a 56 mikhail trunin certain national or social background, that in a new use it evokes the impression of a kind of metrical quotation […]. the russian trochaic pentameter, a relatively rare form, juxtaposes two strong downbeats, especially strong because weak downbeats surround them (the first is preceded and the second is followed by them): —∪ —́∪ —́∪ —∪ —́(∪). certainly this sharp asymmetry, this brokenness of the rhythmical step, this vehement interruption of usual, regular periodicity, renders the meter especially appropriate for the theme of agitated walking (jakobson 1979: 464–465). according to shapir, taranovsky consistently failed to distinguish between the two. in the opening part of his article, the scholar submits that the “expressive haloes” take their shape “in different historical contexts across national literary traditions (either independently or under foreign influence)” (taranovsky 2000: 372); however, he – much to his own surprise – remarks in his conclusion: “it is impossible to account for all these facts exclusively in terms of influences and interactions. one faces the necessity to assume the existence of a whole range of convergent phenomena […] one has to make the assumption of a synaesthetic connection between the rhythmic movement of russian trochaic pentameter and the rhythm of human walking pace” (taranovsky 2000: 401; cf. shapir 2015a: 400–401). building on taranovsky’s insights gasparov refutes “organic” interpretations and has total confidence in the historical explanation: we will attempt to distinguish the metrical-semantical aspect of the problem from the rhythmical-semantical and to show that the “historical” explanation, which relies solely on the concept of literary tradition, is in itself sufficient and compelling (gasparov 2012: 336). i would argue, however, that in describing origins and functioning of a specific semantic halo it may be more productive to think in terms of “genetic (contact) influence” vs. “(typological) patterns of cultural memory”. in this regard, the subtitle of the major book by gasparov, where he attempts to draw a bottom line of years of research, is illuminating: meter and meaning. on one mechanism of cultural memory (1999). in closing of his article, taranovsky claims that “studying verse meter in connection with poetic semantics presents interest not only for theory and history of literature, but for semiotics at large” (taranovsky 2000: 403). the scholar never followed up on this statement of his; it gave rise, however, to a dedicated article by levin who treats the dynamics of historical developments 57towards the concept of semantic halo in a meter’s semantic halo as “a manifestation of one of the semiotic mechanisms of culture”: there emerges – by way of either invention or borrowing from another culture – a new cultural code, which is in principle semantically void. at the time of its birth and later on, however, it becomes “pregnant” with the meaning, which is typically brought about by the appearance of a chef-d’oeuvre model. a paradigmatic masterpiece which uses the code establishes itself as a prominent cultural fact. the subsequent use of the code presupposes – consciously or unconsciously – drawing on the semantics (subject matter) of the model. the code is not void and flexible anymore; it is increasingly filled with lexical and syntactical associations, it becomes “genre-bound”, it begins to functions as a “blueprint” or “subtitle”, and the combination of “the code + the meaning” is elevated to the status of a canon or literary template (levin 1982: 152–153). from this perspective, “masteritsa...” is part of a curious cultural puzzle. it is clear that, for the trochaic pentameter, lermontov’s “i go out alone onto the road” works as the chef-d’oeuvre model. a scholar approaching the issue from a historical vantage will focus on instances of lermontov’s direct impact on mandelshtam. this has been done in a large number of studies, among which most prominent are taranovsky’s discussion of the “concert on railway station” [«концерт на вокзале»] (with a direct allusion to lermontov in the line “and not a single star is speaking” [«и ни одна звезда не говорит»]) – see taranovsky 1976: 14–15; cf. also taranovsky 2000: 401, note 41), or the detailed analysis of the “slate ode” by omry ronen and gasparov, who find a direct allusion to the “i go out alone onto the road” in the line “the chalcedony road from the old song” [«кремнистый путь из старой песни»] – see ronen 1983: 13, 51, 61–62, 73–76, 147–148; gasparov 1995: 161–163, 175). at the same time, when approaching the poetic texts written in trochaic pentameters which form the so-called “lermontovian cycle” from the perspective of cultural universals, we notice that the corpus is heterogeneous. if anything, it is a hierarchic structure, with a few highlights which are placed, for one reason or another, at dominant nodes – in other words, they are widely known and highly representative of the semantics of the meter in question (it is hardly fortuitous that they tend to attract most scholarly attention). what are the texts that, apart from the tone-setting “i go out alone onto the road”, which can be counted as belonging here? at the very least, they are tiutchev’s “here i am trudging along a wide road”, blok’s “i am setting off on a journey, exposed for everyone’s gaze”, and pasternak’s “hamlet” (“the din has gone quiet. i have come onto the stage”). taranovsky readily included the latter into the list: 58 mikhail trunin even in the post-war poetry there is at least one poem which entirely belongs to the “lermontovian cycle” and which also, as it were, seals it off for our time. it is pasternak’s remarkable “hamlet” (taranovsky 2000: 400). this highlights how verses can interact with each other, though it is doubtful that one poet influenced another directly. so the theme of unrequited love is added to the trochaic pentameter by tiutchev, and mandelshtam’s poem follows this theme and can be put between blok and pasternak. on one hand mandelshtam writes the word “vzory” (“gazes”/“glances”) in the end of the line, as blok did earlier (cf. «выхожу я в путь, открытый взорам…» – «мастерица виноватых взоров…»); on the other hand, mandelshtam’s poem anticipates the shakespearian theme, which was added to the trochaic pentameter by pasternak. scholars had already noticed the shakespearian allusions in “masteritsa...” mikhail bezrodny mentions “why mandelshtam gave himself in to temptation of hamlet game” (bezrodny 1996: 129–131) and draws attention to the image of ophelia in the poem. oleg lekmanov makes the points: in mandelshtam’s works of 1930s the hamlet theme was […] unobviously continued in the poem “skilful lady of guilty glances” (1934) […]. in the last stanza of this mysterious poem a distinct reminiscence from hamlet’s monologue appears: “i need to sleep in order to forestall death” (cf. “to die, to sleep; / to sleep: perchance to dream”; act 3, scene 1), and in the first [stanza] there is a hint at ophelia: “drowned speech no longer sounds” (lekmanov 2005: 264–265). however, at no point is cultural memory seen as a mechanism for a cure-all. if we step back from the typological patterns to the historical point of view, one characteristic feature of the rhythm of trochaic pentameter is featured and deserves attention: its connection with the theme of the road. this was one of the key points of the observations made by taranovsky, specifically the caesura after the third syllable and the frequently skipped stress on the first ictus, which is motivated by the caesura. taranovsky draws attention to this point (see taranovsky 1953: 283–285): in a variety of poems written in trochaic pentameters the first line has a word boundary before the fourth syllable, which coincide with a cadence. in other words, such poems start from short (three-syllable) phrases consisting of two terms, for example “noch tikhá” [“the night is quiet”] (taranovsky 2000: 401–402). 59towards the concept of semantic halo this observation leads taranovsky to a hypothesis on a natural connection between the rhythm of trochaic pentameter and the theme of the road: “such ‘rhythmical footstep’ of verse really corresponds to an abrupt gait of a human being: as if somebody made one step (or three steps) and stopped for a fraction of an instant” (taranovsky 2000: 402). in 1982, mihhail lotman offers some remarks not only to levin’s analysis of “masteritsa...”, but also some corrections to taranovsky’s ideas about trochaic pentameter. as an example lotman takes maximilian voloshin’s poem “northeast” [«северовосток»] and draws attention to a constant word boundary after the third syllable. lotman insists on its literary thematic representation without any connection with a human footstep (see lotman 1982: 89–90). it was boris eikhenbaum, however, who was the first to point out this feature in lermontov’s poem. in his view the anapestic anacrusis bears more significance than even the caesura in the line’s opening: among his [lermontov’s] later poems there is one which, in terms of its metrical structure, is extremely rare in the poetry of his contemporaries and which, at the same time, tends toward melodious patterns. it is “i go out alone onto the road” […]. the rhythm in “i go out alone onto the road” features, first of all, a constant caesura: in all lines we see a masculine caesura after the second stress, which is constantly supported by the syntax. besides, in the poem […] the precaesura part of every line, due to a weak or omitted first stress, forms in most cases, as it were, the anapestic movement (∪∪—́: vykhozhu, skvoz’ tuman, i zvezda, v nebesakh etc.). alongside the strong caesura after the stress, this provides for a particular rhythmic impression (as if a combination of an introductory anapaestic foot with the iambic trimeter, i.e. ∪∪—́ | ∪—́ | ∪—́ | ∪—́ | ∪). interestingly, the word groups in the parts [of verse lines] after the caesura tend to [form] three-beat groups instead of iambic divisions: “odin ja | na dorogu” (32 + 43), “s zvezdoyu | govorit” (32 + 33), “v sijan’ji | golubom” (32 + 33), “tak bol’no | i tak trudno” (32 + 43), “ot zhizni | nichego ja” (32 + 43), “svobody | i pokoja” (32 + 43), “zabyt’sja | i zasnut’” (32 + 33), “sklon’alsja | i shumel” (32 + 33). the resulting sustained rhythmic parallelism makes for an entirely remarkable character of the trochaic pentameter (eikhenbaum 1922: 114–116). the same feature of the rhythm was also highlighted during the discussion of brik’s paper on 1 june 1919. this, as already noted, was the earliest venue where a case was made for a specific metrical halo of the trochaic pentameter: [ιvan] rozanov believes that it would be promising to study iamb in parallel with trochee. apparently, each meter’s nature comes out more conspicuously in 60 mikhail trunin comparison with another meter. it is interesting why there are so few examples of trochaic pentameter? it is also of note that the second stress in the trochee is most stable. thus, pushkin’s anacreontics show no instances of omitted stress in the second foot. at the same time, the first stress is always omitted […]. why is that? brik. this is exactly what distinguishes trochee from iamb. […] as regards the stability of the second stress, it can arguably be explained by the absence of stress on the previous [foot]. stress becomes stable wherever it is preceded by the absence of stress. in iamb we have a dual tendency: on the one hand, the first unstressed syllable solidifies the first stress, on the other hand, the stability of the second stress undermines the first one. rozanov. greeks used to make their anacreontics out of anapest plus iamb. pushkin, by placing anapests of some sort at the beginning of his trochees, rendered the greek patterns quite faithfully (pilshchikov 2017b: 168–169)4. to make it clear, when eikhenbaum speaks about the “three-beat groups”, he means a “beat” as one syllable of “metrical word” (gasparov’s terminology). so according to eikhenbaum, “three-beat groups” are two metrical words, each composed of three syllables (3 syllables + 3 syllables in lines with a masculine clausula: “v siján’ji | golubóm”, “zabýt’sja | i zasnút’” etc., or 3 syllables + 3 syllables + 1 “non-metrical” syllable in lines with a feminine clausula: “odin já | na dorógu”, “tak ból’no | i tak trúdno” etc.). the anapestic anacrusis contains two ictuses of five, the last three ictuses provide the “three-beat groups”: if there are 6 (+1) syllables after the caesura, there could be only two metrical words, each composed of three syllables. and vice versa, there could be three metrical words, each composed of two syllables (i.e. iambic words). therefore, from the point of view of word boundaries, such lines as “spit zeml’ja | v sijan’ji golubom” may be interpreted as “anapest | + amphibrach + anapest”, not as “anapest | + iamb + iamb + iamb”. in mandelshtam’s poem, out of the 24 lines at least 16 – i.e. two thirds – conform to the tendency towards anapestic anacrusis. if one regards the borderline instances (“metrically ambiguous” words) as having weaker stresses on the first ictus (“ìkh, besshúmno ókhajuschikh rtámi”, “ètot króshechnyj, letúchekrásnyj”, “ètot zhálkij polumés’ats gúb”, “nàdo smért’ predupredít’, usnút’”), their number reaches 20. furthermore, we find ten lines that have a caesura after the third syllable in mandelshtam’s poem, which is more than one third. their bigger part is in the first and two last stanzas – the ones portraying the key traits of the heroine of the poem. four of these ten lines follow the trend to 4 cf. also pilshchikov’s commentary (note 83) that rozanov’s considerations regarding pushkin’s trochaic tetrameter anticipate eikhenbaum’s insights into lermontov’s trochaic pentameter. 61towards the concept of semantic halo creating “three-beat groups” (“málenkikh | derzhátel’nitsa pléch”, “ne zvuchít | utóplennitsa-réch”, “ne sercháj | turchánka dorogája”, “ja stojú | u tvjórdogo poróga”), the other four could be described as “anapest | + iamb + iamb + iamb” (“usmirjón | muzhskój opásnyj nórov”, “ja s tobój | v glukhój meshók zashjús’”, “za teb’já | krivój vodý nap’jús’”, “ukhodí. | ujdí. eshchjó pobúd’”). finally, two lines skip the stress on the third ictus, and, from the point of view of word boundaries, differ from the both types (described above): “chtò zhe mné | kak janycháru, l’júb”, “nàdo smért’ | predupredít’, usnút’”. shaped in this way, the rhythm of “masteritsa...” reveals a stronger link to another poem by mandelshtam, which equally addresses the unrequited love of maria petrovykh and relies on a similar image of small/narrow shoulders (see lotman 2012: 132). this poem is composed in its entirety in anapestic tetrameters (cf. the anapestic anacrusis in many lines in “masteritsa...”): твоим узким плечам под бичами краснеть, под бичами краснеть, на морозе гореть. твоим детским рукам утюги поднимать, утюги поднимать да веревки вязать. твоим нежным ногам по стеклу босиком, по стеклу босиком, да кровавым песком. ну, а мне за тебя черной свечкой гореть, черной свечкой гореть да молиться не сметь. 1934 (mandelshtam 2009: 306) your narrow shoulders are to redden under scourges, redden under scourges and to burn in frosts. you child-like arms are to lift heavy irons, to lift heavy irons and to sew mail-bags. your tender soles are to walk barefoot on glass, barefoot on glass and blood-stained sand. and i am here to burn for you like a black candle, burn like a black candle and not dare to pray. 1934 (mandelshtam 1991: 67) both the poem’s meter and its imagery forcefully evoke the œuvre of another major nineteenth-century poet – nikolai nekrasov, famously “a poet of ternary meters” (cf. gasparov 1984b: 110). quite memorably, he conjured up the “scourged muse” in his poetry. the meter of many of nekrasov’s texts is also trochaic pentameter. as vadim baevsky notes, while in the early 1850s nekrasov used this meter exclusively for parodies (originally on lermontov 62 mikhail trunin and later on contemporaneous writers), in the mid-1870s he started using trochaic pentameters in serious contexts. compare also gasparov’s remark that “lermontov […] came up with new forms for the old romantic subject-matter. following this, it only took nekrasov to come along and rely on these forms as old, re-used for new realistic subject-matter – an act of re-framing, taking apart the once-single unit” (gasparov 1984b: 112). moreover, “as he turns to solemn themes, nekrasov comes closer to lermontov’s rhythm” (baevsky 1975: 156). mandelshtam’s reliance on nekrasov’s poetry became the object of academic study only recently. fedor uspensky, who dedicated a detailed study to the “nekrasov’s strand” in mandelshtam’s poem “the flat is as quiet as paper” [«квартира тиха, как бумага…»]5, sums it up like this: mandelshtam’s poems on russian poetry and the texts composed in their orbit are, inter alia, a list of his “mentors” in poetry, of his sources; he explicitly declares that they made a major influence on his work. in the case in point, nekrasov’s input can be regarded as an enlivening performative framework, as it is strongest where his name is pronounced – among the poems with civic and political agenda, which quite unexpectedly sprout from the texts on russian poetry (uspensky 2010: 337). we should add also that levin reveals in the last stanza of “masteritsa...” a deeper semantic layer, which can be referred to as “‘man and state’ and has to do with the poet’s experience of the oncoming state terror” (levin 1998: 40, note 26). on the other hand, it may be nekrasov who “prompted” mandelshtam an idea to use trimeters breaking up trochaic pentameter. within his own aesthetic hierarchy, as is known, nekrasov closely associated the two meters: the original sketches of nekrasov’s poem [“the hideous year”, written in trochaic pentameter – m. t.] were inspired by victor hugo’s l’année terrible. in 1872 anna butkevitch read it to her brother [i. e. nekrasov – m. t.], and [hugo’s] peculiar romantic alexandrines […] were reflected either in [nekrasov’s] anapestic trimeters […] or [his] trochaic pentameters (baevsky 1975: 150–151). 5 incidentally, it shares a ternary metric framework: it was composed in amphibrachic trimeters in november 1933, that is only three months earlier than the poems addressed to maria petrovykh (see mandelshtam 2009: 183). 63towards the concept of semantic halo just as “scholarship was finding its way” to the concept of the “semantic halo” “simultaneously through many paths” (shapir 2015a: 402), similarly, many prominent students of mandelshtam’s poetry, who have explored the semantics of one of his most mysterious poems, did not consider the significance of the meter of “masteritsa...”. it makes me hope that the remarks above will become useful addenda to the work of my great forerunners.6 6 the publication was supported by the estonian research council grant put634 (“estonian semiotics in cross-cultural context: new primary data and prospects for recalibration in the 21st century”). the author is grateful to mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov and marina tarlinskaja for their comments and suggestions, and to arkadiy avdokhin for his invaluable help with the translations from russian. 64 mikhail trunin references averintsev, sergei sergeevich 1990. pasternak i mandel’shtam: opyt sopostavlenija. izvestija akademii nauk sssr. serija literatury i jazyka 61–3, 203−207. baevsky, vadim solomonovich 1975. k evoljutsii stikha nekrasovskoj liriki. in: n. a. nekrasov i russkaja literatura: vtoroj mezhvuzovskij sbornik. yaroslavl’: yaroslavskij gosudarstvennyj pedagogicheskij institut imeni k. d. ushinskogo, 145–158. bezrodny, mikhail 1996. konets tsitaty. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo ivana limbakha. eikhenbaum, boris 1922. melodika russkogo liricheskogo stikha. peterburg: opojaz. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1979. semanticheskij oreol metra (k semantike russkogo trekhstopnogo jamba). in: lingvistika i poetika. moskva: nauka, 282–308. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1984а. ocherk istorii russkogo stikha: metrika. ritmika. rifma. strofika. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1984b. tynianov i problema semantiki metra. in: tynianovskij sbornik: pervye tynianovskie chtenija. riga: zinātne, 105–113. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1995. “grifel’naja oda” mandel’shtama: istorija teksta i istorija smysla. in: philologica 2 (3/4), 153–193. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2000. k. taranovsky – stikhoved. in: taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich]. o poezii i poetike. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 417–419. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2012. metr i smysl: ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamjati [1999]. moskva: fortuna el. iliushin, aleksandr аnatol’evich 1986. n. a. dobroliubov kak master stikha. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 2, 20−27. jakobson, roman 1979. toward a description of mácha’s verse [1938]. tr. from czech into english by peter and wendy steiner. in: jakobson, roman. selected writings. the hague – paris – new york: mouton. [vol.] v: on verse, its masters and explorers, 433–485. lekmanov, oleg andershanovich 2005. mandel’shtam i shekspir : opyt obobschajuschego sopostavlenija. in: vestnik istorii, literatury, iskusstva. moskva: sobranie – nauka. vol. 1, 263–266. levin, yuri iosifovich 1982. semanticheskij oreol metra s semioticheskoj tochki zrenija. in: finitis duodecium lustris: sbornik statej k 60-letiju professora j. m. lotmana. tallinn: eesti raamat, 151–154. 65towards the concept of semantic halo levin, yuri iosifovich 1998. [a semantic analysis of mandelshtam’s poem] “masteritsa vinovatykh vzorov…” [1971]. in: levin, yuri iosifovich. izbrannye trudy. poetika. semiotika. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 35–44. levin, yuri iosifovich 1998а. [an analysis of mandelshtam’s poem] “my s toboj na kukhne posidim…” [1972]. in: levin, yuri iosifovich. izbrannye trudy. poetika. semiotika. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 24–28. lotman, mihhail 1982. k stat’je k. f. taranovskogo [“‘severovostok’ m. voloshina”]. uchebnyj material po analizu poeticheskikh tekstov. tallinn: tallinnskij pedagogicheskij institut imeni eduarda vilde, 89–97. lotman, mihhail 1988. russkij stikh: semantika stikhotvornogo metra v russkoj poezii vtoroj poloviny xix veka (a. a. fet i n. a. nekrasov). in: słowiańska metryka porównawcza. wrocław – warszawa – kraków – gdańsk – łódź: zakład narodowy imienia ossolińskich – wydawnictwo pan. [vol.] iii: semantyka form wierszowych, 105–143. lotman, mihhail 1995. russkij stikh: osnovnye razmery, vkhodjashchie v evropejskij metricheskij fond. in: słowiańska metryka porównawcza. warszsawa: instytut badań literackich. [vol.]  vi: europejskie wcorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich, 259–340. lotman, mihhail 1996. mandelshtam i pasternak (popytka kontrastivnoj poetiki). tallinn: aleksandra. lotman, mihhail 2012. “masteritsa vinovatykh vzorov…”: k semanticheskoj karte poeticheskogo teksta [1982]. in: lotman, mihhail; zolyan, suren. issledovanija v oblasti semanticheskoj poetiki akmeizma. tallinn: izdatel’stvo tallinnskogo universiteta, 129–141. mandelshtam, osip 1991. selected poems. tr. by james greene. london: penguin books. mandelshtam, osip 2009. polnoe sobranie sochinenij i pisem v 3 tomakh. moskva: progress–plejada. vol. 1: stikhotvorenija. pilshchikov, igor 2017a. “the inner form of the word” in russian formalist theory. in: wiener slawistischer almanach. sonderband 92, 37–64. pilshchikov, igor 2017b. zasedanie moskovskogo lingvisticheskogo kruzhka 1 ijunja 1919 goda i zarozhdenie stikhovedcheskikh kontseptsij o. brika, b. tomashevskogo i r. jakobsona. in: revue des études slaves 88(1/2), 151–175. poliakova, sofia viktorovna 1997. osip mandelshtam: nabljudenija, interpretatsii, zametki k kommentariju. in: poliakova, sofia viktorovna. “olejnikov i ob olejnikove” i drugie raboty po russkoj literature. sankt-peterburg: inapress, 65–187. 66 mikhail trunin ronen, omry 1983. an approach to mandel’štam. jerusalem: magnes press. shapir, maksim il’ich 2015a. “semanticheskij oreol metra”: termin i ponjatie (istorikostikhovedcheskaja retrospektsija) [1991]. in: shapir, maksim il’ich. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. vol. 2, 395–404. shapir, maksim il’ich 2015b. vremja i prostranstvo v poeticheskom jazyke rannego mandelshtama [1991, 2000]. in: shapir, maksim il’ich. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. vol. 2, 33–45. sil’man, tamara 1977. o semanticheskoj mnogoslojnosti liricheskogo stikhotvorenija. in: sil’man, tamara. zametki o lirike. moskva: sovetskij pisatel’, 137–167. soshkin, evgeny 2015. gipogrammatika. kniga o mandel’shtame. moskva: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. taranovsky, kiril 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. taranovsky, kiril 1976. essays on mandel’štam. cambridge (mass.) – london: harvard university press. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 2000. o vzaimootnoshenii stikhotvornogo ritma i tematiki [1963]. in: taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich]. o poezii i poetike. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 372–403. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 2000а. cherno-zheltyj svet: evrejskaja tema v poezii mandel’shtama. in: taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich]. o poezii i poetike. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 77–105. tarlinskaja, marina 1989. meter and meaning: semantic associations of the english “dolnik” verse form. in: style 23(2), 238–260. tarlinskaja, marina; oganesova, naira 1986. meter and meaning: the semantic “halo” of verse form in english romantic lyrical poems (iambic and trochaic tetrameter). in: american journal of semiotics 4(3/4), 85–106. uspensky, fedor [borisovich] 2010. molotok nekrasova: “kvartira” o. mandel’shtama mezhdu stikhami o stikhakh i grazhdanskoj poeziej 1933 goda. in: dar i krest: pamjati natal’i trauberg. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo ivana limbakha, 319–338. vishnevsky, kirill dmitrievich 1977. k voprosu ob ispol’zovanii kolichestvennykh metodov v stikhovedenii. in: kontekst-1976: literaturno-teoreticheskie issledovanija. moskva: nauka, 130–159. vishnevsky, kirill dmitrievich 1985. ekspressivnyj oreol pjatistopnogo khoreja. in: russkoe stikhoslozhenie: traditsii i problemy razvitija. moskva: nauka, 94–113. studia metrica et poetica sisu 3_2_27.indd versification: metrics in practice, 25th–27th may 2016, helsinki, finland satu grünthal, erika laamanen the international and multidisciplinary conference versification: metrics in practice was held in helsinki, finland from 25th to 27th may 2016. the conference was a meeting of nordmetrik (nordic society for metrical studies). scholars from a variety of disciplines and from fifteen different countries gathered in the great hall of the finnish literature society and the topelia building of the university of helsinki to discuss questions of metrics. the conference was organized by the department of folklore studies and the department of finnish, finno-ugrian and scandinavian studies at the university of helsinki, the academy of finland project “oral poetry, mythic knowledge and vernacular imagination”, and the finnish literature society. the theme of the conference was ‘metrics in practice’. versification describes the marriage of language and metre: it is the key to the production of poetry. this phenomenon attracts researchers from a wide variety of intersecting disciplines, ranging from metricists proper and researchers of cognitive poetics to scholars of folklore, linguistics, linguistic anthropology, literature, musicology, philology and more. the aim of the conference was to highlight the inseparability of metre and language and to call attention to metre in different social language practices. the five keynote speakers of the conference approached the theme from different angles. tomas riad (stockholm university, swedish academy) argued against the idea that metre is an abstract pattern filled with language – the idea supported by, for example, generative metrics. instead, he suggested that in the case of metre we are dealing with the same kind of phenomenon as prosodic morphemes and that metre should therefore be treated at root as a linguistic object. the central idea of his lecture was metre as improvement. according to riad, improvement occurs when metred discourse obeys one or more linguistic constraints or conventions more regularly than other forms of language use. paul kiparsky (stanford university), a pioneer of generative metrics, considered interrelations between a metre and the language in which it is used. he spoke about how metres, in addition to historical context, adjust to functional preferences. for example, genre is a factor affecting the choice of metre. epic and dramatic forms use flexible metres that have a simple underlying pattern but complex correspondence constraints, the combination of which offers a studia metrica et poetica 3.2, 2016, 176–180 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.07 177versification: metrics in practice, 25th–27th may 2016, helsinki, finland variety of realization options. sung lyric poems, on the other hand, consists of a wide range of complex metrical structures with simple correspondence constraints. in each case, the correspondence constraints and the types of flexibility that they evolve have dependencies on the language of performance. poet and philologist jesper svenbro (swedish academy) provided a practitioner’s perspective on sapphic and alcaic stanzas, linking his philological research on these poetic forms to the reflective analysis of his own uses of them and resultant choices in the composition process. in addition to his own poetry, he presented examples from sappho, friedrich hölderlin and tomas tranströmer proving the vitality of sapphic and alcaic stanzas in modern poetry. kati kallio (finnish literature society) discussed the relationship between metre, music and performance in oral poetry. kallio began by stating that with oral poetry it is problematic to consider metre exclusively as an abstract pattern. illustrated with many examples, she presented ways in which finnic language-speaking peoples have sung poetry and varied metre according to a given performance situation. jarkko niemi (university of tampere) gave a lecture based on his research project involving the musical traditions, and especially sung expression, of the indigenous ethnic groups living in western siberia and northwestern russia, looking especially at peoples speaking samoyedic and ob-ugrian languages. he highlighted that the linguistic structure of a metrical line could be significantly, if regularly, altered and reorganized as an organic part of oral performance. in his lecture, niemi presented the results of his project that also cast light on the local cultures more broadly, revealing that areal patterns in the singing traditions of these different groups had evolved through their contact history. a wide variety of verse forms, traditions and languages were examined during presentations in the parallel sessions, ranging from poetry of antiquity to recent folklore and from medieval court poetry to rap music of the 21st century. many of the presentations dealt with metre in sung poetry and music, and classical music and translation studies were also included in the program. approaches and methods of the presentations varied as well. during the conference, poetic traditions were discussed e.g. by haukur þorgeirsson (árni magnússon institute for icelandic studies) and frog (university of helsinki). in his presentation, haukur þorgeirsson proposed the idea of two different types of poetic traditions, splitting and lumping ones. splitting traditions require the poets to make distinctions not found in their contemporary language. lumping traditions, on the other hand, allow poets to ignore some of the distinctions found in the language for the purposes of 178 satu grünthal, erika laamanen rhyme or other poetic effects. – in his talk, frog introduced the concept of metrical entanglement. in contrast to metrical motivation, which describes a purely formal relationship between metre and language without reference to conventions of social practice, metrical entanglement describes links that develop socially between language and metre. maria-kristiina lotman (university of tartu) and mihhail lotman (university of tartu / tallinn university) introduced their new research project in which they study the relationship between metre and semantics by means of statistical-comparative analysis. in addition to comparing two different periods also the lexis of various verse metres has been analysed, especially that of the main metres of the earlier poetry, i.e. iambic and trochaic tetrameters, while comparative material has been provided by hexameter. the lexical analysis has revealed differences between verse traditions as well as verse metres in every analysed aspect. issues of textsetting were discussed in the presentations of lev blumenfeld (carleton university) and nicolas royer-artuso (laval university). lev blumenfeld argued on the basis of data from georges brassens that textsetting constraints, while related to metrical ones, form a distinct system, and that textsetting interfaces with phonology directly. nicolas royer-artuso discussed how ottoman court poetry was driven structurally by the demands of the borrowed arabic metre system, aruz, and proposed some general textsetting principles. nordic metres were discussed in several presentations. klaus johan myrvoll (university of oslo), for example, talked about syllabic quantity in old norse metre, and yelena sesselja helgadóttir (university of iceland) analysed formulaic language in postmedieval icelandic þulur, which are on the borderline between verse and prose. questions of faroese poetry, both old and contemporary, were discussed in two presentations: daniel galbraith (stanford university) presented a constraint-based account of faroese ballad metre, and the rhymes and rhythms in a modern bricolage of hip hop, romantic poetry and ballads (“frá bygd til bý” by swangah dangah) was discussed by dragana cvetanovic, satu grünthal and martina huhtamäki (university of helsinki). estonian folk poetry was the topic in the presentations of taive särg (estonian folklore archives, tartu), mari sarv (estonian literary museum), and janika oras (estonian literary museum). taive särg talked about the regilaul metre, which is both a mental model that organises singing, and a set of formal features, being (re)created while singing. she asked what makes singers to perform differently the long verses of very similar or even of the same rhythmic structure. mari sarv discussed the relationship of metre and performance in folksongs, where metrical and musical templates are not totally 179versification: metrics in practice, 25th–27th may 2016, helsinki, finland independent, but structure one another mutually. janika oras concentrated on polyphonic seto oral singing tradition and analysed the broken line as a model of rhythmic variation. not all of the variations are definite and predictable, because while performing some types of verses, the singers can use alternative rhythmic solutions. so the performance resembles a (mutual) play of the singers – the lead singer and the choir – with rhythmic structure. the topic of eila stepanova (university of helsinki) were karelian laments, which are composed in rhythmic-melodic “poetic strings” of variable length united by alliteration and melody. russian folk laments were discussed by elena jugay (russian state university). myfany turpin (university of sydney) analysed multimodal parallelism in central australian song-poetry. awelye, a performance of traditional aboriginal song-poetry, is characterized by parallelism of form and meaning in the textual, musical and visual modalities of this multimodal performance genre. maria v. stanyukovich (peter the great museum of anthropology and ethnography (kunstkamera), russian academy of science), discussed the correlation of text and melody in a hudhud-shaped dirge of the yattuka, an indigenous and highly endangered group of philippine highlanders. central and southern european traditions were brought up by jean-louis aroui (paris-8 university) through the french decasyllable from the 14th to the 16th century, and by rosalía rodríguez-vázquez (university of vigo), through galician song metrics in the iberian phonological continuum. hans nollet (ku leuven) discussed the dactylic hexameter in the poetry of the brabant humanist justus lipsius (1547–1606). russian topics were discussed e.g. by marina akimova (lomonosov moscow state university) and vera polilova (lomonosov moscow state university). marina akimova made observations on the use of verb forms in the poetry of mikhail kuzmin, and vera polilova presented a talk about the genesis of the russian taktovik and identified it as an independent metre in the system of russian tonic versification. eva lilja (göteborg university) spoke on “embodied rhythm”. employing the example of ann sexton’s poem “the fury of rain storms” she explicated how rhythm produces meaning by using a four step analysis model. varun de castro-arrazola (leiden university / meertens institute) presented a study about the source of final strictness in verse lines. these data were compared to corpus analyses of verse in several languages, and a model of attention was proposed as the cognitive factor driving both types of data. finnish issues were discussed e.g. by hanna karhu (university of helsinki), who talked about finnish rhymed couplet metre in original folk songs, in rewritings of the poet otto manninen, and also in his poems that resemble 180 satu grünthal, erika laamanen folk songs. erika laamanen (university of helsinki) analysed the metrical evolution of lauri viita’s poetry, and eeva-liisa bastman (university of helsinki) spoke on finnish 18th century hymn poetry in the light of rhyme, assonance and alliteration. the aim of her paper was to explore the functions and uses of different forms of sound repetition for the stanza structure and for the hymn as a significant whole. the lively and fruitful discussions that followed each presentation were continued in the evenings. the first evening of the conference was spent on tervasaari island, where the attendees had the opportunity to talk about syllables and statistics in an informal manner with good food and nice weather. on thursday evening, tuomas lehtonen, the secretary general of finnish literature society, welcomed everyone to the society-organized reception. to the great delight of all, stephen evans, conference participant and church musician (parish of laitila, turku archdiocese), offered a short piano performance of “berceuse” by armas järnefelt and “yö meren rannalla” [‘night by the sea’] by heino kaski. a publication about the conference is currently being organized. the next meeting of nordmetrik is already being planned and is expected to be held in stockholm in 2018. juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna: identifying and describing a spanish dolnik jesús m. saavedra carballido* abstract: the metre used by the spanish writer juan de mena in his long allegorical work laberinto de fortuna has been puzzling metrists for over five centuries. usually identified as a variety of the verse called arte mayor, this metre has been analysed, among other things, as a divided line – one systematically allowing internal extrametricality – and as an amphibrachic line. here it will be argued that the arte mayor exemplified by mena’s laberinto does not allow internal extrametricality and that it is a dolnik, a syllable-stress form not usually discussed in connection with the spanish language. at the same time as it introduces the main problems encountered by traditional approaches, this article analyses the constant and necessary characteristics of the metre used in mena’s composition, advocating the reliance on the notion of the metrical maximum. next come some comments on other phenomena that are constant in laberinto but not necessary in other kinds of arte mayor, and on several characteristics displayed by those other kinds but absent from mena’s work. the conclusion offers a series of suggestions for further research into the limits of this metre. keywords: spanish versification, juan de mena, arte mayor, dolnik, maximum in his classic study on spanish verso de arte mayor (higher-artistry verse), le gentil states that this is “une versification […] assez compliqué, dont le secret a longtemps échappé aux critiques” = “a rather difficult versification […] whose secret has escaped critics for a long time” (1953: 363).1 despite the best efforts of the metrists coming after him, the nature of arte mayor has remained “obscure” (roubaud 1971: 372). * author’s address: jesús m. saavedra carballido, universidade de santiago de compostela, rúa das carretas 22, 3, santiago de compostela, 15705, a coruña, spain, email: jesus.saavedra@usc.es. 1 the author wishes to thank the editors – maria-kristiina lotman in particular – for their patience, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. in responding to them, every effort has been made to keep the argument as easy to follow as possible. to avoid essay-like notes, the background information concerning spanish metrics, phonology and previous theories of arte mayor has been confined – together with all statistics – to the addenda. studia metrica et poetica 7.1, 2020, 47–96 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.03 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2020.7.1.03 48 jesús m. saavedra carballido arte mayor dominated learned spanish verse throughout the 15th century, such that “no other long verse was ever able to establish itself ” (clarke 1964: 212). here i shall focus on its most frequently studied variety, the one used by juan de mena in his allegorical work laberinto de fortuna = labyrinth of fortune (finished in 1444). mena has long been regarded the indisputable master of arte mayor, laberinto has been called “the best poem” in this form, and, though perhaps “not the typical” example, its verse “traditionally has been considered the norm” (clarke 1964: 167); not for nothing is arte mayor also known as verso de juan de mena = juan de mena’s verse. most conveniently, mena’s 2376-line work represents “a consistent – and still sizeable – corpus” (piera 1981: 102). for all of these reasons, it is a good starting point in the study of this form. domínguez caparrós classifies arte mayor as an irregular form (2014: 159ff.), i.e. one that cannot be properly called free verse but whose lines, despite being metrically equivalent, display some oscillation in terms of syllable count. though he describes arte mayor as accentual, from his account it is obvious that he does not refer to a metre regulating stresses alone, but both the syllable count and the distribution of stresses;2 this view is shared by most scholars (e.g. duffell 1999: 60– 61, 73–74). in an oft-quoted passage, which has served as the basis of later descriptions such as domínguez caparrós’s, clarke states that the “basic pattern” of arte mayor can be “roughly” represented as: (w) s w w s (w) # (w) s w w s (w)3 as she explains, w corresponds to a nonstress, s to a stress and s to a secondary – i.e. optional – stress;4 the hash sign represents a midline boundary rule or caesura (1964: 51). she adds: 2 domínguez caparrós makes it clear that the metre that he is dealing with tends to be anisosyllabic rather than isosyllabic (2014: 45, 159). his reference to arte mayor as accentual coincides with that of previous authors like henríquez ureña (2003: 171, 175, 182, 192–193, 241), who distinguishes two spanish metres in which the number of syllables is irregular or fluctuating (within limits): one he calls amétrico (ametrical); the other, to which are mayor would belong, acentual (accentual). actually, both are types of metrical verse: neither is what we would call free. the difference between them seems to lie in the (relative) absence or presence of an insistent rhythm based on the placement of stresses, which is less noticeable in “ametrical” verse than in “accentual” verse. 3 clarke’s notation has been adapted to the one employed in the rest of this article. 4 in spanish, syntactic words are prosodically divided into tónicas and átonas, that is, tonic (always stressed) and atonic (usually unstressed). for more details on spanish stress, see section 2c of the addenda. 49juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... the caesura is movable between [the second and third] stresses, the secondary stresses are not absolutely fixed in required presence or position, and the unstressed syllables in parentheses are not absolutely fixed except that at the caesura at least one of the unstressed syllables is usually present (clarke 1964: 51; my italics). clarke assumes the line to be unified (verso simple) rather than divided (verso compuesto), and this despite the caesura (1964: 57, 60, 169, 210). her opinion is in line with other descriptions of spanish metrical verse (for its general characteristics, see section 2a of the addenda). among the “common […] modifications of the pattern”, she mentions “the use of two unaccented syllables preceding the [first] secondary stress”, instead of one or none (1964: 168). excluding the optional nonstress at line end, arte mayor lines have from eight – usually nine – to twelve syllables.5 clarke’s description is quite detailed, yet it fails to explain the syllable count, the exact distribution of stresses, the precise nature of the midline boundary and the relation between the two parts of the line. the uncertainties which surround clarke’s analysis are common to all existing accounts of arte mayor. in the course of time, to begin with, its template has been described as falling, or – more usually – as amphibrachic or rising (for previous theories of arte mayor, see section 3a of the addenda). to start dispelling these uncertainties, i shall take my cue from ker and garcía calvo. ker pointed out over a century ago the affinities between spanish arte mayor and the english metre known as tumbling verse (1899: 119 ff.). so did garcía calvo more recently (2006: 1627–1628, 1640–1662). arguably, the metre with which these two authors associate arte mayor is a dolnik – a metre that regulates the syllable count and the distribution of stresses so that strong positions will be usually realized by a stressed syllable and usually separated from each other by two or one 5 for the theoretical assumptions behind the metrical approach adopted in this article, see section 1a of the addenda. i shall always refer to the length of verse lines counting up to the syllable realising the last strong position, and disregarding as extrametrical the material that may follow. by doing this, i avoid the traditional spanish terminology according to which, because of the predominance of paroxytonic lines (with one extrametrical syllable), the total number of syllables in a line is always calculated by counting up to rightmost stress (or equivalent) and adding one. if we applied this traditional system to the english iambic pentameter (a 10-position line, according to most current accounts), we would have to describe it as an 11-syllable line (cf. the spanish term endecasílabo). the traditional system is overcomplicated, because it relies on counting and adding up when only counting is necessary; it has been criticized, but never replaced once and for all, by a number of spanish scholars (cf. piera 1981: 5–7; domínguez caparrós 2014: 62 n. 41). 50 jesús m. saavedra carballido unstressed syllables – with a predominant but not constant ternary rhythm. unfortunately, these two authors do not go into any details concerning the exact characteristics of the metre and its realization. what i propose to do is analyse the constant and necessary features of the verse of laberinto by treating it as a rising dolnik made up of lines with four strong positions.6 to substantiate the dolnik interpretation, i shall examine the arte mayor used in laberinto,7 comparing it with compositions by other spanish authors from just before mena’s times (alfonso álvarez de villasandino and micer francisco imperial) to contemporary times (ramón maría del valle-inclán); scholars have identified some of the verses used by these authors as varieties of arte mayor, and i accept and take advantage of this identification.8 6 dolnik is the russian name – lately adopted in english – for the metrical form to which i am assimilating arte mayor (cf. tarlinskaja 1993: 12; gasparov 1996: 18–26, 175–200, 274–281; attridge 2012; 2013: 103–111, 147–177). in english dolnik has received other names, among them loose iamb (fabb and halle 2008); but dolnik and loose iamb have sometimes been distinguished on statistical grounds (for example by tarlinskaja 1992: 3, 5; 1995: 505; hanson 2008: 380). tarlinskaja characterizes dolnik as follows (her ictus is a strong position; ictic and nonictic positions are strong and weak, respectively; nonictic syllables are those realizing weak positions): “the regularity of stress alternation […] is fairly consistent, so the ictic positions are, as a rule, easy to identify. however, the number of non-ictic syllables (usually unstressed or, less often, bearing lighter stresses) between adjacent ictuses may vary between one and two, and the number of syllables […] preceding the first ictus, may be either constant, or vary from 0 to 2” (tarlinskaja 1993: 12). as attridge does for english dolnik (2012: 8–9 n. 15; 2013: 107–108, 154–155 n. 11), tarlinskaja admits that a weak position between strong positions may be realized by “zero unstressed syllables”, though she thinks that this only happens “in rare cases” (tarlinskaja 1993: 13); duffell concurs (2008: 34). in spanish, such unrealized or void weak positions do not occur. anisosyllabic dolnik is to be distinguished from another metre often referred to in english, again by its russian name, as taktovik. this is an even “looser” form in which “the intervals between adjacent ictuses vary from one to three syllables” (tarlinskaja 1993: 14; cf. gasparov 1996: 18–26, 274–275). in english taktovik has also been identified as a kind of loose anapaest (a metre allowing 4-syllable intervals, according to fabb and halle 2008: 80-82); but when piera analyses arte mayor as loose anapaest (2008), he only contemplates 3-syllable intervals. 7 i rely on the text established in maxim p. a. kerkhof ’s authoritative edition (mena 1995). though the text that it offers does not differ substantially from that of other editions, such as john g. cummins’s (mena 1979), kerkhof ’s is the only one that collates the variants from all known sources. 8 navarro tomás traces the whole history of spanish arte mayor from the middle ages to the 20th century (1974: 95–98, 115–124, 225–226, 277–278, 325, 443–444, 524). saavedra molina (1945: 9, 18–20, 31–32, 45–46, 54–57, 65–66, 115–116), navarro tomás (1974: 115–117) and clarke (1964: 69–72) agree that villasandino was a practitioner of arte mayor. according to saavedra molina (1945: 18, 32, 62–63), navarro tomás (1974: 117), clarke (1964: 99–151) and garcía calvo (2006: 1656), so was imperial. the basic identity between the metre of laberinto 51juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... constant and necessary characteristics of arte mayor in laberinto it has been repeatedly said – and can be easily noticed – that the predominant rhythm in laberinto is usually ternary (e.g. navarro tomás 1974: 115–116; duffell 1999: 56; for my own figures, see sections 4b and 4c of the addenda). to begin with, therefore, a convenient way of approaching the arte mayor of laberinto is to analyse it as a rising ternary metre with four strong positions, each realized by a stressed syllable and separated by two unstressed syllables; all syllables to the right of the rightmost stress are considered extrametrical (they do not correspond to any of the metrical positions that make up the template). the only relevant variations that this metre allows are in the number of nonstresses before the first strong position (from zero to two) and of final extrametrical nonstresses (either zero or one). the template would be: (w) (w) s w w s w w s w w s {x} here s signals a strong position, w signals a realized weak position, (w) indicates an unrealized (void) weak position, and {x} represents the optional extrametrical material. in laberinto, the following 12-syllable line with an oxytonic ending, i.e. without extrametrical nonstresses, realizes the ternary template quite faithfully (x marks a stress and x a nonstress):9 and that of some valle-inclán folk-inspired compositions has been suggested by saavedra molina (1945: 10, 91–92) and navarro tomás (1974: 444), the latter of whom mentions their predominant binary rhythm. (in english there is a similar division between folk or folk-inspired dolnik, which is predominantly binary, and dolnik of learned origin, as shown by tarlinskaja 1993: 39.) 9 i accept the way in which kerkhof stresses words in his edition of laberinto. this means assuming, with piera (1981: 109), that mena assigned stresses in much the same way as in present-day spanish. there are some possible exceptions, mostly in proper names and cultisms, some of them adapted to fit the rhyme (cf. lázaro carreter 1972: 355–356, 360; piera 1981: 141–144). in this respect, it must be borne in mind that, back then, many words of classical origin were stressed differently from now, and that the stressing of others may have been unstable, so mena’s tinkering is much less frequent than it might seem. this tallies with the idea that in spanish verse stress wrenching is generally confined to song, to burlesque compositions and to folk-song imitations intended for recitation (henríquez ureña 2003: 183 n. 18, 257–258 n. 26). as mena’s address to the “lectores”= “readers” implies (l. 1910), and as lázaro carreter admits (1972: 354), laberinto was meant to be read not listened to. 52 jesús m. saavedra carballido (1) aristótiles cerca del padre platón (l. 939)10 x x x x x x x x x x x x since, in spanish, paroxytonic words are far more numerous than oxytonic ones (cf. quilis 1993: 403), few laberinto lines have this abrupt ending; in even fewer is the stressing so regular.11 similarly rare are 11-syllable lines (with a void weak position at the beginning) without extrametricality, like this one: (2) agora, respuse, conosco mejor (l. 1881) x x x x x x x x x x x lines with a paroxytonic ending, i.e. with one extrametrical nonstress at the end, are more abundant. here is an 11-syllable example: (3) tomando castillos, ganando lugares (l. 1181) x x x x x x x x x x x {x} such 11-syllable lines with extrametricality are extremely frequent.12 so much so that many commentators have considered them to reveal an ideal arte mayor 10 in addition to initial and final punctuation, i remove quotation marks and editorial diaeresis – used by editors to indicate that two contiguous vowels cannot be treated as one single syllable – from all the examples. 11 my scansions reflect all stresses corresponding to the prosodic heads of tonic words, including the head of each part of compounds (primary stresses), yet disregards all other possible stresses not corresponding to the heads of tonic words (secondary stresses). i assume that these secondary stresses are inexistent or irrelevant for laberinto. for the rationale behind this assumption, see section 3b of the addenda. 12 navarro tomás has not hesitated to scan a whole stanza of laberinto as belonging to this type (1974: 119): “con dos quarentenas e más de millares / le vimos de gentes armadas a punto, / sin otro más pueblo inherme allí junto, / entrar por la vega talando olivares, / tomando castillos, ganando lugares, / faziendo por miedo de tanta mesnada / con toda su tierra temblar a granada, / temblar las arenas fondón de los mares” (stanza 148, ll. 1177–1184). given the presence of contiguous vowels in most lines, other scansions are of course possible. according to the figures furnished by foulché-delbosc (1902: 99–102), which encompass all lines in laberinto, this kind of line represents 56.8 % of the total. his analyses are not entirely reliable, as they do not have clear criteria concerning how to count syllables and what counts as the rhythm-marking element (sometimes it is stresses corresponding to the heads of tonic words; sometimes, other alleged stresses whose nature is not specified). nevertheless, these figures suffice to direct our attention to unmistakable tendencies – in terms of syllabic length and of stressing – in mena’s arte mayor. my own calculations of line types in laberinto can be consulted in section 4a of the addenda. in this case, they are largely congruent with foulché-delbosc’s (55.2 %). 53juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... form corresponding to a 4-amphibrach template (the vertical bar signals the metrical boundary between consecutive feet): w s w | w s w | w s w | w s w also frequent are 10-syllable lines without nonstresses at the beginning and with one extrametrical syllable at the end: (4) sirve metales, metales adora (l. 789) x x x x x x x x xx {x} the last three are, by far, the most usual kinds of line in laberinto.13 another source of variation from isosyllabic ternary verse comes not from the addition and ommission of nonstresses at the extremes but from the fact that stresses are not confined to strong positions or nonstresses to weak positions. if we resist the temptation to suppress and add stresses in order to be more faithful to the alleged template, we realize how frequent these kinds of departure are. witness the second stress in this line (i provisionally underline the syllables realizing strong positions in such a way that a ternary rhythm is somehow preserved): (5) dame tú, palas, favor ministrante (l. 1125) x x x x x x x x x x {x} the occurrence of unexpected stresses in weak positions is a well-known and accepted phenomenon in spanish and in other versifications, where it receives different names (in english, for instance, attridge calls it demotion). the inverse phenomenon, an unexpected nonstress in a strong position (attridge’s promotion), is likewise permitted. in the following line, for example, if we want to keep the four strong positions that most commentators agree on, but without adding stresses at will, we have to admit that the first strong position is realized by a nonstress: 13 according to foulché-delbosc (1902: 99–102), amphibrachic lines, including those without a final nonstress, amount to 63.4 %. adding headless amphibrachic lines (31.4 %), without and with a final nonstress, we have over 94 % of lines in laberinto. finally, 12-syllable ternary lines like example (1) amount to 0.1 %. my figures are similar (97.3 % and 0.2 % respectively). obviously, one of the difficulties of arte mayor analysis lies in accounting for the minority of lines that remains. 54 jesús m. saavedra carballido (6) introduzido por público pro (l. 1844) x x x x x x x x x x in this other example, the affected strong position is the third: (7) así como príncipe legislator (l. 643) x x x x x x x x x x x from ternary verse to dolnik the variations observed until now are among the most frequent in laberinto. they are not the only ones though. more troubling for the ternary and amphibrachic theory are cases like the following, in which stresses are separated by one nonstress instead of two: (8) en ras con aquel señor de charní (l. 1590) x x x x x x x x x x one way of explaining this phenomenon, in particular within the amphibrach framework, has been to speak of a missing nonstress in the middle of the line (piera 1981: 130; dufell 1999: 68). from the perspective of traditional spanish metrics, this solution has an ad hoc air. moreover, it cannot explain the following case, where a nonstress does not seem to be missing midline (between the second and third stresses) but elsewhere (between the third and fourth stresses): (9) aquel coraçón que si no querer (l. 894) x x x x x x x x x x from the perspective of a rising ternary template, it can be argued that lines without two initial nonstresses are headless, and that final nonstresses are extrametrical. from the perspective of an amphibrachic template, it has been argued that lines with an oxytonic ending are truncated, that lines beginning with a stress are headless, and that lines beginning with two nonstresses have 1-syllable initial extrametricality. the possibility of extrametricality and/or of void weak positions is thus assumed at the beginning and at the end of lines. internally, void positions must also be allowed. 55juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... the assumption of so many void positions in arte mayor is problematic, because in spanish final truncation and initial headlessness are not strictly symmetrical: truncation is considered a permissible exception to the usual paroxytonic ending (cf. domínguez caparrós 2014: 60ff.); by contrast, headlessness is not habitually acknowledged, at least in long lines. the same can be said of initial extrametricality, which is traditionally permitted in short lines but not in long ones. as regards internal voids, the truth is that, outside song, spanish verse does not usually permit them at all. the dolnik solution proposed here is unusual too, yet simpler. what i suggest is treating the verse of laberinto as a rising, 8-position form in which internal weak positions may be realized by two or one syllables and initial weak positions may be realized by two, one or – in the case of headlessness – zero syllables. its template would be:14 (w) s | w s | w s | w s {x} the dolnik hypothesis makes it possible to forget about void weak positions between consecutive stresses. (later we shall see that, in addition to being simpler, this interpretation of arte mayor may also be more accurate, as it predicts lines that are absent from laberinto but present in other compositions.) the downside is that it may complicate the identification of some strong positions in certain lines: (10) oras silvando como dragón (l. 1965) x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x this difficulty can be solved, in some cases, thanks to the notion of the maximum. for the time being, i shall just suggest that, in order to account for the demotion of odd-numbered strong positions without manipulating the stresses and thus violating the givens of the language, the metrical template of arte mayor should be conceived of as containing two cola and two kinds of 14 the idea that weak positions may be realized by two or one syllables is taken from such disparate authors as attridge (1982; 2012; 2013), chisholm (1995) and garcía calvo (2006: 1640–1662). alternatively, it would be possible to posit the template: (w) (w) s | w (w) s | w (w) s | w (w) s {x}, where every s is realized by one syllable, every w after s is also realized by one syllable, and any other w is optionally realized by one syllable or left unrealized. my notation has the advantage of less cumbersome and of requiring not two but only one type of w when dealing with dolnik without headlessness. 56 jesús m. saavedra carballido strong positions, only some of which (the second and fourth) function as the head and rightmost limit of a colon (the hash sign marks the frontier between initial and final cola): (w) s | w s # w s | w s {x} to test the dolnik hypothesis, i shall apply it to lines whose prosodic analysis is relatively straightforward. the presence of contiguous vowels in spanish verse can result in considerable variation in the syllable count and in the determination of the rhythm of the line, because in these cases all vowels or just one may be taken into account (cf. piera 1981: 8; 2008: 95ff.). for this reason, i try to avoid instances with vocalic sequences (as advised by clarke 1964: 105). further, in kerkhof ’s edition of laberinto (mena 1995), there are words written with and without h, such as (h)avía = there was/were and (h)ermanos = brothers, a variation that may or may not affect the syllable count. in view of this, i also leave out of my analysis lines with h between vowels. for good measure, i also exclude lines with elided vowels (marked with an apostrophe ’ by kerkhof ). these exclusions should make it possible to determine more accurately the permissible line lengths. (the complete list of lines meeting these conditions can be found in section 4a of the addenda.)15 on the face of it, in the arte mayor of laberinto colon-final strong positions are realized by a stress, while other strong positions are less strictly constrained: the syllables realizing them can be stressed or not. weak positions are even less constrained: they can be realized by two or one syllables, whether stressed or not, or even – at the beginning – by zero syllables. each colon is realized by between four and six syllables. extrametrical syllables cannot be stressed. this template and these realization rules suffice to explain all the examples given so far. in practice, the verse of laberinto seems to consist in long unified lines; colon-final strong positions must be realized by a stress. the syllable count and the distribution of compulsory stresses are as follows: after a stretch of between three and five syllables, every line contains a stress realizing a colon-final strong position; then, after another interval of between three and five syllables, there is one more stress realizing the rightmost strong position. in its reliance on colon-final anchor-points, coupled with the frequent 15 i assume that the treatment of contiguous vowels in 15th-century verse was as it is today, and that this treatment is the same throughout the line (pace piera 1981: 9, 134), but not across lines (cf. piera 1981: 34). for the problem of contiguous vowels in spanish metrics, see section 2b of the addenda. 57juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... disregard of stresses in other parts of the line, arte mayor would not differ from other spanish long metres.16 for the sake of convenience, all instances of arte mayor can be labelled through a two-figure formula representing the number of syllables in each colon. the examples quoted so far belong to the following types: 6#6: example (1) 5#6: examples (2), (3), (7) 4#6: examples (4), (5), (6) 5#5: examples (8), (9) 4#5: example (10) the frequencies of line types observed in this group are largely congruent with those found in laberinto as a whole (see section 4a of the addenda). judging from the examples, it can be surmised that the final colon cannot be realized by fewer syllables than the initial one, which itself cannot be realized by fewer than four syllables (even when there is headlessness). laberinto excludes a construct like the following, which can only be scanned as 6#5 and yet reads quite well: (a) *esperaba lograr mejor resultado x x x x x x # x x x x x {x} as examples (7) and (10) show, between the stress realizing the first colon-final strong position and the next stress sometimes there can be three or more syllables instead of the two or one that kerkhof stipulates (mena 1995: 31, 110). the following 5#6 lines display similar departures from a ternary rhythm: 16 colon-end (including line-end) stresses are thus the foundation of whatever stress rhythm arte mayor lines may have. it must be noted that, in laberinto, it is precisely at colon-end (particularly at line-end, where there is rhyme) that most of the (few) unusual stressings that can be determined with certainty occur. an example: “tú, penelope, la qual en la tela” (l. 510), where the proper noun penelope must be pronounced as a paroxytone (x x x x # x…) not as a proparoxytone, as is done today, in order to prevent the two cola from being incorrectly realized by three and seven syllables, respectively. compare it with “nueva penélope aquésta por suerte” (l. 622), where editors treat the noun as proparoxytonic. 58 jesús m. saavedra carballido (11) vi despojadores e vi despojados (l. 1235)17 x x x x x#x x x x x x {x} (12) en las baxas artes que le da minerva (l. 474) x x x x x # x x x x x x {x} on this occasion i have only underlined the stresses realizing colon-final strong positions, because it is not always easy to determine which syllables correspond to other strong positions.18 both these examples contain a stressed monosyllable that appears earlier or later than expected (in the initial and final colon, respectively) and that cannot be interpreted as realizing a strong position, but only as being displaced (i.e. omitted at some point and added at some other). as shown by the final cola in these other 5#6 lines, the displaced stresses can also belong to polysyllables: (13) primero fallaron, gentes amonitas (l. 284) x x x x x#x x x x x x {x} 17 if the metre that i am positing were not rising but falling, the template would be {x} s w | s w # s w | s (w), the initial colon would be realized by between three and four syllables up to the rightmost stress, and the final colon by between four and six syllables, i.e. the whole line would be realized by between seven and ten syllables up to the rightmost stress; truncation and 1or 2-syllable initial extrametricality would be necessary to account for many lines in laberinto. this approach only works if extrametrical stresses are accepted at the beginning of 5and 6-syllable cola, as at the beginning of example (11); that is why the falling (in particular dactylic) hypothesis has been criticized by piera (1981: 122–127). as it requires final extrametricality (as in other spanish metres) instead of initial extrametricality, the rising version is more congruent with counting metrical positions from left to right up to the rightmost stress, precisely what should be generally done – as already suggested – with spanish metres. 18 in cola realized by six syllables, the placement of the internal strong position is clear, and a ternary rhythm realizes the metre more faithfully than a binary one. if consecutive strong positions are ruled out, in cola realized by four syllables the placement of the internal strong position in final cola is also clear: it cannot be at the beginning, so in this case a binary rhythm is more faithful to the template; in initial cola, if we accept headlessness, the placement of the first strong position is clear when the first two syllables are a stress and a nonstress (s w s #, with headlessness) or a nonstress and a stress (w s w s #), but less so when both are stresses or nonstresses. finally, in cola realized by five syllables, the placement of the internal strong position cannot always be known with certainty beyond the fact that it must two or three syllables before the colon-final strong position. if we marked this internal strong position always according to a ternary rhythmic norm, we would be artificially reinforcing what is only a statistical tendency, making it more normative than it really is. 59juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... (14) e lo que queremos menos acabamos (l. 232) x x x x x # x x x x x x {x} what these two lines have in common is that a nonstress belonging to a polysyllable realizes a strong position while a stress in the same word appears in a weak position. this is a phenomenon that, from the perspective of other metrical traditions, can be taken to invalidate the dolnik explanation of mena’s arte mayor (and also, for that matter, the ternary and amphibrachic explanations – though not the taktovik explanation, which the syllable count makes nevertheless unlikely). it must be borne in mind, however, that the practice of misplacing disyllabic and longer words is common currency in spanish verse.19 such cases are relatively frequent in laberinto (though not at colon end): a nonstress realizing a strong position can be next to a stress belonging not to a monosyllable (e.g. l. 474, example (12)) but to a polysyllable (e.g. the paroxytone mesmo = same in l. 815: “e madre del fi#jo de su mesmo pa{dre}”, whose final colon scans as …# x x x x x x {x}), and both the nonstress and the stress can belong to the same word, which therefore thwarts metrical expectations not only on one occasion, but on two or more, and not only within one foot (e.g. l. 284, example (13); l. 232, example (14)), but even across feet (e.g. 19 misplaced polysyllables do not detract from the metrical correctness, for example, of the following lines by the 16th-century author garcilaso de la vega, which realize a binary 10-position template of the a maiore type (6#4): “cómo deste lugar hice mudanza” (x x x x x x # x x x x {x}), in which all stresses save those realizing colon-final strong positions realize weak positions and correspond to paroxytonic disyllables, while all nonstresses in the misplaced words occupy strong positions; “él olvidará presto la braveza” (x x x x x x # x x x x {x}), with the oxytonic tetrasyllable olvidará = will forget realizing the sequence s w s w; “recogido le llevan, alegrando” (x x x x x x # x x x x {x}), with the paroxytonic tetrasyllable recogido = gathered realizing the sequence w s w s (vega 2001: 171, 195, 244). despite these (permissible) sources of variation, in vega’s hands the rhythm of the 10-position metre is overwhelmingly binary (cf. duffell 1999: 38–39). in english dolnik, misplaced polysyllables are rare but do not result automatically in incorrect lines. as in other english metres, initial and final stresses in polysyllables can appear after a metrical, syntactic or prosodic boundary (cf. jakobson 1966: 363–364), but also in other contexts (for examples outside dolnik, cf. kiparsky 1977; attridge 1982: 265–275; wright 1988: 198–199). take this dolnik line by yeats: “the days chatter and scream” (from “the tower”; qtd. tarlinskaja 1993: 102); it realizes the template w s w s w s #. the paroxytonic disyllable chatter realizes either the second w s (tarlinskaja’s interpretation: x x x x x x) or the second s w (in which case the preceding w is left unrealized; this would probably be attridge’s preferred scansion, with the void marked as [x]: x x [x] x x x x). the same can be said of the paroxytonic disyllable started in “that was how the grief started to melt” (…x x x x x x {x} or …x x [x] x x x x {x}, from frost’s “the thatch”; qtd. tarlinskaja 1993: 102). in spanish, the assumption that voids play no role leaves us with tarlinskaja’s reading, which does not differ much from my own interpretation of similar realizations in laberinto. 60 jesús m. saavedra carballido the oxytone derribar = knock down in l. 2119: “basta que pu#do derribar al u{no}”, whose final colon scans as …# x x x x x x {x}). (for the specific figures of misplaced polysyllables, see section 4d of the addenda; cf. the discussion and appendixes in duffell 1999: 74–78, 89–90.) in the following case there are zero syllables between stresses belonging to different cola (the relative lengths of cola observed until now serves to disambiguate the line as 5#5 rather than 6#4): (15) e sobre partir tales discordanças (l. 2034) x x x x x # x x x | x x {x} what sets this example apart from the preceding ones is that the displaced disyllable tales = such can be interpreted as fitting snugly in one single weak position, hence as disrupting the rhythm just once  – through demotion. (by contrast, the strong position would be realized by the first nonstress of discordanças = discords – a case of promotion.) leaving aside such cases of comfortable fit (another example would be the oxytone primer = first in the initial colon of l. 371: “que del primer fran#co que tovo corona”, whose initial colon can be scanned x x | x x x #…), in laberinto all the displaced polysyllables appear in final cola; there is even the possibility of misplacing several polysyllables (as in l. 1239: “e vi dos estre#mos fechos una par{te}”, whose final colon scans as …# x x x x x x {x}, where the paroxytone fechos = made realizes a weak and a strong position while the paroxytone una = one fits in a weak position). a possible explanation is that final cola are often longer, affording greater possibilities to deviate from the template, and that authors simply take advantage of them; to this it can be added that in the final colon the need to be strictly regular is not so pressing after the metre has been fairly faithfully indicated by the rhythm in the initial part of the line. all this indicates that in arte mayor a ternary rhythm may prevail, but it is far from constant or necessary: stresses other than the ones at colon end are frequent, but they are not required; when they do occur, they often go against the predominant ternary rhythm, even if they belong to polysyllables.20 as a result, we even find lines with a binary rhythm throughout: (16) echate, dixo, non te fazen guerra (l. 1995) x x x x#x x x x x x {x} (4#6) 20 the pressure of the metre – and of the rhyme – over the author’s language, highlighted by lázaro carreter (1972: 356), occasionally shows in the form of wrenched stresses; but it must be remembered that some of the linguistic peculiarities of laberinto that this scholar attributes 61juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... introducing the maximum the rules given so far cover most lines in laberinto. however, they cannot explain some instances in which colon-final strong positions are realized by nonstresses (given the scarcity of lines without contiguous vowels, in some of the following examples i put that restriction aside, scanning only the relevant part): (17) el ánima contra la falsa fortuna (l. 1554) x x x x x # x x x x x x {x} (5#6) (18) ca un condestable armado, que sobre (l. 2113) … x x x x {x} in these two lines (in which the underlined x indicates a nonstress realizing a strong position) the relevant atonic words are disyllabic. this is not a necessary condition: the distribution of cola in the following example is ambiguous, but whether we scan the initial colon as ending with los = those or with que = whom its rightmost word is an atonic monosyllable: (19) a fijos de los que libró del desierto (l. 1244) x x x x x # x … (5#…) x x x x x x # … (6#…) when analysing them, these nonstresses should not receive any emphasis, lest we go back to the old practice of stress manipulation. it is clear, then, that in laberinto some colon-final strong positions are realized by nonstresses which can belong to both monosyllables and disyllables (a relatively rare yet important phenomenon that recurs throughout the history of spanish metrical verse). it is simply not true that all colon-final nonstresses in laberinto correspond to a “monosyllable”, as piera states (1981: 140). to the influence of the metre also appear in mena’s prose (cf. cummins in mena 1979: 43). the fact that mena does not always insist on a regular ternary rhythm does not prevent performers from regularizing it as they please. obviously, nothing precludes a performance of mena’s arte mayor with four perceptible stresses, as evenly spaced as possible, in all lines. however, this imposed regularity cannot form the basis of metrical analysis: as soon as it has more than two syllables, any line – of prose and of verse, whether metrical or free – can be performed with a perfect ternary rhythm (but then it can also be performed with a binary movement). the difference between strict ternary metres and other kinds of verse – dolnik included – lies elsewhere: not in the performance but in the rhythm that is phonologically determined. 62 jesús m. saavedra carballido either we declare the last three examples to be incorrect, or we find a way to accommodate colon-final atonic words within our rules. i shall try to do the latter by adopting the notion of the metrical maximum, a kind of syllable that metrical rules recognize as particularly salient (i.e. a metrified stress), banning it from (certain) weak positions and/or requiring it in (certain) strong positions (for the history of the notion of the maximum, see section 1b of the addenda). i suggest that in laberinto colon-final strong positions are realized by maxima which need not be stressed.21 the first step towards a fitting definition of the maximum is to recognize that in laberinto some unstressed syllables can perform this role, but not all. judging from what we have just seen of mena’s arte mayor, the only nonstresses that count as maxima belong to what spanish phonologists consider atonic words (palabras átonas), never to tonic words (palabras tónicas). this excludes constructs like the following, in which a colon-final strong position is realized by the last nonstress (indicated by an underlined x) of a tonic proparoxytone:22 (b) *los otros estaban pensándoselo x x x x x #x x x x x x (5#6) (c) *las grandes hazañas históricas x x x x x #x x x x x (5#5) the phonological reason for this exclusion lies in the syntactic relations of dependence into which spanish words enter when combined with each other, affecting their prosody in such a way that atonic words do not receive stress in most contexts. hualde states that these words, “like all other words, have a syllable that is designated as head of the word” (hualde 2009: 202). monosyllabic words, whether tonic or atonic, only have one syllable, which functions as its prosodic head; in simple polysyllabic words, tonic as well as atonic, only one 21 more generally, i would suggest that the rightmost (strong) positions of all short unified lines in spanish have to be realized by maxima. the same rule applies to the rightmost (strong) positions of the cola that make up long unified lines and to the rightmost (strong) positions of the hemistichs making up divided lines (cf. domínguez caparrós 2014: 49). 22 this kind of realization at line end is permitted in languages such as english (cf. attridge 1982: 166–167; tarlinskaja 1987: 66, 80, 178, 181 ff.). notice that, if the basis for the metrical analysis of laberinto were the performance, it would not be possible to find a reason for the absence of nonheads in colon-final strong positions: if the mere addition of postlexical stresses sufficed to render nonstresses of tonic polysyllables fit for these positions, their failure to appear there would be impossible to explain. 63juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... of the syllables can be the head. in tonic words, the head corresponds to a stress, but in atonic words the head usually corresponds to a nonstress: it only “receives stress when the [atonic] word is cited, nominalized or focalized”, to name but a few suitable contexts (202). in this article, it will be assumed that every syntactic word and every half of a compound have one head, which in speech may correspond to a stress or not. it will be further assumed that in laberinto only some heads can be maxima, hence not all heads can realize colon-final strong positions. for the arte mayor of laberinto, i would suggest that every head of a tonic word qualifies as a maximum, and that so does every head of an atonic word not immediately followed by the head of a tonic word within the same line (in divided lines, within the same half-line). this is one of the reasons why example (6), repeated here for the sake of convenience, cannot be scanned as 6#4, but only as 4#6 (from now on, the signs x and x will indicate maxima and nonmaxima): (6’) introduzido por público pro (l. 1844) *x x x x x x # x x x x x x x x#x x x x x x for the same reason, the following construct cannot be a laberinto line of the 5#5 kind, as no amount of stress manipulation can make the atonic conjunction que = that realize the strong position at the end of the initial colon: (d) *fenómenos que no comprenderemos x x x x x # x x x x x {x} the explanation is not the unusual placement of the adverb no = not in a weak position – a phenomenon that spanish metres permit, as we have seen – but the fact that (the head of ) que is somehow overshadowed by the (head of ) the tonic word that follows it: unlike no, the monossylable que is not a maximum.23 23 my definition of maxima takes into account all primary stresses (stresses corresponding to the heads of words, including the head of each part of compounds) and disregards all secondary stresses. that said, the proposed definition is still pretty generous. notice, to begin with, that a compound like vilmente = vilely in l. 809 of laberinto has two maxima: “vimos en uno vilmente abrazados” (x x x x # x x x…). also, a stressed maximum can be immediately followed by another one belonging to a different word in the same line, as in “lavandera que no llore de pena” (x x x x x x # x x x x {x}, a 10-position line of the a maiore, 6#4 type, in góngora 1985: 220). likewise, an unstressed maximum can be immediately followed by another unstressed maximum: witness the realization of the position at the end of the initial colon of l. 1437 of laberinto, scanned as either “tanto que los # que de allí pelea{van}” (x x x x #…, 4#5 or 4#6 64 jesús m. saavedra carballido in the following 5#6 example the first head of the compound malamente = badly acts as a maximum, but the head of the preceding atonic word que does not: (20) e los matemáticos que malamente (l. 1031) x x x x x#x x x x x x {x} as in this line, usually there are more maxima than stresses. this happens even in some of the lines discussed before, including those in which colon-final positions are realized by (syllables of ) atonic words; all of those lines can be rescanned accordingly (extrametrical syllables are never heads so they cannot be maxima): (7’) así como príncipe legislator (l. 643) x x x x x #x x x x x x (8’) en ras con aquel señor de charní (l. 1590) x x x x x # x x x x x (9’) aquel coraçón que si no querer (l. 894) x x x x x # x x x x x (10’) oras silvando como dragón (l. 1965) x x x x # x x x x x (12’) en las baxas artes que le da minerva (l. 474) x x x x x # x x x x x x {x} type) or “tanto que los que # de allí pelea{van}” (x x x x x #…, 5#5 or 5#6 type). further, an unstressed maximum can be preceded by a stressed maximum, as in “allí vi de # pigmalión el herma{na}” (a 4#6 arte mayor line, in santillana 2003: 346). notice also that, if we admitted that laberinto contains divided lines, construct (d) would create no difficulty: x x x x x + x x x x x {x} (the + sign indicates an epic caesura). finally, notice that my account does not make the presence of maxima depend on punctuation. to be sure, punctuation can be a clue to prosody and it often reminds us of such important yet often overlooked prosodic phenomena as the preservation of stress in atonic words placed at the end of intonational phrases (e.g. before a parenthetical break). however, punctuation depends on writing conventions and on editorial practices, which, even within the same language, vary from period to period, from area to area, and sometimes from person to person. this is enough reason to ignore it in analysis. 65juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... (14’) e lo que queremos menos acabamos (l. 232) x x x x x # x x x x x x {x} (15’) e sobre partir tales discordanças (l. 2034) x x x x x #x x x x x {x} (17’) el ánima contra la falsa fortuna (l. 1554) x x x x x # x x x x x x{x} (18’) ca un condestable armado, que sobre (l. 2113) … x x x x {x} (19’) a fijos de los que libró del desierto (l. 1244) x x x x x # x x x … x x x x x x#x x … signalling maxima makes it easier to appreciate why, in contrast to (d) above, the following construct is correct (here the atonic que is a maximum): (e) fenómenos que jamás comprendimos x x x x x #x x x x x {x} (5#5) the syllable count, the realization of the colon-final strong positions, and the syllabic relation between cola – all of these elements comply with the rules given so far. midline metrical boundary (caesura) now that the syllable count and the realization of strong and weak positions in laberinto are clearer, it is necessary to elucidate the relation of linguistic boundaries to the template. when confronted with lines whose rightmost word is atonic, such as (18’), the notion of the maximum and the acceptance of unstressed maxima make it unnecessary to assume, as piera does (1981: 211–216), that line ends in the domain of metre necessarily translate into phrase boundaries in the realization. what makes enjambment possible is the fact that, contrary to piera’s argument, metre does not automatically introduce a systematic “line–phrase correspondence” at the end of all lines (piera 1981: 216; cf. piera 2003a); and 66 jesús m. saavedra carballido neither is there, of course, any line-internal colon–phrase correspondence, as he further claims (piera 2003b). unless we are willing to violate the givens of the language, we must recognize that the lowest line boundary in laberinto is above the syllable but below the phrase: it operates between syntactic words, whether tonic or atonic. examples (17’) and (19’) suggest that the same happens with colon boundaries inside lines. in view of the lines scanned so far, we can therefore add one more element to our account of arte mayor: between the syllables realising the second and third strong positions, as between lines, there must be some kind of linguistic boundary. the existence of a metrical rule explicitly regulating such boundaries is rejected by piera, at least inside lines (piera 1981: 119–121). however, the examples analysed indicate that the syllable realizing the last strong position of the initial colon and the syllable realizing the first strong position of the final colon cannot belong to the same syntactic word. due to the exclusion of 8-syllable lines, laberinto does not present lines in which the first strong position of the final colon is unequivocally realized by the last nonstress of a proparoxytone (as in this 4#4 construct: *“muchos fenó#menos | extra{ños}”, scanned as x x x x # x x | x x {x}). neither does mena’s work contain lines in which the last word of the initial colon presents more than two nonstresses at the end (as in this 5#6 construct: *“estaban lleván#doselos | regala{dos}”, scanned as x x x x x # x x x | x x x {x}). the former absence might be just a stylistic preference of mena’s, and the latter might be due to the scarcity of such words in the language. yet the fact is that in lines without contiguous vowels most straddling proparoxytones end in 6-syllable cola (see section 4a of the addenda); thus they necessarily fall just short of realizing a strong position in the final colon, as in this example: (7’’) así como príncipe legislator (l. 643) x x x x x #x x x| x x x in lines with contiguous vowels the situation is similar: the colon in which straddling proparoxytones end always allows – and frequently demands – a 6-syllable interpretation. finally, while in other spanish verse compounds can straddle two cola and two lines,24 laberinto contains no such cases 24 the two stressed maxima in a compound can appear in different lines and in different cola within the same line. the possibility has been exploited, for example, by luis de león and luis de góngora. as regards the former, “y mientras miserable/ mente se están los otros abrasan{do}”, are a 6-position line and a 10-position line straddled by the 2-maximum adverb miserablemente = wretchedly, whose first maximum realizes the rightmost strong position of 67juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... (cf. duffell 1999: 71–72). all things considered, i tentatively include a compulsory midline boundary rule, of the kind explained, among the realization rules of arte mayor. beyond metrical correctness? the characteristics of mena’s arte mayor in laberinto that i have identified as constant and necessary are the following: two rising cola, each with two strong positions; extrametricality aside, each colon is realized by four to six syllables; as in other dolnik, every strong position is realized by one syllable and every internal weak position by one or two; colon-final strong positions must be realized by maxima, whether stressed or not; both cola are kept distinct by a midline boundary rule, such that the syllables realizing the last strong position of the initial colon and the first strong position of the final colon cannot belong to the same syntactic word, in spite of which the lines can be said to be unified; unusually for spanish metres, headlessness is permitted (but only as long as the initial colon is realized by at least four syllables); the final colon cannot be shorter than the initial one, so it must be realized by at least five syllables; extrametricality only appears at line end, and it is confined to one nonmaximum, so proparoxytonic line ends and extrametrical atonic words are not tolerated. in kerkhof ’s edition of laberinto there are only two lines without contiguous vowels that fail to comply with these rules: (21) *par en el ánimo, non en la fortuna (l. 1563) x x x x#x x x x x x x {x} x x x x x x x #x x x x {x} (22) *ramo ninguno non avrá menester (l. 224) x x x x#x x x x x x x x x x x x x # x x x x x line 1563 is of the hypothetical 4#7 or 7#4 type. in either case, it is incorrect because there can be no 7-syllable cola. line 224 also has two possible scansions: as either 4#7 or 6#5. the former is incorrect for the same reason. the first line (león 2011: 74). as regards the latter, “y al fin ambos igual#mente ayuda{dos}” is a 10-position line (of the a maiore, 6#4 type) in which the 2-maxima adverb igualmente = equally, whose first maximum realizes the rightmost strong position of the initial colon, straddles both cola (góngora 1985: 53). 68 jesús m. saavedra carballido according to the latter scansion, the division into cola goes against the phrasal movement of the line. nevertheless, this does not make the scansion incorrect (we have already seen that the only boundary required between cola is placed between two syntactic words, not necessarily tonic or phrase-final). it is incorrect simply because the final colon cannot be shorter than the initial one. both lines are correct if we accept the occurrence of internal extrametricality (of two and one syllables, respectively); this means accepting the occasional combination in laberinto of unified lines (the norm) and divided lines (with possible internal extrametricality, i.e. made up of different hemistichs, here separated by the + sign that indicates epic caesura): “par en el á{nimo}, + non en la fortu{na}” (of the 4+5 line type) and “ramo ningu{no} + non avrá menester” (4+6). it could be argued that, if such combinations were possible, it would be strange for mena to employ them so rarely. however, there is also line 939 – example (1) – of a type which is equally rare (6#6). the difference is that this line does not present any textual alternatives turning it into something more usual, whereas lines 1563 and 224 can be amended into metrical correctness with a different selection of manuscript variants. thus we can get, for example, the lines “par en el á#nimo, non la fortu{na}” (4#6) or “par en el á#nimo, no en la fortu{na}” (4#6), and “ramo ningu#no no avrá menester” (4#6).25 some lines with contiguous vowels are also dubious. the correctness of the following example depends on treating fue as a disyllable; all other scansions are incorrect (the o indicates a vowel that does not count metrically inside the line):26 (23) desque juba les fue prepotente (l. 400) x x x x x #xx x x x {x} (5#5) * x x x#x x xx x x x {x} (3#7) * x x x#x x ox x x x {x} (3#6) * x x x x x ox # x x x {x} (6#3) * x x x x x xx # x x x {x} (7#3) 25 the two lines would also be metrical with other variants. the point here is not so much to choose the right version from the point of view of the manuscript tradition as to show that the scribes themselves may also have had doubts about the correctness of the readings eventually chosen by kerkhof, opting for something more regular instead. 26 in the case of contiguous vowels, the ones marked as metrically invisible are the higher (cf. navarro tomás 1967: 27, 66–73, 156, 161 ff.; but cf. 151); in the case of vowels that are identical in this respect, i mark as invisible the weaker ones (unstressed as opposed to stressed); finally, in the case of identical vowels in this respect too (stressed or unstressed), i mark as invisible the ones to the left. invisible vowels do not count for the determination of maxima; in other words, maxima are determined after marking invisible vowels, as if they were not there. 69juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... an alternative version, present in some sources and whose metrical correctness is beyond doubt, reads: “desde que ju#ba les fue prepoten{te}” (4#6). this other line is incorrect unless we interpret quieres as a trisyllable: (24) de los passados, si quieres ver espanto (l. 483) x x x x x x # x xx x x x {x} (6#6) * x x x x#x x o xx x x x {x} (3#7) * x x x x{x} + x o xx x x x {x} (4+6) the third scansion shows a divided line with internal extrametricality. examples (21) and (22) above might be similarly divided; the addition of (24) makes three lines out of 2376 in laberinto. however, with different variants we can arrive at a correct unified version of this line too; this is only one of the existing possibilities: “de los passa#dos, si quiés ver espan{to}” (4#6). the following line is equally problematic, now due to the fact that the initial colon is perhaps realized by three syllables and to the relative length of the cola: (25) *femonoe, por orden la sesta (l. 969) x x x#x x x x x x {x} (3#6) x x xo# x x x x x {x} (3#5) x x xx x x # x x x {x} (6#3) x x xo x x # x x x {x} (5#3) with other variants the line would read, for example, “femona por or#den era la ses{ta}” (5#5), whose correctness is beyond dispute. this line is divided or else ends in a 7-syllable colon: (26) *de los que demuestran y de los demostrados (l. 1028) … +{x} x x x x x x {x} … # x x x x x x x {x} some manuscripts read “de los que demues#tran e los demostra{dos}”, with a correct 6-syllable colon at the end. in the following case, the final colon remains correct, in terms of length, only if the two vowels separated by the letter h are treated as one (which proves that this letter is no obstacle to doing so): (27) que fe non se guarden hermanos a hermanos (l. 2031) … #x x x x x o x {x} 70 jesús m. saavedra carballido though piera’s amphibrachic account does not find any incorrect lines in laberinto (1981: 144), one of the lines that i find problematic – example (22) – is also considered incorrect in piera’s second account (2008: 125). other lines that he deems incorrect can be considered well-formed examples of the 5#6 type: line 791 (“que de lo gana#do sufre mengua tan{ta}”, scanned as x x x x x # x x x x o x x {x}) and line 354 (“de parte del aus#tro vimos toda gre{cia}”, scanned as x x x x x o # x x x x x x {? x}, where the ? mark indicates that the metrical status of a vowel is unclear). as regards the constructs that piera presents as possibly correct (piera 2008: 123), one is obviously incorrect by my rules: (f ) *do veredes los grandes señores e los reyes (based on l. 1779) x x x x x x # x x x x x x x{? x} (6#7) x x x x x x {x} + x x x x x x{? x} (6+6) another construct that piera provisionally allows i find incorrect, at least if we accept his disyllabic interpretation of the first word (by virtue of which the line begins with a 3-syllable colon): (g) vieras otro d’essa nación (based on l. 558) *oxx x #x … this line is correct if we treat vieras as a trisyllable; with the scansion x x x x # the line is of the 4#5 or 4#6 type. in this other construct that piera judges problematic but possibly correct, it is the final colon that causes difficulties: (h) oras silvando tanto drago (based on l. 1965, quoted as example (10’) above) x x x x # x x x x {x} this example belongs to the 4#4 type, which is incorrect only if we take arte mayor – qua long unified dolnik with four strong positions – to exclude the 4-syllable realization of the final colon. it is precisely to this and other related issues that i turn now. 71juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... other constant but not necessary characteristics of laberinto one major problem with the dolnik account of arte mayor offered so far is that in laberinto all final cola are realized by at least five syllables. the absence of final cola featuring four syllables means that mena shunned 8-syllable lines. this peculiarity lends weight to the amphibrachic hypothesis. in piera’s version of it (1981), 1-syllable extrametricality is acceptable at the beginning of lines; both cola can be headless, and the line can be truncated; between the syllables realizing two strong positions within the same colon there are always two syllables. the corresponding template can be represented as: {w} (w) s w | w s w # (w) s w | w s (w)27 one possible charge against the amphibrachic account is that 4-syllable final cola (with one syllable alone between the syllables realizing the strong positions), and hence 8-syllable lines, do appear in other authors’ arte mayor. in his first approach to laberinto, piera notes that some nonamphibrachic “descriptions predict eight-syllable lines, whose conspicuous absence from all major poems must then be explained away” (piera 1981: 102). even if in mena’s composition final cola are always realized by five or more syllables, this constant characteristic may not be necessary for other kinds of arte mayor. the best way to determine whether arte mayor admits of 4#4 lines is to find them in compositions using what appears to be the same metre. actually, this line type is not unheard of. this is an instance by imperial (dutton, gonzález cuenca eds. 1993: 261): (28) tan grant amor nunca mostraron x x x x #x x x x{x}28 27 according to duffell (1999: 68), the third foot cannot be headless, while the second can be truncated: {w} (w) s w | w s (w) # w s w | w s (w). 28 the initial colon is oxytonic, and, despite all appearances, the internal weak position of the final colon cannot be filled by two syllables, as this would mean positing two consecutive strong positions (one at the end of the initial colon and another at the beginning of the final one, as in some divided lines). the paroxytonic disyllable nunca contains a maximum followed by a nonmaximum realizing a strong position, both within the same foot; in this respect, this line is similar to several others of laberinto already mentioned: l. 284, scanned as example (13); l. 232, example (14’). 72 jesús m. saavedra carballido in addition to imperial, there are other authors that accept 8-syllable lines. a case in point is the 20th-century writer valle-inclán, arguably one of a handful of versifiers that kept the spanish arte mayor tradition alive. in his “los pobres de dios” = “god’s poor” (valle-inclán 1995: 67), written in what seems to be an 8-position dolnik, we find 5#6 and 4#5 lines with a strong resemblance to those of in laberinto: (29) va la caravana de los desvalidos x x x x x#x x x x x x {x} (30) el polvo quema sus llagas rojas x x x x # x x x x x{x} however, there are also 4#4 lines: (31) por los caminos florecidos x x x x #x x x x {x} (32) en donde cantan las vaqueras x x x x #x x x x {x} all four examples, like the other lines in the composition from which they are taken, display the word boundary between cola mentioned in connection with laberinto. indeed, this is one of the reasons to conclude that valle-inclán “los pobres de dios” is, like mena’s work, an example of arte mayor. therefore piera’s construct (h), scanned above, can be tentatively labelled as a correct 4#4 line.29 29 apart from a dubious case with contiguous vowels like “a rute e prie#go e a carcabuey” (l. 2036), which can be scanned in several other ways (e.g. as 4#5), the 4#4 line type is absent from laberinto. by contrast, mena uses 6#6 lines, which are avoided by valle-inclán. it could be hypothesized that, while mena wants to keep its distance from popular arte menor by avoiding initial cola of three syllables and final cola of four (cf. piera 2008: 123), valle-inclán does aim at a popular flavour. in this regard, we cannot forget that valle-inclán was of galician origin, and that “los pobres de dios” is closed by a stanza made up of four isosyllabic 7-position lines (romance), borrowed from a well-known folk song in the galician-portuguese language. among the possible origins of arte mayor, the influence of galician-portuguese versification on mediaeval spanish verse has been mentioned since santillana’s proemio = preface (santillana 2003: 653). this explanation has been accepted by many modern scholars (e.g. le gentil 1953: 409; clarke 1964: 53, 219; lázaro carreter 1972: 344–345; navarro tomás 1974: 121–122; gasparov 1996: 138; garcía calvo 2006: 1650–1651; domínguez caparrós 2014: 166). while spanish 73juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... if final cola realized by four syllables are accepted, then arte mayor is less likely to be an amphibrachic form than a dolnik. further confirmation of this view would come in the form of headless lines with initial cola realized by three syllables (corresponding to the metrical sequence s w s #). because of the presence of contiguous vowels, on the one hand, and of the existence of manuscript variants, on the other, there are no certain instances of this phenomenon in laberinto;30 but two possible cases can be found in “son de muñeira” = “the sound of the mill-song”, another composition by valle-inclán (1995: 89).31 in my scansion i have assumed that contiguous vowels in the final colon do not count: (33) ¡toc! ¡toc! ¡toc!… bate la espadela x x x # x x x o x x{x} (3#5) (34) ¡toc! ¡toc! ¡toc!… da vueltas la muela x x x # x ox x x o x{x} (3#5) the truth, however, is that both lines can be scanned differently: the initial cola can be continued up to the fourth maximum, and there is the possibility of counting a greater number of contiguous vowels. for this reason, i provisionally dismiss initial cola with fewer than four syllables, here and in laberinto. as regards extrametricality at the end of lines, in laberinto it is always limited to one syllable. however, in spanish this limitation is not usually arte mayor was abandoned when the italianate 10-position line was introduced for learned verse, in galician-portuguese it remained (under the name of verso de moinheira = mill-song verse) a central form both in the oral tradition and in the written tradition of folk inspiration, as evidenced by the work of the 19th-century galician writer rosalia de castro. in the hands of galician authors, even of those writing in spanish, verso de moinheira has never been constrained by the learned connotations that arte mayor had acquired in mediaeval spanish, and thus remained free from some of the stylistic limitations that mena imposed on his laberinto. despite their different minimum and maximum line lengths, the identity between the verso de moinheira and arte mayor has been affirmed by henríquez ureña (2003: 205–207). proof that the absence of certain line types does not necessarily point to a different metre comes from santillana’s “comedieta de ponça” = “little comedy of ponça” (santillana 2003: 295–356), whose verse is clearly the same as mena’s – 5#6 lines predominate, appearing side by side with a few 4#5, 4#6 and 6#6 lines – despite lacking 5#5 lines without contiguous vowels. 30 to be sure, a laberinto line like “o virtuo#sa, magnífica gue{rra}” (l. 2019) can be scanned as 3#6, but also as 4#6 (the latter is the option preferred by editors, who indicate this reading by means of diaeresis: virtüoso = virtuous). 31 despite its title, valle-inclán’s composition was not for singing but for recitation. 74 jesús m. saavedra carballido considered to distinguish among verse types (which are generally allowed to mix oxytonic, paroxytonic and proparoxytonic endings), so we cannot be certain that this is a necessary requirement for all arte mayor. after all, the insertion of two extrametrical syllables at line end is a permissible variation in authors other than mena. witness this example by villasandino (dutton, gonzález cuenca eds. 1993: 162): (35) filósofo firme e grant metafísico […] non entendades que só tan çentífico like other lines in the same composition (analysed as arte mayor in saavedra molina 1945: 116, and piera 1981: 132), these two have the ending x {x x}, absent from laberinto but included among the accepted elements of arte mayor by such scholars as foulché-delbosc (1902: 102–103), navarro tomás (1974: 115–116) and saavedra molina (1945: 27, 30). despite its exclusion from mena’s composition, double extrametricality can be provisionally permitted as an option in arte mayor (cf. piera 1981: 100, 131–134).32 after this comparison between laberinto and works by other authors, it appears that the necessary characteristics of arte mayor may be fewer than those that are constant in mena’s composition. in this light, the latter comes over as a relatively strict version of the metre.33 32 further doubts about the demand to avoid double extrametricality in arte mayor are cast by an isosyllabic 10-position line like “que tienen fama en este mundo va{rio}”, by the late-16thcentury writer bartolomé carrasco de figueroa. in the composition to which it belongs, it appears surrounded by proparoxytonic lines alone, and is therefore supposed to have two extrametrical syllables rather than one (cf. alatorre 2007: 194). theoretically, the same interpretation could be given to similar endings with contiguous vowels in laberinto, such as “privados de to#da visiva poten{çia}” (l. 148, of the 5#6 type). 33 if we compare the constant characteristics of the laberinto verse with tarlinskaja’s description of the english dolnik, a couple of interesting differences emerge. tarlinskaja speaks of void weak positions, most often the first one, but also internally (cf. tarlinskaja 1993: 12–13); but in laberinto all internal weak positions are realized by at least one syllable. the other difference is that the only constant feature that she contemplates in the realization of the metre is that the internal stresses of polysyllables are avoided in weak positions (the distribution of other stresses and nonstresses is fairly predictable, but always with exceptions), while in laberinto the constant feature is that colon-final strong positions are always realized by maxima. 75juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... possible characteristics of other arte mayor the use of final 4-syllable cola might not be imperial’s only departure from the arte mayor standard subsequently set by mena. imperial also has initial 3-syllable cola and final 7-syllable cola, and in some of his lines the initial colon is the longer. these phenomena indicate that his metrical rules might be looser than those followed by mena and by other authors (dutton, gonzález cuenca eds. 1993: 312): imperial might have admitted both headless lines with 3-syllable cola (e.g. “son donze#llas de grant exçelen{çia}, a line of the 3#6 type) and the interspersion of lines divided by epic caesura (e.g. “la quinta lla{man} + conjurado sermón”, of the 4+6 type); also, he might have combined his cola quite freely (e.g. “e vence voluntat # desenfrena{da}”, of the 6#4 type).34 by these rules – which may still result in arte mayor, but which certainly do not coincide with those of its mainstream variety, i.e. of arte mayor qua long unified dolnik with four strong positions, let alone with those of the stricter mainstream represented by laberinto – all of the lines interpreted as incorrect in the preceding sections would become automatically correct. conclusion the anisosyllabic metre of mena’s laberinto has often been considered the most perfect example of spanish arte mayor. i have analysed the verse employed by mena – and by other authors, from the middle ages to the 20th-century – as a kind of syllable-stress dolnik with a predominant ternary rhythm. my claim that arte mayor is a syllable-stress form is based on the following considerations. if a metre that only regulates syllables (or metrical elements based on syllables) is syllabic, and a metre that only regulates stresses (or metrical elements based on stress) is accentual, then it is reasonable to interpret as syllabic-accentual any metre that regulates (metrified) syllables and (metrified) stresses in some way. crucially, spanish metres usually regulate both the syllable count and the minimal number and placement of stresses along the line: all colonand line-final strong positions must be realized by stresses. the latter rule applies to the immense majority of spanish metres; so much so that traditional spanish metrists impose it even on places where it does not 34 some of imperial’s lines are ambiguous; e.g. “la del semblan{te} + nin alegre nin tris{te}” (of the 4+6 type), which can also be interpreted as “la del semblante nin # alegre nin tris{te}” (of the 6#5 type). 76 jesús m. saavedra carballido apply (hence their prescription of stress wrenching in the middle of cola and lines). in relation to spanish, then, duffell is eminently correct when he says that, in general, “the patterns of romance [… metrical] verse are based on two linguistic features, syllable count and accentuation. no romance verse is purely syllabic”, as the “metres contain mandatory positions for accented syllables” (1996: 211). from the perspective of metrical traditions where stresses are regulated in a different way, it might seem that spanish metres are too irregular, as certain stretches within the lines seem to follow no discernible organization; but the fact remains that they are as strictly (even if differently) regulated as many others – e.g. english ones, whose general syllable-stress character no one seriously denies. in this respect, one could say that spanish metres simply obey the rule that correspondence to metrical template tends to be lax at the beginnings of units and strict at the ends (cf. hayes 1983: 373). in spanish metres, these (colonand line-) ends can be placed quite far apart (e.g. in strict a minore 10-position lines in which only the 4th and 10th positions are always filled by a stress, while other stresses, despite following certain statistical tendencies, are optional), or as close together as every four syllables (e.g. in strict 7-position lines in which the 3th and 7th positions must be filled by a stress, while other stresses are optional). at most we could say that in the stretches preceding those ends, spanish metres may display syllabic tendencies (though in many metres stresses are statistically regulated even at the beginning of cola and lines). but, in general, the issue is qualitative rather than quantitative: in a language like spanish in which stress is not fixed or always predictable, it is not really possible to tell the length of a metrical line just by counting the (metrified) syllables. at least one (metrified) stress must be taken into account. take a simple case in point: a 7-syllable line can realize a 7-position template without final extrametricality (if the line ends …x), a 6-position template (if the line ends …x {x}), a 5-position template (if the line ends …x {x x}), a 4-position template (e.g. the construct “adelantán{dosenos}”: x x x x {x x x}), and, theoretically, even a 3-position template (e.g. the construct “acabán{dosetelos}”: x x x {x x x x}). if verse like this cannot be identified without paying attention to syllables and stresses, then it surely belongs to the syllable-stress kind. as regards the dolnik hypothesis, it consists in assuming strong positions to be realized by one syllable and separated by another two or one from the syllable realizing the nearest strong position. arguing that the realization rules of mena’s arte mayor do not count prosodic syllables proper but metrically relevant segments (metrified syllables) and that they do not regulate directly the distribution of stresses and nonstresses but of (usually stressed) maxima 77juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... and (unstressed) nonmaxima (metrified stresses and nonstresses), this article begun by analysing the constant and necessary characteristics of the verse of laberinto: two rising cola, each with two strong positions; extrametricality aside, each colon is realized by four to six syllables; as in other dolnik, every strong position is realized by one syllable and every internal weak position by one or two; colon-final strong positions must be realized by maxima, whether stressed or not; both cola are kept distinct by a midline boundary rule, such that the syllables realizing the last strong position of the initial colon and the first strong position of the final colon cannot belong to the same syntactic word, in spite of which the lines can be said to be unified; unusually for spanish metres, headlessness is permitted (but only as long as the initial colon is realized by at least four syllables); the final colon cannot be shorter than the initial one, so it must be realized by at least five syllables; extrametricality only appears at line end, and it is confined to one nonmaximum, so proparoxytonic line ends and extrametrical atonic words are not tolerated. i have tried to explain as many arte mayor features as possible – some admittedly rare, though shared by other spanish metres – as correct and as necessary. hence, to begin with, the attempt to explain the arte mayor of laberinto as a dolnik rather than as a ternary metre allowing headlessness, a decision intended to accommodate lines whose final colon is realized by five syllables instead of six, and, in addition, the substitution of stress maxima for stresses, a move designed to account for line-end atonic words. it is clear, however, that the metre of laberinto, like other spanish metres, regulates the line length – whose variation it keeps within precise limits – and the placement of maxima at colon and line end more strictly than the placement of other maxima elsewhere in the line. as a result, between maxima – as against the syllables realizing strong positions – there can be less than one or more than two syllables. if it can be stated that – to make room for all the vocabulary in the language and to avoid monotony – syllable-stress dolnik in english can display accentual tendencies, when weak positions are left unrealized (tarlinskaja 1993: 13, 199; duffell 2008: 34; attridge 2013: 107–108, 155 n. 11), so, conversely, it is tempting to suggest that spanish dolnik tends towards syllabism, when the distribution of maxima and nonmaxima does not reveal but obscures (outside colon and line ends) the distribution of strong and weak positions; but, given its strong preference for a ternary rhythm, it can be concluded that laberinto is not characterized by such syllabic tendencies. in relation to rhythm, it is clear that in spanish 1and 2-syllable intervals cannot be the only defining characteristic of dolnik proper: one can write verse with a rhythm that mixes iambs and anapaests while sticking to isosyllabism (e.g. romance, a strict sequence of 7-position lines in which each position 78 jesús m. saavedra carballido amounts to one syllable, and in which it does not usually matter if the rhythm of some lines is binary, of some ternary and of others mixed). some authors have spoken of dolnik when dealing with spanish compositions made up of isosyllabic lines displaying mixed rhythms only (e.g. gasparov 1996: 136). to be sure, this can be done when it can be demonstrated that such lines evolve from anisosyllabic dolnik, but this latter, original variety should never be forgotten. not all the constant features of laberinto are necessary in other kinds of arte mayor. as it turns out, mena’s verse is a singularly strict variety of mainstream arte mayor (defined as long unified dolnik with four strong positions). in other mainstream arte mayor, the final colon can be realized by four syllables (though still not shorter than the initial one), and the line end can be proparoxytonic. lines with these characteristics do not appear in mena’s work, or else they are so scarce as to be better viewed as incorrect; but if they appeared, or if they were more frequent, it would not be reasonable to say that they result in a substantially different metre. i have provisionally argued for the existence of yet other kinds of arte mayor. these seem to have only two necessary characteristics: four strong positions (the second and fourth colon-final and corresponding to maxima) and a midline boundary between syntactic words. the possibilities accepted here but not in mainstream arte mayor would be: headlessness combined with initial cola of fewer than four syllables, and the existence of a looser variety and of two stricter varieties. in the loosest version arte mayor becomes a taktovik and/ or a divided 2-hemistich line (with internal extrametricality, i.e. epic caesura), and it allows a final colon that is shorter than the initial one.35 as regards the versions that are stricter than the mainstream, one amounts to a ternary metre whose final colon is always realized by six syllables, the permitted combinations of lines types being thus limited to 4#6, 5#6 and 6#6; the strictest version of arte mayor is not only rigorously ternary but isosyllabic: all lines are of the 4#6 or 5#6 or 6#6 type.36 in order to achieve a full understanding of the rhythmic range of arte mayor (cf. duffell 1999: 73–74), it is necessary to perform a complete statistical analysis of its variable characteristics, beginning with the ternary or binary movement that predominates (the latter is the norm, for example, in valleinclán’s “los pobres de dios”). while studying the characteristics of all the 35 it would be logical to expect initial cola falling short of four syllables and the interchangeability of cola in certain varieties, other than mena’s, of mainstream arte mayor; however, this does not seem be the case (the reasons need studying). 36 for example, santillana’s composition beginning “robadas havían el austro e borea” apparently consists of 5#6 lines alone (santillana 2003: 285–294). 79juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... forms of spanish arte mayor that might exist, it is nevertheless important to remember clarke’s claim that there have been as many varieties of this verse as there are practitioners of it, and that “the rule” was “that each poet was a law unto himself in the matter of rhythm interpretation” (1964: 210). it might well be that arte mayor is less a single metre than a cluster of different forms with some family resemblance (cf. clarke 1964: 92). thus, it must be borne in mind that “arte mayor from the beginning enjoyed a loose form along with the restricted, which later gradually took precedence over its rival”, leading to “the monotony of rigid pattern” (60, 50). while some arte mayor texts seem to be genuine dolnik, others might be best described as strict ternary verse and even – e.g. when the placement of the colon boundary is rigorously fixed – as effectively amphibrachic; still others might eventually be identified as taktovik. this would mean applying piera’s second account of arte mayor, if not to laberinto, as he did, then to other texts; more generally, this would lead to accept the existence in spanish, and therefore in romance languages, of the taktovik form hitherto proved to exist only in languages like russian, english and latvian (cf. gasparov 1996; fabb, halle 2008).37 as a result, the necessary characteristics of arte mayor might be reduced in number or even declared nonexistent, at which point the very label arte mayor, whatever its convenience as an umbrella term, would lose much of its analytic usefulness. meanwhile, the results obtained here warrant the provisional conclusion that the dolnik form has been cultivated not only in slavic, baltic and germanic languages, from russian to english, but also in a romance language like spanish. in this respect, it cannot be forgotten that, before the emergence of arte mayor, a number of similar forms had already been cultivated in other romance languages from galician-portuguese to italian (cf. burger 1957: 37 some authors – of whom geers was perhaps the first (geers 1930: 179–18; cf. morley 1933: 968), but certainly not the last (e.g. pellen 1985: 10; orduna 1987: 10–11, 23; garcía calvo 2006: 1617–1623) – have characterized the rhymed verse of the spanish epic cantar de mio cid = song of my cid (composed c.1200) as a long, two-part metre with four strong positions; in the nomenclature used here, it would correspond to either taktovik or loose anapaest. (succinct descriptions of the form can be found in gasparov 1996: 134–135; domínguez caparrós 2014: 159–161.) the problem is that the text of the only extant manuscript does not seem to bear out these characterizations (even their proponents sometimes recognize the existence of many lines with the “wrong” number of stresses and/or syllables). this is perhaps because, as some argue (e.g. fernández, brío 2004), the work was meant to be performed to the accompaniment of (now lost) music. to solve these difficulties, other authors have suggested more strong positions: as many as six (though he speaks of “stresses”, this seems to be the view favoured by smith 1979: 52) or even eight (speaking of “beats”, leonard 1931: 293). from today’s perspective, the cid reads much like rhymed free verse. 80 jesús m. saavedra carballido 40–43). and, just like arte mayor has coexisted with other spanish metres that look much like its short counterparts,38 future research may uncover other romance traditions in which dolnik metres are similarly varied. a complete comparative analysis of these forms, on the linguistic basis argued for here, is still pending. references alatorre, antonio 2007. cuatro ensayos sobre arte poética. méxico d.f.: el colegio de méxico. attridge, derek 1982. the rhythms of english poetry. london: longman. attridge, derek 2012. the case for the english dolnik; or, how not to introduce prosody. in: poetics today 33(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-1505522 attridge, derek 2013. moving words: forms of english poetry. oxford: oxford university press. balaguer, joaquín 1995. apuntes para una historia prosódica de la métrica castellana. santo domingo: editora corripio. bello, andrés 1884. principios de la ortolojía i métrica de la lengua castellana. in: consejo de instrucción pública (ed.), obras completas de don andrés bello 5: opúsculos gramaticales. santiago de chile: pedro g. ramírez, 3–229. burger, michel 1957. recherches sur la structure et l’origine des vers romans. genève: droz. chisholm, david 1995. prosodic aspects of german hexameter verse. in: poetics today 16(3), 523–545. https://doi.org/10.2307/1773177 clarke, dorothy clotelle 1964. morphology of fifteenth-century castilian verse. pittsburgh: duquesne university press. correas, gonzalo 1954. arte de la lengua española castellana. madrid: csic. díaz rengifo, juan 2012. arte poética española. kassel: edition reichenberger. 38 let us just recall such anisosyllabic forms as the verso de seguidilla, with between four and six syllables up to the rightmost (metrified) stress, and the verso semilibre menor, with between three and six syllables (for the former, cf. navarro tomás 1974: 177–182, 240–241, 292–293, 340; for the latter, cf. navarro tomás 1974: 524). both can be argued to be underlain by the template w s w s {x}, without and with optional headlessness, respectively. 81juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... d’introno, francesco; teso, enrique del; weston, rosemary 1995. fonética y fonología actual del español. madrid: cátedra. domínguez caparrós, josé 2014. métrica española. 3rd rev. ed. madrid. uned. duffell, martin j. 1996. chaucer, gower, and the history of the hendecasyllable. in: mccully, christopher b.; anderson, john j. (eds), english historical metrics. cambridge: cambridge university press, 210–218. duffell, martin j. 1999. modern metrical theory and the verso de arte mayor. london: department of hispanic studies, queen mary and westfield college, university of london. duffell, martin j. 2008. triple time in english verse. in: rhythmica: revista española de métrica comparada 5–6, 23–48. dutton, brian; gonzález cuenca, joaquín (eds.) 1993. cancionero de juan alfonso de baena. madrid: visor. fabb, nigel; halle, morris 2008. meter in poetry: a new theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. fernández, guillermo; brío, clara del 2004. sobre la métrica del cantar de mio cid. música y épica: la cantilación de las gestas. in: lemir 8, 1–37. foulché-delbosc, raymond 1902. étude sur le laberinto de juan de mena. in: revue hispanique: recueil consacré à l’étude des langues, des littératures et de l’histoire des pays castillans, catalans, et portugais 9(29), 75–138. garcía calvo, agustín 2006. tratado de rítmica y prosodia y de métrica y versificación. zamora: lucina. gasparov, mikhail l. 1996. a history of european versification. oxford: oxford university press. geers, gerardus johannes 1930. algo sobre versificación española. in: neophilologus 15, 178–183. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01510199 góngora, luis de 1985. sonetos completos. madrid: castalia. halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1966. chaucer and the study of prosody. in: college english 28(3), 187–219. https://doi.org/10.2307/374038 halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1971. illustration and defense of a theory of the iambic pentameter. in: college english 33(2), 154–176. https://doi.org/10.2307/374744 hanson, kristin 2008. review of fabb, nigel; halle, morris 2008. in: language 84(2), 370–386. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0026 82 jesús m. saavedra carballido harris, james w. 1983. syllable structure and stress in spanish: a non-linear analysis. cambridge and london: mit press. hayes, bruce 1983. a grid-based theory of english meter. in: linguistic inquiry 14(3), 357–393. henríquez ureña, pedro 2003. estudios de versificación española. in: obras completas 3: estudios métricos. santo domingo: secretaría de estado de cultura, editora nacional, 163–440. hualde, josé ignacio 2009. unstressed words in spanish. in: language sciences 31(2/3), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2008.12.003 hualde, josé ignacio 2010. secondary stress and stress clash in spanish. in: ortegallebaria, marta (ed.), selected proceedings of the 4th conference on laboratory approaches to spanish phonology. somerville: cascadilla proceedings project, 11–19. hualde, josé ignacio 2014. los sonidos del español. cambridge: cambridge university press. hualde, josé ignacio; nadeu, marianna 2014. rhetorical stress in spanish. in: hulst, harry van der (ed.), word stress: theoretical and typological issues. cambridge and new york: cambridge university press, 228–252. jakobson, roman 1966. linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge: mit press, 350–377. ker, william paton 1899. analogies between english and spanish verse (arte mayor). in: transactions of the philological society 24(1), 113–128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968x.1899.tb00138.x kiparsky, paul 1977. the rhythmic structure of english verse. in: linguistic inquiry 8, 189–247. lázaro carreter, fernando 1972. la poética del arte mayor castellano. in: studia hispanica in honorem r. lapesa 1. madrid: gredos, 343–378. le gentil, pierre 1953. la poésie lyrique espagnole et portugaise à la fin du moyen âge 2. rennes: plihon. león, luis de 2011. poesía. 13th ed. madrid: cátedra. leonard, william ellery 1931. the recovery of the metre of the cid. in: pmla 46(2), 289–306. https://doi.org/10.2307/458034 mena, juan de 1979. laberinto de fortuna. madrid: cátedra. mena, juan de 1995. laberinto de fortuna. madrid: castalia. 83juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... morales-front, alfonso 2014. el acento. in: núñez cedeño, rafael; colina, sonia; bradley, travis g. (eds.), fonología generativa contemporánea de la lengua española, 2nd rev. ed. washington, d.c.: georgetown university press, 235–265. morel-fatio, alfred 1894. l’arte mayor et l’hendécasyllabe dans la poésie castillane du xve siècle et du commencement du xvie siècle. in: romania 23(90), 209–231. https://doi.org/10.3406/roma.1894.5820 morley, s. griswold. 1933. recent theories about the meter of the cid. in: pmla 48(4), 965–980. https://doi.org/10.2307/458191 navarro tomás, tomás 1967. manual de pronunciación española. 6th ed. new york and london: hafner. navarro tomás, tomás 1974. métrica española: reseña histórica y descriptiva. 4th ed. barcelona: labor. nebrija, antonio de 2011. gramática sobre la lengua castellana. barcelona: rae; galaxia gutenberg. nespor, marina; vogel, irene 1989. on clashes and lapses. in: phonology 6(1), 69–116. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0952675700000956 orduna, germán 1987. función expresiva de la tirada y de la estructura fónico-rítmica del verso en la creación del poema de mio cid. in: incipit 7, 7–34. pellen, rené 1985. le modèle du vers épique espagnol, à partir de la formule cidienne “el que en buen hora…” (exploitation des concordances pour l’analyse des structures textuelles). in: cahiers d’études hispaniques médiévales 10(1), 5–37. https://doi.org/10.3406/cehm.1985.948 piera, carlos 1981. spanish verse and the theory of meter [unpublished phd thesis]. los angeles: ucla. piera, carlos 2003a. del verso español y los universales métricos. in: mairal, ricardo; gil; juana (eds.), en torno a los universales lingüísticos. madrid: cambridge university press; akal, 265–303. piera, carlos 2003b. intonational factors in metrics. in: michaux, christine; dominicy, marc (eds.), linguistic approaches to poetry. amsterdam: john benjamins, 206–228. piera, carlos 2008. southern romance. in: fabb, nigel; halle, morris meter in poetry: a new theory. cambridge: cambridge university press, 94–132. quilis, antonio 1993. tratado de fonología y fonética española. madrid: gredos. rae [real academia española] 2011. nueva gramática de la lengua española 3: fonética y fonología. madrid: espasa. 84 jesús m. saavedra carballido roca, iggy m. 1986. secondary stress and metrical rhythm. in: phonology yearbook 3, 341–370. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0952675700000683 rodríguez vázquez, rosalía 2010. the rhythm of speech, verse and vocal music: a new theory. bern: peter lang. roubaud, jacques 1971. mètre et vers: deux applications de la métrique générative de halle-keyser. in: poétique 7, 366–387. saavedra molina, julio 1945. el verso de arte mayor. in: anales de la universidad de chile 57–58, 5–127. salinas, francisco de 1983. siete libros sobre la música. madrid: alpuerto. santillana, marquis of 2003. poesías completas. madrid: castalia. smith, colin 1979. la métrica del poema de mio cid: nuevas posibilidades. in: nueva revista de filología hispánica 28(1), 30–56. https://doi.org/10.24201/nrfh.v28i1.1729 tarlinskaja, marina 1987. shakespeare’s verse: iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncracies. new york: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina 1992. metrical typology: english, german, and russian dolnik verse. in: comparative literature 44(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/1771165 tarlinskaja, marina 1993. strict stress meter in english poetry compared with german and russian. calgary: university of calgary press. tarlinskaja, marina 1995. beyond “loose iamb”: the form and themes of the english “dolnik”. in: poetics today 16(3), 493–522. https://doi.org/10.2307/1773176 tarlinskaja, marina 2002. verse text: its meter and its oral rendition. in: küper, christoph (ed.), meter, rhythm and performance. metrum, rhythmus, performanz. frankfurt am main: peter lang, 39–55. toledo, guillermo andrés 2002. acentos en español: un problema para la fonología métrica. in: verba 29, 119–138. tsur, reuven 1998. poetic rhythm: structure and performance. berne: peter lang. valle-inclán, ramón maría del 1995. claves líricas. 4th ed. madrid: espasa calpe. vega, garcilaso de la 2001. obra poética y textos en prosa. barcelona: crítica. wright, george t. 1988. shakespeare’s metrical art. berkeley: university of california press. 85juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... addenda 1. underlying metrical presuppositions; the maximum 1a. metrical presuppositions within the linguistically-inflected approach adopted in this article (inspired by tarlinskaja 2002; cf. jakobson 1966: 364–366), i assume a basic distinction between performance or delivery (jakobson’s delivery design and delivery instance), rhythm (verse instance) and metre (verse design). the performance includes such disparate phenomena as silent reading and a reciter’s oral rendition. the rhythm is that of the authorial realization of verse, established by the analyst in view of phonological knowledge and, when necessary, of the work done by textual editors. as regards the metre, i take it to comprise three elements (cf. kiparsky 1977: 190): a metrical template made up of strong and weak positions; metrical filters selecting what counts as a syllable and what syllables count as salient, that is, by means of which the prosodic material is metrified; realization rules connecting the template and the metrified materials, thus governing the author’s choice of linguistic elements and the audience’s expectations. my analysis focuses on the rhythm of the authorial realization and on the metre, not on a kind of delivery or on any individual performance. i assume that the metrified materials include neither pauses nor vocalic lengthenings (in spanish, these two phonetic staples of temporal and musical theories of verse performance play no phonological role). i reject any tinkering with the linguistic features of lines, including the stresses, so that they will conform to the metre, a move which would “violate the linguistic givens of [the] language” as described by phonologists independently of verse analysis (halle, keyser 1966: 188), and which would render “almost any arrangement” of linguistic traits “metrically acceptable” (halle, keyser 1971: 162). in spanish, this would push metrical verse in the direction of song. the treatment of stress in spanish song involves the erasure of all preexisting stresses and the addition of new ones as called for by the tune (cf. rodríguez vázquez 2010; domínguez caparrós 2014: 75–76 n. 52): at best, this amounts to rendering all spanish verse purely syllabic; at worst, to doing away with any linguistic regulation. respecting linguistic strictures is a guarantee of methodological rigour and of the reproducibility of the analysis. moreover, i distinguish those realizations that are correct (metrical, in an evaluative sense) from those that are incorrect (unmetrical). finally, i focus on constant features; calculations of variable tendencies are confined to these addenda. without denying the usefulness of statistical methods when 86 jesús m. saavedra carballido it comes to appreciating important stylistic nuances in the realization, to analysing the local effects of deviations from a given statistical norm, and even to fully characterizing a metre, i assume that, on their own, statistics cannot tell us what the metre is and what constitutes a correct realization thereof. 1b. the maximum according to halle and keyser’s original definition, the maximum is “a syllable bearing linguistically determined stress that is greater than that of the two syllables adjacent to it in the same verse” (halle, keyser 1966: 197). different versions of the maximum appear in other joint works by halle and keyser, where they suggest, for example, that it is “a stressed syllable […] located between two unstressed syllables in the same syntactic constituent within a line of verse” (halle, keyser 1971: 156), and also in fabb, halle (2008) and in piera (2008), where different metres are said to demand different kinds of maxima based on different kinds of prosodic features (not only stress, but also tone, for example). the idea has a precedent in the theories of the russian formalists; jakobson, for example, states that in russian “a stressed syllable cannot fall on the upbeat [weak position] if the downbeat [strong position] is fulfilled by an unstressed syllable of the same word” (1966: 361). though by another name, the idea of the maximum also appears in kiparsky (1977), according to whom english metres generally ban from weak positions a stress flanked by nonstresses in lexical polysyllables, such that the middle syllable in the word importance can only realize a strong position (but there might be exceptions to this rule too; cf. shakespeare’s and milton’s placement of words like tiresias and universal in kiparsky 1977: 201–203; and like temptation and dividable in tsur 1998: 360). hayes offers his own version of the maximum, calling it peak: a syllable stronger than “at least one of its neighbors” (1983: 376). the notion of the maximum is also implicit in tarlinskaja’s works; she asserts, much like kiparsky, that in english verse an internal stress in polysyllables like continues cannot realize weak positions (tarlinskaja 1993: 10). 2. spanish metrics and phonology 2a. spanish metrics in spanish metrical verse, there is a distinction between verso simple and verso compuesto, that is, between what piera calls a “unified” line (1981: 149), and what clarke calls a “divided” or “compound” line (1964: 51 n. 1, 169). the short unified line (verso de arte menor) is usually distinguished from the long unified 87juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... line (called, somewhat confusingly when dealing with mena’s metre, verso de arte mayor) in terms of their lengths. where the frontier falls between both types is a bone of contention (cf. domínguez caparrós 2014: 134). arguably, however (cf. domínguez caparrós 2014: 49), the difference is that the short unified line consists of one single metrical part or colon, while its long counterpart consists of at least two cola of equal or similar length, without internal extrametricality (this means that a word can straddle two cola). metrically, the divided line can be explained as a combination of two or more independent hemistichs, i.e. of different unified lines placed side by side, all of which can have some extrametrical material at the end (so a word cannot straddle two hemistichs). the phenomenon of the divided line is very frequent in spanish, where its use has long been systematically regulated; its sporadic counterpart is the phenomenon known as epic caesura (cf. domínguez caparrós 2014: 94 n. 67; for english, cf. attridge 1982: 245; wright 1988: 165–169). the defining characteristic of the divided line is that neither the length nor the structure of one hemistich affect the length or the structure of the next. thus, one hemistich may end in one or more extrametrical syllables, or display no extrametricality at all; in the latter case, if the next hemistich begins with a strong position, two strong positions can appear back-to-back within the line (this does not mean that in between there may be unrealized or void weak positions: pace some analysts of arte mayor, in spanish verse this phenomenon does not occur). 2b. spanish syllables in spanish, only vocalic phonemes can be heads of syllables; there are two high vowels (/i/, written i and y, and /u/, written u and ü), two mid vowels (/e/, written e, and /o/, written o) and one low vowel (/a/, written a). if, as quilis claims (1993: 182–183), spanish semivowels (glides) are only allophonic variants ([j], [w]) of vocalic phonemes (/i/, /u/), then we can treat them just like any other vowel (cf. rae 2011: 342). in principle, then, utterances have as many syllables as vowels, but almost any sequence of contiguous vowels, with or without an intervening h (which in present-day spanish is silent), can function as one single syllable in speech, as long as it does not follow the order lower–higher–lower (in which case we pronounce between two and as many syllables as vocalic phonemes there are in the sequence). similarly, in metrical verse almost any vocalic sequence, with or without an intervening h, amounts to one or as many (metrified) syllables as vowels there are in it; if the sequence follows the order lower–higher–lower we count between two and as many syllables as vowels we find. thus, the 5-vowel sequence in odio a 88 jesús m. saavedra carballido eurípides = i hate euripides can be treated as any number of syllables between one and five (cf. navarro tomás 1967: 72, 150–151). witness how one strong metrical position is realized by the ending – a stressed vowel plus an unstressed vowel (plus a consonant) – of venían = they came in this 10-position line by garcilaso de la vega: “de dos pastores que venían cantan{do}” (vega 2001: 244). obviously, when verse lines are said aloud, all the vowels can be uttered, and pronounced as belonging to the same prosodic syllable or not: “it is just that some of them do not count for metrical purposes” (piera 2008: 97). 2c. spanish stress in spanish, syntactic words are prosodically divided into tónicas and átonas, that is, tonic (always stressed) and atonic (usually unstressed). the list of tonic forms includes all content words: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs (quilis 1993: 390–395; rae 2011: 370–376), and most interjections. simple words have one stress alone; compounds can have one or two stresses. as regards simple words, i take it that all trisyllabic and longer words and locutions are tonic. some function monosyllables and disyllables – including the preposition según(d) = according to/as (quilis 1993: 392; rae 2011: 417) – are tonic too. as regards compounds, some behave like simple words in that only the final element is tonic; but each part of the adverbs in -mente and of many other compounds counts as a tonic word; thus, for example, the adverb felizmente = happily has two stresses (piera 1981: 214; quilis 1993: 391; rae 2011: 392–397; hualde 2009: 202–204; 2010: 12; 2014: 226, 231–233). all other words – always function words in proclitic positions, including the poetic interjection o(h) and the conjunction sino(n) = but (which i take to be oxytonic) – are atonic. (enclitics are integrated in the preceding content word – necessarily a verb, whose preexisting stress does not move – such that the noun dique = dam and the verb plus enclitic dime = tell me have the same prosodic structure.) secondary stresses in spanish remain a controversial issue. their placement is usually explained either as conditioning that of the primary stress, or as being conditioned by it (cf. morales-front 2014: 259). in the former interpretation, secondary stresses are considered to obey the lexical rules that determine the structure of words; in the latter interpretation, they are regarded as postlexical (added by the utterer); in both interpretations, the assignment of secondary stresses is governed by the belief that spanish words cannot have more than two contiguous nonstresses, at least to the left of the primary stress (navarro tomás 1967: 195–196; harris 1983: 85–86, 96–97; roca 1986; d’introno et al. 1995: 156–173, 411–436). although their existence is not 89juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... explicitly denied by any author, i interpret the absence of references to lexical secondary stresses, in works such as quilis (1993), as an implicit rejection. in general, the phonologists that admit the existence of lexical secondary stresses tend to accept navarro tomás’s view that one or more of them can be placed to the left of the primary stress of the same word (on the first syllable and/or on a syllable separated from that primary stress by an odd number of unstressed syllables), and/or to the right of the primary stress (on a syllable separated from that primary stress by an odd number of syllables). though postlexical secondary stresses are rejected by some authors (e.g. toledo 2002: 135), their existence is widely recognized. according to roca (1986), one or more of them can be inserted to the left of the primary stress of a word, but only on syllables separated from the primary stress by an odd number of syllables. according to hualde (2009: 205–207; 2010; 2014: 252–253) and hualde, nadeu (2014: 244–247), one or more postlexical secondary stresses can optionally be placed to the left of the primary stress of a word, on the first syllable or on a syllable preceding the primary stress by an odd number of syllables, and/or on the final syllable that there may be to the right of that primary stress, provided that this syllable is an enclitic separated from the primary stress by at least one intervening syllable (for the latter phenomenon, cf. navarro tomás 1967: 196; rae 2011: 412–413); however, postlexical secondary stresses placed to the left of a primary stress only appear in certain registers, where they serve, for example, to draw attention to the importance of the utterance (hualde 2009: 206; 2010: 13–14; 2014: 252–253; hualde, nadeu 2014: 231), and postlexical secondary stresses to the right of the primary stress are even rarer. postlexical strategies like stress deletion and (leftward) displacement have been suggested for a romance language like italian (cf. nespor, vogel 1989), but the latest linguistic research does not mention the possibility of these rhythmic procedures in spanish. 3. arte mayor: theories and problems 3a. previous theories of arte mayor at the close of the 15th century, nebrija described arte mayor as a divided line amounting to an “adónico doblado” = “double adonic”: a repetition of the 5-syllable sequence dactyl-plus-“spondee” – i.e. trochee – totalling (due to the possible presence of one extrametrical syllable at the beginning of each sequence and the possible absence of a syllable at their end) between eight and eleven syllables up to the rightmost stress (2011: 71–73; cf. balaguer 1995: 29–45). navarro tomás, from the camp of temporal metrics, speaks of two 90 jesús m. saavedra carballido dactylic hemistichs of four syllables up to the rightmost stress (the nonstresses following this stress are optional, the dactylic ending is rare); either hemistich can optionally present 1or 2-syllable initial extrametricality, thus reaching up to six syllables (normally five); in theory the total number of syllables of this divided line goes from eight to fourteen, but in practice it goes from nine to thirteen, as the optional nonstresses between the hemistichs are one or two, never zero or four; the rhythm is usually ternary within each hemistich, yet it can be binary (1974: 115–117). these are the only major accounts positing a falling metre. in the late 16th century, salinas described arte mayor as made up of amphibrachs (1983: 573–574). somewhat later, correas added that it contained from nine to eleven syllables, that some feet could be headless and that others could be truncated (correas 1954: 472-475). more recently, other authors have followed suit (bello 1884: 141–145; piera 1981; duffell 1999). for díaz rengifo, also writing in the late 16th century, arte mayor was a divided form combining two rising hemistichs of five syllables, the second and fifth stressed, and with or without one extrametrical nonstress at the end of the hemistichs, which together add up to ten or eleven syllables (2012: 178–179). for burger arte mayor is a divided form combining hemistichs of four and five syllables up to the rightmost stress; all other possible stresses depend on the versifier’s personal style (1957: 34–35). morel-fatio analysed arte mayor as a divided form akin to the french decassyllable, with a break after the fifth syllable, “nécessairement accentué sur la cinquième syllable de chaque hémistiche” = “necessarily stressed on the fifth syllable of each hemistich”, and whose syllabic irregularities must be ironed out either by the editor or in performance (1894: 211, 219–221). by suggesting the latter kind of correction, morel-fatio shows what some current metrical theories regard a misunderstanding of the relation between the metre, the rhythm of the authorial realization and the performance by a silent reader or by a reciter. the same charge can be levelled, as diagnosed by duffell (1999: 11, 83–84), at the description provided by lázaro carreter (1972), which is still popular among textual editors (cf. john g. cummins’s remarks in mena 1979: 44–46; maxim p. a. kerkhof ’s comments in mena 1995: 105 n. 149). contrary to those scholars who, as piera puts it, believe that in mena’s days “reading habits did not impose the pattern stresses at the expense of the natural stress configuration” (1981: 144), lázaro carreter advocates what clarke calls a “mechanical” chanting of the lines (1964: 56). he understands the arte mayor metre as consisting in divided lines, each hemistich with two strong positions realized by their respective stresses and separated by two nonstresses, and he believes in the “omnipotencia” = “omnipotence” of this metre (1972: 350), to which the authorial realization and 91juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... what he regards as the correct performance are subordinated: thus, stresses are added, deleted or displaced by the author so that they coincide with strong positions; and those stresses that do not undergo this authorial treatment must be wrenched, when necessary, by the performer. alternatively, arte mayor has been analysed not as a divided line but as a long unified line. foulché-delbosc posits a line consisting of two parts (equivalent to two cola). each part has between four and seven syllabes = syllables, including two syllabes accentuées = accented syllables (strong positions), each realized by a stress separated by two syllabes non accentuées = unaccented syllables (weak positions) corresponding to nonstresses; other nonstresses can be added at the beginning and at the end of each part. together, both parts total between nine and twelve (usually eleven) syllables up to the last accented syllable. the structure of one part affects the other, to the effect that the last accented syllable of the initial part and the first of the final part must be separated by at least one unaccented syllable. foulché-delbosc contends that, when the first stress of a given part appears earlier than expected, this part has only one accented syllable, the last (1902: 94–103). in total he describes thirty-six line types in laberinto and thirty-two further arte mayor possibilities (including lines with proparoxytonic endings). from other perspectives, the arte mayor line has been analysed as a unified line in which the initial colon contains between four and six syllables, and the final one contains between five and six (roubaud 1971: 380–381); as a line containing from seven to sixteen syllables (saavedra molina 1945: 65, 70), and as a metre whose weak positions are realized, at the beginning of the line, by zero to two syllables, and, elsewhere, by one to three – a form whose lines could therefore have, were it nor for the introduction of some ad hoc restrictions, between seven and fifteen syllables up to the rightmost stress (piera 2008: 122). 3b. secondary stresses in arte mayor spanish metrists tend to assume that secondary stresses coincide with (what they think to be) strong positions not realized by stressed heads (e.g. balaguer 1995: 193 ff.; domínguez caparrós 2014: 75–76). in the absence of conclusive evidence, i assume that secondary stresses are inexistent or irrelevant for laberinto. after all, irrespective of what many spanish metrists and editors may think (cf. cummins in mena 1979: 177), all the linguistic descriptions of spanish stress agree that, unless we adopt a chanting style, in a line like “reconoscerán, # maguer que fero{çe}” (l. 2186 of laberinto), the first word would never present a secondary stress on the second syllable, but only, if at 92 jesús m. saavedra carballido all, on the first and/or third (the resulting scansions being x x x x x or x x x x x or x x x x x, or even x x x x x, but never x x x x x); in brief, this word does not conform to the ternary rhythm that many metrists demand from all lines of arte mayor. to this it must be added that in no variety of arte mayor has the last syllable of proparoxytones ever been said to realize the rightmost strong position of the line, so the alleged stresses at the end of rápido = fast and of pensándolo = thinking it would not even behave as such. 4. mena’s laberinto 4a. analysed lines according to line type and to colon and line ends there follows a list of the lines from laberinto without consecutive or elided vowels, and without h between vowels: there are 442 of them, i.e. 18.6 % of the 2376 lines that make up mena’s work. there are two that i consider metrically incorrect: *224 (example (22)) and *1563 (example (21)). the ones that i consider metrically correct (440 lines, 18.5 %), and on which all subsequent statistics are based, are grouped according to line types, with those whose cola have been disambiguated (41 lines, 9.3 %) marked with a ? sign. oxytonic (“masculine”) endings are marked m (43 lines, 9.8 %), paroxytonic (“feminine”) endings are marked f, proparoxytonic (“dactylic”) endings are marked d (laberinto consisting of unified lines, the paroxytonic and proparoxytonic endings of initial cola actually belong to the corresponding final cola; paroxytonic endings of final cola are extrametrical; proparoxytonic final-colon endings are systematically avoided): • 5#6 type (288 lines, 65.5 %): − f#f (“amphibrachic” type; 243 lines, 55.2 %): 3, 9, 10, 21, 40, 55, 88, 114, 115, 131, 155, 156, 163, 168, 174, 179, 201, 208, 211, 232, 259, 260, 284, 288, 311, 365, 371, 374, 390, 391, 401, 404, 424, 428, 439, 443, 445, 465, 467, 474, 481, 491, 498, 499, 509, 526, 541, 550, 556, 565, 588, 635, 651, 656, 657, 661, 664, 674, 682, 693, 694, 707, 715, 740, 752, 754, 758, 759, 765, 803, 807, 812, 813, 815, 828, 830, 843, 850, 856, 876, 881, 883, 888, 896, 899, 905, 909, 918, 921, 926, 936, 944, 951, 983, 991, 996, 1040, 1049, 1067, 1100, 1107, 1109, 1111, 1119, 1120, 1121, 1126, 1150, 1153, 1160, 1161, 1166, 1167, 1178, 1181, 1184, 1186, 1198, 1204, 1207, 1218, 1232, 1235, 1239, 1253, 1257, 1262, 1265, 1283, 1306, 1307, 1309, 1318, 1352, 1360, 1378, 1407, 1416, 1440, 1472, 1477, 1480, 1484, 1494, 1496, 1497, 1500, 1502, 1504, 1506, 1509, 1514, 1520, 1538, 1554, 1569, 1573, 1575, 1576, 1588, 1600, 1604, 1609, 1611, 1629, 1640, 1642, 1643, 1645, 1646, 1647, 1658, 93juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... 1665, 1688, 1703, 1710, 1731, 1733, 1738, 1773, 1789, 1792, 1796, 1801, 1802, 1807, 1809, 1812, 1816, 1819, 1831, 1837, 1853, 1865, 1878, 1898, 1902, 1906, 1910, 1911, 1914, 1916, 1939, 1960, 1976, 1980, 2003, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2037, 2041, 2053, 2111, 2115, 2138, 2141, 2142, 2146, 2153, 2168, 2173, 2181, 2200, 2221, 2224, 2241, 2244, 2263, 2268, 2277, 2285, 2287, 2288, 2289, 2295, 2310, 2313, 2323, 2333, 2346, 2351, 2357. − f#m (24 lines, 5.5 %): 319, 353, 409, 459, 504, 641, 681, 688, 705, 724, 728, 854, 861, 959, 1270, 1281, 1285, 1540, 1727, 1881, 1888, 1926, 2001, 2060. − d#f (14 lines, 3.2 %): 569, 730, 963, 965, 973, 1031, 1073, 1374, 1605, 1698, 1849, 2129, 2201, 2283. − m#f (4 lines, 0.9 %): 561?, 848, 1383?, 1448. − d#m (3 lines, 0.7 %): 643, 957, 1342. • 4#6 type (140 lines, 31.8 %): − f#f (116 lines, 26.4 %): 15, 19?, 22, 54?, 56, 71, 82, 125?, 158?, 254, 454, 485?, 495, 496, 507, 519, 528?, 572, 576, 580, 627?, 639, 649, 679, 704, 720, 733, 735, 738, 789, 832, 836, 842, 845, 882?, 884, 887, 889, 911, 962, 971, 986, 1011, 1016, 1027?, 1043, 1063, 1069?, 1125, 1127, 1144, 1154, 1159?, 1185?, 1225?, 1259, 1297, 1298?, 1312, 1328, 1358, 1364, 1369?, 1375, 1393, 1408, 1411, 1415, 1457, 1501, 1517?, 1528, 1547, 1656, 1672, 1699, 1708, 1711, 1729?, 1739?, 1755?, 1776, 1790?, 1810, 1811?, 1818, 1843, 1869, 1873?, 1899, 1915, 1936, 1977, 1990, 1992?, 1995?, 1996?, 2026?, 2035, 2039, 2066, 2086?, 2107, 2119, 2127, 2216, 2235?, 2264, 2272, 2292?, 2294, 2321, 2343, 2344, 2353?, 2363? − d#f (13 lines, 3 %): 506, 546, 702, 941, 1022, 1029, 1140, 1704, 1856, 1972, 2000, 2081, 2094. − f#m (11 lines, 2.5 %): 27?, 559, 855, 1455, 1591, 1844, 1848, 1931, 2005, 2057, 2275? • 5#5 type (8 lines, 1.8 %): − m#f (5 lines, 1.1 %): 79?, 1056, 2034?, 2186, 2286? − m#m (2 lines, 0.5 %): 894?, 1590. − f#f (1 line, 0.2 %): 1037. • 4#5 type (3 lines, 0.7 %) − m#f (2 lines, 0.5 %): 167?, 307? − f#m (1 line, 0.2 %): 1965. 94 jesús m. saavedra carballido • 6#6 type (1 line, 0.2 %): − f#m: 939. all lines without contiguous vowels in which straddling proparoxytones end in 6-syllable cola are correct. the only line without contiguous vowels in which a straddling proparoxytone does not end in a 6-syllable colon is l. *1563 (example (21)), which has been considered incorrect. 4b. general rhythmic tendencies in mena’s laberinto the relation of stresses and nonstresses in each line type is the following (only syllables realizing metrical positions are taken into account, as all extrametrical syllables are nonstresses and nonmaxima; colon-final strong positions are underlined): • 5#6: syllable no.: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 % stresses: 1.4 86.5 7.6 5.2 99.7 0 10.1 74.7 8 2.4 100 % maxima: 13.9 97.6 28.5 5.2 100 0.7 25.7 87.2 26.7 2.4 100 • 4#6: syllable no.: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 % stresses: 56.4 5.7 3.6 100 0 12.1 74.3 12.9 3.6 100 % maxima: 96.4 45.7 3.6 100 0 27.1 85 29.3 3.6 100 • 5#5: syllable no.: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 % stresses: 12.5 50 0 0 100 25 50 25 0 100 % maxima: 50 62.5 12.5 0 100 50 50 50 0 100 • 4#5: syllable no.: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 % stresses: 33.3 0 0 100 0 0 66.7 0 100 % maxima: 100 0 0 100 66.7 33.3 66.7 0 100 • 6#6: syllable no.: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 % stresses: 0 0 100 0 0 100 0 0 100 0 0 100 % maxima: 0 0 100 0 0 100 0 0 100 0 0 100 95juan de mena’s arte mayor verse in laberinto de fortuna ... 4c. ternary rhythmic tendencies in mena’s laberinto in lines in which the final colon is realized by six syllables, ternary tendencies can hold throughout the line (i.e. both within and across cola): • lines with four noncontiguous maxima marking a ternary rhythm: (i) all maxima are stressed (112 lines, 25.5 %): 3, 9, 10, 21, 55, 114, 115, 131, 155, 174, 201, 254, 374, 391, 424, 428, 439, 467, 499, 541, 556, 576, 635, 639, 679, 694, 704, 715, 740, 754, 758, 765, 789, 845, 876, 905, 936, 939, 951, 962, 971, 973, 986, 1016, 1029, 1049, 1107, 1109, 1120, 1144, 1160, 1166, 1178, 1181, 1198, 1262, 1283, 1285, 1408, 1477, 1480, 1497, 1501, 1502, 1506, 1573, 1588, 1600, 1604, 1640, 1642, 1647, 1658, 1665, 1703, 1708, 1731, 1802, 1809, 1818, 1831, 1843, 1849, 1856, 1881, 1902, 1906, 1914, 1936, 1939, 1960, 1977, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2053, 2066, 2081, 2127, 2129, 2141, 2173, 2200, 2221, 2244, 2263, 2264, 2277, 2288, 2289, 2310, 2313; (ii) not all maxima are stressed (15 lines, 3.4 %): 507, 519, 569, 702, 883, 957, 1411, 1457, 1554, 1591, 1699, 2000, 2216, 2283, 2285. • lines with more than four maxima but only four noncontiguous stresses marking a ternary rhythm (72 lines, 16.4 %): 71, 82, 88, 156, 168, 211, 259, 260, 409, 445, 454, 496, 546, 561, 565, 688, 724, 730, 733, 738, 752, 812, 828, 830, 848, 854, 855, 888, 926, 944, 959, 996, 1011, 1073, 1111, 1161, 1167, 1184, 1186, 1207, 1232, 1257, 1259, 1306, 1307, 1309, 1342, 1360, 1383, 1440, 1455, 1484, 1528, 1540, 1569, 1646, 1672, 1727, 1733, 1801, 1816, 1848, 1916, 2039, 2060, 2094, 2153, 2181, 2268, 2272, 2287, 2351. • lines with four noncontiguous maxima not marking a ternary rhythm: (i) all maxima are stressed (8 lines, 1.8 %): 284, 651, 803, 1185, 1235, 1472, 2115, 2119; (ii) not all maxima are stressed (7 lines, 1.6 %): 856, 1496, 1688, 1796, 1926, 2168, 2275. • lines with more than four maxima but only four noncontiguous stresses not marking a ternary rhythm (20 lines, 4.5 %): 465, 474, 498, 526, 707, 815, 896, 1407, 1520, 1547, 1575, 1609, 1853, 1992, 2019, 2026, 2037, 2111, 2292, 2346. in lines in which the final colon is realized by five syllables, ternary tendencies hold either within cola or across them: • lines with four noncontiguous maxima marking a ternary rhythm in which not all maxima are stressed (1 line, 0.2 %): 1965 (ternary tendencies within cola). • lines with more than four maxima but only four noncontiguous stresses marking a ternary rhythm (1 line, 0.2 %): 1590 (ternary tendencies within cola). 96 jesús m. saavedra carballido • lines with four noncontiguous maxima not marking a ternary rhythm in which not all maxima are stressed (1 line, 0.2 %): 2286. • lines with more than four maxima but only four noncontiguous stresses not marking a ternary rhythm (1 line, 0.2 %): 894 (ternary tendencies across cola). 4d. realization of strong positions by nonmaxima placed next to maxima lines without vowels in which a nonmaximum realizing a strong position is next to a maximum, at least one of which belongs to a polysyllable (the provisional acceptance of headlessness in 4-syllable initial cola means that the displacement of the maximum always occurs in the final colon): • in which the nonmaximum and the maximum do not belong to the same word: (i) within one foot, with leftward displacement of the maximum (14 lines, 3.2 %): 528, 705, 883, 909, 1185, 1472, 1688, 1796, 1807, 1865, 1926, 2168, 2275, 2346; (ii) across feet, with rightward displacement of the maximum (6 lines, 1.4 %, none of them with 4-syllable initial cola): 815, 1031, 1575, 1995, 1996, 2111. • in which both the nonmaximum and the maximum belong to the same word, which therefore thwarts metrical expectations on more than one occasion: (i) within one foot, with leftward displacement of the maximum (20 lines, 4.5 %): 27, 54, 232, 284, 353, 651, 803, 832, 889, 896, 911, 1239, 1407, 1415, 1496, 1547, 1873, 2037, 2115, 2295; (ii) across feet, with rightward displacement of the maximum (9 lines, 2 %): 319, 1609, 1611, 1755, 1837, 1972, 2026, 2119, 2292. kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine marina tarlinskaja*1 abstract. the early new english iambic pentameter was re-created by wyatt and surrey in the first half of the 16th c. surrey introduced blank iambic pentameter into english poetry, and the first english tragedy, gorboduc, was written in this versification form. early new english playwrights were feeling their way into the iambic meter, and wrote “by the foot”: the mean stressing on even syllables reached 90 percent, while on the odd syllables it fell to 5 percent. the authors of first new english tragedies were members of the parliament or the gentlemen of the city inns, and they wrote for the aristocratic audience and the court. their subject matter and their characters matched the verse form: they were stiff and stilted. marlowe and kyd represented a new generation of playwrights who wrote for the commercial stage patronized by commoners. marlowe and kyd created different sets of plots and personages and a different versification style. marlowe’s tamburlaine and kyd’s the spanish tragedy had a powerful impact on generations of english playwrights, from shakespeare to shirley. the particulars of the earlier new english versification style compared to later elizabethan dramaturgy are discussed in the presentation. key words: english iambic pentameter, surrey, kyd, marlowe, versification style 1. about surrey’s aeneid english iambic pentameter has an almost seven hundred years’ history. discovered, as it is conventional to think, by geoffrey chaucer in the 14th c., it fell into disarray in the next century, and was rediscovered in 1520–40s by thomas wyatt and henry howard earl of surrey. surrey invented blank iambic pentameter that was to play an important role in the development of renaissance english drama. he used unrhymed decasyllabic verse for his translation of virgil’s aeneid, books 2 and 4 (1541–1545). in his translation surrey relied on two texts, virgil’s aeneid written in the classical dactylic hexameter and its italian translation (1535) done in the syllabic mode, both * author’s address: marina tarlinskaja, department of linguistics, university of washington, box 354340 seattle, wa 98195-4340. e-mail: marinat@uw.edu. studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 9–27 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.02 mailto:marinat@uw.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.02 10 marina tarlinskaja unrhymed. surrey’s versification in the aeneid was sometimes interpreted as syllabic (hardison 1989: 127). however, the poet’s goal must have been iambic verse; that is why he rewrote wyatt’s earlier translation of petrarch’s sonnet amor, che nel pensier mio vive e regna converting it into regular iamb. since the time of surrey’s aeneid, blank iambic pentameter began to be associated with historical and heroic subjects. in regular iambic pentameter there is a sizeable difference between the mean stressing on even (metrically strong, s) and odd (metrically weak, w) syllabic positions of the metrical scheme. in the aeneid this difference is striking, and not only in the smoother version published in the tottel’s collection of 1557, but also in the rougher hargrave manuscript 205 of book 4 (padelford 1928: 142–143). in book 2 the mean stressing of even syllables is 74.3 percent more frequent than of odd syllables. this is a sizeable difference (cf. table 1). however, it is not just the stress profile of the text that makes it iambic, but also the number of lines containing strings of “deviating” syllables that belong to polysyllabic words. many words in the aeneid seem to a modern reader to be placed on “wrong” syllabic positions of the iambic line. disyllabic words stressed in modern english on the first syllable (rattling, goddess or follow) occur on positions odd-even, as in the din resounded, with rattling of armes (383). however, there was a developed system of secondary stresses in late middle english and early modern english (liddell 1910; luick 1921; dobson 1968: 445 ff.; kökeritz 1974: 332–339; barber 2004; cf. minkova 2005). liddell wrote: “the suffixes -dom, -nesse, -esse, -este, -hed, -had, -ynge (-ing), -shipe have secondary stress in m.e.” (liddell 1910: lxxxvi). the system of secondary stresses, especially in slow and ceremonial discourse, “seems to have remained in educated speech until 1600” (dobson 1968: 445). dobson continues: “the pattern of a single stress only gradually replaced double stressing even in educated speech during the seventeenth century.” variable or double stressing occurred in words of french origin, probably also in borrowed french words with english suffixes (trembling), anglo-saxon words with french suffixes (goddesse), and, less likely, in simple anglo-saxon words ending in a heavy syllable, e.g., -owe (follow, furrow). even at a superficial glance, most of surrey’s lines are very much iambic. this is how the aeneid, book 2 begins: they whisted all, with fixed face attent, when prince aeneas from the royal seat thus gan to speak: “o queene! it is thy wil i should renew a woe cannot be told, how that the greekes did spoil and overthrow 11 the phrygian wealth and wailful realm of troy…” (surrey, the aeneid, book 2, lines 1–6) however, the italian translation of the aeneid was done in the syllabic mode, and surrey might have left some of its vestiges of his english translation. here are two lines that may be interpreted as syllabic1: x x x x x x x x x x and my wife shall follow far of my steppes (940) w s w s w s w s w s x x x x x x x x x x the frayd mothers, wandring through the wide house (630) w s w s w s w s w s the suffix -ing in wandring is a heavy syllable, and it might have had some degree of stress, at least in verse; the verb follow also ends in a heavy syllable, a diphthong. but even if the two lines are syllabic verse, they are relative exceptions. many word in the aeneid had variable places of stress as shown by the metrical positions they occupy. surrey regularly placed french borrowings altar, citee and palace either on positions even-odd (sw) or on odd-even (ws). the word altar appeared four times on positions even-odd and five times on odd-even. this may indicate that altar had a variable place of stress. compare: their altares eke are left both wast and voyd (450) and at the altar him trembling gan to draw (716). anglo-saxon and hybrid words with heavy suffixes -less, -ful, -hood and -ship, the french -esse and the english -nesse (manhood, hateful, giltless, goddesse) all occurred both on positions sw and ws where they might have had some stress on the second syllable; cf.: disclosing her in forme a goddesse like (777) and worship was done to ceres the goddesse (944). barber, contrary to minkova, thinks that rhyming may indicate stressing (barber 2004: 133): shakespeare rhymed nye with immediately and john donne rhymed i with childishly. the pronoun i was pronounced then as it is today, so the suffix -ly must have, at some point, contained a diphthong. and we know that the great vowels shift occurred only in stressed syllables. 1 signs x and x indicate actual stressed and unstressed syllables in iambic lines, while w and s designate weak (usually unstressed) and strong (usually stressed) syllabic positions of the iambic metrical scheme. kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 12 marina tarlinskaja 2. about gorboduc, jocasta and the misfortunes of arthur norton and sackville’s gorboduc (1561), gascoigne and kinwelmarshe’s jocasta (1566) and hughes’ (probably with collaborators) the misfortunes of arthur (1587) were composed for a courtly audience. we shall compare them with three tragedies of late 1580s written for the popular stage: thomas kyd’s the spanish tragedy and christopher marlowe’s tamburlaine, parts 1 and 2. the three latter plays signalled the remarkable period of renaissance english drama that flourished during the elizabethan, jacobean and caroline periods. the misfortunes of arthur was written simultaneously with the spanish tragedy and tamburlaine, but what a world of difference! looking at hughes’ play we can better appreciate kyd and marlowe’s revolution. gorboduc. norton and sackville following the example of surrey’s aeneid composed gorboduc in blank iambic pentameter: the plot was both “historical” and “heroic”. the significance of gorboduc cannot be overestimated (see cunliffe 1912; wilson and hunter 1990). later poets began to use iambic pentameter in plays of all genres. both norton and sackville were university graduates and “gentlemen of the inner temple2,” therefore gorboduc was first performed by the “gentlemen of the inner temple” during the christmas festivities of 1561 and then again before queen elizabeth in january 1562. in the undated first quarto (probably issued in 1571) the authors acknowledged that norton wrote the first three acts and sackville – the final two. the playwrights followed the account of king gorboduc from geoffrey of monmouth’s historia regnum britanniae (1136) and grafton’s chronicle (1556). gorboduc was the first english senecan tragedy, the direction that would be followed by a number of later elizabethan, jacobean and caroline playwrights. it pioneered the whole trend that produced tragedies of murders and mutilations, madness and revenge, best known from kyd’s the spanish tragedy and peele and shakespeare’s titus andronicus. the motifs were employed in shakespeare’s hamlet and king lear, and appeared as late as 1641 in shirley’s the cardinal. senecan tragedy is a corpus of first century a.d. dramas of which eight belong to the roman author lucius annaeus seneca the younger. rediscovered by italian humanists in the mid-16th century, senecan tragedies became models for the revival of tragedy on the renaissance stage in france and england. the 2 the honourable society of the inner temple, commonly known as inner temple, is one of the four inns of court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in london. to practice as a barrister, an individual must belong to one of these inns. the inner temple is located in the wider temple area of the capital, near the royal courts of justice and within the city of london. 13 elizabethan playwrights found seneca’s bloodthirsty themes appealing to the english audience that still enjoyed bear baiting. gorboduc is the first english tragedy whose plot includes murders and revenge. following the senecan tradition, all murders in gorboduc are committed behind the scene and reported by messengers. in later plays, murders began to occur on stage. another feature of a senecan tragedy was a supernatural element, a ghost; a ghost appeared in kyd’s spanish tragedy and in hughes’ the misfortunes of arthur. the authors made their play a warning to the queen: what evils may ensue without a provision for a successor. king gorboduc decides to divide his realm in his lifetime between his two sons. the sons fell into dissent; the elder son was enraged by not getting the whole kingdom; the suspicious younger brother killed the elder. the queen murdered the younger son for revenge. the appalled people rose in rebellion and slew the king and queen. the nobility destroyed the rebels, but the succession of the crown was uncertain, and a devastating civil war broke out. the tragedy jocasta (1566) was also divided between co-authors: the first and fourth acts were composed by francis kinwelmershe, the second, third and fifth by george gascoigne. the tragedy is written blank iambic pentameter but contains more features of syllabic verse than the aeneid. as in gorboduc, the moving agent of the plot is the rivalry between two royal brothers. the conflict reflected the doom that had cursed the whole family: as we know from the greek original by euripides, the father of the princes, king oedipus, was also their brother; he married, unknowingly, his own mother, queen jocasta. the authors had not gone directly to euripides but to an italian adaptation by lodovico dolce giocasta (1541). jocasta is a translation of giocasta, hughes’ the misfortunes of arthur was composed twenty years after jocasta, in 1587 (probably with collaborators), and performed before queen elizabeth in february 1588. the play is based on an arthurian legend, the story of mordred’s treachery and king arthur’s death as told in geoffrey monmouth’s historia regnum brittanniae. cunliffe suggested that the play incorporates many translations of seneca. it has a chorus, a ghost and a royal father and son simultaneously slaughtering each other. all tragic actions occur offstage, and a chorus, or a messenger announce the events. kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 14 marina tarlinskaja 3. about kyd and marlowe3 thomas kyd and christopher marlowe, in contrast to the plays written by the “gentlemen of the inns,” were commoners who wrote for the popular stage. their plays were performed by professional troupes of actors and watched by wide audiences. admittance cost money, and elizabethan theatres became flourishing businesses. christopher marlowe (1564–1593), a great early elizabethan tragedian, was born to a shoemaker. he attended a good school and went to the cambridge university. a letter to the cambridge authorities from the privy council gave rise to speculations that marlowe not only began writing poems and plays in college, but he also simultaneously worked as a secret agent of the intelligence service. during a provoked “reckoning” brawl a certain ingram frizer rumoured to be a government agent stabbed marlowe to death. marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave. he was only 29 years old. tamburlaine the great, parts 1 and 2 were two out of seven marlowe’s plays. both parts of tamburlaine were entered into the stationer’s register on august 14, 1590 as “two comical discourses,” and the printer richard jones published them together in a single octavo later the same year. tamburlaine’s protagonist is the conqueror timur who rose from shepherd to warrior. the play was, as we shall see, very innovative. the public responded to 1 tamburlaine with enthusiasm, so marlowe wrote a sequel, part 2. the tragedy exemplified and created many typical features of elizabethan high drama: grandiloquent imagery, hyperbolic expression and a strong, almost inhuman character consumed by an overwhelming passion for power. christopher marlowe’s plays were so successful thanks in part to the imposing stage presence of the tragic actor edward alleyn. alleyn, reportedly, was unusually tall for the time, he probably had a booming voice, and the role of tamburlaine was written for him. marlowe’s plays became the foundation for the repertoire of his theatre company, the admiral’s men. marlowe was much admired by other playwrights. within weeks of his death, george peele remembered him as “marley, the muses’ darling”; ben jonson wrote of “marlowe’s mighty line.” shakespeare paid a special tribute to marlowe: in as you like it he quotes a line from marlowe’s poem hero and leander (dead shepherd, now i find thy saw of might, “who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”). shakespeare was strongly influenced by marlowe, as can be seen in his reuse of marlowe’s themes in antony and cleopatra (dido queen of carthage), the merchant of venice (the jew of malta) 3 see tarlinskaja 1987. 15 and richard ii (edward ii). in later years tamburlaine was derided for its bombastic tone and the larger-than-life protagonist. by the 1590s the hyperbolic mode of tamburlaine had gone out of fashion, but the play was long regarded with respect and admiration. thomas kyd (1558–1594) was another important playwright of early elizabethan epoch. he was well known in his time, but fell into obscurity in later years. in 1773 thomas hawkins, an early editor of the play the spanish tragedie, discovered that it belonged to kyd. later scholars shed more light on kyd’s life and work, but the opinion of him as a poet was frequently unfavourable. philip edwards (1966: 6) called him “naïve,” “something of a plodder.” edwards finds it amazing that “…a minor writer, in a strange inspiration, shapes the future by producing something quite new.” kyd’s prosody was accused of “metrical monotony” “manipulated with a cold correctness” (sidney l. lee 1909) and then derided for an opposite fault of creating “limping feet” that “very seldom manage to limp poetically” (vincent 2005). we shall see that kyd was a prominent poet of the generation preceding shakespeare. kyd was educated at an excellent school, but probably never went to a university. by the 1580s kyd was already a notable playwright. in 1598 in his paladis tamia (p. 279) francis meres placed him among “our best for tragedy.” heywood called him “famous kyd,” and dekker referred to him as “industrious” suggesting that kyd had written numerous plays. jonson mentions kyd next to christopher marlowe. for a while thomas kyd shared lodgings with marlowe. in may 1593 the privy council ordered the arrest of the authors of “divers lewd and mutinous libels” posted around london. kyd was among those arrested. his lodgings were searched and a compromising document found. under torture kyd confessed that he had them “from c. marley.” the torture broke his health and spirits; thomas kyd died in dire poverty in august 1594; he was only 35 years old. the famous spanish tragedy was probably composed in the mid to late 1580s. the earliest surviving edition was printed in 1592, with the full title the spanish tragedie, containing the lamentable end of don horatio, and belimperia: with the pittifull death of olde hieronimo. the spanish tragedy was the most popular play of elizabethan theatre, innovative in plot construction and character development. it was the first tragedy of revenge where murders were committed in a “play-in-play” onstage. the plot is completely original. a young spanish warrior, horatio falls in love with a lady of the court belimperia who reciprocates. her brother wants her to marry the king’s son, and arranges horatio’s murder during his rendezvous with bel-imperia. the rest of the play is about horatio’s father, hieronimo. mad with grief, hieronimo plots and executes revenge as multiple murders enacted in a play-in-play. the kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 16 marina tarlinskaja elements of this plot, revenge of a father for his son’s murder (or of a son for his father’s murder), madness and murders in a play-in-play recur in many later tragedies. the two tamburlaines and the spanish tragedy are generally considered the beginning of the great elizabethan theatre. we shall see how tamburlaine’s versification contributed to marlowe’s grandiloquent style and tragic intonations, and what innovations belong to kyd the poet. let us compare stressing of the aeneid and of three plays composed by the gentlemen of the inn for the court to three popular plays created for commercial stage. jocasta is a translation from italian that explains some particulars of its versification: even simple anglo-saxon words daughter, mother, father, and sister appear on positions odd-even in mid-phrase. the two brethren (nay rather cruel foes) antigone, my swete daughter, come forth; ah swete mother, ah my beloued mother; o dear daughter, my most unhappie brethren; ismene my unfortunate sister… (jocasta, 1.1.194; 4.1, 179, 186, 190; 5.5.239) these are signs of a syllabic mode. gorboduc is an original play, and much closer to what we associate with regular iambic pentameter, though a few lines in gorboduc still remind us of the aeneid, e.g., sackville’s our wives, children, kindred, ourselves, and all (gorboduc, 5.2.100); is this line syllabic, like surrey’s the frayd mothers, wandring through the wide house? the elevated style of tragedy might have required a deliberate recitation, thus giving weight to every syllable, so wandring and even children might still have required some stress on the second syllable. if they had only one stress, on the first syllable, their location on positions odd-even might indicate that the author was struggling with his language material, trying to “find his feet” (groves, 2005) in the new verse form. hughes, 25 years later, did not use disyllabic words mother or children on positions odd-even in midline. 17 4. versification 4.1. stressing in earlier decasyllabic verse (tables 1a and 1b) the stressing on even (s) positions in all pre-marlowe and pre-kyd plays is very high: the mean stressing is 86.5 percent in the aeneid, 82.5 and 85.6 in gorboduc, 87.1 and 82.8 in jocasta, and 91.4 in the misfortunes of arthur; cf. with 1 tamburlaine 75.7 and with the spanish tragedy 78.0. table 1a. stressing in earlier decasyllabic verse (even syllabic positions) author & play even (s) syllabic positions 2 4 6 8 10 mean surrey, aeneid 90.0 90.0 80.5 74.6 95.2 86.1 norton, gorbod. 75.8 90.5 68.3 84.6 94.3 82.7 sackville, gorbod. 76.3 91.8 79.0 83.7 97.2 85.6 kinwelm., jocasta 82.9 90.4 83.2 83.8 95.0 87.1 gascoigne, jocasta 77.9 91.2 73.2 81.3 90.4 82.8 hughes, arthur 85.8 95.9 89.6 85.6 100 91.4 kyd, sp. trag. 73.5 87.7 69.2 76.7 82.8 78.0 marlowe, 1 tamb. 70.2 86.9 66.3 79.7 75.3 75.7 table 2b. stressing in earlier decasyllabic verse (odd syllabic positions) author & play odd (w) syllabic positions 1 3 5 7 9 mean surrey, aeneid 20.0 10.9 13.6 10.0 4.7 11.8 norton, gorbod. 17.7 6.1 6.3 5.0 0.4 7.1 sackville, gorbod. 16.7 5.6 7.7 5.9 1.3 7.4 kinwelm., jocasta 15.0 5.8 6.0 4.2 1.7 6.5 gascoigne, jocasta 16.9 5.2 9.3 5.2 3.2 8.0 hughes, arthur 22.6 5.8 7.8 8.7 3.8 9.7 kyd, sp. trag. 27.2 6.2 5.7 3.5 3.0 9.1 marlowe, 1 tamb. 24.6 3.9 4.4 3.1 1.1 9.4 the misfortunes of arthur occurred simultaneously with kyd’s the spanish tragedy and marlowe’s tamburlaine, but hughes seems unaware of popular plays. the high stressing of the misfortunes of arthur was caused, as we shall see, by hughes’ foot-beating rhythm ta-ta | ta-ta | ta-ta | ta-ta | ta-ta, as in thine death | is all, | that east, | or west | can see (1.4.12). the place of the lowest stressing (a “dip”) in midline at first uncertainly fluctuated between kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 18 marina tarlinskaja positions 8 (surrey’s aeneid, kinwelmarshe’s jocasta) and 6 (norton and sackville’s gorboduc), then finally settled on position 6 (kyd’s and marlowe’s plays): an elizabethan stressing pattern. after 1600 the “dip” gradually moved back to position 8. see below some examples from gorboduc: from painful travails of the weary day of mutual treason, or a just revenge to hide the mischief of their meaning there the rascal numbers of unskillful sort (gorboduc, 1.1.2, 63; 2.1.22–23) our texts with the highest stressing, kinwelmarshe’s acts of jocasta and hughes’ the misfortunes of arthur contain many rhythmic-syntactic clichés: lines with identical rhythm tend to be filled with identical syntactic patterns. thus, fully stressed lines with the word boundary rhythm ta-ta-ta | ta | ta-ta | ta-ta-ta | ta are often filled with two attributive phrases, a subject and an object, bound by a verbal phrase, a predicate. here are examples from jocasta: o lucklesse babe, begot in wofull houre; the gilted roofes embowde with curious worke; the shining day had runne his hastened course (1.1.52, 230; 2.1.197). and examples from the misfortunes of arthur: let th’offsprings sinne exceede the former stock; and dreadfull doome, t’augment thy cursèd hap; when inward gifts are deckt with outward grace (1.1.23; 1.4.6; 5.1.86). this is kind of versification that kyd and marlowe had come to reform. why is kyd and marlowe’s mean stressing on s so much lower than in gorboduc, jocasta and the misfortunes of arthur? first, the early poets wrote “by the foot,” following an iambic rhythm that crystallized into the iambic meter; the earliest new english authors had no tradition to lean on. and secondly, there are many grammatical inversions in all early texts, particularly in the aeneid and jocasta. inversions cause grammatical monosyllables to be placed at the end of a phrase, sometimes far removed from the word with which they have a close syntactic link. such monosyllables were stressed on s. stressing of the final, tenth syllable. the early poets so frequently placed a stressed syllable on position 10 that it never fell below 90 percent and sometimes rose to 100 percent: surrey stressed syllable 10 in 95.2 percent of all lines, sackville (gorboduc) in 97.2 percent, kinwelmarshe in his portion of jocasta – in 95 percent, while in the misfortunes of arthur position 10 is stressed 100 percent of the lines. a huge change comes in the spanish tragedy and 1 tamburlaine. in kyd’s spanish tragedy the tenth syllable is stressed in only 82.8 percent of the lines, and in marlowe’s play only in 75.3 percent, though barber 1919 (2004: 131) is inclined to think that a secondary stress on -a in marlowe’s asia, persia (tamburlaine) was possible, though not in pro-tes-ta-ti-ons and ab-jecti-on. he also thinks that a secondary stress was likely on -ly in shakespeare’s immediately (midsummer night’s dream) and in donne’s childishly (the goodmorrow). i considered all these syllables unstressed. in that case, stressing of tamburlaine is unique: position 8 is stressed more often than 10, so the stress profile resembles a “dipper” with its handle down low. the unstressed syllables on position 10 in the early iambs come from long polysyllabic words placed at the end of the line: ser-vi-tude, li-ber-ty, ig-no-rant, barbarous, a-si-a and oppres-si-on. the frequency of unstressed syllables on position 10 in tamburlaine part 1 is 25 percent, a quarter of all lines. both tamburlaines have a “dip” on syllable 6, the consequence of an unstressed end of the line, because missing stresses tend to occur every other foot, thus, on positions 6 and 10, and sometimes on positions 2, 6 and 10. for example: shall draw the chariot of my em-pe-ress the only paragon of tamburlaine; and speech more pleasant than sweet harmony usumcasane and teridamas but that he lives and will be conqueror (marlowe, 1 tamburlaine, 3.3.80, 119, 121; 2.5.52; 3.3.211) the unstressed “tail” of the lines probably required a particular intonation of the tragic actors, contributing to the unique effect in marlowe’s early tragedies. the intonation added to marlowe’s famous “mighty line”, the magniloquence his bombastic verse. imagine a tragic actor booming out: emperor of a-si-a and per-si-a, great lord of media and ar-me-ni-a, duke of africa and al-ba-ni-a, mesopotamia and of par-thi-a… he will, with tamburlaines de-struc-ti-on, but tamburlaine by ex-pe-di-ti-on (1 tamburlaine, 1.1.162–165; 3.2.33; 4.1.39) the use of the disyllabic suffixes -ion at the end of the line is part of kyd’s and marlowe’s stylistic innovation. it was customary to believe that disyllabic -ion is a sign of earlier, archaic verse. however, in all earlier texts preceding kyd kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 20 marina tarlinskaja and marlowe the disyllabic suffix -ion occurs rarely or not at all (0–4 cases per 1000 lines), while in the spanish tragedy the frequency goes up to over 16 per 1000 lines. if we add here geographic names ending in -ia so numerous in tamburlaine, marlowe’s number jumps to almost 44 per 1000 lines. the use of disyllabic -ion, -iance and -ious was kyd’s and marlowe’s stylistic discovery. their contemporaries peele and daniel used them seldom or not at all. disyllabic suffixes were just one way of elongating polysyllabic words. there were several others. we regularly find a longer variant of a polysyllable at the end of kyd’s and marlowe’s line, while its syncopated variant occurs in midline. compare the use of the forms empress – emperess in midline and at the end of the line: the turk and his great emp-ress, as it seems, and behold the turk and his great em-pe-ress (1 tamburlaine, 5.2.409, 293). another way of elongating the final word was to treat a stop [b, d, t] plus a sonorant [l, r, n] as syllabic: what honor were’t in his as-sem-bl-y like phoebe, flora, or the hun-tr-ess shall blast the plant and the young sa-pl-ings (kyd, the spanish tragedy, 3.13.68; 4.1.143; 4.2.18) resolve, i hope we are re-sem-bl-ed and from their shields strike flames of ligh-tn-ing some made your wives, and some your chil-dr-en (marlowe, 1 tamburlaine, 2.6.36; 3.2.81; 5.1.27) 4.2. word boundaries and strong syntactic breaks adjacent words that create junctures in verse are called “metrical words”; their stress falls on an s syllabic position. the line so youth’s | proud livery | so gazed on | now (shakespeare, son. 2, line 3) contains ten “dictionary” words but four metrical words. i differentiate three degrees of syntactic affinity between metrical words: a strong link [/], a medium link [//] and a strong (or full) break [///]. the strong link exists, for example, between components of an attributive phrase, or a verb and its direct object, a medium link occurs, for instance, between a subject and a predicate, or between any adjacent words that have no immediate syntactic link, while a full break takes place between two sentences or a sentence and a clause. 21 table 2. word boundaries, in percent of all lines after syllabic positions authors 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 surrey 42.7 33.4 77.6 13.0 42.5 38.9 39.7 31.4 100 sackville 46.1 31.7 68.1 23.7 56.0 24.0 31.5 36.0 99.6 kinwelm. 40.1 36.8 78.5 14.1 49.3 33.9 29.5 49.6 97.8 hughes 51.1 33.2 74.4 21.2 64.0 25.4 54.0 32.4 100 kyd 46.0 24.4 52.7 32.2 40.0 29.0 33.9 29.4 98.5 marlowe 44.9 26.5 48.0 39.7 35.9 31.4 26.8 31.7 97.5 table 3. strong syntactic breaks, in percent of all lines after syllabic positions authors 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 surrey 6.5 2.3 31.0 2.7 8.6 2.7 1.5 0.9 81.5 sackville 8.3 1.7 29.2 1.5 13.7 1.7 0.9 0.4 70.8 kinwelm. 8.9 2.5 30.1 1.2 7.1 1.1 0.8 0.0 79.0 hughes 10.8 1.4 33.9 1.1 20.5 1.1 4.0 0.0 89.9 kyd 11.9 4.4 22.7 9.3 6.9 2.6 1.7 0.7 89.2 marlowe 6.5 2.2 12.0 6.7 4.6 2.0 1.7 0.2 82.7 tables 2 and 3 show percent of word boundaries and strong syntactic breaks after positions 2–10 in our texts, from surrey’s aeneid through marlowe’s 1 tamburlaine. all early authors before kyd and marlowe, and hughes in particular, prefer a foot-emphasizing word boundary rhythm. strong syntactic breaks support word boundaries after position four. hughes, who wrote “by the foot”, has numerous strong breaks also after position 6. syntactic breaks emphasize the 4 + 6 hemistich line structure. it is relentlessly rigid in all older texts, and particularly in hughes’ tragedy. the numbers of breaks after odd syllables are small: from zero through 1.4 percent of the lines. even surrey, whose stressing “dip” fell on position 8 and not on 6, as in most elizabethan authors, preferred 4 + 6 hemistich segmentation. see examples of hughes’ verse: nor long // in mind, /// nor mouth, /// where arthur // fell no graue / i need /// (o fates) /// nor burial / rights no stately / hearse, /// nor tombe // with haughty / toppe be ay // unknown, /// so that // in euery / coast i still // be feared, /// and lookt // for euery / houre (hughes, the misfortunes, 5.1. 171, 174–175, 177–178) kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 22 marina tarlinskaja the frequency of word boundaries after position 4 in surrey’s aeneid and kinwelmarshe’s acts of jocasta is also amazing: it reaches 78 percent. over twothirds of the texts have a 4 + 6 syllabic composition. strong syntactic breaks after position 4 occur in one-third of their lines. kyd and marlowe seem to be dwellers of a different world. though their line is still structured 4 + 6, the way most elizabethan poetry preferred, it is composed in a much more flexible way, particularly so tamburlaine, because marlowe took great pains to find or create long words, among them exotic proper names of personages and names of countries ending in disyllabic -ia, as in grae-ci-a. marlowe’s words often straddle the hemistich boundary; this explains the total low numbers of word boundaries, and in particular very few syntactic breaks after position 4. the spanish tragedy contains more word boundaries and strong breaks after position 4 than tamburlaine. below are examples of marlowe’s lines (figure 5 indicates a word boundary after position 5): mesopotamia /5/ and of par-thi-a usumcasane /5/ and techelles both usumcasane /5/ and the-ri-da-mas (marlowe, 1 tamburlaine, 1.1.165; 2.3.36; 2.5.52) not all word boundaries after position 5 are created by proper names. the playwright consciously created more word boundaries after positions 3 and 5 than after 6, and more after 7 than after 8; his earlier dido and later edward ii are more like other elizabethan texts. tamburlaine seems to be a stylistic experiment. here are more examples from tamburlaine: to triumph / 3 / over /5/ many /7/ provinces and mighty /3/ soldan /5/ of egyptia an hundred /3/ horsemen /5/ of my company religious, /3/ righteous, /5/ and inviolate (marlowe, 1 tamburlaine, 1.1.173; 1.2.10, 39; 2 tamburlaine, 2.1.48) marlowe’s end-stopped lines filled with long words in 1 tamburlaine did not allow syntactic breaks within the line: that would make the phrases filling the hemistiches too short. the number of breaks after position 4 is already a little higher in 2 tamburlaine. in all following plays the number of syntactic breaks after position 4 gradually increases. below are examples of strong breaks after position 4 from edward ii: 23 ay, isabel, /4/ ne’er was my heart so light. clerk of the crown, /4/ direct our warrant forth, for gaveston, /4/ to ireland! beaumont, fly… lord mortimer, /4/ we leave you to your charge. now let us in, /4/ and feast us royally. for wot you not /4/ that i have made him sure… (marlowe, edward ii, 1.4.371–373, 375–376, 380) clearly, tamburlaine was a stylistic experiment. word boundaries after syllable 4 predominate in the spanish tragedy: 52.7, and so do strong syntactic breaks; they occur in over 20 percent of the lines. medium breaks support the 4 + 6 hemistich segmentation, especially when flanked by strong links. in the lines below, medium breaks after position 4 are underlined. the ugly / fiends // do sally / forth // of hell, and frame / my steps // to unfrequented / paths… the cloudy / day // my discontent / records, early // begins // to register / my dreams and drives me / forth // to seek / the murderer. (kyd, the spanish tragedy, 3.2.16–17, 19–21) 4.3. pleonastic verb do and grammatical inversions pleonastic do (not in questions and negations) often occurs in verse to fill syllabic space, e.g. black treason hid, then, then did i despair (sackville, gorboduc, 4.2.120). they are particularly numerous in kinwelmarshe’s portion of jocasta (87 per 1000 lines), next come surrey’s aeneid and norton’s acts of gorboduc (60.2 and 60.6). in the spanish tragedy and 1 tamburlaine the indices precipitously fall: 17.1 and 10.1 per 1000 lines. grammatical inversions are particularly numerous in surrey’s aeneid (103.5 per 1000 lines), next comes gascoigne in his portion of jocasta (72.1), followed by norton’s portion of gorboduc. kyd has reduced the number to 32.3, marlowe to 27.5 per 1000 lines. the use of pleonastic do and grammatical inversions are more common in earlier poets. the innovative authors who wrote for the public stage did not need the versification support of the devices that help alleviate versification problems. some later poets, however, chose to use the devices; shakespeare employed many filler do and grammatical inversions all his creative life. the kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 24 marina tarlinskaja devices also augmented technical problems in composing rhymed verse; they became a crutch for weaker poets, such as the early 17th c. john davies of hereford. here are some examples of grammatical inversions from the aeneid and norton’s portion of gorboduc: a gerkish soule must offred be therefore, the turrets hye and eke the palace roofe, did move thee now such weapons for to weld? (673) …my sholders brode (953), abashéd then i woxe… (the aeneid, lines 149, 576, 673, 953, 1027). your son, sir, lives, and healthy i him left. with sudden force invaded hath the land (gorboduc, 3.1.63, 160). 4.4. rhythmical italics in early iambs sometimes strings of adjacent syllables whose stressing deviates from the iambic scheme support the meaning of the line or its segment. in that case the deviations become a stylistic device of rhythmical italics, not unlike onomatopoeia, e.g. trampling their bowels with our horses’ hoofs (1 tamburlaine, 3.3.250). in the aeneid they were probably still fortuitous; the explanation of their occurrence might be the plot of the poem and the structure of english phrases. the aeneid is a poem about action. verbs referring to violent actions are, understandably, frequent in the whole text, so they also occur on positions 1–2. the structure of english phrases might be another explanation. surrey often placed present participles at the beginning of a phrase and a line, on positions 1–2 or, more rarely, on 5–6 (odd-even), for example: sighing, he sayd: ‘flee, flee, o goddesse son’ (367), rered for wrath, swelling her speckled neck (488). in contrast, attributive participles and verbal nouns usually occur in mid-phrase and are preceded by a grammatical word on an odd syllabic position, so the participles and verbal nouns appear on positions even-odd, for example: whose waltring tongs did lick their hissing mouthes (266). thus, a fortuitous occurrence of the -ing forms on surrey’s aeneid on positions 1–2 (odd-even) might be the consequence of english phrasal structures. but from our present-day perspective surrey’s fortuitous “rhythmical italics” are surprisingly to the point. we find similar examples in the best texts from shakespeare to shelley. most of surrey’s “rhythmical italics” seem to us semantically motivated: they emphasize the meaning of micro-situations, exactly as in later poetry. all the random examples cited below come from the aeneid, book 2: burning with rage (438), raging in furie (535), trembling for age (659), … trembling doth bend (826), …trembling for dredful fere (903), sprinkling with blood… (647), …dragging a brand of flame (915). possible rhythmical italics formed by monosyllables are even more convincing: fell to the ground, all ouerspred with flash (396), fell to the ground; and whatso that with flame (652); 25 fell on the bedd, & these last words she sayde (book 4, 865); neptunes there shakes with his mace the walles (800); and now at hand, well nere strikes with his spere (687). how many cases of fell on…, strike with… and shake with… on positions ws we encounter in thousands of lines of the later poetry! surrey, fortuitously or intentionally, invented the stylistic device of rhythmical italics. of the two authors of gorboduc, sackville had more rhythmical italics: norton, 53.3 per 1000 lines and sackville, 85.9. can we call sackville a better poet? here are examples from sackville’s portion: clasping his hands, to heaven he cast his sight; and straight – pale death pressing within his face… wearied in field with cold of winter nights, and some, no doubt, stricken with dread of law… slain with the sword, while he yet sucks thy breast (gorboduc, 4.2.224–225; 5.1.87, 88; 5.2.223) the authors of jocasta do not seem to be aware of rhythmical italics at all, and hughes’s use of rhythmical italics is still sparse: this stylistic device did not become widespread at once. marlowe and kyd, however, used rhythmical italics with confidence. in marlowe’s tamburlaine they are numerous. almost all english poets prefer verbs in their “deviations” on positions ws or wsw, compared to the text outside the “deviations” and in prose, where nouns predominate. marlowe, however, used verbs on positions 1–2 especially often. his “muscular verbs” have been noticed before (varn 1987). identical rhythmic, grammatical and lexical patterns keep recurring: batter the walls…, batter our walls… (1 tamburlaine, 3.1.66; 5.1.2), batter the shining palace (2 tamburlaine, 2.4.105); shaking their swords… (1 tamburlaine, 4.2.26), shaking her silver tresses… (1 tamburlaine, 5.2.78), shake with their weight… (1 tamburlaine, 5.2.288), shaking the burden… (2 tamburlaine, 4.1.131), shaking and quivering… (2 tamburlaine, 5.3.68); stretching their paws… (1 tamburlaine, 1.1.51), stretching their monstrous paws… (2 tamburlaine, 3.5.28), and stretching your conquering arms… (2 tamburlaine, 1.5.97). there is little wonder that poetic vocabulary recurs, or that grammatical forms recur, or that deviations from the prevailing iambic sequence of stresses recur. but when all three recurrences overlap, they become formulaic. kyd’s rhythmical italics are also very expressive. below are a few examples from the spanish tragedy: ran to a mountain-top, and hung himself (4.1.127); beat at the window of this brightest heaven (3.7.13); beat at the bushes, stamp our grandam earth (3.13.19); knock at the dismal gates of pluto’s court; murmur kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine 26 marina tarlinskaja sad words abruptly broken off (3.11.266, 321); … singing fits not this case (2.4.181); then, starting in a rage, falls on the earth (3.12.12). these examples might have come from shakespeare’s plays. kyd’s verse may seem archaic and cautious compared to the younger poet, shakespeare’s. but it is unfair to criticize an older-generation poet from the point of view of the next generation, as it was unfair to criticize shakespeare because he did not fit the standards of the 18th c. english classicism or the 19th c. russian realism. we ought to give kyd a deserved place of honour. 5. conclusions: marlowe’s and kyd’s innovations marlowe created his specific tamburlaine versification style and introduced the use of super-long words and of the disyllabic suffix -ion as one way to compose longer polysyllables at the end of the line. many unstressed ends of lines (position 10) probably called for a bombastic declamation style and an exaggerated intonation: recall how hamlet warned his actors to speak more naturally (or “i had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines”) and not to gesticulate too violently (“nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently”). if the spanish tragedy appeared a year earlier than 1 tamburlaine, then kyd’s style probably gave the first inspiration to the younger marlowe. kyd influenced the later development of the renaissance drama in the features of versification and in plot structure. he reinvented the seneca-inspired tragedy of revenge, of real or fake madness, of supernatural characters and of murders on stage in a play-in-play. the latter innovation continued through middleton’s women beware women to shirley’s cardinal. kyd’s personages, as opposed to marlowe’s, are very appealing. some scenes are memorable: e.g., the spanish tragedy contains a beautiful scene of 16th century courtship, as horatio and bel-imperia rendezvous in a garden, act 2 scene 4, or hieronimo’s famous tragic monologue o eyes! no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears in act 3, scene 1. kyd and marlowe worked alongside other playwrights (lyly, peele and greene, to name a few), but they seem to have been the most innovative playwrights that had repercussions in the later jacobean and caroline drama. kyd and marlowe, and kyd in particular, had been, very obviously, the mentors of great shakespeare.4 4 the material is from my new, fourth book, shakespeare and the versification of english drama 1561–1642 (forthcoming). 27 references barber, charles 2004 [1976]. early modern english. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. cunliffe, john w. 1912. early english classical tragedies. edited, with introduction and notes by john w. cunliffe. oxford: clarendon. dobson, eric john 1968. english pronunciation 1500–1700. oxford: clarendon. edwards, philip 1966. thomas kyd and early elizabethan tragedy. london: longmans, green & co. groves, peter l. 2005. finding his feet: wyatt and the founding of english metre. in: versification: an electronic journal of literary prosody 4. http://www.arsversificandi. net/current/groves.html hardison, osborne bennett 1989. prosody and purpose in the english renaissance. london: john hopkins university press. kökeritz, helge 1974 [1953]. shakespeare’s pronunciation. london: yale university press. lee, sidney lazarus 1909. the chronicle history of king leir: the original of shakespeare’s king lear. london: chatto & windus. liddell, mark h. 1910. chaucer. the prologue to the canterbury tales, the knightes tale, the nonne preestes tale. new york, london: macmillan. luick, karl 1921. über die betonung der französischen lehnworter im mittel-englischen. in: germanisch-romanische monatschrift 10, 14–19. meres, francis 1938. palladis tamia (1598) by francis meres. new york: scholars’ facsimiles & reprints. minkova, donka 2005. chaucer’s language: pronunciation, morphology, metre. in: ellis, steve (ed.), chaucer: an oxford guide. oxford: oxford university press, 130–158. padelford, frederick morgan (ed.) 1928. the poems of henry howard earl of surrey. with an introduction and notes. seattle: university of washington press. tarlinskaja, marina (forthcoming). shakespeare and the versification of english drama 1561–1642. farnham, surrey, england; burlington, vt: ashgate publishers. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. shakespeare’s verse. iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncrasies. new york-bern-frankfurt am main-paris: peter lang. varn, lynn 1987. marlowe’s muscular verb: the answer to his might. in: language and style 20 (4), 357–370. vincent, paul j. 2005. when harey met shakespeare. the genesis of the first part of henry the sixth. phd thesis, the university of auckland. wilson, frank p.; hunter george k. 1990. the english drama 1485–1585. oxford history of english literature. oxford: university press. kyd and marlowe’s revolution: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine http://www.arsversificandi.net/current/groves.html http://www.arsversificandi.net/current/groves.html marina krasnoperova: a trodden path evgenij kazartsev, tatjana voevodskaja marina abramovna krasnoperova-eidel (1941–2010) was an extraordinary scholar who worked at the junction of linguistics, poetics and mathematics, entirely devoting herself to a special area of knowledge: verse prosody. being a pupil of the celebrated russian mathematician andrei kolmogorov, she had blazed new trails in this science. since her student years she had been studying the rhythmic system of poetic speech using for its analysis a sophisticated mathematical apparatus. she believed that mathematics would permit the philological science to penetrate into the depths of human consciousness through text analysis. some colleagues of dr. krasnoperova did not recognise or half recognised her contribution to science, not sharing her views on the nature and structure of verse. others, on the contrary, believed she was ahead of her time with her theory of reconstructive simulation of versification, which became a milestone in the theory of verse and made its author one of the founders of cognitive poetics. marina krasnoperova was contemporary of joseph brodsky whose poetry she highly appreciated and with whom her brother sergey krasnoperov, a leningrad poet, was on friendly terms. she was born on december 20, 1940 in leningrad, into a family of mining engineers galina krasnoperova and abram eidel, who by then already had two sons. in 1945 the father died and the care of the children and their education fell entirely on the mother’s shoulders. in 1958 marina became student of the first-ever department of mathematical linguistics opened at the faculty of philology within the leningrad state university. there her teachers were an outstanding phonologist and the founder of the department l. r. zinder, a remarkable linguist yu.s. maslov, noted mathematicians i. a. ibragimov, g. s. tseytin, s. ya. fitialov, and other scholars, themselves co-founders of mathematical linguistics. a promising student, she was sent to moscow state university where she worked on her master’s thesis under the guidance of andrei kolmogorov. in the following years, her life and research were closely associated with moscow and the moscow school of linguistics. in the late 60s, marina krasnoperova studied poetic speech at the institute of slavic and balkan studies at the academy of sciences of the ussr under the guidance of vyacheslav v. ivanov. only in the early 70s did she come back to leningrad. studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 158–162 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.08 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.08 159marina krasnoperova: a trodden path since then, and until her death, she had been working at the laboratory of mathematical linguistics (later named laboratory of intellectual systems) of the institute of mathematics and mechanics at st. petersburg state university. from 2001 to 2010 she was the head of this laboratory. marina krasnoperova defended her phd thesis rather late, only in 1981. however, this work was very unusual and advanced. it contained fundamentals of an absolutely new science on processes of the perception and generation of poetic speech. later, in a series of works, she elaborated the so-called theory of reconstructive simulation (rs) of versification, which became the basis of this science and took its final shape in her post-doctoral thesis for the dr hab. degree of 1992 and also in the monograph of 2000. with the help of her theory of rs, and of her unique research apparatus, marina krasnoperova managed to make important discoveries in prosody. one of her brightest achievements was an explanation of the law of regressive accentual dissimilation formulated by kiril taranovsky in 1953 (krasnoperova 1982). many scholars, including taranovsky himself, recognised the reliability of krasnoperova’s methods as they had shown a gradual development of regressive accentual dissimilation in the verse. the scientific device of reconstructive simulation of versification is based on a series of semiotic, probabilistic-statistical and cybernetic models. probabilisticstatistical models are constructed on the basis of the rhythmic dictionary of prose or poetry. among the cybernetic models, the model of generation and perception of rhythmical structures is a leading one. to the cognitive processes represented in this model one puts in correspondence the probabilistic-statistical data, which are interpreted in the framework of the theory of rs. the theoretical apparatus developed by krasnoperova, and the results obtained by her, permitted a hypothetical reconstruction of the mechanism of versification at the level of rhythm to understand the causes of the evolution of the verse connected with the probabilistic properties of the russian language, the particularities of the verse generation process, and the nature of rhythmic effects. from the beginning of her work at st. petersburg state university marina krasnoperova was actively engaged in teaching activities both at the faculty of mathematics and philology. she was professor in both faculties. she had many pupils and found great satisfaction working with them. she prepared and delivered many new courses on prosody and linguistic poetics. some of them were published as tutorials (krasnoperova 1989, 2004). for several years marina krasnoperova headed the association of verse theorists created at the st. petersburg linguistic society. from 2000 to 2010 she was the head of the permanent international seminar “linguistics and applied poetics” at the institute of russian literature of the russian academy 160 evgenij kazartsev, tatjana voevodskaja of sciences. in 1998 she was the initiator and leading organiser of a big international conference “slavic verse: linguistics and applied poetics in the system of modern sciences”. marina krasnoperova was awarded numerous fellowships, including grants from the russian foundation for basic research (rffi) and the german academic exchange service (daad), as well as a fulbright research grant (university of wisconsin, usa). she delivered a course of lectures at the department of theoretical and applied linguistics (moscow state university), taught at the universities of washington and chicago. in 1999, marina krasnoperova was awarded a medal and a diploma of merit “for high scholarly achievements and in connection with the 275 anniversary of st. petersburg state university”. in 1987 her work was noted in the questionnaire “results and problems of semiotic research” (sign systems studies, vol. 20) as the greatest achievement in the study of the verse by exact methods in the last 25 years. in 1997, international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics made special mention of her works as innovative in the field of prosody and theory of verse. in 2004 a noted phonologist, l. v. zlatoustova, published an article on this new branch of the theory of verse, in which she highly appreciated krasnoperova’s contribution to the field (zlatoustova 2004). according to zlatoustova, the theory of reconstructive simulation of versification represents “a new paradigm in modern prosody”. besides, in different years the works of krasnoperova received a high appraisal from such scholars as yu. m. lotman, v. s. bayevsky, and m. l. gasparov. it should be noted that the theory of reconstructive simulation opened new prospects in studying not only russian versification: its application allows the possibility to describe the typology of mechanisms of versification in different languages (krasnoperova, kazartsev 2011). with the help of this theory evgenij kazartsev is carrying out a broad study of the formation and development of syllabo-tonics in european poetry (kazartsev 2013, 2014). a very promising application of this theory is also the study of semantics of rhythm, the description of rhythmic effects and detection of their semantic predispositions (see krasnoperova 2003; krasnoperova, shljushenkova 2004). in the last decade marina krasnoperova together with a group of physicists and mathematicians studied the possibilities of neural networks for an analysis of processes simulated in the theory of rs (krasnoperova et al. 2001; krasnoperova, granichin 2001). marina krasnoperova died suddenly, in the 70th year of life, at full strength. this happened on june 30, 2010. she liked to repeat: “how it is difficult to be a pioneer!” and continued addressing her pupils: “i hope, for you it will be easier!” perhaps, she was partly right; a well-trodden path is easier to traverse. 161marina krasnoperova: a trodden path however, with her passing the academic life of her pupils became more difficult. at times, it is hard for them to find understanding in their professional media. some colleagues have a watchful attitude to the formal analysis: how can one explain poetry with the help of mathematics? a quantitative character of the technique and a nontrivial logic used in the analysis and interpretation of results obtained also causes difficulties in comprehension. nevertheless, the theory of rs is now an actively developing branch of science. the pupils of marina krasnoperova in different countries continue on the path she made easier, one so well trodden by her. references kazartsev, evgenij 2013. niederländische quellen von martin opitz’ versrhythmik. in: zeitschrift für germanistik 3, 118–128. kazartsev, evgenij 2014. comparative study of verse: language probability models. in: style 48, 119–139. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 1982. k voprosu o zakone regressivnoj akcentnoj dissimiljacii i ego prichinakh. in: russian literature 12, 2, 217–225. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 1989. modeli lingvisticheskoj poetiki. ritmika: uchebnoe posobie. leningrad: izdatel’stvo leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 2000. osnovy rekonstruktivnogo modelirovanija stikhoslozhenija. na materiale ritmiki russkogo stikha. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo sankt-peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 2003. o principakh komp’juternogo modelirovanija semantiki ritmicheskogo teksta. in: trudy ii mezhdunarodnoj konferencii “identifikacija sistem i zadachi upravlenija”. moskva: institut problem upravlenija, 1768–1780. krasnoperova, marina abramovna 2004. osnovy sravnitel’nogo statisticheskogo analiza ritmiki prozy i stikha: uchebnoe posobie. sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo sanktpeterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. krasnoperova, marina abramovna; shljushenkova (voevodskaja), tat’jana borisovna 2004. o semanticheskikh otnoshenijakh ritmoobrazujushchikh edinic v russkoj poezii xix–xx vv. in: slavjanskij stikh: vii. lingvistika i struktura stikha. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 319–338. 162 evgenij kazartsev, tatjana voevodskaja krasnoperova, marina abramovna; pis’mak juri m.; chernykh german anatol’evich 2001. o vozmozhnosti primenenija modelej nejronnykh setej v issledovanii ritmiki teksta. in: scherr, barry p. and kazarcev, evgenij (eds.), formal’nye metody v lingvisticheskoj poetike. sankt-peterburg. izdatel’stvo sankt-peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 11–27. krasnoperova, marina abramovna; granichin, oleg nikolaevich 2001. primenenie algoritma stokhasticheskoj approksimacii s odnovremennym vozmushcheniem na vkhode v rekonstruktivnom modelirovanii stikhoslozhenija. in: formal’nye metody v lingvisticheskoj poetike. sankt-peterburg. izdatel’stvo sankt-peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 28–38. krasnoperova, marina abramovna; kazartsev, evgenij 2011. reconstructive simulation of versification in comparative studies of texts in different languages (theoretical aspects and practice of application). in: lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics. in memoriam: mikhail gasparov. linguistic insights 113. bern [etc.]: peter lang, 97–120. zlatoustova, ljubov’ vladimirovna 2004. o novom napravlenii v stikhovedenii: teorija rekonstruktivnogo modelirovanija stikhoslozhenija. in: vestnik moskovskogo universiteta. serija 9: filologija 5, 122–125. cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books de vulgari eloquentia, de monarchia and convivio annika mikkel*1 abstract: this paper examines the prose rhythm in dante’s latin and italian prose. the samples of dante’s latin books de vulgari eloquentia and de monarchia and the italian book convivio are analysed with the purpose of finding the incidence and patterns of prose rhythm. the method used in this paper is comparative-statistical analysis. the rhythm of classic prose was based on the quantity of syllables, while the medieval latin prose rhythm was based on word stress and called cursus. although the use of cursus was more popular in latin prose, it can also be found elsewhere, including italian prose. the analysis reveals that rhythmical sentences endings have a role in dante’s prose and that the cursus appear in his latin works, as well as in his works in vernacular. keywords: prose rhythm, cursus, clausula, dante 1. introduction the aim of this paper is to study the prose rhythm in dante’s latin and italian prose using the method of comparative-statistical analysis. the term ‘prose rhythm’ is used in ancient rhetoric to denote rhythmical units at the end of sentences and clauses which in classic prose were called clausulae. the rhythm of classic prose was based on the quantity of syllables. in time, the system of clausulae was simplified and amongst quantity, word stress became significant. medieval latin prose rhythm was based exclusively on word stress and called cursus. besides latin prose, cursus can also be found elsewhere, including italian prose. as regards dante and the use of cursus in his books in vernacular, there are differences in opinions whether, and to what extent dante intentionally rhythmicized his clause endings. in my research i have analysed the occurrence of cursus in dante’s latin books de vulgari eloquentia and de monarchia, and the italian book convivio * author’s address: annika mikkel, assistant in romance philology, lossi 3, 51003, tartu, estonia. e-mail: annika.mikkel@ut.ee. studia metrica et poetica 3.1, 2016, 105–120 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.04 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.04 106 annika mikkel (books i and ii) with the purpose of finding the incidence and patterns of prose rhythm1. the sample of latin books was formed from the first ten chapters in both books, and altogether 822 sentenceand clause-ends (474 endings from de vulgari eloquentia and 348 endings from de monarchia) were analysed. in the case of convivio, the sample was formed from all the sentence and clause-ends in the first two books, altogether totalling 2810 endings. in determining the rhythm schemes some problems of prosody became apparent. the syllabication of italian words is not problematic when the syllable line is between a vowel and a consonant or between two consonants. but when there are several vowels in a row, the situation is more complicated, because the language then often allows two ways of syllabication (menichetti 1993: 176–177). the situation is even more complicated when one of the juxtaposed vowels is an unstressed i or u, as in italian those phonemes could be half-consonants. in case of doubt, aldo menichetti suggests to consult the dictionary dizionario d’ortografia e di pronunzia. this recommendation has been followed within this analysis. as regards to the latin, it has been said that in medieval latin accentuation appears often to be the same as in antiquity (norberg 1968: 88). medieval writers had learned their prosody and accentuation from classical models, but still occasional mistakes appear (strecker 1999: 58, norberg 2014: 31–49). thus, for this analysis the rules of accentuation of the classical latin have been followed. 2. prose rhythm 2.1. prose rhythm in ancient prose as has been said before, the rhythm of classic prose was based on the quantity of syllables. the use of clausulae is seen, for example, in the works of cato (de agri cultura), gaius gracchus, livy, sallust and, of course, cicero. cicero’s preference of certain clausulae is evident. the most common rhythmical units used by cicero are2: a.  ∪    //  ∪   ∪ (for example, illa tempestas) cretic, spondee // cretic, trochee 1 i have formerly analysed the occurrence of cursus in dante’s italian books vita nuova (mikkel 2011). 2 see grillo 2015: 43–44. 107cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books b.  ∪   ∪  //     ∪  (for example, adiutus non debui) cretic, cretic // molossus, cretic c.  ∪   ∪  x //     ∪  x (for example, caesari de eius actis) cretic, ditrochee // molossus, ditrochee it has been mentioned that the authors posterior to cicero heavily preferred his cretic-trochee, dicretic and ditrochee clausulae (oberhelman, hall, 1984: 114). prose rhythm in the sense of clausulae has been discussed by cicero mainly in the third book of the de oratore and in the orator 168–238. it has been noted how cicero himself did not favour his recommended clausulae: for example the clausula heroa  ∪ ∪  , which seems to have been recommended by him in or. 217, is quite rare in his extant works; and on the other hand, the “cretic + spondee” sequence ( ∪   ) is used very frequently, but was not mentioned by cicero in his theoretical discussion of clausulae (aili 1979: 9). 2.2. prose rhythm in medieval latin prose in time, the system of clausulae was simplified and, amongst quantity, word stress became significant. this type of prose rhythm where the clausula is structured both accentually and quantitatively, has been defined by modern scholars as cursus mixtus3. the clausula is simultaneously one of the forms of the cursus and one of the standard metrical forms (cretic-spondee, dicretic, cretic-tribrach, ditrochee) (oberhelman, hall 1985: 216)4. cursus mixtus, in turn, developed into medieval latin prose rhythm that was purely based on word stress and was called cursus (norberg 1968: 87, clark 1910: 10–11). there were four different rhythmic patterns in the late middle ages: d. cursus planus (xx xxx, for example audíri compéllunt5), e. cursus velox (xxx xxxx, for example gaúdia perveníre), f. cursus tardus (xx xxxx, for example tímet impéria) and g. cursus trispondaicus (xx xxxx, for example dóna sentiámus, which was also treated as the second form of cursus planus). rhythmical 3 see, for example, the articles of steven m. oberhelman and ralph g. hall (1984, 1985) who have analysed the accentual prose rhythms in imperial latin authors. 4 oberhelman and hall bring an example of the clausula missa pervenerit which is a cursus tardus, while metrically it is a dicretic (oberhelman, hall 1985: 216). 5 see norberg 1968: 87. 108 annika mikkel units comprise at least two words and the last word must have at least three syllables. the number of syllables in the preceding word is not important, only the stress is relevant (tunberg 1996: 115, janson 1975: 10). comparing the medieval forms of cursus and clausulae used in classic prose, we can see that cursus planus is based on the clausulae “cretic + spondee” (xx xxx and  ∪   ; for an example, see d. in 2.2 and a. in 2.1), cursus velox is based on the clausulae “cretic + ditrochee” (xxx xxxx and  ∪   ∪  x; for an example, see e. in 2.2 and c. in 2.1), and cursus tardus is based on the clausulae “cretic + cretic” (xx xxxx and ∪   ∪ ; for an example, see f. in 2.2 and b. in 2.1). in medieval prose, a rhythm notion of consillabicatio was introduced – replacing the last word with two or three short words that include the same number of syllables. moreover, a different way of describing cursus was used where the length of the last word was not considered important, but only the number of syllables between the last two stresses and after the stress of the last word is observed. therefore, for example, next to the usual cursus planus are the forms x xxxx and xxx xx (lindholm 1963: 40–51). in latin prose, cursus velox was the most popular, and used often at the end of the sentences and also at the end of books (toynbee 1966: 229). according to toynbee, cursus velox is the most frequent cursus also in dante’s latin book letters (epistolae) (ib. 242). 3. the occurrence of cursus in dante 3.1. the occurrence of cursus in dante’s latin books de vulgari eloquentia and de monarchia de vulgari eloquentia is an unfinished book of dante and was probably composed between 1303 and 1305 (malato 1999: 873). in the first book dante discusses the relationship between latin and vernacular and is searching for an illustrious vernacular in the italian area. the results of the analysis of de vulgari eloquentia are summarized in the following table: 109cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books table 1. the occurrence of cursus in de vulgari eloquentia frequency %% cursus planus 142 30.0% cursus trispondaicus 36 7.6% cursus velox 98 20.7% cursus tardus 65 13.7% miscellanea 133 28.1% total 474 100.0% the results of the analysis show that the percentage of the cursus in this sample is 71.9%, there, cursus planus (30.0%) predominates, for example as in natura permittit, or rationem portare. next most frequent, by occurrence, is cursus velox (20.7%), for example avidissimi speculantur, or memorabili castigavit, followed by cursus tardus (13.7%), for example esse flexibile, pauci perveniunt, and finally cursus trispondaicus (7.6%), tantum sensuale, and ipsum naturantem. in my research i observed also the occurrence of cursus in the given sample by chapters, the summary of the analysis is in the following table: table 2. the occurrence of cursus (c.) in de vulgari eloquentia in different chapters c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea total 1.i 9 2 9 7 3 30 1.ii 15 3 5 10 18 51 1.iii 6 2 5 4 5 22 1.iv 14 3 7 9 17 50 1.v 9 1 3 4 6 23 1.vi 16 1 10 2 12 41 1.vii 21 5 18 12 10 66 1.viii 13 5 15 2 11 46 1.ix 25 7 13 9 23 77 1.x 14 7 13 6 28 68 total 142 36 98 65 133 474 110 annika mikkel table 3. the occurrence of cursus in de vulgari eloquentia in different chapters (%%) c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea 1.i 30.0% 6.7% 30.0% 23.3% 10.0% 1.ii 29.4% 5.9% 9.8% 19.6% 35.3% 1.iii 27.3% 9.1% 22.7% 18.2% 22.7% 1.iv 28.0% 6.0% 14.0% 18.0% 34.0% 1.v 39.1% 4.3% 13.0% 17.4% 26.1% 1.vi 39.0% 2.4% 24.4% 4.9% 29.3% 1.vii 31.8% 7.6% 27.3% 18.2% 15.2% 1.viii 28.3% 10.9% 32.6% 4.3% 23.9% 1.ix 32.5% 9.1% 16.9% 11.7% 29.9% 1.x 20.6% 10.3% 19.1% 8.8% 41.2% total 30.0% 7.6% 20.7% 13.7% 28.1% if we take a closer look, we can see the accumulation of cursus velox in chapters i, vii, viii – where the average percentage of cursus velox in this sample is 20.7%, the proportion of these in chapter i is 30.0%, in chapter vii 27.3% and in chapter viii 32.6%. in the first chapter of de vulgari eloquentia dante claims that he is going to discuss the theory of eloquence in vernacular and that vernacular language is natural, not artificial, and therefore more noble. in chapter vii he describes the building of the tower of babel and the separation of languages because of the impudence demonstrated by humankind. in chapter viii dante compiles a map of the geographical positions of the languages he knows dividing the european territory into three parts, with southern europe again divided in three: oc language, oïl language and sì language. it can be said that those three chapters (introduction and intention to discuss the more noble kind of language, the separation of language into different idioms, composing a map of the geographical positions of the languages) are all very relevant in the first book of de vulgari eloquentia. also, in chapter viii the percentage of cursus trispondaicus is the highest (10.9%), while the average is 7.6%. in chapter v we can see the highest percentage of cursus planus (39.1%) and at the same time relatively low percentage of cursus velox (13.0%). we can see the accumulation of cursus tardus in chapter i (23.3%, while the average percentage is 13.7) and the lowest percentage of cursus tardus is in chapter viii (only 4.3%). de monarchia (or monarchia) is a treatise on the relationship between secular authority (represented by the holy roman emperor) and religious authority (represented by the pope). there are many opinions about the date 111cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books of composition of this work which refer the years between 1307–1308 and 1321 (the death of dante) (malato 1999: 886). the work is composed of three books, in the first of which dante affirms the need for a universal monarchy. the data of the cursus in de monarchia are summarized in the following table: table 4. the occurrence of cursus in de monarchia frequency %% cursus planus 82 23.6% cursus trispondaicus 28 8.0% cursus velox 54 15.5% cursus tardus 50 14.4% miscellanea 134 38.5% total 348 100.0% the results of the analysis show that the percentage of the cursus in this sample is 61.5%, there, in turn, cursus planus (23.6%) is the most used, for example interesse videtur, and esse producit. the second most frequent form is cursus velox (15.5%), for example naturaliter principari, hominum salutabat, then cursus tardus (14,4%), for example intellectus possibilis, ipse perficitur, and the last in frequency is cursus trispondaicus (8.0%), for example unam civitatem, esse animatum. the occurrence of cursus in de monarchia was studied by chapters too; the summary of the data is given in the following table: table 5. the occurrence of cursus in de monarchia in different chapters c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea total 1.i 8 0 7 9 5 29 1.ii 8 3 7 5 19 42 1.iii 14 4 9 8 37 72 1.iv 6 3 6 5 11 31 1.v 13 3 12 9 26 63 1.vi 5 4 0 4 9 22 1.vii 5 1 1 3 5 15 1.viii 8 4 6 0 7 25 1.ix 9 4 3 0 7 23 1.x 6 2 3 7 8 26 total 82 28 54 50 134 348 112 annika mikkel table 6. the occurrence of cursus in de monarchia in different chapters (%%) c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea 1.i 27.6% 0.0% 24.1% 31.0% 17.2% 1.ii 19.0% 7.1% 16.7% 11.9% 45.2% 1.iii 19.4% 5.6% 12.5% 11.1% 51.4% 1.iv 19.4% 9.7% 19.4% 16.1% 35.5% 1.v 20.6% 4.8% 19.0% 14.3% 41.3% 1.vi 22.7% 18.2% 0.0% 18.2% 40.9% 1.vii 33.3% 6.7% 6.7% 20.0% 33.3% 1.viii 32.0% 16.0% 24.0% 0.0% 28.0% 1.ix 39.1% 17.4% 13.0% 0.0% 30.4% 1.x 23.1% 7.7% 11.5% 26.9% 30.8% total 23.6% 8.0% 15.5% 14.4% 38.5% closer study reveals the accumulation of cursus velox in chapters i (24.1%) and viii (24.0%), while average percentage of cursus velox in this sample is 15.5%. chapter i is a kind of introduction to the whole book and in chapter viii dante speaks about god: men are made in the image of god, but god is one. the first chapter also has the highest percentage of cursus tardus (31.0%). on the contrary, in chapter viii the cursus tardus does not occur at all, the same stands for chapter ix (also 0.0%). the percentage of cursus planus is highest in chapter ix (39.1%) and cursus trispondaicus accumulates in chapters vi (18.2%), viii (16.0%) and ix (17.4%) – the average percentage of trispondaicus is 8.0%. the analysis of this sample of de monarchia does not allow us to conclude that cursus velox accumulates in more relevant chapters, or that it has some other semantic connections. in this case, further analysis would be needed. the data of de vulgari eloquentia and de monarchia are juxtaposed in the following table: table 7. the occurrence of cursus in de vulgari eloquentia and in de monarchia frequency %% cursus planus 224 27.3% cursus trispondaicus 64 7.8% cursus velox 152 18.5% cursus tardus 115 14.0% miscellanea 267 32.5% total 822 100.0% 113cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books 3.2. the occurrence of cursus in dante’s convivio. although the use of cursus was more popular in latin prose, they can also be found elsewhere, including italian prose. there are many opinions about whether and how much dante used cursus in his italian books, since for that purpose dante’s latin books have been studied more systematically6. according to some authors, dante was certainly familiar with the rules of cursus, and seemed to follow them where he found appropriate (rajna 1932: 86). convivio is a work written between 1304 and 1307. this unfinished work of dante consists of four trattati (books): a prefatory one, plus three books, each of which includes a canzone (long lyrical poem) and a prose allegorical interpretation of, or commentary on the poem that takes us in numerous thematic directions. the convivio is a kind of vernacular encyclopaedia of the knowledge of dante’s time. it touches on many areas of learning, not only philosophy but also politics, linguistics, science and history (malato 1995: 864–865). book 1 explains why a book like the convivio is needed and why dante is writing it in the vernacular instead of latin. book 2 discusses allegory and lady philosophy (in connection with the poem voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete), and also treats an astronomical theme (number and nature of the heavens) and angeology. the results of the analysis of convivio (parts i and ii) are summarized in the following tables, where the distinction is made between part one and part two: table 8. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part i convivio part i frequency %% cursus planus 352 30.8% cursus trispondaicus 220 19.2% cursus velox 121 10.6% cursus tardus 49 4.3% miscellanea 401 35.1% total 1143 100.0% 6 see malato 1999 who studies the regular use of cursuses in dante alihieri’s books de vulgari eloquentia, monarchia, questio de aqua et terra and especially in epistolae. 114 annika mikkel table 9. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part ii convivio part ii frequency %% cursus planus 487 29.2% cursus trispondaicus 284 17.0% cursus velox 161 9.7% cursus tardus 75 4.5% miscellanea 660 39.6% total 1667 100.0% table 10. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part i and ii convivio part i and ii frequency %% cursus planus 839 29.9% cursus trispondaicus 504 17.9% cursus velox 282 10.0% cursus tardus 124 4.4% miscellanea 1061 37.8% total 2810 100.0% the analysis revealed that the percentage of the cursus in convivio part one is approximately 65% and in part two approximately 60%, the most frequent form is cursus planus with the incidence of approximately 30%, for example solamente privato, and alcuno difetto. in both parts of convivio the next in frequency is cursus trispondaicus (17.9%), for example prima partorita, servo conoscente, then cursus velox (10.0%), for example essere al migliore, numero regolato, and finally, cursus tardus has the smallest frequency (4.4%), for example essa medesima, quinta e ultima. summary of the analysis of the occurrence of cursus in part one and two by chapters in part one is showed in the following table: 115cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books table 11. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part i in different chapters c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea total 1.i 32 18 12 6 37 105 1.ii 33 24 11 5 26 99 1.iii 22 16 7 1 27 73 1.iv 25 15 13 3 28 84 1.v 30 23 8 2 26 89 1.vi 16 11 12 5 18 62 1.vii 28 28 8 2 27 93 1.viii 37 13 12 2 46 110 1.ix 23 11 4 5 17 60 1.x 28 19 6 4 26 83 1.xi 34 23 8 7 57 129 1.xii 23 11 9 5 38 86 1.xiii 21 8 11 2 28 70 total 352 220 121 49 401 1143 table 12. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part i in different chapters (%%) c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea 1.i 30.5% 17.1% 11.4% 5.7% 35.2% 1.ii 33.3% 24.2% 11.1% 5.1% 26.3% 1.iii 30.1% 21.9% 9.6% 1.4% 37.0% 1.iv 29.8% 17.9% 15.5% 3.6% 33.3% 1.v 33.7% 25.8% 9.0% 2.2% 29.2% 1.vi 25.8% 17.7% 19.4% 8.1% 29.0% 1.vii 30.1% 30.1% 8.6% 2.2% 29.0% 1.viii 33.6% 11.8% 10.9% 1.8% 41.8% 1.ix 38.3% 18.3% 6.7% 8.3% 28.3% 1.x 33.7% 22.9% 7.2% 4.8% 31.3% 1.xi 26.4% 17.8% 6.2% 5.4% 44.3% 1.xii 26.7% 12.8% 10.5% 5.8% 44.2% 1.xiii 30.0% 11.4% 15.7% 2.9% 40.0% total 30.8% 19.2% 10.6% 4.3% 35.1% 116 annika mikkel if we take a closer look at the occurrence of cursus velox and cursus tardus in part one, we can see their abundance in one chapter – vi (19.4% and 8.1%). it is much higher than the average frequency on these two types of cursus (10.6% for cursus velox and 4.3% for cursus tardus). in chapters v–vii dante explains the first reason for using vernacular and not latin in convivio. throughout these three chapters the percentage of all types of cursus is also high – ca 71%. in chapter xiii (last chapter of book i) the percentage of cursus velox in also high – 15.7%, but the percentage of tardus in quite average – 2.9%. in the last chapter of book i dante exalts the new language and predicts a future success to lingua volgare. explaining the reasons of using vernacular instead of latin and predicting a future success to vernacular are quite important parts in the first book of convivio and the abundance of cursus velox in those chapters may not be incidental7. book ii is a kind of comment on the first poem in convivio (voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete). summary of the analysis in part two could be seen in the following table: table 13. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part ii in different chapters c. planus c. trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea total 2.i 27 19 9 2 41 98 2.ii 21 9 4 3 22 59 2.iii 12 14 3 3 21 53 2.iv 33 12 3 4 45 97 2.v 32 19 15 5 39 110 2.vi 41 31 18 5 48 143 2.vii 27 21 10 2 48 108 2.viii 26 18 10 5 36 95 2.ix 29 15 9 6 43 102 2.x 26 12 6 1 29 74 2.xi 30 16 9 3 33 91 2.xii 24 13 7 1 20 65 2.xiii 27 10 11 0 25 73 2.xiv 62 42 21 19 85 229 2.xv 38 20 15 14 76 163 2.xvi 32 13 11 2 49 107 total 487 284 161 75 660 1667 7 the analysis of dante’s other italian prose book, vita nuova, also showed an accrual of cursus velox in certain relevant chapters (mikkel 2011: 708). 117cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books table 14. the occurrence of cursus in convivio part ii in different chapters (%%) c. planus c.s trispondaicus c. velox c. tardus miscellanea 2.i 27.6% 19.4% 9.2% 2.0% 41.8% 2.ii 35.6% 15.3% 6.8% 5.1% 37.3% 2.iii 22.6% 26.4% 5.7% 5.7% 39.6% 2.iv 34.0% 12.4% 3.1% 4.1% 46.4% 2.v 29.1% 17.3% 13.6% 4.5% 35.5% 2.vi 28.7% 21.7% 12.6% 3.5% 33.6% 2.vii 25.0% 19.4% 9.3% 1.9% 44.4% 2.viii 27.4% 18.9% 10.5% 5.3% 37.9% 2.ix 28.4% 14.7% 8.8% 5.9% 42.2% 2.x 35.1% 16.2% 8.1% 1.4% 39.2% 2.xi 33.0% 17.6% 9.9% 3.3% 36.3% 2.xii 36.9% 20.0% 10.8% 1.5% 30.8% 2.xiii 37.0% 13.7% 15.1% 0.0% 34.2% 2.xiv 27.1% 18.3% 9.2% 8.3% 37.1% 2.xv 23.3% 12.3% 9.2% 8.6% 46.6% 2.xvi 29.9% 12.1% 10.3% 1.9% 45.8% total 29.2% 17.0% 9.7% 4.5% 39.6% in the book two of convivio the incidence of all types of cursus is the highest in chapter xii – 69.2%, while the occurrence of cursus velox is highest in chapter xiii (15.1%). an average use of cursus velox in book two is 9.7%. in chapter xiii the percentage of cursus tardus is 0% (which is also significant) and the percentage of all types of cursus is 65.8%. cursus tardus is used more frequently in chapters xiv (8.3%) and xv (8.6%), while the average use of cursus in this book is 4.5%. we should particularly mention the higher occurrence of cursus velox and tardus in the last chapters of this book. 118 annika mikkel 3.3. comparison of latin and italian texts the following table juxtaposes the data of convivio, de vulgari eloquentia and monarchia: table 15. the comparison of cursus in convivio, de vulgari eloquentia and monarchia convivio dve monarchia cursus planus 29.9% 30.0% 23.6% cursus trispondaicus 17.9% 7.6% 8.0% cursus velox 10.0% 20.7% 15.5% cursus tardus 4.4% 13.7% 14.4% miscellanea 37.7% 28.1% 38.5% total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% in table 16 we see compare the results of latin and italian samples: table 16. a comparison of cursus in latin and italian samples convivio dve+monarchia cursus planus 29.9% 27.3% cursus trispondaicus 17.9% 7.8% cursus velox 10.0% 18.5% cursus tardus 4.4% 14.0% miscellanea 37.7% 32.5% total 100.0% 100.0% the comparison shows us that in latin samples the percentage of cursus is 67.5% and in convivio 62.3%. as we can see, there is no significant difference between these two samples. the biggest difference concerns the use of cursus velox and tardus: in latin samples the percentage of cursus velox is 18.5%, while in convivio 10.0%. the percentage of cursus tardus in convivio is 4.4% and in latin works 14.0%. it can be said that the prosody of both language influences the use of cursus. in latin, word stress may be on the penult or the third syllable from the end, and cursus velox comprises words with such stresses. many vernacular words, instead, have the stress on the penultimate syllable, and in convivio dante used mostly cursus planus and trispondaicus which comprise words with stress on the penultimate syllable. in latin samples, the percentage of cursus planus is quite similar to the result of convivio – 27.3% in latin and 29.9% in vernacular. but the use of cursus trispondaicus in latin works is low, only 7.8%, as opposed to 17.9% in convivio. 119cursus in dante alighieri’s prose books 4. conclusion based on this analysis, it can be said that dante is not indifferent towards prose rhythm, and that the cursus appear in his latin works, as well as in his works in vernacular. the importance of the rhythmical endings of sentences in dante’s prose can also be seen from the use of cursus velox. in latin prose in general, cursus velox was the most popular and most often used. it was also considered as one of the most elegant cursus and used above all at the end of the sentences as well as, quite often, at the end of the book. cursus tardus was also used more frequently in latin prose than in italian, probably for the prosodic reasons. furthermore, the higher use of tardus in some parts of dante’s vernacular prose may indicate the importance of rhythm for dante. the distribution of cursus is not homogeneous in different parts of his works. we can see, for example, the preference of cursus velox in some parts, and the absence of some type of cursus in several chapter (thus, in the sample of de monarchia there are no cursus tardus at all in the chapters viii and ix and no cursus velox in chapter vi). cursus planus is used more or less equally in every part of his books, both in latin and in vernacular. the analysis of these samples indicates the accrual of cursus velox in the first chapters (in de vulgari eloquentia and in de monarchia) or in the final chapters of the book (in both books of convivio). in the final chapters of the second book of convivio we can also see the higher use of cursus tardus. analysing the sample of de vulgari eloquentia, we can point out an accumulation of cursus velox in some more relevant chapters in this book, the same can be said about the first book of convivio. in order to say more about the use of cursus in dante, it would be necessary to study the works of some other contemporaries of dante, and to compare the results. we hope it will be done in further research. references alighieri, dante 1993. tutte le opere. divina commedia, vita nuova, rime, convivio, de vulgari eloquentia, monarchia, egloghe, epistole, quaestio de aqua et de terra. roma: grandi tascabili economici newton. aili, hans 1979. the prose rhythm of sallust and livy. stockholm: almquist & wiksell international. clark, albert curtius 1910. the cursus in mediaeval and vulgar latin. oxford: clarendon press. 120 annika mikkel grillo, luca 2015. cicero’s de provinciis consularibus oratio. oxford: university press. janson, tore 1975. prose rhythm in medieval latin from the 9th to the 13th century. stockholm: almquist & wiksell international. lindholm, gudrun 1963. studien zum mittellateinischen prosarhythmus. seine entwicklung und sein abklingen in der briefliteratur italiens. stockholm: almquist & wiksell international. malato, enrico 1999. dante. in: malato, enrico (ed.), storia della letteratura italiana. vol. i: dalle origini a dante. roma: salerno, 773–1052. menichetti, aldo 1993. metrica italiana. fondamenti metrici, prosodia, rima. padova: editrice antenore. migliorini, bruno; tagliavini, carlo; fiorelli, piero dizionario d’ortografia e di pronunzia. http://www.dizionario.rai.it/ mikkel, annika 2011. medieval cursus in italian prose by example of dante alighieri. in: interlitteraria 16(2), 698–711. norberg, dag 1968. manuel pratique de latin médiéval. paris: picard. norberg, dag 2014. introduction to the study of medieval latin versification. washington: catholic university of america press. oberhelman, steven m.; hall, ralph g. 1984. a new statistical analysis of accentual prose rhythms in imperial latin authors. in: classical philology 79, 114–130. oberhelman, steven m.; hall, ralph g. 1985. meter in accentual clausulae of late imperial latin prose. in: classical philology 80, 214–227. rajna, pio 1932. per il “cursus” medievale e per dante. in: studi di filologia italiana. bulletino della r. accademia della crusca. vol. iii. firenze: g.c. sansoni. stecker, karl 1999. introduction to medieval latin. zürich: weidmann. tunberg, terence o. 1996. prose styles and cursus. in: mantello, frank a. c.; rigg, arthur g. (eds.), medieval latin. washington: the catholic university of american press, 111–121. rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic diversity (the example of the russian iambic tetrameter) andrei dobritsyn*1 abstract: this paper examines the frequencies of the rhythmic forms of the iambic tetrameter in the oeuvre of various russian poets of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. the assumption is that this parameter describes the perceptible peculiarities of rhythm better than the so called stress profile. entropy is proposed as a measure of rhythmic diversity. variations of the quantitative value of rhythmic entropy in the works of different poets (or the same poet in different periods of his/her poetic career) are due to the changes in the preference for particular rhythmic forms. it is demonstrated that in the majority of poets the entropy in their early poems is much lower than in their mature period. in order to assess the difference between poetic rhythm and natural language rhythm, the kullback–leibler divergence is calculated. it is the divergence of the distribution of rhythmic forms in a particular poem or group of poems from the modelled (language-based or speech-based) distribution of the same forms. it is revealed that in some poets of the 1920s, the poetic rhythm is very close to the “natural” distribution of the rhythmic forms of the iambic tetrameter. it is also shown that the rhythm of stanzaic and text endings differs from the rhythm of a stanza or the entire poem (the endings have a different level of entropy and a different divergence from natural speech). keywords: russian iambic tetrameter, rhythmic forms, frequency, entropy, modelled distribution, kullback–leibler divergence * author’s address: andrei dobritsyn, l’université de lausanne, section de langues et civilisations slaves et de l’asie du sud, anthropole 4085, ch-1015 lausanne, switzerland. e-mail: andrei.dobritsyn@unil.ch. studia metrica et poetica 3.1, 2016, 33–52 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.02 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.02 34 andrei dobritsyn statistics is a good persuader only when the real causes are unknown. ilya shkrob i. the stress profile and the distribution of rhythmic forms one of the most studied characteristics of the syllabic-accentual rhythm is the rhythmic profile, also known as the stress profile (i.e. a diagram of the average ictic stress on each foot). this characteristic has its undeniable value. using this parameter, andrei belyi (1910: 262) discovered a drastic change in the rhythm of the russian iambic tetrameter in the early nineteenth century. later kiril taranovsky (1953: 66–92) described in detail the peripeteias of this “rhythmic revolution”. it should be remembered, however, that the procedure of averaging in the construction of the stress profile is applied in a somehow unusual situation. in natural sciences, the measurement data are normally averaged in order to get a value that is closest to the true value of a certain real quantity (the strength of current, frequency of a sound, etc.). in the case of the rhythmic profile, we do not calculate a value of any real stress. we consider the foot (ictus) as either stressed or unstressed, which means that the measured quantity takes value 0 or 1, whereas a fractional number does not (and cannot, in principle) describe any real object. a reader or listener is hardly able to detect by eye or ear such a quantity as the average degree of stressing in hundreds lines of verse. nevertheless, the rhythmic profile corresponds to a certain kind of perceptible reality. more precisely, it reflects the balance of rhythmic forms (variations) of a given metre.1 for example, in the iambic tetrameter 60% of stresses in the first ictus mean that forms i, iii, iv and vii are 1.5 times as frequent in the corpus of texts under consideration as forms ii and vi (see below for the list of forms). the frequency of various rhythmic forms, especially the frequency of unusual or rare forms, can sometimes be detected by the ear. an example might be vladimir nabokov’s review of vladimir pozner’s book of poetry titled stikhi na sluchaj (occasional verses, paris 1928): 1 the present paper analyzes only the rhythmic variations related to skipping the schematic (i.e. ictic) stress. neither the extraschematic (i.e. non-ictic) accents, nor the rhythmic variations related to word boundaries, nor the rhythmic factors conditioned by the interrelation between metre and syntax are taken into account. 35rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic мучительно-знакомо и другое – то манерное злоупотребление средними в ямбическом стихе пэонами (отчего стих посредине как бы проваливается), которое могло бы заставить поверхностного читателя поверить в «насыщенность» познеровского стиха. этот проваливающийся ямб такой же модный недуг, как уже однажды отмеченная мною любовь “парижских” молодых поэтесс к длинным, якобы музыкальным, прилагательным, начинающимся с “не”. (nabokov 1989 [1928]: 104) [yet another thing is painfully familiar – a mannered abuse of paeons in the middle of iambic lines (so that the middle of the line droops, as it were), which might make a superficial reader believe in the “richness” of pozner’s verse. this bending iambus is the same fashionable disease as the young “parisian” poetesses’ fondness for long, supposedly musical adjectives beginning with “non-”, as i have noted elsewhere.]2 nabokov noticed the presence of the real objects – namely, the lines belonging to form vii, with ictic stresses skippped on the two middle feet (xx|xx|xx|xx). as regards the stress profile of occasional verses, it is not at all “bending”, that is the average stress on the second and third feet is not lower than the average stress on the first foot. the profile would have been “bending”, if pozner had been only using forms iii (xx|xx|xx|xx) and iv (xx|xx|xx|xx), but in the latter case nabokov’s rhythmic feelings would have been different, and he would not have reproached pozner’s verse for excessive paeonicity. similarly, belyi’s and taranovsky’s observation concerning the rhythmic revolution in the early nineteenth-century russian poetry can, on afterthought, be re-stated in the language of rhythmic forms: a transition from the u-shaped profile to the n-shaped profile occurred mainly due to the decrease in the proportion of form iii and the increase in the proportion of forms vi and ii. however, this formulation is much less demonstrative. moreover, it is not so easy to guess a priori, which forms and which correlations between them should be tracked. in connection with the above, we can pose a question about the possibility of restoring the distribution of rhythmic variations on the basis of the rhythmic profile. distribution of forms on the basis of the stress profile is not uniquely recovered, because there are only 4 equations for 6 unknowns. six unknowns are the shares of six rhythmic variations (i to vii, minus the rare forms v and viii). four equations are conditions of the level of stressing of each of the four 2 all translations from russian are ours. – eds. 36 andrei dobritsyn ictuses.3 it follows from this that a given stress profile can result from various combinations of rhythmic forms taken in different proportions. this is how accents are distributed among the six forms of iambic tetrameter:4 table 1. stressed and unstressed ictuses in the rhythmic forms of the iambic tetrameter. ictuses forms 1 2 3 4 i + + + + ii – + + + iii + – + + iv + + – + vi – + – + vii + – – + the sum total of fractions of forms i, ii, iii etc. (x1, x2, x3, x4, x6, x7) equals the stressing of the correspondent ictuses pi. thus, a system of equations is created (see prokhorov 1984: 97): x1 + x3 + x4 + x7 = p1 x1 + x2 + x4 + x6 = p2 x1 + x2 + x3 = p3 x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 + x6 + x7 = p4 = 100 as we have 6 variables and 4 equations, we can express the fraction of any two forms in terms of the fractions of the other four. let us consider a very simple example. form vii is absent from many texts: x7 = 0. let us express the proportions of forms ii, iii, iv and vi (x2, x3, x4, x6) in terms of the fully-stressed form i (x1): x2 = p2 + p3 – 100 – x1 x3 = 100 – p2 x4 = p1 + p2 – 100 – x1 x6 = 200 – p1 – p2 – p3 + x1 3 “in the classic pattern of russian syllabic-accentual verse”, the very last ictus “always carries a word stress” (jakobson 1960: 361), and therefore its level of stressing is 100%. 4 it is widely accepted now to use the form numbers proposed by shengeli (1923: 139–141). shengeli’s form vii is what taranovsky calls form v. 37rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic with selected fixed values of pi, we can substitute different proportions of x1 into these formulas. as a result, we can have different combinations of forms (x1, x2, x3, x4, x6), which constitute the same stress profile. since all values must be positive, this implies certain restrictions on the profile: p2 + p3 > 100 p1 + p2 > 100, and restrictions on the share of a particular form: p1  – p3 < x4 < 100 – p3 etc. moreover, some shares and the total share of different forms are determined by the stress profile: x2 + x6 = 100 – p1 x4 + x6 = 100 – p3 x3 = 100 – p2 this means: if form vii is absent, the percentage of form iii is only determined by the stressing of the second ictus (and vice versa: the stressing of the second ictus is only determined by the percentage of form iii). in 1984, aleksandr prokhorov published a paper, in which he proposed to add to the four obvious linear equations given above, the principle of minimal “relative entropy”, also known as the kullback entropy or the kullback–leibler divergence (prokhorov 1984: 94–97). this quantity is a measure of divergence between two probability distributions (in this case, the theoretical distribution of accents and the restored distribution with a given rhythmic profile). in other words, a distribution was constructed, which produced a given stress profile and was at the same time as close to the theoretical distribution as possible. the less the kullback–leibler divergence was, the greater this proximity was considered (more on this below). with such a procedure, a particular distribution of forms is uniquely restored. as prokhorov’s calculations demonstrated, in many cases the result is close (sometimes very close) to the correct result. that is to say, the principle of minimal kullback entropy is confirmed empirically for many cases, but not for all cases, as acknowledged by the author himself: 38 andrei dobritsyn deviations from this conclusion mainly deal with rare forms and can serve as meaningful characteristics of the individual image of the metre,5 which cannot be deduced from general language laws. (prokhorov 1984: 97) it is worth making the next step and assuming it is possible to calculate the distance between the rhythm in the works of a particular poet and the modelled language rhythm, in the hope that this distance will be of an informative value, at least to a certain extent. the simplest measure of the distance between the rhythms is the divergence between their entropies. ii. the entropy if we make the main subject of our study the rhythmic form of a given metre, the natural question raised is that of the frequency with which these forms occur, i.e. the question of the distribution of rhythmic forms in the works of various poets, in various periods, in various genres, etc. the poets can prefer some forms in one period, and prefer other forms in another period; consequently, poets may be constant or changeable in their preferences. for example, in 1741, mikhail lomonosov tried to compose pure, fullystressed iambs. according to taranovsky, 95% of lomonosov’s lines of verse written during this year belong to form i (cf. form iii: 2.5%, iv: 1.8%, and ii: 0.7%). therefore, the level of rhythmic diversity is very low. these data were corrected by maksim shapir who discovered the fact that lomonosov’s rhythm changed drastically in autumn 1741, whereas in summer 1741 the proportion of form i was even higher: 96.6%, cf. form iii: 1.6%, iv: 1.4%, and ii: 0.5% (shapir 1996: 100, table 2). the level of rhythmic diversity is measurable, and entropy is well suited to serve as its numerical value. entropy is usually introduced as a measure of disorder, or rather, a measure of uncertainty or unpredictability of random events. let us consider a die, each face of which shows “6”. the outcome of any throw is “6”, therefore the uncertainty equals 0. if one face features “1”, the degree of uncertainty is higher than 0, but not very high (although an outcome may be “1”, the chances are 5/6 that we’ll have “6”). if one face features “1”, and another features “2”, the degree of uncertainty increases, and if any number from 1 to 5 the concept of “the image of the metre” was introduced by andrei kolmogorov who conceived of the metre as “an artistic image” and distinguished between “(a) the sound image of a given metre and (b) its artistic interpretation” (kolmogorov, prokhorov 1963: 83). 39rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic 6 can come up with an equal probability, the degree of uncertainty reaches the maximum. the degree of uncertainty is called entropy (or information). the method for calculating entropy must meet certain conditions. clearly, the degree of uncertainty depends on the probability of the events, and if the probability of an event is equal to one, then there is no uncertainty, and the entropy must equal zero. as is known, the probability that several independent events occur together is equal to the product (the result of multiplication) of the probabilities of each of these events, while it is intuitively clear that the entropies of the events in such a situation should be added (if the degree of uncertainty of the first event is h1, and of the second event is h2, then the degree of uncertainty that both events occur should be h1 + h2). in the case of equiprobable events, it is also clear that with an increase in the number of events, i.e. with a decrease in the probability of each event (pi =1 / n), the degree of uncertainty should increase; and, on the contrary, with an increase in the probability, uncertainty should decrease. there is only one function that satisfies all these conditions, i.e. a) it is a decreasing function, b) this function is equal to zero when the value of the argument is equal to one, and c) such a function maps a product of arguments into a sum of values. this function is the minus logarithm. consequently, the entropy of a single event is defined as h = – ln p, and the entropy of a sequence of random events is defined as the average of the logarithm of their probabilities with sign reversed:6 (1) h = – σ pi ln pi as a random event we will consider the appearance of any rhythmic form of the iambic tetrameter. let us select any text or a corpus of texts, such as a book of poetry (e.g. vladislav khodasevich’s heavy lyre, 1923) or the poems of a particular period (e.g. marina tsvetaeva’s poems composed from 1921 to 1923 using the iambic tetrameter). let us assume the probability of the form is given by the percentage of the lines that belong to this form. then, using formula (1), we can calculate the rhythmic entropy of the selected corpus of poetic texts, or its measure of rhythmic diversity. it reaches a maximum value in the case of equipartition, h = ln6 = 1.79. in taranovsky’s “t-model”, the 6 for the details see yaglom & yaglom 1973. of course, logarithms to any base are adequate. in this paper, natural logarithms are used throughout. 40 andrei dobritsyn entropy h = 1.69, and in his “s-model” the entropy is even higher: h = 1.71 (see taranovsky 1971: 426, table 2).7 in sergei liapin’s model (see liapin 2001: 149), the iambs at the beginning of a sentence have h = 1.62, while the iambs at the end of a sentence have h = 1.67 (that is, the end of the phrase imposes a little less restrictions on rhythm than its beginning). in different periods, as well as in different poets, rhythmic diversity either decreased or increased. the parameter of entropy allows us, albeit roughly, to track such changes, and, in particular, to outline the evolution of the poet’s rhythm. it is worth noting that the rhythmic entropy is an integral characteristic, which allows us to assess the rhythmic diversity, but not particular aspects of this diversity. if we swap the proportions of two forms (for instance, one distribution has 40% of form iv and 1% of form vii, whereas another distribution has 1% of form iv and 40% of form vii, other things being equal), then the quantity of entropy (i.e. the degree of diversity) will remain the same, although the verse will sound quite different. a more detailed characterization could be obtained by calculating the kullback–leibler divergence dkl(p,q): (2) dkl (p,q) = σ pi ln (pi / qi), where pi is the required distribution, and qi is the model probability distribution. its peculiarity is that it is not a distance sensu stricto, because it is not symmetrical. the distance from the distribution p to the distribution q is not equal to the distance from q to p. therefore, in order to use it, we should select a certain basic distribution of rhythmic forms q – for example, any speechbased or language-based distribution – and compare all real distributions with this selected distribution. in the following sections of the paper, the parameters of rhythmic diversity in the works of the poets of the eighteenth, early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are calculated (the entropy and the kullback–leibler divergence from the speech-based and/or language-based distribution). the calculations are based on taranovsky’s data, unless stated otherwise. 7 the “t-model” is a theoretical (language-based) model, in which the probability of a rhythmic form is calculated on the basis of the frequencies of the words of various rhythmic types in the thesaurus of a given corpus of texts (for example, in the dictionary of the writer’s language). the “s-model” is a speech-based model, in which the probability of a rhythmic form is given by the frequency of the sporadic appearance of this variation in “speech”, i.e. in a certain corpus of prose texts. 41rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic iii. the rhythmic entropy and the proximity to the “natural” rhythm 1. eighteenth-century poets let us start with the evolution of the rhythmic diversity of the iambic tetrameters of lomonosov: table and chart 2. the evolution of the rhythmic diversity of lomonosov’s iambic tetrameters and the divergence from taranovsky’s model distributions (t and s) years 1741 1742 1743 1745– 46 1747 1748– 49 1750 1752– 57 1759– 60 1761 1762 h 0.25 1.06 0.86 1.28 1.23 1.27 1.33 1.27 1.32 1.42 1.41 dkl(t) 1.90 0.78 1.08 0.35 0.31 0.28 0.22 0.33 0.32 0.23 0.17 dkl(s) 1.94 0.84 1.13 0.39 0.37 0.35 0.28 0.39 0.33 0.28 0.15 we observe a pronounced, though not a monotonous, trend toward an increase in the rhythmic entropy, i.e. toward an increasing richness of rhythm. aleksandr sumarokov’s rhythmic diversity is similar to that of late lomonosov. in this regard, ermil kostrov and gavriil derzhavin followed sumarokov. rhythmic diversity decreases to a certain extent in the poems 42 andrei dobritsyn of vasily petrov and ippolit bogdanovich, while it decreases even more in mikhail kheraskov and yakov kniazhnin: table 3. russian eighteenth-century poets: evolution of rhythmic diversity sumarokov kostrov derzhavin bogdanovich petrov kheraskov kniazhnin h = 1.40 1.40 1.38 1.32 1.29 1.25 1.21 in the works of all the above mentioned poets there are three dominating modes (forms iv, i, and iii). the entropy in the works whose authors are placed at the end of the table decreases primarily due to the weakening of the secondary modes, i.e. a decrease in the proportion of relatively rare rhythmic variations (forms ii, vi, and vii). while in sumarokov and derzhavin the “rare” forms add up to 10%, in kheraskov and kniazhnin they hardly reach the total of 5%. thus, a significant difference in the degree of rhythmic diversity is predetermined mainly by a relatively small difference in the frequency of marginal rhythmic forms.8 to put it otherwise, the eighteenth century poets developed a poetic style, in which the rhythmic variations of the iambic tetrameter are used in such proportions that the entropy was not high. this style, which can be described as focused on three principal rhythmic forms, was later adopted by several poets of the first decades of the nineteenth century. for example, kheraskov’s and kniazhnin’s entropy can be compared to that of konstantin batiushkov and evgeny baratynsky in his early writings (among the already mentioned poets, it is the lowest in batiushkov, whose works of 1815–1817 have a twomode rhythm: forms i and iv add up to almost 87%). 2. the poets of the early nineteenth century by 1820 the rhythmic predilections of russian poets started to change: in baratynsky, the third frequent variation is not form iii, as in his predecessors, but forms ii (in the early baratynsky) or vi (in his later works). of his contemporaries, nikolai yazykov prefers form vi to iv, and ii to iii. in aleksandr pushkin (as well as later in mikhail lermontov) they are more or less equal, and oscillate by 2–3% from one poem to another. 8 note that nabokov, in his review of pozner’s book cited above, pays attention to the increase in the frequency of the most marginal form. these relatively small changes in the frequency of uncommon rhythmic variations are readily perceptible to the ear. 43rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic table 4. batiushkov: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1805–13 1815–17 h 1.19 1.13 dkl(s) 0.51 0.48 in 1805–1813, three forms predominate: iv (43%), i (38%), and iii (14%). in 1815–1817, only two: iv (57.5%) and i (29%). table 5. baratynsky: evolution of rhythmic diversity lyric poems narrative poems years 1819–20 1821–28 1829–43 1826 1828 h 1.17 1.28 1.26 1.20 1.26 dkl(s) 0.58 0.45 0.39 0.49 0.41 in 1819–1820, three forms predominate: iv (44.5%), i (40.6%), and ii (8.3%). in the poems of batiushkov and baratynsky, entropy is not high and fluctuates rather chaotically, but there were nineteenth-century poets whose rhythmic diversity exceeds the level of late lomonosov and late sumarokov, gradually increasing from the initial low to higher quantitative characteristics. let us take vasily zhukovsky and petr viazemsky as examples. in their poems entropy rises due to their use of the formerly unpopular variations, such as form vi, and a more uniform distribution of forms ii and iii. the corresponding tables and graphs are presented below. it is worth noting that viazemsky began composing rhythmically diverse poems from the start of his poetic career (h = 1.38). table and chart 6. zhukovsky: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1797–1800 1803–13 1814–16 1818–19 1820 1821 1823–32 1842 h 1.19 1.28 1.48 1.41 1.43 1.42 1.46 1.43 dkl(s) 0.46 0.38 0.23 0.20 0.20 0.22 0.24 0.31 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 entropy h dkl(с) 44 andrei dobritsyn table and chart 7. viazemsky: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1811–15 1816–19 1820–22 1823–25 1826–27 1828 1829–30 1831 h 1.38 1.44 1.54 1.49 1.50 1.51 1.44 1.46 dkl(s) 0.28 0.24 0.19 0.27 0.22 0.23 0.23 0.27 pushkin’s rhythmic entropy increased with time on the whole, albeit not monotonously, but with significant fluctuations, and never reached the level of zhukovsky and viazemsky (1.4). the maximum was reached in the narrative poem count nulin (1824–1825) and the lyric poems of 1825–1826, as well as eugene onegin (1823–1830; h = 1.35; dkl(s) = 0.30). an analysis of pushkin’s “novel in verse” by chapters may also give interesting results. table and chart 8. pushkin’s lyric poems: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1814– 15 1816 1817– 18 1819– 20 1821– 22 1823– 24 1825– 26 1827 1828– 29 1830– 33 h 1.17 1.17 1.26 1.23 1.32 1.30 1.37 1.29 1.35 1.28 dkl(s) 0.42 0.41 0.33 0.34 0.36 0.36 0.34 0.35 0.35 0.44 45rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic table and chart 9. pushkin’s narrative poems:9 evolution of rhythmic diversity rl 1817–20 pc 1817–20 fb 1822–23 g 1824 cn 1824–25 p 1828 bh 1833 h 1.21 1.26 1.26 1.29 1.38 1.22 1.21 dkl(s) 0.50 0.42 0.45 0.42 0.34 0.45 0.45 9 rl = ruslan and liudmila; pc= the prisoner of the caucasus; fb = the fountain of bakhchisarai; g = the gypsies; cn = count nulin; p = poltava; bh = the bronze horseman. 46 andrei dobritsyn it is noteworthy that, in pushkin’s narrative poems, the kullback–leibler divergence from the speech rhythm is greater than in his lyric poems of 1817–1829, whereas the entropy of pushkin’s lyric and narrative poems is approximately equal. at first glance, one would rather expect the opposite: a narrative should apparently require an approximation to the natural language rhythm. as a matter of fact, however, a poetic narrative simply imitates the “natural” character of the prose narrative and uses versification devices that are impossible in prose (such as enjambments). 3. the poets of the early twentieth century in the oeuvre of some poets, the evolution of rhythm can be described as an increase in the level of entropy. table 10. valery briusov’s lyric poems: evolution of rhythmic diversity 10 years 1894–97 1898–1901 1901–07 1907–12 1913–18 1919–24 h 1.12 1.36 1.34 1.37 1.39 1.21 dkl(s) 0.40 0.37 0.42 0.36 —10 0.69 in late briusov, a drastic decrease in the degree of rhythmic diversity is connected with a transition to a three-mode rhythmic style with a distinct preference for the fully-stressed form i (i: 55.5%, iv: 25.6%, iii: 9.5%). an analogue would be lomonosov’s odes of 1742 or ivan barkov’s (1732–1768) “ode to priapus” (taranovsky 1956: 22–23 and the final table; shapir 1996: 100, tables 2 and 3). table 11. aleksandr blok: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1898–1900 1901–04 1904–08 1907–16 h 1.19 1.31 1.44 1.46 dkl(s) 0.51 0.34 0.29 0.26 10 a calculation of the kullback–leibler divergence is impossible in this case, because form v (vii in taranovsky’s classification) is absent from taranovsky’s speech-based model (i.e. the probability is equal to zero). this form is, however, featured in briusov’s poems. 47rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic table 12. mikhail kuzmin: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1906–10 1912–13 1914–22 h 1.17 1.46 1.52 dkl(s) 0.61 0.24 0.16 andrei belyi is different: table 13. andrei belyi: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1903–09 1916–921 h 1.61 1.42 dkl(s) 0.11 0.21 dkl(t) 0.10 0.26 in the poems of osip mandelshtam (according to gasparov 2005: 68), the entropy sometimes increased and sometimes decreased. table 14. osip mandelshtam: evolution of rhythmic diversity years 1908–09 1910–16 1917–25 1932–37 h 1.43 1.56 1.43 1.50 dkl(s) 0.04 0.08 0.25 0.17 dkl(t) 0.04 0.10 0.28 0.20 the distribution of forms in the oeuvre of the young mandelstam is somehow unique. the thing is that the kullback–leibler divergence from the “natural” speech rhythm that corresponds to the distribution with the entropy ca 1.43 usually comes to 0.2–0.3. meanwhile, in mandelstam’s early poems this divergence is less by an order of magnitude. in other words, at the average level of rhythmic diversity, the distribution of iambic forms follows the natural distribution very closely. only marina tsvetaeva and vladimir pozner are as close to a speech-based distribution as mandelstam (see below), but it is more expected of them, as their rhythm is considerably more diverse (h = 1.62 and h = 1.70 respectively). as can be seen from the above tables and graphs, in the majority of poets, entropy in early poems is much lower than in their mature period. nevertheless, some authors, after experiments with all the wealth of rhythmic diversity, in time return to a more parsimonious manner, i.e. to preferring a smaller number of rhythmic forms. however, the distribution of these forms at a later stage is different from the juvenilia. thus, the rhythmic diversity of 48 andrei dobritsyn pushkin’s “ruslan and liudmila” (1817–1820) is the same as in his “bronze horseman” (1833): the rhythm of the two poems is primarily determined by three modes. moreover, the predominating variations in both poems are forms iv and i (respectively, 51.8% and 29.6% in “ruslan and liudmila”; 49.7% and 32.2% in “the bronze horseman”). but those that rank third are different forms: it is form iii (9.9%) in the early poem, and form vi (9.4%) in the chef d’oeuvre of the late pushkin. 4. the rhythm of stanzaic and text endings the concept of entropy can also be applied to the analysis of stanzaic and text endings. this problem was discussed at the gasparov readings 2014 (rggu, moscow, 13–16 april 2014), both in my talk and in a paper delivered by alina bodrova and mikhail shapir.11 since many poems – and sometimes stanzas – end with a punch line (pointe) or another type of a striking finale, this begs the questions: are any rhythmic predilections observed in such lines? and, do poets prefer any rhythmic forms to conclude a stanza or a poem? for example, in khodasevich’s collection of poems entitled evropejskaja noch’ (european night, 1927) one third of all stanzas (33.7%) and more than half of the four-foot-iambic poems (9 out of 16) conclude with a line belonging to form vi, although the overall share of form vi in this collection is less than a quarter (24%). moreover, pozner, an epigone of khodasevich, too frequently (i.e. abnormally often) concludes stanzas with the rare form vii (15% in the concluding lines vs. 9% in the whole of occasional verses). the following are the quantitative characteristics of the rhythmic diversity of the iambic tetrameters in khodasevich’s, nabokov’s and pozner’s books of poetry and in tsvetaeva’s poems written from 1921 to 1923, in comparison with corresponding characteristics of the stanzaic endings and text endings in the same poems (the frequency data are mine). table 15. rhythmic diversity in khodasevich’s tjazhelaja lira (heavy lyre, 1923) entire text end of stanza end of poem h = 1.48 1.22 1.21 dkl(s) = 0.17 dkl(t) = 0.2 11 see videos: http://ivgi.org/konferencii/gch http://ivgi.org/konferencii/gch 49rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic table 16. rhythmic diversity in khodasevich’s evropejskaja noch’ (european night, 1927) entire text end of stanza end of poem h = 1.43 1.38 1.10 dkl(s) = 0.15 dkl(t) = 0.16 table 17. rhythmic diversity in nabokov’s gornij put’ (the empyrean path, 1923) entire text end of stanza end of poem h = 1.34 1.27 0.95 dkl(s) = 0.23 dkl(t) = 0.29 table 18. rhythmic diversity in pozner’s stikhi na sluchaj (occasional verses, 1928)12 entire text end of stanza end of poem h = 1.72 1.68 1.46 —12 dkl(t) = 0.035 table 19. rhythmic diversity in tsvetaeva’s poems, 1921–1923 entire text end of stanza end of poem h = 1.62 1.63 1.49 dkl(s) = 0.072 dkl(t) = 0.045 interestingly enough, in the poems of khodasevich, a traditionalist in metrics who made declarative statements about his orientation toward pushkin, the rhythmic entropy is considerably higher than pushkin’s. khodasevich is different from the poets of the age of pushkin in terms of the distribution of rhythmic forms. in the poems of traditionalist nabokov, the rhythmic entropy is close to pushkin’s. the poetry of pozner, a follower of khodasevich, is characterized by exceptional rhythmic diversity. perhaps this was a conscious design: pozner’s book is written entirely in iambs, and a need to use sophisticated rhythms to compensate for the metric monotony. as well as tsvetaeva’s, the rhythmic entropy in his poems approximates to speech entropy, but in 12 pozner used form v (see footnote 10). 50 andrei dobritsyn pozner the rhythmic entropy is even higher than in the speech-based models described above. therefore, the parameter of entropy confirms tsvetaeva’s and pozner’s striving for a “natural” language rhythm noted by some of their poetically aware contemporaries. conclusion scholars are often faced with the question whether a certain phenomenon is of aesthetic value or just a manifestation of the linguistic laws. however, such an approach is often wrong, as an approximation to the linguistic norm may itself be of aesthetic value. this happens, for instance, when a strong tradition exist which sharply differs from this norm, so that the return to the neutral norm appears as an unexpected deviation from the tradition (juri lotman termed this effect a “minus device”). in any event, in order to speak about a proximity to or a divergence from the natural state of things (in this case from the language/speech rhythm), we need to measure this divergence. such a method of measurement has been proposed in this paper. moreover, this comparison of rhythmic entropy (and the kullback–leibler divergencies) of different texts could enable us to take notice of objects suitable for the verification of certain hypotheses, such as the hypothesis of a correlation between rhythm and genre, the hypothesis of no correlation between the rhythmic diversity and the vocabulary, and so on. there are several possible directions for further research. 1) the obvious first step is to apply the proposed method of assessment of rhythmic diversity and divergence of the poetic rhythm from the speech rhythm to other metres (the iambic pentameter, the trochaic metres, etc.) 2) the rhythm of the word boundaries within the line can be studied. the number of the word-boundary variations is very high, and numerous combinations of these variations are very hard to track, therefore in this case an integral characteristic such as the entropy appears even more useful. if the statistics of word boundaries in prose speech is obtained, we can also calculate the divergence of the rhythm of word boundaries in prose from the natural rhythm of word boundaries. 3) the (un)stability and (un)uniformity of the distribution of rhythmic forms may be quantified. distributions of forms can be more or less uniform. let us take a very common example to illustrate this point. every poem in a book of poetry can contain approximately the same proportion of lines belonging to form iv, the 51rhythmic entropy as a measure of rhythmic same proportion of lines belonging to form i, etc. the poems are thus rhythmically close to each other. from this point of view, the book in its entirety may be considered rhythmically homogeneous, although each poem, if taken separately, is characterized by a high level of rhythmic diversity. then let us take a reverse kind of example. every poem in the book may be relatively poor in terms of rhythmic diversity, but still contain a peculiar set of forms. then different poems would sound differently, and although each poem, taken separately, is monotonous, the book in its entirety may be considered rhythmically diverse. thus, the entropy of every single poem composed by tsvetaeva from 1921 to 1923, indicates a large spread of values (from 0.45 to 1.72), and the average entropy of an individual poem is not high (1.27), whereas the average entropy of the entire book is significantly higher (1.62). other peculiarities of the distribution of rhythmic variations in the books of poetry (or in the poems written in the same period) may also be of interest. in particular, one form may have a larger spread of the values around the mean, while another form may be distributed more compactly. references belyi, andrei 1910. simvolizm: kniga statej. moskva: musaget. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2005. ritmika chetyrekhstopnogo jamba rannego mandel’shtama. in: leving, yuri; ospovat, aleksandr l’vovich; tsivian, yuri (eds.), shipovnik: istoriko-filologicheskij sbornik k 60-letiju romana davidovicha timenchika. moskva, vodolej publishers, 63–77. jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: the mit press, 350–377. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov aleksandr vladimirovich 1963. o dol’nike sovremennoj russkoj poezii (obshchaja kharakteristika). in: voprosy jazykoznanija 6, 84–95. liapin, sergei evgen’evich 2001. ritmiko-sintaksicheskaja struktura strofy: (k probleme izuchenija vertikal’nogo ritma russkogo 4-stopnogo jamba). in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich; skulacheva, tat’jana vladimirovna (eds.), slavjanskij stikh: lingvisticheskaja i prikladnaja poetika: materialy mezhdunarodnoj konferentsii 23–27 ijunja 1998 goda. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 138–150. 52 andrei dobritsyn nabokov, vladimir 1989 [1928]. review of: vladimir pozner, stikhi na sluchaj, paris 1928. [with notes by roman d. timenchik]. in: literaturnoe obozrenie 3, 104. (first published in: rul’, 24 october 1928, p. 4.) prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1984. o sluchajnoj versifikacii (k voprosu o teoreticheskikh i rechevykh modeljakh stikhotvornoj rechi). in: kholshevnikov, vladislav evgen’evich; tsar’kova, tat’jana sergeevna (eds.), problemy teorii stikha. leningrad: nauka, 89–98. taranovsky, kiril 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. taranovsky, kiril 1955/1956. ruski četvorostopni jamb u prvim dvema decenijama xx veka. in: južnoslovenski filolog 21(1/4), 15–43. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1971. o ritmicheskoj strukture russkikh dvuslozhnykh razmerov. in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), poetika i stilistika russkoj literatury: pamjati akademika viktora vladimirovicha vinogradova. leningrad: nauka, 420–429. shapir, maksim il’ich 1996. u istokov russkogo chetyrekhstopnogo jamba: genezis i evoljutsija ritma: (k sotsiolingvisticheskoj kharakteristike stikha rannego lomonosova). in: philologica 3(5/7), 69–101. shengeli, georgii 1923. traktat o russkom stikhe. chast’ 1: organicheskaja metrika. izdanie vtoroe, pererabotannoe. moskva, petrograd: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. yaglom, akiva moiseevich; yaglom, isaak moiseevich 1973. veroiatnost’ i informatsija. izdanie tret’e, pererabotannoe i dopolnennoe. moskva: nauka. vadim baevskij (1929–2013) mihhail lotman on november 12, 2013, vadim solomonovich baevskij, the outstanding russian scholar of poetry and versification passed away. vadim baevskij, a veteran in the studies of russian versification, started his research in the 1960s, when any formal approach to the study of literature was strongly disfavoured for ideological reasons. it has to be recognised that baevskij, as a consummate academic, did not automatically join that mainstream of russian versification studies, but instead sought his own way. russian versification studies focus, first of all, on the analysis of rhythmics. ever since andrey belyj (1910), poetic rhythm has been studied on two levels: metrical and rhythmical. although the notions of the relationship between metre and rhythm have varied (be it a norm and a deviation from it, an ideal scheme and its realisation, language and speech in saussurean sense, or deep structure and surface structure in the spirit of generativism), the consensus is that it is necessary to distinguish between these phenomena1. starting from belyj, rhythm has been regarded as a very narrow phenomenon. the classical works by andrej belyj (1910), viktor zhirmunskij (1925), boris tomashevskij (1929) and others proceeded from the understanding that in russian language and verse all syllables are either stressed or unstressed, while there cannot be any intermediate degrees (the corresponding attempts by georgij shengeli in 1921 and 1923 found unanimous disapproval, see especially taranovsky 1953). these are only lexical stresses and they occur only in metrically strong positions. although such an approach is still prevailing, the first critical notes appeared soon after belyj’s monograph was published. thus, valerij brjusov, another guru of russian symbolism, brought forth the need to calculate both phrasal stresses and extrametrical (that is, placed on metrically weak positions) stresses (brjusov 1910), but his standpoints had no practical consequences, and the studies still focused on the distribution of lexical stresses in strong positions. such an approach, however, was in clear contradiction with linguistic data. andrej kolmogorov and his school developed a detailed and complicated system for the notation of verse, which did not find wider application. baevskij, on the other hand, proceeded from the so-called potebnia effect (named by an 1 perhaps the most remarkable attempt to overcome this dichotomy was made by boris buchstab (buchstab 1969), which unfortunately failed. see lotman 1972: 49. doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.09 studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 163–166 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.09 164 mihhail lotman eminent linguist oleksandr potebnia). accordingly, a russian word has three accentual degrees: it is the strongest in the stressed syllable, intermediate in the pre-accentual syllable and the weakest in all the others. the formula for russian 4-syllabic paroxytone, according to potebnia, is 1231 (potebnia 1973: 63). baevskij modified this scheme, expanding it to all russian words. he proceeded from the fact that the initial syllable of the word, as well as the postaccentual syllable, is also to a certain extent distinguished, although weaker than the first pre-accentual. all in all, he discerned five accentual degrees (baevskij 1969). it is interesting to note that in one of his last publications on the theory of verse he returned to this problem and made considerable modifications (baevskij 2013). the scope of baevskij’s research was vast. he was one of the first who attempted to create a universal typology of stanzas, which was further developed as a classification system offered by boris tomashevsky (1958). he also studied the phonic structure of verse, being the first who tried to identify and study anagrams by means of statistical methods (baevskij 1976; baevskij, koshelev 1975 and 1979). in his research baevskij made wide use of mathematical methods, and he was the first to use a number of different models for the study of verse. for example, he used correlation and cluster analyses to study metrics and rhythmics. he was also the first russian versologist to make extensive use of computer technologies, including both data processing and data gathering. together with his younger colleagues he created several data banks of russian poetry, the most substantial of which comprises different aspects of boris pasternak’s poetry, from rhythmics to semantic structure. baevskij worked not only on poetics, but also on the history of literature, where he used statistical methods and mathematical modelling. the end product of these studies is his book “linguistic, mathematical, semiotical and computational models in the history and theory of literature” (baevskij 2001). he created a unique compendium of the history of russian poetry, which has great application as a study tool as well (baevskij 1994). baevskij dedicated several publications to the translation of poetry, including both case studies and more general principles. with his already mentioned study of anagrams he should be considered the founder of the field. although baevskij’s studies of poetry made extensive use of formal methods, poetry interested him in a wider context too. he was an expert on boris pasternak’s works, and devoted several publications to alexander pushkin, david samoilov and nikolaj rylenkov (baevskij 1986, 1990, 1993, 2002). his thorough textological work with pasternak and rylenkov’s poetry made it possible to publish the collections of poems by these authors as well. while working on the “great” poets, baevskij did not forget the local ones. he coined 165vadim baevskij (1929–2013) the term “poetry school of smolensk”, which includes mikhail isakovsky, alexander tvardovsky and nikolaj rylenkov; moreover, he studied their works himself and encouraged countless students to also do so. baevskij’s commitment as a teacher and academic is worth separate mention. baevskij’s scholarly and pedagogic career is inseparably connected with smolensk and its institute, later university. he was a popular teacher and one of the few soviet researchers of versification who managed to establish his own school. most of his papers were written in collaboration with his students. and at the same time he was able to form a group of researchers which, in addition to philologists, included like-minded mathematicians and programmers. baevskij lived a long life, and, up to his final days, remained academically relevant. although his health held him back from travelling, many colleagues and students gathered around him. in the study of literature where the term “smolensk philological school” has been used, baevskij has been named as its founder. during his final years, baevskij himself was regarded as smolensk’s socrates. one might add to it that his ideas have not only influenced his immediate students, his publications have inspired scholars of versification studying in russia and elsewhere. and, as for the students he immediately affected, they have already long been living, and working, carrying on and expanding his tradition, in places and universities all around the world. references baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1969. stikh al’ternirujushchego ritma v svete auditorskogo eksperimenta. in: petrosov, k.g. (ed.) russkaja sovetskaja poezija i stikhovedenie. moskva: moskovskij oblastnoj pedagogicheskij institut, 244–250. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1972. stikh russkoj sovetskoj poezii. smolensk: sgpi imeni k. marksa, 1972. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1986. david samojlov: poet i ego pokolenie. moskva: sovetskij pisatel’. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1990. skvoz’ magicheskij kristall: poetika «evgenija onegina», romana v stikhah a. pushkina. moskva: prometej. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1993. b. pasternak-lirik: osnovy poeticheskoj sistemy. smolensk: trast-imakom. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1994. istorija russkoj poezii. 1730–1980. kompendium. moskva: interpraks. 166 mihhail lotman baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1997. pasternak. moskva: izdatel’stvo moskovskogo universiteta. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1999. istorija russkoj literatury xx veka. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 2001. lingvisticheskie, matematicheskie, semioticheskie i komp’juternye modeli v istorii i teorii literatury. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 2013. netradicionnyj put’ issledovanija ritmiki russkoj stikhotvornoj rechi. in: cherashnjaja, dora izrailevna (ed.), kormanovskie chtenija, vypusk 12. stat’i i materialy mezhvuzovskoj nauchnoj konferencii (aprel’, 2013). izhevsk: udmurtskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 10–17. baevskij, vadim solomonovich 1976. fonika stikhotvornogo perevoda: anagrammy. in: nikol’skaja, ljudmila il’inichna (ed.), problemy stilistiki i perevoda. smolensk: smolenskij gpi, 41–50. baevskij, vadim solomonovich; koshelev, aleksej dmitrievich 1979. poetika bloka: anagrammy. in: minc, zara grigor’evna (ed.), blokovskij sbornik, 3: tvorchestvo a. a. bloka i russkaja kul’tura xx veka. uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 459, 50–75. baevskij, vadim solomonovich; koshelev, aleksej dmitrievich 1975. poetika nekrasova: anagrammy. in: n. a. nekrasov i ego vremja, vyp. 1. kaliningrad: kaliningradskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 32–34. belyj, andrej 1910. simvolizm. moskva: musaget. brjusov, valerij jakovlevich 1910. ob odnom voprose ritma (po povodu knigi a. belogo). in: apollon 11, 1910, 52–60. buchstab, boris jakovlevich 1969. o strukture russkogo klassicheskogo stikha. in: lotman, jurij (ed.), trudy po znakovym sistemam iv = works on semiotics iv = tööd semiootika alalt iv. uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 236. tartu: university of tartu, 386–408. lotman, jurij 1972. analiz poeticheskogo teksta. struktura stikha. leningrad: prosvjeshchenie. potebnia, aleksandr afanasievich 1973. udarenie. kiev: naukova dumka. tomashevskij, boris viktorovich 1958. strofika pushkina. in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), pushkin: issledovanija i materialy. moskva; leningrad: izdatel’stvovo akademii nauk sssr, 49–184. ancient world of the poet and performance in janika päll*1 abstract: this paper studies the means by which ants oras, scholar and professor of english and world literature, literary critic and translator, recreates the poetic space of ancient greek hymns in his translations. the paper analyses his use of deictics (local, personal and temporal) in his translations of three homeric hymns: the 1st part of hymn no. 3, to delian apollo, the hymn no. 19, to pan, and especially hymn no 5 to aphrodite. the special focus is on the initial and final parts of the hymns, where the greek text reflects performance context, whereas oras presents the poems in a more general, hymnal setting, leaving out the references which reveal the function of these hymns as epic prooemium. the analysis of the deictics within the hymn to aphrodite reveals that oras does not adhere strictly to the third person viewpoint of the narrator (as opposed to first person in direct speeches of the characters), but enlivens his narration by frequent deictics which refer to narrator’s viewpoint, the poet’s ‘i’, or ‘here’ and ‘now’. this can only be occasionally explained with metrical reasons (preference to use monosyllabic deictics). this pattern of enlivening is in accordance to other practices, used by oras in these translations: frequent personification of impersonalia (flight, mind) and multiplication of actors (objects of action becoming subjects, passive constructions turned active, and so on). keywords: ants oras, translation, ancient greek poetry, homeric hymns, sappho introduction this paper studies the means by which ants oras in his translations recreates the poetic space of the performance of ancient greek hymns, paying special attention to his use of deictics in the translation of the homeric hymn (no. 5) to aphrodite (oras 1976). ants oras has been important both for estonian literary culture and the study of english literature world-wide. one of his biggest achievements was his translations of virgil (lange 2004, lange 2007, aunin, lange eds. 2008). * author’s address: janika päll, university of tartu library, w. struve 1, tartu 50091, estonia, email: janika.pall@ut.ee. studia metrica et poetica 2.2, 2015, 73–101 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.06 translations by ants oras http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.06 74 janika päll as a literary critic oras had been deeply interested in prosody, which finds a parallel in his essays of recreating the music of virgilian hexameters.1 his translations of virgil have been studied by a number of scholars.2 in the afterword to the reprint of oras’s translations of virgil, jaan unt presents a short sketch of estonian virgiliana and also mentions his translation of the homeric hymn to aphrodite.3 although seemingly out of the more englishor latinoriented focus of oras, this translation is an appendix to his virgiliana, as it tells the love-story of venus and anchises, which leads to the birth of the hero of the aeneid.4 belonging to the genre of epic prooemium (kirk 1989: 69)5 and having common features with both the epic and lyric hymns,6 the hymn to aphrodite offers excellent material for comparing the approaches of oras in translations of works belonging to different genres. i have followed the hypothesis that although deictic words have an extremely important role in the creation of poetic space, oras translates them mostly intuitively, focusing on their sound and rhythm and not their referential or deictic functions.7 this implies that although the translator may be well aware of certain grammatical or lexical features (for example of different grades of deixis) in his source and target languages,8 such distinctions do not always appear in the translations. in case of deixis the possible result is that differ1 see oras 1962, his prefaces to the translations of the bucolics and aeneid (in vergilius 1992) and the letters where he tells: “the result is a new kind of music resembling in a way the latin language and virgil – the virgil of nostalgias” (oras in olesk ed. 1997: 171, translation in lange 2007: 34). 2 mägiste 1976, unt 1992, lange 2004: 377–394, lotman 2012: 141–142. 3 for the complete list of works of ancient authors translated by oras, see eab 2014, cf. lange 2007: 42–47. 4 in his youth oras had presented verses 57–58 of this hymn as an illustration (inter alia) to his claim that shelley is much more ‘graphic’ in his descriptions of love scenes than the greeks (1938: 35–37). 5 on their genre as an autonomous type of hexameter epic, see clay 2011. 6 see gerber 1997: 1–2, 6–8 for the role of ‘i’ – correspondingly on the foreground or background – as the major distinction between lyric and epic poetry. 7 vincent leitsch (2008: 23) characterises oras the critic as disinterested in imagery, rhetoric and textual unity, but the use of narratological devices and deixis could be easily added to this list. 8 such as different grades of demonstrative pronouns ὅδε, οὗτος, ἐκεῖνος this here, that and that (the more remote) in ancient greek; the distinction between direct deixis, deixis am phantasma and anaphora (bühler 1990: 93–95, latacz 1994: 313–321, and felson ed. 2004). for the deictics in estonian, see pajusalu 1999. 75ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras ent types of deictic words (personal/demonstrative, local, temporal) become mutually interchangeable, especially when the perspective of narration and the deictic centre (singer/narrator, character) remain unchanged. this means, for example, that the ‘here’ in the source text can become ‘now’ in translation, ‘i’ can be translated with ‘here’ etc. but the perspective itself and the deictic centre can be shifted as well, either completely or partially; for example direct speech can be replaced with indirect speech, active voice can become passive and the grammatical subject can become the object in the sentence.9 oras has discussed the role of several monosyllabic deictics (for example nüüd, siis trans. ‘now’, ‘then’) in translation from the aspect of prosody, examining their stressed or unstressed position in the sentence and the possibilities of using them as so-called anceps syllables (used either for long or short syllables) in hexameter (vergilius 1992: 59). verse translation, especially quantitative translation into stress languages, has very compelling constraints, which must be taken into account: a choice of one word over another can result from a need to fill the available space in a verse. 10 however, a closer reading can reveal other tendencies, preferences and choices than only those resulting from prosody. for this, i begin with an analysis of typical epic prooemia: the beginnings of homer’s and virgil’s epic poems, aiming to explain the background for oras’s recreation of the poetic space in his translations of homeric hymns. homeric hymns as epic prooemia between lyric and epic poetry the world of ancient epic poetry with its boundaries in time and space is created by the words of a singer (or poet’s ‘i’) through clearly distinguished and wellstudied means.11 the longer homeric hymns use the same narrative patterns (background third person narrator with character speeches) as the epic. the study of these patterns, based on the distinction between diegesis and mimesis, telling and showing or narrator’s text and character speech, has a long history, 9 a series of student papers dedicated to the study of deictics in estonian translations of hesiod, plato, virgil and euripides (correspondingly baikov 2008, pille 2008, tuulmets 2008; kärtna 2010, parvits 2010; kiss 2010; rootsma 2011) has revealed all these tendencies which occur alongside strictly accurate translations. 10 see brunet ed. 2014 for the discussion from the perspective of translators of quantitative verse in different languages (päll 2014 for estonian). 11 see, for example, latacz 1994, 2000, gerber ed. 1997, de jong 2004. 76 janika päll beginning with plato (rep. iii book, 392c–395) and aristotle (poet. 1448a and 1460a) and continuing with modern narratology (de jong 2004: 5–8). greek epic song often begins with a prooemium, the singer’s address to the muse, whom he exhorts to tell the story. the passage from the prayer to the narration is usually unmarked (syntactically and/or lexically) and the singer, who in the beginning defined the boundaries of the performance space (his ‘i’ and the muse) disappears into the background, leaving only traces. the beginnings of homeric hymns are similar to the epic, but not the ends, where the singer reappears and closes the circle, re-establishing his presence by an address to the god (nünlist 2004: 35–36). this return to the prayer and poetic ‘i’ makes homeric hymns close to the hymns in archaic lyric.12 the central narration in the hymns, which has been authorised by the address to the muse,13 follows the joint perspective of the singer and the muse,14 as a rule without references to the deictic centre and corresponding to the narrator’s background role.15 in longer hymns, secondary perspectives appear in character speeches, which introduce their own deictic centres: thus the ‘i-you’ relationship of the singer and the divinity (the muse, the god) can be replaced by the ‘i-you’ relationship of the characters. my first goal is to see whether these quite strict rules of presentation of performance space in greek epic prooemia are also observed in estonian translations. the prooemia of ancient epic poems in estonian translations the beginnings of homer’s poems establish the performance situation from verse one. in the odyssey, the address to the muse is accompanied by unstressed deictic μοι (me), referring to the singer, whereas in the iliad the address is 12 see fränkel 1955, fowler 1987. 13 for the role of muses as guardians of truth and memory, see detienne 1990: 9–12. 14 calame (1986 and 2005) studied homeric hymns from the point of view of enunciation, extra-and intratextual relations. i prefer to speak of a joint perspective in places where he speaks of ‘dédoublement’ or projection of the role of the ‘i’ of the singer to the muse (calame 1986: 20–23 or 40–41). 15 the deictic centre can be also marked by the first person verb forms or, in the case of address, by the use of second person verb forms, imperative or vocative; see dickey 2003 (for vocatives), de jong 2004: 54–60, 13 for focalisation, and 2004: 180–188 for deixis in messenger speeches. 77ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras presented without a deictic pronoun (although the use of vocative establishes the ‘i-you’ relationship). august annist,16 the author of the first and only complete estonian translations of both homeric epics, has maintained this difference: homer, odyssey, v.1 translations ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα tell me, o muse, of this hero annist: jutusta mulle, oh muusa, sest sangarist tell me, o muse, of this hero bergmann: meest mulle nimeta, muusa name me the man, oh muse öpik: meest mulle nimeta, muus name me the man, oh muse annist used the strong, longer form of the first person pronoun, thus slightly underlining the reference to the deictic centre. other, earlier translators of the first song of odyssey, jaan bergmann and anna öpik used the first person pronoun in a similar way.17 the beginning of the iliad in greek does not use the first person pronoun for an explicit reference to the deictic centre, and neither do most of its estonian translators: homer, iliad, v.1 translations μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ πηληϊάδεω ἀχιλῆος sing, o goddess, the anger of peleides, achilleus annist: laula nüüd, oh, jumalanna, peleides achilleuse vimmast sing now, o goddess, the anger of peleides, achilleus ridala: laula, oh jumalatar peeleidi achillese viha sing, o goddess, the wrath of peleides achilleus lõo: laul jumaltar sa vihast peleuspoja loo akhileusi you, goddess, compose a song about the wrath of the son of peleus, achilleus. metslang: kuuluta mulle, oh muusa, peleides-achilleuse vaenu announce me, oh muse, the wrath of peleid achilleus however, annist added a temporal deictic adverb nüüd (‘now’), underlining the performance time (present) and poetic context, which in homer is marked 16 i refer to august annist, who was the versifier. as annist collaborated closely with his editor, hellenist karl reitav, in newer bibliographies both have been named as authors of the translation (eab 2014). all quotations from homer and homeric hymns are from the edition of allen 1904, tlg version, translations, if not indicated otherwise, are my own. 17 for texts, see eesti värss: http://www.ut.ee/verse/index.php?&m=authors&aid=2&obj=poe ms&apid=861 and antiigiveeb, http://www.fl.ut.ee/et/519342. http://www.ut.ee/verse/index.php?&m=authors&aid=2&obj=poems&apid=861) http://www.ut.ee/verse/index.php?&m=authors&aid=2&obj=poems&apid=861) 78 janika päll only by the address.18 other translators of iliad’s beginning, villem ridala, jaan lõo and linda metslang have not changed the type of deictic.19 lõo added the unstressed form of the second person pronoun, perhaps in order to fill a space of one short syllable in the hexameter, and linda metslang added first person pronoun mulle (‘to me’).20 in estonian, the transitive use of the verb meenutama, meelde tooma (‘to remember’) needs a complement which indicates to whom something is remembered. when we compare homeric beginnings to the opening verse of virgil’s aeneid, we see that the focus on the poet’s self-consciousness is stronger in the roman epic, as well as its translation. virgil does not abandon the traditional appeal to the muse, which occurs slightly later, in verse 8 with a stressed pronoun mihi in the phrase-initial position:21 v. 1: arma virumque cano the swords (i) sing and the man. oras: mõõku ma laulan ja meest the swords i sing and the man. v. 8: musa, mihi causas memora muse, remind me the reasons oras: meelde, oo muusa, mul põhjused too muse, bring to me into mind the reasons anvelt: meenuta mulle, oh muusa remind me, oh muse.... the pronoun mul (‘for me’) is present both in oras’s (who uses its weaker form) as leo anvelt’s translation,22 who uses the longer, more stressed form. in verse 1 oras uses the first person pronoun in the role of the subject (as usual in estonian). these examples demonstrate that in estonian translations of homeric and virgilian epic prooemia, a tradition has been established to translate the deictics occurring in greek or latin text by corresponding estonian deictic words (although occasionally with a slight increase or reduction of the deictic centre, 18 nüüd (‘now’) in estonian is slightly ambivalent, as it can be also used as hortative particle, similarly to corresponding particles νυν and nunc in greek and latin. 19 for texts, see: eesti värss, http://www.ut.ee/verse/index.php?&m=authors&aid=12&obj=p oems&apid=1188 and eesti värss, http://www.ut.ee/verse/index.php?&m=authors&aid=9&ob j=poems&apid=1382. 20 for texts, see: antiigiveeb, http://www.fl.ut.ee/et/524324. 21 here and later the words inserted by translators are presented in round brackets, for example, personal pronouns in the role of subject, which are not needed (as the case ending indicates the person) in greek and latin. 22 in: kaalep, torpats eds. 1971: 296. 79ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras connected to the singer), thereby recreating the spatio-temporal field of the performance. now it is time to study the approach of ants oras in the case of independent epic prooemia, the homeric hymns. the performance context in oras’s translations of homeric hymns homeric hymn to aphrodite begins and ends traditionally, with framing prayers.23 the singer asks the muse for inspiration and then steps into the background, telling the love-story of his divine addressee, aphrodite, with a mortal man, anchises, and introducing their speeches occasionally. the address to the muse in verse 1 indicates the two participants of the performance situation (the singer and the muse) as well as the story’s main character and addressee, aphrodite. the presence of the poet is stressed by the first person pronoun μοι (‘me’). in his translation oras omits the first person pronoun, but maintains the imperative ἔννεπε (‘narrate’, estonian jutusta):24 μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου ἀφροδίτης ew: muse, tell me the deeds of golden aphrodite the cyprian oras: laulutar, jutusta lood aphroditest kuldkiharkaunist singer, tell the stories about aphrodite with beautiful golden locks through this omission oras reduces the references to the deictic centre and performance situation, although the second person imperative and address still indicate it. this might be explained by prosodic constraints,25 but not the next omission, which occurs in the end of the hymn. in the end of the greek text (verses 292–293) the performance situation is re-established by the singer’s address to aphrodite: 23 for circular structures see fränkel 1955: 97, van groningen 1958: 51–56, nünlist 2004, compare norden 1913. 24 thus the imperative is left without a complement which it usually requires in estonian. the translations of hugh evelyn-white (1914) are indicated with ew. 25 it might be difficult to find an appropriate translation in estonian hexameters for the genitive formula πολυχρύσου ἀφροδίτης (‘very golden aphrodite’), which typically for the appositive epic style occurs in the end of the verse, whereas in estonian, (genitive) complements need to precede the noun, not follow it. it would be easy (and smoother from the point of view of quantitative verse) to replace the second word jutusta (  ∪), not quite fitting into the first foot) by ütle mul ( ∪ ∪)’ (‘tell me’), but the result would sound too prosaic. 80 janika päll χαῖρε θεὰ κύπροιο ἐϋκτιμένης μεδέουσα· σεῦ δ’ ἐγὼ ἀρξάμενος μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον. ew: hail, goddess, queen of well-builded cyprus! with you have i begun; now (i) will turn (me) to another hymn the address in verse 292 alone is sufficient as a reference to the performance situation, but in v. 293 it is followed by explicit auto-reference of the singer with two stressed deictics in phraseand verse-initial positions: σεῦ δ’ ἐγώ (‘with you i’). however, oras finishes his translation before these two verses (in verse 211, corresponding to v. 291 in greek) with the end of the speech of aphrodite, foretelling the future.26 the relatively short homeric hymn to pan (hymn no. 19) is similarly framed by the addresses to the divinities, establishing the performance situation. the first verse adhorts the muse to tell the singer the story of hermes: ἀμφί μοι ἑρμείαο φίλον γόνον ἔννεπε μοῦσα ew: muse, tell me about pan, the dear son of hermes oras: jutusta, muusa, mis teeb [...] // hermese poeg tell, muse, what does [...] the son of hermes oras again omits the first person pronoun which refers to the deictic centre and the performer (the deictic centre is indicated only through the use of the imperative). in the end of the hymn he follows the same pattern as in the case of the hymn to aphrodite and leaves the final verses with the poet’s autoreference (in verses 48–49 of the greek text) untranslated: 26 oras usually shortens and joins verses within a paragraph (see the table below) and even omits several passages (v. 48–52, 202–246 and 292–293). as a result the 293 verses of this hymn are reduced to 211 in his translation. table 1. correspondence of verse numbers in shortened passages in the hymn to aphrodite and its translation. “homer” oras “homer” oras “homer” oras “homer” oras “homer” oras 25–32 25–31 60–64 50–52 113–125 97–107 176–179 152–154 256–258 183–184 36–38 35–36 69–74 58–62 126–129 108–110 180–184 155–158 259–268 185–191 45–48, 53–55 43–47 75–83 63–69 150–154 130–133 192–195 166–168 269–272 192–194 56–59 48–49 95–99 81–83 157–166 136–142 249–254 177–181 273–275 195–196 280–283 201–203 81ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras καὶ σὺ μὲν οὕτω χαῖρε ἄναξ, ἵλαμαι δέ σ’ ἀοιδῇ· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς. ew: and so hail to you, lord! i seek your favour with a song. and now i will remember you and another song also. these two translations follow an identical pattern: oras addresses the muse, but subdues the reference to the singer’s ‘i’ and omits the closure, where the poet addresses the god and promises to proceed to the next hymn. so it seems that oras does not consider it important to present these hymns as epic prooemia. moreover, his tendency to omit first person pronouns is contrary to the general practice of translating from ancient languages into estonian where the number of personal pronouns (including first person) in target language is usually greater than in source language, because the grammatical subject normally needs to be expressed by a noun or pronoun.27 the example of his hymn to delian apollo is different. it is the translation of the first part of homeric hymn no. 3, which is exceptional among homeric hymns because of its two-fold structure28 and the mixture of second and third person narrations in the middle part (nünlist 2004: 36, esp. 40–42).29 the hymn begins with a first person statement of the singer who promises to remember apollo, thus taking the role of the guardian of memory onto himself: μνήσομαι οὐδὲ λάθωμαι ἀπόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο ew: (i) will remember and not be unmindful of apollo who shoots afar oras: meeles on, meelest ei eal kao kaugelelaskja apollon. apollo, the far-shooting is remembered and shall not be forgotten. murdvee: meeles mul, vaikida ei apollonist saa (he is) in my memory, (i) cannot be silent of apollo two greek first person verb forms in phraseand verse-initial position firmly establish the performance situation, drawing attention to the singer in the focus, but at the same time also pointing to the future, away from the 27 differently from ancient greek and latin, where the use of the third person personal pronoun is very rare and demonstrative pronouns are used, in estonian the third person personal pronoun is usual, and demonstrative pronouns can only very rarely be used for referring to persons. 28 so-called delian and pythian hymns, for the arguments in favour of unity, see clay 2006, steinrück 1992. 29 the apostrophes can be connected to the divine, and third person narration to the human layer of the story, see steinrück 1992: 255–256. 82 janika päll temporal centre.30 in the beginning of his translation, oras omits any references to singer’s ‘i’. he also changes the sentence so that that the god apollo (the addressee and main character of the hymn), grammatical object in greek sentence, becomes the grammatical subject in the translation. apollo is thus clearly in focus, but presented outside the performance context. as a result of this change the transitive first person verb form ‘remember’ appears as a third person verb complement (apollon on meeles [apollo is remembered]), but without any first person pronoun, which would indicate the person who remembers (singer’s ‘i’). this does not result from prosodic constraints: it would have been easy to insert the first person pronoun (‘mul’), as was done by another translator, mari murdvee (murdvee 2006: 71). the end of this hymn (verses 545–546) includes a finishing formula with a reference to the performance situation (similar to the hymn to pan), but it cannot be taken into account in the analysis, because oras did not translate the second part of the hymn. however, the end of the first part of the poem includes another auto-referential passage, which occurs in oras’s translation as well. after the narration about the birth of apollo, the narrator describes the choir of delian girls who sing in the honour of the god (v. 156–178). the singer addresses the choir in direct speech, referring to himself in first person plural, asking to remember him in the future and to answer the questions of wondering stranger, who will ask: whom think ye, girls, is the sweetest singer that comes here, and in whom do you most delight? (v. 169–170, translation by evelyn-white) the short questions of stranger and the choir’s answer are similarly presented in direct speech. the choir’s answer to the singer’s exhortation functions as a kind of sphragis, author’s signature (kirk 1989: 72), referring to the singer as a blind man from chios, whose songs are supreme. thus the narrator becomes a character in his own story (steinrück 1992: 255) and the choir takes the role of the singer as praise-giver, but only briefly, as the singer takes his role back and promises to give in his turn the fame to the choir (see v. 173–178 below). in the history of greek literature this singer (and author) has been identified with cynaithios from chios, but the same passage has also supported the 30 it occurs often in the beginnings of lyric songs, where song-initial verbs (and especially the first person forms) establish the spatio-temporal field at once (päll 2005: 335–338, for general background, devine, stephens 1994: 381, 456–460, dik 1995: 12–13). 83ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras legend about homer as a blind singer.31 in this performance inside a performance the main deictic centre is for a moment shifted from the singer to the stranger (in v. 169–170) and then to the choir (in v. 172–173, both without explicit references to a new deictic centre) and the back to the singer, whereas the shift in time is indicated by future verb forms (in v. 174, 176): v. 171–176: ὑμεῖς δ’ εὖ μάλα πᾶσαι ὑποκρίνασθ’ ἀμφ’ ἡμέων· τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ, τοῦ πᾶσαι μετόπισθεν ἀριστεύουσιν ἀοιδαί. ἡμεῖς δ’ ὑμέτερον κλέος οἴσομεν ὅσσον ἐπ’ αἶαν ἀνθρώπων στρεφόμεσθα πόλεις εὖ ναιεταώσας· οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ δὴ πείσονται, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐτήτυμόν ἐστιν. ew (then) answer [about us], each and all, with one voice:“he is a blind man, and dwells in rocky chios: his lays are evermore supreme.” as for me [=us], (i) [=we] will carry your renown as far as (i) [=we] roam over the earth to the well-placed cities of man, and they will believe also; for indeed this thing is true. oras, v. 147: teie siis kõik ühes koos siis kostke ja vastake talle: “üks pime mees elab kaljusel chiose saarel, kõikidest teitest ta laul jääb kauneimaks iidigavesti.” siis teie kuulsuse viin maa viimsesse, kaugesse äärde, kõikjale kannan, kus linnad on püstitet kõrged ja kaunid, kõikjal siis ustakse mind [=me], sest see, mis ma ütlen, on õige. you all together answer and tell him: “a blind man dwells in rocky island of chios: his songs about you all will be forever supreme.” then (i) will carry your renown to the far end of the earth, everywhere where high and beautiful cities have been built, then i’ll be believed everywhere, because what i say is true. the choir’s answer is in the greek text framed by the singer’s autoreferences in the first person plural, which is uncharacteristic for homeric hymns, but very 31 see allen and sykes 1904 ad v. 172 and v. 169 (quoting hesiod’s fr. 227). 84 janika päll typical in greek lyric hymns (which are performed by choirs);32 the deictic centre is expanded from ‘i’ to ‘we’. in his translation of the singer’s exhortation (v. 171 in greek text), oras uses the second person plural pronoun and imperative, but omits the explicit reference (the ‘we’) to the deictic centre and indicates the new addressee (the stranger) with the third person pronoun. he twice uses the adverb siis (‘then’), referring to the future (estonian does not have morphological future). in three verses following the choir’s answer, oras returns to the local deictic centre (‘here’) of the singer, but renders the choir’s ‘we’ with the singular first person pronoun, clearly re-establishing the deictic centre of the singer in place and in person, but remaining in the future (indicated again by siis ‘then’). the end of the first part of the greek text includes the singer’s shift to the initial, first person singular deictic centre without a direct address to the god; the singer himself is in the role of the guardian of memory and promises to sing about apollo: v. 177–178: αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν οὐ λήξω ἑκηβόλον ἀπόλλωνα ὑμνέων ἀργυρότοξον ὃν ἠΰκομος τέκε λητώ. ew: and i will never cease to praise farshooting apollo, god of the silver bow, whom rich-haired leto bare. oras: sind üha kiidan ma ent, hõbeammuga ambuv apollon, sind, keda ilmale tõi kiharkaunis härrandlik leto! you i’ll praise without ceasing, apollo who shoots with silver bow, you, whom imperious leto with fair hair has brought into the world. the stressed greek personal pronoun ‘i’ in a strong, phrase-initial position is here translated with the unstressed ‘i’ in a weak position by oras. but the reference to apollo (which in greek is in the third person, using his name and epithets and a relative clause) has been replaced in estonian by a double apostrophe, addressing the god with two stressed second person pronouns in verse-initial positions (sind). thus oras changes the performance landscape where the singer is in the focus into another one, where the deictic centre of the singer becomes less important than his subject, the god, whom the poet addresses. in his short postscript to the translation, oras mentions that these final verses are the basis for the legend that homer was a blind singer from the 32 for this fluctuation between ‘i’ in singular and the plural form, and the role of the choir in it, see lefkowitz 1963, 1991: 9–11, 57–71. the underlined autoreference between the two parts of the hymn is in accordance with its transitional character between the stages of narration or parts of poems (see lefkowitz 1991: 55–56). for framing in homer’s epics see bakker 1997: 86–122. 85ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras island of chios. he also refers to homeric hymns as epic prooemia (prologues) to the performance of longer epic poems. “all of them address one or another god in a hymnal tone, mostly very shortly, but in some of them the instinct of the singer has not managed to maintain them in the frames of the lyric, but it blossoms into epic, sometimes indeed excellently” (oras 1976: 34). these words suggest that oras regarded homeric hymns foremost as hymns, which by register are closer to lyric poetry. while omitting the formulaic verses which refer to the performance of epic songs, the blind-man-verses were probably kept by him because of the legend which is famous in literary history. if we suppose that oras wanted to recreate the lyric, hymnal character of homeric hymns, a comparison with his translations of sappho’s lyric poems is appropriate. oras the translator of sappho sappho’s ode 1 to aphrodite is a hymn framed by the singer-poet’s prayers to the goddess whereas the central part describes aphrodite’s epiphany. in his translation oras has retained the intimate and personal character of the ode. he included all references to the deictic centre with first person personal pronouns, which occur in the greek text, and even added some.33 oras also augmented the occurrences of the second person pronoun ‘you’: (10 times, in greek 5 or 6).34 the majority of the second person pronouns in his translation (6) occur in aphrodite’s words, spoken during her epiphany and addressing the singer (sappho), especially in verses 21–24 (sixth stanza). this much discussed stanza offers two important ambiguities:35 firstly, the speaker and the time are not clear, as the references to the deictic centre are absent and the stanza itself is in a transitional position, occurring at the end of the narration about the epiphany of the goddess in the past and her address to sappho just before the final, seventh stanza, where sappho the poet returns 33 correspondingly 5 occurrences in greek, v. 3, v. 6, v. 17, v. 25, 26, and 7 in estonian: v. 3, 6, 13, 15, 25 (twice), 28. once, in v. 16 oras slipped from direct speech into indirect for a moment and used the third person pronoun in aphrodite’s words to sappho (miks teda hüüdsin? [‘why did i call her?’]) in place of sg. sind (‘you’), probably because of metrical reasons (needing to use two short syllables in the adonion.) 34 depending from the readings of the text in verse 19 (σάν or ϝάν), see voigt 1971 ad loc. 35 for ambiguity intertwined with autoreferentiality, see calame 2004 (especially p. 415–416, 420–423). 86 janika päll from narration to prayer and speaks again as her poetic self in the first person.36 secondly, it is not clear who are the desirer and desired in this stanza which speaks of love and rejection. the words can belong either to aphrodite or sappho and be understood either as a timeless example concerning two lovers (one of them is a reluctant girl) or as sappho and the reluctant girl she desires:37 v. 21–24: καὶ γὰρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέως διώξει, αἰ δὲ δῶρα μὴ δέκετ’, ἀλλὰ δώσει, αἰ δὲ μὴ φίλει, ταχέως φιλήσει, κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα. if (she) runs away, soon (she) shall pursue; if (she) does not accept gifts, why, (she) shall give (them) instead; and if (she) does not love, soon (she) shall love even against (her) will. (trans. david a. campbell) oras: väldib sind, küll pea on sul järjest kannul; tõrjub kinke sult – ise peatselt pakub, on su vastu külm – süda pea tal süttib, tahtku või mitte. if (she) avoids you, soon (she shall) be following you; if (she) sends back your gifts, soon (she will) offer (them) herself; if (she) is cold toward you – soon her heart will be in flames, be (she) wanting or not. campbell has preserved this ambiguity in his translation.38 oras, however, interprets the rejected lover as sappho, who is addressed by aphrodite with a fourfold repetition of the personal pronoun ‘you’ in direct speech. although oras’s translation remains ambiguous from the point of view of gender (which can be expressed in estonian only with lexical means), he mentions sappho’s 36 for the analysis of narrative situation, see steinrück 1992: 280–287, for transition character, see päll 2007: 44, 48. tzamali (1996: 81) interpretes the addressee as sappho, speaking of “brachylogische ersparung von σέ as selbstverständlich”, her discussion of syntax in this stanza follows this interpretation (tzamali 1996: 79–84). 37 translation in campbell 1994: 53–55. 38 adding third person pronouns, which are needed in english; thus the result is seven pronouns in translation, where greek has none, although at least one of them is absolutely necessary to express the gender (feminine) of the reluctant lover (expressed by the feminine participle in the text of voigt’s edition, v. 24). 87ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras passion for some of the girls in her group in his afterword to the translation, thus giving guidance for the interpretation of the love scene.39 the same accumulation of personal pronouns occurs in his translation of sappho’s fragment 31, where five first person pronouns occur in greek and six in estonian, and only two second person pronouns in greek and six in estonian.40 nor does oras avoid the references to the first person in his translation of catullus’ version of the same poem (carmen 51).41 the same claim can be made about his other translations of catullus or horace. so it appears that in the case of personal lyric poetry oras does not avoid references to the deictic centre. corresponding to the manner of deixis am phantasma, as-if presence of the speaker and pointing at the listeners, he even adds such references and creates his poetic space with the help of abundant deictics (especially in addresses). until now we have not seen how oras uses the deictics connected to other perspectives than the singer’s. this can be seen in his translation of the hymn to aphrodite. deictic centres in oras’s hymn to aphrodite ancient narrative tradition requires that the singer remain in the background (even when occasionally the narrator’s focalisation leaves some traces). accordingly, between the initial and final verses of the hymn no direct references to the singer’s deictic centre occur.42 in the narrator’s text only such local and deictic adverbs can be found, which refer to places and times far away, 39 although oras stresses the address to rejected lover (sappho) in his translation, the grammatical subject (reluctant lover) is not expressed by third person personal pronouns, perhaps because there was not enough place in the hendecasyllable. 40 due to textual problems it is not easy to tell whether references in v. 2 and v. 7 in the greek text are to second or third person. see voigt 1971 ad loc. in the case of the demonstratives, there is balance: in greek two different demonstrative and a relative pronoun, in estonian also two demonstratives and a relative pronoun (although not always in same places). 41 in: oras 1936. four forms of first person pronoun against the three in catullus, although oras omits the first person pronoun in the beginning of catullus’ ille mi. the three ‘you’s of catullus are all translated in corresponding places. the demonstrative ille is once rendered with demonstrative, once with a third person pronoun. 42 because of my focus on explicit reference by deictics, i am not taking into consideration examples like θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι in v. 90 and the use of τοι, which are markers of narrator’s focalisation (as in de jong 2004). 88 janika päll local and time adverbs which point to the deictic centre are as a rule avoided.43 the character speech, in contrast, often uses local and time adverbs and first person pronouns, which refer to new deictic centres (anchises or aphrodite) and define their space, although pointing away from these centres occurs as well when needed by the story. verses 2–91 describe aphrodite’s power and her falling in love. she is the main actor, the deictics (mostly demonstrative, occasionally third person pronouns) refer to her or other characters. shifts in time are marked by several particles (for example εἶτα, ἔπειτα ‘and then, thereafter’) and spatial shifts are indicated by ἔνθα ‘there’ (in verses 59, 60, 61, when aphrodite starts to travel, in verse 80, where anchises is described). the translation of oras is much less straightforward. he is retaining refer ences to the secondary deictic centres of characters in his translation of speeches, but not always the same types of deictics and in the same places where these occur in the source text.44 for example, in anchises’ welcome address to the goddess several deictics in greek text point to his perspective: v. 92: χαῖρε ἄνασσ’, ἥ τις μακάρων τάδε δώμαθ’ ἱκάνεις ew: hail, lady, whoever of the blessed (you) are that come to this house [here] oras, v. 78: tervitan sind, ülev naine, ükskõik mida õndsate tõugu i greet you, noble lady, whoever of the family of the blessed v. 95: ἤ πού τις χαρίτων δεῦρ’ ἤλυθες ... ew: or, maybe, (you) are one of the graces come hither oras, v. 94–95: olgu sa ... // või ka hariiti dest üks be you.... // or one of the graces v. 97–99: ἤ τις νυμφάων αἵ τ’ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται, ἢ νυμφῶν αἳ καλὸν ὄρος τόδε ναιετάουσι καὶ πηγὰς ποταμῶν καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα. ew: or else one of the nymphs who haunt the pleasant woods, or of those who inhabit this lovely mountain and the springs of rivers and grassy meads. oras, v. 82–83: .... või nümf siit metsast või kingult või neilt allikailt üks, neilt lokkavailt luhtavailt rohtmailt or a nymph from here (this) wood or hill or one from these springs and from these lushy grassy meadows. 43 except τότε ‘then’ in v. 54 (mentioning anchises’ living on ida), which can indicate the narrator’s focalisation. 44 in case of speeches, he usually translates the first and second person pronouns and even increases their number. 89ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras in his translation of v. 92, oras has omitted half of the verse and the deictics (τάδε ‘these here’) which accompany the nouns. however, he has used the compensatory method translators often recur to and inserted similar deictics into close-by verses, where greek has none. occasionally oras becomes even more deictic than the greek text, for example in anchises speech where the mortal man expresses his wish to make love to aphrodite:45 v. 147: ἐνθάδ’ ἱκάνεις; you have come here45 oras, v. 127: siia su juhtis argosetapja the argos-slayer has led you here1 v. 149–151: οὔ τις ἔπειτα θεῶν οὔτε θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐνθάδε με σχήσει πρὶν σῇ φιλότητι μιγῆναι αὐτίκα νῦν· οὐδ’ εἴ κεν ἑκηβόλος αὐτὸς ἀπόλλων τόξου ἀπ’ ἀργυρέου προϊῇ βέλεα στονόεντα. ew: then neither god nor mortal man shall restrain me here till i have lain with you in love right now, not even if far-shooting apollo himself should launch grievous shafts, oras, v. 129–131: ärgu siis tuldagi häirima mind ei maalt ega taevast, heidan su kõrvale siin, jalamaid siin süüvin su rüppe, rünnaku mind oma nooltega siis ise phoibos apollon let then no-one from earth or heavens come to disturb me, (i) lay down besides you here, at once here (i’ll) enter your bosom, let phoebus apollon himself then attack me with his shafts. we can observe the presence of greek text’s ‘here’ and ‘i’ (v. 149–151) in the translation (verses 129 and 130) of oras, although the temporal ‘right now’ has been translated by jalamaid (‘at once’). perhaps the synonym seemed to the translator more accurate for presenting the order of events (the love act has to start immediately) or more poetical, or more fitting into the verse after the penthemimeral caesura, where an anapaest-shaped space was available between two monosyllabic deictics (siin) and two second person pronouns (su). this verse (although exceptional in its high density of deictics) is typical for his character speeches, where deictic pronouns occur more frequently than in the greek hymn. 45 the active has been replaced with the passive voice, thus bringing in another actor (hermes, the argos-slayer). 90 janika päll these verses also offer a typical example of oras’s approach to monosyllabic deictic adverb siis.46 both in evelyn-white’s english and oras’s estonian translations of v. 149 the adverbs then and siis point away from the deictic centre and refer to the future, which in greek is indicated by morphological future forms and the adverb ἔπειτα (‘thereafter’). in estonian the adverb is accompanied by impersonal and third person imperative forms in v. 129 and v. 131 (the translation of greek verse 151, which uses the conditional). the adverb siis (‘then’) occurs a total of 18 times in oras: in speeches it always refers to the events, which are going (or supposed or not supposed) to happen in the future from the character’s point of view (9 occurrences); in narrator’s text it indicates the next stage in the story-time (9 occurrences). thus all these examples point away to the future. the use of nüüd (‘now’) by oras is, on the contrary, not coherent. in greek text, νῦν is used straightforwardly as a temporal deictic. for example in aphrodite’s final speech (verses 247–254 in homer, verses 175–179 in oras), nüüd refers to the present time of the character.47 but nüüd is also used for accompanying exhortations by oras (v. 112, v. 121, 153 and an appeal in v. 161), where greek uses other means (correspondingly verses 131, 141, 177 and 187). however, in the case of exhortations the speaker’s point of view can still be felt, as for example in the one-word estonian cohortative sentence nüüd!, meaning something like: ‘i want you/us/me to do it now!’ through the using of the adverb nüüd, oras the translator-narrator not only enlivens his story, but becomes present in it by referring to the narrator’s temporal deictic centre. for example, aphrodite’s falling in love is introduced with the temporal adverb nüüd in v. 45: v. 45: τῇ δὲ καὶ αὐτῇ ζεὺς γλυκὺν ἵμερον ἔμβαλε θυμῷ ew: but upon aphrodite herself zeus cast sweet desire oras, v. 43: kuid kythereiatki nüüd, teda ennastki zeus pani äkki ihkama but now, zeus, made suddenly kythereia herself desire. the beginning of the story and the unexpectedness of the situation are underlined here by oras with this insertion of a personal viewpoint and present time 46 oras does not use it for translation of greek τότε ‘then’, which occurs in v. 54 (but translates it with ‘just’, ‘right now’ in v. 46). several temporal adverbials and pronouns, as toona, tollal (‘that time’) have not been used by oras. 47 in greek: v. 247: αὐτὰρ ἐμοί (‘but for me’), oras: nüüd, v. 252 νῦν (‘now’), oras: nüüd, as opposed to πρίν ‘before’ in v. 249 (not translated by oras). 91ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras deictic centre.48 oras-narrator appears again in the next stage of the story, when aphrodite meets anchises. here we can see not only the ‘now’, but also the ‘here’:49 v. 81: στῆ δ’ αὐτοῦ προπάροιθε διὸς θυγάτηρ ἀφροδίτη ew: and aphrodite, the daughter of zeus stood before him. oras, v. 68: siin nagu neitsike-nooruke nüüd end ilmutas kypris here like a young maiden49 now kypris revealed herself. the epiphany of the goddess is thus (like in lyric hymns) suddenly presented as felt by the narrator-poet, but only by the estonian one who also shifts the attention from him (anchises) to her (aphrodite). this use of deictics also has a secondary, textual function, to underline the peak of this part of the narration, aphrodite’s arrival. this function becomes even clearer in the description of the love scene, where oras-narrator starts to cumulate the adverbs: v. 164–167: λῦσε δέ οἱ ζώνην ἰδὲ εἵματα σιγαλόεντα ἔκδυε καὶ κατέθηκεν ἐπὶ θρόνου ἀργυροήλου ἀγχίσης· ὁ δ’ ἔπειτα θεῶν ἰότητι καὶ αἴσῃ ἀθανάτῃ παρέλεκτο θεᾷ βροτός, οὐ σάφα εἰδώς. ew: and ... anchises ... loosened her girdle and stripped off (her) bright garments and laid them down upon a silver-studded seat. then by the will of the gods and destiny he lay with (her), a mortal man with immortal goddess, not clearly knowing what (he) did oras, v. 141–143: riisus siis ült särarüü, avas vöö, hõbenaastusel istmel, siis pani kokku nad kõik – ning taeva ja saatuse tahtel embaski põrmlane nüüd jumalannat – ei mõistnud, mis juhtus. [anchises] then robbed (stripped off ) (her) bright garments, loosened (her) girdle and onto the silver-studded seat then put (them) all together. and according to the will of heaven and destiny, the mortal man embraced now the goddess – didn’t understand what happened. in the greek text only the peak of the scene, the beginning of the love act is indicated by the particle ἔπειτα (‘then’), in v. 166. but when this final act of love is going to take place, the narrator oras jumps again into the story, inserting his nüüd (‘now’). this use of the adverb nüüd (‘now’) by the narrator as a 48 it can also be interpreted as an insertion of the point of view of a character into the speech of the narrator (erlebte rede or discours indirect libre). 49 cf. following in v. 81: παρθένῳ ἀδμήτῃ ‘like a pure maiden’. 92 janika päll reference to a reached stage in the story, intertwined with a reference to the now-and-here of the moment occurs similarly twice more in his translation of speeches by aphrodite.50 thus it appears that differently from ‘then’, the ‘now’ has much more complex functions, as a direct make-believe temporal or textual deictic, indicating the new stage in the story. knowing that for oras, the role of deictics was important because of their possible role as anceps syllables in hexameter verse, we could seek correspondences between different prosodic weights of these words in verse (see table 2) and their different deictic values. however, there is none: the local adverbs siin and sääl (‘here’ and ‘there’) always occur only in stressed long position, whereas sääl always points away from the speaker’s point of view and siin can help to relive the past narration as being present. the temporal nüüd (‘now’) occurs also usually in the long position, but its usage is again quite incoherent, while siis (‘then’), which is used quite coherently from deictic point of view (as discussed above), is prosodically used as an anceps. thus it appears that the choice of deictic adverbs and pronouns can only partly be explained with prosodic reasons (their use as anceps). in the case of the framing parts of the hymn the approach of oras (reducing the number of deictics) seems to be consistent and following an interpretative approach of these poems as lyric hymns. in the case of narrative parts, the increase and variation of deictics and his use of the narrator’s perspective during the third person narration seems to serve the goal of presenting the story in a lively and colourful way. this interpretation will find support from a short analysis of actors in both texts, the greek hymn and oras’s translation. 50 see oras, v. 100 and v. 209. in corresponding greek verses (v. 116, v. 289) the deictics do not occur, although in greek v. 289, there is an additional reference to the speaker by τοι: εἴρηταί τοι πάντα. (‘everything has been told you’), cf. now i have told you all in the translation of evelyn-white and similar nüüd olen ütelnud kõik (‘now i’ve told all’) by oras. 93ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras table 2. some temporal and local deictics and their positions51 52 siin ‘here’/ siit ‘from here’ δεῦρ(ο), other: ἐνθάδε ‘here (to this point)’ nüüd ‘now’, other: praegu ‘now’ νυ(ν), νῦν ‘now’ siis ‘then’ τότ(ε) ‘then’ sääl ‘there’/ säält ‘from there’ ἔνθ(α) ‘hither’ short position 0 – 1 – 8 1 0 – long position 4+2 1/1 12 4 10 – 2+3 1 other words – 1/2 1 – – – – 3 other greek words ἥδε51 τόδε ‘this here’ 3 ἐκεῖ ‘there’ 0 adverbs, particles pointing to the shift in narration ἔπειτα ‘then’/ πρίν ‘earlier, then’ 10/152 αὐτὰρ ἐπεί ‘and when’ 3 the multiplication of agents in the hymn to aphrodite another feature of epic diction in this homeric hymn is the focus on its main addressee, aphrodite. the initial part of the greek hymn (verses 1–42) celebrates aphrodite’s power, she is the actor, whose power is described through her deeds: she subdues everyone, except three virgin goddesses athena, artemis, and hestia: 51 v. 235: ἥδε δέ οἱ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀρίστη φαίνετο βουλή = this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel (evelyn-white). it would be interesting to know what oras would have done with this example of secondary focalisation, but these verses belong to the part he omitted from his translation. 52 only in v. 249 (πρὶν with infinitive in v. 150 can be excluded). 94 janika päll v. 7–8: τρισσὰς δ’ οὐ δύναται πεπιθεῖν φρένας οὐδ’ ἀπατῆσαι· κούρην τ’ αἰγιόχοιο διὸς γλαυκῶπιν ἀθήνην· yet (she) is unable to influence and deceive three minds: the daughter of aigis-bearing zeus, glimmering-eyed athene. oras, v. 7–8: kolm aga on, kel meelt ei ta pael ei ta püünised püüa: aigise valduri tütar on üks neist, helksilm athene three are (these), whose mind neither her slings nor her snares can capture, one of them is the daughter of aigisbearer, bright-eyed athene. while the greek text presents a quite straightforward narration – aphrodite is unable to deceive the minds of three goddesses – oras accumulates different actors. at first, he creates a complex phrase with numeral three as a subject in the main clause: three are (those). in the relative clause he introduces other new actors: in the place of aphrodite, whose powers are insufficient, the subduers are her slings and her snares. the next, formulaic name and epithet verse referring to athena, is attached as explication to the word φρένας, ‘minds’, which occurred in the preceding verse, in accordance with epic appositive style. however, oras stresses once more that athena is part of the trio, introducing her as the new grammatical subject.53 instead of a focus on one goddess, who is described in a hymnal style, we see four new actors: the triad, the slings, the snares, and the daughter of aegis-bearer. the multiplication of actors (accompanied by nominalisation) continues in a similar manner. when aphrodite has fallen in love with anchises, she goes to troy and takes the way through the clouds: v. 66–67: σεύατ’ ἐπὶ τροίης προλιποῦσ’ εὐώδεα κύπρον ὕψι μετὰ νέφεσιν ῥίμφα πρήσσουσα κέλευθον. ew: (she) left sweet-smelling cyprus and went in haste towards troy, swiftly travelling high up among the clouds oras, v. 55–56: troojasse suundus ta tuuline tee, imekiirelt ja kergelt lend läbis pilvede vöö. to troy went her windy path, wondrously easily and swiftly flight penetrated the belt of clouds. 53 cf. evelyn-white: yet there are three hearts that she cannot bend nor yet ensnare. first is the daughter of zeus who holds the aegis, bright-eyed athena. oras changes the voice very often, greek passive can become active and greek active can become impersonal in his translation (estonian does not have morphological passive voice), whereas the grammatical objects more often become the subjects in his translation than the other way round. 95ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras oras draws a different picture, where new actors enter: it is aphrodite’s windy way (tuuline tee) which goes to troy, and her flight (lend), which passes through the belt (vöö) of clouds. later in verses 70–72 the greek narrator presents a short catalogue of numerous wild animals who come to greet the goddess, while in estonian it is a pack of wolves, a crowd of lynches and a swarm of leopards (oras, v. 58–60). in the end of the hymn, aphrodite announces that she is pregnant and describes her feelings:54 v. 253–254: ... ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἀάσθην σχέτλιον οὐκ ὀνοταστόν, ἀπεπλάγχθην δὲ νόοιο, for (i) had become very mad, miserably, without repair, and went astray of mind. oras, v. 180–181: liig suur oli hullus, meeletu, pöörane kihm, mis viis minult taibu too great was the madness, mindless, crazy desire, which took my wit. the aphrodite of the estonian translation does not become mad straightforwardly, but the stress is on her folly’s greatness and her mind and desires which take power; thus the goddess becomes a toy in the hands of different actors. in oras’s translation, the personification is connected to nominalisation and abstraction: different groups (three, pack) and personified impersonalia (flight, mind, desires) who move her around. if we compare the greek text and oras’s translation, we see that the number of acting personae (grammatical subjects) is much greater in estonian. it can partly be the result of syntactic changes which arise from the differences of two languages (replacing passive constructions with the active or using personal verb forms in the place of infinitive and participle clauses), but in summary it is not the difference of syntax, but the translator’s view of the world of homeric hymns. oras is describing this world with much greater vividness and as much more colourful and active than it seems to be in greek. conclusions it appears that it is characteristic of oras’s translation of homeric hymns to omit or reduce these references to the deictic centre which are connected to the singer and the performance situation. by omitting the traditional formulas 54 cf.: for very great has been my madness, my miserable and dreadful madness, and i went astray of my mind (evelyn-white). 96 janika päll which refer to the poet and his intention to continue the song (in the ends of hymns to aphrodite and pan), he re-interprets these poems as hymnal compositions, not epic prooemia. however, he conforms to the tradition by keeping the initial addresses to the muses which point weakly to the deictic centre. in his hymn to apollo, oras omits the initial auto-reference to the poet completely, also changing the grammatical subject and shifting the focus in the beginning from the singer to apollo. the mythical story about the singer has been retained in the end, but with a strengthened addresses to the god and weakened references to the singer. this omission of deictics only characterises his recreation of the performance situation. in character speeches his usage is close to lyric poetry with clear references to the deictic centres of the speakers. in the narrator’s part, oras does not follow the norms of epic narrative, where the perspectives of the narrator and the characters are clearly distinguishable. instead, he occasionally introduces the poet’s perspective and increases the numbers of acting subjects, which is supported by his insertion of the poet’s perspective. in this way, the picture becomes much more diverse and lively, and the narration which is set in the past, becomes actualised in the present (of the narrator, but also of the reader). in this way an ancient singer whose position is important as a giver of praise and glory yields to a modern translator, who is becoming more invisible in his role of story-teller, but who reveals his presence even more during emotional moments.55 55 i thank anne lange, sirje olesk and maria-kristiina lotman for their advice and invitation 5 years ago to the seminar dedicated to ants oras, which gave me the impulse to formulate and prepare for publication the results of several different analyses. the article has been written with the support of the estonian research council grant put 132. i am grateful to raili marling for the revision of my english. the approach to the study of deixis through contrastive analysis of texts and their translations is partly a result of the training which every student of ancient greek received in the classes of jaan unt (1947–2012, lecturer of ancient literature and greek at the university of tartu, scholar and translator of ancient literature), where text analysis and interpretation were combined with the discussion of translation principles and possibilities; partly of seminars devoted to deixis at the university’s department of french; see monticelli, pajusalu, treikelder (eds.) 2005. this led to a series of student papers in the department of classics, quoted above (note 9). 97ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras references allen, thomas w.; sikes, edward e. (eds.) 1904. the homeric hymns. edited, with preface, apparatus criticus, notes, and appendices. london: macmillan. url: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.04.00 29%3atext%3dcomm%3apoem%3d3%3acommline%3d169 antiigiveeb = ivo volt (ed.), antiigiveeb. url: http://www.fl.ut.ee/et/380160 (accessed september 15, 2015). aunin, tiina; lange, anne (eds.) 2008. widening circles: the critical heritage of ants oras. tallinn: tallinn university press. baikov, krista 2008. osutussõnad ja nende tõlkimine hesiodose “tööde ja päevade” värssides 293–596. seminaritöö. tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. bakker, egbert j. poetry in speech. orality and homeric discourse. ithaca and london: cornell university press. brunet, philippe (ed.) 2014. traditions du patrimoine antique  – “homère en hexamètres” – rencontre internationale de traducteurs, paris, 26 mars 2012 – réfectoire des cordeliers, 7e édition des dionysies. (anabases 20). url: https:// anabases.revues.org/4768. bühler, karl 1990. theory of language. amsterdam & philadelphia: john benjamins. calame, claude 1986. le récit en grèce ancienne. enonciations et représentations de poètes. paris: méridiens-klincksieck. calame, claude 2004. deictic ambiguity and auto-referentiality: some examples from greek poetics. in: arethusa 37(3): 415–443. calame, claude 2005. masques d’autorité. fiction et pragmatique dans la poétique grecque antique. paris: les belles lettres. campbell, david a. (trans.) 1994. greek lyric i. sappho and alcaeus. (loeb classical library 142). cambridge, mass.: harvard university press; london: william heinemann. clay, jenny s. 2006. the politics of olympus. form and meaning in the major homeric hymns. second edition. bristol classical press. clay, jenny s. 2011. the homeric hymns as genre. in: faulkner, andrew (ed.), the homeric hymns. interpretative essay. oxford: university press, 232–251. 98 janika päll detienne, marcel 1990. les maîtres de vérité dans la grèce archaïque. paris: éditions la découverte. devine, andrew mackay; stephens, laurence d. 1994. the prosody of greek speech. new york and oxford: oxford university press. dickey, eleanor 2003. greek forms of address. from herodotus to lucian. oxford: clarendon press. dik, helma marietta josine 1995. word order in ancient greek: a pragmatic account of word order in herodotus. amsterdam: j.c. gieben. eab 2014 = päll, janika; volt, ivo; näripä, neeme; kurs, kristin (eds.) 2014. eesti antiigitõlke bibliograafia (eab). versioon 1.0, 2014. 1–16. võrguteavik. url: http://philologic.ut.ee/eab_1.0_2014.pdf (accessed september 15, 2015). eesti värss 2004 = lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina; sütiste, elin (eds.) 2004. eesti värss. url: http://www.ut.ee/verse (accessed september 15, 2015). evelyn-white, hugh g. 1914. homeric hymns. (loeb classical library 57). cambridge, mass.: harvard university press; london: william heinemann. [quoted from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/] felson, nancy (ed.) 2004. the poetics of deixis in alcman, pindar, and other lyric. (arethusa 37(3)). fowler, robert louis 1987. the nature of early greek lyric: three preliminary studies. toronto: university of toronto press. fränkel, hermann 1955. eine stileigenheit der frühgriechischen literatur. in his: wege und formen frühgriechischen denkens. literarische und philosophiegeschichtliche studien, ed. by tietze, franz. münchen: c.h. beck, 40–96. gerber, douglas e. (ed.) 1997. a companion to the greek lyric poets. leiden: brill. groningen, bernhard abraham van 1958. la composition littéraire archaïque grecque. amsterdam: amsterdam: noord-hollandsche uitg. homeros 1960. ilias. tallinn: eesti riiklik kirjastus (estonian translation by august annist and karl reitav). homeros 1963. odüsseia. tallinn: eesti riiklik kirjastus (estonian translation by august annist and karl reitav). de jong, irene; nünlist, rené; bowie, angus (eds.) 2004. narrators, narratees, and narratives in ancient greek literature. studies in ancient greek narrative 1. leiden, boston: brill. 99ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras de jong, irene 2004. narrators and focalizers: the presentation of the story in the iliad. london: bristol classical press. kaalep, ain; torpats, ülo (eds.) 1971. rooma kirjanduse antoloogia. tallinn: eesti raamat. kärtna, lis-ann 2010. osutussõnade tõlkimine platoni “pidusöögis” st. iii p. 172 a1 – 186 e1. bakalaureusetöö. tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. kirk, geoffrey stephen 1989. the epic tradition after homer and hesiod. in: easterling, patricia elizabeth; knox, bernard m.w. (eds.), the cambridge history of classical literature, volume i part i. early greek poetry. cambridge: cambridge university press, 65–75. kiss, kadi 2010. osutussõnade tõlkimine vergiliuse “aeneises” 1. laulus värssides 1–350. bakalaureusetöö. tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. lange, anne 2004. ants oras. tartu: ilmamaa. lange, anne 2007. the poetics of translation of ants oras. doktoritöö. tallinn: tallinna ülikooli kirjastus. url: http://e-ait.tlulib.ee/115/ latacz, joachim 1994. erschliessung der antike. kleine schriften zur literatur der griechen und römer. stuttgart, leipzig: teubner = latacz, joachim 1985. realität und imagination: eine neue lyrik-theorie und sapphos φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος-lied. in: museum helveticum 42: 67–94. latacz, joachim 2000. homers ilias: gesamtkommentar. prolegomena. münchenleipzig: saur. lefkowitz, mary r. 1963. the first person in pindar. in: harvard studies in philology 67: 177–253. lefkowitz, mary r. 1991. first-person fictions. pindar’s poetic “i”. oxford: clarendon press. leitsch, vincent b. 2008. widening circles: the postwar critical work of ants oras. in: aunin, tiina; lange, anne (eds.), widening circles: the critical heritage of ants oras. tallinn: tallinn university press, 15–32. lotman, maria-kristiina 2012. equimetrical verse translation in estonian poetic culture. in: chalvin, a.; lange, a.; monticelli, d. eds. between cultures and texts. itineraries in translation history. frankfurt am main: peter lang verlag, 137–150. 100 janika päll mägiste, julius 1976. ants orase “aeneise-tõlke” keelelise kujunduse puhul. in: tulimuld 1: 35–41. monticelli, daniele; pajusalu, renate; treikelder, anu (eds.) 2005. de l’énoncé à l’énonciation et vice-versa. regards multidisciplinaires sur la deixis = lausungist lausumiseni ja vastupidi. multidistsiplinaarsed vaated deiksisele = from utterance to uttering and vice versa. multidisciplinary views on deixis. 1–2. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. murdvee, mari 2006. homerose hümn deelose apollonile. in: päll, janika (ed.), vanakreeka kirjanduse antoloogia. tallinn: varrak, 71–76. norden, eduard 1913. agnostos theos. berlin: b.g. teubner. nünlist, rené 2004. the homeric hymns. in: de jong, irene; nünlist, rené; bowie, angus (eds.), narrators, narratees, and narratives in ancient greek literature. studies in ancient greek narrative 1, 35–41. olesk, sirje (ed.) 1997. akadeemia kirjades. ants orase ja ivar ivaski kirjavahetus 1957–1981. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum. oras, ants (trans.) 1936. catullus, carmina. in: looming 9: 1013–1016. oras, ants 1938. on some aspects of shelley’s poetic imagery. in: acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis (dorpatensis), b, humaniora. xliii, 4. tartu: mattiesen, 1–71. oras, ants 1962. vergilius ja eesti heksameetri probleem. in: tulimuld 4: 242–248. oras, ants (trans.) 1976. homeros. hümn aphroditele. in: tulimuld 1: 29–35. oras, ants (trans.) 1977a. homerose hümn apollonile. in: tulimuld 1: 24–28. oras, ants (trans.) 1977b. homeros. hümn paanile. in: tulimuld 2: 90–91. oras, ants (trans.) 1977c. sappho i, ii. in: tulimuld 3: 142. pajusalu, renate 1999. deiktikud eesti keeles. tartu: tü kirjastus. url: http://www. folklore.ee/seminar/deiktikud/ päll, janika 2005. deixis and word order in greek lyric poetry. in: monticelli, daniele; pajusalu, renate; treikelder, anu (eds.), de l’énoncé à l’énonciation et vice-versa. regards multidisciplinaires sur la deixis = lausungist lausumiseni ja vastupidi. multidistsiplinaarsed vaated deiksisele = from utterance to uttering and vice versa. multidisciplinary views on deixis. 1–2, 329–345. päll, janika 2007. translating ancient greek aspect: sappho’s fr.1 voigt (to aphrodite). monticelli, daniele; treikelder, anu (eds.), studia romanica tartuensia 6: 43–65. 101ancient world of the poet and performance in translations by ants oras päll, janika 2014. la traduction d’homère en estonie: une bataille pour ou contre l’hexamètre quantitatif. in: anabases 20: 211–234. parvits, triin 2010. deiksise kasutamine platoni “pidusöögis” stephanuse lehekülgedel 186e 1 – 201c 3. bakalaureusetöö. tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. pille, katri 2008. osutussõnad ja nende tõlkimine hesiodose “tööde ja päevade” värssides 597–828. seminaritöö. tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. rootsma, ruth 2011. deiksis ja selle tõlkimine euripidese bakhantides (värsid 1–214). tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. steinrück, martin 1992. rede und kontext. zum verhältnis von person und erzähler in frühgriechischen texten. bonn: habelt. tuulmets, kristen 2008. osutavad sõnad hesiodose “töödes ja päevades”, värsid 1–292. seminaritöö. tartu [unpublished seminar paper in the seminar library of classical philology, university of tartu; pdf in the possession of the author]. tzamali, eleni 1996. syntax und stil bei sappho. dettelbach: j.h. röll. unt, jaan 1992. saatesõna. in: vergilius. bucolica. aeneis, tallinn: hortus litterarum, 314–325. vergilius 1992. bucolica. aeneis. tõlkinud ants oras. tallinn: hortus litterarum. voigt, eva-maria (ed.) 1971. sappho et alcaeus. fragmenta. amsterdam: athenaeum – polak & van gennep. file:///c:/d%20ketas/kirjastus/s/studia%20metrica%20et%20poetica/2_2%20joonised/javascript:__dopostback('ctl00$contentplaceholder1$portaalisikupublikatsioonid1$gridview1$ctl02$linkbutton1','') file:///c:/d%20ketas/kirjastus/s/studia%20metrica%20et%20poetica/2_2%20joonised/javascript:__dopostback('ctl00$contentplaceholder1$portaalisikupublikatsioonid1$gridview1$ctl02$linkbutton1','') studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd the versification of the romansh poet andri peer: the heptasyllable and hendecasyllable in his early free forms renzo caduff* abstract: this paper examines the versification style of the romansh poet andri peer, who can be considered as the first “modern” poet of the romansh literature. it focuses on andri peer’s most frequently used verse lines in his early free forms: the heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verse. a rhythmical analysis of the single verse instances revealed that the internal organisation of the line is not very elaborate. in the case of the heptasyllables found in his early free forms, only four patterns make up over 80% of all heptasyllabic verses. regarding peer’s hendecasyllables, it is shown that his arrangement of the prominent syllables is rather regular, especially in comparison to the hendecasyllables of his precursor peider lansel. this trend in peer’s versification to use fixed dispositions of syllables is interpreted as a compensation for the loss of other structural features such as the stanza or the rhyme. keywords: heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verse; versification style; versi ombra; romansh poetry 1. introduction andri peer (1921–1985) is one of the best-known poets of the romansh language which is spoken in switzerland, in the canton of grisons1. peer is often considered as the first “modern” poet of romansh literature (riatsch 2003: 492). he studied french and italian literature in zurich and paris, where he met famous poets such as eluard and became familiar with current trends in modern poetry, especially with the techniques of the vers libre. peer was fascinated by the poetry of eluard, valéry, eliot, montale, lorca and others but * author’s address: renzo caduff, university of geneva, unité de rhétoromanche, rue stours 5, ch-1205 geneva, switzerland; email: renzo.caduff@unige.ch. 1 the romansh language is spoken by around 40 000 (21.5%) people in the canton of grisons in switzerland (grünert et al. 2008: 26). it consists of five regional written varieties and rumantsch grischun, a standard variety created in 1982 (anderson 2016: 169s.). andri peer wrote in vallader, the romansh variety of the lower engadine and the val müstair, which is spoken by around 5’300 native speakers (roegiest 2006: 167). studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 85–102 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.04 86 renzo caduff also deeply interested in traditional romansh poetry, primarily in the works of peider lansel (1863–1943). therefore, when analysing peer’s versification, various influences must be born in mind: peer’s romansh roots, his interest in “modern” romance poetry, particularly french and italian, as well as the exposure of the romansh language and literature to the german-speaking culture. in this contribution, peer’s specific use of the heptasyllable and hendecasyllable, the most frequently used verse forms in his early free forms shall be analysed. after discussing some characteristics of “traditional” romansh metrics (section 2), the rhythmical patterns of the hendecasyllable used by peider lansel, peer’s major precursor, will be presented (section 3). against this backdrop, peer’s use of the heptasyllable and hendecasyllable in the free forms of his early creative period (1946–1951) shall be examined (section 4 and 5). this will be done by analysing the rhythmical patterns of these two verse forms as well as by looking for so called versi ombra. 2. metrics in romansh until today, only a few studies on specific aspects of romansh metrics have been published (hartmann 1906 and 1908, maxfield 1938, fasani 1992–1993, walther 1993 and caduff 2010, 2013 and 2014). nevertheless, it seems possible to define some fundamental principles of versification in romansh. the specific situation of romansh, a language in close contact with and strongly influenced by german and in earlier times by italian2, demands that the german and italian metrics must be considered when analysing romansh verses. moreover, some romansh poets as for example andri peer may be influenced by their extensive reading of french poetry. because of these variegated influences, it is to be assumed that in romansh poetry different principles of versification are simultaneously existing on a synchronic level, while in other so called “national” literatures different principles of versification are generally detected when adopting a diachronic perspective. analysing romansh poetry thus means to consider the syllabo-tonic as well as the accentual-syllabic3 verse depending on the author in question (see caduff 2014). 2 particularly the two varieties of the engadine are influenced by italian. 3 see menichetti: “escludendo pochissime eccezioni, il principio che regge il verso italiano è sillabico-ritmico: il verso è cioè metricamente definito dal numero delle ‘sedi’ sillabiche che lo compongono e dal suo ‘ritmo’”. (menichetti 1993: 89) [italics in original]. 87the versification of the romansh poet andri peer 3. the hendecasyllable of peer’s precursor peider lansel an important influence on andri peer was the poetry of peider lansel, the classical poet of the lower engadine. an analysis of the verse system of peider lansel showed that he refers to the italian endecasillabo (caduff 2013)4. lansel uses the traditional stress schemes of the most dominant form of italian poetry, however, he does not use the synaloepha, which is an important metrical figure in italian syllabics5. thus, lansel’s metrics shows at least one original feature in comparison with italian metrics. lansel’s translation of the two initial verses of giacomo leopardi’s la sera del dì di festa (the evening after the holy day), contrasted with the original, may illustrate lansel’s renunciation of the synaloepha6. la sera del dì di festa dolce^e chiara^è la notte^e senza vento, 1.3.6.10. e queta sovra^i tetti^e^in mezzo^agli^orti 2.6.10. (leopardi 1998: 275s.) la saira dal firà dutsch’ e clêr’ es la not e sainza vent 1.3.6.10. e quieta sur ils tets e sur ils jerts 2.6.10. (lansel 1907: 74) evidently, lansel uses the phonetic figure of the elision employing two apostrophes (“dutsch’ e clêr’”) in his translation of leopardi’s incipit7. the following examples show the metrical patterns of the hendecasyllabic verse used by peider lansel8. in his poems, he uses the three most predominant 4 in contrast to lansel’s verse form the versification of zaccaria pallioppi (1820–1873), another classical engadine poet, corresponds to the syllabo-tonic system as it is used in german poetry (caduff 2013: 297ss. and caduff 2014: 74s.). 5 to the best of my knowledge, the synaloepha is hardly ever used in romansh poetry, however, no study has focussed on this question so far. 6 i’ve indicated the synaloepha by the aid of the circumflex. 7 surprisingly and by way of exception – as shown in caduff (2013: 287) – lansel opted in a second version of his translation for the use of a synaloepha “teiv’ i clêra^es la not i sainza vent” (1929: 160, v. 1). 8 all the examples derive from the epic poem il vegl chalamêr (the old inkpot), which is written in endecasillabi sciolti (unrhymed hendecasyllables). 88 renzo caduff metrical types (in jakobson’s terminology, “verse designs”)9 – of the italian endecasillabo: 4.8.10., 6.10. and 4.7.1010. ir sco giarsun aint pro seis pin a vnescha (v. 35) 4.8.10. quel veider chalamêr cha tü m’hasch dat (v. 1) 6.10. imprais ch’el ha, schi’l plü vegl dals mattuns (v. 32) 4.7.10. as gasparov stated, the endecasillabo is strongly conditioned by two structurally important stressed positions: before the end of line and before the movable caesura with an obligatory stress on syllables four and/or six (gasparov 1996: 122). as can be seen in the following example, lansel’s hendecasyllables are characterized by different metrical patterns (“verse designs”) and therefore also by a richness of different rhythmical patterns (“verse instances”). iris florentina “…toscana gentile, dove il bel fior si vede d’ogni mese”. cino da pistoia eu at perchür, o iris florentina, 4.6.10. tü possasch crescher suot il tschêl alpin, 4.8.10. gnind a flurir eir in nos ajer fin, 4.8.10. malgrà dschêtas i naivs da l’engiadina 2.–3.6.10. sco ’n la dutscha cuntrada florentina, 3.6.10. ingio tuot la cuttür’ es ün zardin, 2.–3.6.10. chi da tuottas saschuns, d’ün bel cuntin 3.6.8.10. minchadi otras fluors i frütta pina. 3.–4.6.8.10. tü’m plaschasch per ta fuorm’ i ta culur 2.6.10. mo plü perché, in la raisch zopada 4.8.10. tegnasch a tuots segret’üna savur. 1.4.6.10. in quai sumegliasch orm’inamurada 4.6.10. 9 jakobson distinguishes between “verse design” and “verse instance” on verse level (versebene) and between “delivery design” and “delivery instance” on recitation level (vortragsebene) (jakobson 1960: 364–367, and donat 2007, s.v. stufen der metrischen abstraktion). 10 additional stressed positions are not indicated, especially for the first hemistich. 89the versification of the romansh poet andri peer chi la felicitad da si’amur 6.10. aint il plü fop dal cour tegna serrada. 4.6.–7.10. (lansel 1929: 45) since the caesura is movable and two stressed positions may immediately follow each other (“malgrà dschêtas”, v. 4; “cour tegna”, v. 14) a broad selection of stressed positions exists. these options make it possible for lansel to make use of a great rhythmical variety in his poems. against this backdrop of lansel’s hendecasyllables peer’s hendecasyllabic verse forms will be analysed below11. 4. andri peer’s versification also in andri peer’s versification, the endecasillabo plays an important role. andri peer mostly used the regular forms such as sonnets or poems in four or three line stanzas at the beginning of his writing period. for his later editions the heterometric poems (i.e. poems in free verse) are characteristic. while the regular verse forms may be analysed metrically and rhythmically, the free forms can be scanned for rhetorical structures12. in this contribution, however, the focus shall be on the two verse units that andri peer used most, that is the heptasyllable and the hendecasyllable. surprisingly, the heptasyllable and the hendecasyllable can not only be found in peer’s bounded forms, for example in his sonnets, but also in his poems written in vers libres or in “free metrics” (metrica libera), to use mengaldo’s terminology (1991). for peer’s early period of writing (1946–1951) even a preponderance of these two verse units in the free forms can be detected (see caduff 2010: 154ss.). in his seminal paper questioni metriche novecentesche (1991) mengaldo suggested that in italian metrics free forms are characterised as follows: 11 for this analysis, the italian terminology will be used. while the heptasyllable corresponds to the italian settenario with an obligatory stressed 6th metrical position, the hendecasyllable corresponds to the italian verso principe, the endecasillabo, with a compulsory stress on the 10th metrical position. 12 in the poem stà (summer) e.g. the use of parallel structures is evident, as well as the verticality that reminds us of the poems of giuseppe ungaretti. stà (1969): “blau / blau / manzinas / tschêl / uondas / cun craista // pizza / vadret / il vent / il lai / teis ögls / tia bocca / teis cour” (“blue / blue / branches / sky / waves / with crown // mountains / glacier / the wind / the lake / your eyes / your mouth / your heart”). 90 renzo caduff 1) perdita della regolarità e funzione strutturale delle rime, che restano eventualmente “effetti locali”. 2) libera mescolanza di versi canonici e non canonici: presenze anche massicce dei primi, endecasillabo compreso, ovviamente non spostano la questione. 3) mancanza dell’isostrofismo, ma distinguendosene un grado debole (strofe di configurazione versale differente ma con lo stesso numero di versi) e uno forte (strofe anche di differenti dimensioni). (mengaldo 1991: 35) 1) loss of regularity and structural function of the rhyme, which may be used as “local effect”. 2) free combination of canonical and non-canonical verses: a massive presence of the first (i.e. canonical verses) obviously does not change the situation. 3) absence of isostrophism, which can, however, be subdivided into a weak degree (heterometric stanzas, but with an equal number of verses) and a strong degree (stanzas of a different length). for peer’s particular use of the two characteristic line units, the heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verse, point 2) is especially crucial which states that a free combination of canonical and non-canonical verse lines is an important criterion of free verse or metrica libera and that free forms may be characterised by an overuse of the same canonical lines as for example the use of heptasyllables or hendecasyllables. 91the versification of the romansh poet andri peer 5. the heptasyllable and hendecasyllable: two characteristic line units in andri peer’s early free forms the following tables show the heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic recurrences in andri peer’s early free forms (see also caduff 2010: 155s.): table 1. recurrences of the 179 heptasyllables in peer’s early free forms (n = 246) patruglia (1946) 16 of 20 lines 80% tea room (1948) 28 of 38 lines 73.7% hbf (1948) 46 of 63 lines 73% mezzanot (1948) 25 of 30 lines 83.3% mumaint creativ (1948) 49 of 54 lines 90.8% il sömmi (1951) 15 of 41 lines 36.6% table 2. recurrences of the 80 hendecasyllables in peer’s early free forms (n = 140) uoss’est qua (1946) 8 of 22 lines 36.4% aspet (1946) 7 of 12 lines 58.3% femna (1948) 7 of 9 lines 77.8% davomezdi (1948) 32 of 51 lines 62.7% i dà… (1951) 19 of 26 lines 73% segns dascus (1955) 7 of 20 lines 35% as can be seen in tables 1 and 2 the heptasyllables (72.75%) and the hendecasyllables (57.1%) are very frequent in peer’s early free forms. in the following sections both an example of a predominant recurrence of a heptasyllable and of a hendecasyllable will be discussed. 92 renzo caduff 5.1 the use of the heptasyllable in the poem mezzanot a typical example of a free verse poem with a predominant use of heptasyllables is mezzanot (midnight). table 3 gives an overview of the types of lines that are used in the poem. table 3. lines in the different versions of mezzanot publications 1948; 1950a; 1951; 1954/55; 1955 stanzas or verse sections 7 or 6 (1955) lines 30 9-syllable 1 heptasyllable 25 6-syllable 2 5-syllable 2 in midnight, there are only five lines that are not heptasyllabic. they all appear in the first two stanzas of the poem, at the beginning of the verse section, apart from the 9-syllable in verse 9. andri peer, mezzanot sper la baselgia 5 cur chi batta l’ura 6 ed ün ventin da not ’7 s’giovainta illa giassa 7 cur cha sü ot las 5 quaidas nüvlas sömgian 6 e zoppan da la glüna 7 la sblacha ravaschia 7 nüvlas, o vus etern cumgià ’9 (or 2 + ’7) da sours chi partan leiv – ’7 (peer 2003 [1948], 28–29, v. 1–10) if the line breaks between the 5and 6-syllables are removed, we obtain two hendecasyllables, the other predominant unit in peer’s free verse forms. 93the versification of the romansh poet andri peer lines 1–2 sper la baselgia cur chi batta l’ura 11 4.(6.)8.10. lines 5–6 cur cha sü ot las quaidas nüvlas sömgian 11 4.6.8.10. interestingly, in one of the several unpublished versions of mezzanot (peer, swiss literary archives, berne, a-1-b/3) the lines 5–6 still formed a hendecasyllable. also, the lines 11 and 12 formed a classic french alexandrine. là stuna sainza pais ’7 sün veidra salaschada 7 là stun gugent sulet sün veidra salaschada 13 (classic alexandrine) however, when peer published the poem in 1948, he split up the long verses. as peer also used alexandrines in other poems (caduff 2010: 185–190) it can be supposed that peer’s heptasyllable may sometimes also be a hemistich of an alexandrine. the rhythmical patterns of peer’s heptasyllables too show a similarity with the hemistich of an alexandrine. the next 20 verses of mezzanot are all heptasyllabic as an excerpt of the third stanza illustrates: là stuna sainza pais ’7 1.–2.6. sün veidra salaschada 7 2.6. e taidl al cling dal sain ’7 2.4.6. chi trembla illas lastras 7 2.6. chi fa il gir dals vouts. ’7 2.4.6. an analysis of the single verse instances shows that the distribution of the stressed positions is quite regular and that the iambic stress pattern is most frequent. this regularity can be found throughout the heptasyllables of peer’s free forms, as the following table illustrates: 94 renzo caduff table 4. rhythmical patterns of peer’s heptasyllable rhythmical patterns of the heptasyllable frequency (n = 179) %% 2. and 6. position 74 lines 41.3% 2., 4. and 6. position 35 lines 19.5% 4. and 6. position 22 lines 12.3% 1., 4. and 6. position 17 lines 9.5% 1. and 6. position 7 lines 3.9% 1., 3. and 6. position 6 lines 3.4% 3. and 6. position 6 lines 3.4% 6. position 3 lines 1.7% 2.–3. and 6. position 5 lines 2.8% 3.–4. and 6. position 1 line 0.6% 1., 3.–4. and 6. position 1 line 0.6% 1.–2. and 6. position 1 line 0.6% 1.–2., 4. and 6. position 1 line 0.6% as table 4 shows, only four different rhythmical patterns of the heptasyllable make up over 80% of all heptasyllables (caduff 2010: 163s.). thus, the verse unit, i.e. the number of syllables as such, is more important in peer’s versification than the internal rhythmical organisation of the line. this observation is also confirmed by an analysis of the hendecasyllabic verse in the following example. 5.2 the use of the hendecasyllable in segns dascus the poetological free verse poem segns dascus (secret signs) discusses the hiding places of poetry (see also caduff 2014: 80s.). segns dascus o vus povrets chi giais tscherchand ’9 il zoppel da la poesia 9 nossa diala culs ögls d’or ’8 lavai voss ögls illa funtana 9 perche els sun tuorbels da tschierpla 9 e boffai oura vossas uraglias 10 culs spagliaduors dal favuogn! ’8 95the versification of the romansh poet andri peer ingio avda la poesia 9 scha na in ün crap dal flüm ’8 in ün dschember tschunc da la sajetta 10 in ün svoul d’aglia tras il temp ’9 o illa sgrischida blonda d’üna früja 12 in pail mulschin dad üna mür ’9 in ün recham da lichen sülla crappa 11 4.6.10. aint il sbriun d’ün’aua ravaschusa 11 4.6.10. chi squitta our’in sbrinzlas sa paschiun ’11 2.4.6.10. illa chavlüra bluorda da las flammas 11 4.6.10. cur chi uondagian tras ils giodens vöds ’11 4.8.10. o illa nervadüra d’üna föglia 11 6.10. chi’s placha sco ün man per benedir ’11 2.6.10. (peer 2003 [1955], 83, v. 1–20) for our argumentation, especially the second stanza is important. it begins with a rhetorical question about the whereabouts of poetry. the answers are for example “in the flight of an eagle through time” (v. 11), in a “lichen stitchery on a rock” (v. 14) or in the “veins of a leaf ” (v. 19). toward the end of the stanza, there is an accumulation of hendecasyllables. as can be seen above, the arrangement of the prominent or stressed syllables is quite regular in comparison with peider lansel’s verse instances (see chapter 3). for peer, the verse unit seems to be more important than the diversity of the rhythmical configuration. from this perspective, the unit resembles the french “décasyllabe”, a unit that is predominantly determined by the number of syllables13. as peer’s heptasyllable, the frequent recurrence of the hendecasyllable too can be seen as a kind of compensation structure for the absence of regularly used verse constituents such as the rhyme. both verses, the heptasyllable and the hendecasyllable, can thus be considered as “ideal” verse units. 13 frey states that “the french verse is basically determined by the number of syllables and thus much precarious [by the dissolution of the severe metrical laws] as the german, which depends on the accents”, “der französische vers ist hauptsächlich durch die silbenzahl bestimmt und dadurch viel prekärer als der deutsche, der von den akzenten lebt” (2000: 34). see further vaillant who speaks of a “faiblesse rythmique de la langue française” (2005: 259). 96 renzo caduff 5.3 verse segmentation as an evidence of “modernity” and the versi ombra another feature of peer’s versification can be found in poems that may be categorised as “hybrid forms” (caduff 2010: 144–153). these forms are characterized by different manifestations of dissolving verse entities such as a segmentation of verse into graphic lines, the abandonment of rhyme structure or a free combination of canonical and non-canonical verses. their only common characteristic is the tension between verse level and delivery level14. listening to a recitation of the poem lai leman (lake of geneva) one might expect a segmentation into verses of 6 syllables each: sguonda tia staila, uonda, alba vaila. vigna, god, chastè fan al lai anè. follow your star, wave, white sail. vineyard, wood, castle are circle to the lake. however, peer’s poem is not written in bounded verses: instead he chose the following segmentation, that is reminiscent of the verticality of “modern” poetry such as the poems of giuseppe ungaretti. lai leman sguonda tia staila, uonda, alba vaila. vigna, god, 14 for the opposition between the german “vers-” and “vortragsebene” see also küper (1988) and donat (2010). 97the versification of the romansh poet andri peer chastè fan al lai anè. (peer 2003 [1975], 253) this example of a hybrid form shows peer’s playful handling of the segmentation of verse; i.e. he graphically blurs the bounded form by segmenting the poem as a free form (see also caduff 2010: 144–153). in peer’s poetry, further dissimulated units or versi ombra (menichetti 1993: 151ss.) can be detected. an example which shows an interesting interrelation between form and content is the poem retuorn (return). the poem’s topic is already subsumed in the title, return. in romansh poetry, the motives of leaving and returning are emblematic moments, especially in the poems of the so called “randulins”15. the return of the emigrant to the engadine of his childhood also is an important motive in andri peer’s literary work. retuorn sulet, cul segn da teis perdavants } ’10 aint il crap, aint il lain, aint il sang. } ’10 il merl da l’aua ha il clom d’antruras. } 11 e tü, che respuondast a l’en? } ’9 (’3 + ’7) (peer 2003 [1975], 273) 15 the term “randulins” (from randulina, engl. ‘swallow’) is used for the engadine emigrants who often worked as confectioners in different parts of europe, especially in italy and france. during the summer season, they usually returned to their native villages for holidays. 98 renzo caduff return alone, with the sign of your ancestors in the stone, in the wood, in the blood. the dipper has his former call. and you, what do you answer to the inn? alone with the sign of his origin, the remigrant seems to be confronted with the reproachful question of the river inn16, why he left his homeland and, in doing so, his native tongue as well17. the comparison of the remigrate, addressed as a “you”, with the dipper (v. 7–9), which in contrast did not change its former call, may be interpreted as a sign of a bad conscience of the repatriate who lives and works in a german-speaking region. regarding the structure of the poem, particularly the first stanza is worth mentioning. the fact that all verse lines end with a word stressed on the final syllable highlights the enumeration “in the stone”, “in the wood” (i.e. in the engadine houses) and “in the blood” and thus the loneliness of the repatriate. the strong enjambement “teis / perdavants”, which separates the trisyllabic “perdavants” from the possessive pronoun, further intensifies the subsequent climax “aint il crap, / aint il lain, / aint il sang”. while the first verse section seems to be mainly organised by the parallelistic enumeration “in the stone, / in the wood, / in the blood”, the second section is composed by two phrases. by removing the line breaks, the following lines can be recomposed: 16 in the precedent tradition instead of a question the inn welcomes the repatriate, e.g. peider lansel, vuschs da la patria (voices of fatherland): “binsan!… binsan!… cun vusch cuntschainta / salüda l’en tras l’ota pasch –”, “welcome!... welcome!... with a well-known voice / the inn greets through the high peace –” (1966: 41, v. 1–2). 17 peer himself had left his native valley to work as a secondary school teacher in the germanspeaking part of switzerland. 99the versification of the romansh poet andri peer il merl da l’aua ha il clom d’antruras. 11 e tü, che respuondast a l’en? ’9 (’3 + ’7) obviously, the first verse is a hendecasyllable, a verse form which peer often uses in his early free forms (cf. table 2 and section 5). from a poetic point of view, the “former call”18 of the dipper could be interpreted as reference to peer’s frequent use of the hendecasyllabic unit in his early poetry. thus, there is an analogy between content and form: the poet who “returns” to his earlier tracks by using a camouflaged hendecasyllabic line. regarding the content, the use of the adverb antruras (‘in former times’ from lat. alteram horam) that does not exist in peer’s variety of romansh, vallader, but is borrowed from the sursilvan variety (see caduff 2010: 187s.) can be read as an allusion to a primary state when the romansh language was not yet divided into five regional written varieties. hence, the poem retuorn is on the one hand a return to the engadine, not least for the poet, but on the other hand also a return to a former use of language and verse19. 6. conclusion as pointed out in section 5 (table 1 and 2), andri peer uses in many of his free verse poems of the first period (1946–1951) a significant number of the same verse lines, either the heptasyllable or the hendecasyllable. according to mengaldo, this use illustrates a free combination of canonical and noncanonical verse lines and corresponds to one of mengaldo’s three criterions of free metrics (metrica libera) (section 4). 18 see in this context giovanni pascolis poem addio!: “quando ascolto voi [le rondini] parlar tra voi / nella vostra lingua di gitane, / una lingua che più non si sa”, goodbye!: “when i listen to you [the swallows] speaking to each other / in your gypsy tongue, / a language which one does not know anymore” (pascoli 1931: 176, v. 16–18). 19 similar to the proceeding in the poem return, in the poem furnatsch (2003 [1960], 122) too it is possible to recompose a hendecasyllable by removing the line breaks: “immez sbodats / cluchers da las / sumbrivas”, “among broken down / towers of the / shadows” (v. 64–66). from a metrical perspective, the towers that are broken down could also be read as a ‘broken down’ hendecasyllable. such a reading fits with the verse structure of the poem furnatsch, whose 66 verses correspond to 8 different verse lines: 9-syllable (5 lines), 8-syllable (13), heptasyllable (13), 6-syllable (12), 5-syllable (19), 4-syllable (2), 3-syllable (1) and 2-syllable (1). thus, the hendecasyllable as a primary structural entity of peer’s early free forms (cf. section 5) has lost its structural function and at the same time points to a new segmentation technique. 100 renzo caduff a rhythmical analysis of the single verse instances revealed that the internal organisation of the line is not very elaborate. more specifically, the analysis of the rhythmical patterns of peer’s heptasyllable showed that only four patterns (2. and 6. position; 2., 4. and 6. position; 4. and 6. position; 1., 4. and 6. position) make up over 80% of all heptasyllables (section 5.1). for the rhythmical organisation of peer’s hendecasyllables, it was shown that his arrangement of the prominent syllables is quite regular, especially in comparison to the hendecasyllables of his precursor peider lansel (section 5.2). therefore, we may conclude that in peer’s versification the verse unit is more important than the rhythmical pattern. instead of rhythmical patterns, peer uses other means of structuring, especially the frequent repetition of the same verse line. thus, he creates a sort of alternative structure to compensate for the absence of structural features such as the stanza or the rhyme. in other words: there is only weak or no “rhythmical arrangement” within the line, as peer focuses on structuring larger rhythmical sequences by using equal lines, especially the heptasyllable and hendecasyllable. analysing the segmentation of verse into graphic lines in peer’s hybrid forms and in his later poetry, dissimulated units or versi ombra could be detected (section 5.3). an example of such a hidden hendecasyllable can be found in the poem retuorn which shows that the hendecasyllable can still “return”, camouflaged as a modern verse segmentation. both verse forms, the heptasyllable and the hendecasyllable, may therefore be considered “ideal” verse units, especially in peer’s early free forms (1946–1951). possibly, peer had internalised basic units deriving from his extensive reading of italian (endecasillabo) and french poetry (alexandrin) which, however, he segments into smaller lines in order to follow a more vertical segmentation. 101the versification of the romansh poet andri peer references anderson, stephen r. 2016. romansh (rumantsch). in: ledgeway, adam; maiden, martin (eds.), the oxford guide to the romance languages. oxford: oxford university press, 169–184. caduff, renzo 2010. die metrik andri peers im spannungsfeld zwischen bündnerromanischer tradition und europäischer moderne. dissertation freiburg (ch), 2010. doc.rero.ch/record/27018. caduff, renzo 2013. die verskunst peider lansels am beispiel des elfsilblers. in: darms, georges; riatsch, clà; solèr, clau (eds.), akten des v. rätoromanistischen kolloquiums / actas dal v. colloqui retoromanistic (lavin 2011). tübingen: francke, 283–302. caduff, renzo 2014. bündnerromanische metrik am beispiel dreier engadiner lyriker: eine hybride kombination metrischer einflüsse der nachbarliteraturen? in: haupt, sabine (ed.), tertium datur! formen und facetten interkultureller hybridität. berlin: lit verlag, 69–84. donat, sebastian 2007. literaturwissenschaftliche grundbegriffe online. metrik. www.li-go.de (3.1.2017). donat, sebastian 2010. deskriptive metrik. innsbruck: studienverlag. fasani, remo 1992–1993. metrica di peider lansel, metrica romancia e traduzione della “commedia”. in: quaderni grigionitaliani 61(4), 298–313; 62(1), 13–30; 62(2), 101–109. frey, hans-jost 2000. verszerfall. in: vier veränderungen über rhythmus. basel: engeler, 7–84. gasparov, mikhail l. 1996. a history of european versification. oxford: clarendon press. grünert, matthias et al. (eds.) 2008. das funktionieren der dreisprachigkeit im kanton graubünden. tübingen, basel: francke. hartmann, gottfried 1906. neuere lyrik in graubünden. sonderabdruck aus “festschrift zum 12. deutschen neuphilologentag 1906”. erlangen: junge & sohn, 475–498. hartmann, gottfried 1908. zur rätoromanischen verskunst. in: festschrift philologische und volkstümliche arbeiten. erlangen, 287–294. jakobson, roman 1960. linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: the m.i.t. press, 350–377. doc.rero.ch/record/27018 102 renzo caduff küper, christoph 1988. sprache und metrum. semiotik und linguistik des verses. tübingen: niemeyer. lansel, peider 1907. primulas. prümas rimas et versiuns poeticas, nova ediziun. ginevra: atar. lansel, peider 1929. il vegl chalamêr. poesias da peider lansel, ediziun definitiva. zürich: fretz. leopardi, giacomo 1998. la sera del dì di festa. in: gavazzeni, franco (ed.), giacomo leopardi, canti. milano: rizzoli. maxfield, mildred elizabeth 1938. studies in modern romansh poetry in the engadine with special consideration of zaccaria pallioppi (1820–1873), gian fadri caderas (1830–1891) and peider lansel (1863 -). cambridge: massachusetts. mengaldo, pier vincenzo 1991. questioni metriche novecentesche [1988]. in: la tradizione del novecento. terza serie. torino: einaudi, 27–74. menichetti, aldo 1993. metrica italiana. fondamenti metrici, prosodia, rima. padova: antenore. pascoli, giovanni 1931. canti di castelvecchio. milano: mondadori. riatsch, clà 2003. aspets da l’ouvra poetica dad andri peer. in: riatsch, clà (ed.), andri peer, poesias (1946–1985). cuoira: desertina, 485–526. roegiest, eugeen 2006. le rhéto-roman. in: vers les sources des langues romanes. un itinéraire linguistique à travers la romania. leuven: acco, 166–178. vaillant, alain 2005. pour une poétique du vers syllabique. in: poétique 143, 259–281. walther, lucia 1993. der umgang mit traditionellen formen  – das sonett. in: riatsch, clà, walther, lucia (eds.), literatur und kleinsprache. studien zur bündnerromanischen literatur seit 1860, romanica raetica 11. chur: società retorumantscha, 211–235. studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.10 studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 160–161 the structure of verse: formal, experimental and computational approaches 19-20 march 2015 leiden university, the netherlands varun decastro-arrazola during th ursday the 19th and friday the 20th of march 2015, a diverse group of about forty scholars gathered in leiden to discuss issues on verse. verse is a wide concept covering poetry, song, chant, nursery rhymes, etc. some of these activities are considered more related to literature, more to music, more to language, depending on the focus taken by the researcher. as a result, verse studies are scattered across a number of university departments. one of the goals of the workshop was to bring together scholars with diff erent backgrounds but who somehow converge on their interest in verse. th is concern with cutting across disciplines had a particular motivation. th e organising committee (varun decastro-arrazola, teresa proto, marc van oostendorp) is involved in a project investigating how the cognitive capacities universally shared by humans shape cultural systems such as decorative patterns, numeral systems or, in our case, metrical patterns. when dealing with verse within the broader context of cognition, combining a range of approaches proves to be particularly valuable. each of the two days of the workshop had its own theme: on th ursday, it was the structure and perception of metred poetry; on friday, the digital encoding of verse. th e fi rst day focused on formal and psychological aspects, while the second day concentrated on computational approaches. each session was opened by a keynote speaker, followed by a series of seven oral presentations, and rounded off by a general discussion on the subject matter of the day. in addition, there were eight contributions in poster format. nigel fabb, the fi rst invited speaker, launched the event with a paper which discussed the place of the metrical line with respect to working memory. th e main claim was that “each line of metrical poetry is constructed and held as a whole unit in working memory capacity.” th e argument was grounded in a wealth of typological data and a thorough account of the baddeley-hitch model of memory. fabb also recognised that experimental evidence is still lacking from most psychological accounts of verse. issues like how to defi ne dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.10 161the structure of verse: formal, experimental and computational approaches an expert poetry listener are some of the obstacles faced by psychological experiments on the topic. th erefore, most of the contributions on the “structure and perception of metred poetry” were formal accounts based on corpora which off ered plausible explanations of how verse is cognitively represented. some of these accounts rely more on abstract metrical templates (e.g. jean louis aroui’s analysis of classical arabic kamil), while others rely almost exclusively on the phonological knowledge of the spoken language (e.g. tomas riad’s talk on metre as improved phonological prosody). nonetheless, working with a living tradition, paolo bravi could approach the creation of sardinian improvised poetry from an online perspective, getting closer to the poet’s mind while the text is being generated. the friday session was opened by kevin ryan. through case studies of greek, latin and sanskrit data, he discussed extensively the problem of evaluating frequencies in verse corpus studies. phenomena can appear to be underor over-represented in a certain metrical position, but without proper baselines of what to be expected, these frequencies are hardly interpretable. statistical analysis of big corpora, a current trend in the humanities, may be more prone to producing raw quantitative results of this kind. however, as ryan showed, digital data also provides the means to better assess observed frequencies; this can be done, for instance, using prose models or by scrambling techniques. th e strand of work described by ryan relies on the digitalisation and annotation of corpora, which was the subject matter of several presentations. projects like remetca (elena gonzález-blanco and clara i. martínez cantón) work towards standard and effi cient ways of digitally encoding verse material. still, other projects take some plain digital text as a starting point and develop algorithms to identify basic features such as syllables, and more complex features such as rhyme (dan brown) or rhythm (klemens bobenhausen and benjamin hammerich). all in all, despite the variety of backgrounds and methodologies present, the workshop benefi tted from a very lively and active audience. it may not be surprising in a context were speakers and listeners are almost completely overlapping sets, but it still requires some extra eff ort when not everyone has a common ground. hopefully, more events gathering psychological, formal and computational approaches to verse will take place in the near future. the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun*1 abstract: the aim of this paper is to get an overview of the lament metrics in seto oral song tradition, which belongs to the southern border area of the finnic song tradition, and the placement and historical development of lament metrics in the framework of the whole seto oral song tradition. in the paper the metrical structures of two main genres of seto choral laments – choral bridal laments and death laments – are analysed that share common features with solo laments and are similar to the structures of seto runosongs. metrical structures of the laments are detected based on sound recordings, taking into account the linguistic structure of the lines and the varied realization of it in a musical performance rhythm. the analysis showed that laments’ metrics where 5-unit end structures play an important role, differs the most from the main body of runosongs and is structurally more similar to a group of runosongs with refrains and varying line length. outlining the development patterns of the metrical system of seto songs, the influences of local unique musical tradition with varied rhythmic structures atypical of the most runosong area, specific functions of ritual song genres, historical changes in language, as well as possible external connections to early eastern and southern song cultures are highlighted. keywords: seto runosong and laments, finnic runosong and lament tradition, choral and solo laments, musical performance runosong, the ancient finnic singing tradition, is estimated to have emerged approximately two millennia ago and, over the course of history, unique regional metric traditions have evolved within this tradition (sarv 2015, 2019, kallio et al. 2017, frog 2019). the differences between these regional metric traditions stem from both changes in the local language and/or poetic and musical system – either as a result of internal evolution or the influence of other cultures. one of the most complex metric systems has developed on the southern border of the finnic runosong tradition – in the seto region, or setomaa. * authors’ addresses: janika oras, vanemuise 42, tartu, 51003, estonia; e-mail: janika.oras@ folklore.ee; žanna pärtlas, tatari 13, 10116 tallinn, estonia; e-mail: zhanna.partlas@eamt.ee; mari sarv, vanemuise 42, tartu, 51003, estonia; e-mail: mari.sarv@folklore.ee; andreas kalkun, vanemuise 42, tartu, 51003, estonia; e-mail: andreas.kalkun@folklore.ee. studia metrica et poetica 8.1, 2021, 40–98 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.02 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.02 41the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics compared to runosongs in general, a characteristic feature of seto runosong meter is the use of different versions of meter in different runosong groups. in our previous studies we described two versions of meter of runosongs. one of these versions, in which the lines are of stable length throughout the song, is a main meter in the seto tradition. it has been analyzed in songs sung with the so-called ‘feast melody’ (praasnigaviis in seto language) (oras, iva 2017). the second version of meter is associated with a share of songs with a refrain, in which the length of the line varies throughout the song – namely, harvest song (seto lelotamine), wedding song (kaaskõlõmine) and ‘the horse game’ (oras 2019; oras, sarv 2021). this article analyzes the meter of seto laments. seto laments share close similarities with seto runosongs, still they are not considered as a subcategory of runosongs. laments are not ‘songs’ from the emic point of view, since they have a specific ritual function, manner of singing and improvised text. in terms of music and performance, the seto solo laments (death laments, also those performed to send recruits off to war) are quite far from seto runosongs. at the same time, seto choral laments (bridal laments, some recruit and death laments) resemble them closely. like runosongs, choral laments are performed by a lead singer and the choir, who generally repeats the song line and the tune sung by the lead singer; there is also no difference between the musical style of choral laments and choral songs of the older layer.1 in terms of meter, seto laments are slightly different from runosongs, thus they can be considered as a version of runosong meter or as a distinct meter close to runosong meter. herewith the metric structure of solo laments coincides with the metrics of choral laments, although solo laments are metrically slightly more varied, characteristic to a solo genre. variative length of lines is a common feature of a share of refrain songs and laments. a melody type used in singing harvest songs with a refrain is most similar to laments in terms of musical rhythmic structure (pärtlas 2018: 222, oras 2019).2 still, the verse structures of refrain songs and laments 1 audio examples of seto choral laments are available at: https://www.folklore.ee/pubte/eraamat/rahvamuusika/en/052-morsja-itkeb-vennale; https://www.folklore.ee/pubte/eraamat/rahvamuusika/en/054-neiud-itkevad-sopra. for an example of a solo death lament, see: https://www.folklore.ee/pubte/eraamat/rahvamuusika/en/053-tutar-itkeb-ema. 2 this tune is also available in shorter variants, which, however, show no direct resemblance to laments. the overlap of the structures of the lament and the harvest song may not be accidental. for example, in greece, a certain kind of singing in the field during the harvest has been interpreted as mourning for the deity of fertility who, according to a widespread myth, died during the harvest (olivetti 2007, see also frazer 1996: 857–866). 42 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun have obvious differences. to understand the structural differences in the versification of seto runosongs and laments we have compared the analysis results of lament lines with the analysis results of the line structures of the two runosong groups – the songs with a stable line length and refrain songs. one of our aims is to explain the reciprocal relationship of laments and runosongs and the possible ways these genres developed. when juxtaposing different song groups and outlining the possible development patterns of the singing tradition, it is important to take into account the unique musical features of the seto songs, compared to the finnic runosong in general. one of the rare features of the musical style of seto runosongs and choral laments is an archaic polyphony, which differs from the mainly one-part singing culture of the finnic tradition, but also a very unusual scale system (pitch, intervals), which is unlike any other known in estonia or among the neighboring peoples.3 another characteristic feature of seto singing is the relationship between verse and melody structures. while in the finnic runosong tradition, an eight-note melody usually corresponds to an octosyllabic line, suggesting an initial symbiosis and the common origin of the melody and verse, seto melodies are often considerably longer than eight notes. since seto singing is also syllabic by nature, various additional words, refrain words and repetitions have been added to align the long melodies with the octosyllabic line of runosong verse.4 at the same time, the octosyllabic main line remains recognizable in seto songs and the use of additional elements depends on the structure of a specific tune. the structural complexity of the songs prompts the question whether seto tunes used to be originally shorter, and the melody and verse line extended simultaneously throughout the history or were the octosyllabic runosong lines in the seto region matched to longer melodies originating in some other musical tradition (rüütel 1990: 106; pärtlas 2006b: 27–28). an altogether different question is whether the musical and poetic form of seto laments is derived only 3 see below “the musical structure of seto laments”, also tampere 1934; kolk 1979; j. sarv 1980; v. sarv 1980; rüütel 1990; pärtlas 1997, 2001, 2006a, 2006b, 2010a, 2010b; ambrazevicius, pärtlas 2011. 4 since the texts and melodies are not strictly linked in seto singing, the same text is often adapted to different tune types, using the specific methods of extending the main verse line for every tune type. thus, the octosyllabic main line of toomalaul, “toomas torrõ poisikõnõ” (‘toomas, a nice young man’), can be sung to different melodies using the following variants (the extending elements are marked in italics): “toomas õks torrõ jal poisikõnõ”, “toomas jo, toomas torrõ poisikõnõ”, “toomas, toomas torrõ poisikõnõ, poisikõnõ”, “toomas torrõ, toomas jo torrõ poisikõnõ” (the examples are from both the lead singer’s and the choir’s part). 43the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics from runosongs or could their idiosyncratic features have developed somewhat independently from runosongs, on the basis of some other tradition. the juxtaposition of bridal and death laments, also the comparison of these with two other groups of songs with a different version of meter, helps to cast light on the most general methodological questions prompted by an analysis of verse metrics in musical performance – which is the only way it can be done in oral tradition. can the meter in texts with highly similar linguistic structures be considered as different if the texts are differently structured and rhythmically organized in the performance? if and how to differentiate between poetic meter as the generalized (deep) structural level, on the one hand, and the varying performance level (in performances using different musical structures), on the other? the paper opens with an overview of the seto lamenting tradition and its place within the finnic lamenting tradition. we will introduce the analyzed material and methods. this is followed by an introduction of previous research on the musical features and metrics of seto laments and the metrics of seto runosongs. the analysis of laments provides an overview of their rhythm structure in musical performance, syllable structure and the positioning of words in different degrees of quantity5 in the sung lines. then the characteristics of the metrics of the laments and the two previously analyzed runosong groups are compared against each other, briefly outlining the possible development patterns of these song groups. material and methods the sources analyzed in this paper are 14 bridal laments (435 lines) and 17 choral death laments (301 lines) – altogether 736 lines (analyse files of the study are available at oras et al. 2021). since no other recordings of choral death laments are known, the material is rather scant. among the choral death laments are two improvisational variants of ‘the war song’ by anne vabarna, the rhythmic structure of which corresponds to those of laments and they are sung to the same tune than her choral death lament (see footnote 1). the total number of lines does not include the 18 unclear lines that have been excluded 5 in the finnic runosong meter, in general, the quantity distinction of long and short word-initial syllables is relevant. in most of the estonian language (including south-estonian and seto), as a result of language change, the long syllabic quantity divided into long (q2) and overlong (q3) during the period of considerable changes in the prosodic system in approximately 13th to 16th century (rätsep 1989: 1518). 44 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun from the analysis. the material comes from the collections of audio-recordings of the estonian folklore archives at the estonian literary museum. determining the metric structure of the text of a traditional song is a challenging task since the so-called natural verse systems may not employ simple patterns but have evolved alongside the development of language and in reciprocal interaction with the musical tradition used in singing (lotman 1998: 1847–1848; ross, lehiste 2001: 3). the text of a song cannot (always) be studied independently of its performance since the song’s melody and performance practices inevitably structure the composition of the verse line (cf. küper 1988: 274–281; sarv 2011a: 334). the musical performance of lines using the same tune (or following the same principles of musical/melodic structure) also reveals the metrically equivalent units in different lines. thus, also in seto songs, the metric organization of lines is revealed in their performance – dividing the syllables of a line into musical metrical units can theoretically be done in multiple ways. how these ways have been actually realized in the tradition will become known only in the analysis of audio-recordings. in the paper, we will propose our interpretation of the metrics of seto laments and juxtapose it with the results of analyzing seto runosong, attempting to understand the seto traditional metrical system as a whole. for that purpose, we will compare (a) the linguistic structure of the lines (the syllabic composition, and use of quantity degrees, without taking the performance into account); and (b) the realization of this structure in a musical performance. in the analysis, we have adopted the terms ‘performance rhythm group’ and ‘performance rhythm structure’ to refer to the units of musical rhythm and their organization in which textsetting occurs during musical performance. syllable structures have been indicated as sequences of numbers, without separating signs (e.g. sul-lõ kal-lu kaa-la ümb-rel-le – 2223). the syllable structures correspond to syllable divisions in ordinary speech (without taking into account the so-called song syllables, in case a syllable is stretched over two musical metrical units in singing – e.g., even though the word va-(a)ht-rõ-hõ is sung over four metric units, it is linguistically a trisyllabic word). word-final negation particle is regarded as a separate monosyllabic word in case it lasts for the duration of an independent metric unit (saa_as < saa and õs, ‘can’ and ‘not’, the vowel of the negation word is assimilated with the previous vowel). if the word-final negation particle forms a part of the musical metrical unit together with the final syllable of a verb, it is regarded as a part of the same syllable (o-lõi < olõ and õi, ‘is’ and ‘not’). the analysis of quantity degrees differentiates between three degrees of quantity. in addition, it considers as separate groups (a) the long archaic forms in which the apocope or syncope has not taken place and for which it is not 45the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics clear whether the performers perceive these as q2 or q3 words (oras, iva 2017: 180–181), and (b) of a small group of words that could be used in language as q2 or q3 words. the quantity of the words was identified with the help of the seto language dictionary, sometimes also the dictionary of the võru dialect was used (jüvä 2002; käsi 2016). andreas kalkun, a native speaker of seto language, identified the quantity of single specific words used only in lamenting based on his intuition. the performance rhythm structure of a song line consists of the performance rhythm groups of 2 and 3 musical metrical units, which start with a stressed (or secondary stressed) syllable.6 the boundaries of a performance rhythm group (further also referred to as ‘rhythm group’) are determined only by the word stresses and not influenced by the alternation of musical harmonies or the movement of melody. the term ‘musical metrical unit’ designates a category of musical rhythm of the duration of more or less the eight note that usually corresponds to a single syllable (sometimes also half a syllable or two syllables) in the line. the patterns of performance rhythm structures indicate the number of units in the performance rhythm groups, and the groups are divided by hyphens, e.g., 2-3 (sais-ta / kot-ta-lõ ‘i come to you’, see example 1 below). in the examples, the syllables are hyphenated, and hyphens are also used to indicate the stretching of a (linguistic) syllable over two musical metrical units – two song syllables (e.g., when aas-ta is sung as a-as-ta or vaht-rõ-hõ is sung as va-(a)ht-rõ-hõ). the two syllables that have been sung faster, during a single metric unit, are presented in square brackets [u-mah]. the number of possible combinations of performance rhythm groups is limited and the way a song line is split into rhythm groups depends on the linguistic structure of the line and the choices about the positioning of words by the performer within the limits of the system: e.g., the line tuulõ anni nuu andõ ‘i gave these gifts to him’ with syllabic structure 2212 can be sung as follows: tuu-lõ / an-ni nuu / an-dõ (the performance rhythm structure is 2-3-2) or tuu-lõ / an-ni nuu / a-(a)n-dõ (2-3-3) or tuu-lõ / an-ni / nu-u / an-dõ (2-22-2) – in q3 words nuu and andõ, one syllable is sung sometimes over one, sometimes over two musical metrical units). 6 in speech, the somewhat irregular alternation of stressed and unstressed units is caused by natural language rhythm, the division of the speech flow into feet – speech units lasting from one stress to another (asu et al. 2016: 126). in the estonian language, a foot is formed of a stressed (incl. secondary stress) syllable, followed by one or two unstressed syllables, whereas the described alternation of stress entails also monosyllabic words (ibid.: 127, 153–154). for language historical reasons, in southeast-estonian dialects, a q3 syllable often builds an entire separate foot (viitso 2003: 162). 46 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun musical metrical units are determined on the basis of the choral part of laments. distinguishing a musical metrical unit is supported by a change in pitch or a perceivable pulsation (the boundary is marked by the dynamics, sometimes with a momentary minimal change in the pitch). if in a choral part the interpretation of the verse in two different ways could be clearly detected, then the two simultaneously sounding musical interpretations were analyzed as two separate structures. the fermata-like musical extensions in death laments do not form a separate metric unit, since these are not independent rhythmic categories that would be proportionate to the main duration (e.g., twice as long). since the two endnotes of the choral part in bridal laments are systematically sung faster, then in these the metric structure of the line ends has been identified based on how the choir joins the lead singer on the last notes of the lead singer’s part – where the two endnotes are not sung faster. of course, there is always a certain grey area of transitions and subjective decisions made in identifying metrical units (some lines were, in fact, excluded from the analysis because it was impossible to identify which rhythm structure they belonged to). perhaps, acoustic measuring might help to make the data more accurate, but that would be extremely time-consuming considering the amount of the material. there is, however, enough material to level out possible identification errors in the final result. in laments, lines of the same lexical composition can be performed with different performance rhythm structures. there is a question whether the performances of the lines with the same linguistic structure but with different musical rhythm should be interpreted (on the level of meter) as separate poetic metrical structures (verse structures) or should the metrical structure be a generalization – and whether this generalization should be based more on the linguistic or the musical level? in our previous studies, we distinguished between musical performance rhythm structure and poetic metrical (verse) structure (oras, sarv 2021). in analyzing the laments, we tried to avoid the terms ‘poetic metrical structure’ and ‘stress groups’ for the reason that it is not clear whether there is any point in differentiating between the structural levels in laments in the same way as it has been done in refrain songs. if there is, it is still impossible to determine which performance rhythm structures correspond to the same generalized verse structure before the analysis is carried out. in the discussion part we compare different song groups on the level of poetic metrical structures. the patterns of poetic metrical structures indicate the number of units in the stress groups, and the groups are divided by plus signs, e.g., 2+3+2. a stress group is as a generalized unit of the level of poetic metrical structure that is based on the musical performance rhythm structure, leaving out of consideration its most varying part (this concerns the shortening method described below). 47the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics units of stress group are here understood as the verse positions which usually are filled by a syllable (in certain cases also half a syllable or two syllables). in short, the signs used in the schemes of the different structural levels are as follows: syllable structure: 232 (ol-li ju-mal-dõ sa-jah ‘i was in weddings of gods’) performance rhythm structure: 2-3-2 (ol-li / ju-mal-dõ / sa-jah) metrical~verse structure: 2+3+2 the first and second halves of the lament lines were analyzed separately. in laments, the end of the first half-line is marked by a monosyllabic word (in rare cases also a disyllabic word sung to a single metric unit), which is preceded by an addressing formula in all bridal laments and in some death laments. for example, in the line sullõ kallu, maamakõnõ, ma kaala ümbrelle (‘i’m leaning, dear mother, around your neck’), the addressing formula is maamakõnõ (‘dear mother’) and ma (‘i’) is the additional syllable connecting the two parts of the line. neither the addressing formula nor the additional syllable is shown in the performance rhythm patterns given here – the analysis includes the main line, which in laments is at most a 10-syllabic line. therefore, in the following analysis, the main line of this example is sullõ kallu kaala ümbrelle, which is usually performed as follows: sul-lõ / kal-lu // kaa-la / ümb-rel-le (the structure of performance rhythm groups is 2-2 // 2-3). it must be kept in mind, though, that the additional syllable is a structural element, characteristic of the musical structure of seto laments.7 background: on laments and seto song metrics seto laments in the finnic lamenting tradition lament is a poetic, musical and bodily form of self-expression characteristic of transition rituals. lamenting relieves psychological tensions caused by changes in the social status of a community member. as these changes alter 7 many ethnomusicologists who have described the metric structure of seto laments have taken into consideration the actually sung texts with an additional syllable (pino, sarv 1981; sarv 2000b, 2000c, pärtlas 2018). since one of the aims of our paper is to compare the meter of seto songs of different structures, it seems practical to do it on the level of the main line, the common part of the different versions of meter. 48 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun the structure of the community, lamenting helps to restore its social coherence and reorganize relationships between members of the community and the spheres of the living and the dead (honko 1974; nenola 1982; wilce 2009; arukask 2011; stepanova, frog 2015; frog, stepanova 2019). as a universal genre, laments are known in different parts of the world: in europe, the area in which the tradition has been preserved longer spans from the south of the balkans to the slavic and finno-ugric peoples in eastern europe, in the regions of eastern (orthodox) rather than western (catholic) christianity. this area also covers the region of the lamenting tradition of the finnic peoples, including that of the seto on the border of estonia and russia (honko 1974: 13–14; nenola-kallio 1982: 16). the main groups of laments in the seto tradition are bridal and death laments, although laments have also been sung when sending a young man off to the army. a bridal lament is sung by the bride and her bridesmaids (podruski’) before the wedding and in the first part of the wedding cycle. the bride usually sings the lead part, in some cases, however, a bridesmaid or some older woman may perform it instead of her (sarv 2000a: 19; hagu 2000: 211). according to the tradition, lamenting is accompanied by constant movements: the bride bows to the people whom she addresses in the lament. the bridesmaids also bow, standing next to the bride in a semi-circle.8 death lament was usually performed solo, although occasionally it may have been performed by a choir: when an unmarried maiden died, her girlfriends lamented at her funeral. while bridal lament used to be an obligatory part of every wedding forming a central genre in the singing culture, choral death lament was a peripheral, rarely used genre, at least in the 19th–20th century. as is common to many other peoples, lament stands apart from other vocal practices in the seto tradition. lamenting (improvising in a lamenting form) is a highly specific activity and a form of self-expression.9 at the same time, the structure of seto choral laments (both bridal and death laments) is almost as stable as the structure of seto runosongs; in this respect, choral laments are more similar to choral songs than death laments performed solo. pointing to the musical similarity between seto choral wedding laments and wedding songs, vaike sarv argues that “bridal lament differs from other wedding songs 8 example available at https://youtu.be/k-5lz_p5ey4?t=334 (00:05:34). 9 the same applies to the solo laments of other finno-ugric peoples – the finnic peoples, mordovians, and udmurts (whose improvisational vocal genre of krez has some functions of laments), as well as russians (the developed lament culture is especially characteristic of the northern part of russia) and lithuanians as representatives of baltic lament tradition. 49the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics mainly in its function” (sarv 2000c: 163).10 in addition to the function, laments performed by a choir are clearly different from other songs because of the specific manner in which they are performed (the difference is more obvious in death laments). the similarity between seto laments, especially choral laments, and runosongs has been previously underlined by all researchers who point out the difference of the seto tradition from the northern finnic lamenting tradition and inquire about the evolution of this style of lamenting.11 in the seto region, laments and songs share the strongest similarities; it is the only finnic area, in which laments have a stable metric structure and, next to solo laments, also choral laments are common. a seto researcher paul hagu finds seto bridal laments “as almost identical with runosong both in poetics and form”. hagu justifiably argues that there is a difference in their verse structure, but it is so slight that “matching the runosong line of verse to the lamenting meter is not a problem for any seto female singer” (hagu 2000: 216, 225). the verses and motifs of laments and songs overlap – the majority of lament verses have direct parallels in songs and, according to kristi salve, there are very few of such traditional motifs that can be found only in laments (salve 2000). paul hagu has suggested that since the laments of other finnic areas are performed solo, “seto bridal lament must have evolved to choral singing already in the seto region, in certain isolation,” even though it may have happened a lot earlier than over the past few centuries (hagu 2000: 226). kristi salve has proposed two possible courses of development for seto lament: “current understanding does not allow us to speculate whether seto lament 10 in estonia (outside of setomaa) only few examples of death laments are recorded from eastern region (pino, sarv 1981). in the estonian wedding tradition a cycle of runosongs, sung when sending the bride away from home, function as laments, but they were not performed differently from the other runosongs and were not considered laments by either the performers or the researchers (tedre 2000). 11 the songs and laments that share the least resemblance are those of archangel karelia. the laments are characterized here by a separately evolved language of metaphors and unmetered long multiphrasal lines (stepanova 1985, konkka 1985, stepanova 2017, frog 2019). in southern karelia, and especially in ingria, laments are more similar to songs both in contents and form, but they are still basically unmetered (honko 1974; nenola 1982, 2002). in the musical tradition of finnic laments, southern vepsian laments have the most simple monophrasal structure, and are considered to be the most archaic examples of finnic laments by ingrid rüütel (rüütel 2000). musically similar to the latter are izhorian, votic and seto tunes of (solo) laments, the scale of which also consists of 3 to 4 successive notes, which are sung syllabically with a descending melody, whereas their structure is slightly more complex. karelian lament tunes have a larger musical range and their structure is the most complex, representing a later stage of musical thinking (rüütel, remmel 1980; krasnopolskaya 1980, 1986; niemi 2002). 50 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun became what it is now through a slow course of development, in parallel with singing, or – which is more likely – the early lamenting style was thoroughly reformed on the example of the once established runosong” (salve 2000: 71). vaike sarv has regarded the metrics of laments as “pre-runosong”, considering the archaic nature and constant practicing of the lamenting genre, although in a following explanation, she has pointed out its relation with runosong: seto lament metrics is a result of “the parallel development of some elements of runosong in the area influenced by baltic and slavic contacts” (sarv 1993: 292; 2000c: 161). the musical structure of seto laments vaike sarv and žanna pärtlas have studied the musical side of seto choral laments. sarv investigated the tunes of bridal laments focusing on the lead singer’s part (sarv 2000b, 2000c); pärtlas analyzed in more detail the tune types of choral death laments on the basis of the polyphonic choral part (pärtlas 2018).12 while both scholars agree that the poetic and musical structures of all seto lament types share similar features, pärtlas, when comparing the tune types of choral bridal and death laments, also noticed essential differences between them. for example, regardless of the small number of recordings, choral death laments have been performed to various tune types, whereas bridal laments, which were more widely spread, had one established tune type. the following description of lament tunes relies largely on the study by pärtlas (2018). the tunes of choral laments, in terms of style, are part of an older layer of seto multipart singing, which is characterized by an unusual ancient scale (the so-called one-three-semitone scale),13 a single-level rhythmic system in which all notes are structurally of the same length (in performance, the length of the 12 the choral part was preferred because of its stability and for the reason that pärtlas categorizes tune types according to the alternating rhythm of harmonic complexes (harmonic rhythm). 13 the one-three-semitone scale (in semitones, 1-3-1-3-1, notated as d–e♭–f♯–g–a♯–b) is highly rare in traditional music and its origins are so far unclear (sarv, jaan 1980; pärtlas 1997, etc.). the only documented parallels are found in the choral songs of belgorod region of russia (south russia), which is geographically very far from setomaa (pärtlas 2005, 2006a). the one-three-semitone scale is typical of the oldest vocal genres of the seto tradition. this fact and also the intervallic structure of this scale and specific tuning while singing give evidence that here we are dealing with the relict of ancient musical thinking. 51the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics notes somewhat varies), and the text and tune are syllabically related (one note usually corresponds to one syllable). the textual and musical structure of seto laments have two components—the main verse and melody line, and the addressing formula. in choral laments, the addressing formula is mostly a quadrisyllabic word in a diminutive form (maamakõnõ ‘dear mother’, tätäkene ‘dear father’, velekene ‘dear brother’, sõbrakõnõ ‘dear friend’, etc.); in laments performed solo, the quadrisyllabic addressing formula is often extended by adding a disyllabic word (e.g., kuku maamakõnõ ‘dear mother’). the main melody line divides into two, and the first part has a stable musical structure, consisting of two performance rhythm groups based on word stress a 2-unit group is followed by 3-unit group. for aligning the main verse with a 3-unit group, a structural additional syllable is used, which is highly typical of seto singing (e.g., kur-val / mee-lel ma ... ‘in sorrow, i ...’). this additional syllable produces a mandatory caesura in the line and can be interpreted as an anacrusis to the second half-line. the addressing formula may be located before the main melody line (sõbrakõnõ, sõbrakõnõ, sinno veeme mi vällä viimätsestä ‘dear friend, dear friend, we’ll take you out for the last time’) or inside the main line immediately preceding the additional syllable (sullõ lää, maamakõnõ, ma ligi lähkohe ‘i’m going, dear mother, very close to you’). the second part of the melody line varies in length and structure, consisting of 4 to 6 musical metrical units (syllable-notes), which depending on the position of word stress, are grouped differently, forming 2and 3-unit rhythm groups (additional syllables are not used in the second half of the line). in bridal laments and the most typical tune type of choral death laments (see examples 1 and 2), the addressing formula as if disrupts line at an “inappropriate” moment – before the additional syllable. such positioning of the addressing formula leaves the impression of “confused” emotional speech. the additional syllable, which now follows the addressing formula, acquires a new function as a connecting syllable, which depending on the manner of performance (the use of a rhythmic stop at the end of the addressing formula), may auditorily become part of the end of the addressing formula or the beginning of the second half-line as a kind of an anacrusis or pickup (although in terms of the main musical structure it is not part of the second half-line). regardless of the location of the addressing formula, the textual and performance rhythm structure of the main line remains the same, which allows referring to this line as a unique seto lamenting line. the tune types of bridal and death laments are very similar in their formal structure and rhythmic model. their harmonic rhythm (the rhythm of alternating harmonic complexes), however, differs considerably, suggesting the use of different tune types. folk singers are well aware of the difference and 52 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun never mix up the tunes of a bridal and a death lament. the bridal and death laments are also distinctive in the manner of performance – in death laments, the endnotes of the motifs are extended, resembling sighs (see the circled notes in example 2), whereas in bridal lament, the final pair of syllabic notes in a line is performed in accelerated manner. text structure lead singer: kur-val mee-lel ma // sais-ta kot-ta-lõ choir: kur-val mee-lel, maamakõnõ, ma // sais-ta kot-ta-lõ in sorrow i // come to you in sorrow dear mother i // come to you example 1. lines of lead singer and choir of a bridal lament performed by jekaterina lummo with the choir, värska parish, 1990 (rkm, mgn i 59 (7)). the harmonic rhythm is indicated below the choir part – the rhythm of two alternating harmonic complexes (marked by symbols o and x), af designates the addressing formula. (translation: ‘i’m coming to you in sorrow, dear mother’.) text structure lead singer: mää-nest lää-de sa // kjau-ki kjau-ma-he choir: mää-nest lää-de, tsi-ds´a-kõ-nõ, sa // kjau-ki kjau-ma-he what journey are you // going on what journey are, dear sister you // going on example 2. lines of lead singer and choir of a death lament for a young woman, performed by maria sirel with the choir, serga parish, 1972 (kki, rlh 72: 5(1)). the harmonic rhythm is indicated below the choir part – the rhythm of two alternating harmonic complexes (marked by symbols o and x), af designates the addressing formula. the circled notes indicate the extended endnotes of motifs. (translation: ‘what journey, dear sister, you are going on?’) 53the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics previous studies on the metrics of seto laments the metrics of seto laments has been previously described by an estonian ethnomusicologist vaike sarv (1986, 1993, 2000b, 2000c) and folklorist paul hagu (2000). both have proceeded in their analysis from the musical performance of laments. vaike sarv carried out a statistical analysis of metrical structures in the lead singer’s part of bridal laments and in death laments performed solo. she described the metrical system of a lament as an accentual system, in which a stressed syllable that starts ‘a foot’ or ‘stress group’14 may be followed by a different number of syllables (sarv 1986: 278–279; 2000b: 127, the following examples are taken from the studies of bridal laments, ibid.: 130, the slashes separate the feet, as delimited by vaike sarv, see also fn. 16 below): pe-rä-/mä-ne mul // om-mõ / ik-mi-ne (2 / 3 / 2 / 3 syllables) (‘for the last time i’m crying’) näi-o / sul-lõ ma // ku-mar-da / jal-ga (2 / 3 / 3 / 2 syllables) (‘i, maiden, before you i prostrate myself ’) hii-rol / la-sõ_ks siin // hil---lä / min-nä (2 / 3 / 2 / 2 syllables) (‘let the horse, here, ride slowly’) sui-ku_ks / tu-lõ_s mul // suu-ri / sui-ga-tõn-na (2 / 3 / 2 / 4 syllables) (‘i didn't have a big sleep’) the second unstressed syllable of the second foot is an additional syllable – a monosyllabic word (very rarely a disyllabic word sung to a single musical metrical unit) that sarv refers to as a connecting word (cf. hagu’s term ‘transitional syllable’). a lament line most often includes 9–11 syllables (the additional syllable included but without an addressing formula). vaike sarv described the metrics of laments as a homogenous system which applies to both bridal and death laments. sarv demonstrates certain ambiguity in her arguments, apparently caused by dissimilarities in the textual features, and especially the musical performance, of the lines of bridal and death laments. since the end of the choral part in bridal lament is performed faster, the issue whether the number of feet in a lament is always four or could 14 in her first studies vaike sarv has used the term ‘foot’ – not in the meaning of metrical feet that form a trochaic tetrametric rhythm of runosong, but in the meaning of accentual meter, as the group of syllables formed by a stressed syllable and unstressed syllables following it. later she used the term ‘stress group’ instead of ‘foot’. the term ‘stress group’ used by vaike sarv corresponds to the term ‘performance rhythm group’ used here (see material and methods). 54 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun it sometimes be five remains unresolved. sarv seems to acknowledge that a death lament may have a fifth foot / stress group (1993: 292; 2000b: 127). however, in bridal laments, the use of a fifth foot is “avoided with various devices” (ibid.) – under these devices, she means an accelerated performance of syllables in 6-syllabic second half-line.15 at that, vaike sarv has also argued that the second half-line of a bridal lament is relatively stable in terms of duration. to achieve that, the syllables are either performed in an accelerated form in a 6-syllabic half-line or more slowly in a 4-syllabic half-line.16 in analyzing the quantity degrees of the initial syllables in lament lines, vaike sarv distinguished between the short (q1) and long (q2 and q3) quantity degrees, as was common in the study of runosong metrics at the time – the independent metric quality of the quantity degree of q3 in southeast-estonian verse, including seto verse, was recognized only in later studies (mari sarv 2008, 2015; oras, iva 2017). neverthless, vaike sarv measured the acoustic length of vowels (all, not only initial syllables) in the lines of the lead singer of a bridal lament, and the results of this work suggest a clear difference in the vowel length of q3 syllables compared to syllables in q1 and q2: the vowel length of syllables in q1 was approx. 70–100 milliseconds, in q2 it was 140–180 milliseconds, and in q3 about 340–380 milliseconds (2000b: 139). paul hagu employed a heuristic approach in describing the verse structures of the choral part of bridal lament. having grown up in the tradition, hagu demonstrates how he, as a member of the choir, would interpret in the choral part the lines of the lead singer which have a more varied structure and a larger number of syllables than the choral part. indeed, the solutions he proposed in the article do correspond to the traditional way words are positioned in laments in the archival recordings. he also pointed out the tendency that applies to all the verse structures of a bridal lament to sing the end of the choral part, especially the final foot, with a faster rhythm (hagu 2000: 220). 15 in her thesis vaike sarv mentions a 2-part end group: “in the musical performance, the fifth stress group is merged with the fourth”, “thus combining a two-part end group, in which the final syllables are compressed together into the boundaries of a single rhythmic unit” (sarv 2000c: 155–156, a revised version of sarv 1993). 16 this is indicated in the above example of a 2 / 3 / 2 / 2 syllable verse with lines marking the extended syllable in the word hil---lä. while some musical transcriptions of the lead singer’s part of the bridal lament in this publication (sarv 2000b: 130, 156–177) seem to confirm the argument about the extended first syllable/note of the 4-syllabic end part in a musical performance, others do not. 55the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics hagu offers an alternative interpretation of the metric structure of laments to that proposed by vaike sarv. he identified verse structures based on the intuitively determined musical stress: in the typical melodic end formula of a bridal lament tune (in the performance of a lead singer and most of the choir singing the torrõ part) a#-g-f#-g-g he places the music stress on a# and on the last but one g (in example 3 these notes have been circled; cf. also sarv 2000b: 152).17 paul hagu also interpreted these musical stresses that are not always consistent with lexical stresses as the stresses of poetic meter. 17 since musical stress is a complex and often ambiguous phenomenon, which may be perceived differently by people of various cultural backgrounds, the positions of stresses proposed by hagu can be contested. however, there is indeed an analytical consideration that supports positioning the line’s last musical stress on the second to the last note of the lament tunes. this consideration takes into account the above-mentioned phenomenon of harmonic rhythm typical of the seto multipart songs. e.g., the endings of melody lines of the length of five musical metrical units are characterized by the harmonic rhythm pattern xoxoo in bridal laments and xxoxx in death laments (see examples 1 and 2; corresponding melody variants of the main voice are e.g. a#-g-f#-g-g and a#-a#-g-f#-f#). in both cases, the tune arrives at the last “tonic” function on the last but one syllable-note, which creates a harmonic accent. interestingly, this harmonic accent does not coincide with the beginning of the last 3-syllabic stress group of the text. the research on the harmonic rhythm in seto songs reveals that such a contradiction in this style is rather exceptional (pärtlas 2001). here it is possible to draw a parallel with the performance of the line structure 2+3+3 (8 syllables=positions, word stresses on the 3. and 6. position) in the songs of stable length: when performing the 2+3+3 line structure, the harmonic (melodic) accent on the last but one note does not coincide with the word stress on the third note from the end and, as a result, the same contradiction emerges as in the laments. 56 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun a) b) a) sul-lõ kal-lu, vel-l´o-kõ-nõ, ma // kaa-la ümb-/rel-le (‘i’ll hold you, dear brother, around your neck’) b) sul-lõ oi-u, vel-l´o-kõ-nõ, // ma ol-gõ / nõa-lõ (‘i’m leaning, dear brother, upon your shoulders’) example 3. the stresses of poetic meter in the choral part of bridal laments that paul hagu identified on the basis of musical stresses. the musical/poetic metric stresses in the second half-line have been circled. a) the metric structure, the end part of which hagu interprets as placing the initial linguistically stressed syllable of the word in the metrically unstressed position of the line (here on the word ümbrelle); b) the metric structure, in which, according to hagu’s interpretation, the additional syllable preceding the second half-line is given a musical/poetic metric stress and thus “the position of the transitional [additional] syllable remains empty” (hagu 2000: 223). transcriptions of recording era, pl 25 b2. since in the second half-line of bridal laments musical ending formulas coincide in the performance of different linguistic structures, according to paul hagu, the initial syllables of polysyllabic words do not always align with the position of musical/poetic metric stress, but may fall on an unstressed position (example 3a).18 hagu argues that if the second half-line consists of four syllables, the structural additional syllable is transferred to the “rise of the verse foot” (it is not sung on the usual f# note, preceding the a# note, but on the a# note, which, according to hagu, designates both the musical and poetic metric stress) and, in this case, the position of the additional syllable remains empty (example 3b). 18 this follows the example of runosong verse, as in regional traditions in which the quantity of the stress syllable is taken into account it is common and natural that short stressed syllables fall on unstressed (or weak) positions in the metric pattern. in his work, paul hagu does not touch upon syllable quantity. 57the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics paul hagu views the following pattern as the “metrically ideal line of bridal lament”: x 1 – x 1 – addressing formula – 1[additional syllable] // x 2(3) – x 1 (in the pattern, x indicates poetic metric stress (not word stress), and numbers indicate metrically unstressed syllables, which sometimes also include the linguistically stressed syllables of words). considering all the possible deviations, the pattern would be: x 0/1/2 – x 0/1/2 addressing formula – 0/1/2 x 2/3 – x 0/1 (hagu 2000: 224). on seto runosong metrics in the comparison of the metrics of seto laments and that of seto runosongs, we rely on our previous studies on two runosong corpora: the lyrical and epic songs sung to the feast tune, of stable length (577 lines) and the harvest, wedding and game songs with a refrain and varying line length (1,150 lines; oras, iva 2017; oras 2019; oras, sarv 2021). like laments, these songs are sung to tunes belonging to the older type, which consist of notes belonging to a single length category. the analysis explores the level of the main line in the choral performance (excluding repetitions and additional syllables) and identifies verse structures – combinations of stress groups. here we have adopted the term ‘stress group’ to describe verse structure according to regular patterns in the alternation of (linguistically) stressed and unstressed units (see material and methods). there are two structures in the songs with a stable melodic line length (the number of musical metrical units): 2+2+2+2 lines and 2+3+3 lines (83.2% and 16.8%, respectively, see table 1). 58 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun table 1. the share of different verse structures in refrain songs and songs using the feast melody (oras, sarv 2021). in the schemes of poetic metrical structures, the stress groups are separated by the plus signs (+), in the schemes of musical performance rhythm structures the performance rhythm groups are indicated by hyphens (-). verse structure refrain songs songs using the feast melody 2+2+2+2 two performance rhythm structures in refrain songs 958 (83.0%) ...-2-2-2 – 58.4% ...-2-3  – 24.6% 480 (83.2%) 2+3+3 146 (12.7%) 97 (16.8%) 2+3+2 35 (3.0%) 2+2+3 11 (1.0%) 3+2+3, 3+3+2 4 (0.3%) total no. of lines 1150 (100%) 577 (100%) in refrain songs, the main line is sung over 8 or 7 musical metrical units. the initial stress group may be extended by a structural (i.e. obligatory) or occasional additional syllable in musical performance.19 in this song group, we differentiated between two structural levels – the poetic metric structure (consisting of stress groups) and that used in a musical performance (consisting of performance rhythm groups). the differentiation of structural levels proved useful in terms of the 2+2+2+2 verse structure, which has been presented in two ways: as groups of two notes, or 2-unit performance rhythm groups (2-22-2, e.g., kuv-võ / pruu-di / ko-(o)t/ ta-lõ ‘in the place of six brides’; sääl-tä / kün-dü / kü-sü/ mä-he ‘from there i’m going to ask’), but also by shortening the end part, “compressing” the final two 2-unit stress groups into a 3-unit performance rhythm group (2-2-3, e.g., kuv-võ / pruu-di / kot-ta-lõ; si-nult / kün-nü / [kü-sü]-mä-he – the syllables given in square brackets are those “compressed” together, sung twice as fast).20 such lines shortened during the performance constitute one-fourth of all the lines. at the same time, different singers do not use shortening in equal measure. while anne vabarna, one of the best-known seto singers, hardly ever uses it in refrain songs, there are 19 in a harvest song with a longer tune, mentioned above, there are two extra line-initial syllables. 20 refrain songs contain a few lines with the 2+2+3 structure (table 1, fourth row), in which a word with a short (q1 or q2) initial syllable starts the final stress group, which can be sung only to the performance rhythm structure of …-2-3. 59the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics singers who have adopted it as the main way of performing the lines with the corresponding linguistic structure, and here the influence of lamenting may be speculated (oras 2019). the statistics of the quantity degrees of the two analyzed runosong groups only concerns the lines performed with 3-unit performance rhythm groups. the linguistic composition of the lines performed to the …-2-2-2 performance rhythm has not been further revealed, containing only a remark that here the initial words of the stress groups may be in all three quantity degrees. among the lines of 3-unit stress groups, in the most popular, 2+3+3 structure, the final 3-unit group does not open with q3 initial syllables, but a few q3 initial syllables can be found in the third position of the main line (in this case, the 3-unit group is formed of the syllable structure 21, e.g., kan-ni (ta) / at-ra ilm / kaa-bul-da ‘he ploughed without a hat’). in the more rare metric structures 2+3+2 and 2+2+3 of seven positions, q3 initial syllables can be found only at the beginning of the last 2-unit group of the 2+3+2 structure (oras, iva 2017: 187–188, 191). when analyzing the runosongs of the võrumaa region, the neighboring county of setomaa, mari sarv discovered that here the overlong (q3) initial syllable has acquired a distinctive metric quality – q3 initial syllables or monosyllabic words are often stretched over two metric positions (sarv 2015: 11, 14).21 this principle also applies in the analyzed seto runosongs: monosyllabic words and the q3 initial syllable of a disyllabic word is quite often stretched over two musical metrical units. in the case of q1 and q2 words, only the final syllable is sometimes divided over two metric units. at the same time, only two initial syllables of q1 and q2 words are in some cases sung twice as fast, “compressed” together to a single metric unit, but never those of q3 words (oras, iva 2017: 182–184, 187). 21 this phenomenon is rooted in the historical shortening of the words. several q3 words are formed as a result of syncope following the stressed syllable; the second syllable of such q3 words can start a new linguistic as well as metric foot, as in the case of poi-si-kõ-nõ > pois-kõ-nõ (‘dear boy’) (sarv 2011: 334–335; pajusalu 2014: 582–583). it seems that, at least in case of southern estonian songs, the change of the quantity system in language resulted in reconfiguring the metrical structure as well (sarv 2015, 2019). 60 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun results of the analysis structures of performance rhythm in the first half-line of choral laments, the syllables that are part of the main verse are always performed for the duration of 4 musical metrical units (the 2-2 structure). if an additional syllable immediately follows the half-line (without a preceding addressing formula), it forms part of the second performance rhythm group. the performance rhythm structures occurring in the second half-line of choral laments are given in table 2. the proportionally largest share of structures is those consisting of 5 musical units – 3-2 and 2-3, the latter being the most common one. while the share of the 3-2-structure is quite similar in both genres (about one-fourth of all lines, constituting 20% in bridal laments, cf. sarv 2000b: 131),22 the shares of other structures in these two lament genres reveal a preference for shorter lines in bridal laments and longer lines in death laments. the 2-3-structure is mostly predominant in bridal laments, in which longer 6-unit structures cannot be found. in death laments, the 2-3-structure is encountered half as often as in bridal laments; however, the longer, 2-2-2-structure lines are statistically prevalent among death laments. the shortest, 2-2-structure is quite rare in death laments but is fairly often found in bridal laments. table 2. the performance rhythm structures of the second half-line of choral laments, shown in total and separately for both genres (b – bridal laments, d – death laments). performance rhythm structure total b d total% b% d% 3* 26 26 0 3.5 6.0 0.0 2-2 60 52 8 8.2 12.0 2.7 3-2 179 89 90 24.3 20.5 29.9 2-3 352 268 84 47.8 61.6 27.9 2-2-2 116 0 116 15.8 0 38.5 3-3 3 0 3 0.4 0 1.0 total 736 435 301 100 100 100 22 in the statistics based on more extensive sources (1,522 lines of lead singer’s part of bridal laments), provided by vaike sarv, the percentages are more or less the same: 15% of the halflines with xx xx verse feet (in the current analysis the performance rhythm structure 2-2); 20% xxx xx (3-2); 42% xx xxx (2-3); 20% xx xxxx – here, the initial syllables of the last verse foot are sung faster (in the current analysis also the 2-3 structure) – sarv 1986: 278–279. (here ‘x’ indicates a syllable, a group of syllables – a verse foot of an accentual system. in her more recent articles, vaike sarv used the term ‘stress group’ instead of ‘verse foot’, cf. sarv 2000b: 131.) 61the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics * the 26 addressing verses of bridal laments, with only 3 syllables and corresponding musical metrical units in the second half-line (kaligo, ‘dear’) form an exception. structures in which a monoor a disyllabic word is sung on the 3rd musical metrical unit of the five-unit half-line (mostly the syllable structures 212 and 222) are considered as 3-2 (in 19 lines) or 2-3 structures (in 28 lines). syllable structures the first half-line the first half of the main line consists of 2–4 syllables (table 3). quite often, in 226 out of 736 cases, or in almost a third of the cases, the amount of syllables is smaller than 4, which is the constant number of corresponding musical metrical units. therefore, in performance, one syllable is often divided between two musical metrical units. there are no significant differences between the two lament genres. the content of the first half-lines is also rather “sparse”: the first rhythm group is completed by a semantically light word in 20% of examples and including a semantically light syllable in another 40%, while the second rhythm group exhibits a comparable proportion of semantically light words. in the first rhythm group, there are 142 monosyllabic words that are divided between two musical metric units. here the nearly asemantic word noo~oo (‘well, oh, ~now’), functioning as a metrical filler but also as a discourse marker indicating the onset of a sequence of lines on a new theme occurs 29 times. other words with similar functions are kui (‘if ’), which occurs 35 times, siis (‘then’) 8 times, tuu (‘this’) 7 times, and seo~sjoo (‘that’) 7 times. of the 54 monosyllabic words in the second rhythm group that are divided between two metric units, the nearly asemantic words viil (‘yet, again’) and võe~või (‘or’) occur 27 and 3 times, respectively. the proportion of semantically light words is significant (compared to the second half of the line). in our previous study analyzing the longer version of harvest song with the refrain of similar musical structure, we suggested that the beginning part of the line (preceding the additional syllable), sung with 4 musical metrical units, could be tentatively interpreted as including additional syllables that were initially not part of the main verse. the interpretation is supported by the fact that there also exists a shorter version of the harvest song, which has only 2 metric units at the beginning preceding the additional syllable: the longer one no-o käü-ge ti kul-la käe-ke-se; the shorter käü-ge ti kul-la käe-ke-se (‘(well,) move, you dear hands’, ti ‘you’ is the additional syllable). although in laments all the four positions of the first half-line are conventionally filled, the light semantic load of the first half line supports a hypothesis that historically it has been formed 62 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun by extension of the original (shorter, i.e. octosyllabic) verse line. this assumption is also indirectly supported by the structure of solo laments, in which, according to vaike sarv, the first verse foot (here the first performance rhythm group) sometimes remains unoccupied (sarv 1993: 289). table 3. all syllable structures in the first half of the main verse of laments – number and occurrences in both lament genres, shown in total and separately (b – bridal lament, d – death lament). (the table shows linguistic syllables, not the so-called song syllables which are the result of the division of a long syllable between two musical metrical units.) the no. of syllables syllable structure total b d total % b% d% 2 syllables 2 1 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.0 11 13 7 6 1.8 1.6 2.0 2 syllables in total 14 8 6 1.9 1.8 2.0 3 syllables 3 42 35 7 5.7 8.0 2.3 12 126 63 63 17.1 14.5 20.9 21 39 21 18 5.3 4.8 6.0 111 5 4 1 0.7 0.9 0.3 3 syllables in total 212 123 89 28.8 28.3 29.6 4 syllables 4 67 36 31 9.1 8.3 10.3 22 407 252 155 55.3 57.9 51.5 112 12 5 7 1.6 1.1 2.3 211 24 11 13 3.3 2.5 4.3 4 syllables in total 510 304 206 69.3 69.9 68.4 total 736 435 301 100.0 100.0 100.0 the second half-line if the first half-line contains both semantically significant as well as less or unimportant components, then as a rule the second half of line has more semantic weight. the second half of the line most commonly consists of syllable structures of 5 syllables and 5 musical metrical units (table 4, cf. table 2). the share of syllables in half-lines also corresponds to the performance rhythm structure characteristic of each genre – in bridal laments the share of 5-syllabic half-lines is slightly larger than in death laments, but in death laments the percentage of 6-syllabic half-lines is larger than in bridal laments. the share of 4-syllabic half-lines is relatively similar in both lament genres. there are more 63the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics 4and 6-syllabic half-lines than 4or 6-unit performance rhythm structures: death laments include 4-syllabic half-lines, whereas the 4-unit performance structure is quite rare there; bridal laments have a significant number of 6-syllabic half-lines, but no 6-unit performance structures. table 4. syllable structures in the second half of the lines in seto choral laments (syllable structures are listed if there are 10 or more lines in both lament genres together, more rare syllable structures are brought together under ‘other’), the number is shown in total and separately for both genres (b – bridal laments, d – death laments). the most cases of trisyllabic half-lines are the addressing lines with the kaligo-ending. (the table shows linguistic syllables and not the so-called song syllables which are the result of the division of a long syllable between two musical metrical units.) the no. of syllables syllable structure total b d total % b% d% 3 syllables in total 31 30 1 4.2 6.9 0.3 4 syllables 4 10 8 2 1.4 1.8 0.7 13 13 6 7 1.8 1.4 2.3 22 81 41 40 11.0 9.4 13.3 other 9 6 3 1.2 1.4 1.0 4 syllables in total 113 61 52 15.4 14.0 17.3 5 syllables 5 37 13 24 5.0 3.0 8.0 23 241 168 73 32.7 38.6 24.3 32 82 52 30 11.1 12.0 10.0 212 41 22 19 5.6 5.1 6.3 other 8 2 6 1.1 0.5 2.0 5 syllables in total 409 257 152 55.6 59.1 50.5 6 syllables 24 149 74 75 20.2 17.0 24.9 222 30 10 20 4.1 2.3 6.6 other 4 3 1 0.5 0.7 0.3 6 syllables in total 183 87 96 24.9 20.0 31.9 total 736 435 301 100.0 100.0 100.0 a comparison of the data on syllable structures and performance rhythm structures explains why these figures do not correspond to each other (table 5). while in singing one syllable usually corresponds to one musical metrical unit, in some lines one (in rare cases also two) syllable(s) are sung more slowly – in a way that the syllable is divided between two musical metrical 64 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun units. in some lines, the number of syllables exceeds the number of metric units; there two syllables are sung half as fast, during one metric unit. table 5. the performance rhythm structures in the second half-line of laments used in performing the more common syllable structures (10 or more lines in both lament genres together). the cases in which the number of units in a performance rhythm structure is larger than the number of syllables in the half-line are shown in bold; the cases where the number of units in performance rhythm structures is smaller than the number of syllables in the half-line are in bold and italics. no. of syllables syllable structures structures of performance rhythm bridal laments death laments 4 syllables 4 2-2 (8) 2-2 (1), 3-2 (1) 22 2-2 (40), 3-2 (1) 2-2 (6), 3-2 (30), 2-2-2 (4) 13 2-3 (6) 2-3 (6), 2-2-2 (1) 5 syllables 32 3-2 (52) 3-2 (28), 3-3 (2) 5 3-2 (13) 3-2 (24) 23 2-3 (168) 2-3 (62), 2-2-2 (10), 3-3 (1) 212 2-3 (10), 3-2 (12) 2-3 (7), 3-2 (6), 2-2-2 (6) 6 syllables 222 2-3 (10) 2-2-2 (20) 24 2-3 (74) 2-3 (8), 2-2-2 (67) in performing death laments, one syllable is often divided between two metric units. for example, the syllable structure 22 occurs quite frequently in death laments, but in most cases, it is not sung for the duration of 4 metric units – the first syllable of the word is divided between two metric units and the line is performed with the 3-2 structure. also, in the case of half-line containing 5 syllables, one syllable can be divided between two musical metrical units in death laments but not in bridal laments. while performing bridal laments one syllable is rarely divided between two metric units; however, the shortening – “compressing” two syllables into one musical metrical unit – is the norm in 6-syllabic lines. 65the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics positioning and performing words of different quantity in the following, we will explain how word quantity degree influences the positioning of words with a different number of syllables in the song line. the statistics of words in laments (table 6) provides a context for the following data. there are far more disyllabic words in laments than there are words with other numbers of syllables in total, the number of monoand trisyllabic words are more or less the same, and the number of longer, 4to 5-syllabic words is the smallest. there is a greater number of shorter words in the first half-line than there is in the second half-line; the longer words, on the contrary, are positioned mostly in the second half-line, which includes all 5-syllabic words and the majority of trisyllabic words. in terms of quantity, the number of q2 words is the largest, followed by q3 and q1 words. table 6. the number of words of varying length and quantity in choral laments. the numbers of cases in the first and second half-line are separated by a slash. on the right, the number of words with the corresponding number of syllables is shown in total and separately for the first and second half-line. the old forms with a long initial syllable, in which the syncope and apocope have not taken place, and the words which can be pronounced as either q2 or q3 words are shown in separate boxes. empty cells: there are only monosyllabic q1 and q3 words in the language and long as well as q2~q3 syllables are possible only in the polysyllabic words. no. of syllables q1 q2 q3 long q2~q3 total 1st halfline 2nd halfline 1 8/11 270/72 361 278 83 2 277/144 588/349 125/263 20/53 6/13 1838 1016 822 3 15/61 14/43 13/150 0/94 0/2 392 42 350 4 20/95 46/57 1/9 0/1 0/0 229 67 127 5 0/32 0/5 0/0 0/0 0/0 37 0 37 total 320/343 (663) 648/454 (1,102) 409/494 (903) 20/148 (168) 6/15 (21) 2,857 1,403 1,419 the first half-line the system of positioning the words of different quantities and with a different number of syllables is simpler in the first half-lines where shorter words dominate, and the main line is always sung over four musical metrical units (table 7). 66 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun monosyllabic words are sung over one or two musical metrical units. short monosyllabic q1 words are performed only over one musical metrical unit and are positioned only on the second unit (which can be interpreted as the second verse position). long monosyllabic q3 words, performed during one musical unit, belong to the first performance rhythm group. in the second group there are only monosyllabic q3 verbs with the following negation particle (e.g., saa-ai ‘cannot’ – 26 cases, syllable structures 111 and 211). as the particle belongs together with the preceding verb, it would be more reasonable to interpret these cases as disyllabic words. the vast majority of q3 monosyllabic words are divided between two musical metrical units. the syllables divided between two units are positioned on 1st–2nd or 3rd–4th metric units. in 13 cases, the first half-line consists of two monosyllabic words divided into 4 metric units (e.g., ku-i / vi-il ‘if again’). disyllabic words are positioned syllabically in the first half-line, regardless of word quantity (except for ka-os-/si(-i) ‘i would disappear’). the positioning of trisyllabic words in the first half-line requires dividing one syllable between two musical metrical units. the system here is the same as in the songs: in q1 and q2 words the final syllable, and in q3 words, the initial syllable is divided (oras, iva 2017). quadrisyllabic words in the first half of the line are q1 or q2 words (with one exception), and they are sung syllabically. 67the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics table 7. the positioning of the words of different quantity degree on the four musical metrical units (notes) in the first half of the song line. the total of corresponding cases is shown in the right column. q1 and q2 words are analyzed together since the principles of their positioning coincide. the forms with a long initial syllable, in which the syncope and apocope have not taken place, and the words which can be pronounced either as q2 or q3 words (29 cases altogether), as well as 2 exceptions, are not included in the table. monosyllabic 1st 2nd 3rd 4th total q1   ma     8 q3         kui       14   sääl     6     saa as 26 rist     142     viil 54 disyllabic           q1, q2   säidse     407     panõ 458 q3   ümbre     44     jättä 80 trisyllabic           q1, q2 tulõva 29 q3 kottalõ 13 quadrisyllabic           q1, q2 hellätsille 66 the second half-line in the second half-line with a varying number of musical metrical units, other positioning models are added to the models used in the first half-line. here it proved challenging to decide how the half-lines that are sung using five metric units, in which a monoor disyllabic word is sung during the third metric units (mainly the middle syllable of 212 syllable structure and the middle disyllabic word, sung twice as fast, of 222 syllable structure) should be organized into performance rhythm groups. mechanically all these could be identified as a 3-2 structure because a monosyllabic word positioned on one musical metrical unit that is followed by a longer word, does not, as a rule, start a metrical unit. but the previous analysis of refrain songs has shown that 212 and also 222 syllable structures (as well as 23 and 24 syllable structures), even if using the exact same lines, may be sung both during the five and six 68 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun metrical units. considering these alternatives, we regarded in this analysis the following to be a 2-3 performance rhythm structure: – all second half-lines of the 222 syllable structure in which the middle word is compressed to one metric unit during the performance (10 lines, e.g., ol-la / [u-mah] ko-toh ‘to be in my own home’); – these lines of the 212 syllable structure in which (a) q3 monosyllabic words are content words (12 lines: the words kuus, käest, maa, rüä, suud, vii, mii); (b) a monosyllabic non-content word carries the sentence stress (6 lines: ar koolda – ar ‘away’, koolda ‘die’, ar minnä – ar ‘away’, minnä ‘go’, sjoost aost~tunnist ‘by that time’ – sjoost ‘that’, miä tetä ‘what to do’ – miä ‘what’). this principle is supported by the fact that all these monosyllabic words that are sung in the middle group of the 2-2-2 performance rhythm structure during two metrical units (maa ‘earth’, suu ‘mouth’, sau ‘clay’) are also content words. a line of the 212 syllable structure is regarded as belonging to the 3-2 performance rhythm structure if (a) the monosyllabic word is a short pronoun (11 lines: ma ‘i’, mu ‘my’, mi ‘we’, ti ‘you’); (b) the monosyllabic word is formed of a long syllable but the word is not a content word and does not carry sentence stress (6: joht ‘~indeed not’, küll ‘~indeed’, miä ‘that’, mul ‘i [have]’); (c) the monosyllabic word is the second component of a compound word (2: mar´apuu ‘berry tree’, vislapuu ‘cherry tree’). monosyllabic words a. sung over one musical metrical unit: 1) the final syllable of the three-unit rhythm group in structure 3-2 (q1 as well as q3 words, 19 in total): söö-di, ma / sei-e (‘[you] fed me, i ate’); ko-do küll / tul-la (‘to come home’). 2) the initial syllable in structure 2-3 (only q3 autosemantic words or words with a sentence accent, 18 in total). 3) the remaining 3 cases are two-unit groups, containing a negation particle (saa-ai ‘cannot’). b. sung over two musical metrical units: q3 words, several times in the structures 2-2 (4, all maa-lõ / jä-ä ‘[i’ll] remain in prostration’), 3-2 (6, 4 of them kum-ma-lõ / jä-ä ‘[i’ll] remain in prostration’), 2-3 (11, tu-u / tunn´-kõ-nõ ‘that hour’), 2-2-2 (6, ma-a / hai-su-/ kõ-sõ ‘the smell of the earth’), 2-2-2 (6, mõ-sõ / ma-a / lõh-na ‘[i’ll] wash away the smell of the earth’), 2-2-2 (3, ti-i / poo-lõ / pä-äl ‘midway’); only once in the structures 2-2, 3(2-1)-2 and 2-3(1-2) (39 in total). disyllabic words table 8 shows the share of disyllabic words in different performance rhythm structures of the second half-line. in the second half-line, the share of q1 words is 17.5%, q2 words – 42.5%, q3 words – 32.0% and other cases – 8.0%. ta b le 8 . t h e d is tr ib ut io n o f d is yl la b ic q 1, q 2, q 3, q 2 or q 3 w or d s an d o ld fo rm s w ith ou t a p oc op e in th e p er fo rm an ce rh yt h m s tr uc tu re s of th e se co n d h al flin e. t h e w or d ’s p os iti on in th e st ru ct ur e is s h ow n in th e le ft c ol um n ; t h e n ex t c ol um n s sh ow th e n um b er o f d is yl la b ic w or d s of d iff er en t q ua n tit y an d th ei r p er ce n ta g e am on g th e w or d s of th e co rr es p on d in g d eg re e of q ua n tit y. t h e p er fo rm an ce rh yt h m s tr uc tu re s in w h ic h th e d is yl la b ic w or d s b el on g to th e th re eun it g ro up (3 (2 -1 )2 an d 2 -3 (1 -2 )) ar e sh ow n s ep ar at el y. in th e la st th re e co lu m n s, th e sh ar e of d is yl la b ic w or d s of v ar yi n g q ua n tit y at th e b eg in n in g o f c or re sp on d in g p er fo rm an ce rh yt h m g ro up s is s h ow n . pe rf or m an ce r hy th m g ro up s q 1 q 1 w or ds , % q 2 q 2 w or ds , % q 3 q 3 w or ds , % q 2q 3, o ld un sh or ten ed fo rm s q 2q 3, ol d fo rm s, % % a t t he b eg in ni ng o f a p er fo rm an ce r hy th m g ro up q 1 q 2 q 3 q 2q 3, o ld fo rm s 22 0 0 2 0. 6 47 17 .9 1 1. 5 0 4. 0 94 .0 2. 0 22 5 3. 5 10 2. 9 29 11 .0 3 4. 5 10 .6 21 .3 61 .7 6. 4 32 (1 st s yl la bl e ov er 2 u ni ts ) 0 0 1 0. 3 30 11 .4 0 0 0 3. 2 96 .8 0 3( 21) -2 9 6. 3 8 2. 3 0 0. 0 1 1. 5 50 .0 44 .4 0 5. 6 32 23 16 .0 65 18 .6 30 11 .4 12 18 .2 17 .7 50 .0 23 .1 9. 2 23 76 52 .8 15 9 45 .6 83 31 .6 22 33 .3 22 .4 46 .8 24 .4 6. 5 23( 12) (2 s yl la bl es d ur in g 1 un it) 2 1. 4 8 2. 3 0 0 0 0 20 .0 80 .0 0 0 23( 12) 3 2. 1 17 4. 9 6 2. 3 2 3. 0 10 .7 60 .7 21 .4 7. 1 222 19 13 .2 54 15 .5 19 7. 2 16 24 .2 17 .6 50 .0 17 .6 14 .8 222 5 3. 5 15 4. 3 4 1. 5 1 1. 5 20 .0 60 .0 16 .0 4. 0 222 2 1. 4 10 2. 9 8 3. 0 8 12 .1 7. 1 35 .7 28 .6 28 .6 222 (b ot h sy lla bl es o ve r 2 un its ) 0 0 0 0 4 1. 5 0 0 0 0 10 0. 0 0 33 (1 st s yl la bl e ov er 2 u ni ts ) 0 0 0 0 1 0. 4 0 0 0 0 10 0. 0 0 33 (1 st s yl la bl e ov er 2 u ni ts ) 0 0 0 0 2 0. 8 0 0 0 0 10 0. 0 0 to ta l 14 4 10 0. 0 34 9 10 0. 0 26 3 10 0. 0 66 10 0. 0 70 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun disyllabic words can be found in all 2-unit performance rhythm groups as well as in 3-unit groups. in several structures, the choice of words depends on their quantity: the first 2-unit group of the 2-2 structure consists, as a rule, of q3 words – in 47 out of 50 cases (the most frequent line is ol-gõ / nõa-lõ ‘on the shoulders’). a disyllabic word is often – in two-thirds of cases – in the third degree of quantity also in the second performance rhythm group of 2-2 structure. in the first 3-unit group of the 3-2 structure, the q3 disyllabic words occur only in a lengthened form (ku-u-pa / min-nä ‘to go to the cave’), the q3 initial syllable is never sung over a single metric unit. the q1 and q2 disyllabic words form in this structure a 3-unit group with a monosyllabic word (ai-a mul / a-sõld ‘to bustle around’). a comparison of the two lament genres reveals that there are two alternative ways to place disyllabic q3 words: in bridal laments, the second half-line beginning with a disyllabic q3 word is sung shorter, with the performance rhythm structure 2-2; in death laments, the initial syllables of q3 disyllabic words are divided between two metric units to form the 3-2 structure. when discussing the abundance of disyllabic q3 words in 2-2 as well as 3-2 performance rhythm structures and these structures as alternative ways to place disyllabic q3 words, we should remember the assertion of vaike sarv that the disyllabic first verse foot/stress group in bridal laments is performed as extended by the lead singer (see footnote 16). still, the singers perceive the 2-2 structure as different from the 3-2-structure – in bridal laments, a clearly differentiating melody variant is always used when singing the 2-2 structure (see example 3b). in death laments, melodic variation does not differentiate between the 2-2and 3-2-structures. also, in the 2-3 structure, disyllabic words take part in forming 3-unit performance rhythm groups. disyllabic q3 words never occur at the beginning of the final 3-unit group. only disyllabic q1 or q2 words, sung quickly, during the first unit of the 3-unit group (ol-la / [u-mah] ma-jah ‘to be in one’s own house’) can be found in this position. disyllabic q1, q2 as well as q3 words begin from the second unit of a 3-unit performance rhythm group. the placement of monoand disyllabic words in the 3-unit group of the 2-3 structure indicates a boundary separating the first and final two units. neither mononor disyllabic words cross that border (but a trisyllabic word can fill a whole group). the 2-2-2 structure, used as an alternative to the structure 2-3 and occurring only in death laments, contains disyllabic words in every performance rhythm group. in the intermediary group (2-2-2), the number of disyllabic q1 and q2 words is slightly larger compared to other rhythm groups of the given structure 71the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics (80% in total). this may not be coincidental because these two syllables are placed into one musical unit in the alternative 2-3 structure, particularly in the bridal laments, and q1 and q2 words are suitable for this purpose. trisyllabic words as in the first half-line, trisyllabic words are also placed in the second half-line according to specific rules, and here, too, q1 and q2 words stand out from q3 words (table 9). trisyllabic q1 and q2 words form the 3-unit performance rhythm group in the 3-2 structure (e.g., ko-go-ni / hös-te ‘very well’). trisyllabic q3 words in this position are an exception. the vast majority of trisyllabic q3 words as well as old (partially) unshortened forms belong to the 3-unit performance rhythm group of the structure 2-3 (e.g., ko-do / kal-du-da; nõ-sõ / nõud-ma-he ‘to go home’; ‘i will demand [you to tell me]’). as an alternative, in death laments some trisyllabic words belong to the second and third group of the 2-2-2 structure. in that case, the trisyllabic word is placed in the same way as in the first half-line. if it is a q3 word, its initial syllable comprises two musical metrical units (6 lines, e.g., koo-lu / ko-(o) h-/to-he ‘bring death to trial’). if it is a q1 or a q2 word, the last syllable is divided between two musical metrical units (5 lines, e.g., vak-ka / va-la-/ma(a) ‘to prepare the bridal chest’).23 next to the more frequent cases of placing trisyllabic words, more important special cases should be mentioned: 1) the 3-unit performance rhythm group of the structure 2-3 is formed by a trisyllabic q1 or q2 word on four occasions (in that case, there is no secondary stress on the second unit, as is characteristic of other cases of the 2-3 musical structure). 2) both the 3-3 structure and the 33 syllable structure occur in the second half-line on only three occasions. the 3-3 structure is used only in death laments (here, unlike in bridal laments, the half-lines have 6 musical units). the 3-3 structure is formed from the 23 or 32 syllable structures, lengthening the disyllabic q3 word (ma-ri-ja / mä-e-le ‘on the hill of berries’). at the same time, three 33 syllable structures, all found in bridal laments, are sung with 23 such forms occur only in a single death lament, in which the short form of the final word is used similarly to solo laments (olga proskin, marva lõhmus, meldova v., collected by paul hagu 1974, ekrk, fon. 87 (11), the longer form in the example given here would be valamahe). as the line ends with a fermata-like extending, these musical structures could be interpreted also as 2-3 structures. here they are interpreted as 2-2-2-structures because they are situated between successive lines with the clear 2-2-2-structure. ta b le 9 . t h e d is tr ib ut io n o f t ris yl la b ic w or d s in d iff er en t d eg re es o f q ua n tit y in th e p er fo rm an ce rh yt h m s tr uc tu re s of th e se co n d h al flin e (q 1, q 2, q 3, q 2 or q 3 w or d s an d o ld lo n g w or d fo rm s w ith ou t a p oc op e an d s yn co p e) . t h e p os iti on o f t h e w or d in th e st ru ct ur e is s h ow n in th e le ft co lu m n , i n th e n ex t c ol um n s th e n um b er s of tr is yl la b ic w or d s of d iff er en t q ua n tit ie s an d th ei r p er ce n ta g e am on g th e w or d s of th e co rr es p on d in g d eg re e of q ua n tit y ar e sh ow n . t h e la st th re e co lu m n s sh ow th e p er ce n ta g e of tr is yl la b ic w or d s of d iff er en t q ua n tit y at th e b eg in n in g o f co rr es p on d in g p er fo rm an ce rh yt h m g ro up s. pe rf or m an ce r hy th m s tr uc tu re q 1 q 1 w or ds , % q 2 q 2 w or ds , % q 3 q 3 w or ds , % q 2q 3, o ld fo rm s q 2q 3 w or ds , ol d fo rm s, % % a t t he b eg in ni ng o f t he r hy th m g ro up q 1 q 2 q 3 q 2q 3, o ld 32 52 85 .2 37 86 .0 2 1. 3 0 0 57 .1 40 .7 2. 2 0 32 in iti al s yl la bl es in o ne u ni t 3 4. 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 0. 0 0 0 0 23 2 3. 3 2 4. 7 14 3 95 .3 95 99 .0 0. 8 0. 8 59 .1 39 .3 222 fin al s yl la bl e di vi de d 2 3. 3 3 7. 0 0 0 0 0 40 .0 60 .0 0 0 222 in iti al s yl la bl e di vi de d 0 0 0 0 5 3. 3 1 1. 0 0 0 83 .3 16 .7 33 2 3. 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 0. 0 0 0 0 33 0 0 1 2. 3 0 0 0 0 0 10 0. 0 0 0 to ta l 61 10 0. 0 43 10 0. 0 15 0 10 0. 0 96 10 0. 0 73the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics the 3-2 performance rhythm structure: two initial syllables of the last trisyllabic word, which in all cases is a q1 word, are compressed on one metric unit (u-ma-lõ / [o-ho]-lõ ‘into my own misery’) quadrisyllabic words of quadrisyllabic words, almost all q3 words are in the 2-2-structure (8 in total; there is also a q2 word in this position). one q3 word forms the 3-2-structure by dividing the initial syllable into two musical metrical units. all other quadrisyllabic words (excluding a few exceptions) are q1-q2 words and belong either to the 2-3 (82 in total: 74 in bridal laments, 8 in death laments) or the 2-2-2 (69, all in death laments) musical structures. again, the figures show that there are alternatives – a quadrisyllabic word, sung mostly syllabically in death lament, is sung faster in bridal laments, with two initial syllables sung during the first unit of a performance rhythm group (in death lament kün-nü / kü-sü-/mä-he, in bridal lament kün-nü / [kü-sü]-mä-he ‘i’m going to ask you’). in a faster performance (the 2-3 structure), the short vowel of the first q1 word is silent (küsümähe > ksümähe; mar´akõnõ > mrakõnõ). there are more quadrisyllabic words in the second half-line, including all q3 words and most of the q1 words. in the case of the q2 words, the difference from first half-line is smaller. pentasyllabic words pentasyllabic words are always either q1 (32) or q2 (5) words and form the 3-2 structure (ar-mõ-tu-/kõ-nõ ‘dear miserable’). the length of syllables positioned on the first units of performance rhythm groups and a summary of the analysis results in laments, words are organized in a line according to the same principles than in the previously analyzed corpora of seto runosongs (oras, iva 2017). 1. as a rule, one syllable corresponds to one musical metrical unit. 2. the 3-unit group of the 2-3 structure in the second half-line is remarkably different from other groups: a) a q3 syllable (a monosyllabic word or the first syllable of a trisyllabic word)24 or the first two syllables of a disyllabic or quadrisyllabic q1 or q2 word are sung over the first metric unit; b) the first and the second unit are separated – the second unit always carries the secondary stress of a trior quadrisyllabic word or the stress of a disyllabic word. 24 the majority of trisyllabic q3 words can be found in the 2-3 structure. 74 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun (there are 4 lines where the 3-unit group is formed by a trisyllabic q1 or q2 word without a secondary stress on the second syllable.) 3. in other performance rhythm structures a monosyllabic q3 word or the first syllable of a multisyllabic q3 word is very often sung over two musical metrical units: a) the first syllable of a trisyllabic q3 word is generally (in 18 cases out of 20)25 divided over two metric units; b) the first syllable of a disyllabic q3 word is divided over two metric units in 3-unit groups (primarily in the 3-2 structure in the second half-line; in 2-unit groups it is sung over a single unit); c) a monosyllabic q3 word is often divided over two metric units. 4. placing monosyllabic words in the end unit of both the first and the second half-line (except for the word-final negation particle) is avoided. lines with a similar linguistic syllable structure are sung in shortened form in bridal laments and in longer form in death laments, using a smaller or larger number of musical metrical units, respectively. 1. in the second half-line, the structures consisting of 4 syllables (22, 4, also 21) are performed with the performance rhythm structure 2-2 in bridal laments and mainly 3-2 in death laments; at that, the first group begins with a q3 word in 92% of the cases; 2. in the second half-line, the structures consisting of 5 and 6 syllables (23, 212, 222, 24, etc.) are always sung with a shorter, 2-3 performance rhythm structure in bridal laments; in death laments also the longer, 2-2-2 structure is used. in the 6-syllabic half-lines of death laments, performed with the 2-2-2 structure, the third syllable (the first syllable of a dior quadrisyllabic word) is usually in q1 or q2 (in 89 out of 93 cases) – the syllable structure as if reflects the possibility to perform it with the shortened 2-3 structure. also, it must be remembered that in bridal lament, the end (the two final syllables) of the choral part is always sung faster. therefore, the musical line end structures in bridal laments, analysed here, were identified on the basis of the singers’ line (the choir joins the lead singer usually on the third note from the end of line). even though the length of performance rhythm structures that are used to perform linguistically similar lines varies in the second half-line (the possible alternatives are 2-2 ~ 3-2 and 2-3 ~ 2-2-2), the isochronic tendency can still be detected owing to the quantity degree composition: word degrees and the 25 in the two remaining cases, the first syllable of a trisyllabic q3 word is sung over one musical metrical unit in the 3-2 structure. 75the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics number of musical metrical units as if balance each other. if the number of metric units is smaller, the word-initial q3 syllables are usually sung over a single metric unit, whereas in structures of a larger number of metric units, the word-initial q3 syllables are divided over two metric units (see table 10). 1. in the shorter 2-2 and 3-2 structures of the second half-line of laments, the 2-2 structure generally starts with a q3 syllable and the 3-2 structure with a q1 or q2 syllable (also, with a part of a q3 syllable sung over two musical metrical units). the second rhythm group of either structure contains words of all quantities, but the 2-2 structure contains a significant number of first q3 syllables. here, the isochronic tendency in the 2-2 and 3-2 structures is revealed – the preferred combination in the 2-2 structure is long-x /x(long)-x and in the 3-2 structure short-x-x / x-x. 2. in the longer 2-3 and 2-2-2 structures of the second half-line of laments, the end part varies. in the 3-unit group of the 2-3 structure, the first unit is an overlong syllable (the first syllable of a q3 word or a monosyllabic word) or two short syllables (a disyllabic q1 or q2 word or the first syllables of a quadrisyllabic word) have been compressed on this unit. in the second group of the 2-2-2 structure, the first syllable of the first unit is fairly often a q1 or q2 syllable (also, a part of a q3 syllable sung over two musical metrical units). the isochronic tendency can also be seen in the 2-3 and 2-2-2 structures: the 2-3 structure is characterized by the “heavy” beginning of the 3-unit rhythm group – x-x / long~[xx]-x-x, and the length of a 6-unit structure is as if balanced by the use of shorter first syllables – x-x / short-x-x / x-x. table 10. the quantity degree of stressed syllables of multisyllabic words in the initial units of performance rhythm groups in the second half-line of choral laments. performance rhythm structure musical metrical units 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 2-2 q1-q2 5/ q3 55 q1-q2 10/ q3 29 3-2 q1-q2 176/ q3 2 q1-q2 94/ q3 32 2-3 q1-q2 244/ q3 82 q1-q2 0/ q3 161 2-3* q1-q2 3/ q3 1 q1-q2 4/ q3 0 2-2-2 q1-q2 79/ q3 20 q1-q2 109/ q3 4 q1-q2 15/ q3 8 3-3 q1-q2 3/ q3 0 q1-q2 3/ q3 0 in this table, the first syllable of q3 words, or monosyllabic q3 words, sung as extended over two metric units, has been regarded as two “song syllables” – the first component of a divided q3 syllable is regarded as a separate “song syllable” of short 76 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun quantity degree and is categorized as a q1-q2 syllable. in the same performance rhythm structure, the number of words that start from different metrical units does not coincide mainly because a large number of old word forms had to be excluded, the quantity degree of which cannot be determined in the contemporary threedegree system (see below). the slash separates the number of metric units beginning with q1-q2 syllables or q3 syllables. these metric units which show a clear majority of either shorter (q1q2) or third quantity degree are given in bold. the structure …-2-3*, marked with an asterisk, includes lines in which the last performance rhythm group is performed with a trisyllabic q1 or q2 word, whereas its first syllable fills one metric unit and the second unit of the group has no secondary stress. the table does not include (a) the old forms without apocope and syncope, in which the initial syllable is not divided; (b) words that may be either q2 or q3 words; (c) the cases in which the first unit of a rhythm group has two syllables (the first syllables of a quadrisyllabic q1 or q2 word or a disyllabic q1 or q2 word); (d) the cases in which the rhythm group begins with a secondary stress of a longer word. the most numerous of these are the following: in the 2-3 structure, the first unit of a 3-unit group includes old, longer forms in 93 cases, and q2 or q3 words in this position in 2 cases; in the 3-unit group of the 2-3 structure, two syllables are sung over the first unit in 92 cases; in the 2-2-2 structure, the first unit of the first group includes old, longer forms in 15 cases etc. comparison of the metrics of laments and runosongs principles of comparison and comparative data one of the research objectives of this paper was to inquire how to describe the metrics of seto singing tradition as a whole and to analyze the reciprocal interrelation of its subcategories. more specifically, the inquiry concerns the relations of seto lament and the rest of the runosong tradition. while the poetic texture of laments seems to resemble that of runosongs, it is not entirely clear whether seto lament, in terms of its poetic composition, should be approached as a subcategory of runosong tradition or an entirely separate song category. it is also not clear whether laments and runosongs were originally two branches of the same poetic tradition or are they of different origin. to explore these issues and weigh the alternative possibilities, we will compare the results of the metric analysis of three song groups: the choral laments discussed in this paper and the songs with the feast melody and refrain songs analyzed in our previous research articles (oras, iva 2017; oras 2019; oras, sarv 2021). for the purpose of a more successful comparison of the texts of different song groups, it is practical to juxtapose the part of the line that comes after 77the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics structural or occasional additional syllables and/or repetitive words. in seto runosong, the first two syllables of a line are often separated from the rest of the line by a repetition or an additional syllable – this has also been the case in the songs with the feast melody and (the lead singer’s part of ) refrain songs studied before. in the case of the “extended beginning” of a line (in the longer version of the harvest song and in laments), the first four syllables are separated by an additional syllable (see example 4). while the structure of the initial part of the line varies across the song categories, the structure of the ending part, following the additional syllable (with addressing word) and/or the repetition, is easily comparable in different song categories. songs with feast melody: too-mas jo / too-mas // tor-rõ / poi-si-/kõ-nõ (structural additional syllable and repetition) too-(o)-mas / too-mas // tor-rõ / poi-si-/kõ-nõ (structural extension of an initial syllable and repetition) songs with a refrain: ve-lesa // -ke-ne / noo-rõ-/kõ-nõ (occasional additional syllable in the lead singer’s part of the wedding song) käü-ge ti, // kul-l´a / kä-e-/ke-se (structural additional syllable in the shorter version of the harvest song) no-o,/ käü-ge ti, // kul-l´a / kä-e-/ke-se (structural “extended” beginning and an additional syllable in the longer version of the harvest song) laments: sõb-ra-/kõ-nõ,/ sõb-ra-/kõ-nõ,/ u-mast/ vee-me mi // ko-tost / ko-go-/nis-ta (addressing formula, structural “extended” beginning and an additional syllable in the choral part of the death lament) no-o/ si-nult ma // kün-nü / [kü-sü-]mä-he (structural “extended” beginning and an additional syllable in the lead singer’s part of the bridal lament) no-o/ si-nult,/ maa-ma-/kõ-nõ-(õ)/ ma // kün-nü / [kü-sü-]mä-he (structural “extended” beginning, addressing formula and an additional syllable in the choral part of the bridal lament) example 4. (hypothetical) main lines in the three compared song groups. the ending part is separated by a double slash. the additional syllables and addressing formulas are underlined; the main line is in bold; the beginnings of lines which have been “extended” (four syllables/musical metrical units instead of two) are in the lighter script. translations: ‘toomas, a nice youngster’; ‘dear brother, dear young man’; ‘(well,) move my dear hands’; ‘dear friend, dear friend, we are taking you from your home’; ‘now, (dear mother,) i’m going to ask you’. 78 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun table 11. the performance rhythm structures of the ending part of line in seto runosongs and choral laments. performance rhythm structure songs with the feast melody refrain songs bridal laments choral death laments ...-2-2-2 480 (83.2%) 671 (58.4%) 116 (38.5%) ...-3-3 97 (16.8%) 146 (12.7%) 3 (1.0%) ...-3-2 35 (3.0%) 89 (20.5%) 90 (29.9%) ...-2-3 283 (24.6%) 267 (61.4%) 81 (26.9%) ...-2-3* 11 (1.0%) 1 (0.2%) 3 (1.0%) ...-2-2 52 (12.0%) 8 (2.7%) other** 4 (0.3%) 26 (6.0%) total no. of lines 577 (100%) 1150 (100%) 435 (100%) 301 (100%) the performance rhythm groups are determined on the basis of lexical stress (or secondary stress, see material and methods). in laments and refrain songs, the …-2-3 structure represents the lines in which the method of shortening has been applied in the performance. the …2-3* structure marked with an asterisk includes lines that do not correspond to the shortening method (the lines in which the final three-unit group begins with a trisyllabic q1 or q2 word and the second unit of the group has no secondary stress). other** indicates exceptions: a) in the lines of refrain songs, in which the three-unit group at the beginning of a line features a trisyllabic word instead of a structure containing a disyllabic word and an additional syllable; b) in bridal laments these are half-lines with addressing formulas, in which the additional syllable is followed only by the word kaligo, which is sung during three musical metrical units. table 11 shows the results of the comparison of the lines’ ending parts in three song groups on the level of performance rhythm. in order to delve deeper from the performance rhythm structures to the level of verse structure, the diversity of the structures may be evened out further. the verse structure level could serve as an interpretive middle ground between the linguistic and musical structural level (cf. table 5) – the verse structure is identified here based on musical performance, although without taking into account the most variable part of the performance. two regular occasions where a verse structure is interpreted in two different ways in musical performance can be pointed out. 79the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics 1) as already mentioned, in refrain songs, the ending parts of the lines of a typical 2+2+2+2 verse26 are performed not only over three (…-2-2-2) but sometimes also over two performance rhythm groups (…-2-3, whereas the final group characteristically has the (secondary) stress on the second unit, see example 5). in our previous studies, we have suggested that the latter case can be interpreted as the 2+2+2+2 verse structure shortened in musical performance – as the ...-2-3 were the surface-level or performance structure. since in choral laments the lines with the …-2-3 performance structure have the exact same linguistic features, we could similarly interpret these lines as the musically shortened variants of the 2+2+2+2 verse structure. these “shortened” lines are most commonly found in bridal laments, characterized by an accelerated ending (in death laments the same syllable structures have been performed also as …-2-2-2 performance structures). linguistic structure: ... ko-do kot-ta-lõ 2 (q1), 3 (q3, secondary stress on the 2nd syllable) ... kul-la ko-do tul-la 2 (q2), 2 (q1), 2 (q2) verse structure: 2+2+2+2 performance rhythm structure: feast melody // ko-do/ ko-(o)t-/ta-lõ ...-2-2-2 // kul-la/ ko-do/ tul-la ...-2-2-2 refrain songs, death laments // ko-do/ ko-(o)t-/ta-lõ or // ko-do/ kot-ta-lõ (shortening in performance) ...-2-2-2 or ...-2-3 // kul-la/ ko-do/ tul-la or // kul-la/ [ko-do] tul-la (shortening in performance) ...-2-2-2 or ...-2-3 bridal laments // ko-do/ kot-ta-lõ (shortening in performance) ...-2-3 // kul-la/ [ko-do] tul-la (shortening in performance) ...-2-3 example 5. realization of two typical linguistic structures of the ending part of 2+2+2+2 verse in different song groups. in fact, the same lines are not used verbatim in all the song categories; in some cases, the comparison is based on lines with an analogous linguistic structure. translation: ‘to place of home’; ‘[you] dear one [cannot] come home’. 26 here and in the following verse structure formulas, the “extended” beginning is reduced to a 2-unit stress group. 80 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun 2) if the lines of the …-2-3 musical structure can be interpreted as the performance variant of the 2+2+2+2 verse structure, then it is possible to interpret the …-2-2 performance structure of choral (mostly bridal) laments according to the same principles. the latter would then be a performance variant of the 2+3+2 verse structure, a surface-level structure formed in a musical performance by means of shortening (example 6). interpreting it as such is further supported by the fact that in the …-2-2 structure, the first syllable is in most cases a q3 syllable (which would enable the alternative …-3-2 performance). the two structures of performance are not clearly distinguishable – as in the case of …-2-2-2 and …-2-3 structures, it is sometimes difficult to determine auditorily whether the …-2-2 or the …-3-2 performance structure has been used.27 linguistic structure ... tüh-jä tar-rõ 2 (q3), 2 (q2) ... vae-sõ-kõ-nõ 4 (q3) verse structure 2+3+2 performance rhythm structure // tü-(ü)h-jä/ tar-rõ or // tüh-jä / tar-rõ (shortening in performance) ...-3-2 or ...-2-2 // va-e-sõ-/kõ-nõ or // vae-sõ-/kõ-nõ (shortening in performance) ...-3-2 or ...-2-2 example 6. linguistic and performance structures of tetrasyllabic line endings – interpreted as alternative performance variants of the same 2+3+2 verse structure. translation: ‘of empty room’; ‘poor little thing’. 27 this applies to death laments because in bridal laments the structures can be distinguished by the pitch structure. however, according to vaike sarv, the boundary is somewhat blurred also in bridal laments because in performance, the four-syllabic second half-line is actually sung using …-3-2 performance rhythm groups, even though sarv’s transcriptions do not really confirm her claim (see above p. 70). the interpretation of the ...-2-2 musical structure as shortened in performance can be objected to. if we compared the two structures, which are here interpreted as shortened in performance (...-2-3 and ...-2-2), then the principle of positioning the initial syllable of a q3 word is exceptional in the first case and quite common in the second case. the q3 initial syllable of trisyllabic words is sung during one metric unit only in the ...-2-3 structure – in other positions of a musical line, the first syllable of a trisyllabic q3 word is usually divided over two units. the two initial syllables of q1 or q2 words are rarely compressed to one unit, as they are in the ...-2-3 structure as well. in the ...2-2 structure, the initial syllable of a disyllabic q3 word is sung during one metric unit. unlike a trisyllabic word, singing the initial syllable of a disyllabic q3 word during one metric unit is quite common also in other positions of a musical line. 81the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics if the described performance rhythm structures ...-2-3 and ...-2-2 are interpreted as shortened in performance and the corresponding verse structures are identified as the 2+2+2+2 and 2+3+2 structures (as hypothetical deep-level verse structures), the summarizing table (table 12) is far more homogeneous than the previous table, which covered all the performance rhythm structures (table 11). table 12. hypothetical deep-level verse structures (combinations of stress groups) in seto runosongs and choral laments. the “extended” beginnings of laments and the longer version of the harvest song are reduced to a 2-unit first stress group. verse structure songs with the feast melody refrain songs choral laments 2+2+2+2 480 (83.2%) 954 (83.0%) 464 (63.0%) 2+3+3 97 (16.8%) 146 (12.7%) 3 (0.4%) 2+3+2 35 (3.0%) 239 (32.5%) 2+2+3 11 (1.0%) 4 (0.5%) total no. of lines 577 (100%) 1146 (99.7%)* 710 (96.5%)* * exceptions to the structures of refrain songs and bridal laments are not included in the table (see table 11). similarities and differences in metric structures of seto runosongs and laments the comparison of seto song groups on the level of the performance (see table 11) as well as of the verse structures (see table 12) clearly reveals significant overlapping in the line structures of both runosong groups and laments. in addition, the similarities include other common principles of structure: * syllabic line; * the separateness of the (extended) 1st “verse foot”; * the same general positioning principles of initial syllables of different quantity degrees – i.e. which syllables are divided over two musical metrical units and which syllables are condensed in a way that two syllables are sung for the duration of a single metric unit (tables 7–9; oras, iva 2017: 182–184); * the same principles of the choice of words by quantity degree in certain positions of a line (table 10; oras, sarv 2021, tables 2, 3 – data on the quantity degrees of songs with the feast melody and refrain songs is available only on structures consisting of 3-unit performance rhythm groups). 82 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun there are, however, also clear divergences in the use of different structures in different song groups in seto tradition. the majority of seto runosongs, here represented by songs with the feast melody, have lines of stable length. in these songs, the most common verse structure is the main runosong verse structure 2+2+2+2; regarding the verse structures of 3-unit stress groups (the so-called broken verse structures of runosong, sarv 2019: 106–107), only 2+3+3 structures can be found. the diversity and complexity of rhythm are caused by repetitions and additional syllables. between the main body of runosongs and laments, there is a group of songs with refrain (these constitute a tiny group of song types; at the same time, the wedding and harvesting songs were an obligatory part of central community rituals). the share of the two most common verse structures in refrain songs is very similar to that in other runosongs with stable line length. however, in its representation of two shorter, 7-position verse structures, as well as in the use of the method of shortening in performance, this group as if bridges other runosongs and choral laments. the choral laments differ the most from the main body of seto runosongs. the beginning part of a lament line is extended (still, this structure occurs in one version of refrain song) and in the singing performance, the length of a line’s ending part varies from 4 (in a definite addressing formula 3) to 6 musical units. the 2+2+2+2 verse structure is found in laments less than in runosongs and the 2+3+3 structure is almost missing. however, the 2+3+2 structure, which is missing in the songs with stable line length and is relatively rare in refrain songs, has an important place in laments. in the case of laments, attention must be drawn to the differences between the share of verse structures and actual sound impression. in lament rhythmics, the dominant (and in bridal laments the only) musical ending structure is that of 5 metric units. herewith, the musical accent is on the penultimate note, so that the musical grouping perceived by the listener is 3+2 (see examples 1 and 2). from the perspective of the poetic meter different metrical structures are mostly sung with the same harmonic sequence – among them the 2+2+2+2 structure with the method of shortening (performance rhythm ...-2-3), and rare 2+2+3 structures. in the last cases the performance rhythm structure is ...-2-3 and musical harmonic structure is ...3+2. thus a conflict of word and musical stresses arises, that is not characteristic of the basic structure of the line in seto songs. by the way, the same conflict is typical also to the performance of the 2+3+3 structures (so called broken line structures) in the songs with the lines of stable length. considering the weight of the 5-unit musical harmonic structure, we have to admit that, in a sense, highlighting the verse structure level overshadows 83the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics the central role of it in the second half-line of laments. at the same time, we cannot forget that the structure of six isochronic musical metrical units is quite usual (38.5% of lines) in choral death laments that share the same structure with another most prominent (and probably also primary) kind of laments – solo death laments. discerning the verse structure level also helps to emphasize the importance (and primacy?) of the 2+3+2 structure – it cannot be a coincidence that the ending musical harmonic contour is “appropriate” to the 2+3+2 structure, owing to the musical functions of the scale steps and patterns of the alternation of harmonic complexes in one-three-semitone scale (footnote 17, pärtlas 2001, 2006b, 2018). comparison with other finnic song regions, possible patterns of development the obvious similarities and differences in the metric organization of the three song groups raise the question of their cause. the answer should be sought in the general development history of seto runosong and lament, which is related to the development and changing of runosong in other areas and may also indicate influences outside the runosong tradition. the most recent theories suggest that some particular features of south estonian language and culture are connected to the differentiation of coastal and inland cultures already before the late proto-finnic, which developed in the northern estonia along with the rich archaeological culture as a result of the encounter of finnic and palaeo-germanic population, and later spread and divided further into different finnic languages (lang 2018: 224, 242–265, cf. also kallio 2014, 2015). late proto-finnic has been considered a language stage suitable for the emergence of syllabic runosong meter (korhonen 1994), that possibly developed under the influence of early germanic culture (frog 2019). these theories imply that runosong might have been evolved concurrently with the major proto-germanic contribution to the finnic language in the northern estonian region, and later migrated from the north to south estonia (cf. sarv 2019; frog 2019). on the basis of archaeological material, the influences of the late proto-finnic culture reached the territory of southeast estonia from the northern as well as from the southwestern direction (lang 2018: 221–223). an important channel of economic and cultural contacts was also the waterway from the territory of eastern setomaa via lakes pskov and peipus to the gulf of finland (valk 2011). the finnic peoples of southeast estonia and northern latvia were closely connected with the baltic peoples and the western ural branch of finno-ugric 84 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun peoples who dwelled east of the territory of setomaa. contacts with the east, as far as to the mordovian peoples, can be also traced throughout the 1st millennium ce (lang 2018: 191, 243–244; laul 1997; 2001: 182–185, 261). according to archeological, linguistic and also ethnological and folkloristic data, most of these southern and eastern influences did not reach north and west estonia – already in the 1st millennium bce but more remarkably in the period following the roman iron age (1st–5th century ce). in the second half of the 1st millennium, a cultural border between the territory of current setomaa and other parts of southeast estonia can be detected. in the last decades of the 1st millennium, the slavicization of the territories east of setomaa began and the slavic culture influenced also the orthodox setomaa in subsequent centuries. in addition, there were also some differences between different parts of setomaa which deepened in the 11th–14th centuries (lang 2018: 244–245, valk 2011: 36–37). ingrid rüütel (1990, 1996) has pointed out different musical as well as other features in seto singing culture that are connected to the different cultural regions mentioned above – many of these are missing from the runosong of north and west estonia and some also from other parts of south(east) estonia. žanna pärtlas has considered the rare seto musical scale system and the type of polyphonic texture as the key to the origin of seto song culture, since these musical features are missing from the neighboring areas of seto and seem to be very old. she has pointed out the parallel phenomena on the previous finnougric territories in south russia and, to a degree, also in mordovia. next to the common features of earlier origin, some of the similar stylistic elements do not appear to be so ancient and could be explained by the long cultural contacts with the eastern finno-ugric tribes, which probably lasted until the beginning of the 2nd millennium ce (pärtlas 2005, 2006a). it is possible to point out some specific features also in the meter of seto songs and laments that are not found in the metrical structure of the runosongs of other regions. 1) one key feature of the seto runosong meter seems to be that the first “verse foot” is “separated” in many musical structures: in seto songs, the 2-unit first stress group of a line is very often expanded by an additional syllable (or sometimes by doubling the duration of the first syllable), forming a 3-unit performance rhythm group). such 3-unit structures are difficult to adapt to the broken runosong line structures beginning with the 3-unit stress group (3+2+3 and 3+3+2) – two kinds of initial 3-unit groups get “mixed up” with 85the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics each other. this can be considered a reason why the main body of seto runosongs include only the broken verse structure with a 2-unit beginning, 2+3+3. the structural 3-unit beginning is quite a frequently found feature of characteristic seto “long tunes”, in which additional syllables, stretching of syllables (over two notes/musical rhythmic units) and repetitions are used to match the octosyllabic verse to the melody. such melodies were probably not originally connected to the runosong verse. repetitions and additional syllables are also found elsewhere in southeast estonia and ingria, but the 3-unit initial group (where an additional syllable is added to the first verse foot) seems to be characteristic precisely of seto songs. ingrid rüütel has pointed out some parallels of the rhythmic structure of longer seto melodies with the songs from southern and eastern areas that have had cultural contacts with the territory of setomaa in prehistoric times – lithuania, western russia, belarus, mordovia (rüütel 1990: 105–106). the origin of seto long melodies, as well as the use of the initial 3-unit rhythm group, is difficult to be determined more precisely. as said in the introduction, it is not even clear whether the runosong structure was adopted in setomaa together with the 8-note melodies corresponding to octosyllabic lines or the melodies longer than 8 notes were already known there before the poetic structure of runosong was adopted. thus, the 3-unit initial structure is an innovation from the point of view of runosong style, but it is hard to guess the time of its emergence – if the structure has been in use in an earlier poetic culture which later has adopted the poetic system of runosong, or has it developed as an innovation within the runosong culture, possibly under the impact of some other musical culture. the caesura after the (extended) first “foot” is a common feature of the structure of seto laments and seto runosongs and, together with other similar features, shows the close connection between them. 2) another conspicuous peculiarity is the varying line length in refrain songs and laments. as explained before, it is a result of using 7-position verse structures on the one hand and the method of shortening in performance on the other. the refrain songs also seem to be influenced by the 3-unit initial group principle having an occasional or structural additional syllable after the second syllable of the main line. therefore, the broken verse structures of runosong with a 3-unit beginning do not match refrain songs either. still, more different structures with 3-unit stress group(s) can be found in refrain songs than in the songs of stable line length and these structures represent 7-unit lines. we can imagine that the refrain enabled the more flexible length of the main line and this resulted in the emergence of the verse structures 2+2+3 and 2+3+2, 86 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun which could be interpreted as the shorter versions of the common runosong structures 3+2+3 and 3+3+2.28 refrains are common in the south-estonian tradition in general, but the first verse foot being “separated” and the varying line length are characteristic only of seto refrain songs. seto refrain songs must belong to quite an early tradition because they are related to old ritual song genres. compared to the other seto multipart songs, their melodies are closest to the melodies of the oldest musical layer of other south-estonian regions. according to ingrid rüütel, the refrain tradition originated in the baltic-slavic cultural unity and formed in the local tradition as a symbiosis of the ancient finnic and baltic cultures in approximately 2nd–4th centuries ce (rüütel 1990: 120; 1996, cf. laul 2001: 220). rüütel’s timing is connected to earlier ideas about the development of the finnic languages, she assumes that the earlier melodic layer (before the adapting of refrains in south-estonia) formed already in later bronze age and earlier iron age. if to assume that finnic tetrameter with the earlier melodies could not reach south estonia earlier than 2nd century, then, by reference to the stages of historical development of melodies, outlined by rüütel, it can be assumed that the refrains were adapted to runosong later. still, it cannot be ruled out that the runosong style and the refrains were taken into use in south-estonia relatively simultaneously. as in refrain songs, the 7and 8-position verse structures are also represented in choral laments. also, the principle of the “separateness” of the (extended) beginning works in laments as well as in other song groups. compared to refrain songs (and other song groups) on the level of verse structure the characteristic feature of laments is the prevalence of the 2+3+2 structure. while searching for reasons for that difference, one must also look at the third specific feature of the seto tradition at the level of musical performance – the method of shortening in performance. 3) the method of shortening in musical performance is a phenomenon common to seto refrain songs and laments. using the 2+3+2 verse structure as well as the method of shortening in performing the 2+2+2+2 structure, the ending part of the sung line (following the additional syllable) consists of 5 notes (isochronic musical metrical units; in laments, mostly in bridal laments, also lines of the 2+3+2 structure are shortened and performed with 4 isochronic notes). the pattern of five notes occurs in more than one-fourths of refrain song lines and is very common in laments – especially in bridal laments 28 we may even assume that runosong as the original system is reflected in the prevalence of q1 and q2 in certain positions (marked in bold) of the verse structures 2+3+3, 2+3+2 and 2+2+3 (the last one is represented by only a few lines). 87the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics where use of the shortening method is required. since in death laments the shortening is not used constantly but as an alternative to the 6-note ending, it seems to be possible that the 5-note ending structure has emerged as one of the alternative musical structures next to the 6-note ending. this assumption is also supported by the musical harmonic rhythm of death laments, where the last musical accent is on the penultimate note in both ...2-2-2 and ...2-3 structures – using performance rhythm ...2-3 as if one note/syllable position disappears: xxooxx > xxoxx. the development of shortening would be associated with the major wave of changes in the language that included the systematic loss of vowels in certain positions of words resulting in a decrease of the number of syllables in words and the emergence of the system of three quantity degrees (13th–17th century, rätsep 1989).29 at the same time, we should not exclude the possibility that shortening was part of the performance style of laments (especially bridal laments) already before language contraction. another possible explanation for the prominence of the 5-unit pattern in laments is the specific function and performance of lament genre. it is possible that the use of structures different from the majority of seto runosongs somehow correlates with the specific function of the genre that also promotes formal distinction from other songs. furthermore, in bridal laments, we can speculate that there is a link between the method of shortening, accelerated performance of all line endings of the choral part, and the movements accompanying the singing – it may well be that the physically demanding constant bowing made the singers save their energy as much as possible (an additional 29 language contraction is also connected with the emergence of three quantity degrees in the estonian language. apparently, after this turn, in seto songs q2 gradually came to be used in singing similarly to how q1 had been used before, in the function of the short quantity degree – to convey the meaning more successfully, the contrast between q2 and q3 had to be highlighted. in a similar manner, the distinction between q1-q2 and q3 is made intuitively in modern popular music (e.g., oras 1999). in spoken language, the q1 and q2 words share common features as well: the similar fundamental frequency contour; no secondary stress on the second syllable; the vowel of the second syllable is half-long in q1 and often also in q2 words, but never in q3 words (asu et al. 2016: 142; ross & lehiste 2001: 49). in east-estonian dialects, the contrasting length is still perceived as the main feature for distinguishing between q2 and q3, unlike in west estonia, where the distinction is based more on the perception of differences in pitch contour (lippus, pajusalu 2009). no clear difference has been identified between the pronunciation of quantity degrees in east and west estonia (on the seto language see parve 2003a: 44–45); however, in her dissertation on the quantity of south-estonian dialects, merike parve argues that “south-estonian pitch contour is generally more stable and more unified than that of north estonians” (2003b: 96). 88 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun possibility to save energy in bridal laments would then be the shortened performance of the 3+2 ending part with 4 musical units). next to the genre-specific and language-historical impulses of formation of the metrical peculiarities of the laments, there is a possibility that the (formation and) development of the lament structure has been influenced by some foreign melody calling for a longer beginning part and a 5-unit ending part. for example, in russian as well as in mordovian tradition, the 3-syllabic ending formula is quite common – although in many cases this formula is not sung with isochronic notes (efimenkova 1980: 34, boyarkin 1988: 202–243). it is possible to see one indication of the independent development of laments in the rare occurrence of the 2+3+3 structure, which is quite frequent in two runosong groups. if the pattern of a 5-unit ending part initially developed in laments, we may speculate that the 7-position lines and the method of shortening could be transposed from laments to refrain songs. the characteristic features of seto runosongs and laments demonstrate them as genres metrically near to each other and specific compared to the metrical structure of runosong in other areas. still, some of the specific traits of seto metrical structures and their performance can be found in the southeast estonian runosong in general (however, the songs of võrumaa need further examination in this aspect). most conspicuous are the same general positioning principles of initial syllables of different quantity degrees that can be connected to the language changes in the first half of the 2th millennium and also to the (continuous) influences of latvian tradition (e.g. sarv 2011b). another feature could be a greater variability in the (performance rhythm) structures of south-eastern runosongs (e.g. oras 2004), compared to the runosongs of the northern areas – it can be traced back to the times of adaption of runosong style, but it is certainly connected to the later historical developments as well. when placing seto laments in the background of finnic lament tradition we can see conspicuous difference: laments of other finnic peoples lack fixed meter and are performed solo, seto lament tradition includes solo as well as choral laments that have basically the same metrical system which is quite close to the metrics of runosongs. the earlier estonian researchers, referred above, have seen the emergence of choral laments as an innovation, which, however, took place a long time ago. indeed, choral laments may have emerged as a fusion of an earlier solo lament tradition with ritual polyphonic choral singing in weddings. if there was an external impulse for the development of choral lamenting, it should probably have come from the east. choral wedding laments exist in northern and nord-west russia (also in pskov region) and there are a lot of other similarities in rituals as well as in music (efimenkova 89the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics 1980: 24–25, pashina 2005: 212–214). still, as north-russian lamenting tradition has been influenced by the finno-ugric substrate, it is hard to determine the direction and time of potential cultural impacts. conclusion the subtradition of runosong that developed in the seto region, in the border area of the finnic singing tradition, is characterized by a unique archaic polyphony, melodies exceeding eight notes in length and a meter that conspicuously differs from that in other runosong areas. the seto song metrics varies depending on the song category – different variants of meter are associated with melodies that differ in certain features of the musical structure. the most important musical feature related to the use of different variants of meter is the stable or varying length of lines within a song. most seto melodies are of stable length; in this paper, such tunes are represented by the so-called feast melody. among the melodies of varying length are the group of refrain songs (harvest songs, wedding songs and a game song) and laments. the purpose of current study was to find out the principles of the metrics of seto laments and compare it to the metrics of seto and other finnic runosongs. to comparatively describe the linguistic structures, performance rhythm structures and poetic metrical structures – as a generalization based on linguistic and performance rhythm structures –, we found it practical to compare the more stable ending parts of the verse lines (starting from the second stress group or verse foot). in seto songs, the ending part of the line (starting from the second stress group) is often separated from the initial stress group (consisting of two verse positions) by an additional element – an additional syllable, musical extension of a syllable and/or repetition. (in laments and in a longer version of the harvest song with a refrain, the initial part separated by the additional syllable is four syllables/musical metrical units long and can be interpreted as the extension of an initial two-unit group.) exclusion of the first stress group (verse foot) of the line and all the additional elements allows to compare the different song groups, whereas it is important to remember that the musical structure in the performance which determines the genre identity of the song can only be described together with structural additional elements. depending on the song category, the number of different verse structures in a line ranges from two (in songs of stable line length) to four (in refrain songs and laments of varying line length). the melodies of stable length include 90 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun the 2+2+2+2 structure and of the structures with three-unit stress groups (of broken line structures of runosong) only the 2+3+3 structure. in refrain songs, the main structures are similar to those in songs of stable line length, but similarly to laments, refrain songs also include 7-position structures. the main difference between refrain songs and laments is their noticeably uneven share of different verse structures. in laments, the 2+2+2+2 structure is less prevalent compared to other song groups and the 2+3+3 structure is very rare. the most common lament structure with three-unit stress groups is the 2+3+2 structure, and there is only a small share of this structure in refrain songs. a possible reason why only verse structures with a two-unit beginning (in one refrain song structure and in laments with an “extended”, four-unit beginning) occur in all the analyzed song categories is the “separated” first stress group (verse foot). that seems to make it impossible to use a 3-unit stress group, characteristic of the structures 3+2+3 and 3+3+2 of other runosong regions, at the beginning of a line in seto songs. in terms of performance rhythm, a special feature – the method of shortening – is used in refrain songs and laments. bridal laments use the method to shorten the verse line the most – the 2+2+2+2 verse structures are always sung to the ...-2-3 performance structure. in refrain songs and death laments it occurs only partly. additionally, in bridal laments the 2+3+2 verse structure, based on the ...22 syllable structure, is usually shortened in performance to the ...-2-2 musical structure (the ...-2-2 musical structure is not known in refrain songs and is rarely used in death laments). the use of both the method of shortening and the 2+3+2 verse structure results in the centrality of the 5-unit musical rhythmic pattern, especially in bridal laments. the 3+2-ending part is also highlighted by the musical harmonic rhythm of the bridal and funeral laments. in the centrality of the 5-unit rhythmic pattern, the frequent use of the 2+3+2 verse structure and the method of shortening, which is different from the main body of seto runosongs with the stable length of lines, the connections to the rituality of refrain songs and laments as well as the special movements performed during bridal laments can be seen. an (additional?) impetus to the use of the method of shortening could also be the historical language change – systematic loss of syllables along with the division of the long syllabic quantity into long (q2) and overlong (q3) quantity degree. on the other hand, these peculiarities may be also caused by earlier or later influence from another musical culture. most typical metrical structures and performance rhythm structures in different song groups are shown in the following schema (feast – feast song, representing songs of stable length, refrain – group of refrain songs, death 91the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics and bridal – corresponding kinds of laments, verse structures are marked with + and performance rhythm structures with ; genres where structure is rare are in parentheses; see also tables 11 and 12). characteristic coincidence in the alternation of musical harmonic complexes in bridal laments is also indicated. feast, refrain, (death) 2 + 3 + 3 feast, refrain, (death) (2) -2(1)3 3 all 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 feast, refrain, death (2) -2(1 )2 2 2 refrain, death, bridal (2) -2(1) 2 3 harmonic rhythm xox|oo (refrain), death, bridal 2 + 3 + 2 (refrain), death, bridal (2) -2(1) 3 2 harmonic rhythm xox|oo (death), bridal (2) -2(1) 2 2 the principles of organizing words in the line are based on their quantity degree in the seto tradition. all the song categories share a similar metric quality of q1 and q2 words and a different metric quality of q3 words. a monosyllabic q3 word or the initial syllable of a multi-syllabic q3 word may be stretched over two musical metrical units. the initial syllables of q1 and q2 words are not stretched over two musical metrical units, but in turn can be systematically compressed to a single musical metrical unit by using the shortening method. the development of the distinction of the q1 and q2 versus q3 is linked to the language change in 13.–16. century. the use of quantity degree in specific verse positions is also similar – to make a bold speculation, it may reveal traces of the positioning principles of words according to their quantity, which is characteristic of the finnic runosong tradition in general (oras, sarv 2021). the finnic runosong meter is obviously the original or exemplary structural system of seto runosong meter – and also at least one of the systems forming the lament meter. belonging to the culturally somewhat isolated border region of finnic runosong area, it has developed along its own course in the context of a unique musical tradition, changes in language and possible external influences. metrical regularity of solo and choral laments as well as the existence of choral laments distinguish seto laments from all other finnic lament traditions and may link to a possible innovation in seto tradition. the meter of seto runosongs shares the most similarities to southeast-estonian 92 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun tradition – but there exist also obvious differences. the development of seto metrics in the context of the neighboring subtraditions of runosong as well as other singing cultures merits further study.30 references ambrazevicius rytis; pärtlas, žanna 2011. searching for the “natural” origins of the symmetrical scales: traditional multipart setu songs. in: journal of interdisciplinary music studies 5(1), 1−17. arukask, madis 2011. communication across the border: what burial laments can tell us about old beliefs. in: estonian journal of archaeology 15, 2, 130−150. https://doi.org/10.3176/arch.2011.2.04 asu, eva liina; lippus, pärtel; pajusalu, karl; teras, pire 2016. eesti keele hääldus. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. boyarkin, nikolai ivanovich (ed.) 1988. pamjatniki mordovskogo narodnogo muzykal’nogo iskusstva. vol. 3: erzjanskie priurochennye pesni i plachi zavolzh’ja. saransk: mordovskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. efimenkova, bronislava borisovna 1980. severnorusskaja prichet’. mezhdurech’e sukhony i juga i verkhov’ja kokshengi (vologodskaja oblast’). moskva: sovetskij kompozitor. frazer, james george 1996 [1922]. the golden bough. a study in magic and religion. london: penguin books. frog 2019. the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? in: studia metrica et poetica 6(1), 20–78. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.1.02 frog; stepanova, eila 2019. on the analogical comparison of performance environments: lament poetry’s soundscape as a case study. in: rmn newsletter 14, 91–111. https:// www.helsinki.fi/sites/default/files/atoms/files/rmn_14_methodologies.pdf#page=91 30 this study was supported by the estonian ministry of education and research (prg1288 – a corpus-based approach to folkloric variation: regional styles, thematic networks, and communicative modes in runosong tradition, ekkd65 – source documents in the cultural process: estonian materials in the collections and databases of the estonian literary museum, and ekkd41 – interdisciplinary corpus of seto), and by the european regional development fund (centre of excellence in estonian studies, 2014-2020.4.01.15-0015). the authors cordially thank frog for his thoughtful comments on the preliminary version of the article. 93the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics hagu, paul 2000 [1995]. poeesia eksam. setu mõrsjaitkudest kõrvutuses läänemeresoomlaste põhjapoolsema itkutraditsiooniga. in: salve, kristi; kõiva, mare; tedre, ülo (eds.), tagasipöördumatus. sõnad ja hääl. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 199–227. honko, lauri. 1974. balto-finnic lament poetry. in: leino, pentti; kaivola-bregenhøj, annikki; vento, urpo (eds.), finnish folkloristics 1. helsinki: finnish literature society, 9–61. jüvä, sullõv 2002. võro-eesti synaraamat / võru-eesti sõnaraamat. tarto, võro: võro instituut. kallio, kati; frog; sarv, mari 2017. what to call the poetic form: kalevala-meter, regivärss, runosong, alliterative finnic tetrameter, or something else? in: rmn newsletter 12–13, 139–161. kallio, petri 2014. the diversification of proto-finnic. in: ahola, joonas; frog (eds.), fibula, fabula, fact: the viking age in finland. (studia fennica historica 18.) helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, 155–168. kallio, petri 2015. the stratigraphy of the germanic loanwords in finnic. in: askedal, john ole; nielsen, hans frede (eds.), early germanic languages in contact. (nowele supplement series 27). amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins, 23–38. käsi, inge 2016. seto sõnastik. eesti keele instituut. http://www.eki.ee/dict/setosonastik/ kolk, udo 1979. problemy setuskogo mnogogolosija. in: uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 501: 90–101. konkka, unelma 1985. ikuinen ikävä. karjalaiset riitti-itkut. helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. krasnopolskaya, tamara vsevolodovna 1980. o nekotorykh osobennostjakh muzykal’no-strofovoj formy v karel’skikh prichitanijakh. in: rüütel, ingrid (ed.), finno-ugorskij muzykal’nyj fol’klor i vzaimosvjazi s sosednimi kul’turami. tallinn: eesti raamat, 196–201. krasnopolskaya, tamara vsevolodovna 1986. o kompozitsionnykh osobennostjakh melostrofy karel’skikh prichitanij. in: rüütel, ingrid (ed.), muzyka v obrjadakh i trudovoj dejatel’nosti finno-ugrov. tallinn: eesti raamat, 216–228. küper, christoph 1988. sprache und metrum. semiotik und linguistik des verses. tübingen: niemeyer. lang, valter 2018. läänemeresoome tulemised. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. 94 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun laul, silvia 1997. lõunaeestlaste ja volga rahvaste ühiskultuurist. in: keel ja kirjandus 9, 577–584. laul, silvia 2001. rauaaja kultuuri kujunemine eesti kaguosas (500 e.kr. – 500 p.kr.). tallinn: ajaloo instituut, õpetatud eesti selts. lippus, pärtel; pajusalu, karl 2009. regional variation in the perception of estonian quantity. in: vainio, martti; aulanko, reijo; aaltonen, olli (eds.), nordic prosody. proceedings of the xth conference, helsinki 2008. frankfurt: peter lang, 151−157. lotman, mihhail 1998. värsisüsteemidest. peamiselt eesti ja vene värsi näitel. in: akadeemia 9, 1846–1874. nenola-kallio, aili 1982. studies in ingrian laments. (ff communication 234). helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. nenola, aili 2002. inkerin itkuvirret. ingrian laments. helsinki: finnish literature society. niemi, jarkko 2002. musical structures of ingrian laments. in: nenola, aili (ed.), inkerin itkuvirret / ingrian laments. helsinki: finnish literature society, 708–728. olivetti, paola 2007. musical features of the ritual lament in ancient greece. in: rosetta 2, 21–31. http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk/issue_02/olivetti.pdf oras, janika 1999. sõprade laulud. noot ja kommentaar. in: mäetagused 11, 120–123. http://www.folklore.ee/tagused/nr11/pdf/laul.pdf oras, janika 2004. helmi villa regilauluviisid – korrastatud mitmekesisus. in: sarv, mari (ed.), regilaul – loodud või saadud? tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 89–121. oras, janika 2019. individual rhythmic variation in oral poetry: the runosong performances of seto singers. in: open linguistics 5, 569−581. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2019-0031 oras, janika, iva, sulev 2017. välted seto regilaulu värsimõõdus. [quantity degrees in the metre of seto runosong.] in: mäetagused 68, 177–194. https://doi.org/10.7592/mt2017.68.oras_iva oras, janika; sarv, mari 2021 (forthcoming). metrics of runosongs of the border area: quantity and broken lines in seto songs. in: frog, grünthal, satu; kallio, kati; niemi, jarkko (ed.), versification: metrics in practice. (studia fennica litteraria). helsinki: finnish literary society. oras, janika; pärtlas, žanna; sarv, mari; kalkun, andreas 2021. the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics: dataset. https://entu.keeleressursid.ee/public-document/entity-9896 https://doi.org/10.7592/mt2017.68.oras_iva 95the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics pajusalu, karl 2014. eesti keele sõnaprosoodia lõuna-läänemeresoome taustal. [estonian word prosody in the southern finnic context.] in: keel ja kirjandus 8/9, 575–589. pärtlas, žanna 1997. tähelepanekuid setu laulu laadiehitusest ja mitmehäälsusest. in: teater. muusika. kino 1, 23–28. pärtlas, žanna 2001. viisi rütmilisest vormist ja laadirütmist setu mitmehäälses rahvalaulus. [the rhythmic form and modal rhythm of the melody in the setu polyphonic folk song.] in: jaago, tiiu; sarv, mari (ed.), regilaul – keel, muusika, poeetika. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum. eesti rahvaluule arhiiv; tartu ülikool. eesti ja võrdleva rahvaluule õppetool, 117–152. pärtlas, žanna 2005. k voprosu o skhodstvakh v setuskoj, mordovskoj i juzhnorusskoj pesennykh traditsijakh. [on the similarities between seto, mordovian and southrussian folk song traditions.] in: aun, mare; tamla, ülle (ed.), setumaa kogumik 3. uurimusi setumaa loodusest, ajaloost ja folkloristikast. tallinn: tallinna ülikooli ajaloo instituut, 196−237. pärtlas, žanna 2006a. “sümmeetrilised laadid” ja monointervalliline mitmehäälsus vokaalses rahvamuusikas: mõningaid paralleele setu ja lõuna-venemaa rahvalaulu vahel. in: lintrop, aado (ed.), regilaul – esitus ja tõlgendus. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 219–248. pärtlas, žanna 2006b. foundations of the typology of setu folk tunes. in: ojamaa, triinu; kalkun, andreas (eds.), individual and collective in traditional culture. (töid etnomusikoloogia alalt 4.) tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 19–28. pärtlas, žanna 2010a. setu multipart singing: comparison of written sources and sound recordings. in: ziegler, susanne; bareis, urban (eds.), historical sources and source criticism. stockholm: svenskt visarkiv, 227–237. pärtlas, žanna 2010b. a “hen-and-egg” problem: interrelation between scale structure and vertical structure in setu multipart songs. in: tsurtsumia, rusudan; jordania, joseph (eds.), the fourth international symposium on traditional polyphony. proceedings. tbilisi: international research center for traditional polyphony of tbilisi v. sarajishvili state conservatory, 336−354. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-etpuyum-ieeh6p7ujzt7uwk_gv1dfhb/view pärtlas, žanna 2018. the brides of death: the seto collective funeral laments to maiden. in: tsurtsumia, rusudan; jordania, joseph (ed.), the eighth international symposium on traditional polyphony. tbilisi (gruusia), 26.-30.09.2016. proceedings. tbilisi: international research center for traditional polyphony of tbilisi v. sarajishvili state conservatory, 220−233. 96 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun parve, merike 2003a. setu välted. in: lõunaeesti häälikud ii. (tartu ülikooli eesti keele õppetooli toimetised 27.) tartu: tartu ülikool, 17−48. parve, merike 2003b. välted lõunaeesti murretes. dissertationes philologiae estonicae universitatis tartuensis 12. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. pashina, olga (ed.) 2005. narodnoe muzykal’noe tvorchestvo. sankt-peterburg: kompozitor. pino, veera; sarv, vaike 1981. setu surnuitkud i. tallinn: eesti nsv teaduste akadeemia, keele ja kirjanduse instituut. rätsep, huno 1989. eesti keele tekkimise lugu. in: akadeemia 7, 1503–1524. ross, jaan; lehiste, ilse 2001. the temporal structure of estonian runic songs. berlin, new york: mouton de gruyter. rüütel, ingrid 1990. die schichten des volkslieds der setukesen und ihre etnokulturellen hintergründe. in: finnisch-ugrische forschungen 49(1/3), 85–128. rüütel, ingrid 1996. estonian folk music layers in the context of ethnic relations. in: folklore. an electronic journal of folklore 6. https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol6/ruutel.htm rüütel, ingrid 2010. lõunavepsa surnuitkuviisid läänemeresoome itkuja laulutraditsiooni kontekstis. in: salve, kristi; kõiva, mare; tedre, ülo (eds.), tagasipöördumatus. sõnad ja hääl. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 283–296. rüütel, ingrid; remmel, mart 1980. opyt notatsii i issledovanija vepsskikh prichitanij. in: rüütel, ingrid (ed.), finno-ugorskij muzykal’nyj fol’klor i vzaimosvjazi s sosednimi kul’turami. tallinn: eesti raamat, 169–192. salve, kristi 2000 [1993]. toone tare. tähelepanekuid setu surnuitkude žanridevahelistest ja geograafilistest seostest. in: salve, kristi; kõiva, mare; tedre, ülo (eds.), tagasipöördumatus. sõnad ja hääl. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 55–72. sarv, jaan 1980. rasshifrovka setuskogo mnogogolosija pri pomoshchi mnogokanal’noj studijnoj apparatury. in: rüütel, ingrid (ed.), finno-ugorskij muzykal’nyj fol’klor i vzaimosvjazi s sosednimi kul’turami. tallinn: eesti raamat, 103–126. sarv, mari 2008. loomiseks loodud. regivärsimõõt traditsiooniprotsessis. (dissertationes folkloristicae universitatis tartuensis 11) tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. http://hdl.handle.net/10062/5358 sarv, mari 2011a. metrical universals in oral poetry. in: küper, christoph (ed.), current trends in metrical analysis. peter lang, 329−337. 97the metrics of seto choral laments in the context of runosong metrics sarv, mari 2011b. possible foreign influences on the estonian regilaul metre: language or culture? in: lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.), frontiers in comparative prosody. (linguistic insights 113.) peter lang, 207−226. sarv, mari 2015. regional variation in folkloric meter: the case of estonian runosong. in: rmn newsletter 9, 6–17. http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/ english/rmn/rmn_9_ winter_2014-2015.pdf sarv, mari 2019. poetic metre as a function of language: linguistic grounds for metrical variation in estonian runosong. in: studia metrica et poetica 6(2), 102–148. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.2.04 sarv, vaike 1980. o zakonomernostjakh stroenija zvukorjadov i ritmiki v setuskom muzykal’nom fol’klore (na materiale pesen odnoj zapevaly). in: rüütel, ingrid (ed.), finno-ugorskij muzykal’nyj fol’klor i vzaimosvjazi s sosednimi kul’turami, 129–145. sarv, vaike 1986. prichitanija nevesty u setu. in: rüütel, ingrid (ed.), muzyka v obrjadakh i trudovoj dejatel’nosti finno-ugrov. tallinn: eesti raamat, 272–284. sarv, vaike 1993. setu itkuvärsi meetrikast. in: keel ja kirjandus 5, 282–292. sarv, vaike 2000a. setu itk – mõiste ja liigid. in: salve, kristi; kõiva, mare; tedre, ülo (eds.), tagasipöördumatus. sõnad ja hääl. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 9–37. sarv, vaike 2000b. setu mõrsjaitku muusikaline struktuur eeslaulja partii põhjal. in: salve, kristi; kõiva, mare; tedre, ülo (eds.), tagasipöördumatus. sõnad ja hääl. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 123–198. sarv, vaike 2000c. setu itkukultuur. (ars musicae popularis 14.) tartu, tampere: eesti kirjandusmuuseum. stepanova, aleksandra stepanovna 1985. metaforicheskij mir karel’skikh prichitanij. leningrad: nauka. stepanova, eila 2017. parallelism in karelian laments. in: oral tradition 31, 2, 485– 508. https://doi.org/10.1353/ort.2017.0018 stepanova, eila; frog 2015. social movement and a structural distribution of karelian ritual genres. in: rmn newsletter 10, 112–118. tampere, herbert 1934. eeslaulja ja koor setu rahvalaulude ettekandmisel. in: eesti rahva muuseumi aastaraamat ix/x (1933/34). tartu: sihtasutus “eesti rahva muuseum”, 49–74. tedre, ülo 2000. itku relikte eesti pulmakombestikus. in: salve, kristi; kõiva, mare; tedre, ülo (eds.), tagasipöördumatus. sõnad ja hääl. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum, 228–237. http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/english/rmn/rmn_9_ winter_2014-2015.pdf http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/english/rmn/rmn_9_ winter_2014-2015.pdf 98 janika oras, žanna pärtlas, mari sarv, andreas kalkun valk, heiki 2009. hilisrauaaeg (1000/1050–1225). in: valk, heiki; selart, anti; lillak, anti (eds.), setomaa, 2. vanem ajalugu muinasajast kuni 1920. aastani. tartu: eesti rahva muuseum, 126–174. valk, heiki 2011. setomaa asend ajaloolises ruumis: lisamärkusi kaugema mineviku kohta. in: õpetatud eesti seltsi aastaraamat 2010. tartu: õpetatud eesti selts, 9–46. viitso, tiit-rein 2003. rise and development of the estonian language. in: erelt, mati (ed.), estonian language. linguistica uralica supplementary series 1. tallinn: estonian academy publishers, 130–230. wilce, james m. 2009. crying shame. metaculture, modernity, and the exaggerated death of lament. oxford: wiley-blackwell. studia metrica et poetica sisu 3_2_27.indd to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure barry p. scherr*1 abstract: this article examines two related matters that have heretofore received little attention in the scholarly literature. the first is whether the division into stanzas shown on the page always reflects the thematic and formal structure of the poem. for instance, may 8-line stanzas with a repeated rhyme scheme (such as ababcdcd) in fact represent pairs of quatrains arbitrarily joined together? conversely, are there cases when a poem written in couplets actually consists of 4-line or 6-line stanzas that have been divided? the second issue is whether a poet’s decision to write verse in which stanzas are not demarcated on the page leads to works that differ in their formal features from those where the stanzas are (as is more typically the case) separated by blank lines. the latter portion of the article shows the effects of this decision in the verse of aleksandr kushner. keywords: russian versification, stanzas, 20th-century russian poetry, kushner this article offers some preliminary observations regarding two aspects of a single problem: are there effects on a poem that result from whether and how frequently a graphic division between rhyme units appears on the page? oleg fedotov (2002: 7) is no doubt correct in asserting that “the graphic layout […] is not an empty formality, but an objective and, in the literal sense, evident sign of the author’s will”. the question to be explored here is whether a poet’s will operates more or less autonomously in deciding if and where blank lines are to be placed between rhyme sets, or whether the choice carries with it certain implications for the poem’s structure and forms. granted, semantic considerations – a sense that line groupings of a certain length seem best suited for treating a poem’s thematic element – may be an important factor. nor it is it possible to discount the influence of tradition or of a poet’s own previous practice. but here the focus will be on certain empirical – and often quite subtle – factors that may come into play within the context of a given poem or a poet’s entire oeuvre. the first matter to be considered arises when a rhyme pattern is repeated within the confines of a single stanza: the most common instance in russian * author’s address: barry p. scherr, dartmouth college, russian department, 6085 reed hall, hanover, new hampshire 03755-3562.e-mail address: barry.scherr@dartmouth.edu studia metrica et poetica 3.2, 2016, 32–49 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.02 33to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure verse consists of an 8-line stanza with two sets of alternating rhyme, ababcdcd. is this in fact an 8-line stanza, or does the poem actually contain pairs of quatrains that happen to be joined together? ernst häublein (1978: 29) has stated: “usually the unity of such [eight-line] stanzas is very precarious. in many cases, the rationale for choosing an eight-line instead of a four-line stanza is hard to see”. the reverse situation also bears considering: do poets sometimes break up stanzas by inserting blank lines to create shorter units on the page? the prime examples in this case consist of couplets, which sometimes seem to have been formed from dividing 4or even 6-line stanzas. the overall question, though, is whether the poet’s will, in fedotov’s terms, comes to be expressed by any formal means beyond the presence or absence of spaces between the rhyme units – and whether those formal elements may sometimes suggest a different structure than what appears on the page. the second matter concerns poems in which a consistent rhyme pattern appears throughout, but the stanzas run on continuously, with no blank lines demarcating their boundaries. the convention in russian is to consider poems with eight or fewer undivided lines as “single-stanza” poems.1 however, regularly repeated rhyme schemes can be found in many longer undivided poems as well. the most prevalent pattern in this undivided verse – not surprisingly, given the predominance of the quatrain in russian poetry – involves alternating rhyme in four-line units (ababcdcdefef…). once again the function of blank lines – or their absence – between rhyme sets comes to the fore. while the decision whether or not to separate the stanzas may simply be up to the poet, it is nonetheless worth asking if the two alternatives have differing effects on a poet’s writing  – specifically, whether the formal features of verse written with, say, separated quatrains differ from those in works where the stanzas remains undivided on the page. any consideration of a poem’s layout needs to contend with the possibility that a distortion of the “poet’s will” has occurred during the process of a poem’s transfer from manuscript to printed form. kirill vishnevsky has pointed out that the absence of a blank line indicating separate stanzas may be due to the interference of an editor or to a mistake during the typesetting process that is not subsequently corrected (vishnevsky 1978: 51–52). even though most authors, of course, take great care in overseeing the printing of their verse, errors do occur and are not always rectified in subsequent editions. furthermore, a few poets – including, famously, tiutchev – have been known 1 for his pioneering catalogue of pushkin’s stanzas boris tomashevsky placed poems containing from two to eight undivided lines in a separate category, and most researchers since then have accepted that distinction (tomashevsky 1958: 138–147; see his note on p. 139). 34 barry p. scherr to display a striking indifference to the publication process.2 and these days even the most conscientious poets have little control over what appears on the internet, where the layout of a poem may well depend on the caprice of the person putting the work on line. for that matter, even the eventual position on the page can cause confusion. it is not unusual for a poem to be divided evenly between two pages so that it is impossible to be sure whether, for example, a 16-line poem was composed without any division at all or as two eight-line stanzas. scholarly editions, for which the editors have gone back to the original manuscripts whenever possible, can reduce the likelihood of a lapse between the composing of a poem and its appearance in book form, but autographs of works have often not survived, and in any case such editions are usually not available for the works of contemporary authors. thus a word of caution is in order, though the occasional incorrectly reproduced poem – assuming that such occurrences are indeed “occasional” – should not greatly alter the overall picture. two excerpts from poems by mandel’shtam will help illustrate the range of factors that may come into play in considering the integrity of stanzas that contain a repeated rhyme scheme. the middle two stanzas of the 32-line “tristia” offer an instance where, despite the identical rhyme scheme in lines 1–4 and 5–8, it seems highly likely that we are indeed dealing with an 8-line stanza: кто может знать при слове «расставанье» a какая нам разлука предстоит, b что нам сулит петушье восклицанье, a когда огонь в акрополе горит, b и на заре какой-то новой жизни, c когда в сенях лениво вол жуёт, d зачем петух, глашатай новой жизни, c на городской стене крылами бьёт? d и я люблю обыкновенье пряжи: a снуёт челнок, веретено жужжит. b смотри, навстречу, словно пух лебяжий, a уже босая делия летит! b 2 john dewey’s fine biography provides details on tiutchev’s generally careless attitude to the publication of his poems; for instance, when in 1836 he sent to ivan gagarin 65 poems to be considered for publication in pushkin’s sovremennik, they were “in both draft and fair copies, often in more than one version. tyutchev had made no effort to sort or edit the manuscripts” (dewey 2010: 220). 35to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure о, нашей жизни скудная основа, c куда как беден радости язык! d всё было встарь, всё повторится снова, c и сладок нам лишь узнаванья миг. d the second and third stanzas are representative of the whole, since the first two stanzas are in many ways alike, as are the last two. in the first two stanzas a comma appears after the fourth line, indicating continuity. tomashevsky (1958: 55–56) noted that syntactic closure is a defining characteristic of stanzas, but, like certain other poetic features, such closure is a norm rather than an absolute requirement. indeed, as svetlana matiash has shown, since the nineteenth century some poets have observed this norm more strictly and others less so. according to her figures, fewer than 3% of mandel’shtam’s stanzas lack closure when the stanzas are separated (matiash 2009; see especially pp. 194–197 and the data for mandel’shtam on p. 196). thus the presence of a comma after line 4 in two of the poem’s four stanzas by itself already suggests that the poet was writing 8-line stanzas. the poem’s second stanza (and the first of those quoted here) forms a single sentence, with its series of questions all referring to the same topic: not knowing what the new situation or the new day will bring. at the stanza’s midpoint the “fire” (ogon’) in line four relates to the image of the dawn in line five, thus further drawing together the first and second halves of the stanza semantically. at the same time there is an interesting change in the rhythm. note that all four lines in the first half of the stanza are rhythmically the same, omitting stress on the fourth strong position, or ictus, in the line. the last four lines contain a mini-structure of their own: the fully stressed lines 6 and 7 are surrounded by two lines that omit stress on the first ictus. thus a very faint hint at a difference between the two halves appears, but both the content and the punctuation after line four strongly point to a single 8-line stanza. having established that expectation in the first two stanzas, mandel’shtam can introduce strong syntactic breaks at the midpoint of his next two stanzas without great danger of their being read as quatrains. furthermore, in both stanzas 3 and 4 – as illustrated in the second stanza of this quotation – he creates a 4–2–2 structure, with the punctuation at the end of line six “echoing” that at the end of line four, thereby giving rise to the sense that they essentially belong together. in the case of this stanza, an additional unifying feature is the reappearance of the rhyme vowel from lines two and four in lines six and eight. finally, and perhaps less obviously, the word boundaries in lines four and six make them rhythmically identical (ужé / кудá; босáя / как бéден; дéлия / рáдости; лети́т / язы́к), thereby further helping to draw the two halves of the stanza together. 36 barry p. scherr a more ambiguous situation occurs in “vek”, another poem with 32 lines, divided on the page into four stanzas. the first two stanzas are given below: век мой, зверь мой, кто сумеет a заглянуть в твои зрачки b и своею кровью склеит a двух столетий позвонки? b кровь-строительница хлещет c горлом из земных вещей, d захребетник лишь трепещет c на пороге новых дней. d тварь, покуда жизнь хватает, a донести хребет должна, b и невидимым играет a позвоночником волна. b словно нежный хрящ ребенка c век младенческой земли – d снова в жертву, как ягненка, c темя жизни принесли. d in these, as in the other two stanzas, there is a clear break after the fourth line, and each four-line unit seems reasonably well contained. it is hard to find an obvious reason for the lines to be arranged in 8-line stanzas rather than quatrains, and this appears to be a poem in which the length of the stanza simply reflect the poet’s will. still, it is worth looking a little more closely to see whether there are any formal signs that mandel’shtam had eight-line sections in mind as he was composing the poem. a possible approach in this case is to consider the stanza rhythm – the stressing analyzed according to each line’s position within the stanza. this topic has received only occasional attention in the scholarly literature, with the most extensive survey of the topic to date found in an article by m. l. gasparov. he looked primarily at quatrains, but he also provided some data for 8-line trochaic tetrameter stanzas of the nineteenth century. even though that period precedes the writing of this poem, the findings can still provide a benchmark. gasparov (1989: 142) discovered that the rhythm of these stanzas tended to form double quatrains: the highest average stress is on the first line, then average stressing drops rapidly from lines two to four, stress on the fifth line rises to be the second highest for the poem, and then it falls off more gradually over lines 6–8. “vek” is too short to allow for a valid statistical analysis, but its general pattern does not deviate too far 37to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure from that outlined by gasparov. for the entire four stanzas of the poem, the first line displays the most frequent stressing, and then there is a drop over the next three lines, with three and four having the fewest stresses. lines five through eight are relatively even, with the same amount of stressing on lines two, five and seven, which all tie for second in the number of stresses. the most striking feature is the use of fully stressed lines to begin three of the four stanzas in the poem: it is as though mandel’shtam clearly wants to mark the beginning of each stanza. furthermore, in the first stanza lines 4 and 5 both omit stress on the penultimate ictus, thereby creating a rhythmic similarity and blurring any border between the quatrains. in the second stanza he emphasizes the fifth line by making it fully stressed, but in this case the rhyme in lines five and seven, ending with an unstressed “-ka”, contains an echo of the rhyme vowel in lines two and four. the third stanza begins with a pair of fully stressed lines («чтобы вырвать век из плена, / чтобы новый мир начать»), and the sense of a strong opening is further emphasized by the anaphora as well as the identical word boundaries. thus, even though the most obvious features (the repeated rhyme scheme, the syntactic break after line 4 in every stanza) point to underlying quatrains as the actual structural units of this work, the strong rhythmic beginnings to the stanzas as well as the similarity of the stanza rhythm to that of other poems composed in trochaic tetrameter 8-line stanzas suggest that mandel’shtam was in some ways emphasizing 8-line divisions during the writing of the poem. the reverse phenomenon involves poems containing short stanzas that seem to have been carved out of larger units: that is, certain structural features of the poem indicate that the poem actually consists of longer stanzas than those presented on the page. this situation arises most often with couplets. below in its entirety is the first poem from akhmatova’s cycle “cinque”: как у облака на краю, вспоминаю я речь твою, а тебе от речи моей стали ночи светлее дней. так отторгнутые от земли, высоко мы, как звезды, шли. ни отчаянья, ни стыда ни теперь, ни потом, ни тогда. 38 barry p. scherr но живого и наяву, слышишь ты, как тебя зову. и ту дверь, что ты приоткрыл, мне захлопнуть не хватит сил. on the page, this poem appears to be in six 2-line stanzas rhyming aa. could it just as well, especially considering the lack of a clear syntactic break after the poem’s second line, consist of three 4-line stanzas rhyming aabb? in this case, i would argue, certain features strongly point to the 2-line stanza. not only do the spaces every two lines reflect the will of the poet, but so does the selfcontained nature of these units, expressed most strongly, perhaps, in the 5-fold use of the word ni in lines 7–8, but also in the focused imagery elsewhere, such as that of earth and stars in lines 5–6 and the door in lines 11–12. i would add to this a rhythmical factor. the poem is written in 3-stress dol’nik verse, with a 2-syllable anacrusis that sometimes bears an extra stress. note, though, that the rhythm of the first line and that of the second line differ. the first line of each pair usually has just two stressed ictuses; the two times when this line has a third stress it is followed by two syllables before the final ictus (lines 3 and 11). thus the underlying pattern for the odd lines is xxxxxxxx – though line 5 has an extra syllable, making it equivalent to anapestic trimeter. as for the second line of each couplet, all the ictuses are stressed, and the pattern in five of the six even lines is xxxxxxxx, with a one-syllable interval between the final two ictuses. the single exception, the eighth line, is again in anapestic trimeter. thus a total of 14 metrical stresses occur in the first lines of the couplets and 18 in the second. in addition, the two strong hypermetrical stresses on the first syllable (stali in line 4; slyshish’ in line 10) appear in those second lines. this heavier stressing on the even lines further indicates that akhmatova was creating a kind of back and forth rhythm between each pair of lines, thereby strengthening the notion that she was indeed thinking in terms of couplets – even though the use of tak to begin line 5 and no to begin line 9 vaguely imply 4-line groupings in terms of the thematic structure. determining whether couplets form the predominant structure of a poem can be difficult in the case of gumilev, who wrote some twenty poems with 2-line stanzas on the page. the pre-1916 poems (through the collection kolchan) are always in paired masculine rhyme, generally consist entirely or at least primarily of syntactically closed couplets, and in all but two cases contain a total number of lines that is not divisible by four. all this argues for 2-line stanzas; yet among these earlier works gumilev has poems apparently written in couplets where the lack of strong syntactic breaks between stanzas 39to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure calls that structure into question. consider the 26-line “u kamina”, where the clearest syntactic boundaries occur after lines 4, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 24. gumilev similarly has irregular breaks in later poems, such as “somalijskij poluostrov”, which, considering only the syntax, divides irregularly into units of four or six lines (4-6-6-6-4-4-6-6). in these and other instances gumilev seemed to have felt confined by the couplet form and to employ far more syntactically open stanzas than he did with longer stanza forms. in the case of “rassypajushchaja zvezdy” there is some justification for arguing that he was essentially writing quatrains. below are the first eight of the sixteen lines: не всегда чужда ты и горда и меня не хочешь не всегда, – тихо, тихо, нежно, как во сне, иногда приходишь ты ко мне. надо лбом твоим густая прядь, мне нельзя её поцеловать, и глаза большие зажжены светами магической луны. the punctuation in this poem has varied; the version here is from the recent edition of gumilev’s complete works (1999: 169).3 note the absence of a full syntactic break after the odd and before the even numbered stanzas: that is, sentences end only after lines 4, 8, 12 and 16; after lines 2, 6 and 10 there are commas, and line 14 has no punctuation at all. the syntax, then, strongly suggests quatrains. furthermore, if one breaks the poem into quatrains and then counts the number of stresses in each line of the quatrain over the four resulting stanzas, it turns out that lines 4, 8, 12 and 16 lines have a total of 13 stressed ictuses, making this line of the quatrain the most lightly stressed in the poem as a whole. indeed, even over a poem as short as this, the frequency of stressing, considering the lines in groups of four, closely matches the stanza 3 the “biblioteka poeta” edition (1988: 269) contains a period after both lines 5 and 6. the commas found in the polnoe sobranie sochinenij seem more likely. another difference occurs in line 14, which has no punctuation in the polnoe sobranie sochinenij but a comma in the biblioteka poeta volume. however, in both editions the punctuation at the conclusion of every fourth line clearly marks the end of a sentence. 40 barry p. scherr rhythm found by gasparov (1989: 144) in trochaic pentameter quatrains.4 in short, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that gumilev was essentially writing 4-line stanzas rather than couplets. one of the most interesting cases occurs in “les”. the number of lines (30) is not divisible by four, but the clear syntactic breaks occur after lines 4, 8, 12, 18, 22 and 26, implying an overall symmetrical structure of 4-4-4-6-4-4-4: six 4-line stanzas, with a single 6-line stanza in the center. (thematically, the strongest division occurs after line 18.) as in “rassypajushchaja zvezdy” only the rhyme scheme – with each pair of lines rhyming aa – suggests the existence of couplets.5 thus, just as longer stanzas may for all practical purposes seem to consist of shorter stanzas written together on the page, so too may relatively short stanzas represent longer stanzas that have been arbitrarily divided. the second matter relating to the layout of verse concerns the poet’s decision to separate the rhyme units graphically into stanzas or to present all the lines as a continuum. while the great majority of russian poetry with a regularly repeated rhyme scheme uses blank lines to demarcate stanzas, a not insignificant number of exceptions occur. does the decision about whether to separate the stanzas on the page have other implications as well? i have touched on this issue in an article dealing with the poetry of evgeny rein, one of the few poets to write the majority of his poems without blank lines between the rhyme sets (scherr in press-a). the corpus of material comprised 293 lyric poems in the largest single collection of his verse (rein 2001). all but 30 of the poems employed stanzas, and of the works in stanzas 97 had blank lines between the stanzas on the page and 166 did not. this latter figure represents 63% of the stanzaic poems, an unusually high proportion. the most striking difference between those two sets of poems is, not unexpectedly, the syntactic integrity of the stanzas. of the collection’s 97 poems in the first category only once is a stanza left syntactically open at the end – a clear indication that when rein separates his stanzas, he feels the end of the stanza should coincide with the end of a sentence. some of the poems that appear undivided on the page also contain clear syntactic breaks after each rhyme unit, but many lack one or more breaks. thus one difference is 4 for 19th-century trochaic pentameter verse rhyming abab gasparov noted that the first and third lines were stressed equally, the frequency of stress on the second was slightly lower than on the odd lines, and the fourth was stressed least frequently of all. if this poem is read as consisting of four 4-line stanzas; then the number of stressed ictuses on each line is 16, 15, 16 and 13, matching the pattern detected by gasparov. 5 for a more extensive treatment of “les” and of gumilev’s couplets in general, see scherr in press-b. 41to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure clear: when rein writes poems without space between the rhyme sets, he is far more inclined to leave them syntactically open. had svetlana matiash (2009: 195–197) included rein in her examination of syntactic closure in poems with graphically divided stanzas, the near absence of open stanzas in the 97 poems that fall into this category would cause rein’s practice to resemble that of the eighteenth century, when syntactic closure was a virtual necessity. rein apparently was more or less consciously limiting his syntactically open stanzas to those poems where the stanzas are not separated. the frequency of syntactic openness, however, is not the only difference. when rein divides his verse on the page into regular quatrains, his practice tends to be formally conservative. one-third of those poems are written in iambic tetrameter or pentameter verse, while the other meters he employs frequently are among those found most commonly in russian poetry: trochaic tetrameter, anapestic and amphibrachic trimeter. when he writes verse that is not divided on the page, he becomes more venturesome, using a wider range of meters and, in a significant handful of poems, composing complex long lines – such as trochaic heptameter and octameter, amphibrachic and dactylic pentameter. the percentage of poems displaying non-classical meters (dol’niki, logaoedic and accentual verse) rises from about 11% when the stanzas are graphically divided to 19%. even his rhyming becomes bolder: approximate rhymes appear in much of his poetry, but the most radical instances of approximate rhyme are concentrated in the undivided verse. at least in terms of formal experimentation, his divided verse tends to be rather conservative, while the absence of graphic divisions seems to have given him a license for greater experimentation. rein of course is far from the only poet to write repeated rhyme schemes without dividing them on the page. among nineteenth-century poets the differences between divided and undivided verse appear to have been less extreme. that said, baratynsky, who wrote about a dozen poems in undivided quatrains, does on occasion leave some of his rhyme sets syntactically open when he uses this format.6 thus in “ot”ezd”, a 32-line poem in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines, the first three rhyme sets end with a semi-colon, and the penultimate rhyme set with a comma. in “svoenravnoe prozvan’e” three of the five boundaries between rhyme sets conclude with a semi-colon or comma. when baratynsky divides his verse on the page, fewer 6 note that the metrical handbook for baratynsky lists more than 50 works in undivided quatrains; however, the great majority of these are 8-line poems, which, as noted above, are regarded by most scholars as “single-stanza” compositions. for a list, see shakhverdov 1979: 319–320. 42 barry p. scherr than 4% of his stanzas are syntactically open; clearly, he felt the freedom to treat his rhyme sets differently when they were not separated by spaces.7 more recent poets, though, tend to exhibit additional differences between their divided and undivided verse. while aleksandr kushner, a close contemporary of rein, has most often placed blank lines between his identical stanzas, he has also composed a significant amount of poetry in which the stanzas are continuous on the page. an extensive study of the poetry that he had published in collections though 2006 showed that, out of 1300 poems in total, nearly 850 have stanzas that are divided by blank lines and just under 150 are written in stanzas that are not separated (laletina, lutsiuk, tver’ianovich 2008; see esp. table 21–u, pp. 579–603, for the data mentioned in this paragraph). both kinds of verse employ a broad metrical repertoire, albeit with some interesting differences in usage. whether or not his stanzas are divided, kushner, like most russian poets, favors the quatrain, most often with alternating masculine and feminine rhyme (abab or abab), but sometimes with all feminine (abab) or all masculine (abab) rhymes alternating. the frequency of quatrain types differs, sometimes sharply, depending on whether or not the stanzas are separated. in the divided verse the number of poems in abab and abab are about equal, with a slight preference for the latter, but when the stanzas are not divided almost twice as many poems are in abab. there are about equal numbers of poems with quatrains in all feminine or all masculine alternating rhymes in the divided verse, whereas in the undivided verse about twice as many poems in all feminine rhymes are found. when the stanzas are separated, about 10% of the poems with alternating feminine and masculine rhyme employ iambic pentameter. the same is true for the undivided abab poems, but for those in abab the frequency rises to a little over 25%. kushner is the opposite of rein in that his undivided verse tends to employ longer metrical forms less often than his poems in which the stanzas are demarcated. of the 131 undivided poems written in the four types of quatrain most favored by kushner (abab, abab, abab, abab), just one is in amphibrachic pentameter and two in anapestic pentameter; for the 453 divided poems employing one of these four combinations of line endings, the figures for these two meters are 18 and 28, or 4% and a little over 6%. however, the most notable aspect of kushner’s approach to undivided verse is the manner in which it evolves over the years. in early poems, such as “uroki fiziki” or “osen’”, he tends to be fairly conservative. both poems 7 for the frequency of open stanzas in baratynsky’s divided verse, see the table in matiash 2009: 195. 43to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure are written in iambic tetrameter, rhyme abab throughout, and have a strong syntactic break every four lines. even in the few instances when he introduces commas at the ends of his four-line units, he is careful to make each quatrain integral. two such boundaries occur in the concluding portion of “vozdukhoplavatel’nyj park”: чтоб нам летать и удивляться: a деревьев нет и листьев нет, b горит вверху иллюминация a’ организованных планет, b и самолеты-вертолеты a гнездятся в верхних облаках, b и где-то первые пилоты a лежат – пропеллер в головах, b и электричка рядом бродит, a огнями вытравляя мрак. b и в белом платье тень приходит a в воздухоплавательный парк... b here he again basically uses an abab quatrain – with one a’ rhyme word – and iambic tetrameter (it is striking how traditional he is in much of this early poetry), and even though the fourth and eighth lines in this excerpt end with commas, the four pairs of lines each introduced by an “and” impart a syntactic regularity to the conclusion. as a result, the run-on between stanzas is not particularly striking. as time goes on, in some of his poems without blank lines between stanzas kushner continues to end all the rhyme sets with a strong syntactic break. however, more and more frequently he comes to leave some of his stanzas syntactically open. and at times he virtually ignores the border between stanzas. thus in “i esli spish’ na chistoj prostyne…” from the 1984 collection tavricheskij sad, he has no periods after any of its four-line rhyme groups, so that only the rhyme scheme indicates the stanza structure: и если спишь на чистой простыне, a и если свеж и тверд пододеяльник, b и если спишь, и если в тишине a и в темноте, и сам себе начальник, b и если ночь, как сказано, нежна, c и если спишь, и если дверь входную d закрыл на ключ, и если не слышна c 44 barry p. scherr чужая речь, и музыка ночную d не соблазняет счастьем тишину, e и не срывают с криком одеяло, f и если спишь, и если к полотну e припав щекой, с подтеками крахмала, f here, in the first twelve of the poem’s 20 lines, the fifth line simply continues the anaphora that starts with the beginning of the poem, imparting no hint of syntactic closure. this openness is taken further at the border of lines 8 and 9, which i have highlighted in the quotation. for one thing, even though one line ending is feminine and the other masculine, in both the rhyme vowel is u, helping to link the two lines. more significantly, the adjective at the end of line 8 modifies the noun at the end of line 9, thus obliterating any sense of a syntactic boundary between the rhyme sets. note that while an absence of syntactic closure between stanzas is not unusual, outright enjambment, as in this instance, appears far less often.8 thus, in looking at gumilev’s graphically divided verse, svetlana matiash observed some 88 times when stanzas that were syntactically open but only two cases of actual enjambment – when there is no pause between lines or when a stronger break occurs within one of the lines rather than at the end.9 at the beginning of kushner’s career a poem with undivided stanzas that so radically dispenses with the notion of syntactic closure after each rhyme set would have gone very much against his inclinations. meanwhile, even as he comes to vary the internal structures of his undivided poems, kushner continues to place a clear syntactic break after essentially all of his stanzas when he divides them by blank lines. kushner’s collection kustarnik (2002) illustrates the range of his mature practice in this regard. for the more than 50 poems with blank lines placed between the stanzas, nearly every stanza ends with a period or other punctuation clearly marking the end of a sentence. a very few stanzas end with a colon or an ellipsis, but even in these instances the syntax appears “closed”, and there are certainly no examples of outright enjambment. the several poems in which stanzas are not separated on the page present, on the whole, a very different picture. just one, “stena”, contains a syntactic break after every four lines. a second such poem ends one abab rhyme group with a comma and the other 8 dictionary definitions of enjambment vary and can be incomplete; for a brief summary of its varieties see scherr 1986: 264–265. 9 the number 88 is derived from the percentage of open stanzas in the table provided in matiash 2009: 196. 45to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure two with sentence breaks. the third, “on snimaet zdes’ dachu, znakomy…”, contains 36 lines (with a space between lines 2/3 of the way through) and four of the eight rhyme sets that precede the last end with punctuation no stronger than a comma, thus indicating syntactic openness. two of those instances have no punctuation at all and comprise clear examples of enjambment. the most extreme play with the expected correspondence of rhyme set borders and syntactic breaks occurs in “pobochnye deistvija”, where the absence of spaces between the stanzas presents just one of several challenges to the poem’s readers: the layout of the poem (in columns that break up most of the lines into smaller sections), the irregular numbers of feet in the lines of verse, and the lack of sentence breaks throughout the poem all factor as well into masking the structure. the first half of the poem appears on the page as 22 separate lines; only the first and sixth of these are full lines of verse: перечень побочных действий препарата: головная боль, усталость, тошнота, сниженье аппетита, – пробую зарифмовать, но, может быть, не надо? – беспокойство, головокруженье, дрожь, я чуть не написал: обида, но обиды нет, тревога, изменение походки, спутанность сознания, бессонница, потеря обонянья, судороги, сухость в носоглотке, шум в ушах, депрессия, растущая по мере излеченья, the poem is written in trochaic lines, which contain anywhere from five to ten feet. despite the hesitation expressed in the sixth line of the quotation, “pobochnye dejstvija” is rhymed throughout, and these rhymes allow 46 barry p. scherr for the possibility of locating the actual borders between lines and for determining that the work consists of quatrains in alternating feminine rhyme (ababcdcd…): перечень побочных действий препарата: a головная боль, усталость,тошнота, сниженье аппетита, – b пробую зарифмовать, но, может быть, не надо? – a беспокойство, головокруженье, дрожь, я чуть не написал: обида, b но обиды нет, тревога, изменение походки, c спутанность сознания, бессонница, потеря обонянья, d судороги, сухость в носоглотке, c шум в ушах, депрессия, растущая по мере излеченья, d note that the d rhyme exhibits consonance – i.e., the stressed vowels in the rhyme words differ. the poem as a whole occupies 36 lines on the page, but only contains sixteen lines of verse. the third of the four rhyme units concludes with a question mark, but that is at the end of a parenthetical phrase appearing between dashes while the main clause continues into the next line (indeed, the entire poem essentially consists of a single sentence). in all, the poem conveys as well as any the way in which a tension between the natural “closedness” of stanzas on the one hand, and, on the other, the openness of a work’s syntactic structures as well as its graphic layout can contribute to the overall effect of a poem. most importantly, though, the poem exhibits a radical quality in its formal experimentation that is relatively extreme for kushner: like rein, though more in his later than his earlier poetry, he appears to find a certain freedom in writing verse where the rhyme sets are not demarcated on the page. this study has touched on two phenomena that require much further research. nonetheless, it is possible to form some initial hypotheses from the material examined here. first, subtle (and in some cases not so subtle) formal features that strengthen the integrity of the given stanza often become evident upon close analysis. hence, over the length of a poem an 8-line stanza that rhymes, say, ababcdcd, is likely to display rhythmic or syntactic structures that militate against its division into two quatrains. exceptions certainly exist, but poets for the most part find ways, perhaps as much unconsciously as consciously, to make the stanza they have chosen central to the poem’s structure. and the same point, again with certain exceptions, applies to the potential clustering of stanzas into longer units: when poets employ 2-, 4or 6-line stanzas, they typically will use formal elements that help delineate the stanza boundaries and 47to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure prevent their being perceived as larger structures. however, as we have seen in the case of gumilev, 2-line stanzas – given their brevity – are more likely than other lengths to combine into longer units: the placement of syntactic boundaries along with certain rhythmic qualities sometimes suggest that the basic structure of a particular poem consists of longer stanza forms. second, the decision to use repeated rhyme patterns but not to demarcate their boundaries on the page often carries with it certain ramifications. the most obvious and the most widespread of these is the sense that it is less necessary to have strong syntactic boundaries coincide with the ends of rhyme units. when poets place blank lines between their stanzas, they typically make the great majority of the stanzas syntactically closed – generally, more than 80%, and for some poets more than 95%. when graphic breaks do not exist, poets may still place syntactic breaks after each rhyme unit within a given poem, but at other times they will allow for syntactically open structures to appear at the boundaries of rhyme units. this lack of closure will be less marked than when it appears between separated stanzas and allows for a greater flexibility in shaping a work’s narrative, with topics more easily allotted varying amounts of space or with the work as a whole running on as though forming a single continuous statement. other consequences of not separating the stanzas may be subtler. poets like rein and kushner, who write substantial amounts of verse in stanzas that are not divided on the page, can be stricter than most in observing syntactic closure when they do place blank lines between stanzas. when he does not separate his stanzas on the page, rein tends to employ a wider range of meters and to be more experimental in his rhyming; for his part, kushner turns to structures that are more varied and complex than those found in his other stanzaic verse. however, the crucial feature seems to be the greater freedom: be it to create a more varied internal structure, employ a wider range of forms, or carry out more extreme experiments. in general, verse scholars to date have devoted most of their attention to such features as verse rhythm, rhyme and syntax, while not deeply examining the internal workings of stanzas and how the choice of stanza form can affect other aspects of a poem. the intent of this article has been to suggest that even such a seemingly trivial matter as the way in which stanzas are separated (or not separated) on the page may carry with it significant implications for the formal qualities exhibited by a work. to date the investigation of this topic has been confined to relatively few poets and works; further studies of these matters among individual poets from various eras will be needed to know whether it is possible to discern the existence of norms that have governed the role played by graphic divisions over the history of russian verse. 48 barry p. scherr references dewey, john 2010. mirror of the soul: a life of the poet fyodor tyutchev. shaftesbury: brimstone press. fedotov, oleg 2002. osnovy russkogo stikhoslozhenija: teorija i istorija russkogo stikha, kniga 2: strofika. moskva: flinta, nauka. gasparov, mikhail 1989. stroficheskij ritm v russkom 4-stopnom jambe i khoree. in: scherr barry p.; worth, dean s. (eds.), russian verse theory: proceedings of the 1987 conference at ucla. columbus, ohio: slavica, 133–147. gumilev, nikolay 1988. stikhotvorenija i poemy. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. gumilev, nikolay 1999. polnoe sobranie sochinenij v desiati tomakh, 3. moscow: voskresen’e. häublein, ernst 1978. the stanza. london: methuen & co. kushner, aleksandr 2002. kustarnik: kniga novykh stikhov. st. petersburg: pushkinskij fond. laletina, ol’ga; lutsiuk, irina; tver’ianovich, kseniia 2008. metrika i strofika a. s. kushnera. in: khvorost’ianova, elena (ed.), peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov. sankt-peterburg: nestor-istorija, 517–634. matiash, svetlana 2009. stroficheskij perenos v russkoj poezii (voprosy teorii i istorii). in: skulacheva; tatiana; prokhorov, aleksandr (eds.), slavianskij stikh, viii: stikh, jazyk, smysl. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury, 192–210. rein, evgeny 2001. izbrannye stikhotvorenija i poemy. moskva, sankt-peterburg: letnij sad. shakhverdov, sergei 1979. metrika i strofika e. a. baratynskogo. in: gasparov, mikhail (ed.), russkoe stikhoslozhenie xix v.: materialy po metrike i strofike russkikh poetov. moskva: nauka, 278–328. scherr, barry 1986. russian poetry: meter, rhythm, and rhyme. berkeley: university of california press. scherr, barry in press-a. nerazdelennyj stikh evgeniia reina. scherr, barry in press-b. seeing the forest through the trees: the underlying structure of gumilev’s “les”. tomashevsky, boris 1958. strofika pushkina. in: pushkin: issledovanija i materialy 2, 49–184. 49to separate or not to separate: stanza boundaries and poetic structure vishnevsky, kirill 1978. arkhitektonika russkogo stikha xviii – pervoj poloviny xix veka. in: kholshevnikov, vladislav (ed.), issledovanija po teorii stikha. moskva: nauka, 48–66. editorial this issue is dedicated to the memory of lucylla pszczołowska (1924-2010), the recognised leader in polish and comparative slavic versification studies. professor pszczołowska was not just a researcher. study of verse was her calling and mission, to which she committed her entire life. from 1952 until her retirement in 1995, lucylla pszczołowska worked at the institute of literary studies of the polish academy of sciences. there she was an active participant in research projects initiated by polish scholars maria renata mayenowa and maria dłuska. her works include the second volume of the encyclopaedia of versification, devoted to rhyme, and she was also one of the main contributors to the collective monograph on strophics. from 1981 to 1993 she headed the laboratory of theoretical poetics and language of literature where she widened the scope of versification studies even more by creating her own series of comparative slavic metrics (slowiańska metryka porównawcza). this was, however, not just a new book series, but a continuous project, which, in addition to poles, attracted scholars from czech republic, soviet union (after its collapse – from russia, ukraine and estonia), bulgaria, yugoslavia (after its breakup – from serbia and slovenia). each volume in the series was preceded by workshops and conferences, and in many cases more than one conference. nine issues have been published, devoted to topics such as the rhythmical lexicon of language and methods of its processing, the syllabic structure of verse, the semantics of verse, verse in translation, sonnet, the fund of european metres in slavic verse traditions, free verse, short verse metres, hexameter and ancient stanzas in slavic poetry. an overview of the series is given in one of professor pszczołowska’s last papers, which is published in this volume in tribute to our late colleague. two trends can be observed in the theoretical studies of verse. the first treats of verse as a linguistic phenomenon, and, accordingly, versification is treated as part of linguistics. in the polish studies of verse the representative of this viewpoint was maria dłuska. the second trend approaches verse as an aesthetic or, more narrowly, a literary phenomenon: in accordance with this approach, versification is part of literary science. this trend was represented by maria renata mayenowa. pszczołowska synthesised these trends in her work. on the one hand, she was a very systematic, meticulous describer of the language of poetry, who stimulated further research of the linguistic aspects of studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 7–8 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.01 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.01 8 mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman polish verse and other slavic poetic traditions (compare the first two volumes of slowiańska metryka porównawcza). on the other hand, her attention was focused on both literary approaches (see, for example, her study of romanticist verse) and various non-slavic traditions (for instance, classical prosody and even the common heritage of european verse), as well as literary contacts. among her last works, her research on the relationship between polish and ukrainian verse stands out. the scholarly legacy of lucylla pszczołowska is impressive both for its breadth and its depth. she was an outstanding scholar and a wonderful person whose life and work will continue to inspire many of her colleagues. mihhail lotman, igor pilshchikov, maria-kristiina lotman studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd reuven tsur playing by ear and the tip of the tongue amsterdam/philadelphia, johns benjamins, 2012 eva lilja reuven tsur created cognitive poetics, and from 1977 on his perspectives greatly shaped the fi eld. his chosen problems explain many of the classical questions within aesthetics. english cognitive stylistics, however, which more strictly follow the cognitive discoveries of lakoff & johnson, look more limited by comparison. specifi cally tsur’s poetry analyses are both enlightening and fi nished with a certain feeling for the poem. his criticism always pays attention to artistic qualities before dry theory, and this focus is something that strengthens his credibility. his new book playing by ear and the tip of the tongue (2012) continues in many ways his what makes sound patterns expressive? (1992), with parts of the older book even being repeated in service of those who haven’t read it. th e somewhat peculiar title refers to what tsur labels the tot (tip of the tongue) phenomenon – when you have a word on the tip of your tongue but cannot quite get hold of it. almost all parts of the word are at hand but one detail is missing. his point is how words consist of many parts, phonetically and semantically, that to some extent act separately. a word is a stable confi guration out of long time memory consisting of a great many distinctive features, anyone of them potentially changed or manipulated. th is is used within poetic language. speech sounds as well consist of clusters of qualities in combination – for example a sound might be opened or closed. diff erent combinations give rise to various meanings. th is is a main theme of the book – no linguistic phenomenon is unambiguous because they all consist of combinations of a great many small characteristics. as the preface says, this book explores how poetic language attempts to escape the tyranny of conceptual and phonetic categories. th e specifi c poetic eff ect originates from disturbances in cognitive processes, tsur says. speech sounds are in actuality complex, but uncomplicated when listened to and categorised. still, certain devices of poetic language delay categorisation in order to facilitate precategorial information. in that way, poetry creates meanings which are both unexpected and optimal. normally categorisation takes place at lightning speed, but the poetic language possesses doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.07 studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 134–139 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.07 135review articles tricks to delay it and provoke emotion. th e good reader perceives phonetics as well as semantics in a text, something that will take some time. and aff ects need time to incubate, growing emotions that will be indispensable elements in the experience of that poem. precategorial information reuven tsur has developed gestalt psychology so it can be relevant for versifi cation studies. he is one in the great tradition from arnheim, cooper & meyer and barbara herrnstein smith. his fi ndings are just as important for free verse as for the metred verse that he himself mostly prefers. you might say that poetic forms consist of gestalts – according to the standards of gestalt psychology. more than that, tsur also postulates a background mumble, that is not categorised but full of undetermined meanings originating out of the context – this context might be semantic as well as acoustic. th is background murmur is said to be ‘thing-free’, or ‘shapefree’, and lacking gestalt. a precategorial meaning production should precede the gestalt. th e book aims at explaining the relations between precategorial information and its semantic and phonetic circumstances. tsur’s theory emanates from an era before the break through of brain research, which is why you should be careful with the results. later psychologists have discussed so called cognitive schemas applying patterns or gestalts to all information that could be perceived. th e stability of such schemas has also been subject of debate: are they stable structures of the long term memory or more of momentary constructions? my experiences from versifi cation studies and verse history speak for the stability of such cognitive schemas. when a form pattern is established it will prevail in its culture. an example is the tactus or metre, that arised within the germanic languages at the threshold of the modern age. tactus is still a strong force in the mind – but nowadays perhaps more a pattern for poets to oppose. th ere are patterns of form and patterns of culture or meaning. th ose who mean that cognitive schemas are more temporary constructions seem to refer to cultural patterns and their semantic meanings. th is begs the question: are form schemas more stable than the categories of culture? th is is to be further investigated. an important idea in gestalt psychology is the fi gure-ground scheme. tsur’s conception of a murmur below the gestalts is analogous to it, and he gives 136 review articles extensive room for discussing examples of this model. however, the fi gureground scheme shows up to be rather unstable when applied to poetry. tsur argues that it operates more like in music – sometimes ‘ground’ is missing or ‘ground’ turns out to be ‘fi gure’. but perhaps this scheme is not relevant for music and poetry? tsur imagines gestalts fl oating upon uncategorised information that nevertheless slips into consciousness. i agree that perceptions are premodal, but does that really mean they lack gestalt? my experiences from versifi cation studies say that the settling of form patterns in a fi rst step is premodal, and that details are added later on when the pattern has found its modality. with such a model, perceptions that are not patterned just disappear. roman jakobson, however, claimed the existence of subliminal signifi cation. th is is where he comes close to tsur’s idea of uncategorised ‘thing-free’ sounds. but maybe the background mumble also possesses some kind of form? also, as tsur correctly points out, phonemes are coded according to the acoustic context. a speech sound is pronounced (and coded) depending on the surrounding sounds and their meanings. th e background murmur seems to function in a similar way. th en is it really lacking gestalt? th e poetic text is spatial as well as temporal. in his poetic rhythm, tsur shows how the gestalt’s second limit contributes to reshape the gestalt, by so called back-structuring. only when the gestalt is closed you know its form for sure – it is, so to say, structured or understood backwards. th is is one of several devices that spatialise the text giving it a quality of balance by suspending the fl ow of time. in other words, this quality adds to the concentration and charged signifi cation of poetry. modalities act in diff erent ways. tsur brings qualities from music and image into the art of poetry testing the results; furthermore, he is tracing the play between modalities. sight appears to be the strongest and most differentiated of the senses, and visual gestalts are stable and diff erentiated in comparison. th ey are rapidly categorised, while acoustic gestalts typically are unique, undiff erentiated and miss adequate descriptions – in other words they are signifi ed by delayed categorization. some modalities don’t have a working terminology but use descriptive terms from, primarily, visuality. th at means that temporal lapses oft en are described in spatial terms. sight possesses most descriptive expressions, aft er that comes hearing, but tactility seems to be woolly. meanwhile, less diff erentiated senses borrow expressions from the more diff erentiated ones. here we have a good explanation for the synaesthesia of common everyday language. sound is mostly described in spatial expressions such as ‘high-low’ and so on. but tsur shows us how acoustic details are really understood. 137review articles a sound has three physical dimensions: rapid – slow, broad – narrow (both aiming at the vibrations of the sound wave) and thick – thin (aiming at the source of the sound). he also shows how the formants of a sound infl uence semantics. for example, the formants of a ‘g’ are situated where you also fi nd metallic sounds – in that way the ‘g’ gets a metallic quality. more than that, diff erent aff ects have their typical pitches. th e intonation of happiness is marked by big jumps with rounded tops. anger jumps too, but the curves are somewhat lower and sharper in form. tsur also repeats what we already know – small things cooperate with high frequancy and big things with low frequency, and so on. while interpreting poetry, facts like these explain a great many ‘subliminal’ meanings. words have very many more signifi cations than those listed in the dictionary. brain halves tsur’s measurements at haskins laboratories around 1980 are of epoch-making importance. today, however, they are thirty fi ve years old and should be revised in the light of modern neurology. brain research has developed rapidly, and new results are continuously knocking at the door. a poem can be listened to and looked at, and now neurology discusses the relationship between sight and hearing, and how those senses are supported in the brain. among other things, it has been proposed that the sense of hearing has less room than that of sight, or that the temporality of hearing depends on sight qualities. visuality is spatial, and the superiority of sight might add spatial properties to the poem in spite of its basic temporal lapse. around 1980 the general knowledge of the diff erent functions of the brain halves was agreed upon – the left half contains for example language and logic, while the right half is responsible for arts and emotions. th e measurements at haskins show that poetry uses both halves – this is something that gives it a unique position in human cognition. th is double position explains some aesthetic questions and at the same time creates new ones. sound might be coded in a speech mode (on the left side) as well as in a nonspeech mode (on the right). th e speech mode is rapidly categorised – one hears something other than one really hears. in the nonspeech mode, however, one perceives the very sound, the qualities of the sound wave. poetry allows us to take part with both modes, the coded meaning as well as the very sound – certainly a wonderful art form. in my studies of aesthetic rhythm, i have distinguished two dominating rhythmic movements, balance and direction. 138 review articles even these two seem to refer to diff erent brain halves. direction goes to the left together with sequence and time, but balance belongs to the right half with space and relations. th ese circumstances once more underline how poetic language works with time as well as space, something which partly explains the special character of poetic language. not least the interesting facts tsur presents about abilities of the brain raises the question of the age of his reference literature – it is oft en fi ft y to sixty years old. it is like repeating my own intellectual history – i remember when i as a young student lost myself in wellek & warren’s th eory of literature (1949) or ullmann’s principles of semantics (1957), both of which are important for tsur. but much has happened during these sixty years. cognitive poetics has another theoretical base other than structuralism, and i am looking forward to the discussion of the connection between them. poststructuralim is missing in tsur’s impressive reference list, and i would like to have it explained what motivated its absence. tsur is a great theory builder, he creates theory and has no duty to prove every step he takes, but i need more background. what is the relation between structuralism and lakoff & johnson’s philosophy in the flesh? and, how do i come from neurology and get to phenomenology? signifi cation patiently, tsur uncovers layer aft er layer in the poem’s production of meaning. every extra signifi cation has its own technical explanation. for example, repetitions add extra meaning because of their similarities – repetitions create similarity – they mix and disturb the rational lapses of language. th e reader is forced to abandon the rational principle of succession for the emotional principle of similarity, and the properties of the text collide in a confusion of sound and content. aft er this book, interpreting a poem will be arduous, sweaty work. tsur elucidates ways between sound and meaning, and these connections are complicated. meaning production takes place according to several models. one of them is iconicity in a broad sense of sound symbolism and structure resemblance. aff ects have their typical energy curves – the same curves that are seen in the poetic text. brain mechanisms for religious mystery might enter the poem supplying its special signifi cation; synaesthesia of all kinds colour the text. speech sounds have many potentials for meaning – the one realised depends on the context. 139review articles in the old days one tried to explain the meaning production of the sound structure with the help of associations. th ese associations should be intersubjective. however, tsur has proven his case that these so-called associations are based on (many subtle) facts, and this is something that means a change in paradigm for poetics. th is book is one from a group where tsur confi rms such a new paradigm. references gibbs, raymond w. jr 2006. embodiment and cognitive science. new york: cambridge university press. lakoff , george; johnson, mark 1999. philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western th ought. new york: basic books. lakoff , george; turner, mark 1989. more than cool reason: a field guide to poetic metaphor. chicago & london: th e university of chicago press. ullmann, stephen 1957. principles of semantics. oxford: blackwell. wellek, rené; warren, austin 1949. th eory of literature. new york: harcourt, brace & world. studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd versifi cation at the 2014 aseees convention (november 2014, san antonio, texas, usa) barry p. scherr th e association for slavic, east european and eurasian studies (aseees; formerly known as the american association for the advancement of slavic studies, or aaass) is the largest organization in the united states for scholars whose research involves eastern europe and the countries that formerly were part of the soviet union. a wide variety of disciplines are represented in the organization: historians, political scientists, literary scholars, linguists, fi lm scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, geographers, etc. typically, more than 2000 people attend the annual conventon, which is held in various cities throughout north america. during the 1980s and 1990s nearly every year saw at least one panel (out of the several hundred at each convention) devoted to versifi cation. however, with the retirement of several american verse scholars it became increasingly diffi cult to hold such panels on a regular basis, and for the several years immediately prior to 2014 there had not been any that focused on verse theory. in 2014 several scholars from eastern europe and russia agreed to attend the aseees conference, which allowed for the organization of two panels. at the fi rst of these, “versifi cation in the 21st century” tatyana vladimirovna skulacheva spoke on “what’s new in russian verse study.” th ree developments were highlighted in her talk. first, she referred to what she termed a “new wave” in the study of non-classical verse. if scholars such as m. l. gasparov carried out the fundamental work in defi ning and initially analysing these metres, then scholars today are engaged in the tasks of looking at recent developments in their usage and fi nding new approaches to analysing their essential features. second, she referred to the use of computer-aided analysis in verse studies. computers have for some time been used to look at matters such as phonetics, but now the attention of researchers is turning to applying the power of computer analysis to additional aspects of verse study. for many years individual researchers have manually (and painstakingly) noted the metres and rhythm of individual poems; computers off er the promise of dealing with vast bodies of verse and providing data on a scale not previously possible. much of her talk was devoted to the recent application of brain studies to the analysis of poetic texts. aft er initially studying and determining the most basic components of verse across a number of languages, this fi eld has now started to studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 156–159 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.09 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.09 157versifi cation at the 2014 aseees convention explore additional problems. among these, one of the key issues involves the varying lengths of pauses between words. research has shown that the closer syntactic ties (and thus the shorter pauses) occur at the end and at the beginning of a verse line, whereas the looser ties are to be found in the middle. at the end of her talk she took note of the wide range of specialists – linguists, statisticians, neurophysiologists – who are joining forces in an eff ort to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of verse. th e paper by robert ibrahim-kolár and petr plecháč, both from the institute of czech literature, czech academy of sciences, was titled “how to compile and use a verse corpus: th e example of czech” and was presented by petr plecháč. th e corpus of czech verse currently contains nearly 80,000 poems with more than 2,5 million lines of poetry. a computer program has automatically provided information about the basic (non-infl ected) form of each word in the corpus as well as about its grammatical categories. in their paper, the two scholars focused on two aspects of computer analysis: the phonetic and the metrical. th e phonetic analysis in some ways has proved to be the easier of the two, with the computer able to use a series of rules to provide a phonetic description that is accurate in all but a relatively small number of instances, when it is necessary to resort to a manually built dictionary. examination of a random sample shows that the error rate is quite small, on the order of nine mistakes per 10,000 sounds. th e computer-assisted metrical analysis, by contrast, for now is essentially “semi-automatic,” with manual checking called for unless a series of conditions has been met. th e combined manual and automatic approach to identifying metres has again resulted in a very low error rate (about .03%). th e latter portion of the paper briefl y described several other features of the work that has been done to date, including the creation of databases for czech metres and rhymes, as well as a program that searches for keywords according to a set of criteria that can be described by the researcher. unfortunately, oleg mikhailovich anshakov, who was scheduled to speak on “computer-aided verse study,” was not able to attend the conference; however, a brief summary of his talk was provided by tatyana skulacheva at the conclusion of the second panel. th at panel, “russian versifi cation studies in metre and rhythm,” opened with a paper by mihhail lotman, of tallinn and tartu universities: “metre: a template or (probablistic) measure” which in his absence was read by barry scherr. th e paper consisted of two sections. th e fi rst dealt with the fundamental problem of defi ning metre. he noted that metre is oft en an adopted form, whose origins are not clear. one way of understanding metre is to regard it as an abstract structure, which is then realised diff erently in various verse traditions. for instance, the metrical “template” of the hexameter can serve as 158 barry p. scherr the basis for very diff erent hexametrical forms: quantitative-syllabic, accentual-syllabic, etc. metre is oft en realised through rhythm, but it can also be associated with other kinds of cognitive structures, including grammar, syntax, and semantics. th e second part of the paper involved an approach to texts that appears to be metrical but cannot be associated with a particular template. th e instance examined in this paper was pushkin’s oft -studied but never satisfactorily categorised “west slavic songs” («песни западных славян»). previous studies have focused on analysing the distribution of stresses to try to fi t the poem into a particular metre, usually anapestic or trochaic, but these have all failed to explain a signifi cant number of lines. m. l. gasparov comes closest, but in claiming that the “west slavic songs” are written in the rather amorphous 3-stress taktovik he accounts for only about 90% of the lines. lotman proposes a quite diff erent, probabilistic approach, in which the key factors turn out to be (1) a strong tendency toward lines of 10 syllables and (2) a regularity in the distribution of word boundaries, which is independent of the distribution of stresses. aleksandr mikhailovich levashov presented a talk on “th e russian dolnik of the 20th and 21st centuries,” which he had co-authored with by sergei evgenievich liapin. the authors pointed out that dol’nik verse not only remained popular during the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st, but that its features had evolved, requiring new approaches to its analysis. a major focus of their paper was the verse of joseph brodsky, which researchers have oft en had diffi culty in classifying, given the irregularities (such as large clusters of unstressed syllables) that categorise many lines. th e approach of levashov and liapin is in a way probabilistic as well, searching for various features that allow them to fi nd strong tendencies in verse that at fi rst glance seem resistant to conventional analysis. th us they classify a group of poems by brodsky as consisting of 6-stress dol’niki so long as at least 75% of the lines contain six ictuses, and they off er statistical analyses to highlight certain features: the division of these lines into two somewhat independent hemistichs, the manner in which weak and strong syntactic links emphasise the metrical structure of the lines, and the diff erences between the two hemistichs. th eir analyses show that the seeming irregularities of brodsky’s verse do not, in the fi nal analysis, prevent their belonging to the category of dol’nik verse. finally, stanislav shvabrin (university of north carolina, usa) in “quantifi able metaphysics: nabokov and ‘non-classical’ prosody,” also deals with dol’nik verse, albeit in a very diff erent way. in his own original poetry nabokov largely avoided the non-classical verse forms that had come into fashion at the beginning of the modern era (and which nabokov seems to have associated with writers who were politically to the left ). however, the 159versifi cation at the 2014 aseees convention opening paragraph of chapter 18 in nabokov’s invitation to a beheading («пиглашение на казнь»), includes quotations from the beginning of the fi rst line in tiutchev’s poem “last love” («последняя любовь») and the end of the second line (in the english translation, which was done by nabokov’s son in collaboration with the author, these lines are quoted in their entirety). th at second line is the fi rst of fi ve in this 12-line poem that deviates from the iambic tetrameter of the other seven lines and is written in what today would be called dol’nik verse. shvabrin noted that nabokov preferred sergei bobrov’s term pauznik and used it to apply to a broader range of verse forms in which the number of weak syllables between ictuses is variable. th e reference to tiutchev’s innovative verse at this key moment in the novel, where the hero clearly senses his own doom, shows that nabokov saw this form, with its interruption of orderly expectation, as possessing not just a literary or political but also a “metaphysical” signifi cance. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk*1 abstract: the paper studies long-term changes in the length of russian poetry (1750– 1921) to reveal the relation of poem length (counted in lines) to a poetic form and its evolution. the research has shown a dramatic decrease in the mean and median poetry lengths during the 19th century. this decrease was followed by the decline in length diversity, which resulted in short poems (8–20 lines) overpopulating the literature during the age of modernism. we argue that this transformation towards the short form could be understood in the framework of cultural evolution: russian poetry struggled to keep its literary niche, while being continuously under the pressure of successful large narratives of the 19th century. therefore, it was forced to develop complexity while being highly constrained formally (accentual-syllabic verse and rhyme maintained for a long time) by the shrunk length of a lyrical poem. keywords: russian poetry; length; 19th century; 20th century; cultural evolution; complexity; system of poetic genres introduction the length of poetry is not a widely discussed topic in literary theory – neither formalist nor structuralist. however, changes in poem lengths are frequently addressed in the context of genre’s system disintegration, which was happening in russian poetry during the first half of the 19th century (see on that: ginzburg 1974, tynyanov 1977): since russian formalists this disintegration has been seen as the decline of monumental lyrical genres (ode), followed by the dominance of elegy in the 1810s, and its decomposition towards genreunspecific lyrical form. the genre system and its normative examples started to lose their influence on the subsequent generations of romantic poems. there are reasons to think that during these processes russian poetry was becoming shorter: obviously, the ode was a large genre that vanished while * authors’ addresses: artjom shelya, department of slavic studies, university of tartu, lossi 3, 51003, tartu, estonia. e-mail: artjoms@ut.ee; oleg sobchuk, institute for cultural research and arts, university of tartu, ülikooli 16, 51003, tartu, estonia. e-mail: sobchuk@ ut.ee. doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.03 studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 66–84 67the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) literature drifted away from the court, but multiple evidence also suggests that the long elegy of the 1810s shrunk rapidly during the 1820s (martynenko 2015: 25–27); fyodor tyutchev broke down the philosophical ode and invented an extra-short form of a “lyrical fragment” (leibov 2000: 44–58; rydel 1995; tynyanov 1977b); lermontov – in the situation of genre ambiguity – pushed narrative forms towards “lyrical novellas” (eikhenbaum 1924: 115–128); ballads were frequently squeezed into short poems and this resulted in the poetry of cues: indirect leftovers of the stories in a lyrical poem (explicit already in lermontov, but especially important for fet). if this change towards a shorter form can be traced, then why, when gaining the relative freedom from the genre system, does poetry need to be shortened? from the evolutionary perspective, change in size cannot happen independently from change in the whole organism: “for every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form”, states the famous essay of j.b.s. haldane (haldane 1927: 18)1. similarly, tynyanov in 1923 wrote on the differences between large and small poetic forms: “the calculations for large form are not the same as for small form, every detail, every stylistic device has a different function, depending on the size of construction, has a different power, carries a different burden” (tynyanov 1977). despite this manifest importance of the size of a poetic construction, the length itself was rarely studied with quantitative evidence, and it was never done on a large historical scale, using the whole population of poetic forms (or at least a large sample) instead of observing few canonical authors. in this paper, we try to trace the change in length of russian poetry during almost the entire history of the modern russian literature, to solve the question of the “convenient size” for poetic “species”, and to explain the possible reasons and pressures that were driving this change within the framework of cultural evolution theory. 1 on the topic of size in literature (character networks in the novel and title length) see also moretti 2013: 179–210; 231–237. 68 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk data for the study we used data of the poetical subcorpus of the russian national corpus2, which is the largest well-structured and marked up digital collection of russian poetry of the 18–20th centuries3. we had access to a database dump of the poetical subcorpus (made in 2012): a collection of separate .xml documents with texts and metadata.4 files were parsed to extract different data, which was combined into one large table: it contains information on ≈43,000 poems.5 the length in lines was counted for each poem. we chose to observe the number of lines instead of the number of words because lines provide more information about the form and genre: for example, a poem of 12 lines occupies the space of three quatrains, while that of 4 lines suggests a small genre of epigram, epitaph, or inscription. not everything in the corpus could be controlled. the main problem is that there is no way to separate texts based on their editorial status (finished / unfinished, published / left in manuscripts, etc.), and thus there is no control on the cultural impact of specific texts (the corpus includes many alexander pushkin’s unfinished drafts, for example). another notable source of noise is dates of composition: some of the texts are undated and represented in the corpus within the time interval in which they could have been written – often this period extends to 20–30 years or even more. to decrease the possible bias in chronology, we decided to exclude from the observation those poems that have this interval larger than 10 years. for the rest of uncertain dates the upper year mark was taken as the approximate time of composition. for the most part of the study, we will be using texts written between 1750 and 1921. before this period, the corpus data is simply too scarce, as the system of modern russian poetry was just emerging; after that, the data is unreliable, since russian poetic tradition clearly splits to three separate branches – soviet, underground, and emigrée – and there is no way in the corpus to distinguish 2 http://ruscorpora.ru/search-poetic.html. 3 this corpus is not a whole population of the russian poetry, but a large sample that, despite following certain rules of representativeness, is skewed towards the canonical texts and the texts available in the 20th century editions. some principles of design of corpus contents are described in korchagin 2015. 4 we are sincerely grateful to boris orekhov and kirill korchagin for the access to the database dump. without it this study couldn’t be done. 5 the processed data and the source code for plots used in this paper are freely accessible: https://github.com/perechen/russian.poetry.length. 69the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) between them automatically. besides that, collection of the 20th century poetry may be not very reliable due to authorship restrictions and the lack of some key authors6. results in figures 1.1 and 1.2, the mean and median poetry lengths were counted by both years and decades. there is a clearly observable decrease in length – it is more evident in figure 1.3, where extreme values of the 18th century were excluded from the observation. however, there is also a decline in lengths diversity: mean values are rapidly closing the gap with the median. figure 1.1. mean and median values of length in lines counted for each year (1750– 1921, sample size = 34,000) 6 this problem is certainly important for our sample made from russian national corpora in 2012, since then the 20th century in poetic corpus became much more representative. 70 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk figure 1.2. mean and median values of length in lines counted for each decade. smoothing lines added (loess) figure 1.3. closer look on the 19th century (1800–1921, sample size = 31,000) 71the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) the median represents centrality, it could be seen as a dot that separates the higher and the lower halves of values, so this measurement is resistant to outliers. because short poetry is dominant (95% of poems in our sample are shorter than 100 lines), median values remain relatively low, compared to the means that are sensitive to big numbers of large forms. however, this difference between the mean and the median was fading during the second half of the 19th century, and suggests that short forms were overpopulating russian poetry, and that large forms had less and less impact on the means. this difference could be also observed in particular authors: while pushkin’s gap between the mean and the median is 29 lines (with values 43.4 and 14 respectively), poets of a predominantly short form have mean even lower than median: afanasii fet (16.99 and 18), alexander blok (17.5 and 18), anna akhmatova (11.56 and 18). this trend reaches its maximum in the modernism – when reinvention and outburst of lyrical poetry happened. it is hard to address the latest situation with our sample as seen on figure 2, where the timeline was extended to 1980s. results remain uncertain; should we attribute the increase in median and mean length in the 1920–1930s to the soviet period, when poetry was trying to bring the large form back – new epic and heroic narratives? or is this just a flaw in the sample, which is small and could be seen as not representative (dispersion of values is particularly high in the second half of the 20th century, where data is very scarce)? these measurements, however, give only a rough general picture, because everything is counted together within the corpus: large drama in verse and pushkin’s drafts. another possible problem that could bias the results is that large forms in corpus sometimes can be hard to detect because of its structure, where long texts are frequently broken into smaller parts according to their internal organization by “sections / chapters / parts”. for example, mikhail kuzmin’s poem the trout breaking through the ice (форель разбивает лед) is represented in the corpus not as one poem of 524 lines, but as 15 smaller poemsparts (in this case, the split is a good decision – and it will be discussed later). we also expected that the drop in length would accompany the disintegration of the genre system theorized by formalists – but there is no visible change in the length during the first half of the 19th century. a probable answer is: comparing to the second half of the 19th century, the first half provided a vast amount of space for large poetic forms: drama, romantic narrative poems, even a “novel in verse”. short forms existed in the diverse population, and that diversity had disappeared, thus figures 1 and 2 depict this most visible change, but they say little about short lyrical poetry. obviously, short forms have always existed, but there are reasons to expect that their “short” length 72 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk wasn’t constant, and in fact became even shorter. to trace this change and switch to the scale of “small” poems, some control over the data should be acquired. poetical corpus is tagged for genres7 and we can remove large poems (поэма), dramas and verse novels from our observation. also, one case requires a special treatment. according to the markup used by the creators of the russian poetic corpus, a “cycle” (цикл) means: any poem that was considered a part of a larger text unity, or this larger unity itself. since there is no way to automatically distinguish between these two meanings, we decided to exclude all the texts marked as “cycle” from our corpus. that will exclude many texts, not only large ones, but also small poems, however, this operation can remove possible bias that emerges by treating actual large forms as a number of small texts. finally, all texts larger than 100 lines and smaller than 5 (4 lines stand for traditionally small genres like epigram and include unfinished pieces and drafts) were excluded to access the lowest part of the size scale, where the unidentified “lyrical poem” is arguably located. 7 corpus genre tags sometimes only reflect genre attribution in the title of the poem (so “song” tag is added for poems, which have the word “song” in their title). given the extreme uncertainty in the discussion on genre problems, this decision allows to have only basic and rough control of different poetic forms in the corpus. 73the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) figure 3. mean and median for shorter poems (lines < 100, > 4; 1750–1921, sample size = 32,000). in this cleanest sample we calculated pearson’s correlation for variables in time, which is highly significant (r = –0.80 (mean), r = –0.72 (median); p < 0.001) in figure 3 two significant decreases in poetry length during the 19th century become clearly visible. the first happens in the 1820s, right where we expected the decomposition of genre system and the beginning of a new lyrical form; poetry gets compressed even more in the 1880s, losing about one quatrain in size. roughly, the average short poem became two times shorter during this 150 year period of modern russian literature. here we were tracing an “average” length poem, but what does this average consist of ? to trace this population of short forms, a distribution of poems of small sizes (number of lines below 50, 90% of corpus) was made, as shown on figure 4. 74 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk figure 4. quantities of poems of small size (lines < 50; 1750–1921, sample size = 30,000) note how all the most common lengths are the multiples of four (8, 12, 16…), which points to the high sustainability of a quatrain’s syntactic and compositional scheme in russian poetry. this is the outcome of rhyme preservation: rhymes are inducing the underlying 4-line structure (especially abab, abba patterns) to verse. however, there is an important exception: the number of poems of 14 lines is unexpectedly high. this has a simple explanation: a sonnet. sonnets, of course, became popular in the romantic age, were widespread in modernism, but had existed long before russian modernity started. it was probably the most successful and widespread form in the new european lyrical poetry; invented in the literature of the court (wilkins 1915) a sonnet initiated a shift from singing lyrical poetry to reading it (oppenheimer 1989: 1–29). by isolating canzone (or canso) stanza (kleinhenz 1986) a sonnet acquired its short structure of 8+6 lines, and became a vital device for formally diverse expression of lyrical emotion in a constant, limited size.8 the size of the most widespread short forms of russian poetry was approximating the length of a sonnet (12 and 16 lines) – and in fact never compressed more than this. 8 see the overview on early history of the sonnet in kennedy 2011. 75the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) figure 5 shows how these extra-short forms (8–20 lines, 60% of all poems in the observation) were overpopulating russian poetry in time, taking more and more relative space. this suggests why, among other things, the sicilian-born poetical form of the 13th century was successful, its luckily coined size was of high importance – probably convenient form for european lyric poetry that was rediscovered many times in different national literatures.9 figure 5. the weight of the most spread short poems (8–20 lines, poems of 14 lines excluded) in the sample size measured for each decade (1750–1921) cyclization of short forms as russian poetry was becoming shorter on average, and the genre system was losing its influence over it, specific forms developed to constitute larger unities of lyrical texts. the shortest species couldn’t fit in the old genre structure that divided poetic space into clear sectors (odes were united with odes, 9 of course, poetry length should be investigated in different literary traditions to explore the hypothesis of “convenient” size for the european lyrics. 76 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk elegies with elegies, etc.). so instead of the unity of grouping by genre, these short forms found more ambiguous and flexible ways to be united in a book of poetry, its sections, or a thematic cycle (leibov 2000: 44–46). this way of short poetic forms living in lyrical “colonies” within a book was called the “large form” by tynyanov.10 this “large form” was widespread in modernism, and this can be clearly seen on figure 6, where the weight of poems with the tag “cycle” was counted – it gives only a rough estimate of this process, but nevertheless shows the increasing cyclization of lyrics, which was happening while russian poetry experienced a continuous decline in length. figure 6. the weight of the poems with a “cycle” tag in the sample (1750–1921) modernism presented a wide diversity of “large forms”, with different strengths and structures of links between the parts: from annensky’s “shamrocks” of three poems, to the lyrical “trilogy” of blok. andrey belyj and mikhail kuzmin invented a specific type of larger poem: links between poems-parts are stronger than in a cycle but weaker than in a unified text (e. g. the romantic poem). this type survived in the soviet underground poetry in a genre that elena 10 on the issue of cyclization and book of poetry see dolgopolov 1985, ginzburg 1974, magomedova 2003, lekmanov 2012 for bibliography. 77the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) schvarts called in her works a “small narrative poem” (маленькая поэма). but in all these cases the “large form” should remain a metaphor, as larger unities weren’t particularly stable, they were still made of small blocks of short poems that differed from each other significantly. these forms introduced to the literature what could be called the serialization of lyrical poems, and trained both readers and scholars at perceiving lyrical colonies as inseparable entities. that is why the corpus structure that splits kuzmin’s trout into parts is highlighting the way how lyrical poetry was assembled to form larger unities. the spread of lyrical “large form” in modernism shows how short poetry expanded in literature and freely moved to the spaces that were previously occupied by large poetic constructions. in some sense, short poetry invented a way of being large by remaining small.11 cultural evolution quantitative observations on the length of russian poetry reveal a longterm trend of change towards shorter forms. features and scope of this trend could be further clarified by running measurements on different samples and acquiring better control of the data, but the pattern is clearly present. similar long-term trends were also found in different cultural domains: various examples provide observation on technological complexity and diversity (increase in the number of technology parts, lines of codes, etc.; see: kelly 2010: 278–292); average shot length decreased during entire film history (salt 2009: 366–368), while the visual activity and darkness of the screen increased (cutting et al. 2011); title length in an english novel decreased as the literary market was growing and new genres emerging (moretti 2009); anglophone literatures experienced continuous decline in the use of lexicon of positive emotions (acerbi, morin 2016). 11 another instance of lyrical expansion in the 20th century is the “large lyrical poem” (большое стихотворение) – an important poetic form for joseph brodsky, clearly opposed to the large narrative poems (поэмы) in some of his self-descriptions (volkov 1998). while this form in brodsky’s poetry was clearly dependent on english tradition of a long metaphysical poem and bears lesser resemblance to russian neo-archaic large elegy (like autumn of baratynsky), the possible growth of the small lyrical form into the larger build in the 20th century should be investigated closely. if there is a trend (beyond brodsky), it could mean forces that were at work during the 19th century disseminated at some point – and that the lyrical poem was expanding freely as role of a poetry in culture and its social impact declined. 78 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk these observed cultural trends could be understood within the theory of cultural evolution, a study field that aims to explore and explain cultural change with basic darwinian principles and provide coherent empirical framework for the humanities (see: richerson, boyd 2005; mesoudi 2011; mesoudi 2016 for recent review of the field). mechanisms that drive cultural change, transmission and diffusion (see morin 2016), success and failure of particular traditions and cultural forms are the domains studied by cultural evolution. while the field itself remains rooted in anthropology, social sciences, and technology studies, several attempts were made to include literature in the discussion on the evolutionary process of culture (morin, acerbi 2016). one of the key innovations of cultural evolution theory is the introduction of population thinking to the domain of cultural forms: these are the scope of population, where variations occur, and the selection mechanisms (or drift) drive the successive change. the expansion of various forms of “distant reading”, which were recently amplified by the accessibility of large digital text collections and computational approaches to textual analysis, was actually accompanied by the analogues of evolutionary thinking in literary theory12: with studies of the formal variety and branching in literature (moretti 2000), and accessing the literary population (e. g. going beyond canon to inspect literary diachrony (algee-hewitt et al. 2016, jockers 2013, underwood 2016)). when the change in length of russian poetry is considered a population change, several ways of explaining it emerge. the shortest species russian poetry during the 19th century was obtaining its “convenient form”; this form appeared to be small and its size resembled that of an old european invention in the field of lyrical poetry – a sonnet. partly, the success of these short forms is related to the changes in literary environment and the fall of large poetic constructions. russian poetry in its modern version appeared in the 18th century, when european literary space provided lots of open opportunities for poetic language: from drama to philosophical treatises and guides on garden design. these niches, however, collapsed rapidly during the course of the 19th century. highly successful realistic conventions put a constant 12 an early and influential attempt to provide literary studies with quantitative evidence and empirical background made by boris yarkho was also rooted in naturalistic and evolutionary explanations (yarkho 2006). 79the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) pressure on poetry. appearance of a novel with its complex narration made large poetic narratives (constrained on various levels) irrelevant; the same happened in the realistic drama, and only a small niche for simplified poetic language was left in theatre – it was within opera where poetry was largely a subordinate of voice. however, lyrical poetry appeared to be sustainable; shrunken to its shortest form it could withstand a novel and expand dramatically in modernism. as a literary form, it has provided something that other literary forms couldn’t conquer or replace. there could be different explanations for what it was, but the inherent features of a small-sized lyrical space suggest a few important ones. first, short form could be argued to be a good attention controller – it demands very little effort from a reader in terms of time (to leave other “costs” of poetic language out of discussion). roughly speaking, a short lyrical poem of an advanced poetic tradition could be seen as a short and sophisticated rhymed advert, radio jingle, children rhyme or limerick, which are easily moving in and out of our attention window. second, russian poetry did not give up on rhyme and for a long time remained accentual-syllabic, never being actually transformed fully into vers libre. mikhail gronas argued that the longevity of rhyme and verse structure in russian poetry is related to the spread of specific practices of memorization in russian poetic culture, including the conservative school education, the continuous pressure of censorship, the space of “unpublishable” literature, and the wide diffusion of oral traditions in prisons and later in gulag (gronas 2011: 71–96). poetry has been pushed to remain memorizable, and short form provided a convenient package for mnemonic devices. if this hypothesis is correct13, then “memory bias” (how culture evolution theory would call it) was notably influencing the evolution of russian poetry, similarly to how memory shaped folklore texts in oral cultures (rubin 1997). if the spread of short forms is an outcome of this pressure towards memorability, then in traditions where poetry transitioned to predominantly free verse, and, accordingly rejected mnemonics the average poem length in this period of transition should have increased. but neither size, nor memorability potential alone can explain the success of short lyrical form. other poetic genres, from children rhyme to the popular song, are both short and mnemonical (probably even more aggressively) – and we know that these intuitively labeled “simple” forms do not make up the core 13 see the discussion on gronas’s “mnemonic hypothesis” in russian publication of the book chapter (gronas 2012). 80 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk of russian poetry. the important distinctive feature for the short lyric could be then located in its “complexity”. short lyrical poetry provided quick emotional output and was forced to master this emotional control in the very limited space, leaving aside other constrains of the poetic language such as meter structure and rhyme patterns. the poetic capability to carry complex messages in a highly constrained formal environment is often discussed as “informational paradox” (abernathy 1961; lotman 1976: 29–36). general information theory implies that increased number of constraints leads to a decrease in unpredictability and, thus, to a decrease in information capacity that message could carry – apparently, this is not what was happening in advanced poetic traditions. dmitrii manin’s experimental study, of the relation of constraints and unpredictability in russian poetry found evidence for compensatory mechanisms for this information loss: if the low metrical unpredictability of poetry indicates a narrowed space of possibilities for poetry compared to prose, then the higher non-metrical unpredictability means the compensatory expansion of this space in a different dimension, by relaxing the semantic and syntactic constraints on word combination. (manin 2012: 293) to rephrase – by maintaining many constraints on various formal levels, poetry could acquire extreme freedom in semantics while not becoming incomprehensible. if the assumed pressure for memorability is taken to account, then russian poetry, especially in the 20th century, was shaped by the increased complexity within highly constrained mnemonic form – poetry struggled to be both sophisticated and “simple”14, e. g. to be widespread and to exploit a popular taste for conservative forms. the decrease of average length of poetry could have also contributed to this “complexity under constrains” by keeping the available poetic sandbox very small. it seems relevant that important inventions in russian lyrical semantics of the 20th century were made in extra-short forms (and while the average length became shorter than ever) – by akhmatova and mandelshtam (levin et al.). some of the consequences of poetry being short were noted by tynyanov (on tyutchev’s verse): 14 in a way in which mnemonic device could be “simple” by increasing redundancy of a message. 81the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) ...words, that are being lost in the vast space of a poem, gain an extraordinary significance in the small space of a fragment [...] ode became microscopic and have focused all the power on the small scale [...] fragmentarity, the small form, which narrows the field of view, is empowering its stylistic features enormously. (tynyanov 1977b: 46) arguably, this “focusing of power” happened not only in the lyrical fragment of tyutchev. any compressed lyrical form of a tradition in a certain time could have experienced this “empowering” that triggered semantical shifts and inventions, which lead poetical language to an increased complexity. 82 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk references abernathy, robert 1962. mathematical linguistics and poetics. in: poetics, poetyka, poetika. warszawa: panstwowe wydawnictwo naukowe, 563–569. algee-hewitt, mark; allison, sarah; gemma, marissa; heuser, ryan; moretti, franco, hannah walser 2016. canon/archive. large-scale dynamics in the literary field. pamphlet 11. in: pamphlets of the stanford literary lab. https://litlab.stanford.edu/ literarylabpamphlet11.pdf (accessed february 23, 2017). cutting, james e.; brunick, kaitlin l.; delong, jordan e.; iricinschi, catalina; candan, ayse 2011. quicker, faster, darker: changes in hollywood film over 75 years. in: iperception 2(6), 569–576. dolgopolov, leonid k. 1985. ot “liricheskogo geroja” k stikhotvornomu sborniku. in: na rubezhe vekov. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’, 91–115. eikhenbaum, boris 1924. lermontov: opyt istoriko-literaturnoj otsenki. leningrad: gosizdat. ginzburg, lidiya y. 1974. o lirike. moscow: sovetskij pisatel’. gronas, mikhail 2011. cognitive poetics and cultural memory: russian literary mnemonics. new york: routledge. gronas, mikhail 2012. naizust’: o mnemonicheskom bytovanii stikha. in: novoie literaturnoe obozrenie 114, 223–248. haldane, john burdon sanderson 1927. on being the right size. in: possible worlds and others essays. london: chatto & windus, 18–26. jockers, matthew l. 2013. macroanalysis: digital methods and literary history. urbana, chicago, springfield: university of illinois press. kelly, kevin 2010. what technology wants. new york: viking. kennedy, william j. 2011. european beginnings and transmissions: dante, petrarch and the sonnet sequence. in: cousins, a. d.; howarth, peter (eds.), the cambridge companion to the sonnet. cambridge; new york: cambridge university press, 84–106. kleinhenz, christopher 1986. the early italian sonnet. the first century (1220–1321). lecce: milella. korchagin, kirill m. 2015. poezija xx veka v poeticheskom podkorpuse natsionalnogo korpusa russkogo jazyka: problema reprezentativnosti. in: moldovan, aleksandr m. et al. (eds.), trudy instituta russkogo jazyka im v. v. vinogradova 6. moskva: institut russkogo jazyka imeni v. v. vinogradova ran, 235–256. https://litlab.stanford.edu/literarylabpamphlet11.pdf https://litlab.stanford.edu/literarylabpamphlet11.pdf 83the shortest species: how the length of russian poetry changed (1750–1921) leibov, roman g. 2000. “liricheskij fragment” tjutcheva: zhanr i kontekst. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. lekmanov, oleg a. 2012. kniga stikhov. in: trediakovskij: literaturno-khudozhestvennyj almanakh. http://www.trediakovsky.ru/kniga-stihov levin, yurii i.; segal, dmitrii m.; timenchik, roman d., toporov vladimir n.; tsivyan, tatyana v. 1974. russkaja semanticheskaja poetika kak potentsialnaja kulturnaja paradigma. in: russian literature 7–8, 47–82. lotman, yurii m. 1976. analysis of the poetic text. ann arbor: ardis. magomedova, dina m. 2003. o zhanrovom printsipe tsiklizatsii “knigi stikhov” na rubezhe 19–20 v. in: evropeiskij liricheskij tsikl. istoricheskoe i sravnitelnoe izuchenie. materialy konferentsii. moskva: izd-vo rggu, 183–196. manin, dmitrii y. 2012. the right word in the left place: measuring lexical foregrounding in poetry and prose. in: scientific study of literature 2(2), 273–300. martynenko, antonina i. 2016. “stikhotvorenija e. baratynskogo” 1827 g.: istoria i predystoria sbornika. [manuscript of the thesis]. higher school of economics, moscow. mesoudi, alex 2011. cultural evolution: how darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. chicago, london: university of chicago press. mesoudi, alex 2016. cultural evolution: a review of theory, findings and controversies. in: evolutionary biology 43(4), 481–497. moretti, franco 2000. the slaughterhouse of literature. in: modern language quarterly 61(1), 207–227. moretti, franco 2009. style, inc. reflections on seven thousand titles (british novels, 1740–1850). in: critical inquiry 36(1), 134–158. moretti, franco 2013. distant reading. london, new york: verso. morin, olivier 2016. how traditions live and die. oxford, new york: oxford university press. morin, olivier; acerbi, alberto 2016. birth of the cool: a two-centuries decline in emotional expression in anglophone fiction. in: cognition and emotion. http://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1260528 (accessed februrary 2013, 2017). oppenheimer, paul 1989. the birth of the modern mind: self, consciousness, and the invention of the sonnet. oxford, new york: oxford university press. 84 artjom shelya, oleg sobchuk richerson, peter j.; boyd, robert 2005. not by genes alone: how culture transformed human evolution. chicago; london: the university of chicago press. rubin, david c. 1997. memory in oral traditions: the cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes. oxford; new york: oxford university press. rydel, christine a. 1995. questions of genre in tiutchev’s lyrics. in: canadianamerican slavic studies 29(1), 331–352. salt, barry 2009. film style and technology: history and analysis. london: starword. tynyanov, yuri n. 1977. literaturnyj fakt. in: tynyanov, yuri n. 1977. poetika. istorija literatury. kino. moscow: nauka, 255–270. translation in english by gitta hammaberg: http://www.macalester.edu/~hammarberg/russ294littheory/ tynianovlit%20fact.html (accessed february 23, 2017). tynyanov, yuri n. 1977b. “vopros o tyutcheve”. in: tynyanov, yuri n. poetika. istorija literatury. kino. moskva: nauka, 38–51. underwood, ted 2016. the life cycles of genres. in: journal of cultural analytics. http://culturalanalytics.org/2016/05/the-life-cycles-of-genres/ (accessed februrary 23, 2017). volkov, solomon. 1998. dialogi s iosifom brodskim. moskva: nezavisimaja gazeta. wilkins, ernest h. 1915. the invention of the sonnet. in: modern philology 13(8), 463–494 yarkho, boris i. 2006. metodologija tochnogo literaturovedenija: izbrannye trudy po teorii literatury. moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur. http://www.macalester.edu/~hammarberg/russ294littheory/tynianovlit%20fact.html http://www.macalester.edu/~hammarberg/russ294littheory/tynianovlit%20fact.html studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd the corpus of czech verse petr plecháč, robert kolár* abstract. th e article presents the corpus of czech verse (i.e. a lemmatised, phonetically, morphologically, metrically and strophically annotated corpus of czech poetry) and the online tools and frequency lists that give access to its data. th e following online tools are described: database of czech metres – the main tool for working with the corpus data, gunstick – a web application that serves to investigate the frequency of rhyme pairs and their historical development, hex – an application which enables to search the corpus of czech verse for texts which contain a keyword specifi ed by the user, or to display all keywords found in the group of texts specifi ed by the user, and euphonometer – application which enables to quantify the degree of non-randomness of sound repetition in any text. keywords: czech poetry, versifi cation, corpus linguistics, verse theory 1. introduction at the end of 2013 we completed the fi rst phase of building the corpus of czech verse at the institute of czech literature, academy of sciences of the czech republic. th e corpus currently contains almost 1,700 poetry collections (almost 80,000 poems, over 2.5 million verse lines) primarily from the 19th and early 20th century. all texts have been lemmatised, phonetically transcribed and morphologically, metrically and strophically annotated.1 in * authors’ addresses: petr plecháč, institute of czech literature, academy of sciences of the czech republic, na florenci 3/1420, 110 00 praha 1, czech republic. e-mail: plechac@ucl.cas.cz; robert kolár, institute of czech literature, academy of sciences of the czech republic, na florenci 3/1420, 110 00 praha 1, czech republic. e-mail: kolar@ucl.cas.cz. 1 lemmatisation and morphological annotation were carried out by the researchers at the institute of th eoretical and computational linguistics, faculty of arts, charles university in prague (hana skoumalová, milena hnátková, tomáš jelínek and vladimír petkevič) in cooperation with the researchers at the institute of formal and applied linguistics, faculty of mathematics and physics, charles university in prague (jan hajič, jaroslava hlaváčová). phonetic transcription and metric / strophic annotation was carried out using the computer program květa developed at the institute for czech literature, academy of sciences of the czech republic (see ibrahim, plecháč 2011). at this moment only syllabotonic verse lines are annotated in terms of metrics. quantitative, syllabic and free verse lines, which also occur in czech poetry, are currently classifi ed as „undetermined“. however, the annotated syllabotonic verse represents more than 88% of all verse lines in the corpus. studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 107–118 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.05 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.05 108 petr plecháč, robert kolár the present paper we will fi rst describe in detail the structure of individual records in the corpus and introduce the freely available online tools that give access to the data contained in the corpus. 2. the structure of records each lexical unit (token) in the corpus is assigned phonetic transcription, lemma (the basic dictionary form) and a morphological tag that contains information about various grammatical categories (part of speech, number, case…)2. each verse line is assigned the following attributes, namely (2.1) type of metre, (2.2) length, (2.3) end of a line, (2.4) metrical pattern, (2.5) rhyme, (2.6) commonly used name of metre, (2.7) rhymed, (2.8) stanzaic and (2.9) fi xed form: 2.1. type of metre a dactyl with anacrusis (amphibrach) d dactyl j iamb n undetermined (free, syllabic, quantitative, accentual, unrecognised verse) t trochee x logaoedic y logaoedic with anacrusis 2.2. length th e number of s in the pattern 2.3. end of a line m masculine (the pattern ends in s) z fe minine (the pattern ends in sw) a acatalectic (the pattern ends in sww) 2 for detailed description of morphological tags see hajič 2004: 32–88. 109the corpus of czech verse 2.4 metrical pattern (including substitutions, caesuras etc.) s strong position w weak position x undete rmined position (free, syllabic, quantitative, accentual, unrecognised verse) more metrical patterns can correspond to one metre (i.e. metre type + length + end of a line). in such cases one pattern is always considered as basic, e.g. d4z swwswwswwsw (basic) v ostravské harendě večer se stavil d4z swwswswwsw šel starý magdón z ostravy domů apart from the symbols s, w and x, the metrical pattern may also contain a hyphen. in ghazals the hyphen separates the so called radif (a word or a group of words recurring at the end of a line), which is not included in the characteristics of the metre, e.g. t5z swswswswsw-sw užívej, když smutek tebe zkruší, hašiš, t5z swswswswsw-sw vzdechy tiší, slzy rázem suší, hašiš t5m swswswsws jesti čaroděje mocný prut, t5z swswswswsw-sw který vazby všednosti v ráz zruší, hašiš... 2.5. rhyme a numerical index connecting rhymed verse lines. zero indicates unrhymed lines. 2.6. commonly used name of metre alexandrine j6 with a caesura (constant word boundary) between the sixth and seventh syllable blank verse unrhymed j5 hexameter x6, pattern: s(w)ws(w)ws(w)ws(w)ws(w)wsw pentameter x6, pattern: s(w)ws(w)ws(w)s(w)ws(w)ws furthermore, besides the usual bibliographical data (author, the name of the collection, the year of publication etc.) the poem is assigned the following 110 petr plecháč, robert kolár attributes, namely (2.7) rhymed (rhyme scheme), (2.8) stanzaic (stanza scheme) and (2.9) fi xed form: 2.7. rhymed 0 unrhymed poem 1 rhymed poem a rhymed poem is a poem in which at least 30% of lines have a nonzero rhyme index. a rhyme scheme shows the distribution of rhymes in stanzas. th us it is determined only in poems marked as both rhymed and stanzaic. a rhymed scheme is traditionally marked, i.e. [a] for the fi rst rhyme in stanza, [b] for the second rhyme in stanza... [x] for an unrhymed verse. a rhyme scheme is recorded only if it occurs in a poem at least twice. if there are more than three diff erent schemes in a poem, it remains undetermined. 2.8. stanzaic 0 non-stanzaic poem 1 stanzaic poem a poem is marked as stanzaic if it consists of sections containing m, or n lines (2 ≤ m, n ≤ 14) with a scheme (1) m.m..., (2) m.n.m.n..., or (3) m.m...n.n... (m.m...n.n...)... stanza scheme indicates the distribution of individual metres in the stanza, e.g. the scheme [abab] can (among others) correspond to the following combinations: t4z t4m t4z t4m . t4z t4m t4z t4m ... or t4z d4z t4z d4z . t4z d4z t4z d4z... stanza scheme is determined only in poems indicated as stanzaic. stanza scheme is recorded only if it occurs at least twice. 111the corpus of czech verse 2.9. fixed form at present, the following fi xed forms are recognised: alcaic strophe, arte mayor, asclepiad iv, burns stanza, elegiac couplet, ghazal, heroic couplet, huitain, rhyme royal, qaṣīda, limerick, madrigal, onegin stanza, ritornello, rondel, rondeau, sapphic stanza, sestina, sicillian octave, italian sonnet, english sonnet, spenserian stanza, ottava rima, terza rima. (for more details, see http://www.versologie.cz/en/kcv_znacky.html). 3. online tools th e online tools and frequency lists that are continuously being developed give access to the data contained in the corpus of czech verse. at present, the following tools are available: (3.1) database of czech metres, (3.2) gunstick, (3.3) hex, and (3.4) euphonometer. all applications are available in czech, english and russian translations at <www.versologie.cz>. 3.1. database of czech metres th e database of czech metres is the main tool for working with the corpus data. th e user can both search for and st atistically evaluate data on the basis of their own and/or default fi lters, and browse through individual records in the database. th e fi lters (which can be freely combined) include: type of metre (2.1), length (2.2), end of a line (2.3), metrical pattern (2.4), commonly used name of metre (2.6), rhymed/unrhymed, rhyme scheme (2.7), stanzaic/non-stanzaic, stanza scheme (2.8), fi xed form (2.9). th e results of such query are interactive line charts and pie charts displaying the distribution of poems/verse lines complying with the specifi c parameters, and a tree structure which provide detailed information about the individual poems. 3.2. gunstick – database of czech rhymes gunstick is a web application that serves to investigate the frequency of rhyme pairs and their historica l development. when using the application the user enters a word (token) which will be searched for all rhyme pairs attested in the corpus before 1920. th e search can be restricted to a specifi ed author, to a specifi ed time span or a specifi ed end of a line (masculine, feminine, acatalectic, undetermined). 112 petr plecháč, robert kolár c h ar t 1 : d at ab as e of c ze ch m et re s. d is tr ib ut io n o f i am b ic a n d tr oc h ai c lin es (r el at iv e fr eq ue n cy m ea su re d b y n um b er o f p oe m s) . 113the corpus of czech verse aft er entering the query a pie chart is displayed illustrating the frequency of occurrences of individual rhymes with the searched word. th e left -click may be used to select a sector and thus display the selected data in the area chart, which shows the number of occurrences of the selected rhyme pair for each year, and in the table at the bottom of the screen, which displays among others the full text of both rhyming verse lines and a reference to the full text of the particular collection. clicking the button “coverage [+]” below the pie chart enables to display charts illustrating the coverage and data volume. th e chart “data volume” shows the number of occurrences of all rhymes (i.e. all occurrences in the database) for each year (when specifying the fi lter “author” it shows the number of occurrences complying with the given conditions). th e chart “coverage” indicates the percentage of rhymes with the searched word within all occurrences in each year. 3.3. hex – key words in czech poetry th e hex application enables to search the corpus of czech verse for texts which contain a keyword specifi ed by the user, or to display all keywords found in the group of texts specifi ed by the user3. in both cases the user can narrow down the selection by using the fi lter “the name of the author” and defi ning the time span. in addition, when searching a specifi ed group of texts the user can use the fi lters “name of the collection” and “name of the poem”. keywords are those lemmata whose frequency in the given poem is signifi cantly higher than the frequency in the whole corpus. th e statistical signifi cance is verifi ed by the χ2 (with yates’s correction) and log-likelihood tests. th e user can specify whether the tests will be performed at the signifi cance level α = 0.001 (i.e. the 0.1% risk that the lemma whose higher frequency in the poem is only a coincidence will be incorrectly marked as a keyword), or α = 0.01 (i.e. 1% risk). along with this, the user can specify which parts of speech should be excluded from the analysis (by default only nouns, adjectives and verbs are allowed) and determine the minimum number of occurrences of a lemma in the poem required for its inclusion among the keywords. when searching for a specifi c key word, aft er entering a query an interactive chart is displayed showing the frequency of occurrences in each year, 3 for analysis of keywords in your own texts we recommend the application kwords (cvrček, vondřička 2013) developed by the institute of the czech national corpus, faculty of arts, charles university in prague, that we drew inspiration from when developing hex. 114 petr plecháč, robert kolár c h ar t 2 : g un st ic k  – d at ab as e of c ze ch rh ym es . r hy m es o f t h e w or d “l ás ka ”. 115the corpus of czech verse c h ar t 3 : h ex  – k ey w or d s in c ze ch p oe tr y. d is tr ib ut io n o f t h e ke yw or d “v la st ” ( re la tiv e fr eq ue n cy m ea su re d b y th e n um b er o f p oe m s) . 116 petr plecháč, robert kolár either the absolute frequency (the total number of occurrences in each year) or relative frequency with respect to (a) the number of poems (i.e. absolute frequency divided by the number of all poems published in the given year), (b) the number of verse lines (i.e. absolute frequency divided by the number of all verse lines contained in the poems published in the given year), (c) the number of words (i.e. absolute frequency divided by the number of all words contained in the poems published in the given year). in addition, a table is displayed containing, among other things, the name of the poem in which the keyword was found. at the same time, the name of the poem serves as a link to the list of all key words found in the poem according to the parameters entered, and the name of the collection which the poem comes from serves as a link to the full text of the collection. when searching a specifi c group of texts the user can choose whether the output should be a list of poems with keywords, or a frequency list of the selection. 3.4. euphonometer th e application euphonometer enables to quantify the degree of non-randomness of sound repetition in any text (the so-called euphonic coeffi cient). th e application draws upon the method based on the binomic test, which was proposed by gabriel altmann (altmann 1966a; 1966b; čech et al. 2011) and later slightly modifi ed (plecháč, říha 2014). th e results of the analysis are values of the euphonic coeffi cient of each line of the searched text and the total (average) euphonic coeffi cient which can be compared with the values counted for each poem in the corpus. 3.5. frequency lists of czech poetry frequency lists of czech poetry contain information about the frequency of words in the works of poetry included in the corpus of czech verse. th e lists provide information about both the frequency of lemmata and frequency of word forms (tokens), not only in the individual poetry collections but also in the author’s subcorpora and the entire corpus of czech verse. th e data in the lists are classifi ed as follows: column 1: rank column 2: lemma/token 117the corpus of czech verse column 3: part of speech4 column 4: the absolute frequency of lemma/token column 5: the relative frequency of lemma/token5 each list is published in two formats: (1) xls (microsoft excel, openoffi ce calc, libreoffi ce calc) and (2) txt with utf-8 encoding, where individual columns are separated by a tabulator (the latter is convenient for further processing). th e lists can be downloaded as compressed archive containing the frequency list of the entire author’s subcorpus (00_dilo) and frequency lists of individual collections of poems of an author ([year of publication] _ [name of collection]).6 4. conclusion th e online tools and frequency lists that have been presented in this paper are of course limited in their functions and cannot make use of the full potential of the corpus of czech verse. one can easily imagine that mere frequency lists may not be suffi cient for every user, and that their research project may require for example not only information about the frequency of lemmata in a given author’s work, but rather more specifi c frequency lists generated for each metre used by this author separately. other users could prefer – in order to be methodologically coherent – the analysis of thematic concentration to the keyword analysis (cf. popescu 2007; popescu, altmann 2011). one possibility could be a direct online access to the entire database via sql queries. th us, the user could enter any query without being limited by the functions of the tools. however, only a small number of potential users would know the query language, and the results of such queries would in most cases have to be further processed using a statistical soft ware. th e optimal approach therefore appears to be a compromise – to build the interface for direct sql 4 th e part of speech is indicated by the fi rst position of a morphological tag (a – adjective, c – numeral, d – adverb, i – interjection, j – conjunction, n – noun, p – pronoun, r – preposition, t – particle, v – verb, x – unknown, indeterminable part of speech, see hajič 2004: 32–88). th is allows us to distinguish between homonyms like “bez” (noun/preposition) and to further fi lter out the data obtained from the lists (e.g. to evaluate the frequency of nouns only). 5 given in ppm (10 000 ppm ~ 1 %) and rounded to whole numbers. 6 for information about the frequency of lemmata/tokens in prose, which the data included in the frequency lists of czech poetry can be compared with, see křen 2010. 118 petr plecháč, robert kolár queries (see the new application babel at http://www.versologie.cz/babel/) as well to continue with the development and update of the tools according to users’ requirements.7 references altmann, gabriel 1966a. th e measurement of euphony. in: levý, jiří (ed.), teorie verše i: sborník brněnské versologické konference 13.–16. května 1964 (spisy filozofi cké fakulty univerzity j. e. purkyně v brně 107). brno: universita j. e. purkyně, 263–264. altmann, gabriel 1966b. binomial index of euphony for indonesian poetry. in: asian and african studies 2, 62–67. cvrček, václav; vondřička, pavel 2013. kwords. praha: ústav českého národního korpusu ff uk. url: http://kwords.korpus.cz (accessed june 5, 2014). čech, radek; popescu, ioan-iovitz; altmann, gabriel 2011. euphony in slovak lyric poetry. in: glottometrics 22, 5–16. hajič, jan 2004. disambiguation of rich infl ection (computational morphology of czech). praha: karolinum. ibrahim, robert; plecháč, petr 2011. toward automatic analysis of czech verse. in: scherr, barry et al. (eds.), formal methods in poetics. lüdenscheid: ram, 295–305. křen, michal 2010. srovnávací frekvenční seznamy. praha: ústav českého národního korpusu ff uk. url: http://ucnk.ff .cuni.cz/srovnani10.php (accessed june 5, 2014). plecháč, petr; říha, jakub 2014. measuring euphony. in: vekshin, georgy (ed.), metodologija i praktika russkogo formalizma (brikovskij sbornik 2). moskva: azbukovnik, 194–199. popescu, ioan-iovitz 2007. text ranking by the weight of highly frequent words. in: grzybek, peter, köhler, reinhard (eds.), exact methods in the study of language and text. berlin, new york: mouton de gruyter, 557–567. popescu, ioan-iovitz; altmann, gabriel 2011. th ematic concentration in texts. in: kelih, emmerih et al. (eds.), issues in quantitative linguistics 2. lüdenscheid: ram, 110–116. 7 th e paper was translated by gabriela brůhová. th is paper and its translation were supported by czech science foundation (p406/11/1825) and by the long-term conceptual development of a research institution 68378068. end-weight effects in verse and language lev blumenfeld*1 abstract: weight ordering preferences appear to function in opposite directions in verse and language. while linguistic expressions, in both syntax and phonology, typically display a “long-last” effect (cooper and ross 1975), stanza forms often show the the opposite, “short-last” structure. this effect has been called “saliency” in previous literature (hayes and maceachern 1996; kiparsky 2006). in this paper i address this apparent discrepancy between the behaviour of verse and language. i argue that “saliency” is not a primitive in the theory, but can be derived from more basic mechanisms that allow grouping structure to be signalled, and show that “short-last” structures are optimal under the conditions of metrical verse that possesses parallelism. keywords: weight, prosody, stanza “why do you always say joan and margery yet never margery and joan? do you prefer joan to her twin sister?” “not at all, it just sounds smoother”. (jakobson 1960) 1. introduction when linguists study the structure of verse, they typically focus on its properties that are homologous to the properties of language. this interest is natural in the context of the jakobsonian and generative approaches, which foreground the intimate connection between the rule-governed behaviour of writers, readers, and performers of verse texts with their rule-governed behaviour as speakers of their native language. the claimed connection between verse and language may be superficial, such as the observation that phonological categories relevant to a language’s meter – quantity, weight, stress, or tone – are also the ones relevant to its phonology, or may take a deeper and * author’s address: lev blumenfeld, school of linguistics and language studies, carleton university, slals, 1125 colonel by drive, ottawa, on, k1s 5b6, email: lev.blumenfeld@carleton.ca. studia metrica et poetica 3.1, 2016, 7–32 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.01 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.01 8 lev blumenfeld more abstract view, such as the claim that the building blocks for rules and constraints governing verse are the same as for language. in this paper i will investigate an effect which at first blush appears to behave in the opposite way in verse and language: the relationship between ordering and weight. consider the examples in (1). there are many fixed expressions in english such as (1a), where the triad is arranged such that the longest element is last, but not many expressions with a different order (1b). conversely, a 43 couplet such as (1c) sounds better than the couplet in (1d), rearranged to make it 34.1 (1) a. the good, the bad, and the ugly b. # the ugly, the bad, and the good c. amazing grace! how sweet the sound / that saved a wretch like me. d. # amazing grace! this sound / has saved a bitter wretch like me. herein lies the paradox: why does language favour long-last structures, while verse favors short-last structures? in what follows, i will investigate this paradox in more detail, offering a resolution in terms of the grammar of grouping preferences which links short-last effects to meter and parallelism in verse, thus deriving it from more basic notions. in sum, the argument runs as follows. sequences of lines form constituents like couplets and stanzas, which we can generally refer to as “groups”. the structure of those groups – i.e. the location of the boundaries between constituents like couplets and stanzas – can be signalled overtly, using strategies well-established in the study of music (lerdahl and jackendoff 1983). these strategies reflect constituent structure iconically, using proximity and similarity between elements (elements that are closer together are in a constituent; elements that are more similar are in a constituent). as i will argue, either short-last or long-last groupings of lines can manifest their boundaries using proximity and similarity. however, only short-last structures are possible in texts set to a fixed metrical template which imposes the additional requirement of parallelism from line to line. this argument will be unpacked in the following sections. the main difference between the present proposal and the discussion of the short-last effect in previous works (hayes and maceachern 1996; kiparsky 2006) is that the effect 1 the expression “43 couplet” means ‘a pair of lines such that the first line contains 4 surface beats and the second line contains 3 surface beats’. 9end-weight effects in verse and language is not stipulated but derived from more basic grouping preferences, which are themselves expressions of iconicity. furthermore, the claim will delimit the empirical range of short-last effects in verse, and will show that the paradox in (1) is a false one: long-last and short-last are distinct effects. this paper is organized as follows. i begin in §2 and §3 by rehearsing the evidence for the paradox exemplified in (1). in §4, i report an experiment probing the relationship between end weight and metricality, confirming the effect from a new angle. in §5, i offer an explanation of short-last in terms of grouping preferences, and explore its consequences in §6. 2. long-last in language the long-last effect is known by many names, among them pāṇini’s principle, behaghel’s fourth law, and law of increasing terms. it has been observed in a wide variety of circumstances: in idiomatic expressions, in syntactic ordering, and in phonological rhythmic preferences. cooper and ross (1975) produced the first detailed investigation of the effect in english fixed expressions, such as those in (2). they observed that ordering by weight, while in competition with other preferences, often overrides them. a ready example is men and women vs. ladies and gentlemen, where the gender-based ordering – whatever it is – yields to pāṇini’s principle. the significance of weight-based ordering was confirmed more recently by benor and levy (2006) in a more sophisticated statistical setting. the effect shows up both in the count of the syllables (2a), and in the vowel quality (2b), with low and back vowels acting as longer and heavier than high and front vowels. (2) a. vim and vigor; hot and heavy; hale and hearty; tom, dick, and harry; free and easy; bag and baggage; ladies and gentlemen; men and women; bread and butter b. zig-zag; bric-a-brac; tic-tac-toe; hip-hop; riffraff; king kong; ding-dong; ping-pong; mishmash a long-last effect has been known to psychologists of rhythm for more than a century (bolton 1894; woodrow 1909, 1951; fraisse 1974). stimuli that differ in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, while stimuli that differ in length are grouped as short-long. in the linguistics context, the phenomenon has been 10 lev blumenfeld dubbed the “iambic-trochaic law” (hayes 1985, 1995; hay and diehl 2007), where the long-last preference applies at the level of the phonological foot. on the syntactic side, long-last effects have been thoroughly explored under the name of “heavy np shift” in english and other languages (wasow 1997a, b; wasow and arnold 2003; wasow 2002; anttila et al. 2010). a variety of syntactic constructions cater to pāṇini’s principle, such as the dative construction in english (3), where the acceptability of ordering the theme np after the goal pp increases as the theme np becomes larger. (3) a. * i gave [to kim] [it]. b. ? i gave [to kim] [the book]. c. i gave [to kim] [the most riveting and whimsical piece of creative fiction i have ever read in my entire life]. this wide variety of long-last effects refer to a diverse set of notions of what counts as ‘long’: vowel quality, vowel length, syllable count, number of words, syntactic complexity have all been shown to play a role. the diversity of the surface manifestations of an apparently general effect calls for a general explanation. one possibility is that placing elements in the order of increasing length puts their beginnings as early as possible. there may be an advantage to such arrangements, as beginnings are psycholinguistically important and perceptually salient, and thus long-last structures can efficiently signal constituency. this is true in the general case, but other factors may intervene, such as minimizing the distance between heads of constituents (hawkins 1990), which sometimes results in long-last syntax. a further complication is that the connection between such a processing explanation and the effect may be more or less direct depending on the context. fixed expressions in particular, being memorized wholesale, do not obviously benefit from a better signalling of their constituent structure. the mechanism by which expressions in (2) acquire their long-last structure must thus also appeal to diachrony. that said, the long-last effect is extremely well-established and robust across a wide variety of circumstances and languages, making each example of the opposite effect an important topic of investigation, to which i turn in the next sections. 11end-weight effects in verse and language 3. short-last in poetry the preference for short-last in verse can be illustrated statistically by looking at corpora of quatrains. consider the data for two sets of quatrains in russian and english: 873 quatrains from blok’s “book three” (1907–1916), and 1023 quatrains by emily dickinson. table (4) shows the mean length of lines (in syllables) in the quatrain, and the masculine/feminine line ending ratio for each line position in the quatrain.2 in both corpora, lines ii and iv are shorter and more likely to have a masculine ending than lines i and iii. this suggests a long-short-long-short pattern for the quatrain. (4) line i ii iii iv blok lenght 9.45 8.11 9.47 8.1 m/f 0.204 3.198 0.211 4.105 dickinson lenght 7.6 5.96 7.8 5.9 m/f 1.85 7.1 1.568 3.355 the same effect has been found in two studies investigating the structure of quatrains in folk verse, hayes and maceachern (1996) and kiparsky (2006). both works observe that there is a near-absolute preference for couplets such that the second line is either equal to or shorter than the first, and quatrains whose second couplet has either equal lines, or a long-short structure. the short-last desideratum has been dubbed saliency by these authors, and is a key component in explaining the distribution of quatrain types. the short-last effect has been observed only in actual verse. next i turn to a confirmation of the effect outside of verse corpora. 4. confirming the phenomenon there appears to be an interaction between end-weight preferences and metricality: metrical structures favour short-last, while non-metrical structures favour long-last. cooper and ross (1975: 78) have noticed that there are some short-last sequences like hickory-dickory-dock, clackety-clack, blankety-blank, and hint that their structure might have something to do with the regular 2 i have performed these counts automatically. the dictionaries used to generate stress and syllable count information for english and russian were hammond (2012) and an electronic copy of zalizniak (1977), respectively. 12 lev blumenfeld distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables, but do not investigate that effect any further. in order to test whether short-last structures are judged as more well-formed when they are rhythmical, i conducted a rating study, on which i report here. i constructed stimuli using two cross-cutting parameters: short-last vs. long-last, and rhythmic vs. unrhythmic, according to two different schemas that are illustrated in tables (5) and (6). for exach schema, ‘rhythmic’ tokens such as mát-balloón-laságna or veránda-frída-sítter had a regular alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables, while ‘unrhythmic’ tokens like trúck-brunétte-médicine or lárry-génder-abándon had either a stress clash or a stress lapse or both. in the examples in tables (5) and (6), the clashes and lapses are underlined. there were 10 examples in each condition, for a total of 40 stimuli per trial (i.e. per table (5) and (6)) presented in random order to 26 and 22 native english speaker subjects in the two trials, respectively. participants were asked to rate on a scale of 1–7 each stimulus based on how smooth or fluent it sounds, or “how it rolls off the tongue”. they were told that the phrases are meant to be meaningsless sequences of words, and were instructed to ignore the semantics. the responses were transformed into z-scores by subject. the data from the two trials was pooled together.3 3 when tested individually, the trials do not have relevant differences, despite some differences in stimuli construction (stress clash vs. stress lapse). also, in trial 2 but not trial 1, i avoided consonant clusters across word boundaries, so words followed by other words ended in syllabic segments, but this did not seem to have an effect on the ratings. 13end-weight effects in verse and language the main results are shown in figure 1a. the effect of rhythm on score is significant as determined by anova: sequences with ‘good’ rhythm get better scores (f(1,1918)=112.3;p<0.0001). more surprisingly, there is a general short-last effect: sequences ending in shorter words get higher scores (f(1,1918)=60.873;p<0.0001). the hypothesis, however, is about the interaction of the two factors: does short-last give greater benefit to rhythymic than to unrhythmic lines? the interaction plot is shown in figure 1b. two-factor anova shows that he interaction was significant (f(1,1916)=10.23;p<0.0015). figure 1. main results. 14 lev blumenfeld in other words, when a well-formed rhythmic structure induces the perception of a metrical template, subjects appear to prefer stimuli with final empty beats, and/or with final short words. this effect can be thought of as equivalent to saliency observed in verse corpora if each word is an analog of a line. 5. resolving the paradox: couplets 5.1. introduction the opposite directions of weight preferences in verse and language call for an explanation. in previous literature, saliency was either stipulated, or explained in terms of phonetic effects. for examle, hayes and maceachern (1996: 483) relate saliency to the tendency to slow down at the ends of prosodic constituents. such prosodic final lengthing (beckman and edwards 1990) makes constituent-final vowels, syllables, and words longer than medial ones. shorter lines, hayes and maceachern argue, allow the extension of the final syllable over a longer portion of the metrical template, inducing a perception of final lengthening, which, they claim, “is itself a cue to phrasehood, that is, a kind of constituency marker”. the amount of final empty space at the end of the line that allows for this mimicry of final lengthening is what makes lines appear cadential, and thus optimal for coupletand quatrain-final position. this explanation in terms of final lengthening is incomplete, because if the facts were the other way around – i.e. final lines were longer than non-final lines – final lengthening could also explain the same phenomenon. a longer final line could serve as “a cue to phrasehood” and a “constituency marker” just as a short final line. furthermore, the explanation in fact does not depend on the verse text being metrical, or having parallel rhythmic structure from line to line: any pair of lines such that the second one is shorter fall under the explanation, because in such cases just as in the metrical cases the final syllable can be extended over a longer time span in imitation of phonetic phrase-final lengthening. i will suggest below that while a key component of hayes and maceachern’s explanation is on the right track, their proposal is incomplete. my own proposal will attempt to connect short-last with two key properties of verse texts: grouping and parallelism. this will not only derive saliency from more basic notions, but will limit the empirical domain in which it is expected to be observed. metrical verse possesses two layers of structure: the linguistic representation and the metrical constituency. the latter includes the structure both 15end-weight effects in verse and language within the line (feet and metrical positions), and larger constituents such as lines, couplets, and stanzas. let us assume that there is a desideratum to signal constituent structure at these higher levels – that is, to signal the location of stanza boundaries in some way. stanzas consist of sequences of lines, and represent groupings of such lines into higher-level units. one area where grouping preferences have been worked out is the generative theory of music (gttm; lerdahl and jackendoff 1983), where grouping well-formedness is part of a set of constraints governing the structure of a musical representation. while these grouping preferences are designed for a theory of music, they are more general, and can be harnessed to describe grouping perception in stanzas. 5.2. how grouping is signalled in music grouping can be signalled in several independent ways, of which the most important are proximity and similarity. such preferences have been defined in gttm as follows (gpr stands for “grouping preference rule”). (7) gpr 2 (proximity) consider a sequence of four notes n1n2n3n4. all else being equal, the transition n2 − n3 may be heard as a group boundary if a. (slur/rest) the interval of time from the end of n2 to the begnning of n3 is greater than that from the end of n1 to the beginning of n2 and that from the end of n3 to the beginning of n4, or if b. (attack-point) the interval of time between the attack points of n2 and n3 is greater than that between the attack points of n1 and n2 and that between the attack points of n3 and n4. (lerdahl and jackendoff 1983: 44) the preference rule in (7) expresses the common-sense notion that grouping is iconic: elements that are closer together are perceived as a group, and a break in a sequence of elements can induce the perception of a grouping boundary. proximity can be established from the end of the last element to the beginning of the next (7a), or from the beginning of the last to the beginning of the next (7b). lerdahl and jackendoff show that both ‘end-to-beginning’ (eb) and ‘beginning-to-beginning’ (bb) proximity play a role in musical grammar. proximity is not the only possible way of signalling grouping – the other is similarity. again the following formal statement (8) expresses the iconic nature of grouping: pairs of elements separated by a boundary are more different than pairs of elements within a group. 16 lev blumenfeld (8) gpr 3 (change), adapted4 consider a sequence of notes n1n2n3n4. all else being equal, the transition n2 − n3 may be heard as a group boundary if it involves a greater change than the transitions n1 − n2 or n3 − n4. (lerdahl and jackendoff 1983: 46) the “change” in (8) can be defined in terms of any characteristics such as dynamics, register, duration, etc. gpr 3, like other grouping preferences, does not fully determine the grouping structure. consider a sequence like aaabaaa, where a and b are notes. excluding the grouping (aaa)(b)(aaa), where one group consists of a single element (specifically precluded by gpr 1, lerdahl and jackendoff 1983: 43), two possible groupings are consistent with gpr 3: (aaa)(baaa), and (aaab) (aaa), depending on whether b initiates the second group or concludes the first. lerdahl and jackendoff note that the choice of grouping depends on the nature of the differences between b and a, and suggest that a fuller theory might contain a ranking different versions of gprs. a relevant factor is the location of the difference between b and a. if the difference is perceptible at the onset of b, as would be the case with pitch or dynamics, the information on boundary would be immediately available to the listener. in such a case b could be perceived as initiating a new group, and a boundary would thus be perceived before b. on the other hand, the difference between a full note and a staccato note is not available at the onset of b, and that might induce a perception of the boundary after b rather than before it. proximity and change are very general grouping preferences – they simply express iconicity, the notion that elements within a group are closer to each other than elements outside of the group, and more similar to each other than elements outside of the group. these general ideas can be applied to verse lines, to which i turn in the following sections. 5.3. proximity in verse lines verse lines can be thought of as analogs to notes, and thus can be subject to the preferences like those expressed in (7) and (8). 4 this gpr was adapted by removing some music-specific detail, and replacing “and” with “or” in the last clause. without this change, the preference rule will not literally apply to groupings like (aaab)(aaa), on which see below: the transition across the grouping boundary, ba, is not necessarily greater than the transition between the penultimate and final elements of the first group, ab. 17end-weight effects in verse and language first consider proximity. as in (7), we might entertain two versions: endto-beginning (slur/rest), and beginning-to-beginning (attack-point). which version of proximity depends on the realization of the lines. to appreciate how this works more specifically, we need to visualize the possible rhythmic scenarios. i will use the following schematic representation to illustrate the ways that various possible configurations signal or not signal couplet boundaries. each circle represents a beat. a filled circle (•) stands for a realized beat; an empty one (∘) stands for a beat present in the template but not realized – in musical terms, a pause. so, a four-beat line can be represented as ••••, a three-beat line (with a final empty beat) as •••∘, etc. now let me illustrate how proximity applies to sequences of lines, starting with end-to-beginning proximity. consider a sequence of 43 couplets, where the second line has an empty final beat, as follows. “amazing grace” (1c) can serve as an example, repeated below.5 now consider the distance, in beats, from the end of each line to the beginning of the following line. 5 of course, this hymn is written in quatrains, not couplets. quatrains, however, are not sequences of four lines, but of two couplets, and thus analysis at the level of the couplet is legitimate, as was assumed in previous work (hayes and maceachern 1996; kiparsky 2006). 18 lev blumenfeld clearly, the end-to-beginning distance within a couplet (in line pairs 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 7–8) is shorter than across a couplet boundary (in line pairs 2–3, 4–5, 6–7). this means that the couplet boundaries in (9) are signalled by endto-beginning proximity (7a): the interval across a boundary is greater than within a couplet. to see the effect of beginning-to-beginning proximity, consider a sequence of 34 couplets, without empty beats. (such as sequence is implausible in sung verse, because it does not respect parallelism, on which see below; here it simply serves to illustrate the application of proximity). let us compute the distance, in beats from the beginning of line n to the beginning of line n+1. for line pairs within a couplet (pairs 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 7–8), this distance is 3, equal to the length of the first of the two lines in the pair. for line pairs across a couplet boundary (pairs 2–3, 4–5, 6–7), this distance is 4. this means that the couplet boundaries in (12) are signalled by beginning-tobeginnning proximity (7b). 19end-weight effects in verse and language note that which version of proximity applies to which case depends on the structure of the examples: end-to-beginning proximity signals the boundary in (9) but not (12), and vice versa for beginning-to-beginning proximity. 5.4. change in verse lines now consider how change (8) might apply to sequences of verse lines. a general consequence of (8) is that lines that are in some respect different – for example, shorter – than other line might induce the perception of a boundary in their vicinity. recall from the discussion of (8) in §5.2 that a sequence like aaabaaa is compatible with two groupings, (aaa)(baaa) and (aaab)(aaa). suppose a and b are verse lines of different length, e.g. a could be •••• and b could be •••∘. then the sequence aaabaaa can be represented as follows, with | showing line boundaries, for clarity. clearly, in such a sequence the shorter line b (•••∘) can only conclude, not initiate a group of lines, i.e. only (aaab)(aaa) and not (aaa)(baaa) is possible. the reason is that the information on b’s difference from a is not available until the end of b. thus, a structure like (aaa)(baaa), with the shorter line •••∘ initiating the second stanza, would create a processing garden path: a listener would not know that b initiated a group until the end of b, and would have to repair an incorrectly perceived constituent structure. for this reason, in the discussion below i will only consider differences at ends of lines, and in structures of the type aaabaaa, change will be interpreted to induce only the grouping (aaab)(aaa).6 in the case of the particular example (14), it appears that change is in itself an explanation for short-last effects: placing the shorter element (•••∘) first in a constituent creates a garden path, unlike placing it last. this, however, is not yet a full explanation of the effect, because in other configurations, the opposite holds. consider the following structure, where a is •••, and b is ••••. 6 for some reason, poetry generally prefers to mark ends rather than beginnings of groups. for example, there is a near-universal tendency for line endings to be metrically stricter than line beginnings. see also smith (1968) for a broader perspective on endings in poetry. this curious asymmetry between beginnings and ends, while obviously related to the topic at hand, is beyond the scope of this study. 20 lev blumenfeld here, change once again is only compatible with (aaab)(aaa), because just as in (14), in (15) the information on the difference between b and a is not available until the end of the lines, and thus the same garden path argument applies. this time, however, the structure it creates is a long-last one, not a short-last one. an explanation of the short-last effect thus cannot be found in change alone. in the next section i turn to a more complete view of the logically possible line couplets, and the application of proximity and change to them. 5.5. typology of couplets in the preceding two sections i showed how the grouping structure of a sequence of verse lines can be signalled through the general strategies of proximity and change. next i take a more systematic look at all the logical possibilities of beat arrangement in couplets, and illustrate how the grouping structure is or is not signalled in them. consider couplets consisting of two lines, where each line is a sequence of beats. the beats can either be filled (•) or unfilled (∘). lines can differ in their length in terms of filled or unfilled beats. a line like •••∘, consisting of four beats only three of which are filled, can be said to have four beats in the “template”, and three beats in the realization. there are thus the following possibilities: the second line is longer in its template (16a); second line is longer in its surface realization (16b); second line is shorter in realization (16c); second line is shorter in its template (16d). there is yet another possibility that combines the preceding ones, viz. where the second line’s template is longer than the first, but its realization is shorter (16e). also, it is possible for the second line to be longer than the first by virtue of the first containing an empty final beat (16f ). finally, the two lines can be identical both in their surface and underlying structures, whether or not they have a final empty beat (16g, 16h). i consider impossible structures where the realization is longer than the template, e.g. five surface beats filling a four-beat template. the illustrations below show two couplets in sequence, to demonstrate both couplet-internal and between-couplet boundaries. in the following, a vertical line (|) represents a line boundary; two vertical lines (∥) represent a couplet boundary. thus, a 44 couplet can be represented as ∥••••|••••∥, a 43 couplet with a final empty beat as ∥••••|•••∘∥, etc. 21end-weight effects in verse and language the following table summarizes these options. the numbers refer to the number of beats in the final lines. structures in shaded cells are impossible. each of the types in (16) signals the couplet boundary in a different way. the types where the second line’s template is longer than the first (16a, 16b, 16e) satisfy beginning-to-beginning proximity: the initial beats of their coupletfinal lines are further from the initial beats of the following couplet-initial lines than are initial beats of couplet-internal line pairs. the types where an empty beat separates the second line of a couplet from the following initial line (16a, 16c, 16e) satisfy end-to-beginning proximity. the types where the second line has a different number of realized beats (16b, 16c, 16d, 16e) satisfy change. the types (16d) and (16f ) fail to satisfy either of the versions of proximity. moreover, in (16d) beginning-to-beginning proximity prevents the perception of the grouping boundary in the desired place, because the initial beats of couplet-final lines are closer to the initial beats of following lines than in the case of couplet-internal line pairs. the same is true of end-to-beginning proximity in (16f ). in other words, both short-last and long-last arrangements are useful strategies of signalling constituency boundary in terms of proximity. thus, on its face it is not possible to determine which of these types is ‘optimal’. lerdahl and jackendoff point out that a fuller theory of grouping might impose a ranking between the different desiderata. however, no such theory has been worked out, and in any case it is not clear that the ranking that works for music would carry over to verse lines. 22 lev blumenfeld 5.6. parallelism fortunately, one of the types in (16) can be selected once we take into account another desideratum of metrical quatrains: parallelism. lines prefer to have identical metrical structures. parallelism can be stated at the underlying level of the metrical or musical template, requiring the metrical space (e.g. number of beats) that is available to each line to be identical, regardless of how a line actually occupies that space (18a). or, parallelism can be required of surface structures, preferring those where all lines have the same number of surface metrical or musical beats (18b). the ‘domain’ in the definitions below in our case is the couplet.7 (18) a. underlying parallelism (up): the metrical/musical templates of all lines within some domain are identical. b. surface parallelism (sp): the surface realizations of all lines within some domain occupy an identical number of beats. the perfectly parallel examples are (16g, 16h), where the two lines are equal in surface and underlying realization. all of the other cases in (16) have imperfect parallelism, either because their lines have a different number of surface beats (16c, 16f ), or because the metrical space occupied by the second line is longer or shorter that occupied by the first (16a), or both (16b, 16d, 16e). the following table summarizes how each of the three couplet boundary types in (16) fares on each of the desiderata – proximity, change, and parallelism. in the column labels, eb, bb stand for end-to-beginning and beginning-to-beginning proximity; ch stands for change; up and sp stand for underlying and surface parallelism. a check mark (ü) in a cell means that the column’s desideratum is satisfied by the row’s structure, i.e. that the second line of the couplet is treated as couplet-final by that preference. a blank cell means that the desideratum does not treat the line boundary across couplets differently from the line boundaries within couplets; in such cases, the preference contributes nothing to grouping perception. finally, a cross (×) means that the desideratum selects the boundary incorrectly; this happens only with the pathological behaviour of bb proximity in the (16d) type, and with the 34 type (16f ). 7 metrical parallelism loosely corresponds to lerdahl and jackendoff ’s gpr 6 (1983: 51), which calls for parallel grouping structures of parallel musical passages. 23end-weight effects in verse and language the desiderata expressed by columns can be thought of as grammatical preferences, or constraints: a structure is less marked, or more harmonic to use optimality-theoretic jargon (prince and smolensky 2004 [1993]), the more checkmarks it has in its row. none of the types in the table (19) are perfect. in fact, the preferences are incompatible: one cannot satisfy change and surface parallelism at the same time, for example. if table (19) is treated as an ot tableau, with each column containing a constraint and each row a candidate, then the outcome will depend on the ranking of the constraints, and any candidate except (16b), (16d), and (16f ) is a potential winner.8 however, the table above is not an ot tableau, because in the context of sung verse, not all preferences are equal. in particular, underlying parallelism in a musical setting in non-negotiable: the musical meter normally contains a fixed number of beats. there are four types in (19) that satisfy up: the 43 short-last type (16c), the 34 long-last type (16f ), and the two fully parallel types, 44 and 33 (16g, 16h). of these, only one – the short-last type – satisfies proximity. for the other types, proximity is either silent or selects the wrong grouping boundary. thus, with a privileged view of underlying parallelism, the short-last type is the only one that signals constituent boundaries via proximity. to put it another way, while both long-last and short-last structures can satisfy proximity, only short-last also satisfies parallelism. 8 the long-last candidate (16b) is harmonically bounded by (16e); the short-last, no-emptybeat candidate (16d) is harmonically bounded by (16b), (16c), and (16e); the 34 candidate (16f ) is harmonically bounded by (16c). all other candidates can win under some ranking. (16a) wins if {eb,bb,sp} ≫ {ch,up}; (19) wins if {eb,ch,up} ≫ {bb,sp}; (16e) wins under the ranking shown in (19); and either (16g) or (16h) win if both of the parallelism constraints are undominated. in this evaluation, violations are interpreted positively rather than negatively. 24 lev blumenfeld saliency has thus been reduced to the more basic strategies of signalling constituency. however, there is yet another line of attack. if the two constraints on proximity and the two constraints on parallelism are interpreted as disjunctions of a single constraint, then the picture becomes much simpler.9 (20) a. proximity: either bb or eb proximity is satisfied. b. parallelism: either sp or up is satisfied. the following table implements this unification of proximity and parallelism into single constraints. it repeats (19), placing a mark in the unified column if there is a checkmark in either of the subcolumns of (19). in this new table (21) one structure stands out: the short-last option (16c) is the only one that contains a checkmark in every column – the only one that satisfies all three preferences. now, which of the types examined above are actually attested? according to both hayes and maceachern as well as kiparsky, only 44, 43, and 33 occur with any significant frequency as couplet components of quatrains. these three types form a natural class in (19): they are the types where underlying parallelism is satisfied, and where there are no ×s in any cells. in other words, of the underlyingly parallel couplets, only those are attested where the grouping boundary is not mis-signalled by proximity, i.e. where the 9 although, as i said above, the tables here are not ot tableaux, it is worth noting that such a disjunctive definition is not strange to standard ot constraints; cf. ftbin, which is normally defined as foot binarity at either syllabic or moraic levels (e.g. kager 1999: 156). 25end-weight effects in verse and language structure does not suggest that there is a boundary between the first and second lines of a couplet. once again, saliency falls out of something more basic. in the next subsection i will apply these ideas to the structure of quatrains. 5.7. quatrains quatrains are pairs of couplets; the grouping structure of the four lines of a quatrain is [[line1 line2][line3 line4]]. the boundary between the second and third lines is a couplet boundary, while the boundary after the last line of a quatrain and the first line of the following is both a couplet and a quatrain boundary. thus, if the grouping structure in a quatrain sequence is to be signalled efficiently, it must be the case that the inter-quatrain boundary (call it the 4–1 boundary) is signalled more strongly than the intra-quatrain boundary (the 2–3 boundary). (22) proximity: is there a 4–1 boundary, and if so, is it stronger than the 2–3 boundary? given the three attested couplet types (44, 43, and 33), there are nine quatrain types. they are listed below, along with their performance on the two preferences. a checkmark (ü) means that the 4–1 boundary is present; a plus sign means that it is also stronger than the 2–3 boundary. a blank cell means that the preference says nothing about the presence of a group boundary. a cross mark (×) indicates that the preference places the boundary in a wrong place. in the table, the hand (43) before a quatrain type indicates that it is attested in the corpora examined in the literature. underlying parallelism is assumed to be satisfied. there is also a quatrainlevel surface parallelism preference, defined below. (23) q-parallelism: the two couplets of a quatrain have identical surface metrical structure. here, the attested types form a natural class: they are those without an ×, i.e. those where proximity does not mis-signal the quatrain boundary. another way of summarizing the facts is that the only attested non-parallel quatrains are those with a + in the proximity column: parallelism between couplets in a quatrain is broken only if there is something to gain for signalling the quatrain boundary. 26 lev blumenfeld once again, i emphasize that the tables (19), (21), and (24) are not ot tableaux. adding other reasonable constraints, such as realizebeat (or *∘) will generate a different factorical typology and a different set of outcomes. for example, with {*∘, prox} undominated, the undesired long-last candidate (16b) can win: it satisfies bb proximity without missing any beats. rather, the logic of the above discussion is that saliency, or short-last, can be made sense in terms of the more general desiderata that have to do with making the grouping structure explicit, i.e. saliency can be stated in terms of those patterns. short-last structures of a particular type – with a final missing beat – are an efficient way of signalling grouping structure while satisfying metrical parallelism. there are other desiderata which they are not efficient at satisfying – e.g. the preference not to have empty beats. but it is not incumbent on this discussion to explain why out of the universe of possible preferences, it is proximity and parallelism that seem to have such sway in chanted verse. the goal here was more narrow: to reduce saliency to more basic notions. those notions were the grouping structure possessed by metrical verse. the paradox exemplified (1) is thus an illusion: long-last in language and shortlast in verse operate at different levels, the former on syntax and phonology, and the latter on meter. 6. additional evidence the account of short-last effect, which sees it as signalling grouping structure while preserving parallelism, empirically links the effect to two concrete properties of texts: grouping and parallelism. the account makes a prediction: the short-last effect should be absent when either grouping or parallelism is not at issue. this prediction is not made by simply stipulating a ‘saliency’ advantage to short-last structures without any connection with other properties. for example, the suggestion of hayes and maceachern (1996) that shorter final lines imitate phonetic final lengthening does not make such a connection to specific properties of texts. as both anonymous reviewers of this paper point out, there are many examples of stanzas that have longer final lines – the spencerian stanza is one well-known case, where the last line contains six rather than five beats; there are many others in various traditions in the world. there is, however, a strong tendency toward short-last in texts where parallelism is overt – that is, where the template is realized in the musical beat, and this agrees with the specific prediction of the present proposal that short-last is linked with 27end-weight effects in verse and language metrical parallelism. the same reviewer argues convincingly that the corpus of the world’s metrical texts is too heterogeneous and too complex to be examined efficiently with respect to the predictions of my proposal, and thus the typological work is left for another day. a general prediction, however, is clear: short-last structures should be the more likely the more overt parallel metrical structure is. it should be strongest in sung verse, then perhaps in children’s verse which is often recited in a metrically explicit way; it should be weaker in more cultivated art verse. the converse of the prediction is that text which are not metrical at all, and thus where there is no notion of missing ‘beats’, and where the issue of parallelism does not arise, should not display short-last effects. as an example of non-metrical poetry, i examined the long-line poems from the pocket book of ogden nash (1962). there were 83 such poems. i counted the syllables of the final line pairs in all such poems. the second line of the pair is on average 3.59 syllables longer than the first (mean length difference significantly differs from 0; t(82)=2.082;p<0.05). thus, ogden nash displays a long-last rather than a short-last effect in final line pairs. another source of evidence are verse texts that are metrical, but whose meter does not impose a periodic template. in such cases, there is a notion of ‘empty beat’, but no coherent notion of paralelism. i considered a. s. griboedov’s gore ot uma (woe from wit), a play written in rhymed iambic lines whose length varies unpredictably between 1 and 6 feet. i counted the average difference between two lines such that the second line but not the first line ends a sentence, and there is no sentence break within the second line. testing the first 62 line pairs of the play meeting these conditions, the mean difference between the foot count of the two lines was 0.0323, which is not significantly different from 0 (t(61)=0.1859;p>0.85). there were 20 long-last, 19 short-last, and 23 equal pairs. i have also counted all scene-final line pairs, comparing two final lines of each scene of the play (54 line pairs). here, the numbers are not as equal, but still do not show a clear short-last effect. the mean difference in the number of feet was −0.259, which is not statistically different from 0 (t(53)=−1.459;p>0.15). there were 13 long-last, 23 short-last, and 18 equal line pairs; the difference between 13 and 23 is not significant on a binomial test (p>0.13). finally, i considered the converse situation: a text with a periodic structure, but without a metrical structure that involves the notion of ‘beat’. w. h. auden’s age of anxiety is written in 9-syllable lines in two alliterating halves, usually 4+5 or 5+4, occasionally 6+3 or 3+6. thus, while the lines have a repeating template, it is not based on metrical beats. if the lines display a short-last effect, we would expect their second halves to be shorter than the first. in the first 128 28 lev blumenfeld lines, 67 are short-long, and 61 long-short lines – a non-significant difference. the second half of each line is 0.031 syllables longer than first half (also not significant; t(127)=0.253;p>0.8). the three cases where a short-last effect is absent are exactly what one would expect if the effect is a consequence of grouping and parallelism. the evidence is, of course, negative – nothing precludes a future discovery of a non-metrical text with a short-last effect, and that would weaken my proposal, because a second source of saliency will have to be sought outside of parallelism and grouping. the additional arguments in this section thus must be taken with the usual caveat that acompanies such negative evidence.10 however, the discussion in this paper makes it clear that a careful look at the typology of short-last and long-last structures is needed. 7. conclusion i started with the observation that with respect to weight and ordering, verse and language show opposite behaviour: language prefers long-last structures while verse-prefers short-last structures. in the paper i argued that the shortlast effect in verse is a means of signalling the additional layer of constituency that verse possesses compared to language. thus, the mismatch between verse and language appears to be a false paradox. i conclude by mentioning another relevant set of data that shows the complex interaction that grouping preferences can enter into. the so-called butz triads form a familiar rhythmic scheme, with two short items and a longer one. sugar, and spice, and all things nice; slugs, and snails, and puppy-dogs’ tails are some of the more innocuous ones; the reader is invited to cull morgan (1983) for less appropriate examples.11 although these figures are called “triads”, their common structure also resembles a quatrain, if the last element of the triad is thought of as a pair. in terms of beats, the rhythm can be thought of as 1121, e.g. slugs (1) and snails (1) and puppy-dogs’ (2) tails (1). in this way, the butz triad resembles the short-meter quatrain (3343). 10 the argument also comes with the caution that the evidence comes from statistics over a corpus. 11 the pattern is not limited to english; cf. two common russian triads: i švéc, i žnéc, i na dudé igréc ‘a sewer, a reaper, and a player on the pipe’; kefír, zefír, i tjóplyj sortír ‘kefir, zefir (a confectionary), and a warm loo’. 29end-weight effects in verse and language morgan (1983: 50) pointed out that these triads combine apparently incompatible rhythms: “it is the reconciliation of a triple pattern to a duple pattern… it establishes the three-beat pattern, and extends with a fourth beat to accommodate the duple rhythm”. however, the two properties that are combined here are not in fact incompatible. rather, the rhythmic perfection of these triads lies in the fact that they satisfy both kinds of end-weight preferences at the same time. at the level of the syntax, they follow the long-last pattern ([slugs][and snails][and puppydogs’ tails]), but at the level of rhythm, it is short-last, 1121. this embedding of a short-last structure inside a long-last one shows that the two end-weight preferences are distinct, and not in fact incompatible. finally, i end with an example that shows an even more complex rhythmic embedding. below is the poem “majolica lament, or ‘australopithecus’ ” by linda kunhardt.12 the quatrains are in 3343 short meter. the third line of each stanza contains six syllables with this stress profile: σ́(#)σ́́#σ́σ́σ́σ́, e.g. óx chíp gastrólogỳ. they are distributed among four beats as follows: this structure is reminiscent of a butz triad: short-long in its linguistic shape with a long-short rhythmic cadence. in this poem, short-last sits inside longlast which sits inside short-last.13 the farmer in the dell the farmer in the dell ox chip gastrology the farmer in the dell the farmer takes a wife the farmer takes a wife pupa reconnaissance the farmer takes a wife 12 poetry 196(2): 110, available at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/ detail/53553. 13 thanks for comments to boris maslov and tatiana nikitina, to the audience at the prosody today workshop at the university of chicago in march of 2015, to my colleagues at carleton, and to two anonymous reviewers of studia metrica et poetica. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/53553 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/53553 30 lev blumenfeld the wife takes a child the wife takes a child sweetbread electrolyte the wife takes a child the child takes a nurse the child takes a nurse cheese futz habitual the child takes a nurse the nurse takes a cow the nurse takes a cow flatworm collateral the nurse takes a cow references anttila, arto; adams, matthew; speriosu; michael 2010. the role of prosody in the english dative alternation. in: language and cognitive processes 25(7/9), 946–981. beckman, mary, edwards; jan 1990. lengthenings and shortenings and the nature of prosodic constituency. in:. kingston, john; beckman, mary (eds.), papers in laboratory phonology 1: between the grammar and physics of speech. cambridge: cambridge university press, 152–178. benor, sarah bunin; levy, roger 2006. the chicken or the egg? a probabilistic analysis of english binomials. in: language 82(2), 233–278. bolton, thaddeus l. 1894. rhythm. in: american journal of psychology 6, 145–238. cooper, william e.; ross, john r. 1975. world order. in: grossman, robin e.; san, l. james; vance, timothy j. (eds.), papers from the parasession on functionalism. chicago: chicago linguistics society, 63–111. fraisse, paul 1974. psychologie du rhythme. paris: presses universitaires de france. hammond, michael 2012. a searchable dictionary of english. http://www.lexicon. arizona.edu/hammond/newdic.html. hawkins, john a. 1990. a parsing theory of word order universals. in: linguistic inquiry 21(2), 223–261. http://www.lexicon.arizona.edu/hammond/newdic.html http://www.lexicon.arizona.edu/hammond/newdic.html 31end-weight effects in verse and language hay, jessica s. f.; diehl, randy l. 2007. perception of rhythmic grouping: testing the iambic/trochaic law. in: perception and psychophysics 69(1), 113–122. hayes, bruce 1985. iambic and trochaic rhythm in stress rules. in: proceedings of the eleventh annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society, 429–446. hayes, bruce 1995. metrical stress theory: principles and case studies. chicago: university of chicago press. hayes, bruce; maceachern, margaret 1996. quatrain form in english folk verse. in: language 74: 473–507. jakobson, roman 1960. linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, ma: the mit press, 350–377. kager, rené 1999. optimality theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. kiparsky, paul 2006. a modular metrics for folk verse. in: dresher, b. elan; friedberg, nila (eds.), formal approaches to poetry. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 7–49. lerdahl, fred; jackendoff, ray 1983. a generative theory of tonal music. cambridge, ma: the mit press. morgan, gareth 1983. butz triads: toward a grammar of folk poetry. in: folklore 94, 44–56. prince, alan; smolensky, paul 2004 [1993]. optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. malden: blackwell. http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/5370802/537-0802-prince-0-0.pdf. smith, barbara herrnstein 1968. poetic closure: a study of how poems end. chicago: university of chicago press. wasow, thomas 1997a. end-weight from the speaker’s perspective. in: journal of psycholinguistic research 26(3), 347–361. wasow, thomas 1997b. remarks on grammatical weight. in: language variation and change 9, 81–105. wasow, thomas 2002. postverbal behavior. stanford: csli. wasow, thomas; arnold, jennifer 2003. post-verbal constituent ordering in english. in: rohdenburg, günter; mondorf, britta (eds.), determinants of grammatical variation in english. berlin: mouton, 119–154. woodrow, herbert 1909. a quantitative study of rhythm: the effect of variations in intensity, rate, and duration. in: archives of psychology 14, 1–66. http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/537-0802/537-0802-prince-0-0.pdf http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/537-0802/537-0802-prince-0-0.pdf 32 lev blumenfeld woodrow, herbert 1951. time perception. in: stevens, stanley smith (ed.), handbook of experimental psychology. new york: wiley, 1224–1236. zalizniak, andrei a. 1977. grammaticheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka: slovoizmenenie. moscow: russkii iazyk. frontiers in comparative metrics 2, in memoriam lucyllae pszczołowskae (april 19–20, 2014, tallinn university, estonia) igor pilshchikov the second international conference on comparative prosody was organised by the department of cultural theory of tallinn university and the department of classical philology of the university of tartu and held in tallinn in april 2014. the first such conference took place in estonia in 2008, and was devoted to the memory of the prominent russian scholar mikhail gasparov (1935– 2005); the proceedings were published three years later (lotman & lotman 2011). the present conference was devoted to the memory of another important representative of international verse studies, the polish scholar lucylla pszczołowska (1924–2010). the main topics of the conference included verse theory and methods of verse analysis, frontiers in indo-european and fenno-ugric prosody as well as non-european poetic systems, the poetics of written and oral texts, cognitive poetics, and the analysis of the verse structures of translated texts and their originals. the keynote speakers were nigel fabb (university of strathclyde, u.k.), tomas riad (stockholm university, sweden), and paul kiparsky (stanford university, usa). the conference was opened by nigel fabb’s talk, “lines and other layers of the poetic text: their differentiated formal, aesthetic and psychological properties”. the speaker developed roman jakobson’s distinction between verse design (resp. verse instance) of the poet and delivery design (resp. delivery instance) of the reciter (jakobson 1960: 366–367), and explored whether metrical verse in performance, when line boundaries are not cued auditorily, is experienced differently from prose in performance. according to fabb, the surface forms are nevertheless heard relative to the distinct lines required for the formal processing of the metrical verse (a phenomenon sometimes described as “metrical tension”). tomas riad delivered a talk on the prosodic metrics of tashlhiyt berber songs, in which he silently opposed jakobson’s bold statement “that versification cannot be deduced in its entirety from a given language” (jakobson 1923: 118), and analysed the prosody of berber songs in line with the assumptions of “phonological” metrics, where metre is derived directly from language studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 144–157 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.07 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.07 145frontiers in comparative metrics 2 (golston & riad 2000). riad interpreted the five regularities in the patterning of metre in these songs (as established in previous scholarship) in terms of linguistic constraints, and reduced these regularities to linguistic unmarkedness and linguistic rhythm. moreover, the speaker demonstrated what he referred to as a close correspondence between the metre of the songs and the productive prosodic morphology of the derivational system in tashlhiyt. the problem of poetic performance was again in the spotlight in the paper of tina høegh (“metrical transcription of oral performances of poetry – a multimodal text”). høegh used a microanalysis of videotaped recitations of poetry and prose to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the study of metrics and language rhythms in coordination with multimodal expressions of the performer (gestures, gazes, voice quality, tones, pauses and bodily beats). several papers were devoted to sung poetry. varun decastro-arrazola (“the impact of general cognitive biases on the metrical patterns of sung verse”) attempted to link the examination of sung poetry to cognitive linguistics and human brain studies. in his paper, metrical regularities found in sung verse were tentatively explained through the working of general cognitive mechanisms. kati kallio (“clumsy metrics, good songs?”) discussed how modern finnish versification was born as a result of a competition between two oral traditions – the old folkloric kalevala-metre songs and the new hymn-singing culture brought by the reformation with its attempts to imitate the prosody of german and scandinavian lutheran hymns. jacqueline pattison ekgren described “the accent patterns in norwegian stev” – the songs that have survived many centuries through oral tradition though they defy both standard musical notation and metrical description. the kvedarar (stev singers) traditionally performed stev with foot-taps at irregular, but still predictable intervals. these foot-taps are grouped into asymmetrical “two-accent units” (“dipods”), which are documented by filmed performances and film frame counts. each line of stev can be described as a 4-accent line consisting of two dipods. megan e. hartman presented a paper on “the structure and rhetorical purpose of old norse málaháttr”. málaháttr is a hypermetric form of the more common eddic metre fornyrðislag: it consistently has one additional metrical position per verse. hartman analysed the structure of málaháttr in the context of other hypermetric metres (particularly the hypermetric patterns of old english) and demonstrated that, on one hand, the “irregularities” of the málaháttr are relatively uniform but, on the other hand, this metre gives the poet more freedom and facilitates the telling of a dynamic narrative. 146 igor pilshchikov in his paper, “degrees of well-formedness: the formula principle in the analysis of oral-poetic metres”, frog argued that well-formedness in oral poetries functions practically according to a hierarchy of preferences (i. e. some verses may be more metrical well-formed than others). relative degrees of metrical well-formedness allow flexibility for stylistic and strategic variation in compositional practice. the author develops the oral-formulaic theory of parry-lord-foley (see, in particular, foley 1995) and advances a formula principle, according to which, metrically entangled and metrically bound formulaic sequences provide qualitatively more dependable data on metrical well-formedness than non-formulaic composition or expression. the paper discussed this principle in relation to the diachronic conditioning of formulae in old norse and finnic poetries. kristin hanson (“individual and collective lyrical styles: a generative perspective on textsetting in bach’s st. matthew passion”) contributed to the recent developments in generative metrics that take an interest in the principles governing alignment of rhythmic elements of language with those of music. the guiding assumption is that intuitions about metrics and textsetting draw on a common rhythmic competence and so overlap to a significant extent. but the differences between metrics and textsetting are significant too, especially in any quest to understand these art forms in their specificity. the paper analysed some of these differences between metrics and rhythmic aspects of textsetting using the examples from j. s. bach’s matthäus-passion. the first day of the conference also featured a panel on classical prosody and other varieties of quantitative metrics. jean-louis aroui’s paper, “a typology of quantitative metres”, proposed a new approach to the problem posed in its title. according to aroui, all quantitative metres (vedic, ancient greek, latin, arabic etc.) are governed by a set of four ranked and violable metrical constraints: the count of morae, the count of syllables, the count of metrical positions, and the constraint specifying the way morae and syllables are associated to form a particular metre. the presenter identified four types of quantitative metres depending on which constraint is ranked first: 1) the number of morae for a metrical position (and, consequently, for the line) is constant; 2) the number of syllables in the line is constant; 3) the number of morae and the number of syllables in the line is constant; and, 4) the number of metrical positions is constant. andrew becker posed a question: “what is latin about latin metre? (or why asclepiads are not boring)”. the answer, he suggested, is that, in latin metre, nearly everything is latin, but for the bare pattern of heavy and light syllables adopted from the greek (contrary to the viewpoint of some of contemporary scholarship on latin versification). becker took horatian 147frontiers in comparative metrics 2 asclepiads as a case study in latin lyric versification, and argued that attention to the relationship between the latent schematic ictus and the performed word accent discloses an acoustic liveliness that belies a more cursory reaction to the bare metrical pattern. useful here are ancient roman scansions and descriptions of asclepiads. examples from odes iv.3 and iii.13 allowed the audience to see (hear) the variety of rhythmic patterns that enliven the predictable sequence of heavy and light syllables. andreas keränen discussed “the development of the choliamb metre in greek and latin”. the choliamb can be described as an iambic trimeter with a spondee or a trochee substituted for the last iambic foot: xlwl | xlwl | xllu. in greek, the last foot had a strong tendency to be spondaic (ll), rather than trochaic (lw). in latin, a spondee or a trochee were equally possible. at the same time the roman metricians regulated the fifth foot to be a pure iamb (wllu, rather than xllu), and the latin poets never violated this rule, whereas such a regulation was neither mentioned by the greek grammarians nor respected by the greek poets. keränen attempted to explain the difference between the two traditions by the specificity of accent placement in ancient greek and latin, but admitted that the reason for which the anceps in the fifth foot of the latin choliamb was disambiguated remains unclear. at the afternoon session two authors presented their papers in absentia. anastasia belousova talked by skype from bogotà. her paper, “dissimilarity of the similar”, was devoted to “a comparative study of strophic forms and the problems of poetic syntax”. she used the statistical methods developed for a description of verse syntax by twentieth century russian scholars (boris jarcho, grigorii vinokur, boris tomashevsky and others) to examine the syntax of similar stanzaic and regular forms (ottava rima, terza rima, and the sonnet) in different languages (italian, english, german, french and russian). the aim of the paper was to investigate how the poet’s native language and his or her individual poetic design interact and influence each other in the formation of the national variations of international strophic pattern. marina tarlinskaja’s paper, “double falsehood: did an 18th century author rewrite a 17th century shakespearean play?”, was delivered by the panel chair, maria-kristiina lotman. tarlinskaja analysed the 18th century play, double falsehood (1727), whose author, lewis theobald, claimed that that he had based his text on a play “written originally by w. shakespeare”. it is known that, in 1613, shakespeare’s theatre company king’s men performed a play with the same plot as double falsehood called the history of cardenio, “by mr fletcher & mr shakespeare” (the play was never printed, and the manuscript was eventually lost). the versification particulars in double falsehood (positions where schematic stresses are predominantly skipped, the ratio of 148 igor pilshchikov enclitics and proclitics, the structures of masculine and feminine line endings, positions of strong syntactic breaks, etc.) reveal some unmistakable traces of fletcher’s rhythmical style (from act 3, scene 3 to the end of the play). at the same time, not so many traces of shakespeare or shakespeare and fletcher’s collaboration have been found. a section devoted to romance prosody featured papers on occitan, portuguese, and romansh poetry. gianluca valenti revised the established interpretation of the prosodic structures of medieval occitan poetry in his paper: “towards a new classification of the troubadours’ metrical schemes”. istván frank’s catalogue of the metrical repertoire of troubadour lyrics (1966) accounts for 885 different patterns, which is a clear case of excessive detalisation. valenti proposed some ways to generalise these descriptions. patricio ferrari (“fernando pessoa’s versecraft”) presented a case study of one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century. fernando pessoa (1888–1935) wrote poetry in three languages: portuguese, french, and english, and published under different names (he called his various literary personalities heteronyms instead of pseudonyms). ferrari studied the role that different types of metres and verse systems played in the shaping of the literary styles of pessoa and his heteronyms. in particular, pessoa’s heteronym álvaro de campos experimented with syllabo-tonic verse (unusual for portuguese which normally exploits a syllabic verse system). another point of ferrari’s paper was the relevance of metrics in textual criticism. (a scholar of russian verse may recall here mikhail gasparov’s similar study of the leading poet of the russian avant-garde, entitled “twenty versification-based textual amendments to the texts of mayakovsky” [gasparov 1991]). renzo caduff’s paper, “influences on the versification of the romansh poet andri peer (1921–1985): the example of the heptasyllabic and endecasyllabic verse”, investigated into the two most frequent metres in the work of the author who is sometimes called the first “modern” poet of romansh literature (vallader dialect). in addition to pure “settenari” and “endecasyllabi”, these rhythmical patterns are discernible in peer’s free verse, either as “sublinear” sections or as “translinear” combinations. in italian metrics, such divergences between rhythmic and graphic structures have been called a phenomenon of “shadow verses” [versi ombra] (menichetti 1993: 151). the discussion of free verse in the framework of metrical intertextuality continued in satu grünthal’s paper, “metrical intertextuality: forms and functions”, which was focused on the “reader’s response” aspects of metrical and rhythmical relations between earlier and later texts. it is known that the reader’s former experience and knowledge of metrical repertoire influences 149frontiers in comparative metrics 2 his/her later readings of poetry. grünthal introduced the notion of “metrical competence” (comparable to culler’s concept of “reader’s competence” resp. chomsky’s “linguistic competence”) and discussed such questions as “what about young readers with limited reading background and imperfect familiarity with literary conventions?” or “what is the function of metrical competence in cultures where contemporary poetry is almost exclusively written in free verse?” free verse was also discussed in aile tooming’s paper, “estonian free verse in the beginning of the 20th century”. the presenter attempted to describe the vers libre of the “golden age” of estonian literature (1900–1940) from two complementary points of view: i) free verse as one versification system among others, and ii) free verse as a form which demonstrates its “freedom” against the background of more conventional verse form (miroslav červenka [2002: 367] called this kind of relationship a “parasitic” rhythmical structure of vers libre). the second day of the conference featured more papers on fenno-ugric prosody. paul kiparsky opened the morning session with the keynote speaker’s presentation, “kalevala and mordvin metre”. at first glance the quantitative/ accentual kalevala and pure syllabic mordvin metrical systems have little in common. the classic kalevala verse is a trochaic tetrameter, whose rhythmic variety comes from the syncopated effects achieved by the frequent “broken” lines and the option of a trisyllabic initial foot. instead, mordvin versification relies on a repertoire of no less than twenty distinct metres and on complex prosodic rules that license systematic mismatches between the strict abstract syllable count and the actually articulated text, as well as alignment of the text to melodies with shifting musical measures. the length of mordvin metres ranges from seven to seventeen syllables, and stress placement plays no role. a historical connection between the two metrical systems remains disputable but, according to kiparsky, a re-examination of the mordvin system might rehabilitate its plausibility (although by no means proves it). each mordvin metre consists of a fixed arrangement of two, three, or four cola. there are five short metres (a two-colon line), two couplet metres (two full lines), and thirteen long metres (one line plus a colon). depending on the metre, a colon may have four or five syllables, a terminal colon may also have three. kiparsky proposed a stochastic optimality theory system that generates the mordvin metrical inventory and explains the relative frequencies of the metres. his argument was that mordvin metres can be seen as a natural restructuring of a kalevala-type metre after the loss of quantitative oppositions and stress. the process of restructuring may have been guided by what he referred to as the 150 igor pilshchikov intrinsic principles of metrical organisation that are widely attested across the world (e.g. in english folk quatrains, as described in kiparsky 2006). mihhail lotman’s talk, “estonian verse: rhythmic structure and literary movement”, was devoted to the fundamental problem: is verse rhythm (as a particular realisation of metre) a purely individual phenomenon, or could we discover some regularities pertaining to a particular chronological period or an aesthetic movement? lotman’s point was that the answer is different as far as different verse traditions are concerned. russian verse theorists, who developed andrei belyi’s (1910) insight on the differences between the rhythm of russian 18th and 19th century iambic tetrameter, came close to a description of the entire history of russian verse as a systematic evolution of many relevant parameters from one period to another. similar investigations into english and czech verse did not bring similar results: the picture is far more diversified. a multi-aspect study of estonian iambic and trochaic tetrameter (lotman & lotman 2013, 2014), in which both the accentual and the quantitative structures of verse have been examined, and a gradual scale has been used (five grades of accent and three grades of duration), has demonstrated that the estonian poetic tradition may be described as placed somewhere in the middle between the opposite types of evolution. on the one hand, the generalised accentual profile of the two metres shows no differences between authors, movements or periods. but on the other hand, the evolution of heavier accents reveals a significant contrast between the earlier (“traditionalist”) and later (“modernist”) poets. it is worth noting that the abovementioned research is based on a corpus of estonian poetry, eesti värss [estonian verse] developed by mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman, and elin sütiste (http://www. ut.ee/verse/). another corpus of national verse system was exposed in robert ibrahim and petr plecháč’s paper, “database of czech verse” (presented by petr plecháč). the corpus of czech verse (http://www.versologie.cz/en/kcv.html) is a lemmatised, and phonetically, morphologically, metrically and strophically annotated corpus. each lexical unit is provided with information about its basic word form (lemma), phonetic transcription and grammatical categories; each line of verse is provided with information about its metre, foot length, clausula type, and metrical pattern (only the syllabo-tonic poems are currently annotated). the corpus is complemented by online research tools: the database of czech metres, word frequency lists, and others. a corpus-based approach was also proposed in boris maslov and tatiana nikitina’s paper, “pragmatics of 19th century russian rhythmic verse types” (presented by boris maslov). the paper addressed the issue of the statistical distribution of finite verbs and pronominal case/gender forms (“pragmatic 151frontiers in comparative metrics 2 patterns”) in russian iambic and trochaic metres (in partial incongruence with russian terminological habit, the authors call them “rhythmic verse types”)1. the poetic corpus extracted from the russian national corpus (http://ruscorpora.ru/search-poetic.html) has a tool for creating various subcorpora using different chronological and prosodic parameters (http://ruscorpora.ru/mycorpora-poetic.html). maslov and nikitina demonstrated that, in a subcorpus of late 18th and 19th century russian poetry, some lexical items manifest different distribution in trochees and iambs. in particular, first-person grammar is more at home in the iambic verse than in the trochees. the presenters attempted to explain this fact by typical generic and pragmatic differences between the two metres. several papers were focused on comparative aspects of syllabo-tonic (syllabic-accentual) verse. evgeny kazartsev’s topic was “the genesis of syllabotonic verse in northern europe”. the process of syllabo-tonicisation took place over several hundred years, from the 16th century to the late 18th century, and embraced english, flemish, dutch, german, danish, and swedish poetries. a more strict metrical system, to which the presenter gave the name “continental syllabo-tonic prosody”, evolved in the netherlands and germany, and spread subsequently to scandinavia and russia. the development of the syllabo-tonic versification system in russia in the 18th century influenced many neighbouring slavic cultures. tatyana skulacheva (“system of versification unknown: how to analyse?”) discussed a not unusual situation when we need to identify the metre but do not know what versification system we are faced with (syllabic, syllabic-accentual, tonic, quantitative etc.). this situation emerges when we deal with less studied languages and their verse structures (that is, the majority of world languages) or with the non-classical verse in the well-studied (mostly european) poetic traditions. skulacheva suggested a few procedures applicable to most languages with known stress placement and vowel length, and then focused on russian non-classical syllabic-accentual and tonic metres. such metres can be recognised with a generalised algorithm: count the number of syllables; count the number of stressed syllables; calculate the interval scheme; find the strictest metre (from the given inventory), in which the line fits. however, this simple algorithm is not always easy to apply (in particular, because some syllables can be stressed or non-stressed depending on the interval scheme of the verse; because anacruses and clausulae should be given special treatment; etc.). 1 the dichotomy of metre and rhythm is not so widespread in european verse studies as is in russian tradition (for the latter see pilshchikov 2012). http://ruscorpora.ru/search-poetic.html http://ruscorpora.ru/search-poetic.html http://ruscorpora.ru/mycorpora-poetic.html http://ruscorpora.ru/mycorpora-poetic.html 152 igor pilshchikov lev blumenfeld presented “an investigation of prosodic typicality” – a new quantitative measure for prosodic structure, which estimates the extent to which the rhythm of a line of verse differs from prose. russian verse theory studied the rhythmic structure of verse in comparison to the “baseline” rhythm of natural language, as supplied by prose corpora. such is a metre-dependent calculation: scholars compare real iambs with “accidental” iambs in prose, real trochees with “accidental” trochees in prose, etc. blumenfeld proposed a new twist on this approach. the prosodic pattern of each line of verse occurs in prose with a certain measurable frequency. more frequent patterns are prosodically “typical”, while rare patterns are “atypical”. this notion of “typicality” is independent of the metre in which a line is written. however, a count of the frequency of a prosodic structure in a prose corpus depends on the length of the line. the prosodic patterns of long lines are less probable to encounter in prose than shorter patterns, and this probability decreases exponentially as the line grows. thus, typicality must be normalised by line length. also discussed was another question: is typicality determined by stanza position? the advanced the specific methods of measuring typicality using a perl program that is able to perform various quantitative tasks related to english and russian syllabic-accentual metrics. two papers were devoted to rhyming poetry. tatiana nikitina and boris maslov’s “rich and poor rhymes in the onegin stanza” (also presented by maslov) explored the correlations between the quality of rhyme and the rhyme’s placement in the stanza in aleksandr pushkin’s eugene onegin. it is known that the onegin stanza incorporates all three major structural types of rhyming (abab + ccdd + effe + gg)2. a rhyme is defined as rich if the onset consonants of the rhyming syllables are identical; failing that, a rhyme is considered poor. nikitina and maslov’s data reveal that masculine rhymes are consistently richer than the feminine rhymes3, whereas the distribution of feminine rhymes depends on the rhyme’s position in the stanza: the rhyme is more likely to be poor in later positions of the verse. moreover, there is no significant correlation between the richness of adjacent masculine and feminine rhymes; there is, however, a relation of co-variation between the first two pairs of feminine rhymes (the c rhyme is more likely to be rich if the a rhyme is rich). thus, acoustically, masculine rhymes form the stable rhyming “skeleton” of the onegin stanza, while feminine rhymes tend to co-vary. 2 capital letters denote feminine rhymes, and lower-case letters denote masculine rhymes. 3 it should be remembered that, unlike english and german poetries, and similarly to french classical poetry, russian classical poetic canon prohibits non-coincident consonants in “open” (i.e. cv type) masculine rhymes. 153frontiers in comparative metrics 2 daniela rossi (“beyond rhyme: relevant pairings and sound networks”) argued that the established definitions of rhyme, however different they were, prove unable to give an account of the sound organisation of some works of poetry. the presenter suggested broadening the notion of rhyme by the novel concept of “relevant pairing”. she defined “relevant pairings” in relation to their length, their location in the line of verse (line ending vs. inside the line), their location in the poetic text (close vs. distant), and their density. these ideas were tested in a case study (arthur rimbaud’s “sonnet”, “jeunesse ii”, from illuminations). the rest of the day was devoted to comparative prosody sensu stricto. sergei liapin delivered a talk “on an understudied mechanism of formation of the russian dolnik (against the background of german and english poetic traditions)”. “dolnik” is the russian term for strict stress-metre. unlike the classical syllabo-accentual metres, the length of the inter-ictus intervals in a dolnik line is not constant. however, unlike accentual verse (stress-metre) it is not arbitrary, but oscillates between one and two syllables. at the same time, “‘dolnik’ is a metre in its own right, not just a looser variant of iamb, or a stricter variant of accentual verse” (tarlinskaja 1992: 3; cf. 1993). descriptions of a synchronic (systematic) derivation of the russian dolnik usually include the following algorithm: an extra syllable is added to an iambic or trochaic line. thus the syllabic basis of the metre is undermined, and the tonic factor acquires greater significance. the other mechanism of generation of the dolnik from the iambus or trochee is often unnoticed or thrown into the background: namely, the stress shift at the beginning of the line (supported by a tendency towards isosyllabism) reveals the syllabic component in the generation of the dolnik. liapin discussed the working of the latter mechanism in russian dolnik in comparison with german and english verse. a comparison of russian and german dolniks continued in sergei liapin and igor pilshchikov’s paper, “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam... and the typology of the russian dolnik” (presented by pilshchikov). this paper developed some of the ideas that were expressed at the meeting of the translators’ section of the soviet writer’s union (28 december 1934) where the ex-formalist leftist critic osip brik’s talk on new russian translations of heinrich heine’s germany was presented and discussed. the meeting was presided over by prominent literary theorist boris jarcho (yarkho) and featured leading russian translators – in particular, dmitrii usov and lev penkovsky. brik argued for equirhythmical translations of heine’s dolniks and maintained that equimetrical translations are impossible due to the differences between the russian and the german systems of verse. usov and penkovsky, on the contrary, argued for equimetrical translations and maintained that equirhythmical translations are impossible 154 igor pilshchikov due to the differences between the accentual systems of the russian and the german languages. jarcho developed a theory, according to which every versification system is characterised by primary and secondary features. the primary features represent a determinist norm and should be reproduced in translation to the full extent, while the secondary features represent a statistical norm: they may be reproduced in a proportion that the language and the poetic tradition can afford and that is at the same time similar to the proportion found in the original text. liapin and pilshchikov discussed three russian poetic translations of heine’s celebrated “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam…”4 from the point of view of their equimetricity/equirhythmicity, and compared their metrical and rhythmical structure with various rhythmic types of the russian dolnik. the problem of equimetricity was also discussed in maria-kristiina lotman’s paper, “translating systems of versification: the case of syllabic verse in estonian”. although the equimetrical and equiprosodic methods of translating poetry prevail in estonian tradition5, a poetic translation into estonian normally involves a choice between, or a combination of the syllabic, accentual, and/or quantitative principles. for example, french alexandrines are usually translated as (accentual-)syllabic verse (following the french model) or syllabic-accentual verse (in accordance with the german model), and the italian endecasillabo is usually rendered as a syllabic-accentual line, although there are occasional examples of syllabic translation. other foreign traditions may create other challenges. thus, japanese poetic structures (which are based on a moraic rather than a syllabic count) are conventionally translated in estonian as syllabic forms. at the same time, to convey the form of haiku, some translators use an estonian functional equivalent, in which the first line contains four syllables (a trochaic dimeter), the second line contains six syllables, and the third line has four syllables too, as an allusion to the estonian folk metre, regivärss. during the afternoon sessions, more papers on the prosody of poetic translations were delivered. juliette lormier’s “how to land on (other) one’s feet?” questioned “hephæstion’s influence on baïf ’s étrénes (1574), a french ‘translation’ of greek meters”. many french humanists in the 1570s aimed at translating the 4 produced by dmitrii usov in the early 1940s, maksim shapir in 1994, and the authors of the paper themselves in 2013. 5 the concept of equiprosodic translation is different from both equimetrical and equirhythmical translations: it describes a poetic translation, “which conveys the versification system of the source text” (lotman 2012: 447). 155frontiers in comparative metrics 2 rules of classical metrics into their own language, following the example of the italian poets who had started on this goal at the end of the 15th century. in particular, jean-antoine de baïf published his étrénes de poézie fransoèze an vèrs mezurés, in which he used a new alphabet (a mix of latin characters with diacritics and greek characters, allowing for an exact reproduction of french pronunciation) and french equivalents of various greek metres (dactylic hexameters, iambic trimeters, phalaecians, sapphic stanzas, minor asclepiads, and many more). mathieu augé-chiquet (1909) claimed that baïf had used the enchiridion of hephæstion (2nd century ad) to construct his own “measured verse”. however, no proof of this claim has been provided since 1909. lormier checked baïf ’s french hexameters, trimeters, phalecians and antispasts with hephæstion’s metrical rules, as they are presented in adrien turnèbe’s edition of the enchiridion (1553), and revealed that the french poet, instead of straightforwardly transposing ancient greek metres into his mother tongue, created a fascinating metrical hybrid, conforming to both greek and french prosodic rules. annika kuuse described “the syllabic structure of the hexameters of academic occasional poetry in tartu in the 17th century”. the presenter examined the neo-latin hexameters composed by the students of academia gustaviana (dorpatensis) from the viewpoint of three parameters: quantity, number of syllables, and accent variations. the main aim of the paper was to find out how much different the neo-latin metre was from its ancient sources. another point of interest was the peculiarities of the texts composed by the authors whose native tongue was not latin and who had no possibility of consulting the native speakers of latin. yuri orlitsky’s talk, “maksim amelin: a modern versifier for modern versologists”, was devoted to the work of an important contemporary russian poet (b. 1970) who has also come into the public eye as a translator of catullus and homer. orlitsky started with a brief description of amelin’s lexically and metrically faithful translations of catullus’ carmina from the latin and nikoloz baratashvili’s “merani” from the georgian, and then focused on the poet’s experiments with the genre of the ode in his recent book гнутая речь [curved speech] (2011). amelin draws on rich russian and european pre-19th-century tradition and exploits various stanzaic forms, from the 10-line iambic stanzas of the solemn ode to the short trochaic stanzas of the anacreontic odes, and even to the baroque calligram used in his ode to the monument of catherine the great (written, moreover, in free verse). orlitsky found parallels to amelin’s experiments in the work of the russian poets of the older generation: oleg okhapkin (1944–2008), sergei stratanovsky (b. 1944), viktor poleshchuk (b. 1957), sergei zavyalov (b. 1958) and some others. 156 igor pilshchikov vera polilova discussed the problem of “the metrical structure of spanish golden age drama in translation”. the polymetrical and polystanzaic structure of dramatic verse is sometimes referred to as the main driving force in the comedies of lope de vega, tirso de molina, and calderón de la barca. it is no surprise then the sophisticated metrical organisation of spanish classical drama: different types of stanzas have different functions in the dramatic text. therefore, we are faced with the challenge of reproducing these metrical peculiarities in translation. it is evident, however, that the semantic halos of different metres in spanish (source) literature may not coincide with the semantic halos of these metres in other (target) literatures. polilova observed the solutions suggested by the russian translators – first and foremost, the translations of calderón produced by the symbolist poet konstantin balmont between 1900 and 1919. the paper demonstrated that the russian poet’s attention to the metrical and stanzaic diversity of the originals increased from year to year. this tendency is in resonance with the evolution of the principles of the poetic translation in russia in the modernist and early soviet periods. there is an intention to publish some of the presented papers in the next issues of studia metrica et poetica. references augé-chiquet, mathieu 1909. la vie, les idées et les œuvres de jean antoine de baïf. paris (reprinted genève: slatkine, 1969). belyi, andrei 1910. simvolizm. moskva: musaget. červenka, miroslav 2002. the principle of free verse. in: prague linguistic circle papers = travaux du cercle linguistique de prague, nouvelle série 4, amsterdam and philadelphia: john benjamins, 365–376. foley, john miles 1995. the singer of tales in performance. bloomington: indiana university press. frank, istván 1966. répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours, 2nd edn. paris: h. champion, 2 vols. gasparov, mikhail 1995. dvadcat’ stikhovedcheskikh kon”ektur k tekstam majakovskogo. in: izvestija akademii nauk sssr, serija literatury i jazyka 50(6), 531–538. golston, cris; riad, tomas 2000. the phonology of classical greek meter. in: linguistics 38(1), 99–167. 157frontiers in comparative metrics 2 jakobson, roman 1923. o cheshskom stikhe preimushhestvenno v sopostavlenii s russkim. sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo jazyka 5. [moskva, berlin]: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo r.s.f.s.r. jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: thomas a. sebeok (ed.). style in language. cambridge, mass.: the m.i.t. press, 350–377. kiparsky, paul 2006. a modular metrics for folk verse. in: b. elan dresher and nila friedberg (eds.). formal approaches to poetry: recent developments in metrics. phonology and phonetics 11. berlin and new york: mouton de gruyter, 7–49. lotman, maria-kristiina 2012. equiprosodic translation method in estonian poetry. in: sign systems studies 40(3/4), 447–472. lotman, mikhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.) 2011. frontiers in comparative prosody. in memoriam: mikhail gasparov. linguistic insights 113. bern [etc.]: peter lang. 426 pp. lotman, mikhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2013. the quantitative structure of estonian syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter. in: trames 17(67/62), 243–272. lotman, mikhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2014. the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter. (published in this volume). menichetti, aldo 1993. metrica italiana: fondamenti metrici, prosodia, rima. medioevo e umanesimo 83. padova: antenore. pilshchikov, igor 2012. the concepts of “verse”, “meter” and “rhythm” in russian versification studies: the “russian method” from formalism to structuralism and contemporary approaches. in: xavier galmiche (ed.). les enfants de herbart: des formalismes aux structuralismes en europe centrale et orientale. filiations, reniements, héritages. [papers from the international conference held at université paris 4-sorbonne and cefres, prague, february 10 and 13, 2012]. url: http:// formesth.com/fichier.php?idf=127, direct download link: http://formesth.com/ download.php?idf=127 tarlinskaja, marina 1992. metrical typology: english, german, and russian dolnik verse. in: comparative literature 44(1), 1–21. tarlinskaja, marina 1993. strict-stress meter in english poetry: compared with german and russian. calgary: university of calgary press. http://formesth.com/fichier.php?idf=127 http://formesth.com/fichier.php?idf=127 http://formesth.com/download.php?idf=127 http://formesth.com/download.php?idf=127 boris yarkho’s works on literary theory* mikhail gasparov** boris isaakovich yarkho (1889–1942)1 was a major and unique figure in literary scholarship during the 1920s and 1930s. however, his name is usually recalled less frequently than the names of many of his contemporaries. the circumstances of yarkho’s life and work prevented his most important research from being published. therefore the general panorama of his completed work and his projects for further research escaped most of his contemporaries. and it is the width of his general intentions to perfect scientific methods in studying literature that has rendered the most services to literary scholarship. yarkho received his education at moscow university and later studied in heidelberg and berlin. from 1915 to 1921 he taught at moscow university, first as privatdozent and later as a professor. literary theory did not immediately become the main object of his scholarly activity. at first he specialized in folklore, germanic philology, and the history of medieval literature (in this area he was a recognized authority, his articles were published in foreign journals, and the medieval academy of america elected him as a member). his first major work was dedicated to folklore: it was the tale of sigurd and its reflection in the russian epic (published in russkij filologicheskij vestnik, 1913–1916); his second long work was on skaldic poetry (mansǫngr, published in sborniki moskovskogo merkurija, 1917). he chose to write his doctoral dissertation on hrotsvitha [of gandersheim], a german poetess of the tenth century who composed dramas in latin. the title of yarkho’s dissertation was the rhymed prose of hrotsvitha’s dramas; he worked on it for over ten years; the dissertation was completed in two variants, russian and german, but remained unpublished. in studying hrotsvitha’s use of poetic rhythm, which complexly oscillates between verse and prose, yarkho had to work out detailed * this paper was first published in russian (gasparov 1969; a revised version: gasparov 1997). translation by michael lavery and marina tarlinskaja. ** mikhail leonovich gasparov (1935–2005) was a preeminent scholar of russian and european verse. among his works translated into english are gasparov 1972; 1980; 1987; 1996. a special issue of the slavic and east european journal (2008, vol. 52, no. 2) was published as a tribute to gasparov. 1 russian: борис исаакович ярхо. other transliterations: iarkho, jarcho, jarxo, etc. — eds. studia metrica et poetica 3.2, 2016, 130–150 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.05 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.05 131boris yarkho’s works on literary theory methods of statistical approach to the phonetic layer of literary speech with its immensely varied phonic features. here yarkho worked out the foundations of what he called the “methodology of an exact study of literature”. the application of statistical methods in the study of versification, as we know, was traditional already in nineteenth-century classical philology, familiar to yarkho. the novelty of yarkho’s approach lay in the fact that he was probably the first to transpose the use of these methods onto other areas of literary studies. yarkho wrote his main series of foundational theoretical works during the 1920s and 1930s. from 1922 to 1930 he worked in gakhn [gosudarstvennaja akademija khudozhestvennykh nauk: the state academy of artistic sciences], where he headed the department of theoretical poetics and the committee for translation of literature. here he managed to organize a small scholarly group (mikhail p. shtokmar, leonid i. timofeev, igor’ k. romanovich and others) whose work from then on he always remembered with deep satisfaction. gakhn was something like a club for the moscow humanitarian intelligentsia; its members were forced to make a living on the side. yarkho taught languages and stylistics in the educational institutions of that period, whose names were constantly changing. he worked for bse [bol’shaja sovetskaja entsiklopedija: the great soviet encyclopaedia] and for three years served as an economist in the vsnkh [vysshij sovet narodnogo khozjajstva: the supreme soviet of the people’s economy]; he translated a great deal (la chanson de roland, the völsunga saga, goethe’s reineke fuchs, the plays of molière and schiller; his translation of el cantar de mio cid was published posthumously with annoying changes and without an introductory article; his translated anthologies of carolingian poets and of “visions” of the sixth to twelfth centuries, and his translation of the cent nouvelles nouvelles to this day remain unpublished).2 during this busy period he also wrote a series of articles on the rhythm of russian rhymed prose of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (partially published) and the unpublished works “the distribution of speech in five-act tragedies”, “the comedies and tragedies of corneille”, and “the correlation of forms in the russian chastushka”. he also wrote a small study on the history of the adaptations of la chanson de roland (“young roland”, leningrad, 1926) that adjoins the works listed above. his work on these themes allowed him to systematize and generalize, first, the aesthetic prerequisites for the formal study of literature, and second, the specific devices for the exact methods of 2 yarkho’s anthology of carolingian poets was eventually published in 2010. his preface to his anthology of medieval “visions” was published in 1989. — eds. 132 mikhail gasparov such research. he achieved the former in the articles “the elementary foundations of formal analysis” (yarkho 1927) and “the limits of the scientific study of literature” (yarkho 1925–27); these articles deserve much greater renown than they currently enjoy. the latter was achieved in the book the methodology of an exact study of literature (introduction. analysis. synchronic synthesis. diachronic synthesis), a large study (over 400 pages), summing up all that the author had accomplished and planned during the past 20 years of work. gakhn was scandalously abolished in 1930; yarkho was arrested in 1935 (in the “case of the great german-russian dictionary” that entrapped a large group of the moscow intelligentsia); he wrote his book in exile in omsk and continued to work on additions to it until his death. the book remained unpublished; only short excerpts appeared in the periodicals sign systems studies iv (tartu, 1969)3 and context–1983 (moscow, 1984), and it has not in any way become obsolete in the 60-plus years since it was written.4 the unfinished large studies of the poetics of the slovo o polku igoreve (the lay of igor’s campaign) and contemporary western european epics were to serve as a practical demonstration of the developed methodology. yarkho worked on this study in kursk, where he was a professor from 1940 to 1941, and in evacuation in sarapul, where he passed away from tuberculosis on may 3, 1942. the basic postulates of yarkho’s methodological system laid out in these works can be shortly summarized in the following theses. literature is an independent phenomenon of objective reality and should be studied as an independent object of research rather than as a reflection or expression of any non-literary phenomena (social relations, psychic complexes, etc.). as is well known, trees, for example, may be studied as a reflection or expression of something extrinsic, for instance, of christian virtues, and all of medieval botany was based on this presumption, but it did not move science one step forward. as a phenomenon of objective reality, literature should be studied by scientific methods, such as are applied to objective reality – the methods of exact sciences. of course, the level of precision intrinsic to mathematical sciences is not attainable in the study of literature, but some level of precision, achievable, for instance, in the natural sciences is totally accessible to literary research. the exact sciences know two main methods of research – observation and experimentation. clearly the use of experiments in literary studies is difficult 3 this excerpt was translated into english (yarkho 1977 [1936]). — eds. 4 the book was finally published in 2006. all references to the methodology in this article have been transposed to this edition and formatted according to this journal’s specifications. – eds. 133boris yarkho’s works on literary theory (though not impossible). therefore observation remains the main method of literary research. its success depends on the solution of two questions: “what to observe” and “how to observe”. the natural answer to the first question is as follows: we observe what is specific to a given object. the specifics of literature are its aesthetic effectiveness, that is, its power to invoke the feeling in a person (for lack of a more precise definition) that forces him to approach the object from the point of view “is it beautiful or not beautiful?” the aggregate of aesthetically effective elements of a literary work is called its literary form. the aesthetic effectiveness of each element of a literary work arises from its uncommonness, either quantitative or structural. the sound “p” in language is common and therefore aesthetically neutral, while the accumulation of this sound in aleksandr pushkin’s line “pora, pero pokoja prosit” is quantitatively uncommon, and therefore aesthetically potent. it enters a literary scholar’s field of conscience as a phenomenon known as “alliteration”. stressed and unstressed syllables in language are common, but their regular alternation in the same line is structurally unusual; it is recorded in the consciousness of a literary scholar as a phenomenon known as “iambic tetrameter”. uncommon sound forms (that is, those that attract our hearing), similar to the examples above, comprise the field of phonics; uncommon linguistic forms (that is, those that affect our thinking) belong to the field of stylistics; uncommon images, motifs and plots (that is, forms that affect our imagination) are called the field of iconics or poetics per se. these are the three main fields of literary research; to these three yarkho adds a fourth – composition, the study of their interaction. each of these areas, independently or together, can be studied either synchronically or diachronically. the question of “how to observe” is answered thus: start with an immediate impression, check it against an objective account of all features capable of producing this impression, and express the results of the observation in the form of quantitative indices. only in this way can the results be considered trustworthy. prior to yarkho, literary scholars had limited themselves to the first of these three stages and therefore could not get themselves out of the abyss of subjectivism. relying on the immediate impression they operated with such concepts as a “flowery style”, “colourful”, “lively”, etc. however, by not worrying about an objective account of these features, they had been unable to fill these concepts with a universally recognized meaning: what seemed flowery to one person didn’t seem flowery to another, etc. however, if we agree beforehand, say, to give the name “flowery” to a style saturated with morphological and syntactic figures, and call “colourful” a style saturated with sensuously characterized images, etc., then all these disagreements will end: 134 mikhail gasparov it will be sufficient to count the ratio of figures in this or that text to be able to say which of them is more flowery and which is less flowery, and to what degree. thus, an expression of quality via quantity is the primary goal of any literary study if it wants to be a science and not a game of subjective tastes. to reiterate: we are not talking about driving intuition out of scholarly cognition, but only about driving it out of scientific exposition. in the very first pages of his monograph, yarkho writes: science comes from a need for knowledge, and its (basic and primary) goal is the satisfaction of this need. [...] this aforementioned need is as inherent in man as the need to reproduce: if a man leaves this need unsatisfied, he will not physically perish but sometimes will suffer extremely intensely. [...] an intellectual man is not a person who knows a great deal, but rather merely one who possesses an above-average thirst for knowledge. [...] the need for knowledge, however, is only the grandmother of science. its mother is the need for communication of knowledge. if curiosity is the primary biological characteristic of the human individual, then “thirst for communication” is the secondary quality of man, already as a zoon politikon: in other words, the social aspect comes into force. and science, the daughter of this need, is first and foremost a social act. indeed, there is no scientific (in contrast to unscientific) knowledge per se: when we discover the most reliable scientific principles, our intuition, fantasy and emotional tone play an enormous role alongside our intellectual processes. science is a rationalized statement of what has been cognized, a logically formulated description of that part of the world which we have managed to understand; this means that science is a particular form of communication (exposition) rather than of cognition. the task of this exposition is to find a general, objective language, because logic is considered the most homogenous psychic function in people. alongside with logic, sensations also have a high level of homogeneity: most people see red as red, wormwood tastes bitter to most people. therefore sensory demonstration and logical proof are the basis of objective language. [...] in my view, science is a system of proof, a rationalized language, and i dreamed of converting my science, the science of literature, into precisely such a system. (yarkho 2006: 19–20, 21) thus, statistics for yarkho were by no means a goal in themselves, but only an instrument to discipline thinking, which the science of literature sorely needs. i ought to say i found especially annoying that we, scholars of literature, practice this saloperie in treating the conclusions made from sometimes extremely carefully collected material. i have just taken a closer look out of the corner 135boris yarkho’s works on literary theory of my eye at meteorology. what a contrast! what precision in processing the most approximate, arbitrary and superficial observations! what panache in the diverse methods of recording and accounting data! [...] if we exercised one tenth of this diligence and spent one hundredth of these means, our science would be able to compete with any other (yarkho 2006: 30). — placing quantitative data and microanalysis at the base of my research, i only suggest that we do for the science of literature what lavoisier did for chemistry a century and a half ago, and i have no doubt that the results will be imminent (yarkho 2006: 7). the quantification of aesthetic impressions constitutes the pathos of all theoretical literary work by yarkho. here is a small but striking example. among the scholar’s papers (russian state archive of literature and art [rgali], fond 2186, op. 1, ed. khr. 83) a page is preserved with the title “the programme for the study of syntactic boundaries between verse lines”. yarkho describes in passing the history of this research programme in his methodology (yarkho 2006: 34). he happened to debate with “a leningrad professor”5 about “normal diction”: which pause is stronger in lermontov’s verse line, “beleet – parus odinokij” [“gleams – a sail lonely”] or “beleet parus – odinokij” [gleams a sail – lonely]? yarkho maintained that the first break was stronger, while his opponent felt that it was the second. such debates are usually resolved without arguments. yarkho began to argue. the first pause in the line in question separates the subject and the predicate, the second pause – a modified noun and its modifier. it is obvious that the stronger of the two syntactic pauses will be the one that most often coincides with the strongest rhythmic pause of the verse, the final pause between the lines. yarkho compiled a list of all types of syntactical pauses possible at the end of a verse line; there turned out to be five such types (ten with subtypes included): 1) between sentences, 2) between a subject and a predicate, 3) between a verb and its object or adverbial modifier, 4) between a noun and an attribute or appositive, 5) other instances – forms of address, auxiliary particles. and then he calculated how often each of these five pauses coincided with the end of a verse line. he used as material the first hundred lines from five texts: a. k. tolstoy’s “the dragon”, pushkin’s “the little house in kolomna”, vladimir benediktov’s translation of [schiller’s] “the gods of greece” (all in iambic pentameter), pushkin’s “ruslan and liudmila” and “the bronze horseman” (both in iambic tetrameter). the results are displayed in the table below (all numbers in percentages): 5 lev v. shcherba, a prominent linguist who worked in leningrad. — eds. 136 mikhail gasparov table 1 type the dragon the little house in kolomna the gods of greece ruslan and liudmila the bronze horseman 1 52 59 67 60 39 2 25 14 18 22 17 3 18 25 13 15 36 4 2 1 2 2 8 5 3 1 — — — thus we have the means to answer the original question: the type “vot uzh na more beleet / parus odinokij” [predicate phrase / subject phrase] is encountered on average six times more often than the type “vot uzhe beleet parus / odinokij v sineve...” [predicate phrase, subject / subject’s modifier]. in proving his point yarkho obtained for the first time numeric data to help address such an important problem as enjambment (cf. the data from “the bronze horseman” and other texts). these numbers required further precision and examination, and the page records a plan of “excisions” for the subsequent work: how the distribution of the types of end pauses changes according to the author, metre, stanza type, genre... thus a fortuitous debate about declamation grew into a conceived plan of how to investigate a large and important subject: rhythm and syntax. in 1929 yarkho planned to carry out such a study with the help of his group at gakhn, but in 1930 gakhn was dissolved and the project did not materialize. yarkho planned his research in such a way as to gradually test his method in all fields of literary studies. in the field of phonics this allowed him to study in depth a number of complex forms intermediary between verse and prose, both in russian and foreign material. it wouldn’t be necessary to focus on the details of these works in our current overview; firstly, the majority of them have been published (“the rhymed prose of the so-called novel in verse” and “pushkin’s free sound forms” in the collection ars poetica 2, 1928; “the mystery play of the ten virgins” in the collection pamiati p. n. sakulina, moscow, 1931; “the rhymed prose of russian intermezzos and interludes” in the collection teorija stikha, leningrad, 1968), and secondly, because in the field of versification a successful application of statistic methods (one of the pioneers of which was yarkho, who started his work independently not only of boris tomashevsky, but also of andrei belyi) had long ago ceased to be a novelty. in the field of stylistics: yarkho’s most effective illustration of how to apply the new method to stylistics can be found in the introductory article to his 137boris yarkho’s works on literary theory translation of the poem la chanson de roland where he described his analysis of the poem’s stylistic devices (moscow, 1934). the common opinion had been that the style of la chanson de roland was impoverished in verbal embellishments, that it is dry, simple, and terse. a calculation showed that both points of view were wrong; the number of verbal ornaments, that is, stylistic figures, comprises about 20% of the number of lines, which is no insignificant amount (in el cantar de mio cid – only about 11%); among these figures the majority (60–65%) is pleonastic; thus, the style of la chanson is not dry but, on the contrary, intentionally verbose. the traditional view of the scantiness and dryness goes back to the judgments of great scholars, whose “feel for language” was undoubtedly no less acute than yarkho’s. this example demonstrates that a victory in the controversy was not won by the superiority of the scholar’s talent, but rather by the superiority of his method – the statistical over the intuitive. in the field of iconics on its lowest levels – image, motif, plot – yarkho worked relatively little. one can probably mention the expressive comparison of military motifs in la chanson de roland and el cantar de mio cid: although both poems are nearly identical in length, in roland we find 76 battle scenes (of which 46 are single combat), while in cid – 25 battle scenes (of which only 5 are single combat): the plot dynamics of cid is achieved not by the battle scenes, but by changes of location (in roland the place of action changes only 18 times, while in cid – a countless number of times). one can also note the intriguing analysis of sensuous colouring of images: the statistics of colors in five medieval epics. in cid only three colours are used, and colour epithets comprise only 0.024% of the text (calculated from the number of syllables); beowulf, correspondingly, has seven colours and 0.053% of the text; slovo o polku igoreve – nine colours and 0.433%; roland – ten colours and 0.217%; the nibelungenlied – eleven colours and 0.065%. the growth in the richness of the palette from the semi-barbarian beowulf to the courtly nibelungenlied could have perhaps been predicted a priori (although cid’s placement here too is unexpected). however, even the most refined intuition could hardly have been able to predict that the author of slovo o polku igoreve used his nine colours six times more generously than the author of the nibelungenlied’s eleven colours. in the field of iconics on its highest levels, however, yarkho worked a great deal, and he achieved great success in the difficult task of formalizing the main emotional and ideological concepts embedded in a literary work. he accomplished this feat by strictly isolating the object of his research. the emotional concepts of a work (tragic elements, optimism, etc.) derive only from the statements contained in the text, moreover, from the author’s speech, and by no means from the researcher’s own interpretations. the “rules” for 138 mikhail gasparov identifying the ideological concept of a literary work formulated by yarkho in his methodology deserve to be cited in full: it is important for me to show that it would be possible to set the work of finding the dominating idea or emotion of a literary work in a way different from how it is being done now. usually, in the best case, the “researcher” takes some statement from his object at random, subjects it to an arbitrary exegesis, adjusts it to several important passages from the story, and then admires how it “all” (!), in a coherent whole, is “subservient to one idea”. if such a hasty intuitivist were to carry out an analysis that he despises so much (people simply do not like to work), then he would see what this “all” comes down to. but this, as mentioned, is still the best case: the “scholar” often himself thinks up an idea and attaches it to the a literary work, and then already without any hesitation declares it dominant, finding the metre and meaning superbly in agreement with it (in what manner?) etc., etc. i propose to bring this activity into a stricter framework in order to explain some genuine, and not fictitious, relations. α. prerequisites: 1. an idea is not necessarily a fundamental (dominant) feature in the general structure of a complex. 2. an idea may be considered a “concept” if it surpasses in verbal quantity all other ideas of the same complex in the image material it encompasses. 3. an idea is dominant if it encompasses over 50% of all verbal material (expressed in numbers of any kind of volume denominator).6 4. a concept may be composite, ideological-emotional, i.e. one and the same material can express both an idea and an emotion. [...] 5. an idea should be articulated expressis verbis in the text of a work: only then can one say that the idea is present in the text. to derive it through arbitrary exegesis is a fruitless endeavour. β. method: 1. proceed to a statistical weighting of a conception only after a sufficiently detailed analysis of the poetics of a given work (iconics, motifs, plot). 6 a volume denominator is any unit of measuring the text volume: line, word, syllable, etc. (yarkho 2006: 118–119). — eds. 139boris yarkho’s works on literary theory 2. one must evaluate not just a single idea, but all ideas clearly formulated in a given text. if an idea is clearly episodic, i.e. connected with an insignificant volume of verbal material (a proverb cited in passing, the opinion of a secondary character never later reaffirmed, and the like), then it may be disregarded. 3. one must take an idea only in the expressions in which it is given by the author. an idea must never in any case be paraphrased at random; but it may be complemented with a different variant contained in the same text. by no means should one ever transpose an idea from one work of the same author to another without mention. 4. take an idea only in its context. if, for example, an idea is expressed by an antagonist and is constantly refuted by the course of action and the remarks of other characters, then obviously it is the negation of this idea and not the idea itself that is dominant. 5. in order to weight an idea, it is necessary to count words and indivisible phrases relating to it [...]. 6. motifs (i.e. [verbs and] verbal expressions) that are not relevant to the plot but support an idea are included in the general set of topics as nouns and adjectives; a verb with its object or adverbial modifier is counted as one unit. for example, units supporting the idea “wealth is the highest good” could be: “…he amassed wealth…”, “…managed to become wealthy”, “…sold profitably”. 7. motifs relevant to the plot are counted separately. it may turn out that the images mostly relate to one concept (to a panegyric of military valor, for example), while the course of action relates to another (for example, to the affirmation of the power of fate); in this case, the synthesis will contain two dominants: one for ideology, the other for the subject-matter. 8. the number of the units obtained must be weighted with the help of some volume denominator. (yarkho 2006: 122–124) yarkho’s analysis of the ideological conception of la chanson de roland may serve as an illustrative example of such an approach. at the time of his scholarly activity there were two theories about the chanson: the old theory maintained that the chanson was created in a military environment, while a newer theory affirmed that it was composed in a clerical environment. yarkho adhered to the old theory but was the first to affirm it with statistical data, comparing the chanson with a later reworking of the story composed by a clerical author (priest konrad’s rolandslied). it turned out that christian motifs (i.e. all lines from which it was clear that the poem’s author was a christian) in the 140 mikhail gasparov chanson comprise about 10% of the text, while nearly twice this proportion of such verse lines (about 20%) occur in the clerical version. thus, the ideology of roland is mainly secular and knightly. moreover, with the help of statistics it is possible to specify both the nuances and the concentration of this ideology. if we single out only three of its elements – “courage”, “military honor” and “patriotism”, then the vocabulary related to these elements in roland composes 0.29%, 0.24% and 0.12% of the text (by the number of syllables); in cid – 0.14%, 0.07% and 0%; in beowulf – 0.48%, 0.48% and 0.08%; in slovo o polku igoreve – 0.82%, 0.82% and 0.40%. from this it is clear that, first of all, in concentration of military ideology roland surpasses cid but is far behind slovo o polku igoreve, and, secondly, in patriotic coloration all three western epics cannot even come close to slovo o polku igoreve, “this is the mathematical expression of ideological specificity”, yarkho concludes (rgali, fond 2186, op. 1, ed. khr. 49, fol. 10). thus, by applying exact methods of research, we have won the right to speak of “an emotion that permeates the entire poem”, of “an idea that directs all the characters’ actions” and other such high words that i did not at all plan to eliminate from the study of literature but into which i merely wanted to insert a concrete meaning. besides, such words are often nothing but hot air, and if the reader becomes accustomed to demanding numerical evidence, then our desire to throw around pompous phrases will gradually pass away. (yarkho 2006: 48)7 everything discussed above concerned separate fields within literary studies. the question of the interaction between these fields was, understandably, much harder to subject to exact analysis. nevertheless, the first steps were taken in this direction as well. in his article “the correlation of forms in the russian chastushka” (printed in german in 1935) yarkho studied the style of the chastushka8, to be more precise, the stylistic device of repetition in the chastushki 7 at the beginning of the war in 1941 a wave of conferences on patriotic themes took place in moscow scholarly institutions. yarkho volunteered to give a talk on the patriotism of slovo o polku igoreve, presented the results mentioned here and said that he acknowledges his mistakes: until then he had counted the percentage of patriotic vocabulary by number of words; now he counts by number of syllables instead and sees that the indicator of patriotism of the slovo is even higher. this presentation caused a storm of indignation: the motherland was dear to the scholars in attendance, but their methodological innocence was even dearer. (from the recollections of boris v. gornung and mikhail p. shtokmar). 8 a chastushka is a humorous folk song, a trochaic tetrameter quatrain usually rhymed abcb or abab that is sung at village and inner city youth gatherings. — trans. 141boris yarkho’s works on literary theory in connection with their phonic and thematic sides. it turned out that the rhyming lines of the chastushka were less frequently combined with device of repetition than non-rhyming lines, and that chastushki with socio-political themes were poorer in repetitions than those with a love theme: this is the law of compensation; phonic and thematic wealth are, as it were, reimbursed with stylistic poverty. in his article on the serbian tužbalica9 of long lines (printed in serbian in the journal slavia, 1924), yarkho wondered if the repetition in these songs generates alliteration, or whether alliteration generates repetition. a statistical count showed that repetition without alliteration does not exist, while alliteration without repetition exists in 70% of cases, so therefore alliteration must be considered primary. (however, this is not a causative relationship, as yarkho pedantically insists, because, for example, in old germanic verse the same kind of alliterative phonics did not generate the style of repetition, but rather the style of synonyms and metaphors.) if one does not go into the difficult question of the interaction between different elements of form but only speaks of their coexistence, then huge possibilities open up before the statistical method. after all, the concepts of literary genre and literary trend are nothing other than a complex of varied but coexisting features. the poetics of genre got a detailed study in yarkho’s work “the comedies and tragedies of corneille” (yarkho 2006: 403–549). it is generally believed that comedy differs from tragedy in its greater liveliness, greater saturation of action, more ordinary feelings and thoughts of its characters, etc. “greater” – of course, but how much greater? in order to answer this question, one must fill each of these concepts with concrete content. “liveliness” – this is, obviously, the frequency of exchanged utterances (cues); it follows that the indicator of liveliness will be the ratio of the number of utterances to the number of verse lines in a play. indeed, in corneille’s tragedies this ratio equals 0.150, and in his comedies – 0.276. this should be distinguished from the level of coherence – the degree of necessity with which a remark causes the following one. the indicator of phonetic coherence will be ratio of utterances breaking in the middle of a verse line or couplet to the total number of utterances (in tragedies – 67%, in comedies – 77%). similarly, an indicator of stylistic coherence could become the ratio of the number of utterances connected by a question and answer, anaphora, antitheses and the like to the general number of utterances. saturation of action is the percent of personages that act in their own 9 a tužbalica is an improvised folk dirge, usually in octosyllabics, that is sung as part of ritual mourning practices in south slavic cultures. — trans. 142 mikhail gasparov interests (in tragedies – 37%, in comedies – 54%: heroic characters in tragedies usually entrust their actions to others). saturation of action is also the number of “moments of action” (a concept introduced by yarkho) per character (in tragedies – 2.6, in comedies – 4.2); it is the number of physical actions (killings, embraces, etc.) indicated in dialogue or stage directions per play (in comedies this indicator is 1.9 times higher). saturation of action is also the ratio of the amount of pre-plot exposition to the general length of the play (in comedies this indicator is 2.7 times higher: the intrigue-motivating point [zavjazka] occurs sooner). it is, in addition, the ratio of the number of actions on stage to the number of actions that occur behind-the-scenes (in comedies, which do not make use of messengers’ speeches, this indicator is 16 times higher!). the difference in the characteristics of feelings is clear, firstly, from the fact that the number of characters who act out of fraud and deception is 49% in comedies and 12% in tragedies, the number of characters acting out of jealousy is 25% in comedies and 10% in tragedies, those acting out of bravery – 13% in comedies and 32% in tragedies, out of patriotism – 0% and 15% respectively; and, secondly, from the fact that the vocabulary of love, joy, and cunning and the vocabulary of fear, woe, valour, and hatred (about 160 words, about 4000 cases of usage) appear in tragedies at a ratio of 31:69 and in the comedies at a ratio of 64:36 (the indicator of transgression in the former is 15% and in the latter – 39%, i.e. the comic character more often acquires a tragic colouring than the other way around). and, finally, the difference in the kinds of thinking in tragedies and comedies follows, for instance, from the themes of utterances pronounced by the characters in a play: such themes as state and society, blood lineage, woe and fear, and references to time comprise 61% of utterances in tragedies, but are totally absent from comedies; such themes as love and marriage, religion, crime, valor and fate are present in both tragedies and comedies, but they comprise 39% of all utterances in the former and 78% in the latter; finally, such themes as joy and happiness, deception and lies, wealth and poverty, literature and art are present only in comedies and comprise 22% of all utterances. at first glance these data may appear trivial: even without any calculations it is well known that tragedy is characterized by loftiness, while comedy – by liveliness, etc. but if we recall just how many dramatic works in world literature are located in between typical tragedies and typical comedies, and how important it is to establish their gravitation to a certain genre, then it will become clear how necessary it is here to have firm “reference points” – the characteristics of genres in their purest form. to be sure, the statistical data mentioned above characterize the genre system of only one epoch: classicism. but nothing prevents us from deriving such characteristics for other epochs, 143boris yarkho’s works on literary theory and this will already be a transition towards the next problem – the poetics of literary trends. the poetics of literary trends is dealt with in yarkho’s work “the distribution of speech in five-act tragedies” (yarkho 2006: 550–607). this is a reconnaissance effort along a narrow front: out of the thirty features by which tragedies and comedies were compared, only four have been here selected: a – the percentage of scenes with 1, 2, 3... speakers (monologues, dialogues, trialogues...); b – the uniformity in the distribution of this percentage in the plays of each period (sigma); c – the average number of scenes in a play (the coefficient of mobility of action); d – the number of characters in a play. the material was limited to four periods: 17th century classicism (24 tragedies of the two corneilles, racine, quinault and others), 18th century classicism (80 tragedies by voltaire, crébillon, sumarokov, lessing, alfieri and others), early romanticism (15 tragedies by kleist, werner, schiller), late romanticism (22 tragedies of grillparzer, kerner, hugo, vigny and others); 45 more tragedies from euripides to byron and hebbel were added as comparative material. the following data were obtained (see table 2; percentages for the most commonly found type of scene – dialogues – were chosen for the feature a): table 2 (yarkho 2006: 589) feature 17th c. classicism 18th c. classicism early romanticism late romanticism a 73.7 55.2 33.8 43.0 b ±0.61 ±0.88 ±1.95 ±1.33 c 29.5 29.6 73.9 55.1 d 8.3 7.5 24.6 16.7 table 3 (yarkho 2006: 599) feature 17th c. classicism 18th c. classicism early romanticism late romanticism a 0 46.3 100 76.9 b 0 20.1 100 53.7 c 0 0.2 100 57.6 d 4.6 0 100 54.1 mean indicator 1.1 16.6 100 60.6 before us is the law of wave-like evolution: the maximal constraint of the classicists is replaced by the maximal freedom of the early romantics, while the late romantics begin a return to strictness. if before the start of the curve 144 mikhail gasparov of the consolidated (mean) indicator (the concept of “consolidated indicator” is dealt with below) we add an indicator of a preceding period, 18.2 (early corneille), and after its end an indicator of the following period, 93.0 (neoromanticism of hebbel, grabbe, immermann), then the wave-like character of the curve becomes even clearer. (“know the changing tides that rule the lives of men” – yarkho used this line by archilochus as the epigraph to his work.)10 the observation of the wave in the change of literary epochs (gothic – renaissance – baroque – classicism – romanticism – realism) is far from new, but yarkho was the first to propose a numerical expression (even of only one parameter) of this wave. statistics allow us to make even more subtle observations. thus the average distribution of scenes with 1–2–3–4–5 speakers in 17th century classicism is 10–70–16–3–1; for corneille in particular: 8–67–20–4–1, and for racine: 13–73–11–2–1. in other words, both classicists in equal measure deviate from the average amounts but in opposite ways: racine prefers monologues and dialogues, corneille – trialogues and tetralogues. the similarities between the writers are clearer to us than the differences between them, but for their contemporaries, who readily juxtaposed and contrasted corneille with racine, the differences were more obvious than their similarities. the problem of the change of literary trends naturally leads to the general problem of literary dynamics. here, too, yarkho proposes the path of quantification. how do we express in numbers the overall pace of changes from epoch to epoch, from classicism to romanticism? in order to answer this it is necessary to derive consolidated (mean) indicators for all features under analysis, regardless of their heterogeneity (as it is impossible to prove, for example, that the percentage of dialogues is a feature more noticeable or, alternatively, less noticeable than the number of scenes). this can be accomplished in the following way (table 3): the minimal indicator of each feature is designated by 0, the maximal indicator is designated by 100, the intermediate indicators are designated by percentages within this range, and the arithmetic mean is derived from the percentages of indicators of each feature inside a given period. the index reveals the place of this period on the evolutionary path. and after that it is already easy to define the historical place of any given writer within his epoch. if, say, a certain author at the end of the 18th century gives the consolidated indicator 70, then it is obvious that he is closer to the early romantics than the late classicists, and more precisely, from the distance between their indicators (16.6 and 100) he has covered about 64%. one may call this amount 10 yarkho inaccurately cites v. veresaev’s russian translation of archilochus. a recent authoritative english translation of archilochus’ fragment 128 yields: “know what sort of pattern governs mankind” (archilochus et al. 1999: 167). — trans. 145boris yarkho’s works on literary theory the coefficient of progressiveness of a given writer – that is, the indicator of his gravitation to newer forms rather than those that are becoming obsolete. it will be even easier to quantify an enrichment or impoverishment of the metric repertoire of a certain period (for example, from pushkin to lermontov), the repertoire of stylistic figures, a set of images and motifs used (for example, from early to late adaptations of the plot of la chanson de roland), etc. in the process of identifying the sources of a literary work, one should first isolate the percentage of metrical, stylistic and iconic forms that have a correspondence in each proposed literary source; only afterwards one can attribute the residual elements to non-literary sources originated in everyday life. it should be axiomatic for the scholar of literature that literary sources are primary and non-literary sources are secondary. to adhere to the opposite order (as yarkho explains in his favourite biological comparison) would be the same as to affirm that man comes from milk, porridge, bread and beef: of course, without all of this man cannot live, just as literature cannot live (without declining into epigonism) without an inflow of material from everyday life, yet a human being arises all the same not from food, but from human reproductive cells. (we will remember, by the way, that in his main research on literary genesis in “young roland” yarkho proves, contrary to tradition, that the tale has a non-literary, rather than literary, origin.) in mentioning the “coefficient of progressiveness”, we have touched upon the last problem of the traditional study of literature – the problem of evaluation. for yarkho this problem in general does not enter into the field of scientific cognition and stays within the realm of criticism. if [the critic] vissarion belinsky considered pushkin a good writer and [another critic], dmitry pisarev, considered him a bad writer, then these judgments help us very much in understanding belinsky and pisarev and very little in understanding pushkin. one may also classify trees as beautiful and non-beautiful, but how does this help botanists? however, half-joking and half-serious, he allowed that someday it might be possible to quantify even the concept of talent. the concept of talent can be broken down into the concept of the richness of the forms used (metrical, stylistic, iconic) and that of their originality. the former is already accessible to statistics now, while the second will be quantitatively expressed only after we have compiled for each epoch a frequency catalog of forms and will be able to evaluate the originality of each form (the rhyme “liubov’ – krov’” [love-blood], the metaphor of “love as flame”, the idea that “love is stronger than death” and the like) as a quantity inverse to its frequency, and there you have it. yarkho’s goal in the study of literature was not evaluation, not an answer to the question “is it good or bad?” but rather an answer to the question “what 146 mikhail gasparov and how?” i.e., an exhausting summary of statistically derived information about the repertoire of poetic forms of all times and peoples. he planned works of the widest scale – for example, a series of reference books on the metrics, stylistics and iconics of russian poetry (a metrical reference book on pushkin was published, a reference book on lermontov was prepared for print) as well as a history of the filiation and migration of love topics in european poetry from the early latin medieval period to the high renaissance. against the objection that one man alone could not handle all these themes, he answered that the time of researchers working alone in all sciences had already passed, and that for a small research group such a theme would be a task for a year or two, and no more. but the conditions of scientific work in the 1930s turned out such that these plans remained unrealized. yarkho named his method “formal”. but unlike the opoyaz formalists, he considered this method not a revolution in science, but on the contrary, a direct development of positivist methodology of the 19th century. he polemically opposed contemporary methodologies to his own methodology, the goal of which was the search for objective truth rather than replacing it with subjective conviction or up-to-the-minute utility. accordingly, it became necessary to wage this polemic on two fronts: first, against the “organic poetics” of intuitivism (defended in gakhn, for example, by gustav g. shpet and mikhail p. stoliarov) and, secondly, against the sociological literary studies of the 1920s and 30s (petr kogan, vladimir friche and others). let us bring to mind a curious characteristic of the “organic poetics” that has not lost its relevance to this day: it has often occurred that i hear from the mouths of people who firmly stand on the point of understanding the study of literature as “blabology” accessible to everyone, that analysis is unlawful, that it’s impossible to split the “living organism” of a poetic work into parts, to break up the whole which is an indivisible product of inspiration etc. etc. they propose to “proceed from the whole”, to define immediately (intuitively, that is, simply speaking, without any expenditure of effort or time) the “essence”, “core”, “dominant”... [...] but every time such a deductivist gives his definition of “essence”, he only snatches out one feature out of many and arbitrarily considers it predominant, for he has absolutely no means of proving the dominant character of this feature: not having analyzed the complex, he does not know its other features and he cannot judge to what degree they are more important or immaterial than the characteristic he has ripped out. in addition to this, in abstracting one feature, he himself is making an analysis, but he does this incompletely and poorly. (yarkho 2006: 66–67) 147boris yarkho’s works on literary theory yarkho reproached sociological poetics for its constant striving to directly explain the better known by means of the less known – explaining literature by means of social consciousness. the path of research should be the opposite: from a particular literary work through a particular writer, through the actual cultural environment of people who knew each other (troubadours, skalds, the court of louis xiv, pushkin’s st. petersburg – something that yarkho calls “literary ecology”) to the broader and less defined cultural environment, and while going through this process one should not forget that the cultural environment and class environment are not identical by far. of course, a writer writes with a reader in mind, but their relation is not a “social demand” [or “social order”], but a “social market” [or “social sale”]; the reading public is not a client, directly dictating to the master all characteristics of a requested product, but rather a free consumer, who more often than not is attracted to the shop window exactly by the unexpectedness and unusualness of the goods. literary works are indeed sometimes made to order, but this is usually “newspaper-template babble”; to “order” pushkin’s eugene onegin, the client should himself have the talent of pushkin.11 the positivist prerequisites of yarkho’s methodology fully explain his weak sides, which can be seen clearly enough from the aforementioned: his descriptiveness, mechanicism, and biologism. yarkho sees in a literary work first and foremost a sum of atomistic devices, an aggregate of elements of form independent from one another. he readily accepts the concept of structure (in his manuscripts we find even a curious approximation to the concept of a generative model), but the concept of an organism is closer to him, and the argumentation with biological analogies is his favourite device. he does not reject the problem of the dynamic connections between features, but in practice he usually replaces it with accounts of statistic proportion of features (he says, justifying his approach, that in order to speak of a functional relationship, one must clearly separate cause and consequence, prius and secundum, and this is possible only through a diachronic study and almost never through synchronic analysis). he draws the boundaries between literary categories mechanically: if a certain feature in a text produces over 50% of rhythmic repetition, then it is poetry, if it is less than 50%, then it is prose (though it is obvious that in certain poetic cultures 10% of rhythmical repetitions would 11 yarkho argues against the concept of sotsial’nyj zakaz [‘social demand/order’], which was central to the ideology of the left front of art (lef). a leading lef and opoyaz critic, osip brik, put it thus: “[...] a great poet does not reveal himself, but only fulfills a social demand”. “had pushkin not existed eugene onegin would all the same have been written” (brik 1977 [1923]: 90–91). — eds. 148 mikhail gasparov be sufficient, and in others even 90% would not be enough). and when yuri tynianov asserts that the specific metrical position of a word gives it a new semantic content, yarkho skeptically requests a formulation: what content, exactly? however, all of this does not detract from the positive sides of yarkho’s methodology: its demand for complete exactness and immutable proof for each assertion. yarkho understood well that without exhaustive analysis any synthesis risks being arbitrary, and structural synthesis demands it in the same way as any other. he developed his programme of statistical discipline in order to avoid arbitrariness. all of his grandiose undertakings in descriptive literary studies were not ends in themselves, but rather only preparation of material for future generalizations. several of his generalizations were correctly predicted from the first stages of his work: the law of compensation, the law of wave-like changes; most of the others had to be put aside for future researchers. the methodological revolution in science has made available to scholars much more precise and dialectic methods than what yarkho had at his disposal. but in order to apply these methods it is necessary to arrange the analyzed material accordingly. the study of literature had lagged behind other sciences: it was not adequately equipped with formalized material (the only exception was the humble field of versification studies). and without adequately formalized material the structural method in literary studies threatens to degenerate into jugglery with facts arbitrarily ripped out of context in the way of its predecessors. modern structuralism is correct when it underscores that a device is not a fact by itself; the fact is the relationship between the fact and the background onto which it projects; that the absence of a device may be more telling than its presence.12 but this means that for the ascertainment of a device we must know the background context just as well as the fact itself: in order to evaluate “minus devices”, say, of pushkin, it is necessary to have a comprehensive picture of the “plus devices” of the preceding epoch. we do not have such a picture yet, but it is indispensable: indices of the poetics of individual authors are just as irreplaceable for the study of literature as concordances and author’s dictionaries are for the study of their language. work in this direction will demand still more effort from researchers, and yarkho’s experience will often prove helpful in these undertakings. 1969 12 gasparov refers to juri lotman’s concept of a “minus device”. — eds. 149boris yarkho’s works on literary theory p.s. (1997). two traits struck yarkho’s contemporaries: his phenomenal erudition and fantastic energy and ability to work in the most unsuitable conditions. when his brother grigory isaakovich yarkho translated gargantua and pantagruel and reached an impasse in attempting to translate unclear passages and difficult realia, yarkho – in exile, without books – sent him explanations, even with illustrations. at 25 years old, preparing to become a privatdozent, he brought back from abroad a store of materials for 18 university lecture courses. this material was prepared so thoroughly that his work on mansǫngr and “young roland” mentioned above each comprised only one part of only two of such courses. after his exile, reaching out to narkompros [narodnyj komissariat prosveshchenija, people’s commissariat for education] with a request for work, he listed his specializations: medieval literature (latin, french, provençal, german, anglo-saxon and old scandinavian); stylistics, metrics, poetics, russian and slavic folklore, serbo-croatian literature, the history and theory of drama; “in addition, i translate from approximately 20 (new and old) slavic, germanic and romance languages”. (he still had to wait a year for employment.) he was not an absolutist in his scientific ideals: just as medieval science died out because it reduced everything in the world to good and evil, so is science of the modern era dying out because it is reducing everything to truth or falsehood, and these no man is capable of distinguishing either. they will ask me why i constructed my methodology on a principle that was fated to have no future [...]. i will answer thus: first, i made this for my own “ego” thoroughly imbued with a hypertrophied sense of truth and justice; secondly, i believe that our “sciences of truth” are destined to live; and if not, let my theory be the swan song of the old “philalethist” study of literature. (yarkho 2006: 27) references archilochus, semonides, hipponax 1999. greek iambic poetry: from the seventh to the fifth centuries bc. edited and translated by douglas e. gerber. (loeb classical library 259). cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. brik, osip 1977 [1923]. the so-called formal method. translated by ann shukman. in: russian poetics in translation 4, 90–91. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1969. raboty b. i. yarkho po teorii literatury. in: trudy po znakovym sistemam 4 (uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 236), 504–514. 150 mikhail gasparov gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1972. the metric repertoire of the russian lyric in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. in: soviet studies in literature 8(4), 365–389. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1980. quantitative methods in russian metrics: achievements and prospects. translated by gerald stanton smith. in: russian poetics in translation 7, 1–19. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1987. a probability model of verse (english, latin, french, italian, spanish, portuguese). translated by marina tarlinskaja. in: style 21(3), 322–358. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. a history of european versification. translated by gerald stanton smith and marina tarlinskaja. edited by gerald stanton smith and leofranc holford-strevens. oxford: clarendon press. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1997. raboty b. i. yarkho po teorii literatury. in his izbrannye trudy. t. 2: o stikhakh. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 468–484. yarkho, boris isaakovich 1925–27. granitsy nauchnogo literaturovedenija. in: iskusstvo 2 (1925), 45–60; 3(1) (1927), 16–38. yarkho, boris isaakovich 1927. prostejshie osnovanija formal’nogo analiza. in: petrovskij, mikhail aleksandrovich (ed.), ars poetica i (trudy gosudarstvennoj akademii khudozhestvennykh nauk. literaturnaja sektsija 1). moskva: izdanie gakhn, 7–28. yarkho, boris isaakovich 1977 [1936]. a methodology for a precise science of literature (outline). translated by l. m. o’toole. in: russian poetics in translation 4, 52–70. yarkho, boris isaakovich 2006. metodologija tochnogo literaturovedenija: izbrannye trudy po teorii literatury (philologica russica et speculativa 5). edited, with notes (pp. 611–807), by marina v. akimova, igor a. pilshchikov and maksim i. shapir (general editor). moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur. odd stanzas barry p. scherr* abstract. stanzas with seven and nine lines have had a long tradition in english verse, but stanzas with an odd number of lines and longer than five lines occur relatively rarely in russian. indeed, russian poetry has never developed a strong tradition of longer lines with an odd number of stanzas, despite two moments when they might have achieved wider acceptance. from the 1820s through the 1840s a few poets, including lermontov and the less known kjukhel’beker, composed some notable experiments with these forms. even lermontov’s famous borodinskaja strofa did not attract many imitators, although a number of poets throughout that century and up to the present day have continued to write poems in stanzas with 7, 9 and even 11 or 13 lines. the second period occurred during the early 20th century, but among modernist poets the interest in stanzas was focused more on traditional forms, such as the sonnet. perhaps because of their rarity, the odd stanzas found among russian poets most often serve as the platform for complex and unconventional rhyme schemes, often accompanied by other striking formal features as well. key words: russian verse, stanzaic forms four descriptive features define a given stanza: the number of lines or its length, the rhyme scheme, the types of endings (masculine, feminine, dactylic) and the metre (tomashevskij 1958: 52–55).1 here i wish to focus on the most obvious of these characteristics, the length of the stanza. after some brief comments about stanzas in english verse for background purposes, i will provide a brief overview of the predominant stanza lengths in russian and then look more closely at what i term “odd stanzas”: those whose line length is at least seven and not divisible by two. these russian stanzas are odd not just due to their number of lines, but also in the word’s two other basic meanings: they occur infrequently, and, especially in terms of their rhyme schemes, they often exhibit a strange or unusual appearance. the relative paucity of these forms throughout the history of russian verse stands in sharp contrast to english. the “rhyme royal”, a stanza of seven lines rhyming ababbcc, was introduced * author’s address: barry p. scherr, dartmouth college, russian department, 6085 reed hall room 201, hanover, new hampshire 03755-3562. e-mail address: barry.scherr@dartmouth.edu. 1 in this classical work tomashevskij groups these features under two overall indicators. for a valuable commentary on his study of stanzas, see vishnevskij (1965: 4–8, 10–12). studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 28–54 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.03 mailto:barry.scherr@dartmouth.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.03 29odd stanzas to english poetry by chaucer in troilus and criseyde (hence sometimes it is called the troilus stanza) and enjoyed wide popularity in subsequent centuries. the 9-line spenserian stanza (ababbcbcc) first appeared in the faerie queene and then was revived in the 19th century by such poets as byron, shelley and keats. spenser apparently created it by adding a final iambic hexameter line to the basic ballade stanza (ababbcbc) in iambic pentameter. granted, the most common stanza length in english, as well as in russian and in european poetry in general, is the quatrain.2 its popularity may owe much to the simple fact that two rhymes require four lines. the length also appears particularly suited to the concise means of expression found in poetic speech: four lines can comfortably embody a single notion that serves as a building block of the poem. three or five lines might do as well, but then the rhyming would not be balanced in the same way. at first glance, a reliance on quatrains could seem repetitive or dull, but of course it is possible to vary the rhyme scheme, with alternating, paired or enclosed rhyme, to say nothing of creating a scheme in which one or two lines of a stanza are unrhymed. in russian, varying combinations of masculine, feminine, dactylic and hyperdactylic clausulae allow for still more variety. furthermore, individual lines may employ different metres. thus the possibilities for variety are enormous. aleksandr kushner, not noted for a great deal of experimentation in his verse, has nonetheless employed more than 120 different kinds of quatrain in his poetry (laletina et al. 2008: 579–584). by incorporating different kinds of quatrains within the same poem, he has created still greater variety in his usage of this seemingly simple 4-line form. in short, poets can easily find variety writing nothing but quatrains, and most poets employ quatrains for a majority, often a significant majority, of all their stanzaic verse. similarly, for many poets the second most common form of stanza contains eight lines, which, in terms of the rhyme scheme, may simply consist of two quatrains joined into a single stanza. in branching out into other forms, english poetry has made special use of the final couplet. thus a particularly important form has been ottava rima, which rhymes abababcc. most notably, byron used it in such works as beppo and don juan; both keats and shelley turned to it as well. what is most distinctive about this form is its structure, with the use of three alternating a and b rhymes followed by a two-line coda. while 6-line stanzas in english have exhibited a wide variety of rhyme schemes, the rhyme scheme ababcc, also with a final couplet, gained 2 for information about the frequency of stanza lengths in european languages and about the most widely used rhyme schemes see häublein (1978: 18–33). 30 barry p. scherr initial popularity for this form. the 7-line troilus stanza and the spenserian stanza both also end with a “cc” pair. given that long stanzas are relatively rare in english, as they are in russian, and the proclivity to favour stanzas with an even number of lines over those with an odd number, the relatively robust use of the 9-line stanza by english poets is in particular noteworthy (häublein 1978: 33). indeed, for all that english verse in modern times has frequently turned away from both metre and rhyme, complex 7and 9-line stanzas have continued to appear. yeats has a number of poems featuring these stanzas, including the chaucerian rhyme royal, which appears as well in auden’s “letter to lord byron”. to take an even more recent instance, philip larkin made extensive use of long stanzas with an odd number of lines, albeit not always fully rhymed.3 as is already evident from the remarks about the quatrain, stanzas with an even number of lines seem inherently more “natural” for poets, with various kinds of balance among the rhyme patterns: two each of the a and b rhymes in the quatrain, likely a third rhyme pair in the 6-line stanza, and possibly a fourth pair in the eight-line (or three each of the a and b rhymes and two appearances of the c rhyme). other combinations, often less balanced or symmetrical, are of course possible, but the relative ease of producing the simplest schemes no doubt helps explain their relative frequency. the 8-line stanza’s possibility for building on the quatrain as well as the readiness with which it can result in a variety of balanced structures possibly accounts for its being used somewhat more often than the 6-line stanza. by contrast, stanzas with an odd number of lines lack ready symmetry. a 5-line stanza may, for instance, rhyme abaab or abbab, but both forms give rise to an asymmetry, with three of one rhyme and two of the other. why then did the 7and 9-line stanzas become widely used in english? there is no clear answer to the question, but a couple of possibilities readily suggest themselves. first and probably most important is the simple matter of tradition: in the case of english, the 7and 9-line stanzas gained popularity in part because major poets had used them in important works. the early history of russian verse for the most part lacks such models. the onegin stanza would be an obvious exception, and of course poets after pushkin occasionally have 3 yeats employs rhyme royal in, for instance “a bronze head” (1938), but he uses several different rhyme schemes for his seven-line stanzas; see, for instance, the interesting pattern abcabca in “a memory of youth” (1912) where the middle line (and middle a rhyme) in each of the three stanzas is introduced by the word “and”. notable poems by larkin in this category include “maiden name”, a 7-line poem rhyming abbacca, “church going,” in 9-line stanzas rhyming ababcadcd, and “winter”, where the often very inexact rhymes of the 11-line stanzas suggest the approximate scheme abbacxcdeed (larkin 2004: 53, 58–59, 11–12). 31odd stanzas turned to it, but the stanza became so strongly associated with evgenij onegin that it was difficult to use it in other works without referring back to (or at least bringing to mind) its initial use. then, too, a 14-line stanza does not necessarily lend itself readily to the conciseness of lyric poetry. second, the tendency among english poets to employ a final rhymed couplet pair has provided a sense of structural closure to many of the stanza forms in english. in the case of the 7and 9-line stanzas, these final couplets provide a structural anchor to a stanza that otherwise may seem unbalanced. for its part, the 9-line stanza further gained acceptance in english because poets could see it as building on the already widely used ballade stanza. once these line lengths were in wide use, poets felt free to turn to them as the basis for other rhyme patterns. in russian, as we shall see, the prevailing rhyme schemes for the odd stanzas were quite varied and did not give rise to base structures. it is not that russian poets were unfamiliar with the english forms. in particular, the spenserian sonnet was well known by the 1820s through byron’s childe-harold’s pilgrimage. toward the end of the decade poets would have had a chance to read russian examples of that stanza when ivan kozlov published his versions of selected passages from that work.4 the best known of these, “k morju” (dedicated to pushkin) – with six stanzas, numbers 178–83, from canto 4 – altered the rhyme sequence to ababaccdd. however, his “pri grobnice cecilii m.” (stanzas 104 and 105 from the same canto) captured the pattern exactly: ababbcbcc (kozlov 1960: 135–136, 141–142, 456–457). l.v. pumpjanskij (1941: 398) has speculated that the unfamiliarity of the stanza – in particular, the use of a final iambic hexameter line after eight lines in iambic pentameter – kept russian poets from becoming more interested in the form. whether or not this was the decisive factor, the spenserian stanza found little resonance in russia, despite the enormous popularity of byron and this work. although scholars have published detailed descriptions of the stanzaic forms employed by certain russian poets, this information has come out sporadically and not always in the same form. furthermore, researchers have yet to examine the stanzaic usage of many major poets, especially those of the 20th century. the initial effort to compile statistical data for the formal features of russian verse goes back to the 1930s, when boris jarkho along with his pupils prepared metrical handbooks for pushkin and lermontov. jarkho was planning a vast project that would collect such data for other poets and that would expand to 4 for an overview of kozlov’s work on byron, as well as both the originals and all of kozlov’s translations, see barratt (1972). two other excerpts that kozlov translated from childe harold are not discussed here because they do not adhere to its stanzaic form – in his later translations from byron kozlov often has more lines than the original (barratt 1972: 52). 32 barry p. scherr include rhyme dictionaries as well. however, the undertaking was subjected to sharp criticism in the “anti-formalist” atmosphere of his time and little was done to follow up on his work until the late 1960s (gasparov et al. 1979: 5).5 only then did several scholars elaborate on a methodology for creating such handbooks, which would include extensive data for each poem: the date, the length, metre, stanzaic form and rhyme scheme. the product of this effort was the volume titled russkoe stikhoslozhenie (gasparov et al. 1979), which contained the data for nine poets, with an emphasis on key figures from the first half of the 19th century.6 for their methodology the handbooks owed much both to jarkho’s pioneering work on metrical handbooks and to boris tomashevskij’s impressive effort to catalogue pushkin’s stanzas (1958). the collective volume, while containing much valuable data, nonetheless suffered from inconsistencies among the individual handbooks as well as varying degrees of care in their preparation (lilly 1979). due to space considerations, the handbooks furthermore lacked detailed indexes but instead used page numbers or the number of each poem in a particular edition to refer scholars back to individual works. this solution was at best an inconvenience, and in those instances when the sources used were relatively rare the handbooks were difficult to use. ultimately the project’s greatest failing, though, is that the intended sequel(s) did not emerge. over the next several decades a few other handbooks appeared, offering an overview of both the metrical and stanzaic usage of individual authors, along with some studies devoted just to metre or to stanzaic forms (for instance, rudnev 1972; car’kova 1978; pavlova 1984; lauwers 1993: 93–133, 202–221; scherr 2001). only after an interval of nearly three decades did the project resume, this time under the editorship of elena khvorost’janova (2008). the resulting publication, peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura, is notable both for the consistency among entries, enforced by an extremely detailed and strict set of instructions, as well as for its completeness, with detailed tables for each poet and an index of individual poems.7 the 5 for an overview of jarkho’s contributions to literary studies and the difficulties he encountered because of his approach, along with a bibliography of works by and about him, see akimova, shapir (2006: vii–xxxii). 6 the poets treated are zhukovskij, batjushkov, vostokov, pushkin, del’vig, baratynskij, kol’cov, tjutchev and polonskij. 7 as the result of its thoroughness, this substantial volume (660 pages) contains data for just seven poets, including several lesser-known figures (a. a. rzhevskij, ivan rukavishnikov, dmitrij maksimov). 33odd stanzas focus on petersburg poets narrows the project somewhat, but for now there are still many more figures to cover in what promises to be an ongoing venture.8 these previous studies provide the bulk of the data for the table in the appendix to this article, which will be a touchstone for the discussions that follow.9 while most of the poets are from the 19th century and the table lacks the breadth to offer a definitive view of russian stanzaic usage, nonetheless the corpus of nearly 5700 poems by 13 authors active from the 18th into the 21st centuries offers at least a rough picture of stanza lengths among russian poets. the columns to the right show that far from all poetry is stanzaic; indeed, for many authors, especially in the 19th century, stanzaic verse accounts for well under half the number of lines they wrote. the relative predominance of non-stanzaic verse results in part from issues of classification. scholars of russian verse generally characterize “traditional” or “fixed” forms, such as the sonnet or the sestina, as falling outside the category of stanzaic verse. furthermore, they describe short poems (up to eight lines according to some scholars, up to 12 or so according to others) with no graphic break into separate stanzas as “odnostrofnye”, or “monostanzaic”, and these too are generally seen as falling into a separate grouping: a basic feature of the stanza involves repetition, which is difficult or impossible to discern in a short undivided poem. in contrast, longer poems with regularly 8 indeed, khvorost’janova (2013) appeared as this article was ready for publication; it describes the meters, stanzas and rhymes used by seven additional authors: apukhtin, annenskij, komarovskij, adamovich, kulle, vinogradov and bitov. 9 the data for zhukovskij, batjushkov, pushkin, del’vig, tjutchev, and polonskij comes from gasparov et al. (1979); while khvorost’janova (2008) serves as the source for the figures regarding lomonosov, rukavishnikov and kushner. the statistics for lermontov are based on vishnevskij (1965, see especially the table on p. 98). vishnevskij only counted the number of stanzas in quatrains that were divided by spaces on the page; my figure, in keeping with what is given for other poets, includes the number of stanzas in both the divided and the undivided poems. in addition to the 269 poems he lists as being in identical stanzas, i have added in 13 others in which the stanzas are of identical length but differ in rhyme scheme (see section 3, 120–123, where he lists 24 poems, eleven of which have stanzas of unequal length). for the information about the stanzas used by bal’mont, see ljapina (1984); the benediktov and brodsky figures are derived from the data in two articles by scherr (1989; 2002). the percentages are based on all the stanzaic works by each poet, the totals of which appear in the third column from the right. note that the table refers to poems where all, or nearly all, the stanzas are of the same length; this criterion is also used for the tables labelled 13.3 in the contributions to khvorost’janova (2008; see 51 for a description of these tables). the occasional defective stanza results in some of the numbers in the second row for each poet not being evenly divisible by the number of lines in the stanza. the abbreviations used for the “fixed forms” are “son” for sonnet, “oct” for octave, “ter” for terza rima, “tri” for triolet, “ses” for sestina, and “ron” for rondel. 34 barry p. scherr repeated rhyme patterns are counted as stanzaic even when there is no space between stanzas on the page. a resulting anomaly involves, for instance, an eight-line poem with four rhyme pairs: if it is divided on the page into two stanzas that rhyme, say, abab, then it is classified as stanzaic; if the there is no space between lines four and five, though, it is a monostanzaic poem rhyming ababcdcd (which could either be two quatrains or an 8-line stanza).10 tver’janovich and khvorost’janova (2008: 49–50) describe both fixed forms and monostanzas as “transitional verse” – that is, belonging to a category that falls between non-stanzaic and stanzaic – and, what is more, require that monostanzaic poems not be formally divisible into shorter structures.11 the differences in the approach to this kind of verse indicate that the data for various poets provided in the appendix are not always precisely comparable, though the discrepancies have little or no effect on the statistics for the “odd” stanzas, which are the main focus of this article. thus quite a few poems exhibiting a regular rhyme pattern fall outside the definition of stanzaic verse. in addition, longer works are more likely to be non-stanzaic, and so stanzaic verse frequently accounts for a significantly lower percentage of a poet’s lines than of the poems. thus nearly 40% of zhukovskij’s poems are stanzaic but those works contains only 20% of his lines, while for polonskij somewhat more than half his works are stanzaic and only one-fourth of the lines. non-stanzaic verse plays were common in the 19th century and contributed significantly to the imbalance. what is more, narrative and epic verse, while occasionally stanzaic (with evgenij onegin serving as a prime example) very often turns out to be non-stanzaic. as already noted, within russian stanzaic poetry quatrains occupy the dominant position, accounting for nearly 2/3 of all the stanzaic poems. 8-line stanzas, thanks no doubt to their frequent resemblance to two quatrains combined into a single stanza, are a distant second, with 6-line stanzas third. poems visually divided into couplets are not all that common, but works consisting entirely of contiguous rhyme pairs (with no space between the pairs) occur at least occasionally in the work of most poets; as a result, 2-line and 5-line stanzas are the other lengths that appear with some regularity. roughly 10 see, for instance, the list of 8-line monostanzaic poems by pushkin in tomashevskij (1958: [144–147]). 11 tver’janovich and khvorost’janova (2008: 13) note the inconsistencies among previous researchers in defining monostanzas. most, though, have followed the lead of tomashevskij (1958: 135) and have considered monostanzaic poems to be those that are not divided and contain eight or fewer lines. for a thoughtful discussion of such poems, see also vishnevskij (1978: 50–51). 35odd stanzas 95% of all the stanzaic poems in this sample employ one of these five lengths; 3-line stanzas, 7-line stanzas, and 9-line stanzas, together, appear in fewer than 3% of the poems. the tendency to avoid stanzas of an odd length carries over into the very long stanzas, those with more than 10 lines. among the thirteen poets in the table, 12-line stanzas appear in more than half the poems with very long stanzas, 37 of 72. strikingly, then, the very long 12-line stanzas are used in more poems than 9-line stanzas. indeed, if lomonosov were eliminated from the table, there would be just about as many 12-line stanzas as the even-numbered 10-line. this relative frequency hints at a preference for stanza lengths that are divisible by four, a phenomenon partially confirmed by the presence in this sampling of no fewer than ten poems with 16-line stanzas. thirteen works have 14-line stanzas (with the onegin stanza accounting for most of these), and the table also reflects one instance each of an 18-line stanza (rukavishnikov) and 20-line stanza (zhukovskij). by contrast to the long stanzas with an even number of lines, 11-line stanzas (one each by bal’mont and kushner) and 13-line (one each by bal’mont and rukavishnikov) are weakly represented even among 20th-century poets; for 19th-century poets in the table stanzas of these lengths are found only in the work of lermontov, who, in addition to five works that employ 11-line stanzas, also has a poem with two 13-line stanzas. for the sake of comparison, it is instructive to consider smith (1977), who examined 3135 stanzaic poems written between 1735 and 1816; thus the only overlap with poets in the appendix involves the verse of lomonosov and pre1817 works by zhukovskij and batjushkov. the most significant difference between his overall figures (table 14, 170) and mine concerns the 10-line stanzas, which in the 18th century were widely used in odes. they were the second most common stanza in his data, but otherwise the relative frequency of the various stanza lengths is quite similar to that found in the table accompanying this article. strikingly, the odd stanzas occurred with about the same frequency among these earlier poets as they did later: his percentages for poems in 7-, 9and 11-line stanzas are 1.2, 0.5 and 0.2; for the thirteen poets represented in the appendix to this article the corresponding figures are 1.1, 0.4 and 0.1. with such small numbers, a relatively few poets can account for significant portions of the works. thus sumarokov composed three of the six poems in 11-line stanzas (and also five of the 17 in 9-line stanzas); derzhavin has five poems in 7-line stanzas and three in 9-line (table 28, 241). trediakovskij, who did not write many stanzaic poems, has the highest percentage of stanzas with an odd number of lines (smith 1977: 266–267). a closer examination of the earliest instances of the 7and 9-line stanzas in the appendix to this article suggests that in the first half of the 19th century, at 36 barry p. scherr least, they were even rarer in the works of most poets than this table suggests. thus one of zhukovskij’s three usages of 9-line stanzas occurs in section vii of “iz don-kikhota” (1804) and is in effect an 8-line unit (rhymed abbacdcd) in iambic tetrameter with an unrhymed one-line refrain in iambic trimeter at the end of each stanza. the same is true of batjushkov’s single 9-line poem “pesn’ garal’da smelogo”, which even has the same rhyme scheme as the zhukovskij poem although it exhibits a different metre: the first eight lines of its five stanzas are in amphibrachic tetrameter and the orphan refrain is in iambic hexameter. the work that the authors of the metrical and stanzaic handbook for pushkin consider a nine-line stanza is “nochnoj zefir”, in which a thrice repeated 5-line refrain (in short iambic lines, rhyming aabba) alternates with two 4-line trochaic tetrameter units (rhyming abab). all of pushkin’s 7-line stanzas date from the lycée period; two of those are collective works (one of which is a takeoff on “bozhe! carja khrani!”, discussed below with zhukovskij’s other 7-line stanzas), and the other two are “k delii” and “delija”, in which the rhyme schemes are ababccb and ababaab. neither of these stanzas found any reflection in his mature period. batjushkov’s one work in 7-line stanzas is similarly marginal: it occurs in a 14-line chorus attributed to batjushkov within a collective work titled “sceny chetyrekh vozrastov”. in short, neither batjushkov nor pushkin (to say nothing of lomonosov, all of whose stanzaic poems contained an even number of lines) contributed significantly to a tradition of longer stanzas with an odd number of lines. and yet this period does not lack for some notable examples. zhukovskij’s single 7-line stanza poem turns out to be the very familiar “bozhe! carja khrani!” (zhukovskij 1902: i.77). the rhyme scheme is the rather interesting aabc´c´c´b in the first stanza and then a´a´bc´c´c´b. the work is in dactylic dimeter, with the contrast between the masculine and the dactylic lines creating a marked variation in line length. of zhukovskij’s remaining poems with 9-line stanzas, one occurs in a work titled “pesnja” (“rozy rascvetajut…”, 1831) which employs a similarly short line, trochaic trimeter. the rhyme is ababcdccd, and thus it reads (as do some other 9-line stanzas) like a quatrain joined with a 5-line stanza. his longest work to employ a long stanza with an odd number of lines is the 63-line “proshchal’naja pesn’” (1824, subtitled “petaja vospitannicami obshchestva blagorodnykh devic, pri vypuske 1824 goda”; see zhukovskij 1902: 1ii.67). while justifiably not among zhukovskij’s most acclaimed achievements in terms of content, the poem exhibits a stanzaic structure that is of more than passing interest. the rhyme scheme is aabccbddb, with the “b” rhyme serving to link the entire stanza into a unified whole even as it delineates a tripartite structure: in most of the stanzas strong syntactic breaks occur after the 37odd stanzas third and sixth lines. these few instances already attest to his willingness to try unusual stanzaic forms. as the table indicates, he also had relatively frequent recourse to long stanzas (with up to 20 lines!), though eight of these long forms consist of 12-line stanzas, which zhukovskij associated with the ballad (matjash 1979: 72, 89), and none contain an odd number of lines. the innovative quality of zhukovskij’s 9-line stanzas turns out to be indicative for the manner in which poets write long stanzas with an odd number of lines: the use of such stanzaic forms generally reflects an effort not so much to follow or establish a tradition as to experiment with form, to work out new rhyme schemes as well as unusual combinations of line lengths and metres. in contrast, the long stanzas with an even number of lines, at least during the 19th century, show a stronger tendency toward the symmetrical and the balanced. thus zhukovskij’s 12-line stanzas, in terms of their rhyme schemes (for a list of the schemes see matjash 1979: 84), most often read as though they were a combination of three quatrains, and even his 14-line stanzas have the appearance of three quatrains combined with a couplet after the second four-line unit. for that matter, of course, the rhymes of the onegin stanza form three quatrains and a concluding couplet – a far more regular pattern than that found in most poems with long stanzas containing an odd number of lines. del’vig’s small corpus of these “odd” stanzas provides further evidence of the tendency toward formal experimentation. of his two works in 7-line stanzas, one “difiramb [na priezd trekh druzej]” (1821), is unrhymed, but the varied line lengths and the mix of masculine, feminine and dactylic endings, which appear in the same position in each of the stanzas, show that he had in mind a clear but complex structure. the line lengths are 12, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7 and 8 syllables, with dactylic clausulae in lines 1 and 6, masculine in 2 and 7, and feminine in 3–5. the metres go from a four-stress dol’nik in the first line, to dactylic dimeter, then iambic dimeter, and ending with four lines in amphibrachic dimeter (del’vig 1959: 150). displaying the same sequence of metres in each stanza, the poem as a whole can be characterized as written in logaoedics. his other 7-line stanza (“druz’ja, pover’te, ne greshno”, 1819) rhymes ababcxc, with the sixth line blank. it again contains lines of varying lengths, albeit all are iambic and follow a repeated pattern: tetrameter in lines 1, 3 and 7; trimeter in 2, 4 and 5; pentameter in 6 (del’vig 1959: 130–131). in the third and final stanza the “c” rhyme is replaced with a repeat of the “b” rhyme, so the scheme becomes ababbxb. the iambic tetrameter “poet” (1820), the one instance in which he used a 9-line stanza, ends with a paired rhyme, as in the spenserian stanza, but otherwise is quite different: abbbaccdd (del’vig 1959: 137–137). the rhyme scheme hints at a 5+4 structure, but the strong internal syntactic breaks, rather than appearing regularly after the fifth line, instead 38 barry p. scherr serve more as a counterpoint to the rhyme pattern. in two of the three stanzas, rather than a break, enjambement occurs between lines five and six; in the first stanza, for instance, major syntactic breaks appear instead after lines two and eight. del’vig here creates an integral nine-line unit, and employs the same rhyme in three consecutive lines, which is found among other poets as well in their longer stanzas with an odd number of lines. many poets turned to these stanzas only one or two times, if at all. baratynskij, for instance wrote two poems in 5-line stanzas but otherwise avoided stanzas with an odd number of lines. in the case of tjutchev, “more i utes” (1848) marks his only use of a longer “odd” stanza in an original poem: ababcdccd, with trochaic tetrameter throughout. each of the four stanzas contains a strong syntactic break after the fourth line, so that both the rhyme scheme and the semantic structure of the stanzas cause them to read – like zhukovskij’s “pesnja” – as though they consist of a quatrain (abab) and a 5-line stanza (abaab) joined together. this single use of a long stanza with an odd number of lines, unlike those of del’vig and zhukovskij, turns out to embody qualities found frequently in the poet’s other verse: the trochaic tetrameter was one of his favoured metres, the abab stanza represents his favoured quatrain, and nine of his 16 original 5-line stanzas display the rhyme pattern abaab. in short, tjutchev branches out into this form only gingerly, treading over familiar ground, and does not repeat the venture. for polonskij, on the other hand, 7-line stanzas comprised a minor but hardly rare part of his repertoire: they appear in 7 poems, totalling an impressive 1186 lines. for the most part the poems are not long, from two to four stanzas, and adhere to a similar rhyme pattern: the first four lines are in alternating rhyme, followed by a paired rhyme, and then either the a or the b rhyme recurs at the end. typical is his “v telege zhizni” (1876), with the rhyme scheme ababccb (polonskij 1954: 344). in this and works with a similar scheme polonskij employs a flexible structure – resembling that used by pushkin in his early “k delii” and “delija”. as in this poem, the stanza can exhibit a clear 4+3 structure, though in other cases, because the final b rhyme echoes lines 2 and 4, it is just as likely to divide differently or to appear as an integral whole. while the stanza lacks the sense of closure provided by the final paired rhyme of the rhyme royal, it is nonetheless a form that seems conducive to both lyric and narrative poetry. by far the largest portion of his lines written in 7-line stanzas occur in a single poem that appears not to have been republished since polonskij’s death. “neuch” (subtitled “proza v stikhakh”) contains 153 numbered stanzas, of which one (no. 37) is empty, resulting in a total of 1064 lines; below is the sixteenth of those stanzas: 39odd stanzas и все газеты наши плохи! но, a постойте! – вот, свою газету b он сам начнет фабриковать: c он обновит российскую печать c о нем пройдет молва по белу свету, b он скажет все, что следует давно a сказать, о чем молчать постыдно и грешно!. a (polonskij 1896: iv.354) the order of the first six rhyme words forms a mirror image: abc is followed by cba, leading to a stark separation of the first two a rhyme words, before the last line echoes and reinforces the a-rhyme, resulting in a concluding rhyme pair. all the lines are iambic, with pentameters in lines 1 and 4–6, tetrameters in lines 2 and 3, and a hexameter in line 7. the final rhyme pair and the switch from pentameter to hexameter at the very end of the stanza recall the structure found in the english 7and 9-line stanzas; it is quite likely that polonskij either directly or indirectly was reflecting that influence, even if his stanza on the whole displays an original and unusual form. for polonskij, then, “neuch” turns out to be the exception, in terms of both length and the originality of the rhyme scheme. two 19th-century poets, one famous and the other far less so, stand out for the radical quality of their experimentation with these long forms. vil’gel’m kjukhel’beker has received relatively little scholarly attention and is not represented in the table, but his use of these forms was among the earliest and the most unconventional. consider his “beda i ne beda” (late 1810s or early 1820s). if the lines that form a refrain are counted as separate lines, then it displays a 13-line stanza, rhyming ababccddccddc (and once ababccddcceec). the 23 stanzas of “rogdaevy psy” (1824) have eleven lines, rhyming abbaccddede; nine of the lines are in amphibrachic tetrameter, while the 9th and 10th are in trimeter (kjukhel’beker 1967: i.192). this poem is almost certainly the longest work to that date employing an 11-line stanza.12 the first half of the 1830s witnessed kjukhel’beker’s most intensive experiments with stanzaic form. during this period, for example, he composed the 140-line “elisaveta kul’man”, one of the few poems in russian to employ a 12 this one poem thus has as many lines as all six of the poems in 11-line stanzas discovered by smith (1997: table 14, 170). vishnevskij (1965: 82) noted that he had found only a single usage of an 11-line stanza prior to lermontov: “pesnja” (“vek junyj, prelestnyj…”) by the little-known poet n. m. konshin. however, kjukhel’beker’s poem and all those noted by smith were earlier. 40 barry p. scherr 20-line stanza. furthermore, the stanza consists not simply of five quatrains or a mix of quatrains and couplets, but exhibits a truly complex structure – abbacacddefefghhgiig – where seven-line rhyme structures at either end set off the six lines in the middle portion. by comparison, his 7-line stanza in the ballad “kudejar” has a more familiar rhyme scheme, ababccb, which had already been employed by pushkin, though kjukhel’beker again varies the line lengths, with amphibrachic tetrameter in lines 1, 3, 5 and 6, while the rest are in amphibrachic trimeter. the stanzas in “son i smert’” are less ambitious metrically, with iambic pentameter throughout, but they employ a more unusual pattern, abababb, based on just two rhymes and with a final couplet. “ossian” features what must be one of the longest stanzas in russian with an odd number of lines – fifteen – albeit the rhyme scheme here, consisting of two quatrains, then a couplet, followed by a 5-line unit rhyming ffggf, is significantly less adventurous than in his 20-line stanza. the shorter stanza in “rosinka”, however is notable for its complexity: сон побежденный a с выси янтарной b канул за лес: c шар лучезарный, b око вселенной, a сердце небес, c всходит и – пало d тьмы покрывало, d сумрак исчез. c (kjukhel’beker 1967: i.284–285) the poem is written in dactylic dimeter, with the c rhyme marking the end of each third of the stanza, but the reversal of the ab rhyme in the middle third helps make this a particularly atypical rhyme pattern. remarkably, then, in virtually every poem where kjukhel’beker employs a long stanza, he devises a different form – several of them unique in his day, and a couple of which very likely remain unique to the present. the other 19th-century poet notable for his compositions with long odd stanzas is lermontov. in his case, far more than with the relatively little-read kjukhel’beker, it is surprising that his verse forms did not become more widely imitated. for the most part, lermontov’s use of these stanzas occurs during his years of youthful exploration, but some also appeared during the brief mature period of his short career, from 1837 to 1841, when he wrote nearly all of his 41odd stanzas best works.13 at first the raw statistics in the table may not seem overly impressive. taken together, his two poems in 7-line stanzas and the three in 9-line stanzas account for just 1.8% of the poems and 2% of the lines written in stanzas. however, lermontov also has no fewer than 14 works (5% of all his stanzaic poems) in long stanzas. of the poets examined here, only zhukovskij comes close to that percentage, though in his case 8 of the 11 poems have the 12-line stanzas that often read as though they were simply constructed by joining three quatrains. for lermontov, only three of his poems in this category have 12-line stanzas, while five works, including the lengthy “tambovskaja kaznachejsha”, are written in the complex onegin stanza. his turning to the extremely rare 11-line stanza in five works, including a couple of narrative poems, quite possibly makes him the most prolific russian author of verse in this form. and he also has one poem that makes striking use of a 13-line stanza. lermontov’s “borodino” (1837; see lermontov 1958: i.408) is perhaps the most famous poem to employ a seven-line stanza, and in fact the term “borodinskaja strofa” refers both to lermontov’s use of that stanza and to modern imitations. the rhyme scheme is aabcccb. the lines with the masculine b rhyme are in iambic trimeter; the others in iambic tetrameter. if both the poem and the stanzaic form are well known, the stanza nonetheless failed to find any significant following among lermontov’s contemporaries or among recognized poets of subsequent generations. the particular mix of metres and the 3-fold adjacent rhyme in lines 4–6, while certainly possible to imitate, do not allow for the flexibility and easily varied internal structures of the more common rhyme schemes found in english. perhaps more importantly, though, the stanza, with its resulting rhythm that recalls a military march, seems so suited to the poem and became so widely associated with “borodino”, that, as with the onegin stanza, almost any use of it was bound to recall its original appearance (vishnevskij 1965: 64–65). lermontov’s other seven-line stanza, found in the early “pesnja” (“kolokol stonet…”, 1830–31) is even more unusual: it begins with three unrhymed lines followed by two lines consisting of the same word, and then concludes with an adjacent rhyme. the metre consists of two dactylic dimeter lines followed by five in amphibrachs: a trimeter, two monometers, and two tetrameters (with the third line of the second stanza iambic rather than amphibrachic). not surprisingly, this stanza has lacked imitators. lermontov’s three poems written in 9-line stanzas are all relatively early: “zhelan’e” (1832), “on byl rozhden dlja schast’ja, dlja nadezhd” (1832), “opjat’, 13 for an overview, see pejsakhovich (1964: 489). vishnevskij (1969: 87) claims that lermontov’s most polished stanzaic discoveries only begin in 1837; he may have fewer long forms in the late years, but they are more impressive for their virtuosity. 42 barry p. scherr narodnye vitii” (1833–35). other than the fact of their employing a relatively rare stanza length, they are not especially venturesome in their structure. each begins with four lines in alternating rhyme and concludes with a five-line unit, which is a little different in each of the poems: respectfully, these are cdccd, cddcc, and ccdcd. 14 because its stanzas are of varying lengths (9, 12, 6 and 9 lines), “umirajushchij gladiator” (1836) is not counted in the table. the poem is a free rendering of stanzas 139–141 in part iv of byron’s childe-harold’s pilgrimage, and thus the appearance of two 9-line stanzas is probably no accident, though these stanzas’ metre (consistently iambic hexameter) and rhyme scheme (ababcdcdc) differ from byron’s spenserian stanza. four of lermontov’s poems in 11-line stanzas date from his transitional or mature periods. the sole exception, “pole borodina” (1830–31), an early version of “borodino”, rhymes ababccdeeed. it is written in iambic tetrameter, except for the lines containing the d rhyme, which are in iambic trimeter. this 11-line form clearly served as the prototype for “borodino”: the final 7 lines are exactly the same as the borodino stanza. three of the later poems with 11-line stanzas – the very long “sashka” (1835–36), the second version of “tebe, kavkaz, surovyj car’ zemli…” (1838?), and “skazka dlja detej” (1840) – employ the exact same form: ababaccddee, with iambic pentameter lines. lermontov’s one other poem with an 11-line stanza, “pamjati a. i. o[doevsko] go” (1839), exhibits the same metre and a similar rhyme scheme: ababcddccee. the key difference is that the initial rhyme pair ends with line four, and the fifth line instead introduces the c rhyme, which is again followed by three adjacent pairs: ddccee. thus lermontov, like polonskij, made a particular long stanza with an odd number of lines a part of his repertoire, using the same rhyme pattern or a minor variation no fewer than four times, in both long works and lyrics. even though this form seems less restrictive than the borodino stanza and in lermontov was being championed by one of the most accomplished poets of the 19th century, it too languished.15 lermontov’s poem in 13-line stanzas, “[a. g. khomutovoj]” (“slepec, stradan’em vdokhnovennyj…”, 1838), also belongs to his mature period. the 14 for more on these poems and on their relationship to other stanzaic forms used by lermontov, see pejsakhovich (1964: 479–81) and vishnevskij (1965: 78–80). vishnevskij assigns just these three works to this category, but pejsakhovich has five: he includes both a monostanzaic work with 9 lines, “shcherbatovoj” (1831), and the heterostanzaic “umirajushchij gladiator”. 15 while these stanzaic inventions left little trace among later generations of poets, several of lermontov’s other formal innovations did have a major influence on subsequent developments in russian verse (vishnevskij 1969: 78–88, especially the summary, 87–88). 43odd stanzas first stanza of this iambic tetrameter poem has the form of a 5-line stanza followed by two quatrains – abaabcdcdedef – and major syntactic breaks in fact occur after lines 5 and 9. then, in the second of the two stanzas, lermontov reverses the structure, with the two quatrains preceding the five-line unit – ababcdcdefeef – and the strong syntactic breaks appearing after lines 4 and 8. with the failure of either lermontov’s 11-line stanzas or his borodinskaja strofa to gain wide usage, the sporadic appearances of long stanzas with an odd number of lines was to remain the norm throughout the 19th century – and for that matter since then as well. some poets do not use these forms at all; others write a handful of works in 7-, 9or even 11-line stanzas. among 19th century poets, nikolaj jazykov has “kubok”, written in a unique 17-line stanza; the 3 stanzas rhyme ababcdcdefeefghgh (jazykov 1988: 276–277). his 7 line stanzas appear in two songs, neither published until many years after his death: “bozhe! vina, vina!” parodies “bozhe! carja khrani!”, while the other, “ot serdca druzhnye s vinom”, has 4 stanzas in iambic tetrameter and an interesting symmetrical structure, with couplets at the beginning and the end surrounding the bab rhyme in the centre: aababcc. his poems with 9-line stanzas include “denisu vasil’evichu davydovu” (1835) and “elegija” (1839); notably, the two poems share the same metre, trochaic tetrameter, and the same rhyme scheme, ababcdccd (jazykov 1988: 85, 84, 293–295, 309–310). nekrasov’s “n. f. kruze” (1858) begins with two 7-line stanzas rhyming aaabccb before concluding with a conventional 8-line stanza. more striking are the three11-line stanzas that comprise his “muzh i zhena” (1877), rhyming a´a´bccbbbddb, ababccddeed, ababccbbddb (nekrasov 1967: iii.332). the last four lines in each stanza are a refrain, and line 5 of the first stanza (slezy, nervicheskij khokhot, pripadok... ) is repeated as line six of the second and five of the third. this means that the c rhyme is based on the same sound throughout the poem, while the b rhymes in stanzas 1 and 3 and the d rhyme in 2 are also identical. the entire poem is dactylic. the lines in the refrain contain 3, 4, 3 and 2 feet, while the remaining lines are either all tetrameter (stanza 3) or a mix of tetrameter and trimeter. the interplay of parallels and variations between stanzas, along with the asymmetrical structure within each stanza brought about by the odd number of lines and the rhyme scheme, make this a striking example of the possibilities inherent in odd stanzas. other poets who similarly forayed into such forms only very rarely, such as a. n. pleshcheev, were often less adventurous. thus his “tak mne mila, pora zakata!” simply has two 7-line stanzas in iambic tetrameter rhyming ababacc, using a variant of the form found in english. the lack of an established tradition that could have led to greater acceptance of these odd stanzas continued into the 20th century, with the level of interest in 44 barry p. scherr these odd stanzas not changing much during the age of modernism. significant developments took place in the repertoire of metres, and a wider range of approximate rhymes came into use. interest in stanzas, though, largely centred on forms that had originated in western traditions – primarily the sonnet, but also the triolet (for sologub and rukavishnikov) as well as the sestina, dante’s terza rima, etc. brjusov’s opyty po strofike may be representative: it includes everything from sonnets to examples of the rondeau, triolet, villanelle, sestina, ghazal, and song patterns from various traditions, among other forms. it reads almost like a handbook of foreign forms (and not just those from western traditions), complete with examples, though brjusov (1973–1975: iii.332) stated that his goal was not to offer examples of every form or to provide a systematic textbook but to select representative examples from his own writing. interestingly the spenserian stanzas he began to prepare for the volume were never completed.16 these stanza forms with an odd number of lines, it seems, did not appear sufficiently important to brjusov for him to feel it necessary to include them in his book. long stanzas with an odd number of lines seem to have accounted for only a small part of the verse composed by poets who are associated with the beginnings of the modernist trend in literature. even so, a few isolated items of interest occur. merezhkovskij employs a 7-line stanza for the more than 2000 lines in his “vera” (1890). he uses a form resembling the english rhyme royal, with a concluding couplet (cc or cc), but he turns the stanza into a particularly flexible device for a long narrative poem by varying the rhyme scheme over the first five lines: abbab, ababa, abaab, etc. gippius alters this form even further and makes her ababacc structure into something of a tour de force; over the 5 stanzas of “progulka vdvoem” (1900) she uses the same words throughout for the c rhyme and in each stanza repeats the final word of the first line at the end of the fifth line. an examination of some 600 poems by maksimilian voloshin yields only a single instance of what initially appears to be a longer stanza with an odd number of lines, “zaklinanie (ot usobic)” (1920). the rhymes of the two stanzas are linked, resulting in less a 7-line structure than a single 14-line stanza: aabccbc // ceefgfg (voloshin 2003–: i.353). close examination reveals that in fact the poem is a reverse onegin stanza; labelling the lines from the end would result in the rhyme scheme ababccddeffegg. 16 see the notes to opyty (brjusov: 1973–1975: iii.626–667), which include three spenserian stanzas that brjusov omitted from the published volume. for the “opyty po strofike” that were written specifically as part of the opyty project and for references to those poems that had been published earlier, see brjusov (1973–1975: iii.511–529). 45odd stanzas other poets have been more willing to test odd stanzas. nikolaj minskij employed both 7and 9-line stanzas, sometimes in poems that pre-date russian modernism. for instance, “posvjashchenie” (1882?) consists of eight 7-line stanzas in iambic hexameter rhyming ababacc – displaying the concluding couplet favoured by the english forms of this stanza. several of his works in these forms are songs, including “serenada” (1879), which was set to music by numerous composers. this latter work consists of two nine-line stanzas with a 3-line refrain in each. all the lines are dactylic, with the first six alternating tetrameter and trimeter, and the three lines of the refrain in dimeter; unusually, five of the lines end in dactylic rhymes: a´ba´ba´cd´cd´ (minskij, dobroljubov 2005: 99–100, 124; see also the commentary, 329–300, 338–339). mikhail kuzmin was one of the few to show a genuine interest in these stanzas. of the 670 poems in the biblioteka poeta edition of his verse, seven employ 7-line stanzas and four others 9-line stanzas: not an extremely high percentage, but also not insignificant. what is more, each of the seven poems in 7-line stanzas possesses a different rhyme scheme: abbacbc, ababbcc, ababbaa, abbaaab, ababccc, aabbccb, and abbbaaa.17 all are written in iambic or trochaic verse and some have lines of varying lengths. kuzmin clearly seeks unusual combinations of rhymes that heighten the sense of an atypical form. thus in the fifth of these poems five lines are in iambic tetrameter but the first two lines in the c rhyme triplet are in dimeter, thereby underscoring the asymmetrical nature of the structure. the two longest of his poems in 9-line stanzas reveal his mastery of the spenserian form: the 28 stanzas of “vsadnik” (1908) and the 12 stanzas of “chuzhaja poema” (1916, with a missing final line in the eleventh stanza). the metre is also that associated with the spenserian stanza: eight lines in iambic pentameter and a ninth in hexameter. clearly, like his english predecessors, he saw the possibilities of this form for longer works. but his first and last poems in this stanza length show that he could be inventive here as well: “gde somnen’ja? gde tomlen’ja?...” (1907) has stanzas that rhyme aabccbddb, while “razletajutsia, kak pticy…” reveals a still more original pattern: ababccccb (kuzmin 1996: 523). the poem is in trochaic tetrameter with trochaic trimeter in lines 7 and 8, but the most distinctive feature consists of the four consecutive c rhymes. with the last two of these rhymes appearing in the dimeter lines, the rapid repetition of identical sounds gives the poem a lively and distinctive rhythm. 17 the works are “serdce b’etsja, plennyj strepet…” (part 8, chapter 3 of novyj rolla; 1908–10; kuzmin 1996: 284–85), “kakaja belizna i krotkij son!” (1917; 1996: 311), “eto vsë pro nastojashchee, druzhok…” (1920; 1996: 416–17), “italija” (1920; 1996: 452–53); “ja imeni ne nazovu…” (1924; 1996: 527–28), “ty/2-oe” (1927; 1996: 565–66), “ja rassmejalsja by v lico…” (1911–12; 1996: 621–22). 46 barry p. scherr one of the greatest experimenters of the early 20th century was the relatively obscure but productive ivan rukavishnikov. with the exception of the identical triolets, of which he wrote more than 300, the vast majority of his poems display a unique combination of stanzaic length, rhyme scheme and metre. however, his stanzaic inventiveness is most notable for such features as including unrhymed lines in his otherwise rhymed poems and creating hybrid forms that combined features of non-identical stanzas and linked stanzas (laletina 2011: 191). he has only a few poems in regular 7or 9-line stanzas, though he also composed one early work, “za schast’em” (1901), in an unusual 13-line stanza: aabc´bbc´ddeffe. in addition, on several occasions he wrote poems in 7and 9-line stanzas that are linked by the appearance of the same rhyme in adjacent stanzas. his fourth collection of poems contains two such instances. 18 “veka”, consists of two 9-line stanzas, where the first two lines of both stanzas share the same aa rhyme and are in iambic pentameter, with the remaining lines in iambic dimeter that rhyme b´b´cd´cd´d´. a more radical experiment is “volny”, where the two 7-line stanzas contain the same rhyme words (except for a different post-tonic ending in the final two lines): я все смотрелся в волны мутные a´ бесцельно плещущей реки. b и мне казалось: волны мутные a´ рисуют облики минутные a´ моей рыдающей тоски, b тоски всегдашней, неизменной, c тоски и тленной и нетленной. c я все смотрелся в очи мутные a´ моей рыдающей тоски. b и мне казалось: очи мутные a´ рисуют отблески минутные a´ бесцельно плещущей реки, b реки под солнцем неизменным, c под солнцем тленным и нетленным. c (rukavishnikov 1906: 140). 18 laletina (2008: 323–324) lists these poems separately from the poems that are in regular 7and 9-line stanzas. it is questionable whether this phenomenon deserves a distinct category (especially in the case of “veka”, where only the aa rhyme pair is the same in both 9-line stanzas), but the linked stanzas are sufficiently unusual to deserve special attention. 47odd stanzas whatever the quality of the resulting work as poetry, it at least displays formal inventiveness, as does much of rukavishnikov’s verse. among the poets at the turn of the 20th century bal’mont makes the most use of 7and 9-line stanzas: indeed, his 42 works in these two forms comprise exactly half those composed by all 13 of the poets in the table. seen as a percentage of his entire work, the numbers are not necessarily that high: bal’mont was very prolific and his more than 2000 stanzaic poems far exceed the output by any of the dozen other poets. still, the sheer number of works in these stanzas shows that they were an established part of his repertoire. he rarely repeats the same rhyme scheme, often combines lines of varying lengths within the stanzas, and occasionally inserts unrhymed lines (as in “cvetozyb”, where the rhyme scheme is x´x´x´ab´b´a). like rukavishnikov, he is capable of linking stanzas; see, for instance, the 7-line stanzas in his “pesn’ garal’da smelogo (12-j vek)”, based on an old norse ballad (the same work that served as batjushkov’s source for his poem in 9-line stanzas). in bal’mont the final line is a refrain and the d rhyme appears only in the sixth line of each stanza. the first two of the six stanzas additionally share the a rhyme, so that the scheme becomes ababcdc // aeaecdc. some of his 7-line stanzas contain just two rhymes, and one of the two may appear in five lines, as in “cherep”, which rhymes abbbabb (bal’mont: 1921: 121). bal’mont’s poems in 9-line stanzas tend to be equally imaginative in their rhyme schemes; for “uzornoe okno” (1897?) he uses the b rhyme to link together the entire stanza while creating an effective asymmetrical structure abaaabccb (bal’mont: 1980: 67). bal’mont only rarely wrote odd stanzas with more than 9 lines, but it is interesting to note that in the three 11-line stanzas of “tkachikha” – rhyming aabccddbaab – he similarly uses the lines with the b rhyme to mark the major syntactic breaks (bal’mont: 1908: 142). the b lines are in trochaic dimeter (as opposed to the tetrameter in the remaining lines, all with feminine endings) so that the sharp distinctions between the lines with three syllables and those with eight further punctuate the delineations. the utilization of stanzas with these odd line lengths has remained modest and uneven over the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st. while the 9-line stanza and especially the 11-line remain rarities, it is possible to find occasional 7-line stanzas among some poets. thus in “zrelost’” (1956) david samojlov uses the rhyme scheme aabcccb in the first stanza before switching to aaabccb in the other two. the metre consists of iambic tetrameter and trimeter, with the trimeter lines always with the b rhyme: i4434443 and then i4443443. one of the many poems that boris sluckij wrote “for the drawer”, “generala legko ponjat’”, consists of eight 7-line stanzas in 3-stress dol’niki that are variously rhymed, with the pattern abbacca dominating the first half of 48 barry p. scherr the work (though the poem’s very first line is unrhymed). arsenij tarkovskij’s “olivy” (1958), written entirely in amphibrachic trimeter, contains four stanzas, with the last truncated to five lines. he uses two rhymes in each stanza, altering the pattern slightly as he goes along: abaabab, abaabba, abbaabb, abaab. junna moric starts with a pair of masculine couplets and concludes with a triplet, so that the five stanzas of “v junosti, v pasti ognja” rhyme aabbccc. the first two pairs are in dactylic trimeter, but the stanza concludes with two lines in amphibrachic dimeter and one in amphibrachic trimeter. lev loseff wrote several poems in odd stanzas, including the very late “ekskursija”, with its quirky delay of the final a rhyme until the sixth line: aabccab. he also has the early “marsh”, in five 9-line stanzas rhyming a´ba´bccddc, with a 3-line coda tacked on at the end of the poem. the stanzas all start with four lines in anapaestic trimeter. what follows varies; for the most part there are four shorter anapaestic and iambic lines, with a final iambic line in tetrameter, although twice the final line also has a two-foot coda added on.19 a closer examination of works by the last two poets in the table will help round out the modern picture. the available analyses of aleksandr kushner’s work cover virtually all his published poetry from the end of the 1950s until the middle of the 2000s – some 1300 poems over nearly 50 years. even more than most poets, he has favoured a relatively narrow range of stanza lengths: 4-, 5-, 6and 8-line stanzas together account for more than 97% of his stanzaic poems. meanwhile, 7-line, 9-line, 10-line and longer stanzas together appear in just a dozen poems, about 1% of his stanzaic verse. as rare as they may be, stanzas of these lengths tend to feature complex rhyme schemes – with the exception of his 12-line stanzas, which can be broken down into three quatrains with alternating rhyme (laletina et al. 2008: 542). for example, “ja plokho splju: prikhodjat, slovno dnem…” (1993) has a 10-line stanza that rhymes abcabcabca. kushner did little with longer stanzaic forms, especially those with an odd number of lines, until the late 1980s, a time when both the number of works he was writing each year and the range of his metrical repertoire reached their highest levels (laletina et al. 2008: 548). an early exception is “vbezhal na kholm i zadokhnulsja”, (1973) in which he precisely imitates the borodino stanza: aabcccb (kushner 1975: 89). here kushner is being more playful than inventive, but his later poems in long stanzas with an odd number of lines tend to be both original and striking in their rhyme patterns. consider his single poem with 9-line stanzas, “manija” (1997), which 19 in a note to the author some years ago loseff remarked that in this poem he was imitating the metre and rhythm of a popular military march, “proshchanie slavjanki”, but apparently nobody had noticed the similarity. 49odd stanzas rhymes a´b´c a´b´c a´b´c (kushner 1998: 49). the pattern is highly unusual due to the three-fold abc rhyme and dactylic endings in both the a and b positions. the metre is primarily iambic pentameter, but one trimeter line appears at varying places in each stanza. his one poem in 11-line stanzas, the iambic tetrameter “ne mozhet byt’ durnoj molitvy”, has a particularly convoluted rhyme scheme in the first stanza: ababbcdbcdb. in contrast, the second stanza employs a simpler pattern of alternating rhymes throughout: ababacdcdcd (kushner 1997: 391–392). the exclusive reliance on feminine rhyme for a stanza of this length is exceptional.20 if some of kushner’s most unusual forms appear in his handful of poems with odd stanzas of seven or more lines, then joseph brodsky was on the whole more innovative in his use of all stanza lengths, employing a wide range of rhyme schemes and at times coming up with unique variations (scherr 2002: 286). that said, he was like kushner in employing the longer odd stanzas quite rarely; for that matter (and unlike kushner), even his usage of the 5-line stanza is quite low. clearly, brodsky’s extensive reading of english poetry did not influence him toward borrowing the 7and 9-line stanzas that he came across (scherr 2002: 276). when he does turn to those stanzas, he devises rhyme schemes that are very much his own. his early “dva chasa v rezervuare” (1965) employs a variety of 7-line stanzas in sections 2, 3 and 4 (though section four has one eight-line stanza). while the rhyme patterns in 2 and 3 vary slightly, both (along with section 4) start with a stanza that features four consecutive feminine a rhymes followed by a rhyme triplet in b. the middle two stanzas have an interlocking scheme with all feminine rhymes, before a final stanza that introduces some masculine rhyming. thus the unique combination of rhymes in section 3 is as follows: aaaabbb aabbcdc / deeffff aabbbcc. some years later brodsky (2011: ii.194) resurrected the aaaabbb stanza, using it throughout his 84-line “portret tragedii” (1991). brodsky carries his interest in rhyme triplets over to his even rarer 9-line stanzas. the three triple adjacent feminine rhymes in “dekabr’ vo florencii” create a unique pattern, made all the more distinct both by the frequent use of strong enjambement (as in kushner’s “ne mozhet byt’ durnoj molitvy”) as well as brodsky’s distinctive dol’nik-like metrical structure (also seen in “portret tragedii”); below is the second of its nine stanzas: 20 long stanzas with an odd number of lines have not disappeared from kushner’s repertoire. a recent poem with the rather gruesome opening line “prisnilas’ deva mne s otbitoju rukoj” consists of two 7-line stanzas in iambic hexameter, rhyming abaabab and ababaab (kushner 2013: 3). 50 barry p. scherr глаз, мигая, заглатывает, погружаясь в сырые a сумерки, как таблетки от памяти, фонари; и a твой подъезд в двух минутах от синьории a намекает глухо, спустя века, на b причину изгнанья: вблизи вулкана b невозможно жить, не показывая кулака; но b и нельзя разжать его, умирая, c потому что смерть – это всегда вторая c флоренция с архитектурой рая. c (brodsky 2011: i.378) the pyrotechnic quality of brodsky’s rhyme schemes and other formal elements helps compensate for the few examples of poems by him with these stanza lengths. this survey of odd stanzas leads to several conclusions. first, russia never developed a clear tradition of such stanzas, so that, with the occasional exception of a kuzmin using the spenserian stanza, poets are not so much referring back to a corpus of earlier works as creating forms for themselves. second, the history of russian verse points to two key moments when a tradition might have arisen. the earlier of these occurred from the 1820s through the 1840s, when a few poets – lermontov among the most widely-read figures, but also kjukhel’beker and to a lesser extent jazykov – experimented with these forms but failed to attract followers. during the second period – the turn of the 20th century and the rise of modernism – more attention was paid instead to metre and rhyme. interest in stanzas related more to traditional forms, especially the sonnet, and to such phenomena as linked stanzas; long odd stanzas never achieved anything approaching wide currency. third, while such stanzas have remained uncommon, they have never gone entirely out of fashion: many poets have used them for the occasional work or two, and a few have turned to them more extensively. fourth, and most importantly, the very infrequency with these forms occur has generally given them an experimental flavour. there are exceptions; for instance, the stanza that merezhkovskij uses for “vera” is not dissimilar to that found earlier among both russian and english poets and seems well-suited to the long narrative text in which it appears. however, the odd stanzas have most often served as a platform for unconventional and frequently complex rhyme schemes, for combining lines of different lengths into a single stanza, and in general for highlighting the formal features of the text. if russian poets have only rarely been able to use these stanzas to evoke earlier poets in the way that, say, yeats and auden did within the english tradition, they nonetheless have found – and continue to find – these forms a source for inspiring some of their most dazzling creations. 51odd stanzas references akimova, marina v.; shapir, maksim i. 2006. boris isaakovich jarkho i strategija ‘tochnogo literaturovedenija’. in: jarkho, boris i. metodologija tochnogo literaturovedenija: izbrannye trudy po teorii literatury, shapir, maksim i. (ed.) moscow: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur, vii–xxxii. bal’mont, konstantin d. 1908. pticy v vozdukhe. st. petersburg: shipovnik. bal’mont, konstantin d. 1921. dar zemle. paris: russkaja zemlja. bal’mont, konstantin d. 1980. izbrannoe: stikhotvorenija, perevody, stat’i. moscow: khudozhestvennaja literatura. barratt, glynn 1972. i. i. kozlov: the translations from byron. berne and frankfurt: herbert lang & co. brodsky, joseph. 2011. stikhotvorenija i poemy. novaja biblioteka poeta. st. petersburg: pushkinskii dom, vita nova. brjusov, valerij ja. 1973–1975. sobranie sochinenij v semi tomakh. moscow: khudozhestvennaja literatura. car’kova, tat’jana s. 1978. metricheskij repertuar n. a. zabolockogo. in: kholshevnikov, vjacheslav e. (ed.), issledovanija po teorii stikha. leningrad: nauka, 126–51. del’vig, anton a. 1959. polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij. biblioteka poeta, bol’shaja serija, 2nd ed. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. gasparov, mikhail l.; girshman, mikhail m.; timofeev, leonid i. (eds.) 1979. russkoe stikhoslozhenie: materialy po metrike i strofike russkikh poetov. moscow: nauka. häublein, ernst 1978. the stanza. london: methuen & co. jazykov, nikolaj m. 1988. stikhotvorenija i poemy. biblioteka poeta, bol’shaja serija, 2nd ed. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. khvorost’janova, elena v. (ed.) 2008. peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov. st. petersburg: nestor-istorija. khvorost’janova, elena v. (ed.) 2013. peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov – ii. st. petersburg: nestor-istorija. kjukhel’beker, vil’gel’m k. 1967. izbrannye proizvedenija v dvukh tomakh. biblioteka poeta, bol’shaja serija, 2nd ed. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. kozlov, ivan i. 1960. polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij. biblioteka poeta, bol’shaja serija, 2nd ed. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. kushner, aleksandr s. 1975. prjamaja rech’. leningrad: lenizdat. kushner, aleksandr s. 1997. izbrannoe. st. petersburg: khudozhestvennaja literatura. 52 barry p. scherr kushner, aleksandr s. 1998. tysjachelistnik: kniga stikhov. st. petersburg: russkobaltijskij informacionnyj centr blits. kushner, aleksandr s. 2013. stikhi. in: zvezda 1, 3–6. kuzmin, mikhail a. 1996. stikhotvorenija. novaja biblioteka poeta. st. petersburg: akademicheskij proekt. laletina, ol’ga s. 2008. metrika i strofika i. s. rukavishnikova. in: khvorost’janova, elena v. (ed.), peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov. st. petersburg: nestor-istorija, 176–360. laletina, ol’ga s. 2011. poezija i. s. rukavishnikova v kontekste russkogo simvolizma. st. petersburg: nestor-istorija. laletina, ol’ga s.; lucjuk, irina v.; tver’janovich, ksenija ju. 2008. metrika i strofika a. s. kushnera. in: khvorost’janova, elena v. (ed.), peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov. st. petersburg: nestor-istorija, 517–634. larkin, philip 2004. collected poems. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. lauwers, lenie 1993. igor’-severjanin: his life and work – the formal aspects of his poetry. orientalia lovaniensia analecta, 49. louvain: peeters. lermontov , mikhail ju. 1958. sobranie sochinenij, 4 vols. leningrad: akademija nauk sssr. lilly, ian k. 1979. review of russkoe stikhoslozhenie: materialy po metrike i strofike russkikh poetov. in folia slavica, vol. 3, no. 3, 370–79. ljapina, larisa e. 1984. metricheskij i stroficheskij repertuar k. d. bal’monta. in kholshevnikov, vjacheslav e.; car’kova, tat’jana s. (eds.), problemy teorii stikha. leningrad: nauka, 179–92. matjash, svetlana a. 1979. metrika i strofika v.a. zhukovskogo. in: gasparov, mikhail l.; girshman, mikhail m.; timofeev, leonid i. (eds.), russkoe stikhoslozhenie: materialy po metrike i strofike russkikh poetov. moscow: nauka, 14–96. minskij, nikolaj m.; dobroljubov, aleksandr m. 2005. stikhotvorenija i poemy. novaja biblioteka poeta. st. petersburg: akademicheskij proekt. nekrasov, nikolaj a. 1967. polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij v trekh tomakh. biblioteka poeta, bol’shaja serija, 2nd ed. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. pavlova, margarita m. 1984. metricheskij i stroficheskij repertuar sashi chernogo. in: kholshevnikov, vjacheslav e.; car’kova, tat’jana s. (eds.), problemy teorii stikha. leningrad: nauka, 193–207. pejsakhovich, mikhail a. 1964. strofika lermontova. in: fokht, ul’rikh r. (ed.), tvorchestvo m. ju. lermontova: 150 let so dnja rozhdenija, 1814–1964. moscow: nauka, 417–491. 53odd stanzas polonskij jakov p. 1896. polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij ja. p. polonskogo v pjati tomakh. st. petersburg: a. f. marks. polonskij, jakov p. 1954. stikhotvorenija. biblioteka poeta, bol’shaja serija, 2nd ed. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’. pumpjanskij, lev v. 1941. stikhovaja rech’ lermontova. in: literaturnoe nasledstvo, 43–44: m. ju. lermontov, i. moscow: akademija nauk sssr, 389–424. rudnev, petr a. 1972. metricheskij repertuar a. bloka. in: blokovskij sbornik, ii. tartu: tartuskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 218–67. rukavishnikov, ivan s. 1906. stikhotvorenija: kniga chetvertaja. st. petersburg: sodruzhestvo. scherr, barry p. 1989. the verse practice of vladimir benediktov. in: scherr, barry p.; worth, dean s. (eds.), russian verse theory: proceedings of the 1987 conference at ucla. columbus, ohio: slavica, 297–329. scherr, barry p. 2001. elizaveta dmitrieva (vasil’eva) i cherubina de gabriak: metrika i strofika. in: scherr, barry p. and kazarcev, evgenij v. (eds.), formal’nye metody v lingvisticheskoj poetike: sbornik nauchnykh trudov, posvjashchennyj 60-letiju professora sankt-peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta m. a. krasnoperovoj. st. petersburg: sankt-peterburgskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 147–64. scherr, barry p. 2002. strofika brodskogo: novyj vzgljad. in: loseff, lev; polukhina, valentina (eds.), kak rabotaet stikhotvorenie brodskogo: iz issledovanij slavistov na zapade. moscow: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 269–99. smith, gerald s. 1977. the stanza forms of russian poetry from polotsky to derzhavin, thesis submitted for the degree of ph. d. university of london. tomashevskij, boris v. 1958. strofika pushkina. in: pushkin: issledovanija i materialy, ii. moscow: akademija nauk sssr, 49–184. tver’janovich, ksenija ju.; khvorost’janova, elena v. 2008. instrukcija k sostavleniju metriko-stroficheskikh spravochnikov. in: khvorost’janova, elena v. (ed.), peterburgskaja stikhotvornaja kul’tura: materialy po metrike, strofike i ritmike peterburgskikh poetov. st. petersburg: nestor-istorija, 11–63. vishnevskij, kirill d. 1965. strofika lermontova. in: tvorchestvo m. ju. lermontova: sbornik statej, posvjashchennyj 150-letiju so dnja rozhdenija m. ju. lermontova (penzenskij gosudarstvennyj pedagogicheskij universitet, uchenye zapiski, serija filologicheskaja, vypusk 14). penza, 3–131. vishnevskij, kirill d. 1969. tradicii i novatorstvo v stikhotvornoj tekhnike lermontova. in: jazyk i stil’ proizvedenij m. ju. lermontova (penzenskij gosudarstvennyj pedagogicheskij universitet, uchenye zapiski, vypusk 78). penza, 78–88. 54 barry p. scherr vishnevskij, kirill d. 1978. arkhitektonika russkogo stikha xviii–pervoj poloviny xix veka. in: kholshevnikov, vjacheslav e. (ed.), issledovanija po teorii stikha. leningrad: nauka, 48–66. voloshin, maksimilian a. 2003– . sobranie sochinenij. moscow: ellis lak. zhukovskij, vasilij a. 1902. polnoe sobranie sochinenij v 12-ti tomakh. st. petersburg: a. f. marks. appendix: stanza lengths for selected poets stanza size: poet: 2-line 3-line 4-line 5-line 6-line 7-line 8-line 9-line 10-line 11-plus totals: stanzaic poems fixed forms all poems№ % № % № % № % № % № % № % № % № % № % lomonosov poems – – – – 12 28.6 – – 2 4.8 – – 5 11.9 – – 23 54.8 – – 42 – 289 lines – – – – 2120 26.9 – – 90 1.1 – – 608 7.7 – – 5060 64.2 – – 7878 – 13,925 stanzas – – – – 530 47.0 – – 15 1.3 – – 76 6.7 – – 506 44.9 – – 1127 – zhukovskij poems 2 0.8 4 1.7 126 53.2 8 3.4 15 6.3 1 0.4 64 27.0 3 1.3 3 1.3 11 4.6 237 – 615 lines 32 0.2 87 0.6 4776 34.4 305 2.2 846 6.1 42 0.3 4402 31.7 99 0.7 248 1.8 3032 21.9 13,869 – 69,175 stanzas 16 0.7 29 1.3 1194 52.5 61 2.7 141 6.2 6 0.3 550 24.2 11 0.5 25 1.1 243 10.7 2276 – batjushkov poems – – – – 34 77.3 1 2.3 1 2.3 1 2.3 4 9.1 1 2.3 1 2.3 1 2.3 44 – 172 lines – – – – 1257 66.9 38 2.0 44 2.3 14 0.7 304 16.2 45 2.4 40 2.1 136 7.2 1878 – 6714 stanzas – – – – 314 81.1 8 2.1 7 1.8 2 0.5 38 9.8 5 1.3 4 1.0 9 2.3 387 – pushkin poems 100 26,5 1 0.3 185 48.9 7 1.9 24 6.3 4 1.1 47 12.4 1 0.3 4 1.1 5 1.3 378 3 son 1000 lines 4196 24.3 9 0.1 3109 18.0 125 0.7 808 4.7 98 0.6 2621 15.2 23 0.1 180 1.0 6078 35.2 17,247 3 ter 42,663 stanzas 2103 54.6 3 0.1 778 20.2 25 0.6 135 3.5 14 0.4 330 8.6 3 0.1 18 0.5 445 11.5 3854 del’vig poems 6 7.0 2 2.3 55 64.0 4 4.7 6 7.0 2 2.3 9 10.5 1 1.2 – – 1 1.2 86 7 son 200 lines 85 4.2 21 1.0 1236 60.8 145 7.1 174 8.6 49 2.4 272 13.4 27 1.3 – – 24 1.2 2033 2 oct 5245 stanzas 43 9.1 7 1.5 319 67.4 29 6.1 29 6.1 7 1.5 34 7.2 3 0.6 – – 2 0.4 473 tjutchev poems 2 0.9 – – 158 69.0 16 7.0 9 3.9 – – 42 18.3 1 0.4 1 0.4 – – 229 – 377 lines 48 1.1 – – 2824 66.3 230 5.4 156 3.7 – – 944 22.2 36 0.8 20 0.5 – – 4258 – 6978 stanzas 24 2.6 – – 706 76.2 46 5.0 26 2.8 – – 118 12.7 4 0.4 2 0.2 – – 926 – benediktov poems 2 1.7 1 0.8 73 60.3 6 5.0 16 13.2 – – 16 13.2 1 0.8 3 2.5 3 2.5 121 8 son 400 lines 62 1.0 12 0.2 3752 63.4 240 4.1 822 13.9 – – 496 8.4 54 0.9 379 6.4 104 1.8 5921 1 oct 19,449 stanzas 31 2.4 4 0.3 938 73.8 48 3.8 137 10.8 – – 62 4.9 6 0.5 38 3.0 7 0.6 1271 lermontov poems 2 0.7 – – 173 61.3 6 2.1 17 6.0 2 0.7 60 21.3 3 1.1 5 1.8 14 5.0 282 1 son 509 lines 64 0.6 – – 3355 32.7 135 1.3 498 4.9 119 1.2 2608 25.4 81 0.8 140 1.4 3266 31.8 10266 33,149 stanzas 32 2.0 – – 839 51.7 27 1.7 83 5.1 17 1.0 326 20.1 9 0.6 14 0.9 277 17.1 1624 polonskij poems 9 3.6 2 0.8 160 64.5 13 5.2 24 9.8 7 2.8 28 11.3 – – 4 1.6 1 0.4 248 2 son 431 lines 212 1.9 48 0.4 6332 55.8 575 5.1 1092 9.6 1186 10.4 1712 15.1 – – 160 1.40 36 0.3 11353 45,943 stanzas 106 4.4 16 6.7 1583 65.8 115 4.8 182 7.6 170 7.1 214 8.9 – – 16 0.7 3 0.1 2405 bal’mont poems 142 7.0 39 1.9 1469 72.7 100 5.0 133 6.6 33 1.6 83 4.1 8 0.4 4 0.2 9 0.4 2020 534 son 3350 (11 ses) 35 ter 68,786 rukavishnikov poems 13 2.5 6 1.2 354 68.7 43 8.3 56 10.9 4 0.8 20 3.9 2 0.4 5 1.0 12 2.3 515 9 son 1425 lines 172 1.4 96 0.8 7912 65.6 1075 8.9 1494 12.4 105 0.9 472 3.9 63 0.5 240 2.0 427 3.5 12056 308 tri 35,150 stanzas 86 3.2 32 1.2 1978 73.3 215 7.8 249 9.2 15 0.6 59 2.2 7 0.3 24 0.9 32 1.2 2697 1 ron brodsky poems 3 0.9 5 1.5 186 54.7 2 0.6 48 14.2 4 1.2 75 22.1 1 0.3 4 1.2 11 3.2 339 47 son 690 lines 86 0.5 507 3.2 6456 40.4 60 0.4 3187 20.0 161 1.0 4251 26.6 81 0.5 422 2.6 758 4.7 15969 30,353 stanzas 43 1.4 169 5.6 1614 53.2 12 0.3 531 17.5 23 0.8 531 17.5 9 0.3 42 1.4 57 1.9 3031 kushner poems 8 0.7 9 0.8 751 65.2 78 6.8 105 9.1 3 0.3 188 16.3 1 0.1 5 0.4 4 0.3 1152 2 son 1300 lines 104 0.4 171 0.7 14596 60.9 1845 7.7 2574 10.7 77 0.3 4304 18.0 45 0.2 160 0.7 94 0.4 23970 27,738 stanzas 52 1.0 57 1.1 3649 71.1 369 7.2 429 8.4 11 0.2 538 10.5 5 0.1 16 0.3 8 0.2 5134 totals poems 289 5.1 69 1.2 3736 65.6 284 5.0 456 8.0 61 1.1 641 11.3 23 0.4 62 1.1 72 1.3 5693 2-line 3-line 4-line 5-line 6-line 7-line 8-line 9-line 10-line 11-plus total russian binary meters part two. chapters 5–6 kiril taranovsky* 1 editors’ note part i of russian binary meters, the english translation of kiril taranovsky’s classic study ruski dvodelni ritmovi (taranovsky 1953), appeared in volume 7.2 (2020) of studia metrica et poetica (pp. 110–176). part i bears the title (inadvertently omitted from our translation) “theoretical bases for the study of russian binary meters”, and consists of the first four of the book’s nineteen sections. following are the first two sections of part ii (“historical development of the rhythmic drive of russian binary meters”), devoted, respectively, to the trochaic and iambic tetrameter. the reader should bear in mind that the numbering of sections and footnotes is continuous with the earlier installment, beginning here with section 5 and footnote 71. we have taken the liberty of reformatting taranovsky’s tables i–iv to make them more readable. the tables are now split into three vertical parts: icti, word boundaries and rhythmic variations, with the icti and rhythmic variations placed side by side. (we are grateful to mikhail trunin, vera polilova and artem babushkin for editorial assistance.) the historical development of the rhythmic drive in russian binary meters 5. the four-foot trochee the four-foot trochee is the most common trochaic meter in the russian literary tradition. it is used in some of the longer genres – the fairy tale in verse (žukovskij, puškin, and others) and the ballad (puškin’s “besy” and “utoplennik”). most often it has rhymed masculine and feminine endings. * translated by walter n. vickery and lawrence e. feinberg. translator’ address: lawrence feinberg, university of north carolina at chapel hill, department of germanic and slavic languages, dey hall 426, chapel hill, north carolina 27599, usa, e-mail: lfeinber@email.unc.edu. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 110–199 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.06 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.06 111russian binary meters. part two however, in the second half of the eighteenth century we also begin to find four-foot trochees employing exclusively the unrhymed dactylic endings which we normally associate with the byliny of folk poetry; and, naturally enough, it is in stylizations of oral folk epic poetry that the four-foot trochee is found with dactylic endings. among other examples of this type of poetry we note xeraskov’s baxar’jana, karamzin’s il’ja muromec, vostokov’s pevsilad i zora, and puškin’s bova. later, in nekrasov, the four-foot trochee can be used with a combination of rhymed dactylic and masculine endings – here too in a poem which has stylistic affinities with folk poetry (korobejniki). in the shorter lyric genres the thematic range of the four-foot trochee is far wider. it is used in hymns (e. g., deržavin’s “grom pobedy razdavajsja”), in elegies (e. g., puškin’s “dar naprasnyj, dar slučajnyj”), in humorous verse, and also in poetry for children. in lyric poetry dactylic endings serve a function similar to that observed above: they are employed in imitations of folk songs (eighteenth-century songs, later kol’cov and nikitin, and in the twentieth century orešin, kljuev and esenin). the four-foot trochee entered the literary tradition in a less revolutionary fashion than did the iamb. the trochee was in some degree indebted to the tradition of the syllabic thirteen-syllable line which in trediakovskij (1735) has assumed an almost completely pure trochaic character, based on the following pattern: — ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪ | — || — ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪ , e.g.: ne vozmóžno sérdcu, áx! // ne imét’ pečáli; óči tákožde eščé // plákat’ ne prestáli: drúga mílogo ves’má // ne mogú zabýti, bez kotórogo tepér’ // nadležít mne býti. here the first hemistich is, in fact, a four-foot trochee with a masculine ending (catalectic), and the second a three-foot trochee with a feminine ending (acatalectic). this meter remains productive in the russian literary tradition. we find it in sumarokov in exactly the same form as in trediakovskij: prósiš’ pésnju, čtob oná // žár moj iz”jasníla; xóčeš’ védat’ ímja tój, // któ menjá pleníla; já sej čás časóm dragím // nazyváti stánu, i ispólnju tvój prikáz: // tý dalá mne ránu. 112 kiril taranovsky but in sumarokov we also find it separated into two lines: já ne vlásten už v sebé, tý vladéeš’ mnóju, tý odná pokój daéš’, ótnjat ón tobóju. obviously there is nothing new in the arrangement of this last example – except to the eye. the odd lines still do not rhyme. only when sumarokov uses rhyme in the odd lines also, do these latter acquire greater independence: négde v málen’kom leskú, pri potákax réčki, čto bežála po peskú, stereglís’ ovéčki. žukovskij did much to popularize this metrical pattern: ráz v kreščénskij véčerok dévuški gadáli: za voróta bášmačok, snjáv s nogí, brosáli... we find it again later in nekrasov (“general toptygin”) and in a. k. tolstoj: kolokól’čiki moí, cvétiki stepnýe, čtó gljadíte na menjá, temnogolubýe? thus, there can be no doubt that the four-foot trochee had its origin in trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable line. it is true that trediakovskij permitted “the replacement of a trochee by an iamb” in some feet. lines of the type: ópicu, pridáv stixóv // ímja otcá, pérvu... júnker, kotórogo v čést’ // já zdes’ nazyváju... are not to be found in the poets who followed him. however, the line: tól’ velíkija v ženáx // monárxini ánny... 113russian binary meters. part two is not at all unusual even later. a complete analogy to it is found in nekrasov: pribežáli tój porój jamščík i vožátyj... here we are dealing with a displacement of the metrical ictus, which was discussed in section 3. genuine four-foot trochees with masculine and feminine rhymes, i.e. metrically of the type that russian writers use even today, are found in russian literature for the first time in the translation of an ode by fénelon which the student lomonosov sent from freiburg to the russian academy of sciences in 1738.71 lomonosov’s translation could not have had any influence because it remained forgotten among the papers of the russian academy. only at the end of 1739 or the beginning of 1740, when lomonosov sent the members of the russian assembly his famous “pis’mo”72 and became the first to offer examples of the russian iamb, did so-called “tonic” verse begin to appear in russian poetry. six lines only, in the four-foot trochaic meter, were sufficient in the “pis’mo” to serve as an example, since the theoretical laws on which they were constructed were formulated precisely and clearly: nímfy ókol nas krugámi tancováli pojučí, vspléskivajuči rukámi, nášej ískrennoj ljubví veseljásja privečáli, i cvetámi nas venčáli. here we find regular four-foot trochees with feminine and masculine rhymes. trediakovskij, who in 1735 had published a rather confused theory of russian versification73 in which he showed himself to be a resolute opponent of pure iambic lines and masculine rhymes, greeted lomonosov’s theory inimically. it is true that in his 1735 work trediakovskij was already talking in terms of feet. but he had not given a single example of any “tonic” meter other than the thirteen-syllable trochaic line (with the caesura after the seventh syllable) and the eleven-syllable trochee (with the caesura after the fifth syllable). and thirteen-syllable and eleven-syllable lines were, of course, the most popular meters in syllabic poetry, though in the syllabic tradition they had not yet acquired an explicitly trochaic character.74 in any case, whatever his initial reactions, trediakovskij eventually began to use all the meters introduced by lomonosov. in 1752 trediakovskij revised his theories, bringing them more into line with lomonosov and attempting to show that it was he who had 114 kiril taranovsky introduced “tonic” versification into russian poetry.75 we will not dwell here on this argument which has already been well documented.76 verse practice is our chief concern. lomonosov’s younger contemporary sumarokov, who reputedly responded to lomonosov’s theory with an epigram, began to write in regular iambs and trochees. in 1744 we find all three poets competing to see who can recast the one hundred and forty-third psalm in the purest tonic verse.77 while sumarokov and lomonosov use iambs, trediakovskij prefers trochees with masculine and feminine rhymes: krépkij, čúdnyj, beskonéčnyj, póln xvalý, preslávnyj vés’, bóže! tý edín prevéčnyj, sýj gospód’ včerá i dnés’... thus, we can fairly say that in the course of the 1740s the syllabic verse tradition comes to an end. the four-foot trochee has become popular in the work of trediakovskij and sumarokov; lomonosov uses it very rarely78. but, on the other hand, he has established himself as the “true champion of the iamb.” the russian four-foot trochee (in combination with three-foot trochees) not only continues the metrical tradition of trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable line. from the rhythmic standpoint also, it represents to some extent a development of the first hemistich of trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable line. this can be seen from the fact that in the russian four-foot trochee (cf. table i) the weak and the strong icti alternate, with the icti on the third and seventh syllables strong, while those on the first and the fifth are weak. the rhythmic line is therefore an undulating one. its oscillation hinges on two strong points – the icti on the third and the seventh syllables. exactly the same rhythmic drive is found in trediakovskij’s 1735 thirteen-syllable line (“pis’mo apollinu” and two elegies)79: syllables: 1 3 5 7 % of stresses: 66.1 80.4 55.0 100 here too, as we note, the strong icti are on the third and seventh syllables, and the weak icti on the first and the fifth. it is hard to say whether this drive in trediakovskij’s poetry developed from the syllabic thirteen-syllable line of his predecessors, since russian poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has not yet been thoroughly studied from this point of view. the only available figures are those compiled by l. i. timofeev: these give the 115russian binary meters. part two stress percentages for the first hemistich in the thirteen-syllable line of simeon polockij, trofimovič, kantemir and trediakovskij, and compare them with the corresponding percentages for lomonosov’s and puškin’s four-foot trochees: year poet syllables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1700 simeon polockij 20.0 19.5 22.5 8.0 31.0 48.0 30.0 1728 trofimovič 27.0 30.0 38.0 20.0 33.0 18.0 53.0 1736–40 kantemir 34.0 40.0 70.0 24.0 50.0 8.0 77.0 1735 trediakovskij 63.0 00.0 81.0. 00.0 55.0 00.0 100 1738 lomonosov 80.0 00.0 82.0 00.0 65.0 00.0 100 19th c. puškin 57.0 00.0 97.5 00.0 43.5 00.0 100 as the table shows, in polockij’s verse the most stable is the sixth syllable, but in trofimovič’s the stress percentages for the third and the seventh syllables are the highest, and in kantemir and trediakovskij the third and seventh syllables are clearly dominant, just as they are in the four-foot trochee. up to kantemir, the even syllables are stressed along with the odd. but in kantemir the odd syllables attract a considerably larger number of stresses than before, thus producing, albeit as yet in embryonic form, a trochaic cadence with bipartite rhythmic structure. the increase, from polockij to kantemir, of stresses on the second and fourth syllables runs to some extent counter to a trochaic cadence, but this increase is abruptly halted in trediakovskij, who has zero percentages for the second and fourth syllables.81 on the basis of timofeev’s figures, one could draw the premature conclusion that the rhythmic drive of the first hemistich in trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable line is a development from trofimovič and kantemir, trediakovskij merely accentuating already existing tendencies. however, timofeev is at fault in his “historical-progression” approach to kantemir. in actual fact kantemir is preceded by trediakovskij whose trochaic rhythmic drive could have subsequently influenced kantemir’s syllabic thirteen-syllable line. this leaves us only trofimovič, and we therefore have totally insufficient grounds for drawing conclusions about the evolution of the syllabic thirteen-syllable line, particularly in view of the fact that the accuracy of timofeev’s statistics has been questioned.82 this question requires a new and detailed examination which cannot be undertaken in the framework of the present study. there is other evidence which shows that in the first half of the eighteenth century a bipartite rhythmic structure developed in the eight-syllable line 116 kiril taranovsky (with strong icti on the third and seventh syllables) and gained currency in russian poetry. in 1744 kantemir, among other rules which he gives for the octosyllabic line, states the following: “eight-syllable lines have no caesura, but one should take care that the third and the seventh syllables be long. an example: skol’ko bédnyj suetítsja čelovék za malu slávu. noč’ ne spít, i den’ tomítsja, čtob ne sél sosed poprávu, čtob naród emu divílsja i xvostóm vsegda taščílsja; znatno bédnyj zabyváet, čto po smérti prax byváet”.83 these lines are no more nor less than pure four-foot trochees with bipartite rhythmic structure. we should not forget that in the literary tradition the fourfoot trochee had only begun to appear at that time: consequently, kantemir had very few models. we should, moreover, bear in mind that at that time kantemir was in paris and was, therefore, to a great extent separated from the literary life of russia: one traveled from russia to paris by horse or at times on foot (e. g., trediakovskij).84 therefore, the fact that kantemir clearly formulated the need for stressing the third and seventh syllables in the eight-syllable line is for us highly significant. both the rhythmic character of the first hemistich of kantemir’s and trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable line and kantemir’s rule concerning the structure of the “syllabic” eight-syllable line lead us to believe that the origin of the rhythmic drive of the russian literary four-foot trochee must be sought in russian verse prior to the introduction of german tonic metrics into russian literature. we think that the answer to the question of the origin of that drive is to be found in russian, and perhaps also in east slavic, musical folklore. many lyric folk songs have the first musical accent on the third syllable of the text, as is the case in the well-known song “ax vy, seni, moi seni”: 117russian binary meters. part two in russian folk songs the lines are not isosyllabic. nor are they in this song. however, when isosyllabism is present, as for example in the fifth and seventh stanzas of this song, a pure trochee results: 5. ty letí, leti, sokólik, vysokó i dalekó. i vysóko i dalëko, na rodímu storonú. 7. ne puskáet molodú pozdno véčerom odnú. ja ne slúšala otcá, potešála molodcá.85 when the stanza consists of isosyllabic lines, we see that the musical accents fall on the third and the seventh syllables in the line. and this actually gives us, in its purest and most extreme form, the bipartite rhythmic structure of the four-foot trochee. similarly, in the music accompanying ukrainian eight-syllable lines (four plus four), we find the stronger beat on the third and seventh syllables. “the four-syllable group,” says filjaret kolessa, “corresponds most often to 2/4 time with an eighth note falling on each syllable: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ | ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ oj po ki ja bu la ma la kolysala mene mama to v kolysci to v korobci, teper mene ljubjat xlopci. the rhythm of the melody, emphasizing the first and the third syllables of each group by means of a strong beat, causes both the incorrect stressing of words (po-kí, má-la, méne, téper), and in longer words the appearance, in addition to the main stress, of other secondary stresses. often both stresses are “incorrect”: kórobóčka / torkotila, a ja spati / ne xotila. one can notice in singing that the beat of the third eighth is stronger than the first beat;86 often the two groups are linked by a two-syllable rhyme: 2 4 118 kiril taranovsky a v marýsi / bili pýsi jak ne vjýryš / podyvý si.87 “if the tetrasyllabic group,” continues kolessa, “corresponds to 3/4 time, then the melody usually sets off (by means of a weak beat) the first syllable, and (by means of a strong beat) the third syllable of the group: ♪ ♪ à à | ♪ ♪ à à | ♪ ♪ à à | ♪ ♪ à à | oj pid ga em ze le nen’kym bra-la vdo-va l’on drib-nen’kyj similarly: plive čóven / vodi póven.”88 hence in the ukrainian eight-syllable line the third and the seventh syllables are most often stressed. all we have said up to now indicates that further studies must take two directions. on the one hand, the stress in russian syllabic verse before trediakovskij must be studied, and, on the other hand, the stress in east slavic folk poetry and its relationship to the melody. particular attention should be given to the song books from the first half of the eighteenth century which, as is well known, contain not only imitations of the folk songs but also genuine folk songs. obviously these questions are outside the scope of the present study. however, even the limited materials here collected indicate quite clearly that the drive of the russian literary four-foot trochee must have developed under the influence of folk poetry. it could be suggested that this bipartite structure with strong icti on the third and seventh syllables is characteristic of trochaic eight-syllable lines in general. this is, however, not the case. for example, old polish, old czech and similarly also modern czech eight-syllable lines have completely different types of rhythmic drive.89 however, a bipartite structure very similar to the russian one is found in medieval latin trochaic eight-syllable lines. in the latter, jakobson’s figures show the accents distributed over the syllables in the following manner:90 syllables: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. “de corpori christi,” thomas aquinas: 84.6 1.9 100 00.0 48.1 00.0 100 00.0 2. “prologus in subjectum opusculum”: 84.6 00.0 98.9 00.0 64.8 00.0 100 00.0 3 4 119russian binary meters. part two this drive is very similar to the russian drive, but it is not as symmetrical: in the latin the first syllable is considerably stronger than the fifth. a rhythmic drive in the main similar to the russian is also found in the german four-foot trochee. the trochees of four german poets studied show the following stress distributions for the metrically strong syllables:91 syllables: 1 3 5 7 bürger: 82.3 93.1 86.3 95.6 goethe: 81.3 94.3 86.9 98.9 schiller: 73.2 85.7 88.1 98.2 heine: 69.7 92.7 73.2 97.2 here the great similarity between bürger’s and goethe’s rhythm is at once apparent. the bipartite rhythmic structure with the stronger icti on the third and seventh syllables emerges clearly, although the contrast between the strong and weak icti is far less marked than in the russian line. in heine the drive is more emphatic than in bürger and goethe, the contrast between strong and weak icti being greater, but the strength of heine’s rhythmic oscillation still falls below that of the russians. schiller’s line, however, differs from the lines of the other german poets studied, in that in his line the fifth-syllable ictus is stronger than the third-syllable ictus: thus, schiller’s line shows a progressive strengthening of the icti from the first to the last. as we shall see in the next section, a high stress percentage for the penultimate ictus is also characteristic of schiller in the four-foot iamb. his poetry, therefore, reveals different rhythmic tendencies from those found in bürger, goethe and heine. the origin of the german bipartite rhythmic structure is, in our opinion, to be found in medieval latin poetry, primarily in the church hymns written in trochaic eight-syllable lines, as in the following example from a thirteenthcentury hymns: dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla teste david cum sibylla. such hymns became popular also in religious poetry written in german, which borrowed from medieval latin hymnology not only the themes but also the rhythmic structure of the line, and probably musical forms as well. church hymns were also popular with the eighteenth-century german poets, e. g., gellert (“osterlied”): 120 kiril taranovsky jesus lebt, mit ihm auch ich. tod, wo sind nun deine schrecken? er, er lebt und wird auch mich von den toten auferwecken. er verklärt mich in sein licht; dies ist meine zuversicht. when all this is taken into consideration, the connection between the rhythmic drive of the medieval latin verse and the german verse of the eighteenth century becomes at the very least a strong probability.92 since russian syllabo-tonic verse was formed on the german model, the question must be raised as to whether the rhythmic drive of the german trochaic octosyllabic line could have influenced, and to what degree, the formation of the rhythmic drive of the russian four-foot trochee. we do not feel that that influence was significant. we have already shown that the bipartite rhythmic structure with strong icti on the third and seventh syllable was present in the first hemistich of trediakovskij’s and kantemir’s thirteen-syllable lines, i. e. before the appearance of the first imitations of the german trochaic eight-syllable line. and in trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable line, the bipartite structure is already more clearly marked than in german verse. kantemir’s above-mentioned rule concerning the octosyllabic line bears witness to the fact that russian poets, even without contact with german poetry, had by the early 1740s become fully aware of the bipartite rhythmic structure with strong icti on the third and the seventh syllables. the only instance of possible german influence is lomonosov’s first attempt at the trochaic tetrameter, when he translated fénelon’s ode in four-foot trochees at freiburg. this would be a perfectly tenable thesis, since lomonosov’s first attempts at the iamb were also, as we shall see in the next section, permeated with the rhythmic drive of the german meter.93 in lomonosov’s translation of fénelon the stresses are distributed in the following manner: syllables: 1 3 5 7 % of stresses: 79.3 82.1 58.6 100 as we see, the bipartite structure is still fairly undeveloped: the difference between the stress percentages for the first and third syllables is very small and the percentage of stresses on the first syllable is close to the corresponding percentage for the german poets. this high stress percentage for the first syllable of the four-foot trochee does not again occur in any russian poet. we 121russian binary meters. part two should not, however, forget that lomonosov’s translation remained buried in the files of the russian academy, and that it did not serve as an example to russian poets; an example was provided, rather, by the six lines in his “pis’mo” – too few lines to give any real feel of the rhythmic drive. while russian poetry is indebted to lomonosov for the establishment and popularization of the iambic meter (which will be discussed in the next section), trediakovskij and sumarokov contributed more to the popularizing of russian trochees. sumarokov in particular was close to folk poetry, whose form he so abundantly imitated in his lyrics, and neither he nor trediakovskij had read german poetry to such a degree that they became influenced by its rhythm. bearing these points in mind, we can state with assurance that in the formation of the rhythmic drive of the russian literary four-foot trochee, the influence of folk poetry was the decisive factor. during the historical development of the four-foot trochee, its rhythmic drive did not undergo any drastic changes, as did, for example, the drive of the four-foot iamb. from the 1740s to the second half of the twentieth century, we see an unbroken line of development (of course with certain individual deviations), which consisted in a progressive strengthening of the contrast between the weak and strong icti. the development of the rhythmic drive from lomonosov to the end of the nineteenth century is shown in table i, 1–26. we note immediately that the percentage of stresses on the third syllable shows a continuous rise. in the poets of the eighteenth century it is between 82.1% and 94.4%, and in those of the nineteenth century between 96.1% and 100%. in eight examples it reaches the maximum 100%; this is one of the rare examples of a rhythmic tendency developing into a constant. for the first syllable, in the eighteenth century the percentage of stresses is between 56.2% and 79.3%; it is usually somewhat above 60%. in the nineteenth century, if we exclude katenin (73.6%) and the youthful puškin (63.6%), the percentage for the first syllable is between 43.7% and 58.3%; thus, in the nineteenth century, as a rule, a considerably lower percentage of stresses occurs on the first syllable than in the eighteenth century. the fifth syllable offers a similar picture. the high figure is found in krylov – 63.7% – at first glance a somewhat unusually high figure, because in no other poet does the percentage of stresses on the fifth syllable reach 60%. this is, however, a distinctive trait with krylov. we shall see later that in other meters as well, his line is very heavy, i.e. has a high percentage of stresses. meanwhile, in other eighteenth-century poets the percentage of stresses on the fifth syllable does not fall below 50%. with the poets of the nineteenth century, the percentage is in six cases above 50%, and in thirteen cases below. in jazykov it is down to 34%, and in poležaev it reaches the rather unusual low of 29.1%, 122 kiril taranovsky which again is characteristic of these poets, for as we shall see, they very often omit the stress on the penultimate ictus in other binary meters as well. as far as other individual poets are concerned, of special interest are the poets at the turn of the nineteenth century. karamzin does not differ from the poets of the nineteenth century, but his much younger contemporary katenin belongs, on the basis of stress percentages for the first and, to some extent, fifth syllables, to the eighteenth century, while his percentage for the third syllable puts him in the nineteenth century. this is in keeping with his archaistic proclivities.94 even the lyrics of the youthful puškin (1814–1822) are, where the first-syllable percentages are concerned, reminiscent of the eighteenth century, whereas his fairy tale bova (1815) has already considerably fewer stresses on the first syllable. this difference is explained by the influence of karamzin, whose work puškin used as a model both in writing the fairy tale and on other occasions. the difference between the eighteenth and nineteenth century rhythmic patterns becomes still more evident if we examine the average percentages for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:95 syllables: 1 3 5 7 18th century: 63.3 89.5 54.8 100 19th century: 54.3 98.8 46.4 100 in comparison with the eighteenth century, the percentage of stresses on the third syllable has increased by almost 10%, while it has fallen on the first and fifth by some 8–9%. this has caused the rhythmic line in diagram i to acquire more acute angles for the nineteenth century; the rhythmic oscillation between the third and seventh syllables – the strong points in the line – is consequently more pronounced in the nineteenth century than in the eighteenth century. this oscillation is almost symmetrical, except that the first syllable is somewhat more frequently stressed than the fifth. the difference between these two syllables is in the eighteenth century 8.5%, and in the nineteenth 7.9%. in fact, as is clear from diagram i, the relative strengths of the first and the fifth syllables did not change, since both these syllables became weaker in the nineteenth century by an equal amount. 123russian binary meters. part two диаграмма 1. диаграмма 2. диаграмма 4. диаграмма 5. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 broken line: eighteenth century solid line: nineteenth century diagram i. distribution of stresses in four-foot trochee if we compare the rhythmic patterns of individual poets, we note that in ten cases the first syllable is stronger than the fifth, and weaker in only six cases (cf. table i, 6, 10, 16, 22, 25 and 26). thus in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the weakest syllable is as a rule the fifth syllable, i. e. the penultimate ictus in the line. the bipartite rhythmic oscillation is almost completely symmetrical in krylov, mej and a. k. tolstoj, in whose works the difference between the stress percentages for the first and fifth syllables is minimal, which, moreover, could be mere coincidence, as it is probably coincidence that in two examples from puškin the fifth syllable is stronger (cf. table i, 10 and 16), while in five cases the first is, as is normal, stronger.96 by comparing the average values for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can clearly see the difference between the verse of the two centuries, but the evolution of the four-foot trochee becomes even clearer when we compare the typical verse of individual poets over shorter time segments. in diagrams ii–v we have accordingly juxtaposed the rhythmic lines for lomonosov, trediakovskij, deržavin, puškin and poležaev. 124 kiril taranovsky диаграмма 1. диаграмма 2. диаграмма 3. диаграмма 4. диаграмма 5. диаграмма 6. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 diagram ii broken line: lomonosov (fénelon’s ode) solid line: trediakovskij диаграмма 1. диаграмма 2. диаграмма 3. диаграмма 4. диаграмма 5. диаграмма 6. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 diagram iii broken line: trediakovskij solid line: deržavinдиаграмма 1. диаграмма 2. диаграмма 3. диаграмма 4. диаграмма 5. диаграмма 6. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 diagram iv broken line: deržavin solid line: puškin (“skazka o mërtvoj carevne”) диаграмма 1. диаграмма 2. диаграмма 3. диаграмма 4. диаграмма 5. диаграмма 6. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 diagram v broken line: puškin solid line: poležaev while these diagrams somewhat simplify the evolution of the russian fourfoot trochee, they clearly show how the rhythmic line from lomonosov to poležaev acquires progressively more acute angles. this can be seen again from diagram vi, which shows the vast distance between lomonosov’s first attempts, in which the bipartite rhythmic oscillation is barely perceptible, and poležaev, in whose work this oscillation is most strongly developed. the rhythmic drive in poets of the second half of the nineteenth century is closer 125russian binary meters. part two to that of žukovskij and puškin than it is to that of poležaev and jazykov; this can be seen in diagram vii where puškin’s rhythmic line is compared to fet’s: диаграмма 1. диаграмма 2. диаграмма 3. диаграмма 4. диаграмма 5. диаграмма 6. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 diagram vi broken line: lomonosov solid line: poležaev диаграмма 7. 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 3 5 7 diagram vii broken line: puškin (“skazka o zolotom petuške”) solid line: fet the difference in the rhythmic drive of individual poets can be clearly felt by comparing even a small number of their lines. this can be illustrated by two short excerpts from deržavin and poležaev: skól’ tvoími čudesámi, vzgljáda tvoegó lučámi, ímenem tvoím blažénny! skól’ tobój my vosxiščénny! zrí na náši tý dnes’ líca, krótkaja nebés zeníca! gdé tvoë liš’ ímja, vzóry nám vozbléščut, – pésni, xóry tám povsjúdu razdajútsja. vosklicánija nesútsja: vséx tobój my v svéte kráše, lučezárno sólnce náše. (deržavin) 126 kiril taranovsky razdaválsja gúl gromóvyj, polunóčnaja grozá bléskom mólnii bagróvoj ozarjála nebesá. nad tumánnoju rekóju drévnij áncium dremál i ugrjúmoj tišinóju mírnyx žítelej k pokóju blagosklónno prizyvál. (poležaev) in the twelve deržavin lines only nine stresses are omitted: two in the first foot (lines ten and twelve), three in the second (lines two, three and six), and four in the third (lines one, four, nine and ten). this excerpt, therefore, is much too small to bring out the bipartite oscillation.97 of the twelve lines, four, i. e. onethird, have all four icti stressed. consequently the trochaic metrical scheme makes itself clearly felt: –́– ∪ –́– ∪ –́– ∪ –́– ∪ the omitted stresses break the monotony of the trochaic scheme by inserting in the lines moments of frustrated expectation. in the poležaev excerpt, however, there is not a single line with all four icti stressed. in only nine lines fourteen stresses are missing: six from the first foot, and eight from the third foot. five lines have two unstressed icti (on the first and the fifth syllables). the entire excerpt quite obviously leans toward a symmetrical pattern: ∪ ∪ –́– ∪ ∪ ∪ –́– [∪] while the stresses which do occur on the first and the fifth syllables produce moments of unfulfilled expectation, thereby giving greater variety to the rhythm. as we see, the rhythm of deržavin differs considerably from the rhythm of poležaev; hence the clear-cut difference in the rhythmic lines for these two poets, as shown in the appropriate diagrams. the bipartite structure of the four-foot trochee is produced by certain rhythmic variations or figures. in all there are seven such variations:98 127russian binary meters. part two figure no. of stressed icti in the line stressed syllables example i 4 1, 3, 5, 7 búrja mglóju nébo króet ii iii iv 3 3 3 –, 3, 5, 7 1, –, 5, 7 1, 3, –, 7 s kolesnícy pál dadón k slávnonu carjú saltánu víxri snéžnye krutjá v vi vii 2 2 2 1, –, –, 7 –, 3, –, 7 –, –, 5, 7 pó ͜ morju, po ͜ okeánu razočtëmsja, nakonéc vozblagodarít’ za blágo of all these variations, the seventh is the rarest. it was found in five poets only, and then only in from 0.1% to 0.3% of the lines. in twenty-one examples it was not found at all. the fifth variation is also very rare. it occurs most frequently in lomonosov’s translation of fénelon’s ode (2.9%) and also in trediakovskij (1.6%). in the other seven cases, its percentage varies from 0.3% to 0.9%: in seventeen examples it does not appear at all. it is obvious that russian poetry avoids having two unstressed feet next to each other. the small percentages for these variations (vii, v) shows that they play a quite insignificant role in the general rhythmic drive of the four-foot trochee. the third figure (iii) plays a certain role in the eighteenth century, where its percentage ranges between 15% and 5.6%. its subsequent sharp decline is very evident. in the nineteenth century its percentage varies from 3.6% to 0.4% and in nine cases is zero. this evolution is perfectly understandable: the third figure shows a progressive fall-off because of the increase in the percentage of stresses on the third syllable. thus the russian four-foot trochee gradually narrows down to only four variations. the percentages for these variations clearly show that two opposing tendencies are at work in the russian four-foot trochee. one is the tendency to stress all four icti. this function is performed by the first figure. its percentage varies from 12.1% to 37.5% (the low figure is found, quite naturally, in poležaev and the high figure in katenin). usually just under one-fourth of the lines have all four icti stressed. the second tendency consists in maximum stress omission. this tendency finds expression in the sixth figure, which has only two stressed icti. it is usually less common than the first figure, and its percentage in the nineteenth century is as a rule larger than in the eighteenth century: in the poets of the nineteenth century it is usually above 20%. the high figure is found in poležaev (39.3%), and the low figure in lomonosov (fénelon’s ode, 7.8%) and katenin (7.8%). however, in lomonosov’s later trochees its percentage increases to 20.8%, bringing lomonosov into line with the poets 128 kiril taranovsky of the nineteenth century. thus lomonosov himself pointed to the direction in which this rhythmic variation would develop. in other eighteenth-century poets, with the exception of karamzin, the percentage figure is considerably lower – between 11.9% and 18.1%. somewhere between these two extreme tendencies are two intermediate rhythmic variations with three stresses. figure ii omits the stress on the first foot, and figure iv omits the stress on the third foot: ii ∪ ∪ –́– ∪ –́– ∪ –́– [∪] iv –́– ∪ –́– ∪ ∪ ∪ –́– [∪] these two figures taken together give us six stresses (four strong and two weak) out of a possible eight stresses in two lines. figure ii varies from 17% to 31% (disregarding the low figure for lomonosov’s first ode) and figure iv varies from 20.5% to 37.9%. as a rule, the fourth figure is more common than the second; in fact it is usually the most common variation of all (in eighteen out of twenty-six examples). the two rhythmic variations under discussion (ii and iv) are the most significant for the four-foot trochee, for it is these which contribute most to the establishment of its bipartite rhythmic oscillation. the sum of their percentages varies from 43.6% to 60.4%; in eighteen of our examples it is above 50%, and in only eight is it below 50%. if we add to this sum the percentage for the sixth figure, we see that from 61% to 87.9% of the lines (once again disregarding lomonosov’s first ode) reinforce the bipartite rhythmic oscillation, while only 12.1% to 37.5%, as we noted, reproduce the metrical scheme with all four icti stressed. the bipartite rhythmic oscillation emerges most strongly in poležaev, jazykov, nekrasov and mej, and is weakest (excluding again lomonosov’s first attempt) in the trochees of katenin and krylov. the development of the four-foot trochee in respect to the use of the different rhythmic variations can be best seen if we compare the averages for the poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: variations: i ii iii iv v vi vii 18th c.: 24.8 20.2 9.7 28.1 0.7 16.4 0.1 19th c.: 22.6 22.8 1.1 30.6 0.1 22.9 0.05 these figures show that the most significant changes, as between the two centuries, occur in the third figure, which disrupts the bipartite rhythmic oscillation, and the sixth which creates it in its purest form. while the percentage for the sixth figure has risen sharply in the nineteenth century, the percentage for the 129russian binary meters. part two third has fallen even more sharply. also somewhat higher is the percentage for the intermediate figures (ii and iv) while the line with all four icti stressed (i) is somewhat more rare in the nineteenth than in the eighteenth century. while the metrical scheme naturally calls for 100% stresses, in practice only 68.2% to 84.2% of the icti are stressed in the russian four-foot trochee. the highest stress percentage figures are found in the first attempt by lomonosov (80%), in krylov (80.2%), and in katenin (82.4%). thus their lines carry the greatest number of stresses and are consequently the “heaviest”. at the opposite extreme are poležaev with only 68.2% and jazykov with 71.8% of the icti stressed. the percentage varies from poet to poet, but is most often around 75%. overall, the eighteenth-century trochaic tetrameter carries a somewhat greater number of stresses than that of the nineteenth century. the average percentage for the eighteenth century is 76.9% and for the nineteenth century – 74.9%. at the same time, however, the eighteenth-century trochee appears much “heavier” than one might expect on the basis of these percentages. this impression is due to the following factors. in the nineteenth century, there has been a decrease in the stress percentages for the first and fifth syllables, and the stresses now no longer occurring on these syllables have to some extent gone to swell the percentages for the third syllable; hence the near equality in total stress percentages for the two centuries. on the other hand, however, we must emphasize the fact that whereas we are consciously aware of the lightening of the stress load on the first and fifth syllables, the increased load on the third syllable does not have the effect of, as it were, weighting down the line. on the contrary, the absence of stress on the third syllable creates some sort of dissonance, since we have become accustomed, even subconsciously, to expect the constant stress on this syllable. this explains why, for example, even fet’s trochaic tetrameter appears to us “lighter” than trediakovskij’s, although the percentage of stressed icti is actually higher in fet.99 130 kiril taranovsky 6. the four-foot iamb the four-foot iamb might well be termed the universal meter of russian poetry. it is the favorite meter of russian poets. in the eighteenth century it was used primarily for the solemn ode. in the nineteenth century it was employed in the writing of many romantic poems. it was the meter for puškin’s “novel in verse”. it dominates the lyric genre. it has been pressed into service for the ballad, the elegy, the humorous verse epistle and the epigram. it is no exaggeration to say that at least one third of all russian lines of poetry are iambic tetrameters. two examples will suffice: of approximately 12,000 lines by lomonosov, over 5,000 lines were written in the four-foot iambic meter.100 of nearly 40,000 lines written by puškin, more than 21,500 are written in this meter.101 a similar proportion is surely to be found in many other poets. logically, therefore, the four-foot iamb deserves a very high priority in the present study. our investigation of this meter is based on an examination of more than 100,000 four-foot iambic lines.102 the first four-foot iambs in russian poetry are to be found in lomonosov’s famous “oda na vzjatie xotina”. late in 1739 or in early 1740 lomonosov sent this ode (together with his “pis’mo o pravilax rossijskogo stixotvortstva”) to the members of the russian assembly.103 a new period in russian poetry had begun. during the course of the following century the four-foot iamb underwent considerable evolution, even changing its basic rhythmic drive. the 1820’s mark, as we shall see, a critical phase in its development. in 1830, having used this meter for fifteen years, puškin wrote: четырехстопный ямб мне надоел: им пишет всякий. мальчикам в забаву пора б его оставить. but puškin did not abandon the four-foot iamb. nor did his fellow-poets. it was a favorite meter for the symbolists and it remains in favor with a majority of the poets of our day. on the eve of the 200th anniversary of lomonosov’s first ode, the poet vladislav xodasevič composed a veritable apotheosis in honor of the four-foot iamb: не ямбом ли четырехстопным, заветным ямбом, допотопным? о чём, как не о нём самом, о благодатном ямбе том? 131russian binary meters. part two с высот надзвездной музикии к нам ангелами занесён, он крепче всех твердынь россии, славнее всех ее знамён. из памяти изгрызли годы, за что и кто в хотине пал, но первый звук хотинской оды нам первым криком жизни стал. в тот день на холмы снеговые камена русская взошла и дивный голос свой впервые далёким сёстрам подала. с тех пор в разнообразьи строгом, как оный славный водопад, по четырем его порогам стихи российские кипят. и чем сильней спадают с кручи, тем пенистей водоворот, тем сокровенный лад певучий и выше светлых брызгов взлёт, – тех брызгов, где, как сон, повисла, сияя счастьем высоты, играя переливом смысла, – живая радуга мечты.1* 1 * translator’s note. taranovsky leaves out the concluding quatrain of xodasevič’s poem, which in the posthumously published (1939) version is preceded by ellipses marking an omitted eighth quatrain. таинственна его природа, в нëм спит спондей, поëт пэон, ему один закон – свобода, в его свободе есть закон. following is a plain prose translation of the full poem: 132 kiril taranovsky as was first demonstrated by belyj in his simvolizm, the russian four-foot iamb of the eighteenth century differs fundamentally from the four-foot iamb of the nineteenth century. in the eighteenth century the strong icti fall on the second and the eighth syllables: the fourth and the sixth syllables are considerably weaker, the weakest being the penultimate (the sixth syllable). in the nineteenth century the fourth and the eighth syllables are strong; the second syllable is weaker than the fourth; and the sixth, as in the eighteenth century, is the weakest. the rhythmic drive is bipartite, but not symmetrical: the second syllable as a rule is twice as strong as the sixth. the difference in the rhythmic drive of the four-foot iamb in the eighteenth century as opposed to the nineteenth century may be readily perceived by reading even a small number of lines. the following is an excerpt from lomonosov: в лугá усы́панны цвéтами цари́ца трудолю́бных пчéл блестя́щими шумя́ крылами лети́т между  ͜ прохлáдных сéл; i. is it not fitting tо write in iambic tetrameter, the sacred antediluvian iamb, when the subject is none other than the beneficent meter itself ? ii. from the heights of music’s realm, from beyond the stars, it was carried down to us by angels. it is stronger than all russia’s fastnesses, more glorious than all its banners. iii. the years have effaced the memory of who fell at khotin, and for what cause, yet the first sound of the khotin ode has become for us the first sound of life. iv. on that day the russian camena ascended the snow-covered hills and, in her wondrous voice, first announced her presence to her remote sisters. v. since then, the current of russian verse, constrained yet manifold like that glorious cataract, has swirled along its four rapids. vi. and the more precipitous its descent – the foamier the vortex, the more intimate the lyric melody, and the higher the upward surge of the radiant spray. vii. and in the droplets, beaming with the joy of ascent, playing with an overflow of sense, the vivid rainbow of a dream, like the iamb, hangs suspended. viii. … ix. mysterious is its nature; the spondee sleeps and the paeon sings within it. it has but one law – freedom. there is law in its freedom. 133russian binary meters. part two стекáется, остáвив рóзы и сóтом напоéнны лóзы, со тщáнием отвсю́ду рóй, свою́ цари́цу окружáет! и тéсно в слéд ея́ летает усéрдием вперéнный стрóй. подóбным жáром воспалéнный стекáлся здéсь росси́йский рóд, и рáдостию восхищéнный тесня́сь взирáл на твóй прихóд. младéнцы кýпно с сединóю спеши́ли слéдом за тобóю, тогдá вели́кий грáд петрóв в еди́ну стóгну умести́лся, тогдá и вéтр останови́лся, чтоб плéск всходи́л до облакóв, тогдá во всé предéлы свéта, как мóлния дости́гнул слýх, что цáрствует елисавéта, петрóв в себé имéя дýх. in these twenty-four lines twenty stresses are omitted, ten on the fourth and ten on the sixth syllables, while the second and eighth syllables are always stressed. the stress pattern thus emphasizes the beginning and the end of the line, and the oscillation can be likened to a single swing of the pendulum. this oscillation is seen in its purest form in a line of the following type: čto ͜ tsárstvuet elisavéta an altogether different impression is conveyed by, for example, puškin’s iamb: люблю́ тебя́, петрá творéнье, люблю́ твой стрóгий, стрóйный ви́д, невы́ держáвное течéнье, береговóй её грани́т, твои́х огрáд узóр чугýнный, твои́х задýмчивых ночéй прозрáчный сýмрак, блéск безлýнный, когдá я в кóмнате моéй 134 kiril taranovsky пишý, читáю без лампáды, и я́сны спя́щие громáды пусты́нных ýлиц, и светлá адмиралтéйская иглá, и, не пускáя тьмý ночнýю на золоты́е небесá, однá заря́ смени́ть другýю спеши́т, дав нóчи полчасá. ... ... ... ... ... красýйся, грáд петрóв, и стóй неколеби́мо, кáк росси́я, да умири́тся же с тобóй и побеждённая стихи́я; враждý и плéн стари́нный свóй пусть вóлны фи́нские забýдут и тщéтной злóбою не бýдут тревóжить вéчный сóн петрá! in these twenty-four lines twenty-one stresses are omitted – approximately the same number as in lomonosov. but puškin’s lines differ from those of lomonosov in that in puškin seven stresses are missing on the second syllable and fourteen on the sixth. therefore the second and fourth icti are thus the strong ones (the fourth and eighth syllables). the rhythm oscillates between these as between two strong points: the oscillation is thus bipartite. this type of oscillation in its pure form is seen in a line of the following type: admiraltéjskaja iglá we see then that the rhythmic drive of the eighteenth century is based on the two strong icti separated from each other by the two weaker icti, whereas in the bipartite structure of the nineteenth century the weaker and stronger icti alternate. we are thus confronted with the following questions: 1) what is the origin of the “single-swing” drive of the four-foot iamb of the eighteenth century?; 2) in what way and for what reasons did it change into the bipartite structure of the nineteenth century? to answer the first question, we shall have to compare the poetry of lomonosov (where this eighteenth-century drive appeared for the first time) with the german poetry that served as his model. to answer the second question, we shall have to study in detail the development of the fourfoot iamb, not losing sight of the evolution of other russian binary meters. in 135russian binary meters. part two order to present this development as clearly as possible, we shall investigate the four-foot iamb by periods: 1) the eighteenth century; 2) the transitional period (in which we observe two stages) and: 3) the nineteenth century. in introducing the four-foot iamb into russian poetry, lomonosov had no examples to follow, for neither in russian folk poetry nor in the literary tradition did there exist a meter which resembled the iamb. thus lomonosov’s first attempt has to be explained solely in terms of german influence, for it is known that lomonosov had made a thorough study of german verse theory and that he borrowed from it the rules for russian verse. lomonosov followed in the footsteps of his german teachers not only in theory but also in practice. an ode by günther written to commemorate the conclusion of a peace treaty with the turks104 served as a model for lomonosov’s ode. not only was lomonosov under the influence of günther’s ideas, borrowing from him certain lines, the meter and the stanzaic form, but he even subconsciously absorbed günther’s rhythmic drive, the drive which is more or less characteristic of the german four-foot iamb in general. let us compare the distribution of stresses in lomonosov’s, günther’s, goethe’s and schiller’s poetry105: syllables: 2 4 6 8 lomonosov: 99.3 87.1 86.1 100.0 günther: 97.0 89.4 85.8 96.6 goethe: 94.4 89.6 86.6 99.0 schiller: 92.1 79.2 90.5 97.9 as can be seen from diagram viii, the rhythmic lines are almost identical for lomonosov and günther. goethe’s rhythmic pattern shows a similar stress distribution. schiller’s differs somewhat from günther’s and goethe’s because of his somewhat higher percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable: in his line the third ictus is stronger than the second. this is a distinctive characteristic of schiller’s poetry. in his four-foot trochee also the penultimate ictus is stronger than the preceding one. yet even in schiller’s line the strongest icti are the first and the fourth, i. e. those icti that strengthen the beginning and end of the line. 136 kiril taranovsky диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: günther solid line: lomonosov diagram viii. distribution of stresses in the four-foot iambs of günther and lomonosov comparing lomonosov’s stress figures with the german stress figures, we conclude that lomonosov, under the influence of the germans, emphasized the first and last feet to an even greater extent in subsequent years – probably quite unconsciously. in his first ode lomonosov clings fairly closely to the four-stress iambic metrical form: the percentage of lines with all four stresses in this ode is 72.5%, while lines with two pyrrhics are completely lacking. in the fourth section we noted that lomonosov at that same time considered the pyrrhic as some sort of compromise with the structure of the russian language and even as a defect. in his “pis’mo” lomonosov speaks of lines containing pyrrhics as “irregular or free”. it seems that lomonosov was not satisfied with his first attempt primarily because of the pyrrhics. in two 1741 odes he strove to create a totally pure iamb (cf. table ii, 2); and the percentage of lines with all four stresses climbed in those odes to 95%. this extremely ponderous line was to remain an isolated phenomenon in russian poetry. as early as 1742 and 1743 lomonosov returns to his 1739 rhythmic pattern (cf. table ii, 3 & 4). it is obvious that he had realized that the pyrrhic is not a defect, for in 1745–1746 he began to favor lines with pyrrhics, and in his four-foot iamb of those years the percentage of lines with all four icti stressed decreases to 32.7%, and later decreases still further. his poetry from 1745 to 1746 (cf. table ii, 5–12) shows a significant weakening of the second and third icti, resulting in a far more clearly perceptible rhythmic oscillation between the two strong icti (on the second and eighth syllables). diagram ix shows the further evolution of lomonosov’s four-foot iambic line. 137russian binary meters. part two диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 dotted line: lomonosov’s 4-ft. iamb (1741) broken line: his 4-ft. iamb (1743) solid line: his 4-ft. iamb (1759–1760) diagram ix lomonosov’s four-foot iamb from 1745 to 1764 does not differ greatly from that of his successors. in addition to lomonosov, we studied the four-foot iamb of fourteen eighteenth-century poets. in all the poets studied (cf. table ii, 5–26), the second syllable is strongly stressed; the percentage of stresses is as a rule above 90% (it ranges from 88.2% to 98.1%) and only in two cases (kostrov and kapnist) does it fall below 90%. the fourth syllable is somewhat weaker than the second and the percentage of stresses on it varies from 71.2% to 89.2%. only in three examples (all three taken from lomonosov) does it fall below 75%. also in only three cases — these, moreover, from the last decade of the eighteenth century (nikolev, krylov and kotel’nickij) — does it exceed 85%. in the remaining sixteen examples, the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable ranges between 75% and 85% – which may be regarded as constituting the typical range limits for the eighteenth-century russian fourfoot iamb. the difference in the percentages of the stresses on the second and fourth syllables is always in favor of the second, and varies usually between 6.3% and 23.3%. only towards the end of the eighteenth century can one feel a tendency toward the equalization of the relative strengths of the second and fourth syllables. this occurs in two poets (krylov and kotel’nickij), and even with them the second syllable is stronger, though only by a small margin: the 138 kiril taranovsky difference between the second and the fourth syllables is 3.6% in krylov and 2.1% in kotel’nickij. in the four-foot iamb of the eighteenth century the least stable ictus is that on the sixth syllable. the percentage of stresses on it varies from 41.9% to 61.8%. it is found to be above 60% only in two poets: petrov and krylov – and in the latter we have already observed in the four-foot trochee an unusually high stress percentage for the penultimate ictus. the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable falls below 50% only in five examples: in lomonosov (1747 — 48% and 1750 — 47.8%), osipov (1791 — 47.3%) kozodavlev (42.8%) and kotel’nickij (1795 — 41.9%). thus in the great majority of cases this percentage is over 50%. these high stress percentages for the sixth syllable must be considered typical of the eighteenth century. at the same time we note a certain trend towards the end of the eighteenth century to weaken the ictus on the sixth syllable, a tendency which is strongly evident in the verse of kotel’nickij and kozodavlev, poets in whose work the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable is quite unusual for the eighteenth century. as we see, toward the end of the eighteenth century the tetrameters of three poets — krylov, kotel’nickij and kozodavlev — show certain specific characteristics which set them apart from the work of their predecessors. while the high percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable in krylov can be explained by the fact that he tends more than others to stress all the icti (the percentage of lines with all four stresses in his poetry is 44.5%), kotel’nickij’s high figures for the fourth syllable are obviously caused by a lowering of the percentages of stresses on the sixth. in kozodavlev, however, the reduction of the stress percentages for the sixth syllable did not produce the same result: instead, his entire line is more lightly stressed. the verse of these three poets shows that before the end of the eighteenth century the quite strongly defined norms, characteristic of that century, had begun to waver. the average for all the eighteenth-century poets studied shows the following stress distributions: syllables: 2 4 6 8 % stressed: 93.2 79.7 53.2 100 these figures may be regarded as typical for eighteenth-century russian verse.106 in diagram form they produce a line similar to that already observed in the german four-foot iamb – except that the stress percentages for the fourth and sixth syllables are considerably lower. in general, therefore, the russian four-foot iamb of the eighteenth century reproduces the german 139russian binary meters. part two rhythmic drive and even makes it more emphatic by stress omissions, especially on the penultimate ictus: the german four-foot iamb never shows such a large number of unstressed icti on the sixth syllable. this difference between the eighteenth-century russian and the german iambic tetrameter is illustrated in diagram x. диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: goethe’s 4-ft. iamb solid line: russian 4-ft. iamb of the 18th century diagram x two stages can be observed in the transitional period in the development of the russian four-foot iamb. the first covers approximately the period from 1800 to 1814, i.e. up to puškin’s first attempt at writing in the four-foot iamb (“kol’na”), and the second from 1814 to 1820, i.e. the period in which puškin’s poetry was maturing. the exact chronological boundaries cannot be established, for some poets took longer to adopt the new rhythmic patterns while others accepted them readily. for the first stage we examined the poetry of vasilij puškin (1795–1815), žukovskij (1797–1800 and 1803–1813), batjuškov (1805–1813), vjazemskij (1811–1815), a. puškin (1814, “kol’na”) and del’vig (1814) (cf. table ii, 27–33). in allof these poets the eighteenth-century rhythmic drive is still clearly perceptible. vasilij puškin actually differs in no way from his eighteenth-century predecessors, and we shall, therefore, disregard him in our examination of the stress distribution figures for the first stage in the transitional period. in the other poets studied one can already feel certain minor 140 kiril taranovsky changes in the rhythmic drive. the stress percentage for the second syllable varies in their poetry from 85.1% to 97.1%. in four cases the figure is above 90%, as in the eighteenth century. in two it is below 90% (vjazemskij and del’vig), which was rare in the eighteenth century. žukovskij, batjuškov and the early puškin do not, as far as the stress figures for the second syllable are concerned, differ from the eighteenth century. the stress percentage for the fourth syllable varies in this stage from 78.5% to 88.3%, and is below 85% in only two cases (del’vig — 78.5%, and vjazemskij — 84.9%). in žukovskij, batjuškov and puškin, it is already over 85%, which would be exceptional for the eighteenth century (we did observe percentages over 85% in the last decade of the eighteenth century). thus žukovskij, batjuškov and puškin, by virtue of their high stress figures for the fourth syllable, are already moving away from the eighteenth-century norm. the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable in the poets belonging to this stage varies from 40% to 54.4%. only in two cases is it above 50%, while in four it is below. in other words, we have here a reversal of the eighteenth-century norm, in which the percentage of stresses on that syllable falls below 50% only as an exception — and then primarily towards the end of the century. the essence of these minor changes which occurred in the first stage of the transitional period can be best seen by comparing average stress distributions for the eighteenth century with those for the first stage of the transitional period (cf. diagram xi): syllables: 2 4 6 8 18th century 93.2 79.7 53.2 100 first stage of transitional period107 92.6 85.9 49.1 100 we note that in the first stage of the transitional period the percentage of stresses on the second syllable has remained basically the same as in the eighteenth century. however, the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable has risen considerably, while it has fallen on the sixth by a corresponding amount. it is obvious that the percentage on the fourth syllable has risen to a great extent at the expense of the percentage on the sixth syllable. we previously observed this same phenomenon in kotel’nickij (1795). to be sure, this shift from one ictus to the other did not take place in all cases. for example, del’vig, like kozodavlev in the eighteenth century, shows a reduced stress percentage for the sixth syllable without any compensating increase on the fourth. this indicates that the poets belonging to this period did not consciously weaken the sixth in favor of the fourth syllable, but that the weakening of 141russian binary meters. part two the sixth syllable in the majority of poets automatically caused, so to speak, a strengthening of the fourth. (as we shall see, in the first decades of the nineteenth century the penultimate ictus is also noticeably weakened in other meters.) owing to the strengthening of the ictus on the fourth syllable the difference between the stress percentages for the second and fourth syllables has decreased. in the eighteenth century this difference averages 13.5%, but in 1800–1814 it is 6.7%. thus the relative difference in strength between the first and the second ictus has somewhat diminished.диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: 4-ft. iamb of the 18th century solid line: first stage of the transitional period diagram xi the second stage of the transitional period begins in 1814. we studied the following poets belonging to that period: žukovskij (1814–1832), batjuškov (1815–1817), vjazemskij (1816–1819), puškin (all of the four-foot iamb from 1814–1820 and baxčisarajskij fontan, 1822–1823), del’vig (1817–1819), kozlov (1821), venevitinov (d. 1827) and ryleev (dumy, 1821–1823) (cf. table ii, 34–50). in these poets the percentage of stresses on the second syllable varies from 84% to 92.5%: in five cases it is above 90%, while in twelve it is below. thus the stress percentage for the second syllable does not normally reach 90%, whereas in the eighteenth century it was almost always above. the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable varies from 82.6% to 94.1%. as a rule it is above 85% (in thirteen out of seventeen cases) and even exceeds 90% in six cases. the second ictus has thus become perceptibly stronger than 142 kiril taranovsky it was in the eighteenth century (in which in only three cases, and that in the last decade, did the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable exceed 85%). the difference between the percentages of stresses on the fourth and second syllables is in favor of the fourth in eleven cases and in favor of the second in only six (it varies from +4.1% to –4.9%). the relative strength of the first and second icti thus tends toward equality. the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable varies in the second stage of the transitional period from 34.4% to 51%. in seven cases it is below 40%, a percentage not observed before 1814, and in nine cases it is between 40% and 50%: in only one case (in ryleev’s dumy) does it exceed 50%. when we recall that in the eighteenth century this percentage as a rule was above 50%, we realize how relatively weak the sixth syllable has now become. in this respect, the similarity between žukovskij (1818–1820), batjuškov (1815–1817) and puškin (lyrics, 1814–1820) is clearly evident, since in all three the stress percentages for the sixth syllable are now below 40%. all these changes in the rhythmic drive of the four-foot iamb can be clearly seen if we compare the averages for this period and the preceding one (cf. diagram xii): syllables: 2 4 6 8 first stage of transitional period: 92.6 85.9 49.1 100 second stage of transitional period:108 87.7 87.7 43.2 100 as we see, the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable has risen somewhat, while the percentages on the second and the sixth have fallen considerably. the drop in the percentage for the second syllable cannot be explained without a comparison with other iambic meters of the same period: but this will come later. the increase in the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable is to a great extent, as in the preceding period, at the expense of the sixth syllable which has in 1814–1820 become still weaker. this is especially evident in batjuškov and puškin. by 1814–1820 the second and the fourth syllables have become equal in strength: thus we now have equally strong icti next to each other. 143russian binary meters. part two диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: first stage of transitional period solid line: second stage diagram xii on the basis of the foregoing discussion, the following general observations can now be made concerning the transitional period. the reduction in the percentages of stresses on the sixth syllable (weakening of the penultimate ictus) is characteristic for the whole of the transitional period. while for its first stage the increase of stresses on the fourth syllable is also characteristic, more important for the second stage is the reduction of the percentage of stresses on the second syllable. all these changes did not occur independently of similar changes in other binary meters, in particular the iambic meters. as the foregoing discussion shows, the changes in the four-foot iamb of the transitional period occur simultaneously in the work of several poets. for this reason none of them can be considered the pioneer reformer of the russian four-foot iamb. but their roles in the development of this meter are not identical. vjazemskij and žukovskij, particularly the latter, contributed most to the weakening of the second syllable. on the other hand, batjuškov and puškin contributed more toward the stabilization of the second ictus as a strong one, since in their work the stress percentages for the fourth syllable exceed 90%. these two characteristic tendencies of the entire transitional period are best illustrated by the following comparison of the four-foot iambs of žukovskij and puškin: 144 kiril taranovsky syllables: 2 4 6 8 žukovskij (1814–1832): 85.0 85.0 43.2 100 puškin (1814–1820): 90.5 90.5 40.8 100 the strengths of the fourth syllable in žukovskij and the second syllable in puškin are in line with the norms of the eighteenth century. however, the percentage of stresses on the second syllable in žukovskij and the fourth in puškin would be quite unusual for the eighteenth century. as we shall see below, these two tendencies of the transitional period (i. e. the progressive weakening of the second syllable and strengthening of the fourth) will both be present in the work of many poets after 1820. the fourth syllable will become still stronger and the second still weaker. in this way a new rhythmic drive will be created for the four-foot iamb. the majority of the poets studied as representative of the transitional period were quick to abandon the wavering drive of this stage and to adopt the new bipartite rhythmic structure. first to emancipate themselves were vjazemskij, puškin and del’vig: after 1820 their iambs have a clearly perceptible new drive (cf. table iii, 1–20). an exception in puškin’s poetry is baxčisarajskij fontan (cf. table ii, 46), which constitutes the last echo of the transitional period in his poetry. in the same way we clearly see the transition to new patterns in ryleev (executed in 1826): while his dumy (1821–1823; cf. table ii, 50) shows a drive characteristic of the transitional period, his poem vojnarovskij is quite clearly characterized by the new drive (cf. table iii, 21). the same change can also be seen in kozlov if we compare his four-foot iamb of 1821 (cf. table ii, 48), on the one hand, and that of 1824 and 1827 (cf. table iii, 22 and 23), on the other. of the remaining poets under discussion, only vasilij puškin remained faithful to the eighteenth-century drive after the year 1820. batjuškov went insane and stopped writing, venevitinov died in 1827. žukovskij continued for a long time to vacillate between the old and the new rhythmic drive. v. puškin was obviously the one most under the sway of the eighteenth-century drive. when in 1828 he again began to employ the four-foot iamb — for a poem of some length — he still retained the “single-swing” drive of the eighteenth century (cf. table ii, 55). the stress percentage for the second syllable in this work is, to be sure, under 90% (87.5%); but then the stress percentage for the fourth syllable is still 9.5% less than the percentage for the second. as for žukovskij, his poetry from 1818 to 1832 shows considerable vacillations (cf. table ii, 34–38). in his poetry from 1818 to 1820 the fourth syllable is somewhat stronger than the second; in 1821 it is the second which is the stronger; but after 1823 the fourth syllable is once again stronger. if his poetry 145russian binary meters. part two is analyzed in even smaller portions (e. g., if we take individual epistles from 1820 and 1821, or individual translations from 1832), the abovementioned vacillations become even more noticeable. it is obvious that in the period from 1814 to 1832 žukovskij had lost contact with the eighteenth-century rhythmic drive, but did not feel definitely impelled toward the new bipartite structure. after 1832 there occurs a lengthy hiatus in žukovskij’s four-foot iamb. but when ten years later he returned to this meter (“1 ijunja 1824”, cf. table iii, 40), his poetry quite clearly reflected the new rhythmic drive. there is one other poet whom we have not yet discussed and whose verse does not reflect the changes characteristic of the russian iamb of the 1820’s, that poet is kjuxel’beker (cf. table ii, 51–54), like v. puškin he was very conservative in respect to the rhythmic drive of the four-foot iamb. this is quite understandable. in his first period, before the decembrist uprising, kjuxel’beker displayed strongly archaistic tendencies. in style and rhythm he clearly followed the tradition of the eighteenth century. kjuxel’beker was, moreover, strongly influenced by german poets, in whose work the rhythmic drive emphasizes the first and last icti in the line. later, in exile, he was completely isolated from the literary ferment of the capital, and his iamb of those years became even closer to the tradition of the eighteenth century. nevertheless, in his poetry also the stress percentages for the second syllable are below 90% (ranging from 86.7% to 89.9%). however, only in his first period do the stress figures for the fourth syllable exceed 85% – and then only by a slight margin (85.7% and 86.7%), falling in the second period to 81.4% and 81.9%. his fourth syllable is fairly strong, and in his second period the percentage can be as high as 60.2%, the difference between the second and the fourth syllable is in kjuxel’beker’s poetry always in favor of the second syllable; it varies between 1.6% and 7.7%. consequently, his four-foot iamb shows not a trace of the new rhythmic drive. on the contrary, in the 1830’s he is developing in a direction directly opposite to that of his contemporaries. finally let us mention three more poets who appeared in the 1820’s and who were not quite in step with the times. these are ševyrev, xomjakov and lermontov (cf. table ii, 56–60). the first attempts at the four-foot iamb by ševyrev (1820 and 1825)109 and xomjakov (1826–1827) still show an eighteenth-century rhythmic drive: the difference between the second and the fourth syllables is in favor of the second and varies from 3.8% to 5%. the youthful lermontov’s tetrameter (verses from 1828 and one poem from 1830 — poslednij syn vol’nosti) strongly resembles the four-foot iamb of the second stage of the transitional period: the second syllable is stronger than the fourth, but only minimally (by 0.4% and 1.4%). in contrast to v. puškin and kjuxel’beker, who till their deaths remained faithful to the tradition of the 146 kiril taranovsky eighteenth century, ševyrev, xomjakov and lermontov very quickly adopted the new rhythmic drive of puškin’s poetic school (cf. table iii, 24–39). thus the four-foot iambs of vasilij puškin (1828) and kjuxel’beker (from the 1830s) represent the last traces of the rhythmic tradition of the eighteenth century. the new bipartite structure with strong icti on the fourth and eighth syllables appears in fully developed form after 1820 – simultaneously in a large number of poets. these poets may be divided into two groups: 1) those who freed themselves from the influence of the transitional period and developed a new rhythmic drive (cf. table iii, 1–40); 2) those who began to appear around 1820 and whose iambic tetrameters display the bipartite rhythmic structure from the very beginning (cf. table iii, 41–57). the first group includes puškin, vjazemskij, del’vig, ryleev, kozlov, ševyrev, xomjakov and lermontov. žukovskij – on the basis only of his 1842 iambs — may also be included. in the second group we place pletnev, jazykov, baratynskij, tjutčev and poležaev. at the end of the table (table iii, 58–61) we have also mentioned four poets from the second half of the nineteenth century: nekrasov, mej, a. k. tolstoj and fet. with the first group of poets the percentage of stresses on the second syllable varies from 77.5% to 90.5%. in only five examples (all from vjazemskij) does it fall below 80%, and in only two poets (kozlov and xomjakov) does it exceed 90%. in the remaining thirty-three examples the percentage varies from 80% to 90% (or more precisely from 80.6% to 89.9%). the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable varies from 85.2% to 96.4%. it falls below 90% in only nine cases and is above 90% in thirty-one cases. moreover, of the nine instances mentioned five are from vjazemskij. it is evident that the fourth syllable has stabilized itself as a strong ictus. the difference between the second and the fourth is always in favor of the fourth and varies from 2.6% to 12.8%. in only eight examples (out of forty) is it below 5% (puškin, vjazemskij, kozlov before 1825; xomjakov and lermontov’s early lyrics); in nine examples the difference is greater than 10%. the fourth syllable is thus as a rule noticeably stronger than the second. the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable varies from 38.9% to 54.8%. in only one case does it fall below 40% (ševyrev); in five it is above 50%. thus, in the vast majority of cases (i. e. in thirty-four) this percentage varies between 40% and 50%. let us compare the averages for the first group of poets with the averages for the second stage of the transitional period in order to bring out more clearly the evolution of the four-foot iamb after 1820 (cf. diagram xiii): 147russian binary meters. part two syllables: 2 4 6 8 second stage of the transitional period: 87.7 87.7 43.2 100 poets after 1820 who have adopted the new rhythmic drive:110 84.4 92.2 46.0 100 as we see, the percentage of stresses on the second syllable shows a decrease after 1820, while the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable rises considerably. the sixth syllable, on the other hand, has not become weaker; on the contrary, the percentage of stresses on it has even increased.111 whereas in the transitional period the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable was rising mainly at the expense of the sixth, in the tetrameters of the poets who have adopted the new rhythmic drive after 1820 the fourth syllable has gained ground not at the expense of the sixth syllable, but of the second syllable. this fact is particularly important for our understanding of the evolution of the four-foot russian iamb in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. the entire problem will be further discussed in connection with the development of other binary meters.диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: the second stage of the transitional period solid line: poets after 1820 who adopted the new rhythmic drive diagram xiii 148 kiril taranovsky in the poets from the second group, i.e. those who started after 1820 with the bipartite rhythmic structure already formed, and in the four poets studied from the second half of the nineteenth century (cf. table iii, 41–61), the percentage of stresses on the second syllable varies between 75.6% and 88.2%; in five examples it is above 80%, but it never reaches 90%. the percentage of stresses on the fourth syllable varies from 89.2% to 100%. only in one case (the early tjutčev) is this percentage below 90%. in all other cases it is always above that figure. in fact, the fourth syllable quite often comes close to being a constant (e.g., in jazykov, baratynskij and poležaev) and in one instance (with poležaev) this actually occurs. the difference between the fourth and second syllables varies from 6.9% to 23.1%. the low figure occurs, of course, in tjutčev (again in his early poetry from 1820 to 1840) and the high figure in baratynskij. in only five cases (out of twenty-one) is its percentage below 10%, while in three it even exceeds 20% (once in jazykov and twice in baratynskij). the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable with this group varies from 24.6% to 51.5%; as we see, this ictus is the least stable. in six cases the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable is below 30%, in eight it varies between 30% and 40%, in six it slightly exceeds 40% (going up to 44%). the only case exceeding 50% is found in the early work of baratynskij (1819–1820). this high figure is, therefore, quite exceptional. only in jazykov and poležaev does this percentage fall below 30%; this is characteristic of these two poets, whose four-foot trochees also show the weakest penultimate ictus. the foregoing materials suffice to show that with the poets of this group the ictus on the second and sixth syllables, especially the latter, has become weaker. the contrast between the weaker and stronger icti has increased and the bipartite rhythmic structure has become even more pronounced than it was with the first group of poets, i.e. those poets who adopted the bipartite structure in mid-career, having initially employed the rhythmic drive of the transitional period that failed to take hold. a comparison of the averages for the two groups makes this abundantly clear: syllables: 2 4 6 8 poets who adopted the new rhythmic drive: 84.4 92.2 46.0 100 poets who used it from the beginning:112 82.1 96.8 34.6 100 diagram xiv clearly shows that the bipartite rhythmic line for the post-1820 poets has sharper angles than the rhythmic line representing their mostly older contemporaries who had paid their tribute to the rhythmic pattern of the transitional period. 149russian binary meters. part two диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: poets who adopted the new rhythmic drive after 1820 solid line: new poets after 1820 who had started with that drive diagram xiv. the 4-ft. iamb of the 19th century what we have so far observed in our study of the iambic tetrameter from the 1740’s into the second half of the nineteenth century (diagrams xi–xiv) is a gradual change in the rhythm, in effect a series of small, almost imperceptible changes. however, if we compare the initial and the final phases of this process, we shall see that the difference between the eighteenth and the nineteenthcentury rhythmic patterns is very great: syllables: 2 4 6 8 eighteenth century: 93.2 79.7 53.2 100 new poets after 1820: 82.1 96.8 34.6 100 while the percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable has fallen by almost 20%, the percentages for the second and the fourth syllable have reversed their positions; the lines on the diagram which connect the second and fourth syllables intersect almost at right angles (cf. diagram xv). 150 kiril taranovsky диаграмма 8. диаграмма 9. диаграмма 10. диаграмма 11. диаграмма 12. диаграмма 13. диаграмма 14. диаграмма 15. 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 70 80 90 100 2 4 6 8 broken line: 4-ft. iamb of the 18th century solid line: new poets after 1820 diagram xv from a comparison of the two rhythmic lines we can obtain a picture of the main characteristics of the russian four-foot iamb. in its rhythmic drive the strong icti are more clearly defined as such than the weak. of the weak icti only the penultimate is really characterized by the pyrrhic foot, which plays a far more important role in the nineteenth than in the eighteenth century. on the basis of the strong and weak icti, in the eighteenth century the beginning and end of the line are the strong points, the end more so than the beginning. this is due not only to the 100% stress figure for the eighth syllable, but also to the fact that the eighth syllable is preceded by the weakest ictus in the line (on the sixth syllable), whereas the strong beginning of the line (the first ictus) is produced by a mere toning down of the following ictus (on the fourth syllable). the middle and the end of the line (fourth and eighth syllables) are the strong points of the nineteenth century, and here again the end of the line is stronger than the middle, the second ictus deriving its strength from a toning down of the first. while, therefore, weak and strong icti do indeed alternate in the bipartite structure of the nineteenth-century four-foot iamb, the contrast between the penultimate and the last ictus is much greater than between the first and the second. in this respect the bipartite structure of the four-foot iamb differs considerably from its counterpart in the four-foot trochee. 151russian binary meters. part two as we have seen, the new bipartite rhythmic structure of the four-foot iamb was already fully developed at the beginning of the 1820’s in the work of a large number of poets: puškin, vjazemskij, del’vig, ryleev, pletnëv, baratynskij, jazykov and others. no single poet can claim the credit for this new development.113 this new drive became characteristic of the russian four-foot iamb and remains so to this day. the validity of this statement can be confirmed even without statistical analysis; it is sufficient to read carefully the tetrameters of any of the more recent poets. moreover, andrej belyj did demonstrate this statistically, not only in some of the poets which we too have analyzed, but also in benediktov, k. pavlova, polonskij, a. majkov, slučevskij and nadson in the nineteenth century, and in merežkovskij, sologub, v. ivanov, blok and gorodeckij in the twentieth century.114 up to the present the bipartite structure has remained asymmetrical; the first ictus is always considerably stronger than the third. as is the case in all binary meters, the rhythmic drive of the four-foot iamb is created by its different rhythmic variations or figures; the more or less frequent use of this or that figure produces differences in the rhythmic drive. in a four-foot iamb, there are only seven such variations. they are as follows: ordinal no. no. of icti stressed syllables example i 4 2, 4, 6, 8 odním dyšá, odnó ljubjá ii 3 –, 4, 6, 8 beregovój eë granít iii 3 2, –, 6, 8 na lákovom polú moëm iv 3 2, 4, –, 8 bylá užásnaja porá v 2 2, –, –, 8 izvólila elisavét vi 2 –, 4, –, 8 porfironósnaja vdová vii 2 –, –, 6, 8 i velosipedíst letít theoretically, an eighth variation is also possible: three pyrrhics following each other with a single stress on the eighth syllable. but this never occurs. nor is the seventh figure found in its pure form.115 thus, the four-foot iamb is in practice limited to only six variations. as might be expected, the difference in the rhythmic drive of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is accompanied by a difference in the use of the various figures. in the eighteenth century the basic rhythmic drive is maintained by the first, third and fourth figures. taken together, these three figures normally account for about 90% of all lines, while the remaining three make up only about 10% (cf. table ii, 5–26). the percentage for the first figure (all 152 kiril taranovsky four stresses) varies in the eighteenth century from 20.6% to 46.2%. the minimum was found in kozodavlеv, whom we have already mentioned as deviating from the norms of the remaining poets of the eighteenth century. leaving aside kozodavlеv, in eleven cases the percentage is under 30%, in eight it is between 30% and 40%, and only in three (petrov, nikolev and krylov) does it exceed 40%. as we see, the average should be somewhere around 30%, and in fact the precise average for the whole eighteenth century is 31.1%. thus in the eighteenth century just under one third of all four-foot iambs have all four icti stressed, i. e. fully implement the metrical scheme. the percentage for the third figure varies in the eighteenth century from 10.4% to 26.9%. the minimum is found in kotel’nickij (1795) and the maximum in lomonosov (1762–1764). this is quite understandable, for we have seen that of all the poets of the eighteenth century lomonosov most often leaves unstressed the fourth syllable, while kotel’nickij stresses this syllable most often. as a rule the third figure is less common than the first (in only one example, lomonosov’s 1762–1764 tetrameters, is its percentage higher than the percentage for the first figure). the percentage for the fourth figure varies in the eighteenth century from 33.7% to 54%. it falls below 40% in eight cases, in twelve it is between 40% and 50%, and in only two (kotel’nickij and kozodavlev) does it exceed 50%. the average for the whole eighteenth century is 41.9%. usually it is the most frequently employed variation (in seventeen cases out of twenty-two, while in the remaining five cases the first is most frequently employed). as we see, in the eighteenth century the most widely used is the variation which omits the stress on the penultimate ictus (iv), followed by that which fully implements the metrical scheme (i), and in third place is the variation which omits the stress on the second ictus (iii). while the first figure, as noted, fully implements the metrical scheme, the third and the fourth together produce a “single-swing” rhythmic drive which imparts strength to the beginning and the end of the line. the sum of the third and the fourth figures in the eighteenth century is almost always above 50% of all lines. of the remaining three figures, whose sum, as noted, very seldom exceeds 10%, the least common is usually the fifth figure (in sixteen cases out of twentytwo). that is precisely the one which creates the “single-swing” rhythmic drive in its pure form (“izvólila elisavét”). its percentage varies between 0.4% and 4.1%; in eight examples it is below and in a majority of poets it is below 2.5%. only in osipov is its percentage somewhat higher (4.1%). the low percentages for this figure permit us to draw two conclusions: 1) the poets of the eighteenth century avoid two unstressed feet next to each other, and: 2) they are not actually seeking to create the “single-swing” drive in pure form; thus it is more important for them to stress the strong icti at the beginning and the end 153russian binary meters. part two of the line than to insist on weakening the weak icti. the percentages for the second figure range in the eighteenth century from 0.4% to 7.4%, and in only two cases are above 5%. similarly, the percentages for the sixth figure are also quite low (ranging between 1.5% and 6%, and in only two cases exceeding 5%). it is obvious that these two figures somehow run counter to the spirit of the rhythmic drive of the eighteenth century. it is interesting that the poets of the eighteenth century in their handling of the two figures with two unstressed icti (v and vi) show a preference for the sixth figure, which completely destroys the “single-swing” drive, rather than for the fifth, which reflects this drive in its purest form. only in the early lomonosov (1745–1747) is the percentage for the fifth figure higher than the percentage for the sixth; in the remaining twenty examples the fifth figure is more rare. this is convincing evidence that these poets are less concerned to avoid lines with only two stressed icti than they are to avoid two consecutive unstressed feet. the nineteenth century, after 1820, shows a different picture. in the fourfoot iamb with a bipartite rhythmic drive the use of the various rhythmic figures changes accordingly. in the nineteenth century a major role is played, on the one hand, once again by the first figure (which fully implements the metrical scheme) and, on the other hand, by the second, fourth and sixth figures (which produce a bipartite rhythmic oscillation). in the poets after 1820 the percentage for the first figure (cf. table iii, 1–61) ranges between 17.3% and 40.6%. the high figure is found in baratynskij’s early work (1819–1820), this being the only case in the nineteenth century in which such a high percentage is found for the first figure (even the poets of the transitional period fail to show figures over 40%). the percentage falls below 20% only in jazykov (1825–1828 — 17.3%) and poležaev (čir-jurt, 1832 — 19.7%)116. these examples apart, the percentage ranges in thirty-two cases between 20% and 30%, and in twenty-six cases between 30% and 40%. it is clearly evident that in the poets who in mid-career adopted the new bipartite structure the percentages for the first figure are considerably higher than with the poets who appeared after 1820 and started straight off with the bipartite structure. in the first group, the percentage for the first figure varies from 24.5% to 38.5%, and in the second (if we disregard the exceptionally high figure in baratynskij) from 17.3% to 30.9%, exceeding 30% in only two cases. after 1820 the fourth figure is again the most frequently used. its percentage ranges between 34.4% and 64.4% — with the first group of poets between 34.4% and 51%, and with the second between 42.8% and 64.4%. its percentage falls below 40% in only eight cases — and then, as might be expected, only with poets who had not employed the bipartite rhythmic drive from the very beginning (of these eight examples, five are found in vjazemskij). in thirty-five cases 154 kiril taranovsky the percentage for the fourth figure varies between 40% and 50%; in twelve between 50% and 56.1%; and in six examples (all from jazykov and poležaev) it is above 60%. these figures suffice to show that the use of the fourth figure is more frequent here than it was in the eighteenth century. it is without a single exception the most frequently employed variation in the four-foot iamb with bipartite rhythmic structure.117 the percentage far the second figure after 1820 varies from 3.1% to 12.8%, and falls below 5% in only four cases (out of sixty-one). in cases where the percentage for the second figure is low, this is usually compensated by a high percentage for the sixth figure, which also omits the stress on the first ictus. the percentage for the sixth figure ranges from 3.5% to 15.3% and is below 5% in only four cases. here too a small percentage for this figure is as a rule offset by a high percentage for the second figure.118 from this it follows that for the bipartite rhythmic structure in any given poet the percentages for the second or sixth figure are, taken alone, less decisive than the total percentages for the two figures combined. in the post-1820 tetrameter the combined percentages range from 9.5% to 22.5%, and in only two cases (out of sixtyone) fall below 10%. in comparison then with the eighteenth century, there has occurred a considerable increase in the use of these two figures, since in the eighteenth century their combined total ranges from 1.9% to 11.8%, and in only two cases is slightly over 10% (in kapnist 10.7%, and in kostrov 11.8%). the sixth figure reflects the bipartite rhythmic structure in its pure form (“porfironósnaja vdová”). for this reason the post-1820 poets view it with favor: in twenty cases its percentage exceeds 10%. the high for the sixth figure (15.3%) is found in tjutčev (1844–1873); thus he, more than any other poet, gives us the bipartite rhythmic structure in its pure form. in thirty-five cases (out of sixty-one) the sixth figure occupies third place in terms of frequency percentages (first place going to the fourth figure and second place to the first figure). this is particularly characteristic of those poets who began to write around 1820 and adopted from the start the new rhythmic drive: in this group of poets in eighteen cases out of twenty-one the sixth figure is the third strongest. whereas in the eighteenth century this figure played practically no role at all (its percentage ranges from 1.5% to 6%), it has now become an important factor in the rhythmic drive. as for the third and fifth figures, in the four-foot iamb with bipartite oscillation these figures disrupt the rhythmic drive and represent for the verse of the nineteenth (and of course the twentieth) century a kind of dissonance. as we shall see, as early as 1822 the poet pletnëv recommends that lines without a strong stress (rešitel’noe udarenie) on the fourth syllable be avoided. after 1820 the percentage for the third figure varies between 13.4% and zero. its 155russian binary meters. part two percentage exceeds 10% in only seven examples, of which four are found in vjazemskij who, as we might have expected, is responsible for the high of 13.5%. the third figure is least used by jazykov, baratynskij and poležaev. as in the eighteenth century, the fifth figure is the rarest combination; now, however, its percentage is minute by comparison with the percentages for the other figures. in thirteen of our examples it does not occur at all, in forty-two its percentage does not even reach 1%, and in the remaining six examples it varies between 1% and 2.7% (five of these six examples coming from vjazemskij and one from žukovskij). this still more patent avoidance of the fifth figure in the nineteenth century provides convincing confirmation of our stated thesis that the russian binary meter shows resistance to the omission of two adjacent stresses.119 the difference in the use of different figures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may be best illustrated by comparing the averages for the eighteenth century with the averages of those nineteenth-century poets who were not influenced by the transitional period: figures: i ii iii iv v vi 18th century: 31.1 3.4 18.7 41.9 1.5 3.4 19th century: 24.9 6.7 3.0 54.0 0.2 11.2 as we see, the third and the sixth figures have undergone the greatest change: while the percentage for the third has diminished sixfold, the percentage for the sixth has increased threefold. similarly, the percentage for the second figure has doubled. the already small percentage for the fifth figure has become quite negligeable. equally apparent is the considerable drop in the percentage for the first figure and the increase for the fourth. the figures show that in the work of the nineteenth-century poets who have not experienced the influence of the transitional period, roughly one quarter of their lines implement fully the four-stress metrical scheme; somewhat more than one tenth of their lines produce a bipartite rhythmic oscillation; and more than one half omit the stress on the penultimate ictus. on the basis of this comparison we can state a priori that the greatest fluctuation in the use of the second, fourth and sixth figures must have taken place in the transitional period, particularly in its second stage.120 the evolution of all the figures of the four-foot iamb can be best seen by comparing their averages for all periods studied: 156 kiril taranovsky figures: i ii iii iv v vi 18th century: 31.1 3.4 18.7 41.9 1.5 3.4 first stage of trans’l period: 32.3 3.6 13.1 46.3 1.0 3.7 second stage of trans’l period: 27.2 5.2 10.9 48.3 1.4 7.1 poets after 1820 a) who adopted the new drive: 31.0 7.6 7.4 45.6 0.4 8.0 b) who used it from the beginning: 24.9 6.7 3.0 54.0 0.2 11.2 by comparing these percentages it is easy to see that the frequency of the third and fifth figures slowly decreases, while that of the second and sixth gradually increases. as far as the first and the fourth figures are concerned, their development is not so clear-cut. in the first stage of the transitional period the use of the four-stress line (i) is close to that observed for the eighteenth century (the small increase in the percentage for the first figure in this stage is in fact accidental). however, in the second stage the less frequent use of lines with all four stresses is perfectly obvious. with the poets who started with the drive of the transitional period and later adopted the post-1820 bipartite structure we note a tendency to still use four-stress lines (i) in order to reinforce the metrical scheme in the face of the new rhythmic patterns which to their ears must have seemed fluid and not very clearly marked. however, the tetrameters of the poets who started after 1820 show a further drop in the percentages for figure i. these poets tend, more than their post-1814 predecessors, to avoid the four-stress line (i) — because they feel more acutely the bipartite rhythmic oscillation which they themselves did the most to develop. if we look at the nineteenth century as a whole we note that after 1814 russian poets use lines with four stresses considerably less frequently than in the eighteenth century. as for the fourth figure, its percentages are considerably higher in all periods of the nineteenth century than in the eighteenth century. this means that, to a far greater extent than their eighteenth-century predecessors, the nineteenthcentury poets omit the third stress in the line, thus insisting on the weakness of the penultimate ictus. this trend is evident particularly with the new post1820 poets in whose work the percentage for the fourth figure rises to 54% of all lines. however, in poets who after 1820 adopted the new rhythmic drive the percentage for the fourth figure is somewhat lower than in the transitional period. this phenomenon is tied in with the greater frequency with which they employ the first figure, i. e. with their tendency to reinforce the metrical scheme by means of four-stress lines (i). 157russian binary meters. part two as far as the average stress load of the icti in the four-foot iamb is concerned, its percentage varies from 74.5% to 85.9%. it is above 85% in only two cases in nikolev (1790 — 85.9%) and krylov (1793 — 85.3%). it is below 77% in only five cases: in del’vig (1814 — 75.9% and 1817–1819 — 74.5%), žukovskij (1818–1819  — 76.9%), jazykov (1825–1828  — 75.%), and in poležaev (1830 — 76.8%). usually, therefore, the average stress load of the icti remains in the vicinity of 80%; i. e. about one fifth of all icti in the russian fourfoot iamb are unstressed. by comparison, as previously noted, the four-foot trochee as a rule stresses only 75% of all icti. looking at the work of individual poets, we note a certain parallelism between their four-foot iambs and fourfoot trochees in respect to the average load of the icti. for example, krylov’s four-foot trochee carries a very high number of stresses, while jazykov’s and poležaev’s carry relatively very few. the same is true in the four-foot iamb. both in the four-foot trochee and in the four-foot iamb the average stress load of the icti is higher in the eighteenth century than in the nineteenth. this can be illustrated by comparing the averages for all poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. while in the eighteenth century the average stress load on the icti amounts to 81.5%, in the nineteenth century its percentage is down to 80.7% in those poets who switched from the “single-swing” to the bipartite rhythmic structure, and in those poets who started from the beginning with the new bipartite structure it has dropped again — to 78.4%. however, to us, the four-foot iamb of the nineteenth century appears much lighter than one could conclude on the basis of the above percentages. this can be explained, on the one hand, by the fact that in the nineteenth century the percentage of monosyllabic stressed words in metrically weak syllables has been reduced (this was discussed in section 3), and, on the other hand, by the fact that in the eighteenth century the pyrrhics were distributed between the second and the third feet, whereas in the nineteenth century they are more or less concentrated on the third foot where they are juxtaposed to the strongest ictus (the fixed stress on the eighth syllable) and therefore make themselves very strongly felt. 158 kiril taranovsky notes (5. the four-foot trochee) 71 true, lomonosov had predecessors. the pastors glück and paus had earlier attempted to translate lutheran hymns into russian while retaining the original german, i.e. tonic, meter. on their work see peretc 1902. the efforts of paus and glück could exert no influence, not only because they remained in manuscript form, until peretc published them at the beginning of this century, but also because the pastors did not have an adequate command of the langage and often stressed russian words in a quite arbitrary fashion or otherwise distorted them. even if, as peretc attempts to prove, trediakovskij had had their manuscripts in his hands, he could have learned nothing from them. only when lomonosov, as the result of first-hand study in german, had grasped the essence of tonic metrics, could this system be applied to russian verse. and the excellence of lomonosov’s very first efforts bears witness to his brilliance. 72 lomonosov 1895 [1739]. 73 trediakovskij 1735. 74 in his 1735 sposob trediakovskij, doubtless following the model of french verse, recommended that these meters have only masculine endings before the caesura; however, he could not accept masculine rhymes since they were alien to the russian thirteenand eleven-syllable lines, and in this respect he showed himself a conservative. 75 trediakovskij 1849 [1752]. 76 we cite here only the most recent literature on this question: bondi 1935; berkov 1936. 77 trediakovskij, lomonosov, sumarokov 1744. 78 only 144 lines: 1) the psalm “gospodi, kto obitaet” (1747), 2) “razgovor s anakreonom” (apparently also 1747), and 3) “gimn borode” (1757). 79 the second hemistich also has a pronounced trochaic character; the distribution of stresses is as follows: 159russian binary meters. part two syllables: 8 10 12 % stressed: 79.6 55.8 100 our study of this work did not take into account lines with shifted stresses. there are only seventeen such lines, as against 389 regular trochees; the former cannot, then, affect the overall rhythmic drive of trediakovskij’s thirteen-syllable verse. 80 timofeev 1931: 148. 81 here timofeev takes some liberties with his figures: as we have seen, the even syllables are also to be found under stress at times in trediakovskij. 82 bondi claims that timofeev’s statistics do not correspond to his own and appear to be “based on a misunderstanding” (bondi 1935: 94, fn.). 83 kantemir 1868 [1744]. 84 it is known, however, that kantemir had carefully studied the 1735 edition of trediakovskij’s sposob. 85 when these stanzas are sung the quarter-note in the last (whole) measure breaks down into two eighth-notes. 86 emphasis supplied. 87 kolessa 1906, 71(3): 85–86. 88 ibid.: 87. 89 the czech meter generally displays a tendency diametrically opposite to the russian: the icti on the first and fifth syllables are strong, while those on the third and seventh syllables are weak. see the stress diagrams for the poem “o smrtedlnosti” (14th cent.) and the trochaic eight-syllable line of vrchlický in jakobson 1924; cf. also the data for mácha’s verse (jakobson 1938: 227). in the old polish meter the strong icti are the first and penultimate (on the first and seventh syllables), while the internal icti are weak (see the stress diagrams in hrabák 1937). 160 kiril taranovsky 90 jakobson 1924: 280. 91 unfortunately we have not examined the rhythmic structure of the german four-foot trochee from the first half of the eighteenth century, since much of the requisite material was unavailable to us. in particular we regret not having studied the verse of gottsched. the statistics which follow suffice, however, to give an overall picture of the german meter. for bürger our sample was three poems: 1) “das hohe lied von der einzigen”, 2) “elegie”, 3) “die nachtfeier der venus” (900 lines in all); for goethe – all four-foot trochees from the cycles leider, geistliche lieder and balladen (according to the 1887 weimar edition, vol. i, 704 lines); for schiller – three ballads: 1) “hero und leander”, 2) “das siegesfest”, 3) “kassandra” (544 lines); and for heine – romanzero, drittes buch: hebräischen melodien (1488 lines). 92 a comparative study of medieval latin and german liturgical verse must naturally include both catholic and protestant poetry, particularly the latter. this, of course, does not exhaust the question of the origins of the german literary four-foot trochee, which obviously took shape under the most varied influences. thus, german poets of the eighteenth century (gottsched, gleim et al.), in translating greek anacreontic poetry, used unrhymed trochaic octasyllables to render the meter of the original – the so-called anacreontic line (anaklomenoi): ∪ ∪ — ∪ — ∪ — — (e.g.: ἄγε δὴ φέρ᾿ ἡμὶν ὦ παῖ κελέβην, ὅκως ἄμυστιν προπίω, τὰ μὲν δέκ᾿ ἐγχέας ὕδατος, τὰ πέντε δ᾿ οἴνου κυάθους ὡς ἀνυβρίστως ἀνὰ δηὖτε βασσαρήσω.) one easily wonders whether these imitations may not have given the four-foot trochee a new rhythmic drive, with the first ictus considerably weakened and the remaining icti nearly equal in strength – the rhythmic drive characteristic of schiller’s verse. similarly, it is known that german poets from herder to heine used the trochaic eight-syllable line in imitation of various forms of the spanish four-foot trochee; again, the latter may conceivably have had some effect on the rhythmic structure of the german line. a study devoted to all the problems mentioned here (along with a good many others) would 161russian binary meters. part two certainly yield significant results, shedding light not merely on the development of german verse, but on the evolution of syllabo-tonic verse in other european traditions as well. on the origin of the german four-foot trochee cf. minor 1902: 221 ff. 93 to be sure, lomonosov was translating from the french; however, he had obviously made a thorough study of german metrics and read a sufficient number of german lines before deciding to replace the french syllabic line with the four-foot trochee after the german model. 94 actually, the high stress percentages for individual syllables in katenin may be attributed to german influence: the texts which we have analyzed are mostly translations from german poets. 95 owing to its transitional character, katenin’s poetry was not included in our averages. karamzin’s poetry and puškin’s bova were excluded on account of the compulsory dactylic clausula, which gives their verse a somewhat different syntactic structure. the averages for the eighteenth century were calculated on the basis of 3071 lines, and the averages for the nineteenth century on the basis of 7600 lines. 96 there are cases, however, where the stressing of the fifth syllable at the expense of the first may be viewed as a specific rhythmic tendency. an example is kol’cov’s four-foot trochee with a dactylic clausula (the latter occasionally stressed on the ninth syllable), for which astaxova calculates the following stress percentages (astaxova 1926: 66): stressed syllables: 1 3 5 7 9 realized icti: 29 100 61 100 13 here the fifth syllable carries twice the stress load of the first. admittedly, these figures must be accepted with some reserve; as we shall see, astaxova’s statistics are not completely reliable. 97 this excerpt was purposely chosen in order that we might contrast it with poležaev’s rhythmically symmetrical verse. other excerpts from deržavin are apt to show the bipartite rhythmic structure, albeit much less prominently than poležaev’s verse. 162 kiril taranovsky 98 from a purely theoretical standpoint, an additional, eighth variation is possible, with stress only on the seventh syllable: ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ ∪ ––́ [∪]; in practice, this variation never occurs. in the first place, three consecutive pyrrhics would be highly unusual for russian verse; secondly, it is difficult in general to find a stress unit with six pre-tonic syllables, such as we have, e. g., in the following invented lines: a ͜ na ͜ velosipedíste býlo čërnoe pal’tó 99 in addition, the eighteenth-century four-foot trochee is apt to seem “heavier” since, as we noted in chapter iii, it contains a larger number of stressed monosyllabic words on its even syllables. (6. the four-foot iamb) 100 see the table in my brief article taranovsky 1939. 101 jarxo, romanovič, lapšina 1934. 102 our statistics are based on 86,976 lines; tomaševskij analyzed over 5,000 lines (evgenij onegin), andrej belyj nearly 18,000. 103 our remarks concerning the pastors glück and paus in the last chapter also hold good for the four-foot iamb. 104 johann christian günther: auf den zwischen ihro röm. kayserl. majestät und der pforte 1718 geschlossenen frieden (500 lines). 105 our sample for goethe was twenty-seven poems from the first three volumes of his works (1887 weimar edition), and for schiller three ballads: der ring des polykrates, die kraniche des ibykus, der kampf mit dem drachen. 106 these averages are based on table ii, entries 5–26 (10,928 lines); cf. andrej belyj’s statistics (table iv, 1–7 and introductory notes). belyj studied the verse of lomonosov, deržavin, bogdanovič, ozerov, dmitriev, neledinskij-meleckij and kapnist. our statistics are in full agreement with his. according to belyj, the percentage of stresses on the second syllable is always above 90%, the percentage for the fourth syllable varies between 76.7% and 83.2%, and the 163russian binary meters. part two percentage for the sixth between 54.4%and 62.1%. belyj also observed stress values for the sixth syllable above 60% in two poets — kapnist and ozerov. 107 the averages for the first phase of the transitional period are based on table ii, entries 27–33 (4,691 lines). 108 averages based on table ii, entries 34–50 (14,884 lines). 109 except for one epistle from 1820, ševyrëv’s pre-1825 poetry has not been published. 110 averages based on table iii, entries 1–40 (29,621 lines). 111 this increase is especially notable in puškin. while in his lyrics from 1814 to 1820 the stress percentage for the sixth syllable falls from 38.3% to 34.4%, after 1820 it is always above 40%. 112 averages based on table iii, entries 41–61 (18,445 lines). 113 one might imagine that baratynskij played a significant role here, for his 1819–1820 lyrics already show a quite pronounced bipartite rhythmic structure (cf. table iii: 45). however, the great majority of the lyrics analyzed date from 1820. it must be remembered, moreover, that even puškin’s 1819–1820 lyrics have this structure; they are entered in table ii rather than table iii primarily because puškin’s narrative poem from the same period (ruslan i ljudmila, 1817–1820) still does not show the new rhythmic drive (cf. table ii: 44 and 45). finally, we have only a small number of lines by baratynskij from the period 1819–1820, and at this time he had not yet achieved sufficient recognition as a poet to exert any influence on contemporary poetry. 114 cf. table iv (pp. 195–197) and introductory notes (pp. 174–176). belyj’s statistics show clearly that the four-foot iamb of certain poets from the second half of the nineteenth century (e.g., polonskij, majkov, slučevskij, and that of the symbolists as well, has closer rhythmic affinities to puškin’s and lermontov’s verse than to jazykov’s and poležaev’s; we noted a similar situation for the four-foot trochee. in most symbolist poets we observe a high percentage of stresses on the sixth syllable (over 50%); in this feature especially their rhythmic line differs from the nineteenth-century average. 164 kiril taranovsky 115 to quote belyj (1910: 295): “we found this type of line [∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ — | ∪ —] only once in its pure form – in a poem by karolina pavlova dedicated to jazykov: since we do not have the book, we cannot cite the line in question. we find only one such line in puškin, and its resemblance to pavlova’s is only partial: ‘ešče ne perestáli tópat’’ (evgenij onegin). if one reads this line: ‘eščë | ne perestáli tópat’’, then its logical stress is lost. in my own verse this figure occurs in the unsuccessful line: ‘xot’ i ne bez predubeždén’ja’. here is another line, invented on the spur of the moment, which implements the given figure: ‘i velosipedίst letίt’”. the line by pavlova to which belyj refers reads: “<dlja> polugorodskίx poléj”. even here, strictly speaking, this figure does not occur in its pure form, since we have a compound which may receive a secondary stress on its first syllable; in the latter case we obtain the third figure. we have found several similar lines which may be read so as to implement the seventh figure. one such line is sumarokov’s “kolenopreklonén’e, lést’”, where again we have a compound allowing a secondary stress on its second syllable. deržavin’s line “ili velikolépnym cúgom” would today be read so as to implement the seventh figure; in the eighteenth-century literary language, however, ili was stressed on the second syllable. finally, we have the following line from the early tjutčev: “kak by pogruženó v vesné”; here the question arises whether the poet would not have stressed the particle by. actually, belyj’s ad hoc example is our only instance of this variation in its pure form. as for belyj’s line “xot’ ͜ i ͜ ne ͜ bez ͜  predubeždén’ja”, this illustrates not the seventh but the eighth figure. 116 jazykov and poležaev also showed the smallest percentages for the first figure in the four-foot trochee. among the poets of the transitional period, the percentage for this figure also falls below 20% in del’vig (1814 — 16.4%; cf. table ii: 33). 117 in the transitional period, too, this is the most frequent variation. only in one case — kjuxel’beker’s verse for 1831 — does its percentage fall a fraction below the percentage for the first figure (cf. table ii: 53). 118 thus, for example, in jazykov’s verse for 1823–1824 the percentage for the second figure is 3.1% and the percentage for the sixth 12.1%; conversely, in baratynskij’s 1819–1820 verse the percentage for the sixth figure is 3.5% and the percentage for the second 8.3%. 165russian binary meters. part two 119 this does not mean that poets may not at times use such lines intentionally, for stylistic purposes; cf. timofeev 1951: 219–220. in his article timofeev shows that the fifth figure occurs only once in puškin’s graf nulin, and then at a moment of great suspense — when the count appears in natal’ja pavlovna’s bedroom and gets the following welcome: daët — poščëčinu. dá, dá, poščëčinu, da ͜ ved’ ͜ kakúju! this “unusual configuration of the line,” timofeev writes, “acts as a kind of rhythmic italics, highlighting the sense at a critical point in the text.” 120 among the individual poets of the transitional period žukovskij deserves special mention: in his 1818–1820 works the percentage for the sixth figure exceeds 10% for the first time (cf. table ii, 35–36). notes to the statistical tables general remarks 1. the statistical method applied in this book was originally used by andrej belyj in his simvolizm (belyj 1910). we emphasize this fact since belyj’s contributions to the science of verse today tend to be forgotten. it is true that belyj’s statistical method is somewhat elementary: he counted only the stress omissions (pyrrhics) on different syllables of the four-foot iamb, together with the individual rhythmic variations of this meter. belyj’s method was perfected by tomaševskij, who also applied it to phrasing (the distribution of boundaries between accentual units). tomaševskij was the first to illustrate his statistics by means of diagrams – another fact which tends nowadays to be forgotten. 2. our statistics are based on a maximally stressed line: all stresses are taken into account, even in cases where they might be de-emphasized in reading. in this we follow tomaševskij, who considered the equalization of all stresses on metrically strong syllables one of the prerequisites of the study of poetic rhythm, and who classified all syllables as either stressed or stressless, without differentiating between strong and weak accents. “in doubtful cases,” tomaševskij writes, “i have adhered to the following rule: a word is considered stressed so long as its stress does not contradict the sense of the utterance” (tomaševskij 1929: 96). experience has shown that such “doubtful cases”, where it is unclear whether or not a word must be stressed, are quite 166 kiril taranovsky rare and have no effect on our overall statistics; tomaševskij’s approach thus has all the advantages of an objective method. in the notes to individual tables it will be shown to what extent our statistics agree with those of other investigators of russian verse. the style of delivery discussed in section iv, whereby the stresses on individual syllables are intentionally de-emphasized, finds no application in our statistics, for in the final analysis it is always subjective. 3. as for the boundaries between accentual units, we have counted only those which follow a unit whose stress falls on a metrically strong syllable. this means that in lines which have a stressed monosyllabic word on a metrically weak syllable, only the boundary preceding the given word is taken into account. data on word boundary distribution are given for all poets studied. 4. the number of lines analyzed from a given text does not always correspond to the total number of lines in the text – this for several reasons. first, lines which contain a deviant number of feet or are defective in some other respect were naturally left out of account. second, in certain cases we had no access to lines which the censor deleted, or which the author or publisher for one reason or other removed from the original text. finally, in dealing with fairly extensive texts (especially those with several hundred lines or more) some lines were apt to go unnoticed. in such cases we did not always take the trouble to figure in the lines which were accidentally missed, since we were satisfied that such lines are always quite few in number and do not appreciably affect the final statistics. 5. the percentage values given in our tables have been checked over in different ways so as to reduce the likelihood of error; what errors still remain are apt to be altogether insignificant, amounting to no more than decimals. 6.  the dates given for certain texts in our tables are sometimes only approximate. where we were able to ascertain the year in which a work was composed, we gave that year; where this was not possible, we gave the year in which the work was published. in doubtful cases – e.g., where different editions of a poet’s works disagree on the dating of a certain text – we were not always able to establish the precise dates or even the most likely ones. minute investigations of this kind would often have meant an unjustified expenditure of time, even where they yielded results; for our purposes, an approximate dating of individual texts was quite sufficient in the majority of cases. 167russian binary meters. part two table i in this table the following texts are analyzed: 1) lomonosov’s translations of an ode by fénelon (1738); 2) lomonosov’s remaining four-foot trochees (the psalm “gospodi, kto obitaet”, “razgovor s anakreonom”, “gimn borode”); 3) trediakovskij’s psalms and odes according to the 1752 edition; 4) the psalms and odes of sumarokov (died 1777); 5) the longer works of deržavin from various periods (1778–1780, 1789– 1791, 1801–1802 and 1809–1810); 6) two of krylov’s poems from 1793 (“utešenie” and “moë opravdanie”); 7) karamzin’s fairy-tale il’ja muromec; 8) katenin’s trochee from the period 1814–1816: “nataše”, “pevec” (from goethe), “ol’ga” (from bürger); 9) žukovskij’s fairy-tale spjaščaja carevna (1831); 10) puškin’s unfinished fairy-tale bova (1814); 11–13) puškin’s lyrics, 1814–1822, 1824–1828 and 1829–1835; 14–16) puškin’s fairly-tales skazka o care saltane (1831), skazka o mërtvoj carevne (1833) and skazka o zolotom petuške (1834); 17–18) lermontov’s lyrics, 1828–1830 and 1832–1841; 19) jazykov’s lyrics, 1830–1832; 20) excerpts from poležaev’s narrative poem koriolan (1834), composed in four-foot trochees (the third chapter and one strophe from the fourth chapter); 21) nekrasov’s poem korobejniki (1861); 22) polonskij’s pis’ma k muze (1870–1875); 23) mej (died 1862): žena, belorusskaja skazka reuta (translated from the polish); 24) two ballads by a. k. tolstoj: borivoj and alëša popovič (1871); 25) fet’s later lyrics (1879–1892); 26) a. majkov: ispoved’ korolevy (1861). the average rhythmic line for the eighteenth century is based on entries 1–6, and the average rhythmic line for the nineteenth century on entries 9 and 11–26. karamzin’s il’ja muromec and puškin’s bova have only dactylic unrhymed dactylic endings, with the ninth syllable capable of carrying a stress (cf. section ii): the stress percentage for this syllable is 2.13% in karamzin and 15% in puškin. žukovskij’s spjaščaja carevna has only masculine rhymed endings, while polonskij’s pis’ma k muze, tolstoj’s borivoj and majkov’s ispoved’ korolevy have only feminine endings. majkov and polonskij rhyme only the even lines 168 kiril taranovsky (abcb), whereas tolstoj rhymes all lines (abab). in nekrasov’s korobejniki rhymed dactylic and masculine endings alternate. the remaining texts have both masculine and feminine endings, which are rhymed as a rule. for the sake of comparison with our own statistics, we cite below the figures given by other investigators (cf. metričeskij spravočnik – jarxo, romanovič, lapšina 1934: 82, table xxxv, and diagrams 1 and 2 at end of book) for puškin’s fairy-tales (according to šengeli) and lyrics (according to the compilers of metričeskij spravočnik): a) distribution of stresses in puškin’s four-foot trochee: syllables: 1 3 5 7 fairy-tales 57.1 97.8 45.0 100 lyrics 45.3 95.3 39.4 100 b) rhythmic variations in puškin’s four-foot trochee: variations i ii iii iv v vi vii fairy-tales 23.3 19.8 1.9 31.6 0.3 23.1 – lyrics 12.9 22.4 4.0 27.8 0.6 32.2 0.1 it will be noted that šengeli’s figures agree in the main with our own. however, the figures given by the compilers of metričeskij spravočnik differ substantially both from our own figures and from those of šengeli. according to our calculations, puškin’s fairy-tales and lyrics composed in four-foot trochaic meter show no striking differences in rhythmic drive, whereas from the compilers’ figures it would appear that the stress load of individual icti – particularly the weak icti (the first and third) – is considerably less in puškin’s lyrics than in his fairy-tales. it is clear that the authors of metričeskij spravočnik did not count all the stresses in the line, but only the more prominent ones: the bipartite rhythmic structure thus emerges more sharply in their statistics than in our own or šengeli’s; this also explains why the percentage for the first figure in their statistics is only 12.9%. as against 32.2% for the sixth figure. we also cite astaxova’s statistical data for the russian four-foot trochee with dactylic endings (cf. astaxova: “iz istorii i ritmiki xoreja”, p. 66): a) distribution of stresses: 169russian binary meters. part two syllables: 1 3 5 7 9 sumarokov: 58 100 53.5 100 25.5 xeraskov: 59 82 56 89 31 karamzin: 54 96 48 100 25 puškin: 47 96 55 100 15 kol’cov: 29 100 61 100 13 nikitin: 41 100 51 100 11 b) distribution of boundaries between accentual units: syllables: 2 3 4 5 6 7 sumarokov: 28 30 18.5 60 35 40 xeraskov: 15 34 33 41 44 30 karamzin: 27 27 24 51 41 28 puškin: 22 25 33 53 35 30 kol’cov: 12 17 35 52 50 24 nikitin: 13 28 34 40 61 16 astaxova’s sample for xeraskov was his fairy-tale baxarijana (1803), for karamzin, il’ja muromec and for puškin, bova. it will be noted that our statistics (for karamzin and puškin) are in complete agreement with astaxova’s. the rhythmic structure of the literary four-foot trochee with a dactylic clausula is also to be found in the nine-syllable verse of the russian popular tradition, e. g., in the verse of north russian laments (see jakobson 1952: 35–36). we did a supplementary statistical analysis of the popular nine-syllable line, taking as our sample, the laments which barsov published under the title “plač dočeri po otce” (cf. barsov 1872: 45–57). out of 355 lines, twenty-six violate the syllabic constant; the remaining 329 lines – 327 trochaic nine-syllable and two trochaic eight-syllable lines – show the following distribution of stresses and word boundaries: syllables: 1 3 5 7 9 stress percentages: 39.2 100 41.6 100 1.2 syllables : 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 word boundary percentage 29.8 9.4 30.1 41.6 42.2 27.7 1.2 170 kiril taranovsky it will be observed that the third as well as the seventh syllable is a tonic constant in this meter. the icti on the first and fifth syllables are markedly weak, and the stresses which fall on these syllables are usually those of weakly accented, subordinate words. even a few lines suffice to convey this rhythmic drive: tý skaží, rodítel’-bátjusko, mné izvédaj, krásno sólnyško, už ] tý kudý da snarjažáeš’sja, už ] tý kudý da sokručáeš’sja; vo izbú li tý vo zémskuju, al’ k obídni bogomól’noj, al’ ko útreni voskrésnoj? u tjá plát’ica ne zdéšnii, i obútočka ne préžnjaja; samá znáju, samá védaju, što ty és’ da snarjažáeš’ja, kak vo ė́tu vo doróžen’ku, na rodítel’sku na búevku ko serdéčnym ko rodíteljam... as we see, in this meter, too, the weak icti may be transferred onto the even syllables. the third ictus, which shifts to the following syllable in the tenth line of the quoted excerpt, may also shift to the preceding syllable, e. g. iz-za ͜ mór’ ptíčki sletájutsja... kak k tebé múža zakónnogo... the rhythm of these north russian laments provides additional evidence that the rhythmic drive of the russian four-foot trochee has its origin in folk verse (cf. our comments in section 5, pp. 116–120). 171russian binary meters. part two table ii works analyzed: 1–12) all lomonosov’s odes from 1739–1764; 13) a. sumarokov: odes, 1767–1772; 14) vasilij petrov: “oda na karusel’” (1766); 15) mixail xeraskov: odes, 1773–1777; 16) ermil kostrov: “oda na den’ koronacii ekateriny ii” (1778); 17) deržavin: lyrics, 1781–1785; 18) radiščev: “vol’nost’” (1783); 19) jakov knjažnin (died 1791): lyrics (the undated poems “utro”, “večer”, “vospominanija starika”, “nakazannaja nevernost’” and “poslanie k knjagine daškovoj”); 20) nikolaj nikolev: “na zaključenie mira s deržavoju švedskoju” (1790); 21) nikolaj osipov: virglilieva ėnejda, vyvoročennaja na iznanku, canto i (1791); 22) vasilij kapnist: “na sčast’je” (1792); 23) ippolit bogdanovič: “pesn’ na mir so švecieju 1790 goda” and “pesn’ na mir meždu rossieju i ottomanskoju portoju 1792 goda”; 24) krylov: “poslanie k drugu moemu” and “k sčast’ju” (1793); 25) aleksandr kotel’nickij: poxiščenie prozerpiny, canto i (1795); 26) osip kozodavlev: “snovidenie”; 27) vasilij puškin: lyrics before 1815 – “toska po miloj” (1795), “k xloe” (1795), “k žiteljam nižnego novgoroda” (1812) and “ljublju i ne ljublju” (1815); 28–29) žukovskij: lyrics, 1797–1800, and lyrics and translations, 1803–1813; 30) batjuškov: four-foot iamb, 1805–1813 (the shorter poems videnie na beregax lety and otryvki iz šillerovoj tragedii); 31) vjazemskij: lyrics, 1811–1815; 32) a. s. puškin: kol’na (1814); 33) del’vig: “k poėtu matematiku” (1814); 34–38) žukovskij: four-foot iamb, 1814–1816, 1818–1819, 1820, 1821, 1823–1832 (lyric verse, epistles, the ballads polikratov persten’, roland oruženosec and plavanie karla velikogo and the narrative poems peri i angel, šil’onskij uznik and sud v podzemel’e); 39) batjuškov: lyrics, 1815–1817; 40) vjazemskij: lyrics, 1816–1819; 41–44) puškin: lyrics, 1814–1815, 1816, 1817–1818, 1819–1820; 45–46) puškin: ruslan i ljudmila (1817–1820) and baxčisarajskij fontan (1822–1823); 172 kiril taranovsky 47) del’vig: lyric poems and epistles, 1817–1819; 48) ivan kozlov: “k drugu v. a. žukovskomu” (1821), 49) venevitinov (died 1827): lyrics; 50) ryleev: dumy (twelve poems composed between 1821 and 1823 and two undated works); 51) kjuxel’beker: lyrics, 1818–1820; 52) kjuxel’beker: lyrics, 1821–1824 and excerpts from the poem kassandra; 53–54) kjuxel’beker: zorovavel’ (1831) and jurij i ksenija (1832–1835); 55) v. puškin: kapitan xrabrov (1828–1829); 56–57) ševyrëv: “k druz’jam” (1820) and lyrics from 1825; 58) xomjakov: lyrics, 1826–1827; 59) lermontov: narrative poems from 1828 (čerkesy, korsar and kavkazskij plennik); 60) lermontov: poslednij syn vol’nosti (1830); 61) žukovskij: complete four-foot iamb, 1814–1832 (cf. entries 34–38); 62) puškin: four-foot iamb, 1814–1820 (excluding kol’na, his first attempt at this meter; cf. entries 41–45). the average rhythmic line for the eighteenth century is based on entries 5–26, for the first phase of the transitional period on entries 27–33 and for the second phase of the transitional period on entries 34–50. the texts analyzed usually show an alternation of feminine and masculine rhymed endings; less frequently, masculine endings are found throughout; e. g., in žukovskij’s šil’onskij uznik and sud v podzemel’e or lermontov’s poslednij syn vol’nosti. table iii works analyzed: 1–13) puškin: kavkazskij plennik (1820–1821); brat’ja razbojniki (1821– 1822); lyrics and the unfinished poem vadim (1821–1822); lyrics, 1823–1824; cygany (1824); graf nulin (1824–1825); lyrics, 1825–1826; lyrics, 1827; poltava (1828); lyrics, 1828–1829; evgenij onegin (1823–1830); lyrics and the poems gasub, rodoslovnaja moego geroja (1830–1833) and mednyj vsadnik (1833); (the figures for evgenij onegin are given according to the tables in tomaševskij’s o stixe, pp. 136–137). 14–19) vjazemskij: lyrics, 1820–1822, 1823–1825, 1826–1827, 1828, 1829– 1830, 1831; 20) del’vig: lyrics, 1821–1825; 21) ryleev (died 1826): the narrative poem vojnarovskij; 173russian binary meters. part two 22–23) i.  kozlov: the narrative poems černec (1824) and knjaginja dolgorukaja (1827); 24–25) ševyrëv: lyrics, 1827 and 1828–1829; 26–27) xomjakov: lyrics, 1829–1839 and 1841–1858; 28–39) lermontov: lyrics and short narrative poems from 1829 (prestupnik, oleg, dva brata and the first version of demon); lyrics, 1830, narrative poems, 1830 (ispoved’, dve nevol’nicy and the second version of demon); 1831 lyrics and short narrative poems (azrail, kally and angel smerti); izmail bej (1832); narrative poems, 1833–1834 (the fourth version of demon, xadži-abrek, gospital’, ulanša and petergofskij prazdnik); bojarin orša (1835); narrative poems, 1836 (kaznačejša and mongo); lyrics, 1832–1837; four-foot iamb, 1839–1840 (lyrics, the short play “žurnalist, čitatel’ i pisatel’”, the narrative poems beglec and valerik; mcyri (1840) and the final version of demon (1841); 40) žukovskij: “1 ijulja 1842”; 41) pletnëv: lyrics, 1822–1825; 42–44) jazykov: lyrics, 1823–1824, 1825–1828 and 1829–1831; 45–49) baratynskij: lyrics, 1818–1820; lyrics, 1821–1828; narrative poems, 1826 (ėda and piry); the narrative poem bal (1828); lyrics, 1828–1843; 50–51) tjutčev: lyrics, 1820–1840 and 1844–1873; 52–57) poležaev: lyrics and narrative poems (saška and iman-kozël), 1825– 1826; lyrics and shorter poems (“arestant”, “ty xočeš’, drug...”, “kreditory”, and “čudak”), 1827–1831; the narrative poems ėrpeli (1830) and čir-jurt (1832); lyrics and shorter poems (“germenčugskoe kladbišče” and “videnie bruta”), 1832–1833; lyrics and excerpts from narrative poems (koriolan and poslednij den’ pompei), 1834–1838; 58) nekrasov: nesčastnye (1856); 59) mej: sleporoždënnyj (1855); 60) a. k. tolstoj: ioann damaskin (1859); 61) fet: sabina (probably 1857). the averages for those poets who went over to the new rhythmic structure after 1820 are based, on entries 1–40, while the averages for those poets who implemented the new structure from the start are based on entries 41–61. the above texts, like those analyzed in the preceding table, usually show an alternation of feminine and masculine rhymed endings; relatively rare are poems with exclusively masculine endings (e. g., lermontov’s ispoved’ and mcyri). four-foot iambs with exclusively feminine endings are extremely rare, being found only in a few shorter poems (e. g., fet’s sabina). 174 kiril taranovsky table iv the statistics which appear in this table are based on those given by a. belyj in his simvolizm (belyj 1910: 262, 286–287, 371, 375, 379). belyj followed the somewhat whimsical procedure of taking 596 lines from each poet, lines selected “from the period when the poet’s talent was at its peak”. where this number of lines was not available for a given poet, belyj used percentages to scale his statistics upward, so that they might be expressed “in terms of the usual 596 lines”. we have given all of belyj’s statistics in percentages to facilitate comparison with our own figures. it must be pointed out that the figures cited by belyj in various parts of his book are not always in agreement; whether these inconsistencies are to be ascribed to faulty calculation or to typographical errors in not clear. thus, for example, on p. 261 belyj gives the sum total of pyrrhics for individual poets, and in the tables on pp. 262 and 286–287, the number of pyrrhics on different feet in the verse of the same poets: the results we obtained by summing up these last figures differ from belyj’s in a good many cases. we generally disregarded the table on p. 261, since those on pp. 262 and 286–287, in which belyj operates with more or less the same data, are in agreement for the most part; what inconsistencies occur here are not major ones. belyj’s conclusions are also faulty at times; indeed, they may be contradicted by his own figures. thus, he claims that the fewest iambic lines with all four stresses are to be found in nekrasov (belyj 1910: 295), whereas his statistics show clearly that tjutčev, fet, jazykov and baratynskij have even fewer such lines than nekrasov. nevertheless, despite their occasional lack of precision, belyj’s data may be usefully compared with our own results. his figures for the eighteenth-century four-foot iamb (tables 1–7 in simvolizm) are generally in agreement with ours. belyj’s coverage of the transitional period is quite meager, involving only two poets. the figures for batjuškov are apparently based on a period extending roughly from 1810–1817; belyj loses sight of the important differences between batjuškov’s pre-1814 iamb, on the one hand, and his 1815–1817 verse, on the other. it is unclear which period belyj is operating with in his study of žukovskij, but his figures for this poet are in any case accidental. our own analysis of žukovskij’s four-foot iamb, based on all his compositions in this meter, shows that from 1814 till as late as 1832 the poet wavered constantly between the eighteenthand nineteenth-century rhythmic structures. from belyj’s data it would appear that žukovskij’s four-foot iamb, at least as regards the stress load of the second and fourth syllables, does not differ greatly from, say, lermontov’s; hence, the altogether erroneous conclusion drawn by belyj 175russian binary meters. part two that “the entire rhythmic reform was the work of batjuškov and žukovskij” (belyj 1910: 297). belyj’s statistics for the nineteenth century (entries 10–24) are much more reliable than his data for the transitional period. the figures for puškin, lermontov, jazykov, baratynskij, tjutčev and nekrasov agree in the main with our own. thus, in our statistics as well as belyj’s the first foot has the smallest stress percentage in baratynskij (lyric verse), and the third foot in jazykov. some minor divergences are easily explained by the fact that belyj’s statistics do not cover exactly the same material as ours. it is clear, for example, that belyj did not study jazykov’s verse from the period before 1828. his figures for jazykov’s four-foot iamb correspond to those which we give for the period 1829–1831; prior to 1828 the third foot carries an even smaller number of stresses. our statistics and belyj’s also diverge to some extent on a. k. tolstoj, mej and fet — this because different genres were studied: our statistics are based on narrative poems, while belyj’s are based on lyrics. the only major difference in our respective figures for these three poets involves the stress percentage for the sixth syllable: under 40% according to our calculations, over 40% according to belyj’s. belyj analyzes the verse of several nineteenth-century poets not included in our study: benediktov, k. pavlova, polonskij, majkov, slučevskij and nadson. all these poets are in the nineteenth-century tradition; we note as unusual only the rather high stress load on the third foot (over 50%) in the verse of pavlova and polonskij (relatively high percentages for the penultimate ictus have also been observed in polonskij’s other binary meters, e. g., his four-foot trochee, five-foot iamb and six-foot trochee with caesura). finally, belyj also analyzes the verse of several “modernist” poets (merežkovskij, sologub, brjusov, v. ivanov, blok and gorodeckij; cf. entries 25–30) not included in our investigation. in the verse of these poets the bipartite rhythmic structure typical of the nineteenth century is still quite pronounced; one is struck only by the high percentage of stresses on the penultimate ictus (over 50%) in brjusov, v. ivanov, blok and gorodeckij. it would be premature, however, to conclude from these data alone that a high stress load on the penultimate ictus is characteristic of the entire epoch (the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth); belyj’s data are too meager to permit any valid generalizations concerning the four-foot iamb of this period. for the sake of comparison we also cite šengeli’s figures for puškin’s fourfoot iamb (quoted from jarxo, romanovič, lapšina 1934: 80, table xxxii, and diagram 3 at end of book): 176 kiril taranovsky syllables: 2 4 6 8 % stressed: 84 91 43 100 rhythmic figures: i ii iii iv v vi % 27 7 9 48 0.3 9 šengeli’s statistics are in general agreement with belyj’s, tomaševskij’s (for evgenij onegin) and our own. references astaxova, a. m. [astakhova, anna mikhailovna]. 1926. iz istorii i ritmiki khoreja. in: poėtica i. leningrad: academia, 54–66. barsov, e. v. [elpidifor vasil’evich] 1872. pričitan’ja severnogo kraja, part i. moscow. belyj, andrej [belyi, andrei] 1910. simvolizm: kniga statej. moskva: musaget. berkov, p.  n.  [pavel naumovich] 1936. lomonosov i literaturnaja polemika ego vremeni, 1750–1765. moskva, leningrad: izdatel’stvo akademii nauk sssr. bondi, s. m. [sergei mikhailovich] 1935. trediakovskij, lomonosov, sumarokov. in: trediakovskij, v. k. [trediakovsky, vasily kirillovich]. stikhotvorenija. leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’, 5–113. hrabák, josef 1937. staropolský verš ve srovnání se staročeským (studie pražského lingvistického kroužku 1). praha: nakladatelství pražského linguistického kroužku. jakobson, roman 1924. starocheshskie stikhotvorenija, slozhennye odnorifmennymi chetverostishijami (8а-4). in: slavia 3(2/3), 272–315. jakobson, roman 1938. k popisu máchova verše. in: mukařovský, jan (ed.), torso a tajemství máchova díla: sborník pojednání pražského lingvistického kroužku. praha: fr. borový, 207–278. jakobson, roman 1952. studies in comparative slavic metrics. in: oxford slavonic papers 3: 21–66. jarxo, b.  i. [yarkho, boris isaakovich]; romanovič, i.  k. [romanovich, igor’ konstntinovich]; lapšina, n. v. [lapshina, nadezhda vasil’evna] 1934. metričeskij spravočnik k stixotvorenijam puškina. moskva, leningrad: academia. kantemir, a. d. [antiokh dmitrievich] 1868 [1744]. pis’mo kharitona makentina k 177russian binary meters. part two prijatelju o slozhenii stikhov russkikh. in: sochinenija, pis’ma i izbrannye perevody knjazja antiokha dmitrievicha kantemira. t. ii. sankt-peterburg: i. i. glazunov, 1–20. kolessa, filjaret [filaret mikhailovich] 1906–1907. rytmika ukraïn’skyx narodnyx pisen’. zapysky naukovogo tovarystva imeni shevchenka 69(1), 7–30; 71(3), 44–95; 72(4), 80–111; 73(5), 65–118; 74(6), 33–68; 76(2), 64–116. lomonosov, m. v. [mikhail vasil’evich] 1895 [1739]. pis’mo o pravilakh rossijskogo stikhotvorstva. in: sochinenija m. v. lomonosova. t. 3. sankt-peterburg: tip. imperatorskoj akademii nauk, 1–11. minor, j. [jacob] 1902. neuhochdeutsche metrik: ein handbuch. zweite, umgearbeitete auflage. strassburg: karl j. trübner. peretc, v. n. [peretts, vladimir nikolaevich] 1902. istoriko-literaturnye issledovanija i materialy. vol. iii: iz istorii razvitija russkoj poezii xviii v. (zapiski istorikofilologicheskogo fakul’teta imperatorskogo sankt-peterburgskogo universiteta 64). sankt-peterburg: tip. f. vaisberga i p. gershunina. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1939. “o vozmožnosti datirovki ‘razgovora s anakreonom’ lomonosova”. in: iii međunarodni kongres slavista (slovenskih filologa). govori i predavanja / iiième congrès international des slavistes (philologues slaves). discours et conferences. (izdanja izvršnog odbora / publications du comité d’organisation 4). beograd: štamp. mlada srbija, 151–152. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. timofeev, l. i. [leonid ivanovich] 1931. problemy stikhovedenija. materialy k sotsiologii stixa. moskva: federatsija. tomaševskij, b. v. [tomashevsky, boris viktorovich] 1929. o stikhe. leningrad: priboj. trediakovskij, v. k. [trediakovsky, vasily kirillovich]. 1735. novyj i kratkij sposob k slozheniju rossijskikh stikhov s opredelenijami do sego nadlezhashchikh znanij. v sanktpeterburge pri imperatorskoj akademii nauk. trediakovskij, v. k. [trediakovsky, vasily kirillovich] 1849 [1752]. sposob k slozheniju rossijskikh stikhov, protiv vydannogo v 1735 gode ispravlennyj i dopolnennyj. in: sochinenija tred’jakovskogo. izdanie aleksandra smirdina. t. 1. sankt-peterburg: tip. imperatorskoj akademii nauk, 121–178. [trediakovsky, vasily kirillovich; lomonosov, mikhail vasil’evich; sumarokov, aleksandr petrovich]. 1744. tri ody parafrasticheskie psalma 143, sochinennye cherez trex stikhotvortsev, iz kotorykh kazhdoj odnu slozhil osoblivo. v sanktpeterburge imperatorskoj akademii nauk. 178 kiril taranovsky tables i–iv table i: four-foot trochee no. author stressed syllables average stress load on icti number of lines1 3 5 7 1 lomonosov (o. f.) 79.3 82.1 58.6 100 80.0 140 2 lomonosov (other) 56.2 89.6 51.4 100 74.3 144 3 trediakovskij 65.6 85.9 55.9 100 76.9 752 4 sumarokov 61.2 88.6 53.2 100 75.8 675 5 deržavin 62.0 92.1 51.8 100 76.5 1000 6 krylov 62.8 94.4 63.7 100 80.2 360 7 karamzin 54.8 97.3 47.1 100 74.8 480 8 katenin 73.6 98.6 57.5 100 82.4 424 9 žukovskij 54.4 100 47.5 100 75.5 366 10 puškin (bоva) 50.6 95.2 57.5 100 75.8 273 11 puškin (lyr. 1814–22) 63.6 96.1 47.0 100 76.7 610 12 puškin (lyr. 1824–28) 56.4 99.3 40.6 100 74.1 542 13 puškin (lyr. 1829–35) 56.4 100.0 48.6 100 76.3 860 14 puškin (c. s.) 56.9 96.7 45.2 100 74.7 996 15 puškin (m. c.) 51.4 99.6 40.8 100 73.0 552 16 puškin (z. p.) 49.6 98.2 54.5 100 75.6 224 17 lermontov (1828–30) 58.3 96.4 48.0 100 75.7 252 18 lermontov (1832–41) 51.7 99.5 42.0 100 73.7 207 19 jazykov 53.2 100 34.0 100 71.8 374 20 poležaev 43.7 100 29.1 100 68.2 206 21 nekrasov 50.6 100 43.4 100 73.5 684 22 polonskij 54.0 96.3 58.6 100 74.7 324 23 mej 50.0 100 47.0 100 74.3 300 24 a. k. tolstoj 51.9 100 49.1 100 75.3 316 25 fet 51.2 100 57.8 100 77.3 303 26 majkov 52.3 100 57.5 100 77.4 480 27 18th c. average 63.3 89.5 54.8 100 76.9 3071 28 19th c. average 54.3 98.8 46.4 100 74.9 7600 179russian binary meters. part two no. author rhythmic variations i ii iii iv v vi vii 1 lomonosov (o. f.) 30.7 12.9 15.0 30.7 2.9 7.8 – 2 lomonosov (other) 18.7 23.0 9.7 27.1 0.7 20.8 – 3 trediakovskij 24.9 18.5 12.2 26.9 1.6 15.6 0.3 4 sumarokov 21.5 20.0 11.0 28.4 0.3 18.1 0.1 5 deržavin 24.1 20.1 7.6 30.0 0.3 17.9 – 6 krylov 32.8 25.3 5.6 24.4 – 11.9 – 7 karamzin 21.7 22.7 2.7 30.4 – 22.5 – 8 katenin 37.5 18.6 1.4 34.6 – 7.8 – 9 žukovskij 23.2 24.3 – 31.2 – 21.3 – 10 puškin (bоva) 23.8 29.3 4.4 22.0 0.4 20.1 – 11 puškin (lyr. 1814–22) 22.1 21.3 3.3 37.9 0.3 14.8 0.3 12 puškin (lyr. 1824–28) 21.6 18.3 0.7 34.1 – 25.3 – 13 puškin (lyr. 1829–35) 28.1 20.5 – 28.3 – 23.1 – 14 puškin (c. s.) 21.7 20.6 2.9 31.9 0.4 22.5 – 15 puškin (m. c.) 19.9 20.5 0.4 31.1 – 28.1 – 16 puškin (z. p.) 27.3 25.4 1.8 20.5 – 25.0 – 17 lermontov (1828–30) 25.0 19.4 3.6 29.8 – 22.2 – 18 lermontov (1832–41) 18.8 22.7 0.5 32.4 – 25.6 – 19 jazykov 15.5 18.5 – 37.7 – 28.3 – 20 poležaev 12.1 17.0 – 31.6 – 39.3 – 21 nekrasov 19.0 24.4 – 31.6 – 25.0 – 22 polonskij 28.1 27.8 2.5 22.5 0.9 17.9 0.3 23 mej 18.3 28.7 – 31.7 – 21.3 – 24 a. k. tolstoj 22.5 26.6 – 29.4 – 21.5 – 25 fet 26.8 31.0 – 24.4 – 17.8 – 26 majkov 27.9 29.4 – 24.4 – 18.1 0.2 27 18th c. average 24.8 20.2 9.7 28.1 0.7 16.4 0.1 28 19th c. average 22.6 22.8 1.1 30.6 0.1 22.9 0.05 180 kiril taranovsky no. author word boundaries before syllables 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 lomonosov (o. f.) 27.9 42.1 43.6 37.1 50.0 19.3 2 lomonosov (other) 22.2 29.9 31.9 47.9 44.4 20.8 3 trediakovskij 27.7 31.6 36.8 43.1 48.0 20.1 4 sumarokov 21.0 35.1 29.2 43.1 48.3 26.2 5 deržavin 30.6 26.3 33.5 43.8 49.9 21.8 6 krylov 30.0 29.7 44.7 43.1 50.0 23.3 7 karamzin 26.0 28.5 23.5 53.5 38.8 28.8 8 katenin 32.3 40.3 36.6 46.2 50.9 23.4 9 žukovskij 26.5 27.9 34.4 42.9 43.7 26.5 10 puškin (bоva) 23.1 25.3 33.3 55.3 34.8 31.5 11 puškin (lyr. 1814–22) 27.4 34.3 28.2 47.5 47.9 21.5 12 puškin (lyr. 1824–28) 24.2 31.7 31.9 42.8 46.4 20.3 13 puškin (lyr. 1829–35) 24.7 31.7 32.0 49.7 46.3 20.7 14 puškin (c. s.) 19.5 34.8 33.8 44.2 50.4 16.1 15 puškin (m. c.) 26.3 24.6 27.7 49.1 48.2 15.9 16 puškin (z. p.) 25.0 24.1 35.7 49.6 47.3 20.5 17 lermontov (1828–30) 29.4 27.4 34.5 44.8 46.8 19.8 18 lermontov (1832–41) 21.3 30.4 27.5 43.5 52.2 18.4 19 jazykov 19.0 34.2 23.3 44.1 48.1 18.5 20 poležaev 17.0 26.7 25.7 44.2 44.7 14.6 21 nekrasov 21.9 28.7 29.7 48.1 45.6 20.0 22 polonskij 27.2 25.0 47.8 32.7 49.7 26.5 23 mej 23.0 27.0 36.7 48.0 44.7 17.6 24 a. k. tolstoj 20.9 31.0 38.6 36.4 45.9 28.2 25 fet 25.4 25.8 40.6 39.6 45.6 32.0 26 majkov 27.5 24.8 41.7 44.0 46.5 25.2 27 18th c. average 27.2 30.8 35.1 43.3 48.8 22.4 28 19th c. average 23.8 29.8 33.1 45.0 47.1 20.8 181russian binary meters. part two table ii: four-foot iamb 1739-1835 1–4: lomonosov’s first attempts 5–26: 18th c. four-foot iamb 27–33: first phase of transitional period 34–50: second phase of transitional period 51–60: continuation of 18th-c. tradition by certain poets after 1820 61–65: rhythmic averages 182 kiril taranovsky no. author stressed syllables average stress load on icti number of lines2 4 6 8 1 lomonosov (1739) 99.3 87.1 86.1 100 93.1 280 2 lomonosov (1741) 99.3 97.5 98.2 100 98.8 440 3 lomonosov (1742) 98.0 84.1 75.9 100 89.5 440 4 lomonosov (1743) 98.4 89.5 82.7 100 92.7 248 5 lomonosov (1745–46) 94.8 82.2 52.0 100 82.3 560 6 lomonosov (1747) 97.3 76.5 48.0 100 80.5 302 7 lomonosov (1748–49) 95.7 73.4 53.6 100 80.7 304 8 lomonosov (1750) 93.0 76.8 47.8 100 79.4 630 9 lomonosov (1752–57) 95.6 77.3 54.9 100 82.0 639 10 lomonosov (1759–60) 95.6 72.3 54.6 100 80.6 390 11 lomonosov (1761) 90.6 76.7 56.3 100 80.9 480 12 lomonosov (1762–64) 90.9 71.2 52.9 100 78.8 580 13 sumarokov (1767–72) 91.7 78.0 53.8 100 80.9 810 14 petrov (1766) 92.9 84.3 61.8 100 84.8 280 15 xeraskov (1773–77) 95.8 80.1 52.9 100 82.2 548 16 kostrov (1778) 88.2 81.9 54.4 100 81.1 270 17 deržavin (1781–85) 90.4 76.8 54.6 100 80.5 993 18 radiščev (1783) 96.7 82.4 54.1 100 83.3 540 19 knjažnin (до 1791) 96.3 82.4 58.7 100 84.4 699 20 nikolev (1790) 98.1 86.9 58.5 100 85.9 260 21 osipov (1791) 92.3 83.0 47.3 100 80.5 770 22 kapnist (1792) 89.3 80.4 58.1 100 82.0 270 23 bogdanovič (1790–92) 94.1 76.8 56.8 100 81.9 220 24 krylov (1793) 91.7 88.1 61.4 100 85.3 515 25 kotel’nickij (1795) 91.3 89.2 41.9 100 80.6 480 26 kozodavlev 92.8 80.4 42.8 100 79.0 388 27 v. puškin (1795–1815) 97.9 81.9 52.9 100 83.2 138 28 žukovskij (1797–1800) 95.2 87.7 45.8 100 82.2 559 29 žukovskij (1803–13) 92.1 86.5 47.8 100 81.6 889 30 batjuškov (1805–13) 95.3 85.9 54.4 100 83.9 873 31 vjazemskij (1811–15) 88.6 84.9 46.8 100 80.1 517 32 a. puškin (kol’na, 1814) 97.1 88.3 51.1 100 84.1 137 183russian binary meters. part two no. author rhythmic variations i ii iii iv v vi vii 1 lomonosov (1739) 72.5 0.7 12.9 13.9 — — — 2 lomonosov (1741) 95.0 0.7 2.5 1.8 — — — 3 lomonosov (1742) 58.9 1.8 15.2 23.2 0.7 0.2 — 4 lomonosov (1743) 71.0 1.6 10.1 16.9 0.4 — — 5 lomonosov (1745–46) 32.7 3.6 15.7 44.3 2.1 1.6 — 6 lomonosov (1747) 25.8 1.0 21.2 48.0 2.3 1.7 — 7 lomonosov (1748–49) 25.7 2.3 25.6 43.4 1.0 2.0 — 8 lomonosov (1750) 23.2 3.3 21.3 46.6 1.9 3.7 — 9 lomonosov (1752–57) 30.3 2.8 21.8 42.6 0.9 1.6 — 10 lomonosov (1759–60) 27.9 1.3 25.4 40.0 2.3 3.1 — 11 lomonosov (1761) 29.8 5.0 21.5 37.5 1.8 4.4 — 12 lomonosov (1762–64) 22.9 3.1 26.9 39.2 1.9 6.0 — 13 sumarokov (1767–72) 29.7 4.3 19.8 40.0 2.2 4.0 — 14 petrov (1766) 42.2 4.6 15.0 35.0 0.7 2.5 — 15 xeraskov (1773–77) 33.6 0.7 18.6 42.3 1.3 3.5 — 16 kostrov (1778) 29.6 7.4 17.4 40.4 0.7 4.4 — 17 deržavin (1781–85) 27.2 4.8 22.6 40.0 0.6 4.8 — 18 radiščev (1783) 36.7 1.1 16.3 42.4 1.3 2.2 — 19 knjažnin (до 1791) 39.6 2.1 17.0 39.1 0.6 1.6 — 20 nikolev (1790) 46.2 0.4 11.9 38.8 1.2 1.5 — 21 osipov (1791) 31.3 3.1 12.9 44.0 4.1 4.6 — 22 kapnist (1792) 35.9 4.8 17.4 33.7 2.2 5.9 — 23 bogdanovič (1790–92) 31.8 2.7 22.3 39.1 0.9 3.2 — 24 krylov (1793) 44.5 5.6 11.3 35.3 0.6 2.7 — 25 kotel’nickij (1795) 26.5 5.0 10.4 54.0 0.4 3.7 — 26 kozodavlev 20.6 3.9 18.3 52.6 1.3 3.3 — 27 v. puškin (1795–1815) 34.1 1.4 17.4 45.7 0.7 0.7 — 28 žukovskij (1797–1800) 32.9 1.8 11.1 50.0 1.2 3.0 — 29 žukovskij (1803–13) 32.1 3.3 12.4 46.5 1.1 4.6 — 30 batjuškov (1805–13) 38.1 2.3 14.0 43.1 0.1 2.4 — 31 vjazemskij (1811–15) 28.2 5.2 13.4 45.3 1.7 6.2 — 32 a. puškin (kol’na, 1814) 37.2 2.2 11.7 48.2 — 0.7 — 184 kiril taranovsky 33 del’vig (1814) 85.1 78.5 40.0 100 75.9 195 34 žukovskij (1814–16) 85.6 83.3 48.5 100 79.4 994 35 žukovskij (1818–19) 84.2 86.1 37.2 100 76.9 823 36 žukovskij (1820) 84.0 85.6 38.2 100 77.0 1182 37 žukovskij (1821) 87.6 83.6 42.1 100 78.3 1130 38 žukovskij (1823–32) 84.0 86.0 47.8 100 79.5 1516 39 batjuškov (1815–17) 92.5 94.1 37.3 100 81.0 268 40 vjazemskij (1816–19) 87.5 82.6 48.9 100 79.8 442 41 puškin (1814–15) 91.5 91.7 38.3 100 80.4 530 42 puškin (1816) 90.8 92.0 37.1 100 80.0 501 43 puškin (1817–18) 87.6 89.9 36.5 100 78.5 515 44 puškin (1819–20) 87.2 91.3 34.4 100 78.2 596 45 puškin (r. & l., 1817–20) 91.5 89.9 44.1 100 81.4 2775 46 puškin (b. f., 1822–23) 89.5 89.3 43.2 100 80.5 579 47 del’vig (1817–19) 85.0 85.9 42.9 100 74.5 265 48 kozlov (1821) 90.5 91.0 43.5 100 81.3 421 49 venevitinov 89.0 91.5 44.1 100 81.2 1029 50 ryleev (dumy, 1821–23) 86.0 84.7 51.0 100 80.4 1336 51 kjuxel’beker (1818–20) 87.3 85.7 44.8 100 79.5 636 52 kjuxel’beker (1821–24) 89.9 86.7 49.1 100 81.4 931 53 kjuxel’beker (zor., 1831) 89.1 81.4 60.2 100 82.7 1233 54 kjuxel’beker (j. & k., 1832–35) 86.7 81.9 58.5 100 81.8 2353 55 v. puškin (1828) 87.5 78.0 46.0 100 77.9 604 56 ševyrëv (1820) 89.8 86.0 42.7 100 79.6 157 57 ševyrëv (1825) 91.3 86.4 47.6 100 81.3 206 58 xomjakov (1826–27) 93.4 88.4 48.0 100 82.5 198 59 lermontov (1828) 91.8 91.4 45.9 100 82.3 1252 60 lermontov (p. s. v., 1830) 85.8 84.4 49.1 100 79.8 802 61 žukovskij (1814–32) 85.0 85.0 43.2 100 78.3 5645 62 puškin (1814–20) 90.5 90.5 40.8 100 80.5 4917 63 18th c. average 93.2 79.7 53.2 100 81.5 10928 64 1st phase of trans. period 92.6 85.9 49.1 100 81.9 4691 65 2nd phase of trans. period 87.7 87.7 43.2 100 79.7 14884 185russian binary meters. part two 33 del’vig (1814) 16.4 6.2 17.4 47.2 4.1 8.7 — 34 žukovskij (1814–16) 29.5 5.2 13.8 39.4 2.9 9.2 — 35 žukovskij (1818–19) 21.1 4.9 11.2 49.2 2.7 10.9 — 36 žukovskij (1820) 22.3 4.4 11.5 47.3 2.9 11.6 — 37 žukovskij (1821) 24.9 4.3 12.9 46.3 3.5 8.1 — 38 žukovskij (1823–32) 28.8 7.1 11.9 41.9 2.1 8.9 — 39 batjuškov (1815–17) 29.1 4.1 4.1 57.5 1.8 3.4 — 40 vjazemskij (1816–19) 28.3 5.7 14.9 41.8 2.5 6.8 — 41 puškin (1814–15) 27.2 3.4 7.7 56.0 0.6 5.1 — 42 puškin (1816) 25.5 4.2 7.4 57.3 0.6 5.0 — 43 puškin (1817–18) 23.7 3.3 9.5 53.8 0.6 9.1 — 44 puškin (1819–20) 21.3 4.9 8.2 57.2 0.5 7.9 — 45 puškin (r. & l., 1817–20) 29.6 4.6 9.9 51.8 0.2 3.9 — 46 puškin (b. f., 1822–23) 28.9 3.8 10.5 49.9 0.2 6.7 — 47 del’vig (1817–19) 23.9 6.5 12.5 47.0 1.6 8.5 — 48 kozlov (1821) 30.4 4.5 8.6 51.1 0.4 5.0 — 49 venevitinov 29.7 6.3 8.1 50.8 0.4 4.7 — 50 ryleev (dumy, 1821–23) 29.0 7.5 14.5 41.7 0.8 6.5 — 51 kjuxel’beker (1818–20) 23.6 7.5 13.7 49.4 0.6 5.2 — 52 kjuxel’beker (1821–24) 28.9 7.2 13.0 47.7 0.3 2.9 — 53 kjuxel’beker (zor., 1831) 35.6 6.9 17.7 34.9 0.9 4.0 — 54 kjuxel’beker (j. & k., 1832–35) 34.1 8.0 16.4 34.5 1.7 5.3 — 55 v. puškin (1828) 21.5 6.0 18.5 44.0 3.5 6.5 — 56 ševyrëv (1820) 25.5 5.1 12.1 50.3 1.9 5.1 — 57 ševyrëv (1825) 32.6 2.9 12.1 45.1 1.5 5.8 — 58 xomjakov (1826–27) 33.3 3.6 11.1 48.5 0.5 3.0 — 59 lermontov (1828) 33.1 4.6 8.2 50.1 0.4 3.6 — 60 lermontov (p. s. v., 1830) 27.6 6.7 14.8 42.6 0.8 7.5 — 61 žukovskij (1814–32) 25.6 5.3 12.3 44.4 2.7 9.7 — 62 puškin (1814–20) 27.3 4.3 9.2 53.7 0.3 5.2 — 63 18th c. average 31.1 3.4 18.7 41.9 1.5 3.4 — 64 1st phase of trans. period 32.3 3.6 13.1 46.3 1.0 3.7 — 65 2nd phase of trans. period 27.2 5.2 10.9 48.3 1.4 7.1 — 186 kiril taranovsky no. author word boundaries before syllables 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 lomonosov (1739) 43.9 51.1 42.1 43.2 60.7 31.4 2 lomonosov (1741) 42.3 56.6 46.1 51.1 60.5 38.4 3 lomonosov (1742) 41.6 48.9 40.5 42.5 53.0 31.6 4 lomonosov (1743) 41.1 52.4 44.4 44.4 59.7 28.6 5 lomonosov (1745–46) 36.2 49.8 30.4 45.4 44.3 22.9 6 lomonosov (1747) 38.7 45.4 32.8 40.1 44.4 20.5 7 lomonosov (1748–49) 39.8 43.8 33.6 36.2 44.7 24.7 8 lomonosov (1750) 36.8 44.1 32.5 38.9 47.1 18.1 9 lomonosov (1752–57) 38.5 46.5 33.2 39.1 41.0 29.6 10 lomonosov (1759–60) 29.0 55.4 25.6 36.4 50.3 25.9 11 lomonosov (1761) 33.5 46.5 30.8 38.8 47.3 26.7 12 lomonosov (1762–64) 33.8 43.8 31.2 32.4 47.1 26.7 13 sumarokov (1767–72) 33.7 46.5 32.1 40.4 37.7 33.1 14 petrov (1766) 38.6 46.4 29.6 45.4 48.6 30.4 15 xeraskov (1773–77) 34.5 52.0 29.7 39.8 44.0 28.8 16 kostrov (1778) 39.6 40.0 34.4 38.2 48.2 24.1 17 deržavin (1781–85) 37.4 43.6 33.7 37.0 49.6 20.4 18 radiščev (1783) 38.0 47.0 40.7 38.5 50.9 18.0 19 knjažnin (до 1791) 40.3 46.5 31.9 43.8 48.2 26.6 20 nikolev (1790) 41.2 51.5 35.8 41.2 47.7 26.2 21 osipov (1791) 41.7 41.0 39.9 41.2 43.5 15.3 22 kapnist (1792) 36.7 43.7 36.7 34.8 55.2 20.7 23 bogdanovič (1790–92) 35.0 44.1 35.5 36.8 49.1 27.3 24 krylov (1793) 41.7 43.3 39.8 41.6 50.1 24.7 25 kotel’nickij (1795) 35.0 51.3 24.4 46.3 51.7 13.8 26 kozodavlev 43.0 38.2 24.2 46.9 50.5 13.2 27 v. puškin (1795–1815) 39.1 53.6 34.1 36.2 54.3 15.4 28 žukovskij (1797–1800) 42.8 47.5 28.1 42.4 48.1 19.9 29 žukovskij (1803–13) 47.6 38.6 35.1 38.5 46.5 20.2 30 batjuškov (1805–13) 41.2 48.2 33.7 37.2 50.5 24.7 31 vjazemskij (1811–15) 39.5 40.4 31.3 38.9 49.3 20.9 32 a. puškin (kol’na, 1814) 38.0 53.2 27.0 51.8 43.8 22.6 33 del’vig (1814) 33.8 42.6 22.6 37.9 49.7 16.9 187russian binary meters. part two 34 žukovskij (1814–16) 41.4 36.1 35.6 37.0 48.0 19.2 35 žukovskij (1818–19) 35.7 40.9 28.4 35.2 48.2 19.0 36 žukovskij (1820) 35.2 40.2 29.8 37.3 46.4 18.9 37 žukovskij (1821) 33.0 44.3 31.4 38.9 46.8 18.9 38 žukovskij (1823–32) 39.0 38.8 34.4 35.2 48.4 22.0 39 batjuškov (1815–17) 41.4 47.0 28.0 42.5 44.4 20.5 40 vjazemskij (1816–19) 33.5 45.0 31.7 38.5 47.7 22.6 41 puškin (1814–15) 40.6 45.7 25.3 44.7 50.6 14.7 42 puškin (1816) 41.5 45.7 21.6 44.7 47.9 18.6 43 puškin (1817–18) 40.0 42.7 23.3 38.4 48.5 21.0 44 puškin (1819–20) 37.1 47.6 20.1 42.4 48.3 17.3 45 puškin (r. & l., 1817–20) 37.9 50.1 26.6 42.6 47.3 21.0 46 puškin (b. f., 1822–23) 33.3 52.5 26.6 38.5 51.1 19.9 47 del’vig (1817–19) 36.0 42.5 32.8 32.0 53.0 17.4 48 kozlov (1821) 42.8 44.2 31.1 42.5 50.6 13.8 49 venevitinov 41.4 44.1 31.4 38.9 47.4 21.4 50 ryleev (dumy, 1821–23) 39.1 40.7 31.8 37.1 51.3 21.7 51 kjuxel’beker (1818–20) 39.5 41.5 24.8 43.4 47.6 20.9 52 kjuxel’beker (1821–24) 45.4 40.2 27.7 40.2 47.3 24.9 53 kjuxel’beker (zor., 1831) 33.6 47.5 33.6 38.8 50.1 27.1 54 kjuxel’beker (j. & k., 1832–35) 34.6 44.2 33.0 42.1 49.8 23.4 55 v. puškin (1828) 30.5 47.8 33.1 35.9 47.8 16.4 56 ševyrëv (1820) 28.7 54.8 17.8 46.5 53.5 17.2 57 ševyrëv (1825) 33.5 51.5 35.4 30.6 55.3 18.9 58 xomjakov (1826–27) 30.8 58.1 28.8 38.4 55.6 18.2 59 lermontov (1828) 40.8 47.7 33.9 41.5 47.9 17.3 60 lermontov (p. s. v., 1830) 36.4 43.9 30.0 38.0 47.8 23.2 61 žukovskij (1814–32) 37.0 40.0 32.2 36.7 47.6 19.8 62 puškin (1814–20) 38.7 48.1 24.8 42.6 48.0 19.6 63 18th c. average 37.3 45.9 32.8 40.0 46.7 23.4 64 1st phase of trans. period 41.5 44.4 31.3 41.0 49.3 20.1 65 2nd phase of trans. period 38.0 43.9 29.3 39.2 48.3 19.9 188 kiril taranovsky 189russian binary meters. part two table iii: four-foot iamb from 1820 to end of 19th century 1–40: poets who went over to new rhythmic drive 41–61: poets who implemented new rhythmic drive from outset 62–63: rhythmic averages 190 kiril taranovsky no. author stressed syllables average stress load on icti number of lines2 4 6 8 1 puškin (k. p., 1820–21) 88.8 91.8 46.6 100 81.8 734 2 puškin (b. r., 1821–22) 86.5 90.4 47.4 100 81.1 251 3 puškin (lyr. 1821–22) 84.4 92.2 44.7 100 80.3 765 4 puškin (lyr. 1823–24) 84.8 92.8 42.3 100 80.0 678 5 puškin (cygany, 1824) 87.4 91.2 49.4 100 82.0 533 6 puškin (gr. n., 1824–25) 84.0 88.6 51.1 100 80.9 370 7 puškin (lyr. 1825–26) 83.4 91.7 47.0 100 80.5 338 8 puškin (lyr. 1827) 83.6 93.0 40.0 100 79.2 512 9 puškin (poltava, 1828) 87.0 94.8 43.8 100 81.4 1486 10 puškin (lyr. 1828–29) 83.1 92.7 45.1 100 80.2 629 11 puškin (e. o., 1823–30) 84.4 89.9 43.1 100 79.4 5320 12 puškin (lyr. 1830–33) 83.9 95.3 47.0 100 81.6 1195 13 puškin (m. v., 1833) 85.5 96.4 40.7 100 80.7 469 14 vjazemskij (1820–22) 79.3 85.2 49.7 100 78.6 628 15 vjazemskij (1823–25) 82.1 85.4 54.8 100 80.6 664 16 vjazemskij (1826–27) 77.5 86.6 48.9 100 78.3 591 17 vjazemskij (1828) 79.6 85.5 51.9 100 79.3 696 18 vjazemskij (1829–30) 79.3 89.5 40.2 100 77.3 458 19 vjazemskij (1831) 78.1 90.7 48.2 100 79.3 483 20 del’vig (1821–25) 82.3 92.8 42.2 100 79.4 265 21 ryleev (vojn.) 82.1 90.7 46.3 100 79.8 1109 22 kozlov (1824) 90.5 93.1 45.0 100 82.2 593 23 kozlov (1827) 89.9 95.4 44.1 100 82.4 1084 24 ševyrëv (1827) 84.0 93.1 45.4 100 80.6 449 25 ševyrëv (1828–29) 80.6 93.2 38.9 100 78.2 561 26 xomjakov (1828–39) 90.4 95.2 46.5 100 83.0 768 27 xomjakov (1841–58) 85.8 92.0 52.1 100 82.5 338 28 lermontov (nar. poems 1829) 84.0 92.0 45.4 100 80.4 742 29 lermontov (lyr. 1830) 85.7 88.8 51.0 100 81.4 1385 30 lermontov (nar. poems 1830) 81.3 93.9 43.5 100 79.7 754 31 lermontov (lyr. 1831) 84.4 91.8 48.3 100 81.1 1378 32 lermontov (i.–b, 1832) 82.9 94.4 44.9 100 80.6 1730 191russian binary meters. part two no. author rhythmic variations i ii iii iv v vi vii 1 puškin (k. p., 1820–21) 32.8 5.9 7.9 47.8 0.3 5.3 – 2 puškin (b. r., 1821–22) 29.9 7.9 9.6 47.0 – 5.6 – 3 puškin (lyr. 1821–22) 29.9 7.1 7.7 46.7 0.1 8.5 – 4 puškin (lyr. 1823–24) 28.2 7.2 6.9 49.4 0.3 8.0 – 5 puškin (cygany, 1824) 35.3 5.3 8.8 43.3 – 7.3 – 6 puškin (gr. n., 1824–25) 32.9 6.8 11.4 39.7 – 9.2 – 7 puškin (lyr. 1825–26) 30.5 9.2 7.3 44.8 0.9 7.3 – 8 puškin (lyr. 1827) 25.6 7.6 6.8 5.1 – 8.8 – 9 puškin (poltava, 1828) 32.6 6.0 5.2 49.2 – 7.0 – 10 puškin (lyr. 1828–29) 30.5 7.8 6.8 45.3 0.5 9.1 – 11 puškin (e. o., 1823–30) 26.8 6.6 9.7 47.5 0.4 9.0 – 12 puškin (lyr. 1830–33) 34.3 8.0 4.7 44.9 – 8.1 – 13 puškin (m. v., 1833) 32.2 5.1 3.4 49.7 0.2 9.4 – 14 vjazemskij (1820–22) 26.0 11.6 12.1 38.5 2.7 9.1 – 15 vjazemskij (1823–25) 33.1 8.6 13.1 34.4 1.5 9.3 – 16 vjazemskij (1826–27) 25.0 11.0 12.9 39.1 0.5 11.5 – 17 vjazemskij (1828) 28.0 10.4 13.5 37.1 1.0 10.0 – 18 vjazemskij (1829–30) 24.5 6.5 9.2 44.3 1.3 14.2 – 19 vjazemskij (1831) 30.0 9.9 8.3 38.8 1.0 12.0 – 20 del’vig (1821–25) 24.5 11.3 6.4 50.6 0.8 6.4 – 21 ryleev (vojn.) 29.0 8.7 8.7 43.8 0.6 9.2 – 22 kozlov (1824) 33.7 4.9 6.4 49.9 0.5 4.6 – 23 kozlov (1827) 34.7 5.2 4.2 50.6 0.4 4.9 – 24 ševyrëv (1827) 29.6 8.9 6.9 47.5 — 7.1 – 25 ševyrëv (1828–29) 34.2 8.6 6.1 49.6 0.7 10.8 – 26 xomjakov (1828–39) 35.2 6.6 4.7 50.4 0.1 3.0 – 27 xomjakov (1841–58) 38.5 5.9 7.7 39.3 0.3 8.3 – 28 lermontov (nar. poems 1829) 28.8 9.0 7.6 47.2 0.4 7.0 – 29 lermontov (lyr. 1830) 32.6 7.6 10.8 41.9 0.4 6.7 – 30 lermontov (nar. poems 1830) 28.4 9.3 5.8 46.8 0.3 9.4 – 31 lermontov (lyr. 1831) 32.5 7.8 8.0 43.7 0.2 7.8 – 32 lermontov (i.–b, 1832) 30.5 8.9 5.5 46.8 0.1 8.2 – 192 kiril taranovsky 33 lermontov (narrative poems 1833–34) 85.4 93.8 44.6 100 81.0 1357 34 lermontov (b. o., 1835) 84.3 92.5 47.6 100 81.1 1065 35 lermontov (nar. poems 1836) 84.0 92.4 45.4 100 80.5 1000 36 lermontov (lyr. 1832–37) 82.9 95.7 47.5 100 81.5 696 37 lermontov (lyr. 1839–40) 85.9 92.3 45.2 100 80.9 775 38 lermontov (mcyri, 1840) 87.0 93.6 45.1 100 81.4 739 39 lermontov (demon, 1841) 85.3 92.7 40.6 100 79.7 1117 40 žukovskij (1842) 83.5 88.6 50.0 100 80.5 236 41 pletnev (1822–25) 81.0 93.3 44.0 100 79.6 541 42 jazykov (1823–24) 84.8 99.2 24.6 100 77.2 906 43 jazykov (1825–28) 80.7 96.7 26.3 100 75.9 1242 44 jazykov (1829–31) 77.3 98.7 33.2 100 77.3 952 45 baratynskij (lyr. 1819–20) 88.2 96.9 51.5 100 84.2 229 46 baratynskij (lyr. 1821–28) 75.9 99.0 43.9 100 79.7 908 47 baratynskij (nar. poems 1826) 81.9 98.8 41.5 100 80.6 832 48 baratynskij (nar. poems 1828) 81.4 97.0 39.0 100 79.4 644 49 baratynskij (lyr. 1829–43) 75.6 98.4 35.1 100 77.3 767 50 tjutčev (1820–40) 82.3 89.2 42.3 100 78.5 924 51 tjutčev (1844–73) 77.9 90.8 41.2 100 77.5 1594 52 poležaev (1825–26) 87.5 95.5 36.5 100 79.9 1623 53 poležaev (1827–31) 83.0 98.8 34.4 100 79.1 1367 54 poležaev (ėrpeli, 1830) 81.9 99.3 26.0 100 76.8 1291 55 poležaev (čir–jurt, 1832) 84.5 99.6 24.6 100 77.2 1124 56 poležaev (1832–33) 83.0 100 28.8 100 78.0 775 57 poležaev (1834–38) 84.0 99.3 26.7 100 77.5 819 58 nekrasov (1856) 85.2 93.1 41.7 100 80.0 894 59 mej (1855) 79.8 97.7 30.9 100 77.1 223 60 a. k. tolstoj 87.0 98.4 37.3 100 80.7 546 61 fet 84.8 95.1 35.3 100 78.8 244 62 poets who went over to the new rhythmic structure 84.4 92.2 46.0 100 80.7 29621 63 poets who implemented the new structure from 82.1 96.8 34.6 100 78.4 18445 193russian binary meters. part two 33 lermontov (narrative poems 1833–34) 31.8 6.9 5.9 47.4 0.3 7.7 – 34 lermontov (b. o., 1835) 32.4 8.2 7.0 44.4 0.5 7.5 – 35 lermontov (nar. poems 1836) 30.7 7.5 7.2 45.7 0.4 8.5 – 36 lermontov (lyr. 1832–37) 34.9 8.6 4.0 43.7 0.3 8.5 – 37 lermontov (lyr. 1839–40) 30.8 6.9 7.5 47.4 0.2 7.2 – 38 lermontov (mcyri, 1840) 32.6 6.8 5.7 48.0 0.7 6.2 – 39 lermontov (demon, 1841) 28.4 5.3 6.9 49.6 0.4 9.4 – 40 žukovskij (1842) 35.2 5.1 9.7 36.9 1.7 11.4 – 41 pletnev (1822–25) 26.6 10.9 6.5 47.7 0.2 8.1 — 42 jazykov (1823–24) 21.1 3.1 0.4 62.9 0.4 12.1 — 43 jazykov (1825–28) 17.3 5.9 3.1 60.1 0.2 13.4 — 44 jazykov (1829–31) 23.4 8.6 1.2 52.6 0.1 14.1 — 45 baratynskij (lyr. 1819–20) 40.6 8.3 2.6 44.5 0.5 3.5 — 46 baratynskij (lyr. 1821–28) 30.2 12.8 0.9 44.7 0.1 11.3 — 47 baratynskij (nar. poems 1826) 30.9 9.5 1.1 49.8 0.1 8.6 — 48 baratynskij (nar. poems 1828) 28.1 8.2 2.7 50.3 0.3 10.4 — 49 baratynskij (lyr. 1829–43) 23.5 10.0 1.6 50.5 — 14.4 — 50 tjutčev (1820–40) 25.9 5.9 10.5 45.6 0.3 11.8 — 51 tjutčev (1844–73) 25.9 6.8 8.5 42.8 0.7 15.3 — 52 poležaev (1825–26) 27.5 5.1 3.9 55.5 0.6 7.4 — 53 poležaev (1827–31) 26.3 7.0 — 55.5 0.1 10.0 — 54 poležaev (ėrpeli, 1830) 20.4 5.1 0.5 60.8 0.2 13.0 — 55 poležaev (čir–jurt, 1832) 19.7 4.5 0.4 64.4 — 11.0 — 56 poležaev (1832–33) 22.9 5.9 — 60.1 — 11.1 — 57 poležaev (1834–38) 21.5 4.6 0.6 61.8 0.1 11.4 — 58 nekrasov (1856) 29.3 5.6 6.9 49.0 — 9.2 — 59 mej (1855) 21.5 7.1 2.3 56.1 — 13.0 — 60 a. k. tolstoj 29.7 6.0 1.6 55.7 — 7.0 — 61 fet 23.8 6.6 4.9 56.1 — 8.6 — 62 poets who went over to the new rhythmic structure 31.0 7.6 7.4 45.6 0.4 8.0 — 63 poets who implemented the new structure from 24.9 6.7 3.0 54.0 0.2 11.2 — 194 kiril taranovsky no. author word boundaries before syllables 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 puškin (k. p., 1820–21) 39.1 46.6 28.3 41.0 50.3 21.9 2 puškin (b. r., 1821–22) 36.3 45.4 35.5 38.6 49.8 18.7 3 puškin (lyr. 1821–22) 39.6 42.4 28.5 42.2 46.9 21.7 4 puškin (lyr. 1823–24) 38.3 44.5 28.3 41.3 48.4 19.0 5 puškin (cygany, 1824) 40.3 46.2 33.6 35.6 50.5 21.8 6 puškin (gr. n., 1824–25) 33.5 45.9 30.5 39.5 50.5 23.8 7 puškin (lyr. 1825–26) 39.9 39.9 31.4 41.1 48.2 21.6 8 puškin (lyr. 1827) 39.6 41.4 28.1 39.3 48.6 19.5 9 puškin (poltava, 1828) 40.3 45.6 28.8 43.6 48.9 18.5 10 puškin (lyr. 1828–29) 44.0 37.7 29.7 37.4 52.8 19.4 11 puškin (e. o., 1823–30) 36.6 44.3 28.7 40.4 46.5 20.7 12 puškin (lyr. 1830–33) 44.5 38.5 32.6 41.4 50.5 18.8 13 puškin (m. v., 1833) 40.7 43.9 25.4 44.8 46.7 21.1 14 vjazemskij (1820–22) 35.7 37.1 35.2 37.7 44.9 23.6 15 vjazemskij (1823–25) 35.4 41.1 34.0 37.5 46.4 27.9 16 vjazemskij (1826–27) 37.2 35.0 28.5 39.4 43.5 29.4 17 vjazemskij (1828) 32.0 41.8 27.2 39.9 49.7 26.3 18 vjazemskij (1829–30) 34.7 39.7 21.8 42.8 47.2 22.9 19 vjazemskij (1831) 32.3 42.0 32.1 39.5 45.5 25.5 20 del’vig (1821–25) 43.8 35.8 32.4 35.1 54.0 16.3 21 ryleev (vojn.) 41.8 36.7 31.7 41.6 49.5 17.9 22 kozlov (1824) 42.8 44.7 37.6 34.9 48.4 20.2 23 kozlov (1827) 42.0 46.3 34.9 37.9 52.0 16.3 24 ševyrëv (1827) 36.5 45.7 33.0 35.4 52.6 19.4 25 ševyrëv (1828–29) 39.4 39.0 28.3 35.7 47.4 22.8 26 xomjakov (1828–39) 39.7 48.3 30.9 39.8 51.0 22.3 27 xomjakov (1841–58) 39.9 43.8 35.8 36.7 50.3 23.4 28 lermontov (nar. poems 1829) 43.8 38.4 30.3 38.5 50.3 20.0 29 lermontov (lyr. 1830) 41.6 40.7 34.2 38.3 50.4 20.2 30 lermontov (nar. poems 1830) 37.8 41.0 28.6 44.2 45.8 21.4 31 lermontov (lyr. 1831) 41.4 41.1 30.0 43.3 48.1 20.5 32 lermontov (i.–b, 1832) 42.1 39.5 29.9 44.9 48.2 17.6 195russian binary meters. part two 33 lermontov (narrative poems 1833–34) 43.6 40.5 28.5 42.7 48.5 19.9 34 lermontov (b. o., 1835) 37.8 43.4 32.9 40.8 52.3 17.2 35 lermontov (nar. poems 1836) 42.4 39.2 28.8 44.4 46.2 20.8 36 lermontov (lyr. 1832–37) 42.2 38.8 33.8 39.8 52.2 19.4 37 lermontov (lyr. 1839–40) 40.3 43.2 30.2 38.1 50.1 21.5 38 lermontov (mcyri, 1840) 36.7 47.8 34.9 38.2 48.3 19.9 39 lermontov (demon, 1841) 39.1 44.0 30.4 35.3 52.3 17.5 40 žukovskij (1842) 38.6 38.6 34.3 39.8 47.9 22.9 41 pletnev (1822–25) 41.2 36.8 33.5 31.2 48.8 26.8 42 jazykov (1823–24) 44.4 39.8 23.2 39.0 47.5 14.8 43 jazykov (1825–28) 44.5 33.9 21.0 40.1 47.1 17.1 44 jazykov (1829–31) 41.9 34.9 25.1 39.5 49.5 18.4 45 baratynskij (lyr. 1819–20) 45.0 42.4 33.2 42.3 47.6 26.2 46 baratynskij (lyr. 1821–28) 39.5 35.8 29.1 42.6 48.5 23.2 47 baratynskij (nar. poems 1826) 40.3 41.0 28.2 40.7 50.6 21.3 48 baratynskij (nar. poems 1828) 39.1 41.0 22.5 45.7 50.3 18.8 49 baratynskij (lyr. 1829–43) 37.0 37.9 25.0 46.2 44.2 18.7 50 tjutčev (1820–40) 37.7 41.6 27.9 38.3 46.2 22.1 51 tjutčev (1844–73) 35.9 39.5 27.6 40.8 43.9 22.2 52 poležaev (1825–26) 47.5 38.5 28.2 41.2 47.4 16.7 53 poležaev (1827–31) 43.7 38.6 28.6 43.8 45.3 16.1 54 poležaev (ėrpeli, 1830) 41.1 40.4 22.7 46.7 40.3 16.0 55 poležaev (čir–jurt, 1832) 43.4 40.8 19.6 45.0 45.1 14.7 56 poležaev (1832–33) 44.6 38.3 23.1 43.0 45.3 17.4 57 poležaev (1834–38) 46.8 37.0 26.4 42.5 42.7 14.7 58 nekrasov (1856) 37.2 47.3 28.2 41.2 45.3 20.9 59 mej (1855) 40.8 37.2 27.4 44.4 43.5 15.2 60 a. k. tolstoj 48.9 37.5 28.6 39.4 49.5 18.9 61 fet 37.7 46.7 29.1 41.8 46.3 13.5 62 poets who went over to the new rhythmic structure 40.0 41.8 30.9 40.3 49.2 20.4 63 poets who implemented the new structure from 41.9 39.1 26.0 41.8 46.1 18.5 196 kiril taranovsky 197russian binary meters. part two table iv: four-foot iamb (according to a. belyj’s calculations) 1–7: 18th c. four-foot iamb 8–9: transitional period 10–24: 19th c. four-foot iamb (from pushkin to symbolists) 25–30: symbolists 198 kiril taranovsky no. author stressed syllables average stress load on icti2 4 6 8 1 lomonosov 97.8 76.7 54.4 100 82.2 2 deržavin 92.3 76.7 55.9 100 81.2 3 bogdanovič 96.0 80.9 54.5 100 82.9 4 ozerov 90.9 83.2 62.1 100 84.1 5 dmitriev 95.8 83.2 57.7 100 84.2 6 neledinskij–meleckij 94.0 81.7 56.7 100 83.1 7 kapnist 94.1 81.2 61.4 100 84.2 8 batjuškov 95.3 94.5 47.5 100 84.3 9 žukovskij 84.9 91.3 53.0 100 82.3 10 puškin 81.5 94.5 42.8 100 79.7 11 lermontov 83.1 92.1 46.1 100 80.3 12 jazykov 78.8 97.9 34.9 100 77.9 13 baratynskij 72.5 99.3 45.5 100 79.3 14 benediktov 90.1 96.0 42.4 100 82.1 15 tjutčev 80.7 89.6 42.6 100 78.2 16 k. pavlova 82.0 87.9 54.5 100 81.1 17 polonskij 83.9 92.8 52.4 100 82.3 18 fet 76.7 94.3 44.6 100 78.9 19 majkov 87.1 96.0 49.8 100 83.2 20 mej 79.4 97.1 40.9 100 79.4 21 nekrasov 86.4 92.9 41.8 100 80.3 22 a. k. tolstoj 86.1 97.8 45.8 100 82.4 23 slučevskij 87.6 94.6 45.9 100 82.0 24 nadson 90.1 94.8 38.6 100 80.9 25 merežkovskij 85.6 97.3 39.8 100 80.7 26 sologub 75.5 95.5 47.5 100 79.6 27 brjusov 87.7 91.9 52.0 100 82.9 28 v. ivanov 86.4 91.4 54.0 100 83.0 29 blok 81.0 87.7 52.7 100 80.4 30 gorodeckij 87.0 98.2 54.0 100 84.8 199russian binary meters. part two no. author rhythmic variations i ii iii iv v vi vii 1 lomonosov 31.5 1.4 21.5 43.0 1.8 0.8 — 2 deržavin 29.4 3.4 23.1 39.6 0.2 4.3 — 3 bogdanovič 33.7 2.5 18.3 43.2 0.8 1.5 — 4 ozerov ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5 dmitriev 39.9 1.8 16.0 39.1 0.8 2.4 — 6 neledinskij-meleckij ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7 kapnist 39.4 4.7 17.3 35.9 1.5 1.2 — 8 batjuškov 39.3 3.5 4.7 50.5 0.8 1.2 — 9 žukovskij 36.9 7.7 8.4 39.3 0.3 7.4 — 10 puškin 29.0 8.4 5.4 47.0 0.1 10.1 — 11 lermontov 31.0 7.2 7.9 44.2 — 9.7 — 12 jazykov 26.2 6.9 1.8 50.5 0.3 14.3 — 13 baratynskij 27.9 17.1 0.5 43.9 0.2 10.4 — 14 benediktov 33.5 4.9 4.0 52.6 — 5.0 — 15 tjutčev 26.0 6.5 10.1 44.3 0.3 12.8 — 16 k. pavlova 32.6 10.4 11.4 37.5 0.5 7.4 0.2 17 polonskij 36.1 9.4 6.9 40.6 0.3 6.7 — 18 fet 26.0 12.9 5.7 45.0 — 10.4 — 19 majkov 38.9 6.9 4.0 44.2 — 6.0 — 20 mej 28.7 9.7 2.5 47.8 0.4 10.9 — 21 nekrasov 28.5 6.2 7.1 50.8 — 7.4 — 22 a. k. tolstoj 36.6 7.0 2.2 47.3 — 6.9 — 23 slučevskij 35.6 5.4 4.9 46.6 0.5 7.0 — 24 nadson 28.7 4.7 5.2 56.2 — 5.2 — 25 merežkovskij 31.9 5.2 2.7 51.0 — 9.2 — 26 sologub 30.9 12.1 4.5 40.1 — 12.4 — 27 brjusov 37.7 6.2 8.1 41.9 — 6.1 — 28 v. ivanov 41.4 4.4 8.2 36.4 0.4 9.2 — 29 blok 30.0 11.1 11.6 38.7 0.7 7.9 — 30 gorodeckij 44.1 8.1 1.8 41.1 — 4.9 — studia metrica et poetica sisu 3_2_27.indd the elementary foundations of formal analysis1 boris yarkho i. the composition of literary form § 1. – the concept of form these days a lot has been said about literary form, and not without reason. on the contrary, i think that most of those working in this field are on the right track, trying to find and identify what the history and theory of literature should in fact study. therefore, if i venture to write a few lines on these issues, it is not because i want to argue with anyone, but only because i would like to introduce some clarity and simplicity to the question of the composition and the nature of literary form, and, perhaps, thus somehow facilitate practical work with literary texts.*1 first and foremost, [we need] a definition of artistic form: the totality of the elements of a literary work that are capable of affecting aesthetic feeling (either positively or negatively, it makes no difference) is what we call “form”.**2 any definition must in the end rely on something indefinable. the aesthetic emotion is just as indefinable as any other emotion, i.e. anger, grief, disappointment, etc., while at the same time, everyone knows what it is. everyone also knows that not a single phenomenon of the external world is able to directly stimulate aesthetic feeling, that it must be preceded by certain sensory and cognitive acts. * i emphasize this because i want the reader to look at the present article from this practical point of view, i.e. to ask himself the following question: is it pragmatic to work with material using the proposed scheme or not? ** the third part of g[ustav] g. shpet’s esteticheskie fragmenty [aesthetic fragments, petersburg, 1923] was published only after this article had already been written. on pages 8 and 9 of this book i read with pleasure his exposition of an almost identical doctrine. this saves me the trouble of giving a detailed account of my views on aesthetic (positive or negative, i.e. beautiful or unbeautiful) and non-aesthetic (i.e. irrelevant from the standpoint of beauty) verbal objects. see also: b. yarkho, “granitsy nauchnogo literaturovedenija” [“the limits of the scientific study of literature”] ([the journal] iskusstvo [art, 1925] ii, pp. 48 and 49). studia metrica et poetica 3.2, 2016, 151–174 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.2.06 152 boris yarkho hence two questions: (a) about the stimuli contained in the literary work itself, and (b) about the mediating psychic acts, or intermediaries contained in the mind of the perceiver. i must say right away that a literary historian and a literary theorist should be interested only in the former question, i.e. the stimuli themselves (the facts of the external world). the totality of the stimuli is form, which is the subject matter of literary studies. the totality of the intermediaries is the perception of the literary work, which is the subject matter of psychology. if we now speak about intermediaries, it is only to understand the actions of various stimuli and to group them. § 2. – the division of the formal types according to psychic intermediaries the fact is that failure to take intermediaries into account sometimes causes confusion in the delineation of the types of literary forms themselves. let me cite an example. we define a literary “image” as follows: images in a literary work are those meanings of words that evoke an idea of sensory perception. walzel (problema formy v poezii [the problem of form in poetry], tr. by [m. l.] gurfinkel’, petersburg, 1923, p. 30),2 who provides a nearly identical definition of the image, adds: “this includes such elements of poetic imagery as similes, metaphors, and other related phenomena...” obviously, the facts of iconology (the study of images and motifs) and the facts of style are confused here. indeed, does the essence of the figures mentioned above lie in the sensory associations evoked by them? do metaphors and comparisons differ in the images they elicit? for example: vossel sokol na dobra konja. [russian: ‘the falcon mounted the good steed’.] on, kak sokol, vossel na dobra konja. [russian: ‘he, like a falcon, mounted the good steed’.] in both cases the reader imagines a man whose rapid movements and other features make him similar to a falcon. the difference is not in the image, but in the way the concepts are connected logically. 153the elementary foundations of formal analysis this confusion of facts, to which we object, comes from the circumstance that some figures,*3 such as all tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, litotes) as well as bipartite figures (simile, antithesis, oxymoron, and so on), are able to elicit new images in the process of their formation. for example: calix non mellis, sed fellis. [latin: ‘a chalice not of honey, but of bile’.] the image of “honey” is added here as a contrast in order to reinforce the main image of “bile.” all of this is emphasized by the figure known as schema kat’ arsin kai thesin.3 but now we shall see that all this can be done without images. for example: “it is not reasoning that is needed here, but intuition”. the figuration here is the same, and the aesthetic effect of the sentence is based on it alone. no image – an iconic void. it seems clear now: stylistic forms are based not on images, but on concepts. in practice this implies that metaphor, metonymy etc. should be regarded – and i most decidedly insist on this – separately from the images they contain in order to avoid methodological confusion.**4 the vast majority of stylistic figures have nothing to do with sensory associations. here belong all the so-called grammatical (or, more precisely, morphological) figures, including all kinds of enallage4, such as, for example, heterarhithmon5: “the enemy is powerful” (instead of “the enemies are powerful”). the reader, of course, imagines a multitude of enemies, but the usage of the singular imparts to this image a purely abstract concept of totality. syntactic figures based on the position of words in a sentence, such as parallelism, chiasmus and so on, are of the same nature. * we would willingly call them “real” figures, in contrast to “purely modal” figures, which change only the mode of perception. ** now we shall use an elementary schema for purposes of illustration: metaphor simile a rose tsvetushchuju rozu geroj poljubil. [russian: ‘the hero fell in love with a blooming rose’.] anna rozoju tsvela. [russian: ‘anna was blooming like a rose’.] a deer o, lan’, vnemli ljubvi moej. [russian: ‘o, deer, listen to my love’.] o, deva, bystraja, kak lan’... [russian: ‘o, maiden, fast like a deer’.] the horizontal row demonstrates the identity of images (the subject matter of iconology), the vertical row demonstrates the identity of figures (the subject matter of stylistics). 154 boris yarkho exodus 15:10. thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea parallelism covered them. 15:12. thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth (prope swallowed them. aequatum)6 in order to understand the similarities between the grammatical forms and their order a sophisticated logical act is needed, without which the figure will not produce any aesthetic effect. in general, regardless of the fact that some stylistic phenomena are often related to phenomena of a different order (see below, §§ 4 and 5), they are all united by the following feature: instead of changing the image they change the logical mode of its perception. on the basis of this feature they can be identified as a separate group, which should not on any account be mixed with the iconic elements of a work. since the aesthetic effect of the figures cannot be doubted, and this action cannot take place without a logical act, we have to recognize the aesthetic potency of mental acts, the aesthetics of logic. another lesson follows from consideration of the theory of [ernst] elster (prinzipien der literaturwissenschaft, halle, 1911, p. 11 ff ), which unifies under the whole of “style” not only the elements of stylistics proper (see below), but also metrics.*5 it is evident, however, that phonic elements have nothing to do in principle with the meaning of a word and with logical perception in general. rhyme, alliteration and other euphonic forms affect auditory sensation, which can directly stimulate aesthetic feeling. consider the following verses of the troubadour aimeric de belenoi: al prim pres dels breus jorns braus quan branda’ls bruelhs l’aura brava... [provençal: ‘at the first approach of the brief, harsh day, when the harsh wind shakes the wood...’] not only the meanings of the alliterating words, but even their number and the temporal distance between them are irrelevant for the phonic impression here. all metric forms, both simple and complex (see § 5a below), are unified * the same division was proposed by prof. v[iktor] m. zhirmunsky [in his “zadachi poetiki” (“the tasks of poetics”)], [the journal] nachala [the beginnings], 1921, no. 1. 155the elementary foundations of formal analysis by the fact that they must affect auditory sensation. they are placed in the same group on the basis of this common feature. these theses lead to the following conclusions: a) images, stylistic forms, and metrics affect aesthetic feeling and therefore comprise part of literary form, but they do so in three principally different ways. b) they use psychic intermediaries in the following way: α) all images operate by means of sensory associations. β) all stylistic elements operate by means of logical acts. γ) all phonic elements operate by means of auditory sensations. c) all three aspects are therefore equally valuable and, most importantly, equally different from each other. we say “most importantly”, because some scholars (including prof. v. m. zhirmunsky in the preface to walzel’s book quoted above, p. 20) are inclined to place (α) in a separate group and contrast it with the other two as “content” opposed to “form”, and thematic analysis opposed to formal analysis. rejecting this division, we argue not against the terminology, but against the taxonomy which involves a dualistic view of literature and many unnecessary disputes. we contend that (α) does not differ from either (β) or (γ) more than (β) from (γ), and that, therefore, the division into two groups, 1) α and 2) βγ, has no logical basis. § 3. – the division of form according to real categories in accordance with the three specified types of stimuli, the study of literary form is divided into three parts. i. metrics (or, more precisely, “phonics”), i.e. the study of aesthetically used speech sounds, operates with a constant sound structure of words.*6 this includes: a) the study of the relationship between speech sounds in length (metrics in the narrow sense), stress (tonics), and pitch (melodics). * we are speaking of a constant sound structure of words, which is independent from the emotional colouring of pronunciation and which, e.g., in the russian language, includes timbre, length, and pitch accent. these variable sound elements of words belong to the domain of declamation, which should be strictly differentiated from phonics. for more details, see the second part of the article “granitsy nauchnogo literaturovedenija” [“the limits of the scientific study of literature”] (iskusstvo [art, 1927] iii). 156 boris yarkho b) versology [stikhologija], i.e. the study of the structure of repetitive word combinations (feet, verse lines) and their boundaries (pause, caesura, the end of a line). c) strophics, i.e. the study of verse combinations [stikhosochetanija]. d) euphonics, i.e. the study of qualitative sound repetitions (that is, of rhyme in the broad sense). ii. stylistics operates with style,*77 i.e. the form of a word in its relation to meaning. stylistics studies the use of all linguistic categories for aesthetic purposes: a) lexicology and semasiology (barbarisms, archaisms, provincialisms and so on as well as all tropes). b) phonetics in its relation to the meanings of words (annomination8, phonetic variation, homonymy, and other so-called phonetic figures, see § 4b).**8 c) morphology (so-called grammatical figures, see § 2). d) syntax (see § 2). iii. iconology operates with images (see the definition in § [2]) and their combinations, so that we distinguish, respectively: a) images at rest: “the steed”, b) motifs, i.e. images in motion: “the steed broke its leg”, * style is, of course, a problematic word because everyone uses it differently. for example, in [richard] müller-freienfels book (poetika [poetics], tr. by [i. ya.] k[ag]anov and [e. s.] papernaya, kharkov, 1923, p. 32),7 style includes omnia et quaedam alia [latin: ‘everything and something else’]. we use the old terminology found in old textbooks of so-called “stylistics” as nevertheless the most understandable terminology, but would be grateful to anyone who could provide a more appropriate term. the old good word of our forefathers, “slog” [russian: ‘diction’] (as in “he speaks with excellent diction”) would be the most acceptable if only an unambiguous adjective could be derived from it. ** an example of a purely phonetic variation: ty leti, leti sokolik vysokó i dalekó, i vysóko i dalëḱo, priamo k drugu moemu. [russian: ‘fly, fly, my falcon, high and far, and high and far, straight to my friend.] a phonetic variation operates only on the condition of the logical consciousness of a complete equivalence of the meanings of both of its parts, and thus it retains its logical character. 157the elementary foundations of formal analysis c) plots, i.e. the totality of logically related motifs of any literary whole: “the steed broke its leg; christ healed the steed”.*9 to these three disciplines we add a fourth: (iv) the study of combined composition, or simply composition, on which more later (see below §§ 8 and 11). ii. the relation of formal aspects to psychic intermediaries § 4. – auxiliary intermediaries if the correlation we established between stimuli and intermediaries were absolute, it would be wrong. absoluteness is a feature only of scholastic divisions. organic divisions always allow intermediate types (species). in fact, the different types of stimuli are not entirely covered by one main type of intermediary. for example, all images operate by means of sensory associations, but these associations can be evoked not only by the meanings of words. on the other hand, stylistic phenomena always operate by means of logical acts, but are not limited to them. we cite cases of this kind from all three fields. a) phonics. this includes cases when the sound itself evokes a sensory association regardless of the meaning of a word. we are certainly far from subjective speculations about “sound painting” [“zvukopis’”], such as voyelles sombres9 denoting dark states of the soul, et cetera similia quae dicere pudet 10.**10 we are not speaking here of simple onomatopoeia, which belongs to the domain of linguistics. we are referring to particular and specific cases of onomatopoeia used aesthetically: α) imitation of musical tempo. for example, in [petr ershov’s] konekgorbunok [the little humpbacked horse], part iii: “ta-ra-rá-li, ta-ra-rá” etc., where the combinations of sounds themselves evoke the idea of the sound of the trumpet; β) rendering of the duration of movements by a corresponding duration of verse lines or verse segments (see the endless examples in * an example of a basic plot of the narrative part of a spell. ** why should we not be at least as clever as linguists, who long ago abandoned the idea of finding any connection between the sound of a word and its meaning? 158 boris yarkho bücher’s rabota i ritm [tr. by i. ivanov, st. petersburg, 1899, and moscow, 1923],11 as well as in [wilhelm] uhl’s winileod [teutonia 5], leipzig, 1908). it is especially frequent in folk dance songs. cf., for example, the brief alliterative verse segmentations to the beat of the kamarinskaya12: dáli dúlju dár’je, dúre molodój. cf. also a german song sung in the process of piling – the short refrain corresponds to the short wham of a pile-driver: alle mönsche mötte stärwe, rrum! blôt de döcke siebert nöch; rrum! wer wart sîne böckse ärwe? rrum! so’ ne noarsch hätt keener nöch! rrum! 13 b) style. here the auxiliary intermediaries accompany the main intermediary in the following cases: α) in all the so-called phonetic figures, which are based on a repetition of words or parts of words, there appear sound repetitions inseparable from the figure itself, such as alliteration (e.g., in the case of paregmenon14), rhyme (homoioteleuton15, epiphora16) or both (symploce17). the semantic, logical aspect of stylistics remains unscathed. klika klika ne slykhala18 – antanaclasis19. edu, edu v chistom pole20 – epizeuxis21. the phonetic device is the same, but the figures are different because one of them is based on the difference of meanings while the other – on the identity of meanings. β) unusual lexical forms (barbarisms, archaisms, vulgarisms, etc.) can evoke associations with images depicting the milieu from which they came, and these associations may determine sensory perception. the phrase “a scrubby little man came in and said: ‘that woman was not here’” can be rewritten as “a scrubby little man came in and said: ‘dat woman wasn’t here’”, and the image of this man will become clearer. 159the elementary foundations of formal analysis γ) we have already mentioned (see § 2) several figures which are not only capable of, but even prone to attracting images. we also pointed out that the essence of the “real” figuration is not the image, although the latter operates simultaneously with the figure. it is clear that sounds and images attracted by stylistic figures are as such included in the phonics and iconics of a work and should be considered regardless of their origin, along with other sounds and images. c) iconology. just as figures need concepts, and not images, in order to produce an effect (see § 2), so images can be linked to one another by means of only thematic devices, without the aid of any syntactic or lexical figures. namely: α) by contrast, without the mediation of an antithesis, oxymoron, irony or litotes. for example, sigurd and hagen in the song of the nibelungs or the countries of lilliput and brobdingnag in gulliver’s travels. β) by similarity or analogy, without the mediation of metaphors, comparisons, synonyms or parallelism. for example, the images of grandmother and vera in [ivan goncharov’s novel] obryv [the precipice]. – this also includes all the so-called “parallel motifs”, such as lear’s attitude to his daughters and gloucester’s attitude to his sons in king lear. γ) by causal relationship, without the aid of metonymy or an adverbial modifier of cause. then we speak of “motivation” (some scholars use the term “internal motivation”): the reason for every misadventure of odysseus is not indicated every time by a separate phrase, but we know that they are all motivated by poseidon’s wrath. δ) by the correlation of quantity, volume or power, without the aid of synecdoche, comparison or hyperbolic epithets. this includes hyperbole (which, by itself, is not a figure, but an iconological device). for example: “do you know the church of hagia sophia in our city of constantinople? you can climb for seven years, but you still won’t reach the crescent”.22 or: “vois-tu cette mouche là-haut? – non, mais je l’entends marcher!”23 likewise, this includes a gradation of motives, such as in a fairy tale where the hero defeats first a lion, then a giant, and then a whole army. in general, only individual images (e.g. “a white bird”) or simple motifs (e.g. “a white bird flies through the turquoise sky”) are perceived through momentary associations, whereas plot-related composition [sjuzhetnaja kompozitsija] is 160 boris yarkho usually perceived with the help of more or less complex logic acts,*11as was demonstrated above. but this is, of course, optional: descriptive poems are very often a collection of motifs related to one another only stylistically or even completely unrelated. one can even imagine a large work with minimal logical connection between images, such as the german symbolist [paul] scheerbart’s [novel] liwûna und kaidôh. § 5. – number and time it is necessary to point out yet another important connection between the three types of form. every individual formal element is perceived in an imperceptible moment. but if they are accumulated in a certain amount, then the categories of time and number come into force. what occurs is an act of recognition and comparison of the number of facts and the lengths of temporal periods as well as the comparison of facts by their arrangement in time.**12 these acts, while accompanying the perception of all more or less complex forms, are necessary intermediaries between them, [on the one hand], and the aesthetic emotion, [on the other], and are equally characteristic of all three groups of stimuli. we shall see now that the aesthetics of number and time should by no means be ignored. we provide a few examples from all three fields. a) phonics. α) the concept of number is in principle inseparable from phonic effects, which are all based on the repetition of sound phenomena.***13 when we speak of a distich or tristich, we are referring to a known * it is sufficient to compare an impression from a novel by zola or dostoevsky, which affects us by the correlation of a huge number of thematically linked plot-related images (characters and settings), with an impression from the dramas of the german [ex]pressionist [fritz von] unruh, who strike the reader with a multitude of images unrelated to the plot [vnesjuzhetnye obrazy] introduced by means of rhetorical figures, in order to understand the difference between the iconological and the stylistic binding of images. ** we are consciously simplifying the definition. the act of perception of time and quantity is, of course, much more complicated. but this definition is sufficient for the time being to outline the nature of literary forms and not lapse into unwanted digressions because, as was already said, we are first and foremost interested in literary forms, and not in psychic acts as such. we shall get a little closer to the question when analyzing individual examples. *** in fact, we perceive the number only to a certain limit beyond which the concept of “many” begins and the awareness of a specific quantity disappears. 161the elementary foundations of formal analysis quantity of strong breaks (marked or not marked by rhyme), altogether independently of the time span between them. in other cases, the number of phenomena corresponds to a certain time duration, and therefore the comparison of quantities goes in parallel with the comparison of time fractions as in the case of the perception of isosyllabic and non-isosyllabic verse lines.*144 β) we have purely temporal perception in metric poetry,24 e.g., in recognizing the equivalence of spondees and dactyls in [classical] hexameter. γ) quite a few phenomena of versification are based on arrangement in time – including, among other things, the very concept of a “refrain”. b) style. α) a peculiarity of stylistic and iconological forms in contrast with phonic forms is that they are measured exclusively by the number of their parts, and not their duration. snorri sturluson was already aware of this (háttatal,25 3): “it is a [kenning] to call a battle a ‘spear-clash’, and it is tvíkent (doubly modified) to call a sword ‘fire of the spear-clash’, and it is rekit (extended) if there are more elements [in the phrase]”.26 when we speak of the brevity of expression achieved by the use of figures based on the omission of parts of a sentence (such as ellipsis27, asyndeton28), this brevity is not a temporal concept, but rather denotes the small number of parts in the expression. the two phrases: “i came; i saw; i conquered”29 and “i arrived; i looked around; i gained victory”  – are stylistically equivalent but phonically different. when we speak of the “long-windedness” of a story, we express a stylistic concept, because we speak of the disparity between the quantity of words or phrases (i.e. the syntactic structure) on the one hand and the quantity and importance of concepts on the other. * this parallelism of temporal and quantitative perception allows us to significantly simplify in practice the process of analysis. thus, in the study of syllabic verse, whose isochronism is very relative and whose isosyllabism is absolute, we can take no account of the former, and our study loses nothing by this. 162 boris yarkho if we compare the style of a russian futurist with the style of gogol, in the latter we find all or nearly all the figures used by the former. it is clear that the futurist’s style seems “pretentious” not because of the presence of these figures but rather thanks to their quantity. therefore, a purely qualitative comparison of contemporary writers with the “classics” is for the most part unfruitful, since it does not reveal the true (in this case quantitative) character of the aesthetic effect. β) at the same time, the recognition of the arrangement of stylistic units in time has tremendous significance. in particular, it is on this arrangement that many figures are based (chiasmos30, isokolon31, hyperbaton32). it also determines the difference between anaphora and epiphora,33 symploce34 and anodiplosis35 etc. c) iconology. α) it is obvious to anyone that the quantity of images in a given work is not irrelevant for its aesthetic perception. this is the basis for the difference between the social realist novel of [émile] zola (les rougon-macquart), [nikolai] leskov (nekuda [no way out]) or [aleksandr] amfiteatrov (vos’midesjatniki [the men of the eighties]), which operates with a whole kaleidoscope of characters, and the psychological novel of [stanisław] przybyszewski (homo sapiens), [peter] nansen (maria) or a[rnold] bennett (buried alive), which focuses on the relationship between two or three personages. β) the question of the arrangement of iconological elements in time is somewhat more complicated. here we have to differentiate two distinct facts: real time and representation of time, imaginary time. the difference between narrative and descriptive literature (these notions are purely iconological) is based on the arrangement of motifs in this imaginary time: in narrative literature the motifs are assumed to be sequential, while in descriptive literature, they are strung together without any relation to time. in real time the narrative motifs may be arranged in a completely different way. in the aeneid, aeneas’s visit to dido is narrated before the fall of troy.36 retrospection is an iconic device, which corresponds to hysteron proteron37 in stylistics, in the same way as contrasting images correspond to antithesis (see § 4c). 163the elementary foundations of formal analysis iii. the relationships between the formal types § 6. – independence all three types of form are in principle independent from each other. this independence manifests itself in the following ways. a) any of them may be missing in a given work, but the work remains artistic thanks to the other two. no one disputes the possibility of artistic prose (in the absence of metrical devices). in the stanza: die nacht ist kühl und es dunkelt, und ruhig fliesset der rhein. der gipfel des berges funkelt im abendsonnenschein.38 – stylistic art is kept to a minimum, but many generations have admired [these lines] for their imagery and harmony. a classic example of a poem with a negligible number of images is pushkin’s “ja vas ljubil: ljubov’ eshche, byt’ mozhet...” [“i loved you; love has not yet, perhaps...”, 1829].39 one may even imagine literary works that operate only by means of some type of form. everyone is familiar with futurist poems that consist of completely meaningless or almost meaningless sounds. this phenomenon occurs especially frequently in the refrain.*1540 such phrases as “oh, have mercy, have mercy on me, sir, and treat with modesty of power the power of my modesty”41 (epizeuxis42 and antimetabole43) or “decet, ut herilem filiam honorabiliter âmes et amabiliter honores”44 (antimetabole) – phrases that we call “empty rhetoric” – are nothing but pure stylistics. we speak of “artless description” when it is made without rhetorical figures and operates using almost nothing but images. as is known, tolstoy, in his novels, makes very little use of figuration and, while speaking in what is called “plain language”, staggers us with his elaboration of images. b) we can artificially alter any form without affecting others. it is sufficient, for example, to say: * this includes meaningless sounds (“mironton, mironton, mirontaine”),40 meaningless phrases (“oj zhgi, zhgi, zhgi! govori, govori! komariki, mukhi, komari-komari!” [russian: ‘oh, burn, burn, burn! speak, speak! mosquitoes, flies, gnats-gnats!’]), and foreign refrains that make sense but are for the most part incomprehensible for the singer (the gypsy refrains of russian romances, the turkish refrains of serbian songs, and so on). 164 boris yarkho “i zvezdá so zvezdóju govorít” [instead of “i zvezdá s zvezdóju govorít”]45 – and the entire rhythmic scheme collapses, yet both the fantastic image of speaking stars and the figure of prosopopoeia46 remain firmly standing. this phenomenon always occurs when we deal with the translation of metric poetry into russian47 as well as the prosaization of poems or the reverse (cf. zhukovsky’s “undina”48). when we paraphrase, we change style but do not alter iconics. when we parodize and stylize, we often add new images to someone’s turns of speech. the independence and separability of form determine and justify the existence of three distinct historico-literary disciplines: metrics, stylistics, and iconology. however, the study of a literary work as a whole should not be limited to separate inquiries in the three areas mentioned above because these areas often come into very close contact with each other and can (but do not have to) be in different types of relationship or dependence. we shall now try to delineate the said types and thereby determine the subject of our fourth discipline, “combined composition” (as opposed to metric, stylistic and iconic composition). § 7. – correlation we repeatedly see that one field of form in the course of its formation produces certain alterations in the adjacent field. thus, the abundant synonymy in old scandinavian poetry was called into being by phonics because [compulsory] alliteration demanded from the poet that he vary the beginning of words, i.e., in this case, roots. to express the same meaning, he tried to find semantically similar roots which then merged into a single meaning. on the contrary, when german poetry turned to rhyme (otfried)49, it started to cultivate enallages50 of inflected endings for the sake of the final assonances. the rhetorical prose of ancient [greece] is extremely instructive in this regard. striving for the placement of identical grammatical forms at the end of rhetorical segments (homoioteleuton as a stylistic phenomenon)51 caused rhymes which subsequently became a self-sufficient euphonic device (free rhyme). this in turn produced a change in word order, thanks to which a correlation was established between this type of rhyme and [syntactic] inversion. every poet knows from experience how often a conceived image becomes transformed under the influence of rhyme. 165the elementary foundations of formal analysis attempts to define such influences of some types of form on other types can be fraught with considerable, sometimes insurmountable difficulties for the researcher,*16 whereas it is mostly not at all sensed by the reader,**172so that a huge number of correlations in poetry, as well as in nature, eludes us. research in this domain is still scarce and highly desirable. § 8. – coordination the relationship between the formal groups is not, however, limited to the above. we have seen that the categories of number and arrangement are equally inherent in all three orders of formal phenomena. it is on these grounds (and only on these grounds) that the heterogeneous forms can be coordinated. for example: maráet òn edínym dúkhom líst, vnimáet òn privýchnym úkhom svíst. * the difficulties will be partly eliminated if we restrict ourselves to the recognition of a number of permanently observed cases of coexistence without going into the question of any genetic relationship. however, this relationship may sometimes also be identified. let us cite an example: the frequent use of phonetic figures (see § 4b) often accompanies a particular system of sound repetitions [sozvuchija] (e.g., alliteration); the question of whether the figure was created for the sake of the sound (or vice versa, the sound repetition is an involuntary result of figuration) can be answered by counting the ratio of stylistically-related and free sound repetitions, etc. ** sometimes correlations reveal themselves to the reader through a sudden and singular violation of a norm adopted in a given literary work for the sake of another norm, e.g. [violation] of the logical connection between an image placed at the end of a verse line and other images; then the reader speaks of words “brought in for rhyme’s sake”. and vice versa: a word that is indispensable from the thematic point of view violates the rhythm. this is how captain lebyadkin versifies [in dostoevsky’s the devils]: [russian: mésto zánjal tarakán, ‘the cockroach occupied the place, múkhi vozroptáli. and the flies started to grumble. “óchen’ pólon násh stakán”, “our glass is too full”, k jupíteru zakricháli.52 they cried out to jupiter. no poká u nikh shól krík, but while they were shouting, podoshól nikífor, there came along nikifor, blagoródnejshij starík... a very noble old man...’] the inability to find a suitable rhyme for “nikifor” prevents the captain from finishing the poem and makes him disrupt the tetrastich basis of the stanza. the newest captain lebyadkins call this “a device laid bare” [“obnazhennyj prijom”]. 166 boris yarkho [russian: ‘he scribbles on a sheet of paper in one breath, he hearkens to the whistle with an unattentive ear’.]53 there are as many rhyming endings here as there are parallel parts of the sentence, and they are arranged in the same sequence, i.e. the phonic and stylistic elements are coordinated on the basis of the categories of number and arrangement. the specific problem of the coordination of figures of repetition with phonics and iconology is discussed in prof. v.  m. zhirmunsky’s book titled kompozitsija liricheskikh stikhotvorenij [composition of lyrical poems] (p[etersburg], 1921), in which the reader can find abundant examples of such phenomena. of course, not only these figures can be matched with images and strophes. many poems are composed in the form of a simile (e.g. “les colombes” by sully prudhomme)54 or in the form of an antithesis (e.g. the first poem from petronius’s satyricon, in which the two parts of an antithesis are expressed by two different metres). many russian chastushki55 and other short texts are based on parallelism.*1855 coordination of stylistic forms with iconic forms is also found in largecaliber works. an example may be anatole france’s novel les dieux ont soif [the gods are athirst], where the author concludes the descriptions of the terror and the directory with two identical love scenes, which are designed * isokolon: a) skol’ko lesa ne rubila, krepche duba ne nashla. b) skol’ko parnej ne ljubila, luchshe vani ne nashla. [russian: ‘no matter how many trees i’ve hewn, i didn’t find one stronger than the oak. no matter how many guys i’ve loved, i didn’t find one better than ivan’.] simile: a) tiene la virgen del carmen un escapulario al cuello b) y yo también tengо otro con tu retratito dentro.56 [spanish: ‘our lady of mount carmel wears a scapular on her neck, and i also wear another with your portrait inside’.] oxymoron: a) tishe jedesh’, b) dal’she budesh’. [russian: ‘the quieter you go, the farther you’ll get’.] antithesis: a) srbin pije – bekrija je. b) turčin puši – budala je. [serbian: ‘the serb who drinks is a drinker. the turk who smokes is a fool’.] 167the elementary foundations of formal analysis to demonstrate the independence of intimate human passions from social upheavals. anatole france coordinates this “iconic epiphora” with a genuine epiphora by ending both love scenes with the same words of the female character.*19 the study of such a kind of combined composition as distinct from plot composition or phonic composition, i.e., of the correlation and coordination between heterogeneous forms, is the subject of the fourth discipline of literary theory, the least developed of all. it should be noted, however, that in the total mass of literary material, coordination is not a universal phenomenon and in the vast majority of cases the formal types operate without any apparent relation to each other. § 9. – commensurability the study of the relationship between types draws its method from the material itself. we have already said that types are united by the concepts of number and arrangement. these concepts also establish the feature of commensurability between the three types. such issues as the imagery of a literary work or its rhetoricity as well as the ratio of logical pauses and rhymes can be solved only by means of quantitative analysis, which, along with comparisons of the arrangement schemes of literary works, will eventually become the main instrument of studying composition.**20 § 10. – the conception of a literary work we define the conception of a literary work in the same way as [bernhard] ten brink ([über] die aufgabe der literaturgeschichte, strassb[urg] 1891, p. 18[1]9): “da übt denn der dichter sein recht die fabel seinem zwecke gemäss, d. h. in übereinstimmung mit seiner idee umzugestalten. diese idee ist aber schliesslich nichts anderes als die art, wie er den sinn seiner fabel fasst... die frage ob tragisch oder komisch, ob idyllisch, [elegisch] oder satyrisch, wird... bei der konzeption... entschieden”. [german: ‘thus the poet exercises his right * we find the same device in zola’s la débâcle [the downfall]: the motif of a farmer calmly plowing the field. ** in this article, where we discuss the foundations and not the methods of formal analysis, we must confine ourselves to this brief remark in the hope of being able to dwell on these important points somewhere else. 168 boris yarkho to transform the story according to his purpose, i.e., in accordance with his idea. but this idea is, after all, nothing but the way in which he expresses the meaning of his story... the question of the tragic or comic, the idyllic, elegiac or satiric, is... resolved ... by the conception’.] although we agree with ten brink in essence, we are nonetheless inclined to amend this formulation. the conception of a literary work is an idea or a representation of the emotions that are essential for the binding of plot-related elements [sjuzhetoobrazujushchie elementy]. in the former case we are dealing with ideological concepts, in the latter, with emotional concepts (anger – diatribe57, sadness – elegy, cheerfulness  – humor, and so forth). we are not going to get into particulars concerning the nature of conception. what has already been said is sufficient to determine its relationship to the formal types.*21 a) iconic forms are the only forms capable of illustrating an idea and evoking emotions on their own, but this capability is very limited. separate images are neutral in principle, there are no specifically comic, tragic, or religious images. blok’s pierrot is a profoundly tragic character.58 associations with a particular emotion can only be evoked by a combination of images related to each other in a certain way by means of plot-related composition. the “dragon” in the middle high german epic is terrible because it threatens the hero with death, but in rideamus’s parody (hugdietrich) the “dragon” is ridiculous (“der drache war total besoffen” [german: ‘the dragon was totally drunk’]).59 but even here, with complex combinations of motifs, the connection between the plot and the emotional conception is very unstable and, most importantly, short-lived. the tomcat murr believed that when a person is credited with “not having invented gunpowder” this commends his meekness, thereby mistaking satire for a panegyric.60 a medieval scholar considered the song of songs a work of profound mysticism, whereas a present-day scholar would tend to interpret it as an epithalamium61. which one of them is a tomcat murr after all? b) stylistic forms are neutral to an even larger extent. neither parallelism nor simile serves particular ideas, but they can be used to express any ideological conception. as regards the emotional concepts, the possibilities of connecting the conception and the style are very limited. * the conception of a literary work will be discussed further in the continuation of our article on “the limits of the scientific study of literature” forthcoming in the next issue of iskusstvo [art] (publication of the state academy of artistic sciences). 169the elementary foundations of formal analysis α) the style of a word (lexicon) includes forms capable of eliciting associations that complement the concept being expressed (see § 4b). it is commonly accepted to speak of the emotional colouring of archaisms, provincialisms, or vulgarisms. but it would be much better to speak of an associative potentiality. a vulgarism as such is not connected to any emotion: it is neither ridiculous, nor disgusting, nor tragic, nor idyllic. it acquires such characteristics only in conjunction with a corresponding image or a complex thereof. in the phrase “der drache war total besoffen”, a burschikoser ausdruck62 is not comic in itself, but it evokes an idea of the milieu in which it is normally used. such a milieu is very distant from the range of concepts from which the concept of a dragon is taken. it is the unexpected abnormal combination of these two concepts that causes laughter. β) there are many so-called emotional figures, i.e. those that lend to speech a quality as if it were pronounced by a very excited person. these include exclamations, erotema (the rhetorical question)63, dialogism64, ellipsis65 and so on. however, these figures are not capable of unequivocally depicting the emotion that they expressed. the rhetorical question may as well serve admiration and indignation, i.e. both panegyric66 and diatribe67: is he not a great man? is he not the most despicable of mortals? therefore, here the stylistic forms also preserve their modal character: they only emphasize the emotional conception without defining it. c) phonic forms are absolutely incapable of evoking an association with any emotion independently [of other forms]. they can focus the listener’s attention on this point only when accumulated in large quantities at the moment of peak emotional stress produced by the images [in a literary work]. in the humorous serbian folk song about a sparrow, “vrabac-pipac” (“the little sparrow bird”), onomatopoeia enhances the comic effect of the punchline: [serbian: ...da mi starac štap da, ‘..to make the old man give me a stick da isteram vrapca to drive away the sparrow, pipca the little bird, iz bobca. from the beans’.]67 170 boris yarkho therefore, in the vast majority of cases, the emotional potential of style and metrics only covers up the simultaneity of their actions with the action of the plot combinations which evoke emotional association. thus, the study of the conception of a literary work as one of the features of thematic composition is entirely included in iconology. but the great bulk of formal elements (including images) remain completely neutral with respect to the basic conception. we often hear the assertion that a literary work is a whole whose every part serves to express a central concept (or, as some say, the main “idea”). this is an arbitrary judgment that has never by any stretch of the imagination been proven to be true. in such cases, it is common to speak of the impotence or inexactness of scientific methods. i suppose, however, that the more exact our methods become, the more difficult it will be to use them to prove assumptions that are fundamentally incorrect and based solely on a one-sided interpretation of the unity of impression produced by a literary whole. § 11. – the unity of impression thus, we now come right up against the question of the unity of artistic impression. in order to understand the nature of this unity, we need only to draw conclusions from what was already stated above. it is clear that there can be no qualitative harmony between the individual fields of form. unity [of impression] is created by the following factors: a) the simultaneity [of different effects], as in the cases described in § 4 and § 10. b) the similarity in their order in the cases of arrangement coordination (see § 8).*22 c) their quantitative coincidence in the cases of numerical coordination (see § 8). d) their rapid alternation. categories (a), (b), and (c) embrace only a very limited number of facts. in the great majority of cases, as was argued in § 8, formal types operate without any relation to each other. quickly alternating and replacing each other, they do not give the perceiver enough time to identify the nature of the stimulus. this leads * we place this phenomenon in a separate category because it does not always require complete simultaneity. this can be illustrated by the example from anatole france cited in § 8, in which the unity of the final scene begins to affect us long before we get to the second part of the epiphora. 171the elementary foundations of formal analysis to a characteristic confusion of impressions, as a result of which the perceiver starts to believe that the sounds themselves depict “the silence of the landscape”, and the like. the task of the researcher is to make some sense out of this whirlpool of impressions and classify them to determine their quantitative and temporal relationship as well as possible. these are the foundations of formal analysis that earn it citizenship rights in the sciences. the productivity of formal analysis is equal to that of a naturalist, of whom nobody would demand that, having dissected a bird into its constituent elements, he should recreate exactly the same bird from them. no one should demand this from us either. moreover, in literary studies synthesis is impossible without preliminary analysis. however, the arguments in support of this statement as well as all the issues related to formal synthesis are, of course, beyond the scope of this article. translators’ notes 1 this article was first published in russian as ‘prostejshie osnovanija formal’nogo analiza’ in: ars poetica i. moskva: izdanie gakhn, 1927, pp. 7–28. translation by michael lavery and igor pilshchikov. the translators’ additions (such as full names, translations of titles etc.) and corrections of obvious errors are enclosed in square brackets. the footnotes marked by asterisks are yarkho’s own notes; the endnotes marked by arabic numerals are added by the translators. 2 a translation of oskar walzel’s die kunstlerische form des dichtwerks. berlin: e. s. mittler und sohn, 1919. 3 greek: σχῆμα κατ’ ἄρσιν καὶ θέσιν (‘the figure that involves negation and affirmation’). 4 greek: ἐναλλαγή (‘interchange’), the use of one grammatical form in place of another. 5 greek: ἑτεράριθμον (‘differently numbered’). 6 latin: ‘made almost equal’. 7 a translation of müller-freienfels’s poetik. leipzig, 19141, 19212. 8 same as adnomination and agnomination (paronomasia), the juxtaposition of words which sound similar. 9 french: ‘dark vowels’. 10 latin: ‘and other similar things one is ashamed to speak of ’. 11 a translation of karl bücher’s arbeit und rhythmus. leipzig: b. g. teubner, 18961, 18992. 12 a traditional russian folk dance. 13 from karl reuschel’s die deutschen weltgerichtsspiele des mittelalters und der reformationszeit (teutonia 4). leipzig: e. avenarius, 1906, s. 222. 14 greek: παρηγμένον (‘derived’), the juxtaposition of words with the same root. 15 greek: ὁμοιοτέλευτον (‘[with] similar ending’), the repetition of word endings, i.e. the 172 boris yarkho juxtaposition of words with similar endings. same as homeoteleuton. 16 same as epistrophe. greek: ἐπιφορά (‘bringing’), the repetition of the same word(s) at the end of successive phrases or sentences. 17 greek: συμπλοκή (‘entanglement’), the combination of epiphora and anaphora, i.e. the repetition of the same word(s) at the beginning of successive phrases or sentences. 18 russian: ‘the company [klika] did not hear the shout [klika, gen. sing. of klik]’. source unknown. 19 greek: ἀντανάκλασις (‘reflection’), the repetition of a similar word with a different meaning. 20 russian: ‘[i am] riding, riding in the open field’. from aleksandr pushkin’s “besy” (“the devils”, 1830). 21 greek: ἐπίζευξις (‘fastened together’), the repetition of a word or phrase in immediate succession. 22 source unknown. 23 french: ‘can you see that fly there? – no, but i can hear it walking’. an anecdote about a gascon already known to laurent bordelon and pitaval (see heures perduës et divertissantes du chevalier de [bordelon]. amsterdam, 1716, p. 141; bibliothèque des gens de cour, ou mélange curieux des bons mots... ed. by [françois] gayot de pitaval. paris, 1723, vol. 1, p. 257). in a form of a short dialogue it can be found, for example, in a[ugustin] gazier, traité d’explication française, ou méthode pour expliquer littéralement les auteurs français. paris: e. belin, 18801 (19007), p. 188. 24 see note 47 below. 25 old norse: ‘a list of verse-forms; a catalog of metres’ (the fourth part of the edda). 26 translation, with modifications, from: snorri sturluson, edda (everyman’s library). translated and edited by anthony faulkes. london: j. m. dent; rutland, vermont: ch. e. tuttle, 1995, p. 168. 27 greek: ἔλλειψις (‘omission’), the omission of one or several words from a phrase or clause. 28 greek: ἀσύνδετον (‘unconnected’), the omission of one or several conjunctions from a series of related clauses. 29 latin: “veni, vidi, vici” (a phrase attributed to julius caesar). 30 greek: χιασμός (‘likened to the letter χ’), the figure of speech in which the elements of the first clause are used in the second clause but in inverted order. same as chiasmus. 31 greek: ἰσόκωλον, from ἴσος (‘equal’) + κῶλον (‘member, colon’), the figure of speech in which the cola are equal in structure, as in “veni, vidi, vici”. 32 greek: ὑπέρβατον (‘transposition’), a transposition of words, syntactic inversion. 33 see notes 16 and 17. 34 see note 17. 35 greek: ἀναδίπλωσις (‘doubling’), the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause or sentence at the beginning of the next clause or sentence. 36 compare viktor shklovsky’s dichotomy of fabula (story) and sujet / sjuzhet (plot). 37 greek: ὕστερον πρότερον (‘later before earlier’), the reversal of the order of time in which events occurred, placing the more important later event before the less important earlier event. same as hysterologia (ὑστερολογία). 173the elementary foundations of formal analysis 38 german: ‘the night is cool and it darkens, / and calmly flows the rhine. / the peak of the mountain sparkles / in evening sunshine’. a slightly modified quotation from heinrich heine’s “die lore-ley” (“ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten”, 1822). 39 compare the analysis of pushkin’s “ja vas ljubil” in section ii (“poetry without images”) of roman jakobson’s later article “poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry” (1960). 40 the refrain of the french folk song “marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre”. 41 source unknown. 42 see note 21. 43 greek: ἀντιμεταβολή, from ἀντί (‘opposite’) + μεταβολή (‘(ex)change’), the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in inverted order (as in “poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry”). 44 latin: ‘you should love your lord’s daughter honourably, and honour her lovingly’. hrotsvitha of gandersheim, gallicanus (i, 1). translation, with a modification, from the plays of hrotswitha of gandersheim, bilingual edition. translated by larissa bonfante. edited by robert chipok. mundelein, ill.: bolchazy-carducci, 2013, p. 15. 45 russian: ‘and star speaks with star’. from mikhail lermontov’s “vykhozhu odin ja na dorogu...” (“all alone along the road i am walking...”, 1841), a classic example of russian trochaic pentameter. by replacing the preposition s (‘with’) with its vocalized version so, yarkho intentionally violates the metre of this line. 46 greek: προσωποποιία (‘personification’). 47 metric poetry: same as quantitative poetry (quantitative verse). russian translations use accentual analogues of quantitative metres. 48 vasily zhukovsky’s poetic translation (1831–1836) of friedrich de la motte fouqué’s prose tale “undine”. 49 otfried of weissenburg (9th century), the oldest german poet known by name, author of the evangelienbuch, a rhymed version of the gospels. 50 see note 4. 51 see note 15. 52 yarkho marks the word jupíteru because it violates the trochaic metre of the poem. 53 from pushkin’s “istorija stikhotvortsa” (“the story of a poet”, 1817–1818). 54 yarkho confuses here two different poems, sully prudhomme’s “la colombe et le lis” (1869) and théophile gautier's “les colombes” (1838). yarkho likely had in mind the latter (which employs a number of similes) rather than the former (structured around an extended metaphor). 55 a chastushka (plural: chastushki) is a humorous russian folk song. 56 a spanish folk song. from gorjeos del alma: cantares populares, coleccionados por ramón caballero (biblioteca universal 97). madrid: imp. de la biblioteca universal, 1884, p. 97. 57 see note 67 below. 58 pierrot, a stock character of commedia dell’arte, is a tragic personage in aleksandr blok’s play balaganchik (the fairground booth, 1906). 59 from hugdietrichs brautfahrt: eine romantische liebesgeschichte in sieben gesängen (hugdietrich’s honeymoon: a romantic love story in seven cantos, 1907) by rideamus (a pen-name 174 boris yarkho of fritz oliven). 60 tomcat murr, the main character in e. t. a. hoffmann’s satirical novel lebens-ansichten des katers murr (the life and opinions of the tomcat murr, 1819–1821), misunderstood the german saying “er hat das pulver nicht erfunden”, which literally translates as ‘he did not invent gunpowder’ but actually means ‘he did not have much success in life’. 61 a wedding song sung at the door of the nuptial chamber. 62 german: ‘an impudent (literally: student-like) expression’. 63 greek: ἐρώτημα (‘question’). 64 an imaginary dialogue. not to be confused with the bakhtinian concept of dialogism. 65 greek: ἔλλειψις (‘deficiency’), the omission of a word or phrase. 66 greek: πανηγυρικός (‘delivered at a public assembly’), a speech of praise. 67 greek: διατριβή (‘study’), a speech of blame. 68 a cumulative song of the “this is the house that jack built” type, from srpske narodne pjesme, skupio ih vuk stefanović karadžić. knjiga 5, u kojoj su različne ženske pjesme. državno izdanje. beograd: državna štamparija kraljevine srbije, 1898, p. 473–476 (no. 631). reuven tsur (1932–2021) eva lilja*1 reuven tsur (1932–2021) has left us after many years of being an inspiring presence. he was born in 1932 in nagyvárad, transylvania, and his native language was hungarian. as a teenager he fled to israel where he stayed in jerusalem and tel aviv. he had a ba in english and hebrew literature from the hebrew university, jerusalem, and a phd in english from the university of sussex (1971). in his a perception-oriented theory of metre (1977), he developed a theory for cognitive poetics, where the form of a poem became the natural point of departure for understanding its meaning. he combined linguistics and gestalt psychology when he concentrated on perception how the reader conceives the text, and “what our ears tell our mind”. from this starting point of rhythm and sound, he continued to study things like metaphor, sound symbolism, as well as altered states of consciousness. in addition to hungarian, hebrew and english, he mastered many modern languages, and he felt at home with poetry from the middle ages up to this day. he was awarded the israel prize in literature in 2009, and an honorary doctorate from osnabrück university in 2013. he worked as visiting professor at columbia university, as well as the university of lancaster. he was a research fellow at the university of southampton and at yale university, and he took part in the mysteries of speech research at the haskins laboratories, new haven. he also translated volumes of poetry into hebrew, and produced his holocaust memoirs. tsur published more than 20 titles from 1964 onwards – some of which were in hebrew. his numerous articles form a garden of interesting subjects. his measurements at haskins laboratories around 1980 are of epoch-making importance. brain research was then in its infancy and tsur presented his problems in poetics to the laboratory, where he accounted for his findings in his what makes sound patterns expressive? (1992). this was the beginning of his thorough record of how different perceptual qualities work in poetic texts. he presented an exposition of his main ideas in toward a theory of cognitive poetics (1992, 2nd exp. ed. 2008). patiently, tsur uncovers layer after layer in the poem’s production of meaning. for example, repetitions add extra meaning * author’s address: eva lilja, department of literature, history of ideas, and religion, university of gothenburg, box 200, se 405 30 göteborg, sweden, email: eva.lilja@lit.gu.se. studia metrica et poetica 8.2, 2021, 202–205 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.07 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/israel_prize https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.07 203reuven tsur (1932–2021) because they make the reader abandon the rational principle of succession for the emotional principle of similarity. speech sounds offer many potentials for meaning; however, the one that is realised depends on the context. in poetic rhythm (1998, 2nd exp. ed. 2012), he expands the classical problems in metrics one-by-one when he meets and transcends the generative school. here he argues that no rules of metre have yet been devised that have not been violated by milton and shelley, who are usually regarded as exceptionally musical poets. he argues that the conflicting patterns of language and versification can be perceived at the same time. he then had a considerable toolbox when he investigated hypnotic and religious poetry in on the shore of nothingness (2003). in this work, a committed atheist, he wondered which devices can shape a mystic presence in a poem. the charming poetic conventions as cognitive fossils (2017) explains how cultural goods determine a person’s ways to perceive what they read. when reuven tsur left us, he had, in cooperation with chen gafni, just completed his last work, sound-emotion interaction in poetry. rhythm, phonemes, voice quality, which is soon to be published at john benjamins publishing company. here he continues his observations of the mutual structures of sound and emotion. with “sound”, he refers to phoneme qualities, how pitch and length cooperate or not, and the signification power of very small pauses. emotions have their typical energy curves – the same curves that are learnt in the acoustics of the poem. the study of poems’ sounds creates extra difficulties for empirical research. a perception-oriented theory keeps attentiveness towards personal perceptions – so what are the possibilities for stable observations? literary critique does not ask for scientific objectivity, but, instead, for a deep comprehension of the text. however, versification studies run somewhere in between linguistic strength and literary understanding. tsur developed a very special method to cover both of these demands. he aimed at giving empirical evidence for a cognitive theory. thereby, he used recordings where actors perform classical texts, and his investigations treat these interpretations where one can examine small details in length and tone of different phonemes. his articles were easy to identify from their many registration schemas. thus, he obtained a stable body of material with all the objectivity that one may wish for. but there is no objective solution to the conflicts between speech and rule – there are only different performances that tell us about the actors’ choices when handling the difficulties of verse. he was employed at the famous porter institute for poetics and semiotics at tel aviv university. this was a marvellous environment for versification studies. at some time, three different theories of metrics were discussed here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/john_milton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/percy_bysshe_shelley https://books.google.com/books?id=ip8zyrbc-rac https://books.google.com/books?id=ip8zyrbc-rac 204 eva lilja the founder benjamin hrushovsky had already written about free verse in 1954. this must have been a most inspiring department for a young scholar. however, he also felt at home in the english scholarly world from his phd studies in sussex and his many stays as a guest professor. here, he started to explain why the halle-kayser theory of metrics cannot be sufficient. littleby-little he expanded his thinking over form in poetry until he had founded a stable cognitive poetics. a new school was born. tsur was scholarly active up to his end. in his final years, he was assisted by chen gafni, who was an earlier student of his. even when in bad health, he stayed in contact with international friends and colleagues with the help of skype and phone. myself, i have some salient memories of him. on my way to the metrics conference in vechta 1999, i spent the time on the train with his poetic rhythm. at last i had found a scholarly text that saw the same possibilities in form and meaning as i did. when i arrived, i met with the writer himself along with his friendly irony and brilliancy as a lecturer. ten years later, i invited him to a scandinavian conference, where he met with young stars of the generative school. at last, there was a constructive discussion between tsur’s cognitive poetics and the generativists. another good memory comes from osnabrück 2013, where he received his honorary doctorate. how he stayed in the room of poetry studies, where he followed every young speaker with interest and then gently advised them. tsur’s importance for poetics cannot be exaggerated. he started a new era when he succeeded in combining empirical stability with interpretative understanding. his breadth and profundity seldom occurs in the world of scholarly studies. happily enough, he was able to continue his work decade after decade, and now we have an enormous gift to take care of. references tsur, reuven 1977. a perception-oriented theory of metre. tel aviv: the porter institute for poetics and semiotics. tsur, reuven 1992a. what makes sound patterns expressive: the poetic mode of speechperception. durham n. c.: duke up. tsur, reuven 1992b. toward a theory of cognitive poetics. amsterdam: elsevier. tsur, reuven 2003. on the shore of nothingness. exeter: imprint academic. https://books.google.com/books?id=ip8zyrbc-rac 205reuven tsur (1932–2021) tsur, reuven 2012a. poetic rhythm: structure and performance: an empirical study in cognitive poetics. 2nd ed. brighton: sussex academic press. tsur, reuven 2017. poetic conventions as cognitive fossils. oxford: oxford university press. tsur, reuven; chen gafni forthcoming. sound–emotion relationship in poetry. amsterdam: john benjamins. studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd correlation of metrical and phonological units of language margarita lekomceva* is there a correlation between the units of the metric system and the units represented in language on some level, for example, a phonological one? if we consider this question using the material of european kinds of prosody, the following types of correlation will standout. th e main unit of syllabic versifi cation – a syllable – is at the same time also the main syntagmatic unit of the phonological system of the language. th e main unit of the purely tonic versifi cation – a phonetic word – is at the same time both the largest syntagmatic unit of the phonological system and the main unit of the morphological level. th e main characteristics of the ‘high lyrics’ system in ancient greece and the related cantation system (represented mostly in the middle ages in greek, latin, and old slavonic) is the syntagm, i.e. a unit of the syntactic level of the language, and functions here as its main metric unit1. th us, the three abovementioned systems of versifi cation are characterised by a direct correlation of their units to the units of the prosaic language on one of its levels2. th e feet are the elementary units of the next two systems of versifi cation (syllabo-tonic and quantitative). th e feet do not correlate directly to any units of natural language and so they oft en seem unnatural. having given examples * th is paper was fi rst published in russian (lekomceva 1969). margarita ivanovna lekomceva (b. 1935) is a distinguished russian linguist and semiotician, member of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics. her main research fi elds include slavic, baltic, balkan and indo-european phonology, rhetoric and poetics. a representative selection of her papers was published in 2007 and titled “ustroenie jazyka” (“th e arrangement of language”). 1 an example of such versifi cation is the hymn my soul glorifi es the lord. in handwritten collections of the fi rst half of 18th century songs we fi nd songs written according to the same scheme (“dusha moja milaja, krasnaja devica”, “ljubov’ moja prebyvaet do smerti”, etc.). “an indivisible link of this versifi cation system, called a kondak system, is a meaningful unit forming a simple sentence which constitutes a separate verse (line) and is sung to a separate recurring melody (singing tune) or one word. th is unit is not divided into elements and is not connected with adjacent units by any transitions (rhymes, assonances). th e number of syllables and stresses in such verse is diff erent” (pozdneev 1966: 103). 2 j. lotz noted that poetry and prose, despite being so dramatically diff erent, diff er from one another not as two classes of texts, but rather as two types (lotz 1960:135). studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 120–132 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.06 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.06 121correlation of metrical and phonological units of language of feet joining syllables of diff erent words and cutting syllables of one word, feet without any meaning whatsoever, the russian critic a. d. galakhov concluded that “feet are some kind of nonsense” (shengeli 1923b). why is the foot introduced? what is the correlation of a foot and its constituting elements, its syllables, which are the syntagmatic units of the phonological system of the language? to answer this question, it should be noted that in languages with versifi cation based on foot as the main unit, syllables are divided into two classes, and units of versifi cation are formed due to various combinations of syllables of these two classes. th e syllabo-tonic system considers stressed syllables to be the syllables of one class, and unstressed syllables to be of the other. a number of schemes of this metrics determine positions in which syllables of both classes are considered equivalent. v. k. trediakovsky wrote: “of the two-syllable feet it [i.e. the new system of versifi cation] considers the trochee and the iamb to be the main ones; and these two can be replaced, as a [poetic] licence, by the pyrrhic feet [...]” (trediakovsky 1963b: 444). th e quantitative system considers short syllables to be syllables of one class, and long syllables of the other. in this metric system, units are formed by diff erent combinations of relevant syllables. at that, it determines not only the positions in which the syllables of both types are equivalent, but also the positions in which one syllable can be replaced by other syllables, for example, in a certain position of the hexameter, two short syllables can substitute for a long syllable. th is is a one-way replacement, because two short syllables cannot be replaced by one long syllable; and this replacement can occur only in certain positions. th us we can say that the quantitative system is characterised not so much by the constant number of moras in a line, as by the division of syllables into two types and their introduction into the units of the metric system in one of the three ways: the determination of a position for this or that type of syllable; the determination of a position where these syllables are equivalent (position of neutralization); and fi nally, the determination of a position where a syllable of one type can be replaced by a syllable of another type according to the general correlation as when one long syllable is equivalent to two short syllables, although there are replacements where a long syllable is equivalent to three and even four short syllables. for example: τί δὴ μαθὼν τῷ δακτύλῳ τὴν θρυαλλίδ' ὠθεῖς, καὶ ταῦτα τοὐλαίου σπανίζοντος, ὦνόητε; [-λῳ, -νί-: – = ] φαῖσι δήποτα λήδαν ὐακινθίνoν [λή-: – = ] (roussel 1954: 88–89) 122 margarita lekomceva th e fact that in the last two systems the division of syllables into two classes is based on prosodic features (stress and length) led to the limitation of correlation between the metric and phonological systems by their prosodic features only. but the prosodic features themselves very seldom form a system independent from other, inherent, phonological features. an example of mutual independence of the prosodic system and the system of inherent features can be slovenian. here one and the same system of inherent features corresponds to a prosodic system with length/shortness and ascending/descending intonation in the archaic literary language, a system with only length/shortness (the modern orthoepic norm), and a system with expiratory stress which has established itself in the modern oral literary language (stankiewicz 1959). for english, there are descriptions in which prosodic features are defi ned by inherent features (hubbell 1950; caff ee 1951) and descriptions in which prosodic features defi ne inherent features (berger 1955). an example of a language where prosodic features are clearly defi ned by inherent features is mordovian (paasonen 1903). all this calls for correlation of metric units of the language not only with prosodic units, but also with the entire phonological system or, at the fi rst stage, with the system of inherent features. th e latter corresponds with the study of verse in a transcribed form, without stresses, length and height of pitch. th e grounds for correlation of metric units with the units of the phonological system in inherent features can be seen in the following. as phonological analysis shows, prosodic features function as the signals of classes of diff erent levels (syllables, words, syntagms). th ese classes as such can be singled out regardless of signals, for example, purely distributionally. but signals are singled out on the basis of a procedure for identifi cation of classes. acoustic signals can be heterogeneous. from this, it can be seen that the material used for the study of the correlation between the units of the phonological and metric systems is diff erent even from what epstein and hawkes called the preprosodic level – in english, this level represents four types of stress according to trager and smith, and four types of links (epstein, hawkes 1959). th e same metric systems are represented in languages with prosodic features and languages without prosodic features. where there are prosodic features, the rhythmical structure is still formed by the classes of sequences of phonemes (i.e. with inherent features) which are marked by prosodic features3. it is this sequence that determines where prosodic features cannot be 3 “a rhythm supposes three signifi cant attributes: a time continuum; a set of events repeating aft er equally percepted intervals; and amplifi ers (perceived objectively or subjectively) among the events in any regular distribution... an ‘event’ in a metre is a syllable” (chatman 1965: 30). 123correlation of metrical and phonological units of language found. th e goal of a certain interpretation of a verse metrics is to align the prosodic features so that they would correspond to a certain union of one type of classes with others4. th is approach enables us to consider the correlations of ‘bases’ of metric units to phonological units when temporarily excluding the prosodic features from them. what are the peculiarities of phonological units in the languages where poetry widely uses syllabic metrics? if we consider the structure of the phonological syllable in polish, a language with a long tradition of syllabic versifi cation, we shall see that the nucleus of each syllable (vowel) is independent of other syllables. indeed, in polish any vowel may be in any syllable of a word: ogrzewanie ‘warming’, ógrut ‘garden’, niebo ‘sky’, etc. combinations of consonants in the syllable depend on the position in the word (beginning, middle, and ending of the word are the three relevant positions here), thus forming a higher level unit: a word (kuryłowicz 1952; bargielówna 1950). th e fact that in such a language as polish all syllables are independent of one another allows us to consider them to be single-type, independent units on the phonological level. th is corresponds with the fact that the syllables in the metrics are of one type, the main metric unit being a syllable. but is polish the only language where this feature corresponds with syllabism? if we consider french where the syllabic system of versifi cation was established and elaborated in detail a long time ago, we shall see the following picture in the modern language: any vowel can be found in any syllable, regardless of other syllables, unless it is the last syllable of the word. consonants in the syllables depend on their position in the word (in the beginning, middle, or ending of the word), and do not infl uence each other in any way within the specifi ed position (for example, the second syllable on the third in a foursyllable word). but for the last syllable there are the following limitations 4 a “school recital”, as s. chatman has shown, is the elementary way, the fi rst step towards mastering the rhythm, when every stressed syllable of a foot is singled out: th e boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fl ed th e fi rst description of such recital, according to chatman, appeared in 1775 in the anonymous book “th e art of delivering written language” (chatman 1965: 105, footnote 6). further mastering of rhythm is connected with singling out syntactic and semantic classes, preserving the prosodic features which characterise them, and discarding all other features. diff erent interpretations of one and the same poem are then ways of diff erent analysis of the semantic and syntactic structure of the poem. see the model of distribution of stresses in english words depending on the presentation of the sentence syntactic structure using parenthesis in chomsky, halle, lukoff (1956: 65–80). 124 margarita lekomceva concerning vowels in modern french: [e] can only be in an open syllable [ble, leʒe]; [ε], or in a closed syllable [kosε:r, tεl]. but this division is relatively recent, it did not exist in old french (fuché 1958): a closed ‘e’ could occur, and in a closed syllable [vεr] was [ver]. th e second limitation on the set of vowels, namely, the exclusion of [ɔ], is even more recent. a. martinet (1945) still hears the diff erence between pot and peau in the literary language. in dialects this opposition is still actual. th e diff erence between ɔ and ο is not phonological. th us, for french we can note the independence of syllables which existed for a long time and recent changes in the distribution of vowels. th e modern situation diff ers by the fact, that if a word consists of a single syllable (and the share of such words in the french vocabulary is very large: 60%; kielski 1957), only certain vowels can act as nuclei in such syllable. th is syllable is independent and can be used on its own or be accompanied by other syllables before it. all other syllables have a diff erent set of vowels and cannot be used on their own (for example, the syllable [ρɔ] requires the addition of another syllable in the standard form of french). comparison of syllable as a single-type independent unit of phonological system and syllable as the main metric unit in french throughout its history shows the same correlation as in polish. th e latest changes in the phonological system give rise to another direction of this correlation, which will be discussed later. in spanish, where there also exists a long tradition of syllabic poetry, we also observe independence of vowels in syllables following one another (bello 1890). all main metres of italian poetry were formed in the sicilian school (12th century) and were later exported to other regions of italy. th e syllabic verse of guido fava and frederick ii corresponds to a phonological system in which fi ve vowels (a, e, o, i, u) occur in any syllable independently of other syllables. th e tuscan school adopted this metric system, although in the dialect of tuscany there was a syllable singled out by additional diff erentiation of open and closed e and o. but poets disregarded this diff erence and rhymed closed ê and ô with open e and o and also with i and u. in the 17th century, gigli noted the phonological opposition of e and ê, o and ô, but also remarked that even petrarca rhymed stella [ê] and bella [e] (migliorini 1960). aristoxenus insisted that the greek versifi cation is syllabic (aristoxenus 1782). indeed, as a. meillet demonstrated, in ancient greece, with the exception of the hexameter which in the classical era was used very rarely and mostly in didactic poetry and in the ‘high lyrics’ in dramas, greek versifi cation is syllabic, at least in practice (meillet 1927). th e old greek of the classical period demonstrates total independence of vowels of one syllable from vowels 125correlation of metrical and phonological units of language of other syllables. th e signs of length/shortness are also distributed on vowels in the word regardless of their mutual position (schwyzer 1950). th e undifferentiation of length/shortness in the last syllable of the word has the specifi c nature of a free variation (lejeune 1947). but the fact that the positions where this feature is or is not recognised are marked in a word is an important phonological peculiarity with its consequences for the metrics of the relevant language. at present, it is important to note that in greek, the nuclear positions (vowels) of syllables are independent of one another, the syllables are independent in this regard, and, consequently, syllabic versifi cation holds the biggest share in the general scope of metric systems. it is well-known that vowels in latin form three paradigms for the following three syllable types: in the beginning, middle or ending of the word. th e degree of independence of these syllables from one another is diff erent: a syllable from the middle of the word may form a word on its own or with syllables of other types, including syllables of its own type; a syllable from the beginning or ending of the word may form a word on its own and with syllables of other types, but not with syllables of its own type. characteristically, the foreignness of metrics copied from the greek system was always accented in latin poetry. th e national system of versifi cation in latin, the saturnian verse, is entirely diff erent. th e correlation of units of the systems under study is very representative in serbo-croatian. although dialects of this language show diff erent prosodic systems (with signs of length and tone, tone, expiratory stress), the vowels of syllables following one another are independent. along with such independence of syllables on the phonological level, we see a remarkable and long-steady syllabic tradition in folk poetry and literary works. in czech, both inherent and prosodic features of vowels in words are independent from one another and, not surprisingly, all metric systems and infl uences show the “all-penetrating tendency towards syllabism” described by j. hrabák (1964). in this context, the more than 150-year-old history of syllabic versifi cation in russia and ukraine raises the question of the correlation of vowels forming words in russian and ukrainian during this period. in other words, can we assume that the vowels of words following one another were then independent? in certain cases, were o and a, e and i distinguished in unstressed syllables as in stressed syllables in russian, or e and i, o and u in ukrainian? in ukrainian, ‘ukanye’ and ‘ikanye’ do not occur oft en, and o and u, e and i are not mixed in the literary language. in literary russian, the unstressed e and i became indistinguishable only in the 20th century. as far as we know, the unstressed a and o were distinct 126 margarita lekomceva as early as in the 17th century, and in declamation of verses this pronunciation survived until the 19th century. we can assume that for the language of both simeon polotsky and feofan prokopovich, independence of syllables in words was undisputed. such syllables, being equally independent units on the phonological level, can easily become the main units of a metric system. as phenomena of the phonological level are usually unconscious phenomena of behaviour, and a syllable, in its turn, is the node of this level, composition of verses in the syllabic system can be quite intuitive, and the syllables can be counted unconsciously. with the exception of the greek syllabic verse, in which, under the infl uence of the quantitative system we can theoretically single out the foot as a unit of metre, and although practice shows more cases of deviation from it than cases of following it (meillet 1927), no syllabic system of versifi cation has the foot as its main unit. if sometimes french versifi cation speaks about the foot, this term exactly corresponds to any two syllables and proves to be excessive. th e foot has meaning only in a system using syllables of diff erent type: their combinations form feet as elementary units of such metric system. what is the diversity of syllables of the foot when we consider them only from the point of view of purely phonological, inherent features? if we consider this question using the material of modern russian within the framework of the syllabo-tonic system, the syllables are divided into two categories: stressed and unstressed. feet are formed by diff erent combinations of syllables. in inherent features, this corresponds to a signifi cant diff erence between the syllables of both types. th e nucleus of a stressed syllable is formed by the sound classes a, e, i, y, u, ɔ, and the nucleus of an unstressed syllable, by a, ê, i, y, u, ъ, ь, respectively. apart from a signifi cant diff erence in the structure of the vowel paradigms of these syllables, there is an even deeper diff erence between them, including diff erent dependencies between these syllables in relation to one another. syllables of the fi rst type (the stressed syllables, with one vowel paradigm) are independent, they do not depend either on syllables of the other type or on each other. th e sequence of these syllables is a sequence of independent events (both in statistical and logical aspect). syllables of the second type cannot be independent, they can occur only in the presence of the syllables of the fi rst type. so these syllables belong to the category of dependent (bound) syllables. so each foot is a regular set of syllables of certain types. th e same two types of syllables (dependent on one another and independent) occur in germanic languages where this diff erence in the composition of vowels is even more pronounced. in other words, the relation of mutually exclusive sound classes to the sound classes included in both types of syllables is greater. 127correlation of metrical and phonological units of language th e position of dependent syllables allows for a two-way interpretation. th e fi rst way is to equal them, in a certain sense (as syllable) to independent syllables, but this equality will never be complete. th ey bear forever the seal of dependency and can only occupy certain positions in each metre, for example, only even positions in the iamb, only odd positions in the trochee, etc. the second way is to disregard dependent syllables and count only independent syllables, the way it is in syllabic versifi cation. in metrics, this corresponds to the accentual verse and ‘rayoshnik’ in russian tradition; it is knittelvers in germanic languages. th is system corresponds in its structure to the syllabic system: in both systems syllables which are mutually independent and independent on the phonological level are arranged in the line according to the number of entries. th is explains the fact that in languages where syllables are divided into dependent and independent, the initial stage of poetry relies on counting independent syllables (tonic versifi cation). russian epic poems, as was demonstrated by m. p. shtokmar (shtokmar 1941, 1952), are regulated by the rules of the tonic verse. th e tonic verse is represented not only in folk poetry, but also in literature, starting with the fi rst experiments of v. k. trediakovsky and m. v. lomonosov (in “mixture of feet”). in england, tonic verse was used already in the 12th century for the our father prayer and in the 13th century for longer poems. in german, verse with four stresses in one line appeared in the works of otfrid, and became the main verse in the 16th century. free knittelvers with four independent syllables and unregulated number of syllables (usually from 6 to 16) are exceptionally popular in german tradition (paul, glier 1961). in swedish literature, this verse was used for “th e passion of christ”, circa 1300, and remained the only verse in the metrics until the 16th century. in denmark, the fi rst record of this metrics is the lucidarius (13-14th centuries), and in norway it had been known since the 13th century (heusler 1956). how did the transition to the syllabo-tonic system where dependent syllables are also considered separate units and are counted like independent syllables occur in these languages? interestingly, this transition happened through the syllabic system where all syllables are equally independent. speakers of germanic languages knew the syllabic system due to church hymns in latin and poetry in romance languages. th e knowledge of two systems at the same time (tonic and syllabic) against the background of a language where all syllables are independent allows us to consider dependent syllables in another language as independent units. th is is the basis for syllabic versifi cation, for example, in german: the poetry of hans sachs and andreas schwab. a signifi cant deviation from the phonological system of the language is curiously evident in the verses of this metric school: sprechén, zorén (instead 128 margarita lekomceva of sprechen, zorn, etc.). even more curious is the way it transforms, quickly and generally, into the syllabo-tonic system, where syllables are still divided into independent and dependent, although at the same time both types of syllables are counted. it seems that the fi rst to suppose that independent and dependent (in this case, stressed and unstressed) syllables alternate regularly were the dutchmen abraham van der mijle and daniel heinsius in the early 17th century. in germany, opitz’s reform in the 17th century led to the distinction of feet characterised by diff erent combinations of an independent syllable with dependent ones. according to harsdörff er (1645) and weise (1692), the main diff erence between the metrics of romance and germanic peoples (syllable – foot) was already correlated with “a clear pronunciation of all syllables” in romance languages and the distinction of certain syllables only in germanic languages (heusler 1956). in russia, the situation was similar. th e introduction of polish metrics and the expansion of syllabic verse (pozdneev 1966), fi rst in polish hymns written in russian alphabet, led to the interpretation of dependent syllables existing in the phonological systems of many russian dialects as independent units. such uniform interpretation of diff erent types of syllables necessary for syllabic versification hinders intuitive perception, and v. k. trediakovsky wrote that syllabic verses in russian “should be called prose written with certain periodicity [lit. number] but lacking measure and cadence”, and introduced a foot made of syllables of diff erent types (trediakovsky 1963a: 366). th e functional heterogeneity of syllables (m. v. lomonosov’s norm was ‘akanye’; lomonosov 1952) calls for their division into two types and, consequently, introduction of versifi cation based on feet. th e form of the feet and their distribution in the national versifi cation depend on both the peculiarities of the language system and the metric tradition (shengeli 1923). but metrics can only reorganise what already exists in the language (tomashevsky 1929). now it is time to consider the metric consequences of the change in the phonological system of french mentioned above. th e division of all syllables previously independent of one another is into two types: independent (ending) and dependent (all other). th is should lead to a system counting only the independent syllables (the type of tonic versifi cation) and/or to a system counting all syllables, but selecting certain positions for syllables of one type. josef kvapil notes the transition to tonic and syllabo-tonic systems in romance languages. th e second type is also represented by a large number of verses, but within the framework of syllabic verse (kvapil 1966). when a syllabic verse is ‘translated’ into the tonic system, it is read as free verse (hrabák 1964). th e expansion of free verse in modern french and italian poetry is characteristic. 129correlation of metrical and phonological units of language on the phonological level, not only the syllable is singled out as an independent unit (sometimes, with diff erent degree of independence), but also the word as a combination of syllables. if the distribution of vowels, the nuclei of syllables, in the word depends on one another in some languages, and does not depend on one another in other languages, the distribution of consonants in syllables in european languages almost always depends on their position in the word. in other words, a word is singled out as a unit of the phonological level in all european languages. th is fact manifests itself diff erently on the metric level. th e fi rst and the most general refl ection of the independence of the word in metrics is that any line in any verse contains a whole number of words. a renunciation of this as seen in experiments is based precisely on the perception of this principle. if all syllables forming a word are independent from one another in regard to their vowels, the word acts as an additional unit in the metrics in the form of singling out certain positions for the ending of the word. th erefore, in syllabic versifi cation every metrics is characterised not only by the number of syllables, but also by the place of the word boundary – the caesura. if at the same time the word organises the vowels of the syllables forming it, its metric structure, given in the feet, is marked enough, and the word boundary is not fi xed at some given position in the metrics, but creates a free ‘rhythmic play’ by its position. see roman jakobson’s example: гость избежал ужасной кары... and гости сбежали от макара... (jakobson 1923: 29) th us, metric units correspond to an independent syllable and a word in the language. if the language has dependent syllables, there can exist a metric system counting all syllables, but special positions are regularly assigned to dependent syllables. which signals mark these units in the metrics? most oft en, prosodic features function as such signals. these can be purely ‘metric’ prosodic features, such as raise of all ictus syllables in reciting verses at school; these can be features relevant on the phonological level, such as stresses in russian. in prosaic language, the stress can be not phonological, but this does not prevent it from functioning as a signal in metrics. in poetic language, the contrast is usually under diff erent conditions, in contexts of equal lengths (lines). in such a context, the non-phonological stress, if it concerns words of diff erent 130 margarita lekomceva lengths (as is usually the case in european languages) becomes relevant. th is is exemplifi ed by czech and polish, among slavic languages, and by romance languages. prosodic features are not the only features capable of functioning as signals. inherent features also can play the delimitative role. th ese can be certain features of vowels and consonants. th e ancient roman saturnian verse shows inherent features as delimitative. alliterative verse in germanic languages is also a good example of consonants and their groups as signals. comparing the results of a language phonological analysis and the peculiarities of the metric system used by the poetry in its language certainly can be continued and deepened. th e present paper is an attempt to analyse the correlation of the main language units on the phonological level and the specifi city of its metric structure. references aristoxenus 1782. aristoxenou rhythmikōn stoicheiōn deuterou sōzomena. leipzig: teubner. bargielówna, maria 1950, grupy fonemów spółgłoskowych współczesnej polszczyzny kulturalnej. in: biuletyn polskiego towarzystwa językoznawczego 10, 1-25. bello, andrés 1890. obras completas. opúscules gramaticales i: ortología. arte métrica. apendices. madrid: tello. berger, marshall d. 1955. vowel distribution and accentual prominence in modern english. in: word 11, 361–376. caff ee, nathaniel m. 1951. th e phonemic structure of unstressed vowels in english. american speech 26, 103–109. chatman, seymour 1965. a theory of meter. th e hague: mouton. chomsky, noam; halle, morris; lukoff fred 1956. on accent and juncture in english. in: halle, morris; lunt, horace; mclean, hugh et al. (eds.), for roman jakobson. essays on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. th e hague: mouton, pp. 65–80. epstein, edmund l.; hawkes, terence 1959. linguistics and english prosody. buff alo: university of buff alo. fouché, pierre 1958. phonétique historique du français. paris: klincksieck. 131correlation of metrical and phonological units of language heusler, andreas 1956. deutsche versgeschichte. mit einschluß des altenglischen und altnordischen stabreimverses. berlin: de gruyter. [reprint of the 1929 edition.] hrabák, josef 1964. úvod do teorie verše. praha: státní pedagogické nakladatelství. hubbell, allan f. 1950. th e phonemic analysis of unstressed vowels. american speech 25, 105–11. jakobson, roman 1923. o cheshkom stikhe preimushchestvenno v sopostavlenii s russkim (sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo jazyka 5). [moskva, berlin]: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo r.s.f.s.r. kielski, bolesław 1957. struktura języków francuskiego i polskiego w świetle analizy porównawczej t.1. wrocław : zakład narodowy im. ossolińskich. kuryłowicz, jerzy 1952. uwagi o polskich grupach spółgłoskowych. in: biuletyn polskiego towarzystwa językoznawczego 11, 54-69. kvapil, josef 1966. en marge du systéme de versifi cation dans les langues romanes. in: levý , jiř í (ed.) teorie verše i: sborník brněnské versologické konference 13.–16. května 1964. (spisy filozofi cké fakulty univerzity j. e. purkyně v brně 107). brno: universita j. e. purkyně, 87–94. lejeune, michel 1947. traité de phonétique grecque. paris: klincksieck. lekomceva, margarita 1969. o sootnoshenii edinic metricheskoj i fonologicheskoj sistem jazyka. in: lotman, juri et al. (eds.), trudy po znakovym sistemam 4, 336– 344. tartu: tartu riiklik ülikool. lekomceva, margarita 2007. ustrojenije jazyka: sbornik trudov. moskva: ogi. lomonosov, mikhail 1952. rossijskaja grammatika. in his polnoe sobranie sochinenij. 7: trudy po fi lologii. 1739–1758. moskva, leningrad: izdatel’stvo akademii nauk sssr, 389–578. lotz, john 1960. metric typology. in: sebeok, th omas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: mit press, 135–148. martinet, andré 1945. la prononciation du français contemporain. paris: droz. meillet, antoine 1923. les origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs. paris: puf. migliorini, bruno 1960. storia della lingua italiana. firenze: sansoni. paasonen, heikki 1903. mordvinische lautlehre. helsingfors: druckerei der finnischen litteraturgesellschaft . paul, otto; glier, ingeborg 1961. deutsche metrik. münchen: m. hueber. 132 margarita lekomceva pozdneev, aleksandr 1966. iz istorii russkogo stikha xv–xviii vekov. in: levý , jiř í (ed.) teorie verše. i: sbornik brněnské versologické konference 13.–16. května 1964. (spisy filozofi cké fakulty univerzity j. e. purkyně v brně 107). brno: universita j. e. purkyně , 95–108. roussel, louis 1954. le vers grec ancien. son harmonie, ses moyens d’expression. (publications de la faculté des lettres de montpellier vi). montpellier: presses universitaires de france. schwyzer, eduard 1950. griechische grammatik: auf der grundlage von karl brugmanns griechischer grammatik. münchen: c. h. beck. shengeli, georgij 1923. traktat o russkom stikhe. moskva: gosudarstennoe izdatel’stvo. shtokmar, mikhail. 1941. osnovy ritmiki russkogo narodnogo stikha. in: izvestija akademii nauk sssr. otdelenie literatury i jazyka 1: 106–136. shtokmar, mikhail 1952. issledovanija v oblasti russkogo narodnogo stihkoslozhenija. moskva: izdatel’stvo akademii nauk sssr. stankiewicz, edward 1959 th e vocalic systems of standard slovenian. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 1–2, 70–76. tomashevsky, boris 1929. o stikhe. leningrad: priboi. trediakovsky, vasily 1963a. novyj i kratkij sposob k slozheniju rossijskih stikhov s opredelenijami do sego nadlezhashhikh znanij. in: izbrannye proizvedenija. moskva, leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’, 365–420. trediakovsky, vasily 1963b. o drevnem, srednem i novom stikhotvorenii rossiyskom. in: izbrannye proizvedenija. moskva, leningrad: sovetskij pisatel’, 365–450. the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics megan e. hartman*10 abstract. gnomic poems have often been noted for their unusual metrical style. one aspect of their style that stands out is the hypermetric usage, both because these poems contain a notably high incidence of hypermetric verses and because the verses are frequently categorized as irregular. this paper analyses hypermetric composition in maxims i, maxims ii, and solomon and saturn in detail to illustrate the major stylistic features of gnomic composition. it demonstrates that, contrary to the conclusions of some previous scholars, the hypermetric verses basically follow the form for hypermetric composition that can be found in most conservative poems, but with the inherent flexibility of hypermetric metre pushed to a greater extent than in most narrative poems, making for lines that are longer, heavier, and more complex. this alternate style highlights the importance of each individual aphorism and characterizes the solemnity of the poems as a whole. by composing their poems in accordance with the trends of this specialized style, poets may have been marking their composition as separate from narrative poems and encouraging their audience to consider each individual poem in the larger context of old english wisdom poetry. key words: hypermetrics, maxims i, maxims ii, old english meter, oral formulaic theory, solomon and saturn, wisdom poetry 1. introduction in many respects, gnomic poems as a group stand apart from the majority of old english compositions. in particular, maxims i, maxims ii, and solomon and saturn appear remarkable not only because they present lists of seemingly unrelated and sometimes mundane pieces of wisdom, a quality that has raised many questions among modern critics, but also because the metrical patterning is distinctive. a. j. bliss (1962: 97) notes the oddities of gnomic composition particularly in his discussion of hypermetric verse, concluding that “[i]t seems clear that the gnomic poetry of the anglo-saxons belongs in some respects to a different tradition from the remainder of the poetry.” other scholars such as john c. pope (1966: 127) and thomas a. bredehoft (2003: 153–56) likewise note that the metrical features of gnomic hypermetrics set * author’s address: megan e. hartman, university of nebraska at kearney, thomas hall 202, kearney, ne 68849. e-mail address: hartmanme@unk.edu. doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.05 studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 68–99 mailto:hartmanme@unk.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.05 69the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics these poems apart from most of the rest of the corpus. their observations suggest a line of inquiry that has not been subject to detailed analysis in old english metrical studies: stylistic differences along genre lines. in other poetic traditions, scholars and poets readily acknowledge metrical variation between genres. by the early modern period, poets were switching between tetrameter and pentameter in order to mark the lines as more or less formal, and some even tried their hands at fourteeners when attempting to evoke the truly formalized style of epic poetry.1 the cognate old norse tradition likewise shows specific variants on fornirðislag, and snorri sturlason discussed the purpose of each in the prose edda. in contrast, old english poetry has, for the most part, been analysed as a monolithic tradition. studies tend to either take beowulf as a representative example (see for example bliss 1962; pope 1966; russom 1987; and suzuki 1996) or pick out a wide-reaching corpus that stands in for the tradition as a whole (see for example hutcheson 1995; and momma 1997). recently, scholars have begun to consider how language change might have affected poetic composition, and some studies separate late poetry from more standard verse in order to discuss changes to the tradition (see in particular cable 1991; bredehoft 2004 and 2005; and hartman 2014). not much work has been done, however, to isolate stylistic differences that might have been a result of the content or genre of a poem.2 old english scholars avoid this type of study with good reason. modern ideas of genre cannot and should not be superimposed on old english poetry; as scholars such as t. a. shippey (1994) have observed, trying to do so is folly because modern generic conceptions do not accurately characterize old english poems. however, gnomic poetry – which must have consisted of a valued group of poems since so many poets took up the topic – does have some clearly distinct features. foremost of those is the lack of narrative structure in most cases; these poems are composed primarily as lists. because of this clear distinction, some gnomic poems can be singled out and grouped together, even if there are many poems that stand in a grey area between the two types of compositions. in terms of style, hypermetric verse supplies the most distinctive metrical patterns in gnomic poetry. these are the verses that bliss and others have 1 see, for example, george chapman’s adaptation of homer’s poetry into english verse. 2 one exception is the small body of work on the style of the metrical charms. jonathan roper (2000) notes the differences in alliteration as well as the extensive use of enjambment in the charms. e.g. stanley (1984: 193–199) also points out some distinctive features of the charms in his comparative discussion of germanic alliterative discourse. 70 megan e. hartman singled out as particularly irregular. hypermetric composition also seems to be closely associated with gnomic poetry since gnomic poems use them to a greater degree than most narrative poets. the structure of hypermetric verse is particularly flexible and the metrical patterns are therefore especially susceptible to change, both due to a shift of style inherent in a genre and to an individual poet’s stylistic preferences within the larger structure of the poetic tradition. this study will therefore focus on hypermetric verse as the verses that highlight the stylistic characteristics of gnomic poetry overall. to illustrate the degree to which gnomic poems do in fact exemplify a separate set of stylistic choices, i examine the hypermetric verses in two groups of poems. the first group consists of the three poems that bliss singles out as irregular: maxims i, maxims ii, and solomon and saturn. these are by no means all of the wisdom poems in the old english corpus, but they stand out in some ways from the rest of the wisdom poems for, more than any of the others, they provide eclectic lists of aphoristic sayings. other wisdom poems have a clearer narrative, or at least focus on a single theme. because these three poems are so wide-reaching in their wisdom and they basically lack any unifying story, they are most likely to show the features of an alternate metrical style. the second group is a corpus of particularly conservative poems: beowulf, genesis a, guthlac a, daniel, and exodus.3 because these poems are so conservative in general, the hypermetric sections illustrate what standard hypermetric composition might have been, especially when viewed as a group so as to account for any variations that are apparent in the different poets’ styles. a comparison with these poems will therefore show in what ways the gnomic poems vary from the conservative standard. in part, this analysis demonstrates some places that bliss’s conclusions could be reconsidered, showing that the composition of these lines is not as unusual as he supposed. it will also reveal places where scribal corruption is a possibility, indicating that the supposed irregularities in these instances might not be a feature of gnomic poetry at all. once the more wide-ranging differences are explained, a close comparison indicates that the gnomic poems basically follow the traditional standard of hypermetric composition, but they tend to have longer and heavier hypermetric lines than conservative poems, to the point that some of the metrical patterns realized in the gnomic poems never occur in conservative verse. the difference suggests a difference in style that 3 the choice of these poems is based on the analysis of fulk (1992), which shows that these poems demonstrate certain conservative linguistic and metrical patterns to a higher degree than other poems. examples of the features he analyses are vowel contraction, analogical restoration of syncopated vowels, and adherence to the metrical principle known as kaluza’s law. 71the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics characterizes gnomic poetry in particular. while the individual poets of the three gnomic poems may have made some unique choices about how to realize this style, the poems all follow the basic trend of composing heavier lines. the difference does not mean that gnomic poetry is composed in an entirely new metre in old english. instead, poets working in the gnomic tradition make use of the flexibility already inherent in hypermetric composition and expand on that flexibility to produce distinguishable, but related, metrical patterns.4 these patterns seem especially appropriate to gnomic verse because the longer lines can fit clear gnomic statements into single verses as often as possible – giving each verse greater individual significance while also making them all longer and more complex. the cumulative effect of the metrical difference must have been apparent to the audience, for the longer lines with many additional syllables and even some additional stress words must have taken the poets longer to recite and may also have caused them to alter their pacing through the long strings of unstressed words. the hypermetric verses would therefore have presented recognizable, even familiar, verse patterns, but they would also have a slightly different sound or rhythm that could distinguish wisdom poetry from narrative poetry and help the audience to recognize the gnomic significance of the verse. 2. old english hypermetric structure old english metre is arranged as a series of lifts (stressed positions) and drops (unstressed position) combined in four-position verses that occurr paired in a long line. metrists generally analyse verses as belonging to one of five types: a: ́ × ́ ×, b: × ́ × ́, c: × ́ ́ ×, d: ́ ́ ̀ ×, and e: ́ ̀ × ́. this system, which was first devised by edward sievers (1893), has been much revised and rethought in the past few decades as metrists have brought more linguistic knowledge to bear on the material. however, although many disagree with some of the principles of his categorization, the basic verse types still 4 in this way, the old english hypermetric verse of gnomic poetry is distinct from that in old norse. in old norse poetry, gnomic poems – particularly hávamál – are frequently composed in ljóðaháttr, a metre that is derived from the more standard eddic fornirðislag. ljóðaháttr is a distinctive metre because the principles of its composition are quite different from fornirðislag: where the more standard metre quite rigidly avoids extra syllables in a drop, the third and sixth verse in each ljóðaháttr stanza is distinguished from the others with the use of a particularly long drop. rather than relying on a new set of principles, gnomic hypermetrics in old english use an exaggerated version of the principles that already exist. 72 megan e. hartman appear in most of the revised systems of scansion. for this reason, i will use the notation system devised by sievers, but i will also inform my analysis of the verse structure with the theories of later scholars such as russom (1987), suzuki (1996), and momma (1997). a hypermetric verse in this system is a verse that is half again as long as a normal verse, making for six positions. specifically, it consists of a single verse proceeded by a two-position onset.5 that onset can either be a heavy onset, which consists of a lift plus a drop ( ́×), or a light onset, which consists of an extended drop (××). the onsets in particular are what allow for hypermetric flexibility. they tend to be relatively short, with monosyllabic drops in the heavy onset, as in feorh of fēonda dōme (ha1: ́ × ́ × ́ ×) ‘life from the judgment of the enemy’ (exodus 571a), and trisyllabic drops in the light onset, as in þā hīe oðlæ͞ded hæfdon (ha1: × × ×  ́×  ́×) ‘when they had withdrawn’ (exodus 570b).6 however, poets vary the typical length of the drop more than any other position, allowing them to occasionally become quite long: næfre ge mec of ϸissum wordum onwendað (ha1: × × × × × × × ́ × × ́ ×) ‘you will never change me from these words’ (guthlac a, 376a). furthermore, the onsets can be heavier than a normal drop because of the types of words used. according to hans kuhn (1969), words can be split into three categories: stress words (satzteile), particles (satzpartikeln) and clitics (satzteilpartikeln). particles are words such as finite verbs, pronouns, and nonlexical adverbs; they have more prosodic stress than a clitic (which is almost never stressed in old english poetry), but not as much as a stress word (which should always receive at least a half stress and usually receives full stress), and they receive metrical stress on a variable basis. because they are prosodically more heavily stressed than clitics, poets tend to limit how often they occur in unstressed positions, especially verse-medial positions. in hypermetric verse, numerous unstressed particles generally appear in the light onset, and even the drop in the heavy onset, a verse-medial position, can contain a particle. the flexibility in both length and weight of the onset is perhaps the most important feature of hypermetric verse; it is that feature that allows poets to add a variety 5 for this article, i am using the method of scansion first proposed by sievers in his article “der angelsachsische schwellvers” (1887). sievers proposed a second method of scansion in his book altgermanische metric, but hartman 2010 shows that his first method more accurately describes hypermetric composition. 6 with the exception of beowulf, all references to old english poems refer to the anglo-saxon poetic records (aspr). the aspr does not include marks of vowel length in the text, but because they are useful for metrical studies, i have added them here. references to beowulf come from fulk, bjork, and niles 2008. translations are mine. 73the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics of language material to the drops and to use these hypermetric verses in different ways while still composing according to established poetic conventions. in addition to creating heavy metrical patterns, the onsets also allow the verses to have more syntactic flexibility. when an onset is filled with particles, it becomes a place in which auxiliary verbs or even finite lexical verbs can be placed without needing to alliterate. other particles such as pronouns and adverbs can be added there to further clarify the meaning or provide information that might otherwise disrupt the metre. in this way, poets can use hypermetric verse to keep the narrative moving forward steadily, without having to employ variation, and make syntactically straightforward statements. in contrast to the onset, the cadence tends to be relatively uniform. unlike verses in normal metre, which do not typically repeat verse types in each subsequent line, the hypermetric cadence consists overwhelmingly of type a verses. types b and c are especially avoided in the cadence, and types d and e are used only rarely (they make up 13.5% of the verse in my corpus of conservative poems). geoffrey russom (1987: 59–63) argues that the reason for this simplicity is ease of understanding. hypermetric verses must have had a special rhetorical purpose in the poem, so the poet would have wanted his audience to notice the shift in metre. therefore, according to russom, poets kept hypermetric verses as simple as possible because they were already quite complex, so a simple hypermetric pattern, which would be less likely to be misinterpreted, would allow the audience to follow the shift in rhythm. to further simplify the pattern, poets also composed hypermetric verses mainly in longer sections and kept the heavy onsets in the on-verse (the first verse of the long line), making for an overwhelming number of type ha verses (́ × ́ × ́ ×) in that position, and a light onset in the off-verse (the second verse in the long line), making for an overwhelming number type ha verses (× ×  ́×  ́×). the cadence of the verse also tends to be quite concise, often consisting of exactly four syllables. while not following these tendencies to the letter, conservative poets tend to compose most of their verses with these simple, short cadences and relatively contained onsets. inherent in the principles of russom’s analysis is the idea that the audience must have understood the metre and been able to follow it as a poet recited his poem. certainly the audience would not have conceived of the metre in the same terms that modern scholars do, but they still could have recognized metrical patterns, as well as any shifts away from the norm. the mere existence of hypermetric lines supports this conclusion because there would be no reason to shift metres in the middle of a poem if the audience would not have registered the change and appreciated how the different rhythms affected the tone of the poem. any shift away from the more conservative mode of composition 74 megan e. hartman must therefore have been similarly noticed by the audience, for any expansion of the line would result in a different sort of rhythm upon performance. thus, gnomic hypermetric verse would have stood out from more conservative narrative poetry since the gnomic poems as a group do not maintain conservative tendencies as closely. in addition to simply being longer and containing more particles, the verses have the added complexity observed by bliss. bliss makes three major observations about the overall irregularity of gnomic hypermetrics: first, that all three poems use a large number of heavy hypermetric onsets in the off-verse; second, that the two maxims poems both use a large number of what he terms “double hypermetric verses,” which contain four fully stressed positions; and finally, that maxims i in particular contains a large number of remainders (96–97). in all of these cases, the verses fail to maintain the simple patterns that are so important to hypermetric composition elsewhere and instead bring in extra complications that could potentially make the metre more difficult for the audience to recognize. yet multiple poems are composed this way, suggesting that these unusual trends were not the result of a single poet’s whim or incompetence but instead a different style of hypermetric composition. 3. the structure of the onsets one hypermetric feature of the three gnomic poems that distinguishes them from conservative poems is the structure of the onsets. in conservative hypermetric composition, the drop in the onsets, especially the heavy onset, tends to be relatively short. in gnomic poetry, these drops are frequently expanded, making the lines seem unwieldy and irregular. however, while the composition may look different from more conservative composition, gnomic poets do in fact follow the same general principles for the composition of the onsets; they simply take further advantage of the inherent flexibility of hypermetric composition. 3.1. the light onset the light onset falls closer to the parameters set by the conservative poems than the heavy onset, mostly because the light onset is the least restrictive of all positions, so it is variable even in the conservative poems. in terms of the length of the onset, the two groups are roughly comparable, though even here the gnomic poems show a tendency toward longer verses. 75the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics table 1. the number of syllables in the light onset of conservative versus gnomic poems (%%) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 maxims i 0 13.8 31.0 29.1 19.0 8.6 3.2 0 maxims ii 0 0 33.3 0 66.7 0 0 0 solomon and saturn 0 3.3 33.3 23.3 23.3 13.3 0 3.3 gnomic poems total 0 9.9 31.9 23.1 22.0 9.9 2.2 1.1 conservative poems 0 16.1 32.2 35.6 14.1 1.3 .7 0 while the numbers are generally similar, the gnomic poems have one onset that is longer than any in the conservative poems and they have more onsets with five to seven syllables. apart from that difference, the basic tendencies are the same. neither of the groups permits a monosyllabic light onset and both tend towards onsets in the middle range. the only difference in that regard is that the gnomic poems include a five-syllable onset in this middle range, where only threeand four-syllable onsets are most heavily favoured in the conservative poems. significantly, this trend holds true to at least some degree in all three gnomic poems. maxims ii does not have as many of the very long verses, but the majority of the verses have five syllables in the light onset, though with only three total verses with a light onset, it does not provide as reliable statistical data. the other longer examples are split between maxims i and solomon and saturn. the words used to fill the light onset are likewise roughly the same in the two groups of poems. similarly to the conservative poems, the gnomic poems mark the weight of the extended drop in a light onset with one or more particles. two onsets lack a particle,7 but such weak drops appear even more rarely than in the conservative poems, where eight such onsets occur. the light onsets are also similar in the two groups of poems because they have more than one particle the majority of the time, with only 6 onsets in the gnomic poems (6.6% of the light onsets) that contain just one and 10 in the conservative poems (7.8% of the light onsets). thus the light onset in gnomic poems has a slight tendency to be longer and heavier than the onsets of the conservative poems, but they basically show the same compositional style. 7 the verses in question are ond þine heortan geþohtas ‘and the thoughts of your heart’ (maxims i 3b) and under foldan scēatas ‘under the surface of the earth’ (solomon and saturn 459b). 76 megan e. hartman 3.2. the heavy onset the heavy onsets in the gnomic poems differ more substantially from those in the conservative poems because gnomic poets fill the drop with more syllables and use particles more frequently. again, the gnomic poems tend to have longer onsets than the conservative poems, though in this case more so. table 2. the number of syllables in the heavy onset’s drop in conservative versus gnomic poems (%%) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 maxims i 0 34.7 29.3 17.3 12.0 4.0 2.7 maxims ii 0 53.8 23.1 23.1 0 0 0 solomon and saturn 0 45.0 25.0 15.0 15.0 0 0 gnomic poems total 0 38.9 27.8 17.6 11.1 2.8 1.8 conservative poems 5.3 51.6 30.6 11.6 1.0 0 0 the gnomic poems have several instances of onsets that are longer than any found in the conservative poems. in addition, the unusually short verses that have no drop in the onset8 do not occur at all in the gnomic poems. the proportion of verses that contain longer drops differs as well. although the gnomic poems contain monosyllabic drops in the heavy onset more frequently than polysyllabic ones, the tendency is not as overwhelming as in the conservative poems, and more verses have the longer patterns that the conservative poets avoid. maxims ii is an exception to the rule; it contains a maximum of three syllables in the drop, which is also the longest drop that appears frequently in the conservative poems. however, trisyllabic drops are equally as common as disyllabic ones in maxims ii, showing a slight tendency towards longer onsets even in this poem. in addition to longer drops in the onset, these poems also have heavier drops: 64 verses (59.2% of the verses with heavy onsets) have at least one particle in that position, 27 of which (25.0%) have more than one. in the conservative poems, 13 verses (13.7%) have a particle in the drop of the heavy onset, and of those only 5 (5.3%) have multiple ones. on the other end of the spectrum, 19 verses (16.4%) contain only the unstressed final syllable of a word in the gnomic poems, as opposed to 32 (38.7%) in the conservative poems. the maxims i poet takes particular advantage of these longer, heavier drops 8 several of these verses have anacrusis, which causes sievers (1887: 468-69) to suggest that some of the patterns might be inverted. the one example that does not, men mid siðian (genesis a 2869a), is considered corrupt by pope (1966: 103). 77the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics and includes 17 verses (22.7% of the verses with heavy onsets in that poem) with a clause break in that position (something that happens only twice in all of the conservative poems combined). most of these verses are quite complex and have at least one particle in the drop. these numbers show that, on average, the drops in both types of hypermetric onsets, but especially the heavier onset, tend to be longer and more complex, making for weightier lines overall. thus, one major factor that causes hypermetric verses in gnomic poems to look so unusual when compared to the most conservative old english verses is the freedom with which the poets use the onsets. while the minimal length is still common, the drop of each onset is often longer and, in the case of the heavy onset, heavier than in the conservative poems. these verse patterns should not be considered irregular, however, because hypermetric onsets are constructed to allow for a large amount of variability; the gnomic tradition consist of verses that demonstrate that variability to a greater degree than narrative poems do, specifically, containing the longer options with greater frequency. this style creates a different rhythmic pattern that would have been heavier and taken longer to say simply because the verses are longer and contain more words with a degree of prosodic stress. in poems that often list gnomic statements that are one or two verses long, this style would draw out each individual statement, giving it particular emphasis. 4. the structure of the cadence and the verse while the long onsets certainly make gnomic hypermetric composition appear unusual in some ways, it is the form of the cadence, together with the overall pattern of the hypermetric verses that results from the unusual cadences, where the majority of the irregularities that bliss and others cite can be found. this is not to say that the cadences are irregular as a whole – the vast majority of the verses in gnomic poems contain a cadence of type a1, just as the conservative poems do – but merely that more possible irregularities exist. again, though, many of these verses, while not conforming to the norm, still fall into permissible patterns of hypermetric composition, especially when some of the scansions that bliss proposes are reconsidered. some irregularities do remain, but the majority of the verses show the general tendency in gnomic composition to take full advantage of the flexibility of the hypermetric form in order to extend the lines, rather than a disregard for the conservative metrical constructions. greater flexibility of the cadence might therefore represent another gnomic feature that poets used and ultimately capitalized on in this type of poem. 78 megan e. hartman 4.1. remainders bliss focuses on two groups of problematic verses. the first of these are the verses he terms remainders, which means verses he cannot fit into a permissible metrical pattern. he identifies six hypermetric remainders in the old english corpus, all of which occur in the gnomic poems (1962: 96): dol biþ sē þe his dryhten nāt (maxims i 35a) ‘foolish is he who does not know his god’ sēoc sē biþ þe tō seldan ieteð (maxims i 111a) ‘sick is he who eats too seldom’ ofercumen biþ hē, ǣr he ācwele (maxims i 113a) ‘he is overcome, before he dies’ mūþa gehwylc mete þearf (maxims i 124a) ‘each of mouths needs food’ þæt ēce nīð ǣldum scōd (maxims i 198a) ‘that eternal hatred injured men’ wunnon hīe wið dryhtnes miehtum (solomon and saturn 329a) ‘they struggled against the might of the lord’ while it does seem striking that this group of poems, particularly maxims i, should contain this many hypermetric remainders when none of the other poems have any, not all of these verses should necessarily be scanned as bliss suggests. firstly, maxims i 35a and 111a can both be analysed as a type hb1. bliss’s inability to scan them results from his complex method of scansion rather than any metrical problems in the verse.9 there is nothing particularly unusual about these verses when compared to other hypermetric verses and, if they are scanned according to sievers’s first system of hypermetric analysis rather than bliss’s system of replacement, they are perfectly regular. secondly, maxims i 198a could be scanned as a regular type ahd4 (× ́ × ́ ́ × ̀) if the stress on one of the three stress words in the cadence is 9 according to bliss’s system of replacement, the onset must be analysed as part of a verse. furthermore, if the cadence is a type that opens with an unstressed position, the first verse in the sequence should be a type that ends in a stressed position, a type b or e, possibly with the first drop removed if it is a type b. however, because the drops in these verses are formed by multiple function words, the underlying verses cannot be a type e (which requires secondary stress in the drop) or a type b (which cannot have a second drop longer than two syllables). 79the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics subordinated. this scansion presents two problems. first, although normal verses can have three stress words, hypermetric cadences rarely do because they so frequently employ the simplest patterns possible. only one appears in the conservative poems, engel in þone ofn innan becwōm (hd4: ́ × × × × ́ ́ × × ̀) ‘the angel came inside, in the oven’ (daniel 237a), and they occur nowhere else in gnomic poetry. however, the verse from daniel is not exactly an anomaly because the cadence ends with a collocation that frequently closes type b or d4 verses. since it was formed using traditional language and an established verse pattern, the verse reinforces the argument that any valid verse type can appear in the cadence (even if some appear more rarely), which in turn shows that a d4 pattern with three stress words need not be ruled out as too complex. the second deviation is more irregular: the alliteration falls on the first and third stress in the verse rather than the standard first and second. nevertheless, the verse does present a valid metrical pattern, so it should probably be considered a standard hypermetric verse type with delayed alliteration instead of an outright remainder. solomon and saturn 329a contains another non-standard alliteration pattern. not only does this on-verse lack double alliteration, it also alliterates on the w of wunnon, which is irregular because it does not conform to the alliterative tendency known as the rule of precedence: verbs are allowed to participate in the alliteration when they precede a noun only if the following noun alliterates as well. in this case, two nouns follow the verb, and neither one alliterates. similarly to maxims i 198a, however, and especially because strange alliterative patterns, including breaking the rule of precedence, are common in solomon and saturn, the verse should likewise be categorized as a standard verse pattern, in this case a type ha1 (́ × × × ́ × ́ ×), with faulty alliteration. that leaves just two verses that do not fit into any verse pattern: maxims i 124a (mūþa gehwylc mete þearf) and maxims i 113a (ofercumen biþ hē, yæ͞r he ācwele). thus, bliss is correct that the gnomic poems contain all the hypermetric remainders, but with just two remainders, these poems – or more specifically, maxims i, since both remainders appear in that single poem – do not seem exceptionally irregular. in fact, they may not be irregular at all in this regard, since the possibility should be considered that these two verses are the product of scribal error. because hypermetric verses use freer verse patterns, a scribe might more easily make a mistake when transcribing one of these lines and not catch the metrical irregularity. the longer onsets used by the maxims i poet, which create verses that are loosely structured and therefore hard to recognize, would increase this possibility. with so few remainders to provide evidence for this type of irregularity, it is reasonable to assert that they are 80 megan e. hartman both a result of scribal error and that the gnomic tradition does not stretch to include verses that did not conform to the basic principles of the alliterative long-line. even if these two verses are authorial – and with both sense and syntax intact in these passages, it is possible that they are – two verses in a 204-line poem do not constitute an exceptional irregularity. if the maxims i poem took greater liberties with the metre and included a few verses that cannot readily be scanned, he avoided them for the most part. 4.2. four-stress verses a second group of unusual verses is made up of verses that have four stressed positions instead of three, which bliss calls “double replacement” verses (1962: 95–6). bliss identifies a total of thirteen such verses in the old english corpus, though feasible alternatives have been presented for the three verses that occur outside of the gnomic poems.10 the verses from the gnomic poems that bliss argues have four stresses are:11 glēawe men sceolon gieddum wrixlan (maxims i 4a) ‘wise men should exchange maxims’ snotre men sāwlum beorgað (maxims i 36a) ‘wise men guard their souls’ trymman ond tyhtan þæt he teala cunne (maxims i 46a) ‘strengthen and lead so that he knows rightly’ cēne men gecynde rīce (maxims i 58a) ‘the bold one [holds] his natural kingdom’ wīdgongel wīf word gespringeð (maxims i 64a) ‘the wandering wife spreads words’ sceomiande man sceal in sceade hweorfan (maxims i 66a) ‘the man causing shame shall turn in the shadow’ wīf sceal wiþ wer w͞ære gehealdan (maxims i 100a) ‘a woman shall hold faith with her husband’ 10 the verses in question are beowulf 1166a, daniel 237a, and the wanderer 65a 11 bliss also includes maxims i 185a (wērig scealc wiþ winde rōweþ ‘the weary crewman rows against the wind’) in his list; however, this example does not provide evidence for an unusual metrical pattern because it is the result of an emendation. 81the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics fela sceōp meotud þæs þe fyrn gewearð (maxims i 164a) ‘the creator created many things, of those things which occurred formerly’ þēof sceal gangan þ͞ystrum wederum (maxims ii 42a) ‘the thief shall go in dark weather’ once again, some of these verses could be analysed differently. maxims i 4a, 36a, 58a, and 66a could be reanalysed because they all have the second stress on the word men or man. normally man should receive stress because it is a noun. but the similar mon can be used as an indefinite pronoun, and then it is treated as a particle and regularly unstressed. technically the two words are distinct and should be treated differently, but ultimately they fall together and by the middle english period both are regularly unstressed. in old norse as well, maðr can be unstressed.12 in all four cases here, men or man refers to a general subject, even though the more specific noun occurs, so the word is being used similarly to mon. furthermore, in each case, if unstressed, it would fall in the heavy onset, which is a natural place for one or more unstressed words.13 maxims ii 42a (þēof sceal gangan þ ͞ystrum wederum) does not require the fourth stress in the line because one of the four stresses would fall on an infinitive, gangan. as a stress word, infinitives ought to receive stress invariably, but they do not in fact do so.14 kuhn (1933: 5) argues that they should sometimes be considered particles and are therefore subject to variable stress. again, the questionably stressed word in this poem comes in a position that can easily receive an extra, possibly heavier, unstressed word, namely the drop of a heavy onset that begins a clause. therefore, it seems likely that gangan should be 12 some examples of unstressed maðr include fafnismál 7.3, and hávamál 6.2, 6.8, 8.5, 9.5, 10.2, and 11.2. it is telling that many of these examples of unstressed maðr can be found in the gnomic poem hávamál, where the word is unstressed as often as not. it is possible that the word functions differently in gnomic poetry, since it occurs so frequently and is used similarly to the generic particle sum. 13 in one instance, maxims i 58a (cēne men gecynde rīce), leaving men unstressed would create a violation of kuhn’s first law: the verse does not open a clause, so if men should be considered a particle here, it would be an unstressed particle outside the first drop of the verse clause. however, in two other verses, maxims i 4a (glēawe men sceolon gieddum wrixlan) and maxims i 66a (sceomiande man sceal in sceade hweorfan), putting stress on the word would cause a violation of kuhn’s first law because it would separate a particle from the first drop. 14 some examples of verses with unstressed infinitives are the battle of maldon 39, the wife’s lament 42, genesis a 2483, 2820, the phoenix 165, and christ and satan 590 (see pope and fulk 200: 96). 82 megan e. hartman unstressed. thus, these five verses all appear perfectly regular if scanned with only three stressed positions: the heavier unstressed particles are grouped together in the onset and the cadence forms a regular verse type. what is notable about them is that they create metrical patterns that are on average longer and heavier than those of the typical conservative poems, a trend that characterizes gnomic poetry overall. that leaves four verses that clearly have four stresses in the line: maxims i 46a, 64a, 100a, and 164a. none of these verses have either a cadence in which one of the stresses could be subordinated to create a three-stress line or a word of variable stress near the beginning of the verse that could be part of the drop.15 even though these verses appear unusual with their extra stressed position, they are not completely irregular. douglas simms (2003: 67–87) observes that these verses all have a normal verse type in the cadence, just as a regular hypermetric verse would.16 while not all the verses use the type a1 pattern that is most typically found in the hypermetric cadence – maxims i 46a (trymman ond tyhtan þæt he teala cunne) has a type c2 (×× ́ ×) in the cadence and maxims i 164a (fela sceōp meotud þæs þe fyrn gewearð) has a type b1 (××́ × ́) – all the cadences are perfectly regular verses types. the structure of the onset is not as clear. while maxims i 46a and maxims i 64a have the pattern of a normal verse, a type a1 (́ × × ́ ×) and a type e (́ ̀ × ́) respectively, other onsets cannot be scanned as easily.17 maxims i 100a and 164a do not appear as regular, both with just three positions made up of two stresses bookending a single drop. each verse does have a verb in the 15 one particle does come at the beginning of a verse, fela in maxims i 164a. yet while fela can occasionally be unstressed (see for example beowulf 929a, daniel 593a or genesis a 622a), it much more often appears in a stressed position. in addition, fela bears the alliteration here, and the next stress word does not alliterate, so it must receive stress in order to fulfil the alliterative requirements. 16 simms also adds that the onset seem to have the form of a normal verse as well. however, he includes maxims i 58a and 66a and maxims ii 42a in his list of four-stress verses in the gnomic poems, which creates a larger proportion of regular onsets. if only maxims i 46a, 64a, 100a, and 164a are analysed as four-position verses, then exactly half of the verses contain an onset formed from a normal verse, making for less certain evidence. 17 bliss (1971) notes the regularity in some onsets and revises his original analysis by dividing the long on-verse into a normal line and then calling the following off-verse a “short” line, which is equivalent to the old norse full line. however, this proposed change would create an unusually large number of normal lines in the midst of hypermetric passages, as well as full lines which would have continued alliteration, where old norse full lines and other orphan verses in this poem instead generally have internal alliteration. it therefore seems preferable to maintain the analysis of a four-stress verse when the verse unambiguously contains four stressed positions. 83the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics onset, so it would be possible to give the verbs secondary stress to form valid verse patterns, e:  ́ ̀×  ́and a2k:  ̀∪ ́× respectively. however, putting stress on these verbs in the first drop of the verse clause would be unusual, especially since unstressed verbs appear so often in this position in hypermetric verse. without further examples to compare, it is impossible to say which scansion is better. either way, the verses consists of a normal cadence with an onset that has been expanded to an especially large degree. although these verses could also be a product of scribal error, with twice as many verses as the remainders, the probability is not as high, especially given that these verses have a clearer metrical structure. the four-stress verse might instead be a particular feature of gnomic hypermetric verse. simms (2003: 67–87) proposes a logical explanation for why these unusual lines may have developed: they create rhetorical emphasis in an already rhetorically heightened passage of poem. in light of the fact that all of the clear examples occur in maxims i, a poem that is more than one third hypermetric, the idea that the poet would add an extra stress word to the line for further emphasis seems natural. indeed, most of the lines occur in relatively long hypermetric passage of at least six and as many as nineteen lines – only line 146a stands by itself; it occurs in a particularly irregular passage that has several small hypermetric groupings as well as several verses without a verse pair – so an extra lift would help to make any verse stand out in these locations. the explanation is also in line with the general trend toward longer and more complex verses that can be found in gnomic hypermetrics as a whole. 4.3. type b and c verses in addition to the two irregularities discussed by bliss, a third unusual metrical pattern appears frequently in gnomic hypermetrics: types hb and hc. there is nothing strictly irregular about these verses, since the cadence does follow a normal verse pattern, but they are very rare in hypermetric verse. as max kaluza (1895: 377) shows, poets generally avoid using verse-types that open with an unstressed position in the cadence to avoid ambiguity; because the onset always ends in a drop, starting the cadence with a drop would put two drops next to each other, making those two positions indistinguishable from a single long drop. the conservative poems use those two verse types in the cadence, but only 84 megan e. hartman a total of four times in 244 verses. the gnomic poems have fourteen possible examples, which mostly appear to be regular, valid examples of the verse types:18 type b: dol biþ sē þe his dryhten nāt (́ × × × × ́ × ́) (maxims i 35a) ‘foolish is he who does not know his lord’ onge þonne hē hit āna wāt (́ × × × × × ́ × ́) (maxims i 42a) ‘cruel when he alone knows it’ lāð sē þe londes monað (́ × × ́ × ) (maxims i 59a) ‘hateful is he who demands land’ wæsceð his wārig hrægl (́ × × ́ × ́) (maxims i 98a) ‘washes his dirty clothing’ gebīdan þæs hē geb͞ædan ne mæg (× ́ × × × × ́ × × ́) (maxims i 104a) ‘to wait for that which he cannot impel’ mete bygeþ, gif hē māran þearf ( × × ́ × ́) (maxims i 110a) ‘acquires food, if he needs more’ sēoc sē biþ þe tō seldan ieteð ( ́ × × × × ́ × ) (maxims i 111a) ‘sick is he who eats too seldom’ type c: ēorod sceal getrume rīdan (́ × × × ́ ×) (maxims i 62b) ‘the troop shall ride in a host’ sceomiande man sceal in sceade hweorfan (́ ̀ × × × × ́ ×) (maxims i 66a)19 18 five of these are verses that bliss analyses as a different verse type. i have already discussed maxims i 35a and 111a and shown why they need not be analysed as remainders. similarly, he analyses the cadence of maxims i 104a as a type e and calls the whole line a type 1a*1c(2e1a). however, this unusual scansion, which requires placing a half-stress on an inflectional ending, is only required by the constraints of bliss’s system of replacement. with those restrictions removed, the verse can be scanned as a regular type hb2. also as discussed above, maxims i 66a need not be scanned as a four-stress pattern if man does not receive stress; bliss does agree that the cadence is formed of a type-c verse. finally, bliss scans the cadence of 114a as a type a, which must be a mistake because that would require a long vowel on mete. the word clearly means ‘food’ and has a short vowel. 19 as a ūo-noun, sceade would originally have been spelled sceadwe, making for a long root syllable on the noun and a type-a cadence in this verse (see campbell §596). this verse therefore presents an uncertain example because there is no way to tell whether the poem was composed 85the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics ‘one causing shame shall wander in the shadow’ hām cymeð, gif he hāl leofað ( ́ × × ́ ∪ ́ ×) (maxims i 105a) ‘he comes home, if he lives healthy’ mægen mon sceal mid mete fēdan ( × × × ́ ×) (maxims i 114a) ‘one shall feed his strength with food’ wel mon sceal wine healdan (́ × × ́ ×) (maxims i 144a) ‘one shall hold his friends well’ cain, þone cwealm nerede (́ × × ́ ×) (maxims i 197a) ‘cain, whom death preserved’ ende ðurh insceafte (́ × × ́ ́ ×) (solomon and saturn 457a)20 ‘an end through internal generation’ emendations have been proposed for two verses, maxims i 62b and 197a, which means that the metrical pattern might not be authorial in these cases, but both changes are small. in the first case, the aspr replaces the manuscript worod with cognate ēorod to provide the alliteration, and in the second, shippey (1976: 134) points out that the sense of manuscript reading, which is kept in the aspr, is strained and that replacing nerede with serede would create a more logical translation.21 since the errors are so small, they do not influence the scansion of the verse. while they might show evidence of a larger scribal error, it is also possible that any error consisted of only these few letters, leaving the metre intact. these two verses are the only ones that show any visible evidence of scribal error, leaving a large number of clear examples that present strong evidence that the metrical pattern was considered a valid alternative to the usual type-a cadences. these verse types affect the overall metrical patterns in a few different ways. first, they allow for more variability, since they increase the number of verses that differ from the type-a1 pattern and even introduce a clashing late and the spelling is in fact authorial, or it was an earlier poem and the scribe changed the spelling to the later variant. 20 it is possible to analyse this verse as a normal rather than a hypermetric verse by not promoting the stress on the final compound, making the verse a type d*1 (́ × × ́ ̀ ×). the verse looks more regular as a type d*1 since it is short and ends in a compound, but the hypermetric scansion may be better because the verse occurs in the middle of a hypermetric passage. 21 as it stands, the verse would need to be interpreted along the lines of ‘cain, whom death preserved.’ shippey’s emendation allows him to translate the verse as ‘cain, who plotted the murder.’ 86 megan e. hartman stress pattern. secondly, and typically of these gnomic poems, they increase the length of the lines because the initial drop tends to be particularly long in order to signal that it forms two adjacent drops. noticeably, these types are not distributed evenly throughout the three poems but instead, apart from the one short example in solomon and saturn, they are found exclusively in maxims i. in fact, in terms of the cadences, almost all of the unusual verses occur in maxims i. thus, the poet who employs the highest incidence of hypermetric verses overall also employs the more unusual features that characterize gnomic diction most fully. a closer look at the unusual metre of the gnomic poems therefore reveals two important points. first, the maxims i poet tends to use unusual stress patterns more often than the other poets, particularly where the cadence is concerned. and second, none of the poems, including maxims i, are as irregular as bliss asserts. there are some unusual verses, but very few of them are actual remainders. most of them are type b and c verses, which more traditional poets tend to avoid but do not eliminate entirely. these verses fit well in the gnomic tradition because the long first drop allows the poets to compose the long, heavy verses, possibly with multiple particles or a clause break in the opening drop, that characterize gnomic style. in addition, these verses frequently employ the diction that likewise marks a statement as gnomic and are even often used in a particular poetic formula that seems to be used exclusively to share wisdom.22 since they also conform to normal versetypes, they still produce verse patterns that fit into the overall old english poetic tradition. thus, by using so many type b and c verses, the maxims i poet adheres to the overall verse principles while still maintaining and perhaps highlighting features of gnomic composition, thereby contributing to the sound pattern that marks gnomic poetry. the four-position verses might be another example of the same principle. while such verses do not appear frequently in the old english corpus, they do seem to be a logical extension of hypermetric verses: the poet adds yet one more stress to increase the weight of the lines further still. particularly in a poem like maxims i that uses so many hypermetric verses, it would be reasonable for the poet to expand his uses of hypermetric patterns and play with them more to create variety and to add further emphasis to important moments within gnomic passages. the combination of length, weight, and foregrounding of the specialized diction might therefore characterize the gnomic poems overall; the poets employ a 22 momma (1989: 423–426) first identified this particular system and noted that it occurs across both gnomic and narrative poems when the poet wished to share a wise saying; she labelled it “the gnomic formula.” 87the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics larger percentage of hypermetric verse to show the import of their topic, and the variety of hypermetric verses the maxims i poet in particular composes demonstrates his comfort with the features of the gnomic tradition and his ability to use it to place emphasis on important gnomic statements while also employing the rhythms that distinguish gnomic poetry from the conservative sound patterns typical to narrative poems. 5. the structure of the lines another result of the greater flexibility and tendency toward weighty lines in gnomic composition is that hypermetric lines can be structured and distributed in non-standard ways throughout the poems. normally, a hypermetric line consists of a heavy onset in the on-verse and a light onset in the off-verse, and it appears in a passage of multiple hypermetric lines. the gnomic poems show a large number of alternatives: lines that have a light onset in the onverse or a heavy onset in the off-verse, as well as hypermetric lines or verses that occur outside of a hypermetric passage and normal verses that intrude into hypermetric passages. just having variant distribution patterns does not make the gnomic poems stand out; alternatives occur frequently in conservative poems. for example, lone hypermetric lines occur among normal lines in guthlac a, genesis a, and daniel, and daniel in particular includes many normal verses in the middle of the hypermetric passages. furthermore, those same three poems use the light onset in the on-verse at times, and the guthlac a poet makes extensive use of that pattern. since they occur in a number of conservative poems, such features ought not be considered a mark of irregularity per se, but neither are they the norm. it is therefore striking that all three gnomic poems differ from the standard distribution patterns in all the ways listed above. the ready use of alternative patterns suggests that the gnomic tradition allows for a wider range of possibilities than standard hypermetric convention does and includes whatever patterns fit the traditional gnomic language. 5.1 the distribution of the on-sets the first of the irregular distribution patterns, a light onset in the on-verse, is one that occurs frequently in the conservative poems: as a group they employ the alternative 23.0% of the time, and the guthlac a poet in particular uses it 41.1% of the time. the extensive use of the light onset in the on-verse in 88 megan e. hartman guthlac a suggests that the pattern was considered a viable alternative, yet the lack of the alternative in beowulf and exodus shows that it is still a break from strictly traditional composition. in the gnomic poems, the alternate pattern occurs 7 times in maxims i (9.8% of the hypermetric on-verses), 7 times in solomon and saturn (28%), and twice in maxims ii (25%). thus, the poems as a group employ the pattern at about the same rate as the conservative poets do overall, but not to nearly the extent that guthlac a demonstrates they could. this moderated use of the light onset in these poems makes sense when the form of the onset is considered. a light onset in the on-verse is a practical alternative because it provides more space for function words in any given line, allowing poets to compose with straightforward syntax. but it is also a lighter pattern, since it removes one stress from the hypermetric line and includes only small words that can be spoken rapidly. the structure therefore makes the light onset a very valuable tool, and because gnomic composition is so flexible, the gnomic poets employ it where they see fit. nevertheless, the onset decreases the weight of the lines, since it eliminates a stressed position, so it contradicts the general tendency of gnomic poetry to employ heavy lines and therefore does not become a characteristic feature of gnomic diction. where the gnomic poems are distinctly differentiated from the more conservative poems is the use of the heavy onset in the off-verse. this distribution occurs only once in the conservative poems: mǣg wæs his āgen ϸridda (ha1: (́× × ́ × ́ ×) ‘his own kinsman was third’ (genesis a 2869b). in contrast, it appears relatively frequently in gnomic poetry, with 29 examples, or 26.8% of the hypermetric off-verses. all three poets use this pattern, though in this case the solomon and saturn poet does not use it as much. the maxims poets both take full advantage of this alternative. maxims i contains 18 examples (21.6% of the off-verses), which is far more than the 5 occurrences of a light onset in the on-verse. maxims ii has 6 examples (75% of the off-verses), making that the standard onset for the poem as a whole. the expanded use of the heavy onset creates a more sharply contrasting rhythm because it adds another stress word to the already heavy lines and makes them sound even weightier. this feature, which is only used consistently in these two gnomic poems, might therefore be a specialized and distinctive alternative for the gnomic tradition. it is also interesting to note the varying degrees to which the poets employ this alternative. clearly, it fits with the general tendency to make the lines heavier and, given that all three gnomic poems include it, seems to be a viable option for the gnomic tradition overall. yet equally clearly, the three poets use the pattern in widely different degrees. the contrast suggests that the poets took advantage of a degree of personal choice within the larger confines of the tradition. in this case, the maxims ii poet found the heavy onset particularly 89the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics conducive to his style. more than the other two poems, maxims ii focuses almost exclusively on short, pithy statements, rarely expounding on any of them. the additional heavy onsets give weight to each individual gnome and, in the cases in which each gnome takes up exactly one verse, allow for a symmetry in the lists. 5.2 distribution of the lines within the poems the distribution of hypermetric verses across the poem is another way in which gnomic poetry appears less constrained than narrative poetry, specifically with hypermetric verses that are paired with normal verses. the exception is by no means the rule: the vast majority of the verses appear paired with a second hypermetric verse in a group of hypermetric lines. the poems also contain four lone hypermetric lines, but this pattern likewise occurs on occasion in many of the conservative poems. yet even though the poems mostly match the metrically conservative poems in this regard, a notable number of verses are paired with a normal verse, both in longer hypermetric passages and in normal passages. this distribution pattern is not unheard of in germanic verse overall; in the old saxon heliand, 29 normal verses occur in the middle of a hypermetric passage and 29 hypermetric verses appear outside of a hypermetric passage.23 nevertheless, these distributions are distinct from the conservative composition in old english, where normal verses within hypermetric passages occur multiple times only in the possibly corrupt daniel, and even there a completely separate hypermetric verse is avoided. the first possible distribution pattern, a hypermetric verse paired with a normal verse in the middle of a hypermetric passage, occurs 8 times: 24 gebīdan þæs hē geb͞ædan ne mæg. hwonne him eft gebyre weorðe (maxims i 104) (ahb2: × ́ × × × × ́ × × ́) (c2: × × × × × ́ ×) ‘wait for that which he cannot impel. when it becomes time for him again’ 23 these numbers are debatable because old saxon hypermetric verses can be very ambiguous. as suzuki (2004) did, i have excluded all verses with a proper name, since the length of syllables in biblical names is ambiguous. i have also scanned potentially hypermetric verses outside of hypermetric passages as normal verses where possible, so my list of hypermetric verses is shorter than suzuki’s. 24 maxims i 196b and 198a and solomon and saturn 460a are also paired with normal verses, but these occur at the edge of a hypermetric passage, which appears permissible in the conservative poems. 90 megan e. hartman ne mæg hē be þ͞y wedre wesan, þēah hit s͞y wearm on sumera (maxims i 112) (b1: × × × × × ́ × ) (ha1: × × × ́ × ×) ‘he cannot exist through the weather, although it be warm in the summer’ wel mon sceal wine healdan on wega gehwylcum (maxims i 144a) (hc2: ́ × × ́ ×) (aa1: × × ́ ×) ‘one shall hold his friends well on each of roads’ felaf͞æcne dēor. ful oft hine sē gefēra slīteð (maxims i 147) (e: ̀ × ́) (ha1: × × × × × ×  ́ ×  ́ ×) ‘the very treacherous animal. very often the companion rends him to pieces’ īdle hond ͞æmetlan genēah tæfles monnes, þonne teoselum weorpeð (maxims i 183b) (irregular) (ha1: × × × ́ ×) ‘worthless hands suffice for one at leisure, the man given to playing dice, when he throws the dice’ wearð f͞æhþo f͞yra cynne, siþþan furþum swealg (maxims i 192) (aha1: × ́ × ́ × ́ ×) (b: × × ́ ×  ́) ‘hostility came to the kin of men, just as soon as [the earth] swallowed [able’s blood]’ orðanc enta geweorc þā þe on þysse eorðan syndan (maxims ii 2) (d*4: ́ × ́ × × ̀) (ha1: × × × × ×  ́ ×  ́ ×) ‘the skillful work of giants, those who are on this earth’ āfielde hine ðā under foldan scēatas, (solomon and saturn 459 (irregular) (ha1: × × ́ × ́ ×) ‘then caused him to fall under the surface of the earth’ when looking at this list of hypermetric verses with their normal verse pairs, a few notable patterns emerge. first, two of the hypermetric verses, maxims i 183b and solomon and saturn 459b, are paired with irregular verses, which suggests that some error might exist in the line. second, five of the verses are paired with verses that can be analysed as a regular normal verse, but are also metrically very similar to hypermetric verses and could potentially have a similar rhythm when performed. maxims i 104a, 112b, and 192a are all paired with a verse type that opens with an unstressed position, making them similar to verses with a light onset. although 192a has a relatively short opening drop, the other two are quite long, increasing the similarity. maxims i 144a is paired with a verse that takes anacrusis in the off-verse, which is quite rare. because the opening drop is only one syllable long and the light onset, which 91the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics stands in for two positions, is generally longer, the verse seems more logically anacrustic; nevertheless, it does bear a similarity to a type ha1.25 bliss in fact analyses maxims ii 2a as a hypermetric verse; however, it would be unusual as a hypermetric verse because it only has five positions.26 nevertheless, it resembles a hypermetric verse because it is particularly heavy and has three separate stress words. third, most of the verses in maxims i occur in the same hypermetric passage as another unpaired verse or in passages that are quite close to each other. there are two ways to interpret these trends. again, the possibility that these are instances of scribal corruption should be considered. multiple instances of these unpaired hypermetric verses within the same hypermetric passages may indicate that the scribes were confused at these points, and because so many of these verses resemble hypermetric verse, whether they form a normal verse pattern or not, a small change would suffice to create a hypermetric verse. another possibility is that, given the relative freedom of the gnomic tradition, the poets were not as strict about the groupings. these verses are generally still long and similar in structure to traditional hypermetric verse, so they may not have been perceived as a disruption to the metre at all. the larger number of unpaired hypermetric verses in maxims i and the existence of such verses across all three poems suggest that they were acceptable in gnomic composition. the other distribution pattern that is rare in conservative poems but that occurs more often in the gnomic poems is a single hypermetric verse in the middle of a passage of normal verses. in the gnomic poems, bliss finds seven examples of lone hypermetric verses. in addition to these, seven other verses that occur in normal sections, all in maxims ic and solomon and saturn, should perhaps be considered hypermetric as well.27 at least one of the verses that bliss identifies shows evidence of corruption, for ofer ðære stylenan helle 25 bliss does not analyse this verse as hypermetric, although he does so for a second verse that opens with a monosyllable drop (the order of the world 102a). 26 bliss calls the verse a type 2a1(2e1a) (́ × ́ × × ́), creating a sixth position by putting tertiary stress on the final syllable of enta. some instances do occur in which the final syllable of a word receives a degree of half-stress even though the word is not a true compound, but in most cases the irregular instance of stress falls on the second element of a quasi-compound (see fulk 1992: 184–193). because enta does not contain any separate morpheme, it should probably not receive stress on the second syllable. 27 the lone verses that bliss identifies are maxims i 30b, 116b, 149b, 151b, and 164a, maxims ii 47a, and solomon and saturn 490a. additional possibilities are maxims i 172 and 189, and solomon and saturn 236b, 261a, 289a, 337b, and 400b. 92 megan e. hartman (ha1: × × × × ×  ́×) ‘in the hard as steal hell’ (solomon and saturn 490) is not paired with any verse at all, and although there does not appear to be any break in the manuscript, the sense of the narrative suggests that something has been left out at this point. if the further potential verses that bliss does not identify are also hypermetric, the possibility that scribal error could account for all of these verses decreases. the two verses in maxims i, earm biþ sē þe sceal āna lifgan ‘wretched is he who shall live alone’ (ha1: ́ × × × × ́ × ́ ×) (maxims i 172) and oft h ͞y wordum tōweorpað (ha1: × × ́ × × ́ ×) ‘often they throw out words’ (maxims i 189), do not provide definitive evidence because neither verse has a pair to create a complete line, making them unusual to begin with.28 maxims i 189 also has an ambiguous metrical pattern. the cadence is clearly a type a with double alliteration, but the onset only has two syllables, so it could feasibly be analysed as anacrusis. yet because the syllables are formed by two separate words, both of which are particles, the hypermetric reading is more probable. maxims i 172 is more convincingly hypermetric. not only does it have a heavy onset, making for three stress words, it is also a realization of the formulaic system used to articulate wisdom that momma named “the gnomic formula.” most of the possible hypermetric verses in solomon and saturn have light onsets, but they are not as ambiguous as maxims i 189 because they all have three or more syllables in the onset. some have slight irregularities: and hiera winrōd līxan (ha1: × × × ́ × ́ ×) ‘and their blessed cross shines’ (solomon and saturn 236b) does not have any particles in the onset; healdað hine niehta gehwylce (ha1: × × × × ́ × × ́ ×) ‘[two hundred guards] guard it each of nights’ (solomon and saturn 261a) is in an on-verse but does not have double alliteration; and simle hit bið his lārēowum h͞yrsum (× × × × × ́ ̀ × ́ ×) ‘it is always obedient to its teachers’ (solomon and saturn 400b) has an extra instance of tertiary stress in the cadence, making for a pattern which does not fit into any of sievers’s five types. however, apart from the last example, these irregularities do occur elsewhere in solomon and saturn, so they are not atypical of the poem’s composition. furthermore, there is one line, gegangan gēara gehwelce (aha1: × ́ × ́ × × ́ ×) ‘each of years [shall] go’ (solomon and saturn 289a), that opens with a heavy onset and is perfectly regular, so it 28 these verses are typically called orphan verses. though rare in old english poetry, a number of them can be found in gnomic poetry. some have argued that these verses may be related to the old norse full line (vollzeilen) in ljóðaháttr, especially because both occur frequently in gnomic poetry (see bliss 1971). however, the orphan verses do not appear to be a regular feature of the meter, while the full line has a designated place in each stanza. 93the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics is more definitively hypermetric. hence, while the distribution pattern seems unusual, the relative frequency in this poem in particular suggests that it might not merely be a scribal error. although the solomon and saturn poet does not use as high an incidence of hypermetric verses as the other two gnomic poets, the frequent use of lone hypermetric verses shows that he still adds extra weight to his composition at times. in total, 21 verses in these poems are distributed in a manner that is not found consistently in the conservative poems. while several of these verses display irregularities that could have been caused by scribal error, some of the irregularities, such as a verse that has no pair or a hypermetric verse with four stresses, occur elsewhere in the gnomic poems and may be features of gnomic metre. the number of atypical verses is small enough that they could all have resulted from scribal error, with an increased number of errors because the metre was unfamiliar enough to the scribes that they were more likely to make mistakes when copying these poems. however, the increased number of unusually distributed verses overall, together with the proportionate decrease in clearly corrupt verses among those unusual verses, means that we should not discount the possibility that these distribution patterns show another way in which the metre of gnomic poems developed differently from that of narrative poems. the difference might be simply a result of the different content. because gnomic poems focus on a single statement, rather than a narrative sequence, a single hypermetric verse seems appropriate in a gnomic poem, where a single, longer statement could easily stand by itself in the middle of a passage of normal verse. yet even though the alternate distribution patterns could have developed naturally given the content of the poems, they still serve to reinforce the overall metrical tendencies of gnomic poetry, allowing the poets to maintain heavier diction. the occasional hypermetric verse in normal passages adds weight or gravity to the section by increasing the length of the line, thereby slowing the pace of the poem at that moment. even the occasional use of normal verse in hypermetric passages, though not a heavy feature in and of itself, perhaps facilitated the poets’ ability to sustain numerous long hypermetric passages. these additional options therefore add to the cumulative effect of all the features under discussion: they allow the poets to consistently compose longer lines, and, in so doing, evoke a sound that the listeners would recognize, causing them to put the poem in the greater context of popular gnomic wisdom. 94 megan e. hartman 6. conclusion this survey of hypermetric composition in gnomic poetry reveals that gnomic poems are neither irregular nor an entirely separate metre but instead a stylistic variant of traditional hypermetric verses that conforms to and marks gnomic diction. in this variant, verses tend to be longer, more complex, and heavier, and the prominent use of hypermetrics adds to the weight of the poems overall. this style fits with the other features of gnomic poetry; the long lines allow poets to fit their aphorisms into single verses while also giving those statements more importance. not only do the long lines themselves lend weight to the poems, but the ability to put each gnome in its own verse, to make it both pithy and memorable, also makes it stand out. significantly, even though the variant style seems primarily designed for individual gnomic statements that appear in lists, it is still used in the longer explanations that span multiple verses in maxims i and solomon and saturn. the consistent use of this style throughout each of the poems demonstrates that it is not merely a practical devise used to fit lists of aphorisms into poetry but rather a stylistic shift that characterizes gnomic verse overall. this is not to say that all three poems adhere to a completely uniform style; instead, they adhere to the same general principles, but the individual poets apply those principles differently, showing their preferences and creating emphasis in different ways. the maxims poems in particular create a striking contrast. where the lines in maxims i can be long and rambling, the lines in maxims ii use a relatively standard length. where maxims i presents a variety of verse types in the cadence, maxims ii has one type he verse and all the rest use a type a1 in the cadence. where maxims i has numerous examples of lone hypermetric lines, single hypermetric verses in the middle of normal passages, and hypermetric passages that contain normal verses, maxims ii uses hypermetric verses almost entirely in consistent passages. yet as much as maxims ii appears quite regular in comparison to maxims i, it also uses the unusual pattern of a heavy onset in the off-verse, almost to the exclusion of the more standard light onset. the additional heavy onsets, together with the relatively high proportion of hypermetric verses overall, make for much heavier lines. when recited, the different verses in the two poems must have taken on similar gravity, either through the length added by the long drop, the weight added by the extra lift, or both. solomon and saturn bears less similarity to the two maxims poems, yet it is still comparable in many ways. while it does not have as high a proportion of hypermetric verse, it does have a relatively large number of them (50 verses) when compared to other old english poems. it also distributes these verses 95the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics in unusual ways, inserting them into normal passages, thereby drawing out the lines as the poet saw fit. in addition, the length of some of the hypermetric lines could be quite extreme. heavy, expansive lines therefore seem to be a characteristic quality of solomon and saturn as well, one that the hypermetric passages serve to reinforce. thus, even though each poem has its own individual style, all share some more unusual features, and in each case the features combine to form a compositional style that is distinctly heavy. this gnomic style may have developed as a result of the desire to draw the audience more fully into the material, making a sound to match the content that marks the nature of the poem. in his explanation of the significance of formulaic language, john miles foley (1995) argues that poets use traditional diction not just because doing so makes poems easy to compose and memorize or even because they want their poetry to fit seamlessly into the tradition, but rather because the poets can refer metonymically to a broad range of associations that the language evokes. he asserts that “the traditional phrase or scene or story-pattern has an indexical meaning vis-à-vis the immanent tradition; each integer reaches beyond the confines of the individual performance or oralderived text to a set of traditional ideas much larger and richer than any single performance or text” (6). the traditional features that foley discusses are the turns of phrase or formulaic systems that poets use to evoke a number of associations that could further characterize the person or event being referenced, but poetic style might be an additional feature that could elicit a particular response in an oral system where sound is key. if the audience is accustomed to associating a particular poetic style with a certain set of subject material, hearing that style could evoke the connotations and associations that go with it. in a way, the metrical distinctions could work similarly to the lexical distinctions of register. in the course of his discussion of poetic language, foley defines register in this context as “an idiomatic version of the language that qualifies as a more or less self-contained system of signification specifically because it is the designated and sole vehicle for communication in the act of traditional oral performance” (15). foley focuses on lexical features such as a traditional poetic koiné, showing how lexical features distinguish poetry as a register separate from prose and, in the process, allow those familiar with the tradition to understand the associations and meanings implicit to it. expanding of foley’s work, frog (2012: 54) argues that, especially in the variety of metres found in old norse poems, the register is related to the metre and mode of expression, arguing that different modes of expression can have an effect on the metre, since the word choice would influence the rhythms of the poem. these both in turn can have an effect on the register and so, frog 96 megan e. hartman argues, they should “be considered a determinant on register rather than part of the register itself ” (54). frog’s distinctions can explain part of what this study has argued about hypermetric diction in gnomic poetry. as i have shown above, the diction and turns of phrase associated with gnomic statements are a large part of what shapes the gnomic hypermetric patterning, just as frog argues the modes of expression would.29 what is significant about gnomic poetry, then, is that the distinctive metrical patterning remains even when the characteristic diction is not being used, so the shift in mode of expression at these points does not necessarily impact the metre. in these poems, then, the metre serves consistently to reinforce the register, even when the diction of the poem does not, creating a distinctive sound for these particular gnomic poems. even though it is not possible to categorize old english poems into entirely distinctive genres, the sustained difference in style of the gnomic poems suggests such categorization was not entirely foreign and that there were some associations between some groups of poems. by using a style specifically aligned with gnomic poetry, gnomic poets may have been evoking the “more or less self-contained system of signification” that foley describes in order to elicit a particular response from the audience. wisdom poetry in particular would warrant its own stylistic distinctions because it is very important to the old english tradition. gnomic statements appear often in a large range of poems, as well as several poems that are dedicated purely to sharing maxims; as the maxims i poet says glēawe men sceolon gieddum wrixlan ‘wise men should exchange maxims’ (maxims i 4a). the audience would therefore be used to hearing gnomes – often in lists that add to an overall understanding of nature, society, and god – and probably had a store of their own. a separate, traditional gnomic style would allow listeners to associate the wisdom they hear with other wisdom they have heard in order to construct a larger list in their minds that more fully explains the nature of the world. the extensive use of hypermetrics with this long and heavy style could therefore serve to both alert the audience to the associations they should make 29 rebecca fisher makes a similar argument about metrical charms: “the most important characteristic of the parry-lord formula is that a formula consists of a set of words that conforms to the rules of metre and represents a simple, single idea. however, a charm unit is not restricted by metre but by register, meaning that it must conform to the purpose and tone of the charm as a whole, maintaining the appropriate semantic field” (2011: 39). this argument suggests that the poets were primarily concerned with maintaining the language considered appropriate to charms, creating a metre appropriate to that end when casting charms in a poem. this may be the reason why scholars such as roper (2000) have been able to isolate distinguishing stylistic features in the metrical charms, just as i have done here for gnomic poetry. 97the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics and characterize the information that is being shared. features such as extraheavy lines with two heavy onsets, hypermetric verses that intrude in normal passages, and four-stress verses that stand out from even normal hypermetric verses add to the solemn and weighty tone that marks such wisdom even as they alert the audience to the nature of the poem. thus, by using the flexibility inherent in hypermetric verse to create a large number of hypermetric patterns that add more solemnity to the line, gnomic poets distinguish their style of composition from narrative verse and mark their poems in a way that the audience could have heard and recognized as an indication of important knowledge that fits into the larger context of old english wisdom that is meant to be shared. references bliss, alan 1967. the meter of beowulf, revised edn. oxford: blackwell. bliss, alan 1971. single half lines in old english poetry. in: notes and queries 18, 442–449. bredehoft, thomas a. 2003. the three varieties of old english hypermetric versification. in: notes and queries 50.2, 153–56. bredehoft, thomas a. 2004. ælfric and late old english verse. in: anglo saxon england 33, 77–107. bredehoft, thomas a. 2005. early english metre. toronto: university of toronto press. cable, thomas 1991. the english alliterative tradition. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. campbell, alistair 1983. old english grammar. oxford: oxford university press. fisher, rebecca 2011. writing charms: the transmission and performance of charms in anglo-saxon england. sheffield: university of sheffield dissertation. foley, john miles 1995. the singer of tales in performance. bloomington: indiana university press. frog 2012. on the case of vambarljóð ii: register and mode from skaldic verse to sagnakvæði. in: rmn newsletter 5, 49–61. fry, donald k. 1967. old english formulas and systems. in: english studies 48, 193–204. fulk, robert dennis 1992. a history of old english metre. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. 98 megan e. hartman fulk, robert dennis; bjork, robert e.; niles john d. (eds.) 2008. klaeber’s beowulf and the fight at finnsburg. toronto: university of toronto press. hartman, megan e. 2010. the syntax of old english hypermetrics. in: english studies 91, 477–91. hartman, megan e. 2014. poetic attitudes and adaptations in late old english verse. in: leeds studies in english. hutcheson, rand 1995. old english poetic metre. cambridge: d. s. brewer. krapp, george p.; dobbie, elliott van kirk (eds.) 1931–53. the anglo-saxon poetic records, 6 vols. new york: columbia university press. kuhn, hans 1969. zur wortstellung und -betonung im altgermanischen. in: beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 57 (1933). repr. in kleine schrigten 1. berlin: gruyter. 18–103. momma, haruko 1989. the ‘gnomic formula’ and some additions to bliss’s old english metrical system. in: notes and queries 4, 423–426. momma, haruko 1997. the composition of old english poetry. cambridge: cambridge university press. pope, john c. 1966. the rhythm of beowulf. new haven: yale university press. pope, john c.; fulk, robert dennis 2001. eight old english poems, 3rd ed. new york: w. w. norton and company. roper, jonathan 2000. metre in the old english ‘metrical’ charms. in: mikhailova, t., j. roper, a. toporkov, and d. nikolayev (eds), oral charms in structural and comparative light. moscow: probel-2000, 116–121. russom, geoffrey 1987. old english metre and linguistic theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. shippey, thomas a. 1976. poems of wisdom and learning in old english. cambridge: d. s. brewer. shippey, thomas a. 1994. the wanderer and the seafarer as wisdom poetry. in: aertsen, henk; rulf h bremmer, jr. (eds.), companion to old english poetry. amsterdam: vu university press, 145–158. sievers, eduard 1887. der angelsachsische schwellvers. in: beitrage zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 12, 454–82. sievers, eduard 1893. altgermanische metric. halle: max niemeyer. http://bert.lib.indiana.edu:2722/uhtbin/cgisirsi/dbcfwfcij5/x/212340004/18/x245/xtitle/the+'gnomic+formula'+and+some+additions+to+bliss's+old+english+metrical+system http://bert.lib.indiana.edu:2722/uhtbin/cgisirsi/dbcfwfcij5/x/212340004/18/x245/xtitle/the+'gnomic+formula'+and+some+additions+to+bliss's+old+english+metrical+system 99the form and style of gnomic hypermetrics simms, douglas 2003. reconstructing an oral tradition: problems in the comparative metrical analysis of old english, old saxon, and old norse alliterative verse. austin: university of texas at austin dissertation. stanley, eric gerald 1984. alliterative ornament and alliterative rhythmical discourse in old high german and old frisian compared with similar manifestations in old english. in: beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 106, 184–217. suzuki, seiichi 1996. the metrical organization of beowulf. new york: mouton de gruyter. suzuki, seiichi 2004. the metre of old saxon poetry: the remaking of alliterative tradition. cambridge: d.s. brewer. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd early english meter as a way of thinking eric weiskott*1 abstract: the second half of the fourteenth century saw a large uptick in the production of literature in english. this essay frames metrical variety and literary experimentation in the late fourteenth century as an opportunity for intellectual history. beginning from the assumption that verse form is never incidental to the thinking it performs, the essay seeks to test simon jarvis’s concept of “prosody as cognition”, formulated with reference to pope and wordsworth, against a different literary archive. the essay is organized into three case studies introducing three kinds of metrical practice: the half-line structure in middle english alliterative meter, the interplay between latin and english in piers plowman, and final -e in chaucer’s pentameter. the protagonists of the three case studies are the three biggest names in middle english literature: the gawain poet, william langland, and geoffrey chaucer. keywords: alliterative meter; chaucer; historical poetics; intellectual history; medieval literary theory; meter; pentameter; piers plowman; sir gawain and the green knight; tetrameter this essay is about structures of thought that happen to take the form of poetry. thus stated, the object of inquiry would seem to be intellectual history, to which poetics is subordinated. however, the discussion to follow begins from the assumption that verse form is never incidental to the thinking it performs. apprehending meter as a way of thinking necessarily involves reimagining thinking itself. by ‘thinking’ i do not only mean the paraphrasable ideas objectified in intellectual history and philosophy. rather, i propose to demonstrate conformity between ideas and meter in early english verse. at the level of metrical structuration, where language becomes verse, meter and thinking are one and the same. the title of this essay echoes simon jarvis (1998), who recommends approaching “prosody as cognition”. jarvis had alexander pope and william wordsworth in mind when he coined that phrase. i seek to test jarvis’s concept against a different literary archive, exploring the particular kinds of thinking * author’s address: eric weiskott, stokes hall s407, boston college, chestnut hill, mass. 02467; email: eric.weiskott@bc.edu. studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 41–65 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.02 42 eric weiskott done by and through early english meter. the essay focuses on the second half of the fourteenth century, a stretch of decades that saw a large uptick in the production of literature in english. in medieval england, as i will argue, meter was a way of thinking about form and balance, translation and vernacularity, and the historicity of literary practice. the essay is organized into three case studies introducing three kinds of metrical practice: the half-line structure in middle english alliterative meter, the interplay between latin and english in piers plowman, and final -e in chaucer’s pentameter. the protagonists of the three case studies are the three biggest names in middle english literature: the gawain poet, william langland, and geoffrey chaucer (d. 1400). the first of these is no name at all but a cypher: the gawain poet (or pearl poet), a northwest midland writer thought to have composed the four middle english poems in british library cotton nero ms a.x (copied c. 1390). for this poet, no compelling external evidence for authorship has been identified (andrew 1997; duggan 1997). william langland is little more than a floating name in literary history. mentioned in a few contemporary documents and identified as the author of a poem called piers plowman in an early fifteenth-century manuscript note (in dublin, trinity college, ms 212), langland probably belonged to the well-to-do rokele family and likely spent time in london (kane 1965; hanna 1993; adams 2013; johnston 2016). the name ‘langland’ itself may be a pseudonym. chaucer, of course, is the grand poobah of medieval english literature. like gilbert and sullivan’s character, chaucer was chronically overemployed; a resident of london, at one time or another he worked as a clerk, comptroller of customs, diplomat, esquire, forester, page, and soldier, among other jobs (carlson 2004). these three poets have garnered the lion’s share of scholarly attention, and the present study follows suit by placing them at the center of an essay in historical poetics (for recent revivals of the term see prins 2008; jarvis 2014). but i will continually note how the metrical practice of a range of contemporary and earlier poets shaped the structures of thought informing sir gawain and the green knight, piers plowman, and the canterbury tales. the broadest goal of this essay is to demonstrate that intellectual history and poetics can illuminate one another. indeed, where poetry is concerned, the procedures of the two fields ought to coincide. medievalists have made significant contributions toward understanding poetry as cognition, especially in the work of andrew galloway (grady, galloway 2013; galloway 2016), eleanor johnson, alastair minnis (minnis, scott 1992; minnis 2011), fiona somerset and nicholas watson, and jocelyn wogan-browne (wogan-browne et al. 1999 and 2016) under the banner of what minnis calls ‘medieval literary theory’. this research program compares the explicit theories of authority and 43early english meter as a way of thinking textuality propounded in latin by medieval scholars with the often implicit theorization of literature performed by vernacular texts themselves. to date, few medievalists have considered the intellectual significance of english meter as such, though thomas cable (1991: 134) has laid the groundwork for this project by insisting that the study of meter is fundamentally about “mental structures” rather than objective linguistic or acoustic data. following cable, i do not claim that meter stands in a one-to-one relationship to a given public taste or religious conviction, but that meter itself constitutes a way of thinking, a form of cognition, and as such pertains to intellectual history no less than to poetics. from the perspective of intellectual history, this essay seeks to enrich the study of medieval literary theory by disaggregating the medieval english literary field by metrical tradition. alliterative meter does not think the same way pentameter thinks; the difference should matter in any account of medieval literary theory. from the perspective of poetics, this essay seeks to redirect the philological procedures of the highly traditionalist field of metrics toward a phenomenological poetics. the intellectual implications of metrical practice have long remained hidden behind a lingustic formalism that posits meters as direct expressions of languages. a phenomenological poetics, building on but also moving beyond linguistic description of verse form, approaches meter as a historically mediated event that occurs in the minds of poets, scribes, and readers (weiskott 2016: 2–3). if meter lives in the mind, then it is part of the job of a metrist to discover what it is doing up there. 1. asymmetry in the early eighth century, english poetry first found its way onto the manuscript page. when it did, it appeared in an early form of alliterative meter, now known as old english meter. in the middle of the sixteenth century, alliterative poetry disappeared from the active repertoire of verse forms. by then, chaucer’s pentameter had become the default english meter. these are the outer chronological limits of english alliterative verse. in the 800 years in between, the alliterative tradition functioned as a gigantic and slow-moving cultural institution (weiskott 2016). the alliterative tradition was gigantic: over 300 poems survive, many of them thousands of lines long. the alliterative tradition was slow-moving: the major changes in the metrical system took centuries to crystallize. and the alliterative tradition was an institution: for 800 44 eric weiskott years it stood as a set of cultural practices from which poets drew or against which they staked their literary projects. the account of metrical history offered in the previous paragraph conflicts with a prominent twentieth-century literary-historical concept, the so-called ‘alliterative revival’, whereby alliterative verse was resuscitated in the 1350s like an anglo-saxon zombie (turville-petre 1977; for historiography see cornelius 2012). seeking an intellectual context for the ‘revival’, modern scholars have wanted middle english alliterative verse to enact metaliterary gestures toward its own metrical form. many scholars think they have caught the gawain poet doing this near the beginning of sir gawain and the green knight. after situating britain in the long history of european colonization, the poet adjures the reader or listener (quoted from andrew, waldron 2010, with a tabbed space representing the caesura; translation mine): if ʒe wyl lysten þis laye bot on littel quile, i schal telle hit astit, as i in toun herde, with tonge. as hit is stad and stoken in stori stif and stronge, with lel letteres loken, in londe so hatz ben longe. (“if you will listen to this lay just a little while, i will tell it as readily as i heard it spoken [lit., ‘with tongue’] in town. as it is set down and fixed in a brave and sturdy chronicle, enclosed in loyal letteres, so it has long been in the land”.) (30–36) critics are probably overly optimistic in identifying a reference to meter here. the word letteres is ambiguous. it could mean ‘letters’ with reference to alliterating sounds; but letteres also means ‘learning’ and ‘writing’ in middle english (middle english dictionary online, ‘lettre’, 5 and 3). all three senses are appropriate in context. and then, letteres crops up in a second-person address that validates the poem as oral, traditional, and authoritative. if meter appears here at all, it does so as a correlate of these other concerns. the passage is certainly noteworthy for its extended metaliterary meditation on the poem as an ancient (“in londe so hatz ben longe”) and authentic narrative (“stori”), oral (“lysten”; “herde”; “with tonge”) and written (“letteres”), brave and strong (“stif and stronge”) like the chivalric heroes within it. but the status of the passage as a 45early english meter as a way of thinking touchstone in discussions of middle english alliterative meter reflects modern concerns more than medieval ones.1 the difficulty of identifying self-conscious reference to meter in this passage should not be surprising. for one thing, if recent metrical studies are correct, no such event as ‘the alliterative revival’ occurred. students of alliterative meter increasingly characterize fourteenth-century alliterative meter as one phase in a centuries-long catena of metrical practice spanning the old english and middle english periods (russom 2004; yakovlev 2008; cable 2009b; weiskott 2013 and 2016; cornelius 2017). if so, no special intellectual justification for composing alliterative verse was necessary in the fourteenth century. more generally, self-conscious references to meter were thin on the ground at a time when vernacular poetics had not yet become an academic subject or a sustained cultural discourse (cornelius 2017: 23–43). when medieval writers seem to be mentioning or noticing english meter, it is almost always because they are mentioning or noticing something else. in short, early english meter was a vehicle for thought but almost never the object of thought in its own right. hence this essay’s focus on thinking by and through meter rather than thinking about meter. there is a further complication to the optimistic reading of gawain 30–36. many metrists, ironically, no longer include alliteration among the organizing principles of alliterative meter (cable 1991: 132; hanna 1995: 50; yakovlev 2008: 23–24). in recent metrical studies, alliteration appears as an ornament, standing in approximately the same relation to alliterative meter as rhyme to pentameter. the term ‘alliterative verse’, an eighteenth-century formulation for which no very satisfying alternative exists, is worse than a misnomer: it is a category mistake, designating a meter by a linguistic feature that cannot organize metrical patterning per se (cable 2009a: 232). if the gawain poet has designated the poem’s metrical form with reference to the repetition of initial sounds, this corresponds to a misperception shared with a long tradition of modern prosodists but rejected in recent scholarship.2 according to current critical consensus, the most fundamental feature of alliterative verse is not alliteration but division of the metrical line into halflines. the two half-lines, known as the ‘a-verse’ and ‘b-verse’, are divided by a metrical-syntactical break or ‘caesura’. at no point in the evolution from 1 for three other passages often taken as reflexive statements on alliterative meter but better interpreted otherwise, see cornelius 2012: 270–271 and pearsall 1977: 153–154. 2 nor is ‘accentual’ a sufficiently precise descriptor for alliterative meter. old english meter, the ancestor of fourteenth-century alliterative meter, combined morphological (yakovlev 2008: 70–82) and quantitative (stockwell and minkova 1997) organizational principles. 46 eric weiskott old english to middle english alliterative meter does the caesura cease to bear metrical significance. consider the opening line of cædmon’s hymn (late seventh/early eighth c.), the earliest datable english poem, beside that of sir gawain and the green knight: “nu scylun hergan | hefaenricaes uard” (“now let us praise the keeper of the kingdom of heaven...”); “siþen þe sege and þe assaut | watz sesed at troye” (“after the siege and the onslaught had finished at troy...”). from one end of the alliterative tradition to the other, metrical patterning plays out on the scale of the half-line. syntax and sense typically reinforce the metrical boundary. in the opening line of cædmon’s hymn, the a-verse contains the verb while the b-verse contains the object. in the opening line of gawain, the a-verse contains the subject while the b-verse contains the predicate. medieval scribes often divided the a-verse and b-verse of alliterative poetry with a raised point (punctus elevatus), though this practice only occasionally rose to the level of thoroughgoing metrical punctuation (for an old english example, see rosier 1964: 6–7). editors of old english verse regularize the scribes’ practice, marking the caesura with a space. most editors of middle english alliterative verse, frustratingly, elect not to mark the caesura at all. this minor editorial decision has a major interpretive effect, which is to suppress consciousness of the boundary between the two domains of the meter’s formal/intellectual activity. in the late fourteenth century, the caesura assumed particular importance as a flexion point between two mutually exclusive metrical arenas. as a result of metrical history, the middle english alliterative b-verse housed a small set of highly conspicuous metrical patterns. gawain 1b instances the most common pattern: unstress, stress, multiple consecutive unstresses, stress, unstress (xsxxsx, where s represents a stressed syllable and x represents an unstressed syllable). there is one other basic pattern, with variations (cable 1991: 85–113). as a result of the same metrical history, the middle english alliterative a-verse housed a gigantic array of highly indeterminate metrical patterns. indeed, cable (1991: 86) argues that the middle english alliterative line hinged on a principle of asymmetry: all patterns allowed in the a-verse were disallowed in the b-verse, and vice versa. for modern scholars, metrical asymmetry is evidence for the continuity of the alliterative meter. asymmetry gradually increased over time, from nearly 0% in the eighth century to roughly 35% in the twelfth century to nearly 100% in the fourteenth century. fourteenth-century poets, of course, lacked access to metrical history as such. they could not have appreciated the historical forces bearing on verse composition. for them, metrical asymmetry was the most basic precondition of thought in this verse tradition. asymmetry causes every middle english alliterative line to assume the following form: ‘not x or 47early english meter as a way of thinking y’ | ‘x or y’, where x and y represent two major variations on a theme. it is in the variety of responses to the stricture of asymmetry that the richness of thought in alliterative verse most immediately springs into view. consider a passage from the second stanza of sir gawain and the green knight, just before the metaliterary meditation on loyal letteres: ande quen þis bretayn watz bigged bi þis burn rych bolde bredden þerinne, baret þat lofden, in mony turned tyme, tene þat wroʒten. mo ferlyes on þis folde han fallen here oft þen in any oþer þat i wot, syn þat ilk tyme. (“and when this britain was founded by this noble man, bold ones flourished therein, [those] who loved battle, in many troubled time, [those] who wrought harm. more wonders have fallen here often in this land than in any other that i know of, since that very time”.) (20–24) following an influential late medieval british historiographical tradition, these lines describe the aftermath of the foundation of britain by brutus of troy (turville-petre 2003). the poet segregates major ideas in the half-lines, one idea per half-line: britain, brutus; bold men, battle; time, harm; wonders, often; elsewhere, back then. in the first three lines, the caesura divides the prosaic word order of the a-verse from the habitually contorted syntax of the middle english alliterative b-verse: ‘by this man noble’ for ‘by this noble man’, ‘battle who loved’ for ‘who loved battle’, and ‘harm who wrought’ for ‘who wrought harm’. these contortions have a metrical dimension: in each case, prose word order would yield an unmetrical accentual contour. alternation between less and more artificial syntax within each line is one of the strangest and most telling features of the alliterative tradition in general and gawain in particular. the poet thinks like yoda, but typically only half the time. each of the first three b-verses is also grammatically dispensable (respectively, a prepositional clause specifying the agent of an action and two relative clauses), further marking out the b-verse as poetic artifice. cumulatively across the poem, metrical asymmetry enables what is precisely the gawain poet’s major intellectual achievement: the construction of a visceral ancient world of chivalric romance that pointedly comments on its own constructedness. 48 eric weiskott the previous paragraph focused on certain habits of thought rendered possible by the substructure of the fourteenth-century alliterative line. the gawain poet was also capable of breaking habits for effect: x s x x s x x s x x s x þay boʒen bi bonkkez þer boʒez ar bare; x s x x s x x s x x s x þay clomben bi clyffez þer clengez þe colde. (“they went past banks where boughs are bare; they climbed past cliffs where the cold clings”.) (2077–2078) these lines, from the final ‘fitt’ or section of the poem, describe gawain’s journey from castle hautdesert to the green chapel, accompanied by a guide. each of the four verses shows the same metrical pattern, in direct violation of the principle of metrical asymmetry. with their metrical symmetry and syntactical parallelism, these lines stand out clearly from the poet’s normal practice. indeed, they seem imported from a different poetic tradition: middle english alliterating, stanzaic verse as in susannah and the awntyrs off arthure (turville-petre 1974; kennedy 2003). a criterial difference between (unrhymed) alliterative verse and alliterating stanzaic verse is the degree to which the principle of metrical asymmetry obtains. the rhyming poems, oriented toward the line-end rather than the caesura and therefore organized at the level of the line rather than the half-line, smooth out the complexities that differentiate a-verse and b-verse in (unrhymed) alliterative meter (weiskott 2016: 103–106; cornelius 2017: 130–146). rhyming, alliterating verse also differs syntactically from (unrhymed) alliterative verse (lawton 1980). gawain 2077–2078 thus functions as an inscribed poem-within-a-poem, a thoughtwithin-a-thought whose artificiality sets off the surrounding variegation. in these lines, metrical eclecticism is a way of rethinking a romance motif. 49early english meter as a way of thinking 2. macaronics although the foregoing discussion emphasized the subtlety and flexibility of the gawain poet’s metrical cognition, sir gawain and the green knight rightly functions in modern scholarship as a paragon of alliterative style. piers plowman, by contrast, is a poem that works hard to fly under the radar of the alliterative tradition. it succeeds so well in this aim that metrists have often felt the need to isolate piers plowman as a special case. for example, cable (1988: 63) confides, “i suspect that langland knew the rules [...] but felt free to break them”, while nicolay yakovlev (2008: 25) labels the poem “metrically deviant”. more recent scholarship has sought to reopen lines of metrical communication between piers plowman and the rest of the alliterative tradition (cole 2007; barney 2009: 277–278; cable 2009b: 247–248; burrow 2012). in what follows, i pursue a synthesis of these critical positions by arguing that langland stands apart from other alliterative poets not because he flouts metrical rules but because of the peculiar way in which he fulfills them. langland’s poem is well known within and beyond the field of medieval studies, but it cuts an intimidating figure even for medievalists. seven thousand lines long and divided into a prologue and twenty ‘passūs’ or steps, piers plowman exists in three distinct authorial versions (‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’) composed in the 1370s and 1380s. the poem stages an allegorical/apocalyptic/ philosophical inquiry into ethics and biblical history. langland satirizes beggars, minstrels, rich folk, monks, friars, professors, but above all the secular clergy – the pope, bishops, priests, and other ecclesiastics. each sector of late medieval life is weighed and found wanting. three or four times throughout the poem, a mysterious plowman named piers emerges to galvanize the narrator will, other people, and the reader in their metaphorical quest for truth. piers plowman culminates in a vision of the passion of jesus christ, in which jesus is simultaneously a persecuted god-man and a knight with a coat of arms and an entourage of biblical prophets and personified christian virtues. it is a famously difficult poem, and it was immensely popular from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. one of the most remarkable features of piers plowman as a poem is its “bilingual embrace” (steiner 2013: 6). langland’s extensive use of latin within and around english metrical lines increases the degree of difficulty for any interpretive act, including scansion. in piers plowman, latin prose citations can interrupt the english alliterative meter (quoted from kane, donaldson 1975, with a tabbed space representing the caesura; translation mine): 50 eric weiskott salomon þe sage a sermon he made for to amenden maires and men þat kepen [þe] lawes, and [took hym] þis teme þat i telle þynke: ignis deuorabit tabernacula eorum qui libenter accipiunt munera &c. among þise lettrede l[or]des þis latyn [amounteþ] that fir shal falle & [forbrenne at þe laste] the hou[s] and [þe] ho[m] of hem that desireþ yiftes or yeresyeues bycause of hire offices. (“solomon the wise composed a sermon to amend mayors and men who keep the laws, and he took up this theme for them, which i mean to relate: fire shall devour their tabernacles, who love to take bribes &c. [=job 15:34]. among these learned lords, this latin signifies that fire shall fall and ultimately burn up the house and home of those who desire gifts or annuities because of their positions”.) (b.3.93–100) here, a longer sequence of discussion and dialogue about bribery culminates in a citation of job. the verbatim english translation overmarks latin as high-class and bookish (“þise lettrede lordes”) and english as vulgar. while the metrical structure of the poem subordinates latin to english, readers of piers plowman have often noted an uncanny effect whereby the english functions as a commentary on the as-yet-uncited latin (alford 1977 and 1992). in 3.93–100, for example, the translation explicitly positions the prose latin (“þis teme”; “þis latyn”) as the source of the english alliterative thoughts that surround it. this is all to say, the bilingual embrace of piers plowman is fully bilingual. langland thinks in latin and in english, and the metrical and conceptual relationships between the languages are always at issue. the complexity of the english-latin interface in piers plowman can be gauged from a different angle, by appreciating the variety of strategies employed by scribes and early printers for representing latin on the page (alford 1992: 12–13; jefferson 2012). latin can also crop up in piers plowman after an english alliterative a-verse: ‘bryng pacience som pitaunce pryveliche’, quod conscience; and þanne hadde pacience a pitaunce, pro hac orabit ad te omnis sanctus in tempore oportuno. 51early english meter as a way of thinking (“‘bring patience a bite to eat discreetly’, said conscience; and then patience had a bite to eat, for this shall every one that is holy pray to thee in a seasonable time [=psalm 31:6]”.) (b.13.56–57) in this passage, the narrator will sits with patience at a feast hosted by conscience. the menu is mostly scripture, though soup, stew, and wine are also on offer. here, patience is served a slice of psalm 31. i’ll return to this psychedelic scene in a moment. but first, a problem of identification: what is the literary form of latin following an alliterative a-verse? some latin after the a-verse in piers plowman is more quotation-like, as in 13.56–57, while some is more b-verse-like: ac shrift of mouþ moore worþi is if man be y[n]liche contrit, for schrift of mouþe sleeþ synne be it neuer so dedly – per confessionem to a preest peccata occiduntur.3 (“but confession by mouth is more effective if the person is inwardly contrite, for confession by mouth slays sin however mortal it be – by confession to a priest sins are slain”.) (14.90–92) one might well scan, with classical accentuation, peccáta occidúntur (xsxxxsx) – an acceptable b-verse pattern, equivalent to the metrical pattern of gawain 1b discussed above. however, the ambivalence between more quotation-like and more b-verse-like latin means that the potential for suspension of meter exists regardless of the particular rhythmical form of the latin. ian cornelius (2017) argues that langland, unlike other alliterative poets, allowed himself the option of switching out of english alliterative meter and into latin prose at the caesura: the ultimate thule of metrical asymmetry. in the passages in piers plowman discussed thus far, latin stands outside the metrical structure of the poem. langland was also capable of integrating latin into english meter, as in the longer passage in which the “pro hac orabit...” quotation appears: 3 for the latin quotations in this passage in their larger literary context, see alford 1977: 86–96. 52 eric weiskott ‘here is propre seruice’, quod pacience, ‘þer fareþ no prince bettre’. and he brouʒte vs of beati quorum of beatus virres makyng, and þanne a mees of ooþer mete of miserere mei deus, et quorum tecta sunt peccata in a dissh of derne shrifte, dixi & confitebor tibi. ‘bryng pacience som pitaunce pryueliche’, quod conscience, and þanne hadde pacience a pitaunce, pro hac orabit ad te omnis sanctus in tempore oportuno; and conscience conforted vs and carped vs murye tales: cor contritum & humiliatum deus non despicies. (“‘here is proper service’, said patience; ‘no prince fares better’. and he [=scripture] brought us some of blessed are they whose [=psalm 31:1] of blessed is the man’s [=psalm 31:2] making, and then a portion of other food, of have mercy on me, god [=psalm 50:1], and whose sins are covered [=psalm 31:1] in a dish of private confession, i said & i will confess [=psalm 31:5]. ‘bring patience a bite to eat discreetly’, said conscience; and then patience had a bite to eat, for this shall every one that is holy pray to thee in a seasonable time [=psalm 31:6]; and conscience comforted us and spoke merry tales to us: a contrite and humbled heart, o god, thou wilt not despise. [=psalm 50:19]”.) (b.13.52–58a) at the insistence of conscience, scripture serves patience and will bits of psalms 31 and 50. in this showstopping passage, two penitential psalms are sliced up for dinner service. like liturgical incipits, these bits of text evoke the larger scriptural sources from which they derive. for example, ‘blessed is the man’ is mentally expandable to ‘blessed is the man to whom the lord hath not imputed sins’. indeed, beatus vir and miserere are liturgical incipits, though in this capacity they refer to other psalms (to psalm 31:2 cf. psalm 1:1; to psalm 50:1 cf. psalms 4:2, 6:3, 9:14, etc.).4 while most of these scraps of psalms do not contribute to the poem’s metrical shape, 13.53b and 13.54b witness latin embedded in english grammar and meter. the editors’ italicization in 13.53b registers an english possessive constructed from a latin tag (cf. 10.326b). both the second and third b-verses may be scanned with metrically normative patterns: “of beatus virres makyng” (xsxxxxsx; metrical demotion of virres as often in alliterative b-verses); “of miserere mei deus” (xsxxxxsx). crucially, 4 the (as it were) incidental liturgical valence of these incipits fits with the sporadic and nonprogrammatic uses of the liturgy throughout piers plowman (adams 1976). 53early english meter as a way of thinking normative b-verse scansion is only possible by assuming anglicized accentuation rather than classical accentuation of the incipits (béatus and míserere not beátus and miserére). so phonology works together with allusions to the liturgy, grammar, meter, and the metaphorical conceit of the scene to render scripture edible. bits of latin psalms are ingested by patience and will just as they are ingested by english alliterative meter. a scansion like béatus conveys the difference between latin textuality in situ and latin textuality reinscribed as dinner in an english poem. in 13.52–58a, langland is able to imagine the process of reading latin scripture as a process of consuming english meter. the peculiar way in which langland fulfills metrical rules applies not only to latin but also to english itself. as a result of the long history of the alliterative tradition, fourteenth-century alliterative poets consistently versified with twelfthand thirteenth-century word-forms no longer pronounced in everyday speech. this phantom phonology is a characteristic feature of alliterative meter; it helps carry the meter’s historical baggage (cable 1991: 85–113; weiskott 2013). langland, however, mixes linguistically conservative and contemporary word-forms: x s x x x s x the meene and the riche (“the poor and the rich”) (b.prol.18b) x x x s x s x amonges riche and pouere. (“among rich and poor”) (10.77b) in prol.18b, the plural adjective riche counts an etymologically justified phantom -e. in 10.77b, meter indicates that the -e in riche is discounted in scansion. this alternation is analogous to alternation between classical and anglicized scansion of latin words in piers plowman. sprinkling innovative english or latin phonology in the oldest english meter is the metrical equivalent of portraying the crucifixion as a chivalric tournament. in both cases, langland manages to fulfill and disappoint expectations at the same time, turning 54 eric weiskott familiar literary gestures into something strange and wonderful. deformations and reformations like these are doubtless one key to the popularity of piers plowman in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. langland’s peculiar verse thinking occurred in a specific cultural setting. departures from alliterative convention in piers plowman very often take the form of invitations to the syllabic meters that dominated fourteenth-century london literary culture. with that, i turn to the last case study and an even more aggressively avant-garde london poet. 3. multimetricality at the end of book 5 of troilus and criseyde, chaucer apostrophizes the poem (quoted from benson 1987): and for ther is so gret diversite in englissh and in writyng of oure tonge, so prey i god that non myswrite the, ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge; and red wherso thow be, or elles songe, that thow be understonde, god i beseche! (“and because there is such great diversity in english and in the writing of our language, i pray to god that no one miswrite you, nor mismeter you due to an error of speech; and i beseech god that wherever you are read or sung, you be understood”.) (1793–1798) this passage has attracted significant attention as a testament to linguistic, metrical, and textual variation in late medieval england (a characteristic critical engagement is wogan-browne et al. 1999: 11–12). the apostrophe appears to substantiate conclusions that medievalists are ready to accept anyway: that chaucer’s language, meter, and texts were in flux around him, and that chaucer was exquisitely aware of this situation. in the standard interpretation, the speaker of the passage is a lot like a modern editor, worried about language change (“so gret diversite / in englisshe”; “defaute of tonge”), metrical decay (“mysmetre”, a nonce word), and scribal error (“writyng of oure 55early english meter as a way of thinking tonge”; “myswrite”). problems of transmission and interpretation pertain to both reading (“red”) and performance (“songe”). chaucer’s voice speaks across the centuries, validating modern editorial solicitude. i’d like to suggest a different cultural context for chaucer’s hand-wringing: the multifarious “metrical landscape” of late fourteenth-century london (cole 2013). the previous two case studies focused on alliterative meter. with chaucer, the focus shifts to the two other major fourteenth-century english meters, tetrameter and pentameter. chaucer used the former extensively, and he invented the latter. by historicizing early english metrical traditions, it becomes possible to attain some critical distance from the troilus and criseyde passage. through apostrophe, chaucer hints at the complexity of fourteenth-century vernacular poetics. here, finally, modern scholars have caught a medieval poet thinking about english meter. however, chaucer thinks about meter symptomatically rather than analytically. in troilus 5.1793–1798, scansion crops up as a subset of a different activity: copying a manuscript. scribal transmission, in turn, depends on language change (“for defaute of tonge”). the passage as a whole arises in response to a litany of authoritative classical poetry; in the previous stanza, the poet bids his “litel bok” (1786; 1789) go and “subgit be to alle poesye; / and kis the steppes where as thow seest pace / virgile, ovide, omer, lucan, and stace” (1790–1792). this hierarchy of discourses – the classics, then the english language, then manuscript production, then prosody – has shielded from modern readers the specifically metrical meaning of chaucer’s anxieties. attention to the shape and prehistory of chaucer’s metrical landscape helps illuminate what chaucer meant by the neologism ‘mismeter’ but also how meter could appear to chaucer as a poetic problem in the first place. the following discussion picks out some phonological evidence for crosspollination between the tetrameter and the pentameter before exploring how chaucer thinks through these meters. the english tetrameter was invented in the late twelfth or thirteenth century under influence from french and latin octosyllabic verse. by the time chaucer set out to write his first major work, the book of the duchess, in the late 1360s or 1370s, the tetrameter was the readiest alternative to the alliterative meter. the metrical phonology of tetrameter reflects its medium-length history. while conservative, thirteenth-century word forms appeared in fourteenth-century tetrameter, they coexisted with contemporary spoken forms: 56 eric weiskott x s x s x s x s x yif he had eyen hir to beholde (“if he had eyes to see her”) (book of the duchess 970) x s x s s x x s x and to beholde the alderfayreste. (“and the fairest of all to behold”) (1050) in line 970, the infinitive beholde counts an inflectional -e, assuming elision between eyen and hir. in line 1050, the -e in beholde is discounted in scansion, assuming elision between the and alderfayreste as well as compound stress and stress shift in álderfayréste. in the 1380s, chaucer did something extraordinary: he invented a meter and inaugurated a metrical tradition that would go on to dominate the english literary field. troilus and criseyde is likely his first substantial work in this new verse form.5 in a pair of technical studies, martin duffell (2000 and 2014) shows in detail what chaucer’s pentameter owes to cosmopolitan metrical culture. according to duffell, chaucer was transposing to the english language habits of thought learned from consuming french and especially italian meter. this research contributes metrical evidence to the ongoing reconsideration of chaucer’s cultural profile and the internationalization of english in the late fourteenth century (topics pursued by butterfield 2009 among others). belatedly, meter has joined literary style and social context as a criterion of chaucer’s european identity. yet in categorizing chaucer as a european poet who happened to write in english, metrists and critics deprioritize possible english literary backgrounds. when composing pentameter, chaucer used a variable metrical phonology: 5 other contenders are the legend of good women and parliament of fowls (lynch 2007). 57early english meter as a way of thinking x s x s x s x s x s x hym thoughte that his herte wolde breke (“he thought that his heart would break”) (canterbury tales 1.954) x s x s x s x s x s into myn herte, that wol my bane be. (“[i was hurt through my eye] into my heart, which will be the death of me”) (1.1097) in line 954, herte (<oe heorte) counts a historical -e, while in line 1097, the -e in herte is discounted in scansion. if metrical phonology is an expression of metrical history, then a newly created meter ought to employ contemporary phonology. where did chaucer get those phantom e’s? i suggest that the answer lies not in his wide reading in french, italian, and latin but in his prior metrical practice in english. chaucer effectively translated the metrical phonology of the english tetrameter to the newer meter. in this way, the pentameter inherited some of the historical baggage of its key english precursor, the tetrameter. chaucer’s phantom -e’s are not often understood as a problem. instead, they are mined as primary evidence for chaucer’s spoken language. the usual explanation for the variation evident in the metrical minimal pairs with beholde and herte is that chaucer’s london english had two different available forms, one conservative and one innovative. there exists a whole cottage industry in chaucer studies built on epistemological feedback loops between meter and language. however, the reduction of metrical phonology to linguistic profile is precisely a refusal to see meter as a way of thinking different from other ways of thinking. conflating metrical and linguistic forms a priori, e. g., by discussing them together under a single rubric such as ‘grammar’, may obscure trace evidence of the phenomenological experience of verse craft. certainly chaucer engaged linguistic competence in versification; but he engaged much else besides. duffell’s demonstration of chaucer’s french and italian metrical influences stands; but i submit that chaucer had english metrical influences, too. in particular, the tetrameter deserves more attention as a model for the pentameter. chaucer, after all, devoted considerable energy to both meters. in one poem, 58 eric weiskott he combines them. anelida and arcite is mostly composed in pentameters, organized into seven-line stanzas in rhyme royal (ababbcc). the central section of the poem is “the compleynt of anelida the quene upon fals arcite”, consisting of a proem, strophe, antistrophe, and conclusion. the “compleynt” is also mostly in pentameters, though organized into nine-line stanzas (aabaabbab). however, two sixteen-line stanzas, matched across the strophe and antistrophe, mix pentameters and tetrameters. the first half of the first of these multimetrical stanzas runs as follows: now, certis, swete, thogh that ye thus causeles the cause be of my dedly adversyte your manly resoun oghte hit to respite to slen your frend, and namely me, that never yet in no degre offended yow, as wisly he that al wot, out of wo my soule quyte! (“now, truly, my sweet, although you, unjustly, are thus the cause of my grievous troubles, your noble reason ought to make you desist from killing your friend – that is, me, who never yet offended you in any way, as surely as he who knows all redeems my soul from despair!”) (256–263) three tetrameters precede each line of pentameter. all six tetrameters rhyme together, and the two pentameters rhyme together, so that rhyme reinforces metrical identity. this poem is generally dismissed as a warm-up for the knight’s tale. but anelida and arcite stages a starker confrontation between languages and meters than chaucer was able to accomplish anywhere in the canterbury tales, even in the tale of sir thopas. over 250 lines into anelida and arcite, tetrameter intrudes on pentameter like a repressed memory. like metrical symmetry in gawain 2077–2078, or like the switch from seven-line stanzas to nine-line stanzas in this poem, the combination of tetrameter and pentameter cues a poem-within-a-poem – in this case, anelida’s “compleynt”, which she writes down and sends to arcite. in making such a literary gesture, chaucer was thinking through complex histories. the use of inset lyrics and the genre of the “compleynt” derive from medieval french literary culture. chaucer’s pentameter, however, has primarily italian – and, as argued above, english – formal affiliations. the 59early english meter as a way of thinking most prominent textual source for anelida and arcite is boccaccio’s teseida. finally, the theban setting and the organization of the “compleynt” into symmetrical stanzas are classicizing details. a secondary source for the poem, announced by the narrator (l. 21), is statius’s thebaid. chaucer’s career used to be conceptualized as a conversion from french to italian influence; it is better conceptualized as a conversion from the tetrameter to the pentameter, a movement that cuts across linguistic categorizations. anelida and arcite epitomizes this shift in momentum within a poetic career. to embed anelida’s “compleynt” in the larger narrative, chaucer had to be confident in putting forward pentameter as the unmarked mode and tetrameter as a form of hyperstylization. in doing so, chaucer mobilized english, french, italian, and latin metrical histories in service of literary representation. multimetricality appears as one of anelida’s coping mechanisms. multimetricality might even contribute to “the balance between christian contempt of the world and boethian idealism about it” (lynch 2007: 15) in anelida and arcite, though one would not wish to press an identification of meters with philosophies too far. in light of the complicated and interconnected genealogies of chaucer’s two meters, the troilus and criseyde passage gains new significance. when chaucer worries that readers will mismeter his poem, i think he is imagining scansion as a mental activity, not a copying error. chaucer feared that readers would bring inappropriate expectations to the scansion of troilus and criseyde. this was an understandable concern in the 1380s, as chaucer completed his first major poems in a new english meter. from the perspective of english metrical practice, the pentameter was initially a local meter; it would not escape the greater london area until the middle of the fifteenth century. lacking a technical vocabulary for vernacular poetics, chaucer conceptualizes unwelcome scansions as linguistic deficiencies (“defaute of tonge”). but modern scholars shouldn’t accept this characterization at face value. the histories of the english tetrameter and pentameter provide a more robust context for the problem that chaucer names. and the multimetrical play of anelida and arcite, whose dating is uncertain, implies that chaucer was successful in inculcating a new metrical competence and avoiding metrical scandal. as scholars have always recognized, chaucer’s ideas – about love, society, truth, god, etc. – come from many sources: latin scripture, boethius, french lyric poetry, italian poetry, and other prestigious literary traditions. an old and rich vein of chaucer scholarship addresses the poet’s engagement with these sources of inspiration and authority. in this section, i’ve argued that tetrameter and especially pentameter ought to be numbered among the sources of chaucer’s ideas, and indeed that these meters provided a basis or pretext for all other ideas explored by chaucer in verse. 60 eric weiskott 4. conclusion this essay has introduced three english meters – alliterative meter, tetrameter, pentameter – and explored some of the intellectual work performed within and between them in the late fourteenth century. part of the essay’s polemical purpose has been to recommend that more metrists understand themselves as intellectual historians, and that more historians of ideas understand themselves as metrists when they are considering ideas in verse form. what is ultimately at stake in these reorientations is the concept of thinking itself. if critics and historians tend to regard meter as a kind of ornamentation draped across pre-formed thoughts, metrists conversely tend to project literary thought as a series of manipulations posterior to an externally verifiable organizational system. for the critics, thinking comes first; for the metrists, meter does. in either case, meter and thinking are never allowed to coincide as they must in order for poetry to be produced and consumed in literary communities. the particular coincidences of meter and thinking revealed above help historicize ‘medieval literary theory’ and, for that matter, literary theory in general. early english meter as a way of thinking illustrates how subtle and flexible verse practice could be in the absence of explicit prosodic theory. research on medieval literary theory may be excessively narrow in limiting investigation of medieval literary attitudes to explicit discussions of the vernacular. this essay has argued that the intellectual heft of a metrical tradition can be excavated from sedimented layers of verse practice and need not be sought in a collection of obiter dicta. in comparison with the richness of early english meter as a way of thinking, explicit discussions of the vernacular in medieval english texts must appear as rare, precocious, overdetermined intellectual engagements, whose scope normally does not extend to verse form for historical reasons. the practice of early english meter, considered as a kind of thinking, may be the closest thing to a vernacular ars poetica that medieval writers have bequeathed to modern scholars. at the same time, it is important to reaffirm the distinction between thinking in meter and thinking about meter. none of the preceding discussion concerns ‘theory’ in the modern sense. the writings on english meter that began in the late sixteenth century with treatises by george gascoigne and george puttenham evince a qualitatively different disposition of mental energy. in the 1570s and 1580s, for the first time, vernacular meter became a suitable subject for academic discourse. before that moment, attitudes toward meter can be inferred from poetic practice but are never expressed in concerted discussion. the nominalism shared by the new criticism and the new historicism has conditioned literary scholars to move from theory to practice, 61early english meter as a way of thinking or from the term to the concept; the case of medieval english verse should tempt us to move (historically) from practice to theory, or from the concept to the term. in so doing, we might recover ways of thinking through poetry from which we have become historically estranged. finally, early english meter as a way of thinking helps contextualize a quintessentially postmodern problem. in recent decades, scholars, poets, and publishers have begun to worry that poetry is on the way out (jackson 2008). this anxiety seems to me analogous to chaucer’s anxiety about mismetering, and equally misdirected. certainly poetry has attracted new audiences and alienated others since the twentieth century; the same was true of poetry in the fourteenth century. but apprehensions about the transience of verse thinking probably underestimate the dynamism of poetic traditions. ‘poetry’ is always a moving target, because metrical and intellectual histories are always under development. if we can learn to appreciate the radical experimentation of early english verse, then perhaps we can see our way past the twenty-first-century paradox in which poetry is both all-important and obsolescent. the future of poetry is by definition unimaginable: it has yet to be thought.6 6 thanks are due to arthur bahr and participants in the mit ancient and medieval studies colloquium for helpful discussion of a draft of this essay in march 2016, and to the two readers for studia metrica et poetica for astute comments on a later version. 62 eric weiskott references adams, robert 1976. langland and the liturgy revisited. in: studies in philology 73, 266–284. adams, robert 2013. langland and the rokele family: the gentry background to “piers plowman”. dublin: four courts. alford, john a. 1977. the role of the quotations in piers plowman. in: speculum 52, 80–99. alford, john a. 1992. “piers plowman”: a guide to the quotations. binghamton: state university of new york. andrew, malcolm 1997. theories of authorship. in: brewer, derek; gibson, jonathan (eds.), a companion to the “gawain”-poet. cambridge: d. s. brewer, 23–33. andrew, malcolm; waldron, ronald (eds.) 2010. the poems of the pearl manuscript: pearl, cleanness, patience, sir gawain and the green knight. 5th ed. exeter: exeter university press. barney, stephen a. 2009. a revised edition of the c text. in: yearbook of langland studies 23, 265–288. benson, larry d. (ed.) 1987. the riverside chaucer. boston: houghton mifflin. burrow, john a. 2012. the endings of lines in ‘piers plowman’ b. in: notes & queries 59, 316–320. butterfield, ardis 2009. the familiar enemy: chaucer, nation, and language in the hundred years’ war. oxford: oxford university press. cable, thomas 1988. middle english meter and its theoretical implications. in: yearbook of langland studies 2, 47–69. cable, thomas 1991. the english alliterative tradition. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. cable, thomas 2009a. foreign influence, native continuation, and metrical typology in alliterative lyrics. in: jefferson, judith; putter, ad (eds.), approaches to the metres of alliterative verse. leeds: leeds studies in english, 219–234. cable, thomas 2009b. progress in middle english alliterative metrics. in: yearbook of langland studies 23, 243–264. carlson, david 2004. chaucer’s jobs. new york: palgrave. cole, kristin lynn 2007. rum, ram, ruf, and rym: middle english alliterative meters. diss., university of texas at austin. 63early english meter as a way of thinking cole, kristin lynn 2013. chaucer’s metrical landscape. in: carney, clíodhna; mccormack, frances (eds.), chaucer’s poetry: words, authority and ethics. dublin: four courts, 92–106. cornelius, ian 2012. the alliterative revival: retrospect and prospect. in: yearbook of langland studies 26, 261–276. cornelius, ian 2014. langland’s latin b-verses. paper read at the 49th international congress on medieval studies, kalamazoo, mi, may. cornelius, ian 2017. reconstructing alliterative verse: the pursuit of a medieval meter. cambridge: cambridge university press. duffell, martin j. 2000. “the craft so long to lerne”: chaucer’s invention of the iambic pentameter. in: chaucer review 34, 269–288. duffell, martin j. 2014. chaucer’s pentameter: linguistics, statistics, and history. in: chaucer review 49, 135–160. duggan, hoyt n. 1997. meter, stanza, vocabulary, dialect. in: brewer, derek; gibson, jonathan (eds.), a companion to the “gawain”-poet. cambridge: d. s. brewer, 221–242. galloway, andrew 2016. imagining the literary in medieval english. in: machan, tim william (ed.), imagining medieval english: language structures and theories, 500–1500. cambridge: cambridge university press, 210–237. grady, frank; galloway, andrew (eds.) 2013. answerable style: the idea of the literary in medieval england. columbus: ohio state university press. hanna, ralph iii 1993. william langland. aldershot: ashgate. hanna, ralph iii 1995. defining middle english alliterative poetry. in: tavormina, m. teresa; yeager, r. f. (eds.), the endless knot: essays on old and middle english in honor of marie borroff. cambridge: d. s. brewer, 43–64. jackson, virginia 2008. who reads poetry? in: pmla 123, 181–187. jarvis, simon 1998. prosody as cognition. in: critical quarterly 40, 3–15. jarvis, simon 2014. what is historical poetics? in: potts, jason; stout, daniel (eds.), theory aside. durham, nc: duke university press, 97–116. jefferson, judith a. 2012. scribal responses to latin in the manuscripts of the b-version of piers plowman. in: jefferson, judith; putter, ad (eds.), with the assistance of amanda hopkins, multilingualism in medieval britain (c. 1066–1520): sources and analysis. turnhout: brepols, 195–210. 64 eric weiskott johnson, eleanor 2013. practicing literary theory in the middle ages: ethics and the mixed form in chaucer, gower, usk, and hoccleve. chicago: university of chicago press. johnston, michael 2016. william langland and john ball. in: yearbook of langland studies 30, 29–74. kane, george 1965. piers plowman: the evidence for authorship. london: athlone. kane, george; donaldson, e. talbot (eds.) 1975. piers plowman: the b version. london: athlone. kennedy, ruth (ed.) 2003. three alliterative saints’ hymns: late middle english stanzaic poems. eets os 321. lawton, david a. 1980. larger patterns of syntax in middle english unrhymed alliterative verse. in: neophilologus 64, 604–618. lynch, kathryn l. 2007. dating chaucer. in: chaucer review 42, 1–22. minnis, alastair j. 2011. medieval theory of authorship: scholastic literary attitudes in the later middle ages. 2nd ed. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. minnis, alastair j.; scott, a. brian (eds.), with the assistance of david wallace. 1992. medieval literary theory and criticism c. 1100–c. 1375: the commentary tradition. rev ed. oxford: oxford university press. pearsall, derek 1977. old english and middle english poetry. london: routledge & kegan paul. prins, yopie 2008. historical poetics, dysprosody, and the science of english verse. in: pmla 123, 229–234. rosier, james l. 1964. “instructions for christians”: a poem in old english. in: anglia 82, 4–22. russom, geoffrey 2004. the evolution of middle english alliterative meter. in: curzan, anne; emmons, kimberly (eds.), studies in the history of the english language ii: unfolding conversations. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 279–304. somerset, fiona; watson, nicholas (eds.) 2003. the vulgar tongue: medieval and postmedieval vernacularity. university park: pennsylvania state university press. steiner, emily 2013. reading “piers plowman”. cambridge: cambridge university press. stockwell, robert; minkova, donka 1997. old english metrics and the phonology of resolution. in: goblirsch, kurt gustav; mayou, martha berryman; taylor, marvin (eds), germanic studies in honor of anatoly liberman. odense: odense university press, 389–406. 65early english meter as a way of thinking turville-petre, thorlac 1974. ‘summer sunday’, ‘de tribus regibus mortuis’, and ‘the awntyrs off arthure’: three poems in the thirteen-line stanza. in: review of english studies 25, 1–14. turville-petre, thorlac 1977. the alliterative revival. cambridge: d. s. brewer. turville-petre, thorlac 2003. afterword: the brutus prologue to sir gawain and the green knight. in: lavezzo, kathy (ed.), imagining a medieval english nation. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 340–346. weiskott, eric 2013. phantom syllables in the english alliterative tradition. in: modern philology 110, 441–458. weiskott, eric 2016. english alliterative verse: poetic tradition and literary history. cambridge: cambridge university press. wogan-browne, jocelyn; fenster, thelma; russell, delbert (eds.) 2016. vernacular literary theory from the french of medieval england: texts and translations, c.1120–c.1450. cambridge: d. s. brewer. wogan-browne, jocelyn; watson, nicholas; taylor, andrew; evans, ruth (eds.) 1999. the idea of the vernacular: an anthology of middle english literary theory, 1280– 1520. university park: pennsylvania state university press. yakovlev, nicolay 2008. the development of alliterative metre from old to middle english. diss., university of oxford. studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd a study on shakespeare’s verse in its historical context (marina tarlinskaja, shakespeare and the versifi cation of english drama, 1561–1642, ashgate, 2014) mihhail lotman marina tarlinskaja’s new book about english verse culture is a remarkable study. as typical of tarlinskaja’s monographs, it is substantial 411 + xi pages with a very densely typeset text. th e book includes a considerable amount of statistical data which are valuable not only for this book, but also to future researchers. th e book consists of six chapters. th e fi rst, “why study versifi cation? versifi cation analysis; tests” is an introduction to the theme and includes the description of methodological basis (pp. 1–32). th e second chapter, “how it all began: from surrey’s aeneid to marlowe’s tamburlaine” (pp. 33–68), gives an overview of the historical prosody of english verse in the 16th and 17th centuries. th e particular focus of this chapter is on the stressing of disyllabic words in new modern english. th e third chapter, “early elizabethan playwrights: kyd, marlowe, green, peele, early shakespeare. 2, 3 henry vi and arden of faversham” (pp. 69–122), analyses the rhythm of shakespeare’s older contemporaries in comparison with young shakespeare, with special attention to marlowe. th e fourth chapter is titled “shakespeare’s versifi cation: evolution, co-authored plays. th e poem a lover’s complaint” (pp. 123–199). in this chapter the prosody and evolution of shakespeare’s verse is studied, as well as his collaboration with other authors. shakespeare’s authorship of the poem a love’s complaint is contested. th e fi ft h chapter, “jacobean and caroline playwrights: from shakespeare to shirley” (pp. 193–256), focuses on the later years of shakespeare in comparison with his younger contemporaries. th e sixth chapter summarises the book and carries the title “conclusions: shakespeare and versifi cation, 1540s–1640s” (pp. 257–286). doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.08 studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 140–153 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.08 141review articles studies on rhythm marina tarlinskaja has investigated english verse for over half a century, focusing on diff erent problems of verse rhythm. living in two cultural worlds, tarlinskaja has applied the methods of statistical verse analysis called “the russian method” (bailey 1975, 1979) to the english material. th is review will mainly focus on tarlinskaja’s latest book (2014), but some issues from her earlier works, especially her monographs (tarlinskaja 1976, 1987 and 1993), will be dealt with as well. th e russian tradition of versifi cation studies is characterised by three main directions. th ese are, fi rst, the statistical analysis of verse; the second direction, based on the acquired data, is a typological and historical study of verse including the dating and attribution of literary works; and the third direction is the study on semantic mechanisms of verse form. as regards the analysis of rhythm, the basis of the russian method is the distinction between metre and rhythm. metre is an abstract scheme, while rhythm is a stochastic process that takes place in concrete lines against the background of metre. russian scholars have discussed whether metre is a precondition of rhythm (zhirmunsky 1925) or its generalisation (tomashevsky 1929, 1959), but the distinction between metre and rhythm has never been questioned. for marina tarlinskaja as well, this is the main methodological principle: the fi rst cornerstone of versifi cation research is the diff erentiation between the abstract metrical scheme and actual stresses in actual texts (tarlinskaja 2014: 4, 258). but tarlinskaja goes even further: she shows that although sometimes verse metre precedes rhythm, occasionally metre is crystallised from rhythm in the course of verse evolution (tarlinskaja 2014: 3–11). although andrej belyj (1910) was the fi rst to use statistics in his studies of russian rhythms, boris tomashevsky’s works (1929, 1959, 1977) laid a scientifi c ground for verse analysis. tomashevsky did not confi ne himself to fi xing the statistics of stresses in verse, but compared it to the so-called theoretical rhythm that he calculated on the basis of the rhythmical lexicon of the russian language. th is allowed him to distinguish between the rhythmical impulse of the language and the aesthetic choice of a poet. an outstanding mathematician andrey kolmogorov improved and specifi ed tomashevsky’s method (kolmogorov 1963; kolmogorov, kondratov 1962; kolmogorov, prokhorov 1963). but it was mikhail gasparov who performed the most comprehensive study of russian verse (gasparov 1974, 1977 and others). gasparov was marina tarlinskaja’s mentor, colleague, collaborator and friend. in tarlinskaja’s works, the rhythmics of english verse has been described on the basis of large quantities of material; she took into account not just the stress 142 review articles profi les, but also word boundaries and syntactic relations between adjacent words. tarlinskaja has analysed a big bulk of the most important verse metres in english poetry: iambic pentameter, iambic and trochaic tetrameter, ternary metres and the strict stress-metre (the ‘dolnik’) (tarlinskaja 1976, 1993). marina tarlinskaja not only uses the “russian method” to analyse english verse but has made considerable improvements and modifi cations to it. first, she has not just counted the stressed and unstressed syllables, but analysed which parts of speech occur in which position in verse (tarlinskaja 1967, 1972a, 1984). while before only strong and weak positions were distinguished in verse, now these positions have obtained certain morphological characteristics. since the achieved results were extremely fruitful, she applied the modifi ed method in its turn to analyse russian poetry (tarlinskaja 1972b). th e next feature that characterises marina tarlinskaja’s works is directly connected with the previous trait. tarlinskaja sets apart not just stressed and unstressed syllables, but takes into account also the gradation of stresses, for instance, distinguishing between phrasal stresses and lexical stresses, and phrasal stresses may appear in verse as proclitics and enclitics. even more detailed is her diff erentiation of word boundaries. marina tarlinskaja has studied the major body of english verse text starting from pre-chaucerian poetry and ending with frost, but in the centre of her attention has always been shakespeare and his period. th e reviewed work is the second monograph by marina tarlinskaja, which deals with shakespeare. th e fi rst (tarlinskaja 1987) was devoted to the detailed analysis of the rhythm of shakespeare’s iambic pentameter. tarlinskaja had not just described its rhythmic profi le, but had studied the so-called “rhythmic fi gures” (that is, deviations from the metre) and their rhythmic-grammatical patterns. th e statistical analysis of verse elucidated not only the individual stylistic features of certain works or even authors, but also the directions of the evolution of verse rhythm. already andrej belyj (1910) showed that there are signifi cant diff erences in the rhythm of iambic tetrameter of the 18th and 19th century russian authors. kiril taranovsky’s fundamental study (1953) made it possible to describe russian verse in signifi cantly more detail, to add a transitional period between the 18th and the 19th centuries, and to further specify diff erent rhythmical types in the 18th and the 19th centuries. it turned out that the whole evolution of russian binary metres beginning with the 18th century has been subjected to the same regularities, and in his later works (1982) taranovsky ventured to date the yet undated works on the basis of their rhythmic particulars with the precision of ten years. in 1973 miroslav červenka claimed that evolution characterises only russian verse, and that there has been no consistent evolution, for instance, 143review articles in czech verse, where one can merely characterise the rhythmic structure of every particular author’s oeuvre, but that there was no general regularity. james bailey (1975) came to a similar conclusion regarding the english iambic tetrameter analysed with the help of the russian method. tarlinskaja, who has studied a considerably larger bulk of material and has not confi ned herself to just one parameter or one metre, showed that bailey’s conclusion was questionable. one has to keep in mind that although červenka too proceeds from the methods of russian formalism and prague structuralism (following tomashevky and mukařovský), his paper, similarly to some of his other works, is polemical and directed against the standpoints of kiril taranovsky and roman jakobson. his criticism is not restricted to the czech material: he makes similar generalisations about russian verse. yet červenka’s own data reveal that, fi rst, there are rhythmic regularities in czech verse too, and červenka even calls the observed regularity ‘progressive accentual dissimilation’, by analogy with taranovsky’s term ‘regressive accentual dissimilation’. and secondly, he observed certain evolutionary features. th e prosody of the estonian language is similar to czech: both languages have phonologically relevant stress fi xed on the fi rst syllable of a polysyllabic word, and both have contrast of quantity. in estonian verse, similarly to russian, we observe both the progressive accentual dissimilation of feet and the rhythmic distinctions between diff erent periods, and this is true of both trochee and iamb (see, for instance, lotman, lotman 2011, 2013, 2014). tarlinskaja’s studies of verse rhythm are important not only in the context of english versifi cation, but also the general verse theory. th e history of english verse covers a much longer chronological period compared even to czech verse, not to speak of russian and particularly estonian verse. in latter cases, we are dealing with just a two or three hundred years of existence, while the english verse history has been much longer and uninterrupted. tarlinskaja’s studies have revealed that in english verse we also see an evolution of rhythm. several features do not develop lineally (like, for instance, the evolutionary direction in russian verse discovered by taranovsky), but in a wave-like pattern, from stricter – to looser – to stricter – to looser canon. yet there is an important parameter whose change shows a relatively consistent change in the same direction. th is is the frequency of stressing of strong metrical positions. in this area we see the same general tendency in english verse that we had previously observed in russian verse: the average stressing of strong metrical positions on the whole decreased, although in english, this tendency is not linear. in chaucer’s iambic pentameter, this index is 84.8%, in shakespeare 79.6%, in donne 76.4%, in swinburne 75.3%). at the same time, this regularity is not 144 review articles characteristic of weak syllabic positions. on the contrary, in chaucer’s verse it is rather low (8.1%), then it starts to increase and reaches 19.1% in donne and achieves a maximum level in swinburne: 20.8%. however, this evolution was not linear and in classicist and romanticist a symmetrical, but opposite tendency can be observed: the average stressing of strong positions increases, reaching 86% in dryden and pope, and that of weak positions decreases up to 5% in pope, wordsworth and byron (tarlinskaja 1976: 279–280). similar tendencies are also observed in the evolution of iambic tetrameter (tarlinskaja 1976: 260). th us, the verse rhythm does not become lighter (in mikhail gasparov’s sense; gasparov 1977), but the contrast between strong and weak syllabic positions falls and the degree of freedom in poetry increases. all this means that the verse metre as an abstract scheme needs decreasingly less physical expression in rhythm, and it therefore allows more liberties in realising both strong and weak positions. th ese are the most general processes, which reveal themselves in diff erent eras in diff erent ways. more particulars of rhythmic-syntactic and lexical patterns allow us to make the concept of metre more concrete. in the rhythmic structure of iambic pentameter tarlinskaja demonstrates periods of alternation of more strict and less strict periods. th e fi rst period, chaucer’s iamb, is more rigorous, then in the 15th century the metrical constraints become looser, next, aft er that period of looseness, the early elizabethan verse becomes more constrained again. in the jacobean drama the constraints become less rigorous again, and then in carolinian versifi cation there is a return to a shakespeare-like mode. th e classicist poets become even more constrained, while in the romantic poetry the less constrained verse re-emerges anew. th e evolution of english versifi cation is not only global, but concerns also the development of individual authors, just like in russian verse the rhythmic structure of pushkin’s works, for example, enables us to date his poems quite precisely. marina tarlinskaja pays particular attention to the rhythmical evolution of shakespeare. she has described several diff erent periods in his verse. evolution occurred, for example, in the stressing, in the location of strong syntactic breaks within his lines, and in the line endings (syllabic, accentual and syntactic: run-on lines). th ere was a period of relatively numerous feminine endings in early shakespeare, then a 5-year period of few feminine endings, and then a remarkable growth of their number in later shakespeare. th e studies of the evolution of rhythmical structure allow tarlinskaja to determine or to question the traditional dating of certain works. th us, she has shown that ford’s “tis pity she’s a whore” was probably written much earlier than commonly believed. also, having analysed ford’s works, tarlinskaja off ers 145review articles a hypothesis that the rhythmical peculiarities of “th e laws of candy” make us look for a collaborator in composing this play. but this will bring us to the next set of questions. attribution marina tarlinskaja started her research with the analysis of the rhythmical structure, but already one of her fi rst publications deals with attribution (1973). verse rhythm is an important tool in attribution of poetic texts, because it is not usually connected with a conscious intention of the author but is formed mostly subconsciously as a synthesis of the language material, the mode of the epoch and the individual preferences of the poet. tarlinskaja (1973: 419) cites boris tomashevsky’s claim that “... rhythm is inertia created by the chain of verses. and this inertia is individual for every poet. it is easy to forge a word. but in order to forge a verse rhythm the forger has to study the imitated rhythm very hard, and few forgers have done the preliminary work thoroughly enough to be ready for a fl awless imitation, it takes a careful study of minute details, hard work and a good ear to become a tolerable imitator of verse rhythm...” (tomashevsky 1929: 249). in the area of attribution we need to distinguish between two types of research. th e aim of the fi rst type is to uncover forgeries and mistaken authorships, so-to-say, exclusive attribution. here we have to determine whether a text or fragment in question is at all possible in a given author or a given work. th us, for instance, according to tomashevsky’s analysis of the rhythmical structure of the alleged fi nal part of pushkin’s unfi nished dramatic poem “mermaid”, the author of the forgery was pushkin’s epigone who composed his text more than half a century aft er pushkin’s death. tomashevsky showed that the structure of its word boundaries made the end of “th e mermaid” impossible for pushkin’s versifi cation style of that period. th e author of this paper, together with yuri lotman, revealed that the alleged fragments attributed to chapter 10 of pushkin’s “eugene onegin” were also nothing but a later forgery. th e statistical analysis along other parameters used in addition to the analysis of rhythm, such as the length of words (lotman, lotman 1986) confi rmed the results obtained by the analysis of verse rhythm. in her earlier work marina tarlinskaja had used the exclusive attribution, for example, in the analysis of the third part of the english translation of “roman de la rose” (1973). th e original text had two authors, guillaume de lorris and jean de meun. in the english translation, three parts are 146 review articles distinguished, marked with letters a, b and c. th e authorship of the fi rst part is usually not doubted, it is believed to be by chaucer. th e second part (b) could not belong to chaucer: its author is from lincolnshire and uses dialect forms typical of this region. th e authorship of part c, the style of which is close to the fi rst, was questionable. tarlinskaja’s approach to this issue is complex. she analyses several parameters, using a large bulk of text as a comparison. she uses statistical data in order to perform three tests: fi rst, the syllabic structure of the verse, second, the distribution of certain monosyllabic words to diff erent positions in verse and third, the rhythmic inversion, that is, the placement of stresses of polysyllabic words on weak syllabic positions (tarlinskaja includes only original anglo-saxon words in her analysis, since this way there are no diff erent interpretations in the position of word accent). in addition to that, she uses a whole number of qualitative factors. she concludes that part c could not have been written by chaucer, but rather by his epigone, who tried to follow his style, yet managed to do so only to a small extent. similar tests were reported in tarlinskaja’s later works too. in the 2014 book the fi nal section of chapter 4 is dedicated to a poem “a lover’s complaint”. th e poem has been traditionally ascribed to shakespeare and included into his complete works, but his authorship of the poem has been from time to time questioned. an ardent proponent of the shakespearean authorship of the poem has always been macdonald p. jackson (jackson 1965, 2008), while brian vickers has recently claimed that the author was a minor poet of the early 1600s john davies of hereford (vickers 2007). tarlinskaja, using versifi cation tests, has convincingly shown in the reviewed book that neither mature shakespeare nor davies were possible authors of “a lover’s complaint”, and that it had been written at the end of the 16th century by a still unknown minor poet, a follower of spenser. th is shows how negative attribution excluding the text from the author’s oeuvre is closely related to positive attribution. a good example of positive attribution is the case of the jacobean comedy “th e spanish gypsy”, in which tarlinskaja confi rmed its authorship by john ford, th omas middleton and th omas dekker (tarlinskaja 2014: 244–247). at the same time tarlinskaja excludes william rowley’s co-authorship in the iambic pentameter parts of the play, but admits that he might have contributed prose exchanges and songs (tarlinskaja 2014: 243–246). even more complicated is the analysis of the authorship of “henry vi”. th ere have been lots of discussions, whether shakespeare wrote the three parts alone or were there co-authors. th e suggested co-authors in part 1 have been nashe, kyd, marlowe, but also unidentifi ed authors. it has to be reminded here that at that time the authorship, especially in the case of theatre texts, was 147review articles signifi cantly diff erent from our present day understandings, although even today a stage director or a literary consultant may change the text for the purposes of the staging. during shakespeare’s times the author had no copyright of his own work: the text belonged to the theatre company. in “henry vi” the three parts are diff erent in the sense that they seem to have been written by diff erent authors. in her negative attribution, tarlinskaja excludes marlowe, who was at one time suggested the author of part 2 (craig 2009: 40–77; compare tarlinskaja 2014: 112–114). as to the positive attribution, fi rst, tarlinskaja identifi es the scenes that are indisputably shakespearean. act 1 in 1 “henry vi” seems to be nashe’s, and in the other parts a possible collaborator might have been kyd. a careful comparison with statistical data of diff erent texts allows tarlinskaja to make an assumption that the unidentifi ed collaborator of diff erent scenes in parts 2 and 3 of “henry vi” may well have been the same person (2014: 116). here we approach the fi eld which could be called forensic study of verse. th us, statistical analysis enables not only to determine the authorship of anonymous work but to solve even more complicated problems related to attribution. a very exciting story concerns a play published in the 18th century, “double falsehood”. a minor poet lewis th eobald published the play in 1727, claiming that it is based on “mister shakespeare’s manuscript” which th eobald had revised. not all the critics believed th eobald – it was the age when the interest in shakespeare was renewed, and thus the knowledgeable public suspected that the play might have been a money-making stunt. an infl uential poet and literary critic alexander pope considered “double falsehood” a forgery and did not include it in shakespeare’s corpus (see, for instance, hammond 2012: 87–89). a meticulous statistical analysis allowed tarlinskaja fi rst to detect an earlier adaptation in lewis th eobald’s play and later to identify the author of the earlier adaptation: it was william davenant. th e early adaptation was dated 1670–1680. as for the text itself, it is an adaptation of shakespeare-fletcher’s drama “cardenio”, written probably in 1613 and aft er the closure of the theatres in 1642 considered lost. tarlinskaja shows, using statistical methods, that shakespeare and fletcher were the collaborators of “cardenio” that was to become “double falsehood”, and she identifi ed the parts tentatively by shakespeare that had been reworked by later adapters, and the parts clearly written by fletcher. lewis th eobald (and probably davenant before him) made signifi cant revisions especially in the portion written by shakespeare. 148 review articles semantics of verse in the study of russian verse semantics, kiril taranovsky was the fi rst to formulate the problem in contemporary terms. he analysed the whole bulk of russian binary metres from the 18th century to the fi rst half of the 20th century and discovered that all texts written in trochaic pentameter are semantically interrelated (taranovsky 1953: 274; 1963). in all these texts we fi nd the theme of journey, be it an actual travel or, metaphorically, the course of life. what could be the reason behind it? one of the causes is obvious and has not been disputed much. th e founder of this tradition is mikhail lermontov with his famous elegy written in 1841 (see shapir 1991). all the consequent authors took this into account in one way or another. taranovsky showed that this link of a metre with the theme was not as much an abstract scheme but a concrete rhythmic-syntactic structure, a formula in its own way. however this was only part of his explanation. th e problem is that there were also texts written before the lermontov elegy was published where the same theme of the road could be detected. furthermore, supporting roman jakobson reconstruction of general slavonic epic verse (a decasyllable with trochaic tendency, see jakobson 1966), taranovsky claimed that this structure was best preserved in the bylinas, where the theme of the journey prevails (“vavila’s journey with the skomorokhs”). moreover, taranovsky hypothesised (or even claimed) that this particular rhythmic type of trochaic pentameter has a psychological, motor and synesthetic connection with the idea of movement. all that means that the relationship between metre and meaning encompasses diff erent semantic mechanisms: conventional connection, which is based on a tradition (in charles sanders peirce’s terms we could speak of symbolic meaning here), as well as on a direct (iconic) link. th e latter idea has been contested, and mikhail gasparov, the most meticulous and prolifi c researcher of russian verse semantics acknowledged only the conventional association. th e latter approach is also characteristic to tarlinskaja; compare especially her analysis of thematic associations in tarlinskaja 1993: 121–188. tarlinskaja studies not only the thematic associations of verse metres, but also formulae which make it possible to create a link between rhythm, syntax, morphology and lexicon. here her studies are analogous to the research of russian verse by mikhail gasparov (1999). however, what is new in tarlinskaja’s studies of verse semantics, are rhythmical italics. th is is, in a way, the most traditional research subject. for a long time, critics have pointed out lines or whole passages where changes in rhythm accompany the theme of swift movement or other strong actions. such observations may or may not have been true; they 149review articles were usually unsystematic and subjective. tarlinskaja has a diff erent approach here: she treats the link between verse form and meaning as rhythmical italics. th e semantic role of “deviations” emerges from rhythmical deviations (two to four syllables long) regularly accompanying micro-situations of motion. th e deviations of recurring rhythmical structures oft en contain similar or identical morphological and syntactic patterns and recurring key lexicon dealing with motion (the verbs “shake, tremble, pierce, run” and the nouns “wings, hand, arm, head, neck; wind, wave”). th us, the concept of “rhythm and meaning” had acquired a linguistic basis; it became a rhythmical, grammatical and lexical phenomenon. it turned out that rhythmical italics were a learned skill: their number doubled from the early to late shakespeare. studies on the semantics of rhythm are not only important for the theory of verse, but also for the general semiotics (lotman 1988, 1989, 2012). john hollander (1975, 1989, compare also tarlinskaja 2012) has brought to notice that verse metre and verse rhythm have diff erent semantic mechanisms. verse metre is like an emblem, that is, the link between metre and meaning is conventional, based on tradition, and in peirce’s terms a symbolic mechanism of the sign. th e meaning of rhythm is more ad hoc, at fi rst glance it does not seem to be based on any kind of tradition or convention, but is connected with the immediate infl uence of rhythm (sometimes we could even speak of synesthetic infl uence in taranovsky’s sense; see especially 1966), that is, this is an iconic mechanism of sign. however, although the semantic mechanism of verse rhythm is more diffi cult to formalise and involves a danger of subjectivism, such mechanisms do exist, and they are important both from the aesthetic and general semiotic perspective. tarlinskaja’s verse analyses have shown that the formulae had become, in their own way, emblematic. th e recurring link between similar rhythmic deviations from iamb with grammar and semantics was clearly felt already by the renaissance authors and made fun of the 18thcentury poet alexander pope. among the few shortcomings of the book some misprints and errors should be mentioned (for example, in “th e white devil” by webster the sum of simple, compound and compound heavy endings does not equal their separate percent). th e book would have benefi ted from the increased clarity of charts: the charts where multiple authors are compared (for example, p. 144) are rather diffi cult to interpret. th e table of content is unsatisfactory, which is especially odd, since the book itself is well structured and the steps from one subject to another are numbered and have subheadings; if these subtitles had been included into the table of contents, the usefulness of the book would have greatly increased. 150 review articles what can annoy some readers (in addition to the fact that some literary scholars still reject any studies based on quantitative methods) is that it may seem old-fashioned to linguists. for half a century tarlinskaja has been working practically in the same theoretical paradigm, widening and deepening her research, yet without changing her methodological basis. generative metric, optimality theory, diff erent directions of cognitive versifi cation have remained outside tarlinskaja’s sphere of interests. one cannot say that she does not know these notions: she translated, for example, a paper by morris halle and samuel jay keyser (1979) already before emigrating from the soviet union. from halle-keyser’s approach she has borrowed the markings s and w to signify what the structuralists called ‘ictus’ (strong metrical positions) and ‘non-ictus’ (weak positions). but here we are rather dealing with the loan of abbreviations; the analysis and the presentation of results are purely structuralist and just like in mikhail gasparov’s works, with a certain touch of positivism. th ere are indeed readers who might consider such old-fashioned approach a weakness of this study, but i would rather call it “faithfulness to the school”. aft er all, in empirical studies theory plays an auxiliary part, without theoretical bases an empirical study falls apart, yet theory is only scaff olding of a kind, the purpose of which is to build a house, but not to be a thing in itself. furthermore, we have recently come across studies that eclectically join diff erent modern theories and terms; the result of such thinking can be read at best as an interesting essay. however, such theoretical framework does not allow the authors to arrive at new fi ndings in the studied material. in this context, tarlinskaja’s rigorous approach to theory and methodology together with the richness of her results particularly stand out. all in all, what matters, is the results, and the copiousness of the latter. in this aspect, all marina tarlinskaja’s monographs, as well as the reviewed book are especially exemplary. references bailey, james 1975. toward a statistical analysis of english verse: th e iambic tetrameter of ten poets. lisse, netherlands: th e peter de ridder press. bailey, james 1979. th e russian linguistic-statistical method for studying poetic rhythm: a review article. in: slavic and east european journal 23(2), 251–261. belyj, andrej 1910. simvolizm: kniga statej. moskva: musaget. červenka, miroslav 1973. ritmicheskij impul’s cheshskogo stikha. in: jakobson, roman; van schooneveld, cornelis h.; worth, dean s. (eds.), slavic poetics. essays 151review articles in honor of kiril taranovsky. th e hague-paris: mouton, 79–90. craig, hugh 2009. th e 1602 additions to th e spanish tragedy. in: craig, hugh; kinney, arthur f. (eds.), shakespeare, computers, and the mystery of authorship. cambridge: university press, 162–180. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1977. legkij stikh i tjazhelyj stikh. in: põldmäe, jaak (ed.), studia metrica et poetica 2, 3–20. tartu: tartu riiklik ülikool. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1999. metr i smysl. ob odnom mekhanizme kul’turnoj pamjati. moskva: rggu. halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1979. anglijskij pjatistopnyj jamb. perevod s anglijskogo m. g. tarlinskoj. in: gal’perin, il’ja romanovich (ed.), novoe v zarubezhnoj lingvistike 9: lingvostilistika. moskva: progress, 356–378. hollander, john 1975. vision and resonance: two senses of poetic form. new york: oxford university press. hollander, john 1989. rhyme’s reason. a guide to english verse. new haven and london: yale university press. jackson, macdonald p. 1965. shakespeare’s “a lover’s complaint”; its date and authenticity. auckland: university of auckland. jackson, macdonald p. 2008. a lover’s complaint, cymbeline, and the shakespeare canon: interpreting shared vocabulary. in: modern language review 103, 21–38. jakobson, roman 1966. slavic epic verse: studies in comparative metrics. in: jakobson, roman, selected writings iv: slavic epic studies. th e hague: mouton, 414–463 kolmogorov, andrej nikolaevich 1963. k izucheniju ritmiki majakovskogo. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 4, 64–71. kolmogorov, andrej nikolaevich; kondratov, aleksandr mikhajlovich 1962. ritmika poem majakovskogo. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 62–74. kolmogorov, andrej nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1968. k osnovam russkoj klassicheskoj metriki. in: mejlakh, boris solomonovich (ed.), sodruzhestvo nauk i tajny tvorchestva. moskva: iskusstvo, 397–432. kolmogorov, andrej nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1985. model’ ritmicheskogo stroenija russkoj rechi, prisposoblennaja k izucheniju metriki russkogo klassicheskogo stikha. in: timofeev, leonid ivanovich (ed.), russkoe stikhoslozhenie. tradicii i problemy razvitija. moskva: nauka, 113–134. 152 review articles lotman, juri; lotman, mihhail 1986. vokrug desjatoj glavy “evgenija onegina”. in: petrunina, nina nikolaevna (ed.), pushkin: issledovanija i materialy xii. moskva, leningrad: nauka, 124–151. lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail 2013. th e quantitative structure of estonian syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter. in: trames: journal of the humanities and social sciences 17(67/62), 243–272. lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail 2014. th e accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter. in: studia metrica et poetica 1(2), 71–102. lotman, mihhail 1988. semantika stikhotvornogo metra v russkoj poezii vtoroj poloviny xix veka (a. a. fet i n. a. nekrasov). in: pszczołowska, lucylla (ed.), slowianska metryka porownawcza iii: semantyka form wierszowych. wrocław: ossolineum, 105–143. lotman, mihhail 2012. verse as a semiotic system. in: sign systems studies, 40(1–2), 18–51. lotman, mihhail 1989. k semanticheskoj tipologii russkogo stikhoslozhenija. in: bulatova, rimma vladimirovna; dybo, vladimir antonovich; zaliznjak, andrej anatol’evich; nikolaeva, tat’jana mikhajlovna (eds.), slavjanskoe i balkanskoe jazykoznanie. prosodija. moskva: nauka, 76–98. lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2011. toward a statistical analysis of accentual rhythm (with reference to the estonian trochaic tetrameter). in: scherr, barry p.; bailey, james; kazartsev, evgeny (eds.), formal methods of poetics. lüdenscheid: ram-verlag, 256–294. shapir, maksim il’ich 1991. “semanticheskij oreol metra”: termin i ponjatie (istorikostikhovedcheskaja retrospekcija). in: literaturnoe obozrenie 12: 36–40. taranovsky, kiril 1953. ruski dvodelni ritmovi i–ii. beograd: naučna knjiga. taranovsky, kiril 1963. o vzaimootnoshenii stikhotvornogo ritma i tematiki. in: american contributions to the fift h international congress of slavists i. th e hague: mouton, 287–322. taranovsky, kiril 1966. chetyrekhstopnyj jamb andreja belogo. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 10, 127–147. taranovsky, kiril 1982. th e rhythmical structure of the notorious russian poem luka. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 25/26, 429–432. tarlinskaja, marina 1967. akcentnye osobennosti anglijskogo sillabotonicheskogo stikha. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 81–91. 153review articles tarlinskaja, marina 1972a. evoljucija slogovoj i akcentnoj struktury anglijskogo sillabo-tonicheskogo stikha. in: kunin, aleksandr vladimirovich (ed.), sbornik nauchnykh trudov moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta inostrannykh jazykov imeni morisa toreza. moskva: mgpiija, 75–84. tarlinskaja, marina 1972b. nekotorye osobennosti ritmicheskogo stilja nekrasova (odnoslozhnye slova v 4-stopnom jambe). in: filologicheskie nauki 5, 26–32. tarlinskaja, marina. 1976. english verse: th eory and history. th e hague, paris: mouton. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. shakespeare’s verse. iambic pentameter and the poet’s idiosyncrasies. new york, bern, frankfurt am main, paris: peter lang. tarlinskaja, marina 1993. strict stress accent in english poetry compared with german and russian. calgary: university of calgary press. tarlinskaja, marina 2012. rhythm and meaning: “rhythmical deviations” as italics. in: sign systems studies 40(1–2), 65–81. tarlinskaja, marina 2014. shakespeare and the versifi cation of english drama, 1561– 1642. farnham, surrey, england; burlington, vt: ashgate publishers. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1929. o stikhe. statji. leningrad: priboi. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1959. stikh i jazyk. filologicheskie ocherki. moskvaleningrad: gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoj literatury. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1977. o shestistopnom jambe u pushkina. in: černov, igor (ed.), trudy po znakovym sistemam 9, 103–112. tartu: tartu riiklik ülikool. vickers, brian 2007. shakespeare, a lover’s complaint, and john davies of hereford. cambridge: cambridge university press. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha (voprosy poetiki 6). leningrad: academia. studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman*1 abstract. th e paper examines the transmission of alliteration in estonian and russian translated verse. th e main focus is on the translation of alliterative epic, on the one hand, and more recent literary alliteration, on the other hand. various alliterative techniques in diff erent genres are observed, as well as various strategies in conveying alliteration: rejection of alliteration, transmission of alliteration, compensatory translation, for example, with functional equivalent and eventually, saturation with alliteration, to signal alliteration in a tradition without corresponding framework. key words: alliteration, metrics, parallelism, poetry translation, sound repetitions introductory remarks an important issue in poetry translation is the transmission of alliteration. th e diffi culty lies not only in linguistic diff erences (for instance, vocalic and consonantal languages, languages with fi xed and variable stress, languages with and without quantity contrast), but also in diff erent poetry traditions: the forms and treatments of alliteration may be rather diff erent in various poetic systems. alliteration is a widely spread phenomenon in diff erent verse cultures, yet already the term itself is ambiguous and comprises phenomena distinct in principle. in the broadest meaning, alliteration is a form of instrumentation which lies in the repetition of sounds, while these sounds are not necessarily just consonants. in a more narrow sense, we are dealing with the repetition of consonants, with further diff erentiation depending on if this repetition has a purely euphonic or also a metrical role. in this sense, the most rigorous alliteration is the repetition of consonants in the so-called alliterative verse, of which the most well-described is the germanic verse, but the alliterative verse has also been discussed in correlation with diff erent uralic languages. * authors’ addresses: mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail@ehi.ee; maria-kristiina lotman, department of classical philology, university of tartu, ülikooli 17, 51014 tartu, estonia. e-mail: maria.lotman@mail.ee. studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 34–57 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.02 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.02 35lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration th e following typology can be off ered proceeding from the strictness of the function of alliteration in verse: 1. alliteration which marks strong metrical positions within the verse line. such is alliteration in germanic alliterative verse, where diff erent models of alliteration are represented, but in every hemistich (german kurzzeile) at least one alliterative word is present, while the most common model is where two alliterating words are in the fi rst half verse, one in another, that is, aa/a (see, for instance, smirnitskaya 1994, terasawa 2011). conditionally, we will call such alliteration “the germanic type”. 2. alliteration in the finnic folk verse (estonian regisong, finnish kalevalamitta), where alliteration is mandatory (finnish) or almost mandatory (estonian), but its positions in verse are not fi xed. in estonian, such alliteration is usually called the initial rhyme (algriim; in finnish tradition, alkusointu). diff erently from the fi rst type, this alliteration is not related to the internal structure of verse, but characterises verse as a whole. conditionally, we will call such alliteration technique “the finnic type”. see also laugaste 1962, 1969; leino 1970; kuusi 1953, roper 2009, frog, stepanova 2011. 3. in diff erent altaic languages alliteration connects the beginnings of verse, and is called vertical alliteration or line-initial alliteration (zhirmunsky 1968: 36; see also petrov 1990). such alliteration has a function similar to that of rhyme, yet it does not mark the end of a verse line, but its beginning. vertical alliteration can connect two consecutive verses, but such sequence can also be formed with tens of verses. conditionally, we will call such alliteration “the altaic type”. 4. a consonantal repetition of sounds, which does not necessarily have a metrical role, is also called alliteration. conditionally, we will call it modern alliteration. here we would like to emphasise the conventionality of these designations. for instance, if we call this type modern, it means that it is the most common type of alliteration in a particular verse culture, but not that it evolved only recently. th e same type of alliteration can be seen also in most diff erent archaic cultures. see, for instance, ellinger 1938, langer 1978. in our paper we will bring some examples of alliteration technique, focusing mainly on the fi rst and the fourth types; however, in relation with kalevala and its translation, we will put emphasis on the second type, too. as for the third type, here we have not conducted a special analysis and we would want 36 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman to only point out some problems, since in a way it is the most enigmatic type of alliteration. it can be clearly seen in a printed text, but it evolved in oral performance, while in literary poetry it appears mainly as imitations. at the same time, this technique is quite widespread in diff erent languages of the altaic language family. in such a large geographical area, and in the case of such cultures, it is oft en problematic to establish their actual contact, not to speak of derivation from one and the same source. nevertheless, we would like to draw attention to one circumstance related to vertical alliteration; it is present in cultures which have or have had a practice of throat singing, while this singing technique is connected to epic verse with vertical alliteration. in some tungusic languages, this technique has been called toyuk and is not as much connected with epic, but with greeting songs. in turkic people, beginning with yakuts in north-east, ending with kyrgyz people in the south-east, it is called kai (qaï), and kai singers are called kaichi. just like toyuk, kai is prevailingly 8-syllabic and alliterative (compare also levin, edgerton 1999 and harvilahti 2000). let us off er a few examples. th e fi rst is from a modern evenki poem, which imitates the archaic style; compare the beginning of the chain consisting of twenty nine verses: 2 evenks’ toyuk to tuymaada toyuk-singers 1 transliteration туймаадам туонатыгар тойук тўмсўў дьонноро, туойан ыллаан ааїабыт. тойук, ўμкўў дьонноро, томтор, кырдал сирдэргэ тоіуоруїан тураммыт, тумул, алаас аайытын, тохтоон тойук туойабыт. tuymaadam tuonatıgar toyuk tўmsўў dʹonnoro, tuoyan ıllaan aaїabıt. toyuk, ўμkўў dʹonnoro, tomtor, kırdal sirderge toіuoruїan turammıt, tumul, alaas aayıtın, tohtoon toyuk tuoyabıt. we were not able to fi nd a poetic translation of it, but the content is as follows: in the happy valley of tuymaada toyuk has united us all, on every hill, on every meadow we have gathered to sing toyuk. th e second example is from the introduction (zhomok bashy) to kyrgyz epic of manas: 2 here and henceforth, alliterations are marked with italics, rhymes and epiphoras are underlined. 37lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration kyrgyz epic of manas transliteration жармы төгүн, жармы чын, жарандардын көөнү үчүн. жабыратып айтабыз, жолборс манас жөнү үчүн. көбү төгүн, көбү чын, көпчүлүктүн көөнү үчүн, күпүлдөтүп айтабыз. көк жал эрдин жөнү үчүн. жанында болгон киши жок, деги жалганы менен иши жок. jarmı tögün, jarmı çın, jarandardın köönü üçün. jabıratıp aytabız, jolbors manas jönü üçün. köbü tögün, köbü çın, köpçülüktün köönü üçün, küpüldötüp aytabız. kök jal erdin jönü üçün. janında bolgon kişi jok, degi jalganı menen işi jok. diff erently from toyuk, manas is characterised not just with vertical alliteration, but with grammatical rhyme together with the syntactic parallelism. in russian translations, one translator has conveyed just the resonance of the ending, while the vertical alliteration is absent, the other, on the contrary, has conveyed the vertical alliteration without the resonance of the endings. first, the version by mar baidjiev, who has focused on end rhymes (although these too are rather episodic). kyrgyz epic of manas, translated by mar baidjiev transliteration а самым младшим был ногой. усен, орозду, бай, жакып – от ногой-хана сыновья. могучим ханом был ногой. за свой народ и край родной не раз вступал в кровавый бой. китайцам и монголам он в набегах учинял разгром. a samym mladshim byl nogoj. usen, orozdu, baj, zhakyp – ot nogoj-hana synov’ja. moguchim hanom byl nogoj. za svoj narod i kraj rodnoj ne raz vstupal v krovavyj boj. kitajcam i mongolam on v nabegah uchinjal razgrom. diff erently from baidjiev, lev penkovsky aims to convey vertical alliteration, the most important feature of instrumentation here: kyrgyz epic of manas, translated by lev penkovsky transliteration кучами золото мы гребли, куньи шапки были на нас, кушак из шёлка носили мы, кушали вкусные курдюки, кумыс ведь пили мы — что ни день. kuchami zoloto my grebli, kun’i shapki byli na nas, kushak iz sholka nosili my, kushali vkusnye kurdjuki, kumys ved’ pili my — chto ni den’. 38 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman th ere has been much discussion regarding the relations of alliteration with other prosodic elements both from the aspect of versifi cation and structure of language. victor zhirmunsky, who studied the folk poetry of diff erent altaic nations, noted the regularity how alliteration is related to syntactic parallelism, and that corresponding languages have a weak dynamic accent, which is usually fi xed to the end of a word or a syntagm (zhirmunsky 1964, 1968, 1974; stebleva 1965, 1971; correlations between parallelism and alliteration can be observed in other traditions as well, for instance, finnic, compare steinitz 1934). as for european, fi rst of all, germanic verse, it is, to the contrary, usually associated with strong dynamic accent, which is typically on the initial syllable of the word. to a certain extent it can also explain the alliteration in the finnic verse, although the accent here is not strong but is fi xed to the beginning of word. according to eduard sievers and winfred p. lehmann (sievers 1893; lehmann 1956, 1972), the alliterative verse is not as much related to accent, but to quantity (see also kuryłowicz 1949, 1970, 1975: 150–153). th e alliterative germanic verse was not purely accentual, but in our terminology accentualsyllabic-quantitative (lotman 1998: 2064). when quantity disappeared from language as well as from verse as a rhythmic factor, alliteration disappeared too and was replaced with end rhyme. in a way, analogical processes can be observed in the development of estonian folk verse as well, where, together with the increase of accentual factor, alliteration had disappeared and end rhymed evolved (so-called vemmalvärss, that is, doggerel verse). in our paper we will bring some examples about the use of alliteration in two traditions which are diff erent in principle: russian and estonian. th e estonian language has all preconditions for the formation of alliterative tradition: quantitative – the contrast of quantity in langugage, allowing for the quantitative principle in verse; accentual – the fi xed accent in the fi rst syllable of a word; and, morphonological – the lack of prefi xes, which means that the normal estonian word begins with a stem with accent on its fi rst syllable. th us, it seems natural that in the estonian folk song tradition, alliterative verse plays a signifi cant part. in russian language, on the other hand, the contrast of quantity is absent (accentual syllables are one and a half times longer than unaccented syllables, but it is merely a phonetic, but not a phonological phenomenon). th e position of accent is free, and regulated only by statistical regularities, according to which it has a tendency to be placed in the central position of a word. from the aspect of morphonology it is important to note that russian has a welldeveloped system of prefi xes, so a large portion of words begins with prefi xes, not with stem alone (while due to the free position of accent, the stem does not necessarily carry a stress). as a result of all this, there is no alliterative verse in 39lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration russian folk tradition (although there is sporadic use of alliteration, compare čiževsky 1949); instead, there are other phonic devices, for instance, paronymy and episodic rhyme. also, “russian ear” is less sensitive to alliteration. alliteration in russian poetry tradition is mostly a local gesture, and not a constant principle. in order to be noticed, it needs to be more intensive, for instance, in konstantin balmont’s widely anthologised example: konstantin balmont’s “i am free wind...” transliteration я вольный ветер, я вечно вею, волную волны, ласкаю ивы, в ветвях вздыхаю, вздохнув, немею, лелею травы, лелею нивы. ja vol’nyj veter, ja vechno veju, volnuju volny, laskaju ivy, v vetvjah vzdykhaju, vzdokhnuv, nemeju, leleju travy, leleju nivy. another aspect, which is represented in the same example, is how russian alliterative technique is more sensitive to onomatopoeia. konstantin balmont’s reeds transliteration полночной порою в болотной глуши чуть слышно, бесшумно, шуршат камыши. polnochnoj poroju v bolotnoj glushi chut’ slyshno, besshumno, shurshat kamyshi. in these examples we can see it in wind-blasts, which is conveyed with the repetition of ‘ve/vu’, as well as in its purely synesthetically transmitted tenderness: ‘la/le’, and ‘sh/s’, which stand for whispers (in the second example, ‘sh’ conveys the sound of swishing reeds). sometimes we come across the opposition of two alliterations on the phonetic as well as the semantic level, see the fragment from pushkin’s eugene onegin: pushkin’s eugene onegin (5, xlii): transliteration мазурка раздалась. бывало, когда гремел мазурки гром, в огромной зале все дрожало, паркет трещал под каблуком, тряслися, дребезжали рамы; теперь не то: и мы, как дамы, скользим по лаковым доскам. mazurka razdalas’. byvalo, kogda gremel mazurki grom, v ogromnoj zale vse drozhalo, parket treshhal pod kablukom, trjaslisja, drebezzhali ramy; teper’ ne to: i my, kak damy, skol’zim po lakovym doskam. in this passage the old, that is, the right and proper mazurka dance, is opposed to the corrupted modern one. th e old is connected with the emphasised masculinity and noise, while the modern with feminine tender fluency; 40 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman furthermore, the femininity is brought in on a semantic level just with a comparison: we (that is, men) glide like ladies. out of seven lines, fi ve are devoted to the old, which are accompanied by the alliterations ‘gr’, ‘dr’, ‘tr’, ‘r’, while the two last “feminine” verses are instrumentally delivered with ‘l’ and ‘m’. psycholinguistic studies reveal that for the carriers of russian language ‘g’ and ‘r’, and especially their composites, are sensed as agressive (one has to keep in mind that russian ‘r’ sounds much more aggressive than the english ‘r’), but ‘l’ and ‘m’ are recognised as tender (taranovsky 1965a, 1965b). alliteration in translation eugene onegin has been repeatedly translated into english, but none of the translators has been able to convey pushkin’s instrumentation. we will bring just one example: now the mazurka sounds. its thunder used in times past to ring a peal that huge ballrooms vibrated under, while fl oors would split from crash of heel, and frames would shudder, windows tremble; now things are changed, now we resemble ladies who glide on waxed parquet. (alexandr pushkin’s eugene onegin 5, xlii, translated by charles h. johnston) let us just make a brief comment on the diff erences between the original text and the translation. th e translator did not convey the onomatopoetic alliteration of the source text, the noisy masculinity of the fi rst part is conveyed only by lexical means (using onomatopoetic words like ‘crash’, ‘shudden’, ‘tremble’), but in the last two lines the feminine fl uency is supported with phonic means. raven, kaaren and voron it is especially enlightening to study alliteration in translated texts, and in particular when we are dealing with diff erent language and cultural types. let us bring an example from literary texts, that is edgar allan poe’s raven, which is known for the abundance of its alliterations as well as its onomatopoetic eff ects. if we take a look at the english original, then, roughly speaking, the 41lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration sound gestures serve two ideas. first and foremost, the idea is a recurrent theme of hopelessness, fate and death, which both semantically and euphonically culminate in the word nevermore. but on the phonic level, preparations for it start from the beginning of the poem, and primarily in its rhymes: ‘lore’, ‘door’, ‘more’, ‘fl oor’, and so on. what is very important in this context, is, fi rst, how the name of the dead beloved lenore belongs to the same phonic sphere, and second, that the title of the poem, raven, is an almost precise anagram of the word ‘never’, even closer acoustically than visually. th e second, semantic as well as phonic pole of the poem builds the fears and sensations of the fi rst person character, and we are dealing here with diff erent phonetic themes constructed not as much in rhyme, as they are in alliteration. th e rhythmicalsyntactical structure of the poem clearly serves the same purposes: on the one hand, repetitions create the magical eff ect, in keeping with the themes of hopelessness and fate, on the other hand, the hesitant feelings embodied, relate to the inner world of the narrator. to compare diff erent translation strategies, we extracted the fi rst three stanzas both from the source text and the target texts. th e beginning of poe’s original text is here: once upon a midnight dreary, while i pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while i nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ‘‘tis some visitor,’ i muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door – only this, and nothing more.’ ah, distinctly i remember it was in the bleak december, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the fl oor. eagerly i wished the morrow; – vainly i had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost lenore – for the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named lenore – nameless here for evermore. and the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain th rilled me filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; so that now, to still the beating of my heart, i stood repeating ‘‘tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door – some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; – th is it is, and nothing more,’ 42 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman let us compare the estonian translations. th e fi rst translator of raven was ants oras, a literary scholar, critic and translator, who fi rst published his translation of poe’s poem in 1929, with a revised version in 1931, where he had increased the incidence of alliterations and other sound repetitions, as evidenced in his fi rst three stanzas: südaööl, mil kambris selles tummalt, tuskjalt mõlgutelles meeliskelin aegu vanu, ammu veernuid surmani, kuulin äkitselt eel ukse kerge väikse sõrmetukse, koputuse ma eel ukse, tasa kostva minuni. “rändur see vist rännukäigul, jõudev öisel minuni,” mõtlin, “muud ei midagi.” talv too oli, öö, mil ahi nagu tukkuv tulikahi pidas viirastava vahi – valvur öise helveti! tusklin ja all paatund koore hõõgus vaev mul imme noore, neitsi pärast kel lenoore nimeks nüüd ja alati – nimi nii kesk inglikoore taevas nüüd ja alati – sääl vaid – siin ei iialgi. kuulin, kuulen veel, kuis kahin, siidi hiiliv salasahin esiriideist käib, ja vaatan, hurmund, hirmund surmani, nii et, võites õudse põkse rinnas mu, peaaegu rõkk see huulilt kuuldub: “ei, ei, lõkse saatan sea. see vihuti hirm, see rändur vaid, kuis ikka otsiv paika öösiti – rändur vaid – muud midagi.” (edgar allan poe’s kaaren, translated by ants oras) ants oras follows the stanzaic structure as well as the rhyme pattern of the source text. although in his text overall infl ectional rhymes prevail, he retains lenore’s name in rhyme position. alliteration, sound plays and repetitions are consistently conveyed, yet his alliterations are more emphasised and stronger; they are oft en not just confi ned to the initial consonants, but comprise the vowel of an initial syllable as well. sometimes it is also a result of a repetition of a stem, like, for instance, in the 5th stanza: ‘vaatlin, mõtlin mõtteid kurbi, mõtteid, mõeld ei iialgi’. on the phonic level, the motif of “hiss” is introduced already in the second stanza in the rhyming triplet: ‘ahi/kahi/vahi’. in the third stanza, a rhyme with the same sound is continued (‘kahin/sahin’), and is supported with sand h-alliterations. 43lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration a year later johannes aavik, a philologist, translator and neologist, who was even more radical than oras in his innovations both in the sphere of language and poetry, published his polemical version of the poem. his polemic begins already with the title: the name of the bird can be in estonian either ‘ronk’ or ‘kaaren’. th e second was used by oras, while aavik, on the other hand, chose the fi rst, despite ‘kaaren’ being phonetically closer to ‘raven’. let us see the fi rst three stanzas of aavik’s translation: keset öise tunni õudu kord ma juurdlin, roidund, nõutu vana tarkusteose kallal, mis ju unund ammugi. olin tukkumas, kui kabin kõlas just kui samme sabin või kui mingi arglik rabin vastu ust nii äkisti. vist üks väisur, mõtlin, kabin sellest vistist’ sünnibki, see – ja muud ei midagi. käes siis oli algav tali, väljas mühas tuul nii vali koldes küdes kustuv tuli, heitis varje viiliti. hommikut ma kangest’ ootsin; – raamatuist, mil vaimu jootsin, asjata ma troosti lootsin, sest mu armsaim võeti – hurmav neid, leonoore nimeks ingliten kel’ anneti – siin tal nime polegi. ukserimba siidi sahin, purpurkatte vaikne kahin äratas mus õudset hirmu, enne tunt ei iialgi, ning mu süda põksus nõnda, et siis mina korda mõnda “väisur keegi,” ütlin enda vaigistuseks, “vististi,” –; “väisur hiline,” ma enda troostiks ütlin, “vististi, –; see – ja muud ei midagi.” (edgar allan poe’s ronk, translated by johannes aavik, 1930) johannes aavik has conveyed the rhyme scheme, but in the case of masculine rhymes he has given up the lexical rhymes in favour of the infl ectional rhyme; consequently, when compared to the source text, these rhymes are phonically more fragile and semantically less loaded. feminine rhymes, on the other hand, are lexical and the internal rhymes have also been conveyed. yet it has to be mentioned that in the original text the masculine rhymes are especially important from the viewpoint of semantics of the text. for aavik, alliteration is not insignifi cant either. although he has not found a possibility to convey these in the fi rst line of a poem, there are still numerous 44 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman alliterative couplets or triplets (for instance, ‘tarkusteose’, which is a compound word, ‘kui/kabin/kõlas’, ‘samme/sabin’, and so on). it has to be noted that aavik sensed the two contrasting themes on the phonic level of the original: the fi rst is related to raven, the other to the sensations of the fi rst person character. in the transmission of these, aavik uses both alliterative and onomatopoetic technique. th us, already in the fi rst stanza, the theme of raven occurs as an onomatopoetic alliteration ‘kui kabin kõlas just kui’, as well as an onomatopoetic word pair ‘rabin/kabin’, where an anagramm of raven can be sensed as well. at the same time, in the third stanza, the alliteration of ‘s’, and the following onomatopoetic rhymes, create the atmosphere of whispers and silent hiss. th is poem has been translated into russian language many times, with about ten famous renditions. it was especially popular among the symbolists, and has been translated by such leading fi gures of symbolism as dmitry merezhkovsky, konstantin balmont and valery bryusov. th ese, as well as later authors, attempted to convey the meter, as well as the rhyme scheme and phonic structure. yet, diff erently from the estonian authors, the russian poets were not able to convey the recurrent masculine rhyme, excluding just one exception. vasily betaki, a poet from the next generation (who had passed away in 2013), in his time won a competition as best translator of edgar allan poe (compare friedberg 1997: 119–120). however, his version has not been as well-known as the symbolist translations. we will briefl y focus on the most famous ones, the translations by konstantin balmont and valery bryusov, and will add to it altalena’s1 version, who according to experts nina berberova and mikhail gasparov is superior to those of balmont and bryusov2. как-то в полночь, в час угрюмый, полный тягостною думой, над старинными томами я склонялся в полусне, грёзам странным отдавался, вдруг неясный звук раздался, будто кто-то постучался – постучался в дверь ко мне. “это верно”, прошептал я, "гость в полночной тишине, гость стучится в дверь ко мне”. ясно помню… ожиданья… поздней осени рыданья… и в камине очертанья тускло тлеющих углей… о, как жаждал я рассвета, как я тщётно ждал ответа на страданье, без привета, на вопрос о ней, о ней, 1 altalena (italian ‘swing’) was vladimir zhabotinsky’s (ze’ev jabotinsky’s) pseudonym. 2 see addendum for transliterations. 45lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration о леноре, что блистала ярче всех земных огней, о светиле прежних дней. и завес пурпурных трепет издавал как будто лепет, трепет, лепет, наполнявший тёмным чувством сердце мне. непонятный страх смиряя, встал я с места, повторяя: – “это только гость, блуждая, постучался в дверь ко мне, поздний гость приюта просит в полуночной тишине – гость стучится в дверь ко мне”. (edgar allan poe’s voron, translated by konstantin balmont, 1894) как-то в полночь, утомлённый, я забылся, полусонный, над таинственным значеньем фолианта одного; я дремал, и всё молчало… что-то тихо прозвучало – что-то тихо застучало у порога моего. я подумал: “то стучится гость у входа моего – гость, и больше ничего”. помню всё, как это было: мрак – декабрь – ненастье выло – гас очаг мой — так уныло падал отблеск от него… не светало… что за муки! не могла мне глубь науки дать забвенье о разлуке с девой сердца моего, – о леноре, взятой в небо прочь из дома моего, – не оставив ничего… шелест шёлка, шум и шорох в мягких пурпуровых шторах – чуткой, жуткой, странной дрожью проникал меня всего; и, смиряя страх минутный, я шепнул в тревоге смутной: “то стучится бесприютный гость у входа моего – поздний путник там стучится у порога моего – гость, и больше ничего”. (edgar allan poe’s voron, translated by altalena, 1897) как-то в полночь, в час унылый, я вникал, устав, без силы, меж томов старинных, в строки рассужденья одного по отвергнутой науке, и расслышал смутно звуки, вдруг у двери словно стуки, – стук у входа моего. “это – гость, – пробормотал я, – там, у входа моего. гость, – и больше ничего!” 46 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman ах! мне помнится так ясно: был декабрь и день ненастный, был как призрак – отсвет красный от камина моего. ждал зари я в нетерпеньи, в книгах тщетно утешенье я искал в ту ночь мученья, – бденья ночь, без той, кого звали здесь линор. то имя… шепчут ангелы его, на земле же – нет его. шелковистый и не резкий, шорох алой занавески мучил, полнил темным страхом, что не знал я до того. чтоб смирить в себе биенья сердца, долго в утешенье я твердил: “то – посещенье просто друга одного.” повторял: “то – посещенье просто друга одного, друга, – больше ничего!” (edgar allan poe’s voron, translated by valery bryusov, 1905) as we have already mentioned, the specifi cs of russian language did not allow for the development of such alliterative technique which can be seen in finnic and germanic folklore, and in literary texts, repetition of sounds has to be more intense to be perceived. we have marked the repetitions of consonants, but diff erently from rhyme they do not constitute an important aesthetic factor. in order to highlight the phonics, the authors use either a rhyme-like instrumentation in places not meant for it, like, for instance, ‘трепет, лепет’ in balmont, or paronymy or repetitions of syllables, like, for example, ‘полночь, полный’ also in balmont. from the aspect of alliterations, the most eff ective is altalena’s translation. compare the fi rst line in his third stanza, where the sound ‘sh’ is repeated and it has a strong onomatopoetic eff ect: hiss or rustle. yet, as we see in the case of the estonian translators, in russian translations too the main sound theme related to fate, death and lenore is overshadowed by local gestures. translations of alliterative epic russian translations of kalevala (there are two widespread full translations, the older is by leonid belsky, the modern by eino kiuru and armas mishin) are semantically quite close to the original. from the artistic point of view we should prefer the fi rst, but the new one is in a way more punctual. yet neither of these conveys the alliterative technique of the source text, and where alliteration appears in its modern type, it is not as a mandatory factor characterising 47lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration every verse. however, in both translations we come across not just local alliterations, but also phonemic symploces3 and paronymies. as for the germanic alliterative verse, the russian translators have not paid much attention to alliteration, focusing on the transmission of content and verse meter. yet the fi rst attempt of translating the elder edda deserves to be mentioned. th e translator was alexandr vostokov, who conveyed it not in the original meter, but in the epic slavic verse, which he had reconstructed. th ere are two reasons why the alliteration was not conveyed. first, as we already mentioned, the repetition of single word-initial consonants is not as clearly perceived as in the case of germanic languages. th e other reason is related to content. th e elder edda, and beowulf as well, were seen not only as works of art, but also as sources of history, which was to be conveyed as punctually as possible. so it is characteristic that skaldic poetry, the structure of which is much more complicated than that of elder edda, is translated closely following the form, and conveying rhymes as well as alliterations. as for the estonian translations of alliterative epics, we have studied three more important translations, that of kalevala translated by august annist, and beowulf and elder edda by rein sepp4. alliteration is a signifi cant factor of versifi cation in these texts: both in the samples from beowulf and elder edda verses without at least one alliterating pair were quite exceptional, such were not much more than 5% of the total sample. at the same time there were also alliterating quadruplets and verses combined of two alliterating triplets, or of one triplet and one quadruple, see, for instance, an example from beowulf: kes võtta võis vastu kord voogude kandami. (1.52) let us compare the chart showing the most common patterns of alliteration in these translations: 3 phonemic symploce is a repetitive phonemic complex. it diff ers from alliteration and assonance in having both consonants and vowels in its formation, from paronymy in that there is no concomitant illusions of morphemic repetitions (lotman, nakhimovsky 1971). for instance, rare and radiant, vaovad hammasta vahele. 4 th is is a pilot study to fi nd out the most common patterns and regularities in the estonian translations of alliterative verse. each sample consists of 100 verses; full-scale studies should be pursued in the future. 48 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman chart 1. common alliteration patterns in estonian translations of beowulf and elder edda. th is reveals that the most frequent pattern both in beowulf and elder edda is one alliterating pair per verse line: such lines comprise about 40% of the samples. alliterating triplets are the second most frequent pattern (reaching to 30% in the elder edda). and, there are also some combinations of diff erent sounds in alliteration. kalevala is a bit more complicated case: in the canonic estonian edition, two trochaic tetrameters are typographically united into one verse line. it is not, however, a translator’s decision, as the author of the aft erword, heldur niit, explained the necessity of such typographical solution with the readability of the text, following the 1949 finnish edition of kalevala (edited by jouko hautala). let us see the fi rst lines: mõtleb nüüd mu meelekene, ajud need aru peavad, meel see lükkab laulemaie, suu kutsub kõnelemaie, põlist laulu leelutama, lugu pikkada laduma. sõnad suussa mul sulavad, kõned muistsed keerutavad, ise keelele ronivad, vaovad hammasta vahele. when we look at the two half lines separately, we see that about 8% of these are without alliterations (as in the fi rst half verse of the last line in the given example). but if we consider these together, then verses without alliterations are extremely rare (there was just one case in our sample). in the following chart you can see the most common patterns in the translation of kalevala: 49lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration chart 2. common alliteration patterns in estonian translation of kalevala. in kalevala we come across the combination of two alliterating pairs, most frequently the second place is held by verses with an alliterating pair. but if we examine these verses more closely we can see alliterating pairs prevail in one half-verse line, while there is no alliteration in the other one, like in this verse: neid mu õpetas emake veeretelles värtenada, th is means that although typographically the two verses are united, on the phonic level these are still separate units and alliteration does not tie them together, as compared to the translations of germanic verse, such patterns where two alliterating pairs are crossed or interlocking are rarer. yet we can sometimes see the repetition of one and the same sound through several halflines and even verses, like in the following example: kui olin poisike põrandal, püherdelin põlvi eessa piimalutt-pisikesena, piimasuise põngerjana. in the next chart we can see the data about the incidence of alliterating sounds in the studied samples, here the ratio of alliterating sounds is compared to the total number of characters: 50 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman chart 3. incidence of alliterating sounds in estonian translations of alliterative epic. th e highest incidence of alliterating sounds is in the translation of kalevala, where this ratio exceeds 10%, meanwhile in the translations of germanic epics it is about 8%. th e statistic representation of diff erent sounds is presented on the following charts: chart 4. diff erent sounds in estonian translation of beowulf. 51lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration chart 5. diff erent sounds in estonian translation of elder edda. chart 6. diff erent sounds in estonian translation of kalevala. 52 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman here the translation of kalevala is somewhat diff erent from the translation of the germanic epics. while in beowulf, as well as in the elder edda, the most frequently alliterated sound is ‘k’, then in kalevala it is ‘l’, the incidence of which in elder edda is, for example, less than 5%. v-alliteration, which is the third most frequently used in the translation of kalevala, is less frequent in the translations of germanic verse. also, the alliteration of ‘p’ is more common in kalevala. at the same time, some sounds, like alliterated ‘n’ and ‘h’ occur in germanic translations more oft en than in kalevala. it is worth noticing that kalevala is the only sample where alliterated ‘u’ occurs. we did not come across the alliterated ‘õ’, ‘ä’, ‘ö’ in any of our samples. conclusions alliteration plays diff erent role in various verse traditions, being a constituent principle in some and facultative ornamental element in others. in translations, alliteration can be conveyed formally, but there are also ways to replace it with a functional equivalent. th us, for example, russian folk verse does not recognise alliteration as a constructive principle; its instrumentation is not charged with the metrical function, but is either euphonic or, on the contrary, semantic (paronymy, paronomasia). in translations, there may be, in a way, paradoxical consequences to its use. some (mostly 19th-century) translators pay no attention whatsoever to alliteration or replace it with end rhyme. in the fi rst case, the result is bylina-like blank verse (alexandr vostokov translated the fragments of elder edda into a bylina-like verse metre). in the second case, the outcome is verse which, in its formal features, does not diff er from the literary canon and which has mainly just semantic connections with the original. some 20th-century authors carefully try to convey the alliteration, following the scheme of the source text. yet the russian readers poorly perceive it, since such verse has no part in their tradition. in addition to that, signifi cant diff erences in the structure of languages are relevant as well. old germanic word mostly began with a stem, the fi rst syllable of which carried stress. alliteration not only brings forth the stressed syllable, but is in its own way a semantic emphasis, that is, the alliterative words function as key words. in the estonian translations of germanic epics, on the other hand, alliteration is commonly conveyed, since in the estonian national epic, alliteration, too, is an important element (although not so important as in germanic verse). also, alliterative regisong guarantees the availability of a large amount of alliterating formulas which were also imported into literary texts and translations. 53lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration th e most common alliterative pattern in the translations of beowulf and elder edda is aa, while the more complicated patterns abab and abba occur less oft en. in kalevala, the pattern aabb prevails, while the more complicated patterns (cross and interlocking alliterations) are absent. th e study also reveals some diff erences in the sound structure of alliterations: while in translations of beowulf and elder edda the most common sound in alliteration is ‘k’, then in kalevala it is ‘l’, which is quite rarely alliterated in the translations of germanic epics. th ere are also sounds which are very rare in alliteration (for instance, ‘õ’, ‘ä’, ‘ö’ were not alliterated in our samples). alliteration can not only be lost in translation, but on the contrary, its role can even be increased. for example, russian translators, especially altalena, saturated their texts with more alliterations than in the source text, one of the reasons being that because the russian ear is less sensitive to alliterations, it needs stronger signals. th us, for instance, altalena translated these verses of poe: and the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain / th rilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before in the following way: шелест шёлка, шум и шорох в мягких пурпуровых шторах – / чуткой, жуткой, странной дрожью проникал меня всего. in estonian translations sometimes there are less end rhymes, but with the compensatory strategy the number of other sound repetitions has increased, compare the same verses in the translation by ants oras: kuulin, kuulen veel, kuis kahin, siidi hiiliv salasahin / esiriideist käib, ja vaatan, hurmund, hirmund surmani. 5 references audova, iris 1995. algriim vadja rahvalauludes. tartu: department of estonian philology [unpublished dissertation. manuscript in the university of tartu library]. čiževsky, dmitry 1949. on alliteration in ancient russian epic literature. in: jakobson, roman; simmons, ernest j. (eds.), russian epic studies (memoirs of the american folklore society 42). philadelphia: american folklore society, 125–130. ellinger, florence karn 1938. alliteration in selected plays of plautus. ohio state university. 5 th is research was supported by grant no iut20-1. th e preliminary version of this paper was presented at the conference “alliterativa causa” (january 18–19, 2013, london). th e authors are grateful to igor pilshchikov for the careful reading and useful suggestions. 54 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman friedberg, maurice 1997. literary translation in russia: a cultural history. university park: pennsylvania state university press. frog; stepanova, eila 2011. alliteration in (balto-)finnic languages. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. houndmills: palgrave macmillan, 195–218. harvilahti, lauri 2000. altai oral epic. in: oral tradition 15/2, 215–229. kuryłowicz, jerzy 1949. latin and germanic metre. in: english and germanic studies 2, 37–42. kuryłowicz, jerzy 1970. die sprachlichen grundlagen der altgermanischen metrik. (innsbrucker beiträge zur sprachwissenschaft 1). innsbruck: institut für vergleichende sprachwissenschaft der universität innsbruck. kuryłowicz, jerzy 1975. metrik und sprachgeschichte. wrocław etc.: zakład narodowy im. ossolińskich. kuusi, matti 1953. kalevalaisen runon alkusointuisuudesta. in: virittäjä 2, 198–207. langer, kenneth 1978. some suggest ive uses of alliteration in sanskrit court poetry. in: journal of the american oriental society 98(4), 438–445. laugaste, eduard 1962. eesti alliteratsioonist ja assonantsist. in: keel ja kirjandus 9, 531–537. laugaste, e duard 1969. sõnaalguline ja sisealliteratsioon eesti rahvalauludes. eesti rahvalaulu struktuur ja kujundid i (trü toimetised 234). tartu: tartu riiklik ülikool. lehmann, winfred p. 1956. the development of germanic verse form. austin: university of texas press and linguisti c society of america. lehmann, winfred p. 1972. germanic. in: wimsatt william k. (ed.), versifi cation: major language types. new york: new york university press. leino, pentti 1970. alliteratsioon ja regivärsiline rahvalaul. in: keel ja kirjandus 8, 504–507. levin, th eodore c.; edgerton, michael e. 1999. th e th roat singers of tuva. in: scientifi c american 281(3), 80–87. lotman, mihhail 1998. värsisüsteemidest (peamiselt vene ja eesti värsi näitel). in: akadeemia 9, 1846–1874; 10, 2058–2078. lotman, mihhail; nakhimovsky, alexander 1971. ob odnom stikhotvorenii n. a. zabolockogo. in: rudnev, pjotr (ed.), russkaja fi lologija 3, tartu: tartu riiklik ülikool, 62–75. 55lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration petrov, nikolaj egorovich 1990. khorovodnye pesni osuokhaj kak zhanr jakutskogo fol’klora. in: sovetskaja tjurkologija 5, 7–12. roper, jonathan 2009. on finnic and english alliterative metres. in: kilpiö, matti; kahlas-tarkka, leena (eds.), anglo-saxons and the north: essays refl ecting the th eme of the 10th meeting of the international society of anglo-saxonists in helsinki, august 2001. tempe, ariz.: arizona center for medieval and renaissance studies, 89–108. sievers, eduard 1893. altgermanische metrik. sammlung kurzer grammatiken germanischer dialekte. halle: niemeyer. smirnickaja, ol’ga aleksandrovna 1994. stikh i jazyk drevnegermanskoj pojezii. moskva: filologija. stebleva, ija vasil’evna 1965. poezija tjurkov vi–viii vekov. moskva: nauka. stebleva, ija vasil’evna 1971. proishozhdenie i razvitie tjurkskoj alliteracionnoj sistemy v svjazi s istoricheskim rodstvom tjurkskikh i mongol’skikh jazykov. in: sovetskaja tjurkologija 6, 80–84. steinitz, wolfgang 1934. der parallelismus in der fi nnisch-karelischen volkdichtung. helsinki: suomalainen tiedeakatemia. terasawa, jun 2011. old english meter: an introduction. toronto: university of toronto press. taranovsky, kiril 1965a. ‘süsse’ und ‘feuchte’ reime bei lermontov. in: zeitschrift für slavische philologie 32, 251–254. taranovsky, kiril 1965b. th e sound texture of russian verse in the light of phonemic distinctive features. in: international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics 9, 114–124. zhirmunsky, victor maksimovich 1964. ritmiko-sintaksicheskij parallelizm kak osnova drevnetjurkskogo narodnogo epicheskogo stikha. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 4, 3–24. zhirmunsky, victor maksimovich 1968. o nekotorykh problemah teorii tjurkskogo narodnogo stikha. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 1, 23–42. zhirmunsky, victor maksimovich 1974. tjurkskij geroicheskij epos. leningrad: nauka. 56 mihhail lotman, maria-kristiina lotman addendum. transliterations of russian translations of poe’s raven kak-to v polnoch’, v chas ugrjumyj, polnyj tjagostnoju dumoj, nad starinnymi tomami ja sklonjalsja v polusne, grjozam strannym otdavalsja, vdrug nejasnyj zvuk razdalsja, budto kto-to postuchalsja – postuchalsja v dver’ ko mne. “jeto verno”, prosheptal ja, „gost’ v polnochnoj tishine, gost’ stuchitsja v dver’ ko mne”. jasno pomnju… ozhidan’ja… pozdnej oseni rydan’ja… i v kamine ochertan’ja tusklo tlejushhih uglej… o, kak zhazhdal ja rassveta, kak ja tshhjotno zhdal otveta na stradan’e, bez priveta, na vopros o nej, o nej, o lenore, chto blistala jarche vseh zemnyh ognej, o svetile prezhnih dnej. i zaves purpurnyh trepet izdaval kak budto lepet, trepet, lepet, napolnjavshij tjomnym chuvstvom serdce mne. neponjatnyj strah smirjaja, vstal ja s mesta, povtorjaja: – “jeto tol’ko gost’, bluzhdaja, postuchalsja v dver’ ko mne, pozdnij gost’ prijuta prosit v polunochnoj tishine – gost’ stuchitsja v dver’ ko mne”. (edgar allan poe’s voron, translated by konstantin balmont, 1894) kak-to v polnoch’, utomljonnyj, ja zabylsja, polusonnyj, nad tainstvennym znachen’em folianta odnogo; ja dremal, i vsjo molchalo… chto-to tiho prozvuchalo – chto-to tiho zastuchalo u poroga moego. ja podumal: “to stuchitsja gost’ u vhoda moego – gost’, i bol’she nichego”. pomnju vsjo, kak jeto bylo: mrak – dekabr’ – nenast’e vylo – gas ochag moj — tak unylo padal otblesk ot nego… ne svetalo… chto za muki! ne mogla mne glub’ nauki dat’ zabven’e o razluke s devoj serdca moego, – o lenore, vzjatoj v nebo proch’ iz doma moego, – ne ostaviv nichego… 57lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration shelest shjolka, shum i shoroh v mjagkih purpurovyh shtorah – chutkoj, zhutkoj, strannoj drozh’ju pronikal menja vsego; i, smirjaja strah minutnyj, ja shepnul v trevoge smutnoj: “to stuchitsja besprijutnyj gost’ u vhoda moego – pozdnij putnik tam stuchitsja u poroga moego – gost’, i bol’she nichego”. (edgar allan poe’s voron, translated by altalena, 1897) kak-to v polnoch’, v chas unylyj, ja vnikal, ustav, bez sily, mezh tomov starinnyh, v stroki rassuzhden’ja odnogo po otvergnutoj nauke, i rasslyshal smutno zvuki, vdrug u dveri slovno stuki, – stuk u vhoda moego. “jeto – gost’, – probormotal ja, – tam, u vhoda moego. gost’, – i bol’she nichego!” ah! mne pomnitsja tak jasno: byl dekabr’ i den’ nenastnyj, byl kak prizrak – otsvet krasnyj ot kamina moego. zhdal zari ja v neterpen’i, v knigah tshhetno uteshen’e ja iskal v tu noch’ muchen’ja, – bden’ja noch’, bez toj, kogo zvali zdes’ linor. to imja… shepchut angely ego, na zemle zhe – net ego. shelkovistyj i ne rezkij, shoroh aloj zanaveski muchil, polnil temnym strahom, chto ne znal ja do togo. chtob smirit’ v sebe bien’ja serdca, dolgo v uteshen’e ja tverdil: “to – poseshhen’e prosto druga odnogo.» povtorjal: «to – poseshhen’e prosto druga odnogo, druga, – bol’she nichego!” (edgar allan poe’s voron, translated by valery bryusov, 1905) studia metrica et poetica sisu 6_1.indd the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? frog*1 abstract: this article presents a new theory on the origins of the common finnic tetrameter as a poetic form (also called the kalevala-meter, regilaul meter, etc.). it argues that this verse form emerged as a creolization of the north germanic alliterative verse form during a period of intensive language contacts, and that the finnic ethnopoetic ecology made it isosyllabic. previous theories have focused on the trochaic, tetrametric structure and viewed other features of poetic form as secondary or incidental. this is the first theory to offer a metrically driven explanation for the distinctive features of the poetic form: the systematic placement of lexically stressed short syllables in metrically unstressed positions and systematic yet unmetricalized use of verse-internal alliteration. the emergence of the poetic form may be viewed simply in terms of hybridization, but its formation as a central mode for epic and ritual poetry demands consideration of social factors. creolization is considered a social process of hybridization at the level of sign systems that is characterized by a salient asymmetrical relation of power, authority or other value in the cultural sign systems being reconfigured from the perspective of the society or groups involved. an argument is presented that north germanic contacts also produced systematic verse-internal alliteration in finnic languages. discussion then turns to the distinction between the origin and spread of the poetic form. the poetic form’s uniformity across finnic language areas in spite of its ‘foreign’ metrical features along with the range of genres with which it was used are considered indicators of the poetic form’s spread with language, forming an argument that the tetrameter emerged within an environment that also produced late proto-finnic, and then spread with late proto-finnic language and culture through areas where other finnic language forms were spoken. keywords: diachronic analysis; language contacts; kalevala-meter; germanic alliterative verse; creolization this paper introduces a new theory concerning the history of the common finnic tetrameter (kalevala-meter, regilaul meter). unlike earlier discussions of the meter, my aim is to offer a metrically-driven account of the most * author’s address: frog, folklore studies, department of cultures, university of helsinki, p.o. box 59 (unioninkatu 38 c 217), 00014 university of helsinki, finland. e-mail: mr.frog@helsinki.fi. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2019.6.1.02 studia metrica et poetica 6.1, 2019, 20–78 21the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? distinctive features of the poetic form: i.e. the conventions for the placement of lexically stressed syllables of different length and the conventional use of alliteration although this is not metricalized. when considering the history of the poetic form, i also take into account the fact that the poetic form was a social phenomenon. the poetic form did not emerge and change in a vacuum: it emerged in relation to people using it, and their choices about using it as opposed to something else were motivated rather than random. consequently, it becomes necessary to account for the range of uses of the poetry in relation to its emergence and spread. in overview, i argue that the poetic form emerged during the late finnic language period of ca. a.d. 200–800, which is later narrowed to ca. a.d. 200–550 through considerations of historical language spread, and gradually builds into an argument that the poetic form emerged in a multilingual environment most likely closely tied to the emergence of late proto-finnic from middle proto-finnic. the period ca. a.d. 200–550 corresponds to the period when contacts with scandinavian language were most intense. rather than only borrowing words, i propose that proto-finnic speakers were also influenced in ways that they used words. i argue that the emergence of the finnic tetrameter can be accounted for as a metrical hybrid during this period of intensive finnic contacts with proto-scandinavian. this account differs from previous discussions by offering metrically motivated explanations for the finnic tetrameter’s unusual and distinctive features concerning the placement of long and short syllables and unmetricalized alliteration. when the emergence of this poetic form is placed within the broader context of alliteration in the north, it appears probable that alliteration also entered proto-finnic through proto-scandinavian influence during the same period. scandinavian influences at this time thus seem to have fundamentally impacted finnic ethnopoetics. if this is correct, the finnic tetrameter may not simply be a hybrid, but a creolization of the proto-scandinavian alliterative tetrameter. in this case, the proto-scandinavian meter would have been assimilated into protofinnic, where the vernacular ethnopoetic system subordinated it to syllabic (as opposed to accentual) rhythms, resulting in a unique new poetic form. in addition to conventions governing syllable placement and alliteration, creolization would also account for the poetic form’s tetrametric rhythm. the discussion of metrical form is followed by a discussion relating the tetrameter to proto-finnic language spread and developments in finnic traditions. evidence is provided to argue that, in order to account for the tetrameter in north finnic and its distinct evolution from other finnic traditions, the spread of the poetic form occurred at least several centuries before the breakup of proto-finnic into separate languages (in roughly a.d. 800, 22 frog following kallio, p. 2014). consideration is given to the question of whether the finnic tetrameter spread through speech communities of late protofinnic or with late proto-finnic as a language or dialect through middle proto-finnic with broader changes in culture. the question of broader changes is addressed by bringing into focus the variety of areas of culture with which the poetic system connects. this is done by giving attention to the range of genres with which the poetic form was likely associated and their implications concerning practices and social identities. these discussions concerning the spread of the poetic form are complementary to the main argument of the origin of the poetic form through scandinavian contacts, which can be accepted without taking a position on processes through which it spread and developed. 1. cultural creolization? the concept of creolization may seem extremely marked to some readers. the term creolization emerged with culturally and historically specific connections to the context of colonialism, and has received particular attention in connection with language. the perspectives on, and understanding of, social and cultural phenomena in those contexts have been abstracted and developed for more general consideration of restructuring processes related to competition and selection operating at the level of constituent elements rather than language wholes (mufwene 2007). creolization as a concept has also been considerably extended as a framework for addressing traditions and culture more generally (chaudenson 2001; cf. also bronner 2005). the term creole of course emerged as embedded in language and culture ideologies: it was viewed as something inferior to a pure and ideal form of language, culture, ethnicity or race, and evaluated from a stance of the group of which the pure, ideal form is considered iconic.1 the concept of creolization has been lifted from those contexts and objectified in order to discuss a type of broad phenomenon. notably, attention to the process has brought the products into focus as unique and distinctive rather than as derivative, which allows, for example, creativity to come into focus (harring 2004). use of the concept creolization varies. the approach used here is built on a semiotic view of culture as “localized in concrete, [socially] accessible signs, the most important of which are actually occurring instances of discourse” 1 on iconicity in language ideologies, see irvine, gal 2001. 23the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? (urban 1991: 1).2 hybridization and cultural mixing customarily describe products and outcomes independent of social contexts, significance or even perception, and these terms can be applied to unique examples or variations on any scope. similarly, assimilation, vernacularization or indigenization refer only to conforming elements of one culture to the receiving culture, which might be as simple as adjusting the phonology of a borrowed word and reshaping its semantics to accord with its use in the context of another language. creolization is distinguished from these complementary concepts in three important ways. first, creolization refers to a phenomenon of systems of signs and sign behaviour, such as a language, register, genre, category of practice (e.g. foodways), or even culture at the broadest semiotic level, as opposed to something within the sign system like a word or symbol, or something produced by it like a particular text or performance. second, the product of creolization is something new and distinct as a social phenomenon with at least some degree of social durability, whether it is eclipsed after a single generation or advances and spreads to become dominant. third, the process of creolization is characterized by an asymmetrical relation of power and authority associated with the cultural sign systems being reconfigured, a relation which has connotations for semiotic ideologies. the conditions of the asymmetrical relation are considered historically specific to a particular cultural environment rather than necessarily entailing a form of colonialism per se.3 the asymmetry is also not assumed to be necessarily martial, political or economic, only socially salient in the process of creolization. creolization is thus a form of hybridization connected with a type of social or societal relation between groups associated with the two or more semiotic systems being hybridized and resulting in a new and distinct system. the argument below is built on first arguing that the emergence of the finnic tetrameter can be accounted for as a hybrid of poetic forms, which i consider the most compelling such explanation because if offers metrically motivated explanations for its distinctive features. if this model is accurate, however, 2 i replace urban’s “publicly” with “socially” since not all forms of culture are public and thus not necessarily publicly available. 3 this approach to creolization also does not seek to differentiate a top-down imposition of language, culture, religion or practices by a dominant ‘other’ from a bottom-up assimilation of valorized practices and forms of expression by those on the other side of the asymmetrical relation. processes of creolization are here considered to occur among people of the relevant society with their motivations in relation to the conditions of cultural contacts and relations; such an approach opens onto the problem that the processes involved can be multiple and diverse. 24 frog it creates significant questions about how this development relates to cultural contacts, and to consideration of whether the relation between cultures and their interaction was more or less symmetrical or markedly asymmetrical. tracing cultural heritage of language or tradition has customarily built tree-like models that trace each branching of diversification back to a single parent. these models render invisible possible external forms that may have contributed to diversification, and they thus reflect implicit and deep-rooted ideologies that lead language, culture or traditions to be modelled in relation to pure and ideal historical forms that are challenged by models of mixing like creolization (see also mufwene 2007). identifying the emergence of something like the finnic tetrameter with cultural creolization contests this mode of thinking and demands consideration that different features of the phenomenon may each have an independent lineage. this would, of course, also be the case with other forms of hybridization. the argument below therefore explores what may be inferred as most probable behind the outcomes of the processes of hybridization, also considering social implications. 2. the common finnic tetrameter the common finnic tetrameter refers to a poetic form that was organized according to a hierarchy of features that varied significantly by region in the time when the poetry was recorded. key features are (see also e.g. sadeniemi 1951; kuusi et al. 1977; leino 1986; sarv 2008): 2.1. syllabic rhythm (more or less) each metrical position was isosyllabic (filled with only one syllable). this can be placed in contrast to accentual meters, like the old germanic alliterative form which counted stresses and allowed a variable number of syllables between them (e.g. árnason 1991; russom 1998). although syllable-based rhythms are not uncommon, it is only one of a number of possible organizational principles for verse.4 it can be contrasted with meters based on moraic rhythms, such as homeric verse, in which certain positions can be completed by either a long syllable (= 2 morae) or two short syllables (= 1 mora each) (e.g. foley 1990: 68–84). the syllabic rhythm allowed some flexibility in the opening foot, with additional flexibility in other feet varying by region; in western and 4 on different principles for metrical organization, see also hanson, kiparsky 1996. 25the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? south-eastern regions of estonia, the poetic form advanced in the direction of accentual verse (on which, see sarv 2008; 2011; 2014–2015; see also kallio, k. et al. 2016–2017: 144–145). these ranges of flexibility never theless appear primarily associated with the historical loss of syllables in different finnic dialects and languages as well as contacts with poetry in other languages. 2.2. trochaic tetrameter lacking a caesura the base syllabic rhythm exhibits four stressed positions alternating with unstressed positions forming four trochaic feet of two syllables each. flexibility is in the first foot where two or occasionally even three syllables may appear in one position. word breaks are not permitted within the last foot, so lines should never end in a monosyllable, although this can be found very occasionally even in the most conservative region of the meter. the trochaic rhythm lacks a regular caesura (i.e. a mandatory word-break within the line).5 2.3. placement of long and short stressed syllables a particularly distinctive feature of the meter is that, outside of the flexible first foot, the placement of stressed syllables is regulated by a dual constraint. finnic languages place stress on the first syllable. in the meter, long stressed syllables should appear in metrically stressed positions (with the exception of the word on = ‘is’) and short stressed syllables should appear in metrically unstressed positions. the placement of unstressed syllables is not regulated. mari sarv (2008: 39) describes this with the equation &xxababa(c)&, in which & indicates a mandatory word break, x indicates metrical positions which are flexible, a and b indicate positions where a stressed syllable must be long or short, respectively, and c cannot receive a stressed syllable. the constraint differentiates stressed from unstressed syllables and then prescribes the complementary placement of the stressed syllables according to length. basically, it entails certain constraints for long stressed syllables and different constraints for short stressed syllables. the complexity of this feature of 5 matti sadeniemi (1951) proposed that the meter has a caesura, but this seems to be projection on analogy to germanic alliterative poetry. there is usually a word break somewhere in the middle of the line, but this is a natural outcome of right justification or ‘winnowing’ (§2.5 below); there are also lines of a two-syllable word followed by a six-syllable word. moreover, there is nothing that would mark a caesura in a line in sung performance. 26 frog the meter has been considered generally exceptional (fabb 2009: 163). this constraint produces a regular contrastive alignment of lexically stressed short syllables with metrically unstressed positions, which i refer to as contrastive stress. contrastive stress is striking because it seems counter-intuitive to the degree that it has been proposed that we would never have discovered the meter without evidence of its performance (ross, lehiste 2001: 116). this convention is quite strong, but does not hold for 100% of lines even in regions where the metrical form is most strict and regular (sadeniemi 1951: 43–45). 2.4. alliteration another distinctive feature of the poetic form is a convention that two lexically stressed syllables in a line should begin with the same sound, but the positions of those syllables are not interfaced with the metrical template. in other words, it is an alliterative metrical form but alliteration is not part of the meter; instead, alliteration floats on top of the meter in a line without a direct relation to metrical constraints.6 alliteration is significantly more flexible than the placement of long and short syllables. it ideally includes both the onset consonant and following vowel (strong alliteration); if the following vowel is not the same, there is a phonological hierarchy of which vowels are preferred (krikmann 2015). onset alliteration is not required in every line, and its absence can be accommodated by alternative strategies for integrating a verse into the acoustic texture of performance, such as alliteration on metrically stressed rather than lexically stressed syllables or phonic patterning across adjacent verses (frog, stepanova 2011: 201). daniel abondolo (2013) has remarked that the fact that alliteration is not formally metrical suggests that it is a secondary feature that has complemented the metrical form. 2.5. right justification or ‘winnowing’ longer words are generally positioned at the end of a line rather than at its onset. in itself, this is a manifestation of a common phenomenon in oral poetry of right justification (foley 1990: 96–106, 178–196), which manifests as a formal convention for organizing words in a line. in the present context, interest 6 in discussions at conferences, mari sarv has repeatedly advocated for this distinction. 27the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? in this convention is that right justification is subordinate to the placement of long and short syllables.7 2.6. parallelism semantic and syntactic parallelism are an integrated feature of the poetic form, although parallelism is not formally required of every verse (see further steinitz 1934; saarinen 2017). parallelism will remain outside of the concerns of the present article, but it may be noted that right justification extends to the organization of parallel verses (kuusi 1952). 3. main approaches to the origins of the finnic tetrameter 3.1. a proto-uralic inheritance? theories of the history of the finnic tetrameter not infrequently address potential relationships with poetries in other uralic (or finno-ugric) languages. eugene helimski argues that the finnic tetrameter is associated with the meter of northern samoyedic shamanic singing and ritual. the poetry is typically composed in an isosyllabic trochaic tetrameter with a mandatory caesura in the middle of the line. this presents an eight-syllable trochaic line that is equivalent to the finnic tetrameter, but which differs in that it: a) lacks the constraints on syllable placement; b) lacks the complement of alliteration; and c) exhibits a caesura (helimski 1998: 44–45; 2003: 201; see also helimsky, kosterkina 2004: 220–221). a historical relationship between the meters would most reasonably trace back to a common proto-uralic language phase, which would mean it had been in continuous use in each language family for more than four thousand years. methodologically, helimski’s theory begins from a transparent formal similarity of meters. it then accounts for these similarities and their long-term continuity through two factors: 7 for example, the word mehiläinen as a four-syllable word should appear at the end of a line owing to the number of syllables. however, it only appears at the beginning of a line, because its initial syllable is short, which would contrast with the constraint on the placement of stressed syllables. 28 frog 1. these language groups remained closer to the syllabic structure of proto-uralic while reductions through syncope and apocope in other uralic language motivated change in the inherited meter (helimski 1998: 45). 2. northern samoyedic eight-syllable and six-syllable meters had complementary distribution in use so that the eight-syllable meter was used for sacred forms of discourse whereas the six-syllable meter was for profane discourse; sacred status was a crucial factor in the longue durée of the meter (helimski 1998: 44–45; 2003: 201). helimski does not situate this model more directly in relation to the degree of difference between samoyedic and other uralic languages, nor does he contextualize comparison among meter and poetics of other uralic languages. the great differences in performance practices of the different languages also lack consideration, although continuity in metrical form would require adaptation to different modes and practices of performance across millennia. when language contacts can historically impact meters (e.g. sarv 2011), the fact that octosyllabic verse is also not uncommon across languages in central and northern eurasia (leisiö 2001) warrants consideration. metrically, comparison is a system of four features: a) an isosyllabic meter b) of eight positions that is c) rhythmically organized as a tetrameter d) with a trochaic rhythm. it is quite possible that individual poetic features could have continuity from proto-uralic, as seems to be the case with parallelism (cf. lotz 1954; tkačenko 1979; jakobson 1981 [1966]; fox 2014). ingrid rüütel (1998), for example, has proposed that the isosyllabic structuring of verses in performance is an archaic feature of the finnic singing tradition that is shared across several uralic languages. isosyllabic structure could indeed have a continuity in poetics going back to proto-uralic, but that would only account for one of four features in helimski’s model. more recently, niina aasmäe, pärtel lippus, karl pajusalu, nele salveste, tatjana zirnask and tiit-rein viitso observe that “(rhythmic)” trochaic prosody appears typical of uralic languages (2013: 31), which has implications of historical continuity. if metrical form were purely an abstract linguistic phenomenon, isosyllabism could have augmented and systematized language prosody yielding a trochaic metrical form (cf. korhonen 1994: 84–86 and the discussion below). however, oral poetry is a performance-centered practice, so linguistic stresses and performance rhythms might also be aligned through extrametrical features like expletives, as in some samoyedic poetries (see niemi, j. 2015–2016; 2020), vocables or other devices (cf. also kallio, k. 2013; 2020). a trochaic metrical structure in an isosyllabic rhythm is possible for proto-uralic, but cannot be assumed 29the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? solely on the basis of reconstructed linguistic prosody. the question of verse length as octosyllabic, tetrametric or both is still more difficult to assess. the four-millennium continuity of all four of helimski’s features as a system yielding an isosyllabic trochaic tetrameter based on the presence of such meters in ritual poetry of two language branches looks suspiciously ideal without a far broader and more sophisticated comparative analysis. one appeal of helimski’s theory is that it could account for the fact that the finnic tetrameter was used for a remarkable number of genres, ranging from epic and incantations to lyric verse, bawdy songs, proverbs and riddles. from the perspective of semiotic ideologies, if the poetic form had earlier held a prestige status connected with an authoritative mode of social or religious discourse, then it would be unsurprising for that poetic form to be drawn on in secular contexts and to have its fields of use extended. the social and religious significance of ritual and/or epic would construct an ideology of the variety of language characteristic of them, linking language form to assumptions, evaluations and connotations concerning the type of speech, constituting a language ideology (e.g. keane 1997; see also irvine 1989; irvine, gal 2000; kroskrity 2001). the poetic mode of expression as a medium of discourse8 would be subject to valorization linked to the type(s) of speech of which it was iconic. this can be approached in relation to media ideologies (gershon 2010a; 2010b), which could be carried by the poetic form if applied in use with already established or new speech varieties, and the media ideology would then reciprocally evolve according to how the poetic form would be used across speech varieties in society. put simply, the poetic form associated with religious and ritual uses would develop a media ideology valorizing it relative to other media, and that status would account for extensions of its use across genres as a valued or elevated mode of expression. the opposite, however, seems improbable: a popular poetic form exclusive to secular contexts of entertainment is unlikely to have use extended to sacred and ritual contexts at the expense of poetic forms with established authority and valorized status. helimski’s proposition remains quite hypothetical, but samoyedic languages exhibit a noteworthy uniformity in vocabulary related to shamanism (janhunen 1986: 106–109). this is an indicator of historical conservatism in this area of culture at least from proto-samoyedic, which seems to be more of an exception than a norm in northern eurasia (see janhunen 1986). it is at least possible that samoyedic languages could be conservative in poetics as well. 8 i consider medium as that which mediates communication at a general level whereas mode “involves a structuring of a medium’s use in ways that produce predictable, socially distinguishable formal differences in expression” from other modes (frog 2017a: 586). 30 frog when considering the history of the meter, helimski’s comparison only accounts, maximally, for the (more or less) syllabic basis and rhythm of a trochaic tetrameter. it does not account for the distinctive features of the finnic meter concerning the placement of long and short stressed syllables or unintegrated alliteration. 3.2. a common finnic and mordvinic meter? the finnic tetrameter has been compared to mordvinic meters, although the relationship has been more often mentioned than explored. heikki paasonen entered this topic into discussion as early as 1897 when he proposed a relationship between the finnic meter and a mordvinic octosyllabic meter with caesura and occasional alliteration. this comparison became less compelling when metrical analysis revealed that mordvin oral poetry has lines of 7–17 syllables, among which octosyllabic verse is not the most common (paasonen 1911). (for discussion, see korhonen 1994: 75–77.) recently, paul kiparsky proposed that the mordvinic meters are the result of reorganizing the metrical system based on an inherited equivalent of the finnic tetrameter. historical changes in the phonology of mordvinic languages affected word length, stress patterns and quantitative oppositions. kiparsky theorizes that these changes disrupted alliteration and positioning of long and short stressed syllables as well as the regularity in the number of syllables in a line. these disruptions compelled a restructuring of the metrical system that maintained an isosyllabic base: “the higher-order metrical organization is determined by the interaction of two partially conflicting constraints, saliency, marked by catalexis, and (metrical) parallelism” (kiparsky 2014: 37). kiparsky’s model presupposes that the key features of alliteration and placement of stressed syllables were already established in the meter inherited into mordvinic languages. comparisons between finnic and mordvinic meters are based on the classic family tree model of uralic languages as a progressive splitting off of languages, beginning from samoyedic (if this is included at all), followed by ob-ugric (khanty, mansi, hungarian), permic (komi, udmurt), volgic (mari, mordvin), and finally the splitting of finnic and sámi language families. in this model, a historical relationship between finnic and mordvinic meters would derive at least from the hypothetical proto-finno-volgic language stage. however, this model of the family tree has been developed mainly on the basis of lexicon rather than shared phonological innovations. it now seems unlikely that finnic and sámi had a shared language phase of so-called proto-finnosámic or that mordvin and mari had a shared language phase of so-called 31the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? proto-volgic, let alone an earlier common proto-finno-volgic phase (see saarikivi 2007; luobbal (aikio) 2012a; häkkinen 2012; frog 2017c). although finnic and mordvinic as well as sámic languages belong to networks of west uralic languages, their respective histories of phonological developments do not resolve into a clear stemma of genetic descent; they are potentially or probably independent branches from proto-uralic (see saarikivi 2011: 106–110; also frog 2017c: 38). if finnic and mordvinic derive from an earlier branch of proto-uralic, they separated from one another so early that such a branch cannot be distinguished. from this perspective, there is no basis for the assumption of a common language phase shared by finnic and mordvinic languages after the breakup of proto-uralic, which has been the basis for comparison between the meters of these languages. nevertheless, connections between finnic, mordvinic and sámi languages suggest long-term interactions in common networks (kuusi 1963; saarikivi 2011: 106–110). although comparisons cannot trace back to a common language phase intermediate from proto-uralic, it may provide relevant indicators concerning earlier historical periods in the respective languages related to participation in shared networks. trochaic prosody has been considered common for uralic languages (aasmäe et al. 2013: 31) whereas russian folk meters are not generally syllabic (bailey 1992), making it seem improbable that the syllabic system of mordvinic meters derives from russian language contacts. it seems more likely to reflect an inherited structuring principle of verse that was established at least as early as the viking age, when slavic language spread along trade routes through uralic language areas of today’s russia.9 although ambiguous in itself, comparison supports the probability that the syllabic base of the finnic tetrameter could have archaic roots, even if those roots are not presumed to go back as far as proto-uralic. 3.3. a baltic loan? in his study of latvian poetry, a. r. niemi (1918) observed an octosyllabic verse form in daina poetry that produced trochaic lines. he compared this to the finnic tetrameter as its potential origin. finnic languages exhibit a rich layer of baltic loanwords indicative of intensive contacts and influences (larsson 2001), which are paralleled by impacts on mythology and traditions (harvilahti 1990). comparison with daina poetry connected the finnic 9 on the lack of evidence for a historically related verse form in sámic languages, see frog 2017c: 62. 32 frog tetrameter with this wide-ranging influence. however, the interpretation of the historical relationship between latvian and finnic meters was superficial and problematic. niemi’s comparisons between finnic and baltic language traditions generally suffered from lack of contextualization in relation to other traditions (hautala 1954: 340–341). his theory of the origin of the finnic tetrameter reflects his broader ideas of historical relations and directions of influence between finnic and baltic language groups, connected to evidence of linguistic loans (see also wilson 1976: 96–98). petri kallio (2020) has recently shown that the baltic loans seem to be of substrate character. in other words, the influences on language and culture probably result from proto-finnic language spreading through regions where what kallio calls north baltic was spoken, resulting in a language shift. basically, when proto-finnic arrived, a proto-baltic language was spoken by people who lived in the region, and the proto-baltic speakers gradually began speaking proto-finnic. linguistic evidence indicates that the significant contacts with baltic languages were completed in the language phase known as middle proto-finnic, before the beginning of the present era (kallio, p. 2020). continuity of a metrical form through a language shift is theoretically possible, although discussion in the following section makes an emergence of the poetic form in middle proto-finnic seem improbable. a central problem with the baltic origin theory is that the meter for comparison is only found in latvian; similar meters in the more historically conservative lithuanian language are lacking. the rhythms of the daina meter also appear linked to the development of initial stress in latvian. proto-baltic did not have word-initial stress, and a trochaic rhythm for a primary poetic form is improbable; proto-baltic is more likely to have had a primary poetic form for epic and ritual poetries closer to an indo-european model. latvian initial stress is identified with finnic influence, which may be of substrate character – i.e. from baltic language spreading through areas where finnic was spoken – during the iron age or potentially as late as the early middle ages (balode, holvoet 2001: 9; koptjevskaja-tamm wälchli 2001: 638–639). interpreting similarities between the finnic tetrameter and latvian daina meters in connection with the stratum of baltic influences on proto-finnic more than two millennia ago thus seems anachronistic. the latvian meter may be more reasonably attributed to finnic influences rather than vice versa (korhonen 1994: 82–84, 86). comparison with latvian verse is centrally at the level of octosyllabic lines that can have a trochaic rhythm or have an asymmetrical structure (e.g. 3+5 syllables). although verses (and stanzas) may exhibit alliteration, this is irregular, and the organization of stressed syllables according to length is absent. 33the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? 3.4. a language-driven development in late proto-finnic? mikko korhonen (1994 [1986]) argues that developments in the transition from what is known as middle proto-finnic to late proto-finnic “created sufficient conditions for the spontaneous emergence of a new metric system” – i.e. the finnic tetrameter (1994: 85). middle proto-finnic had a strong contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables in words, which is reflected in the levelling of vowels in unstressed syllables. a relevant change in the transition to late proto-finnic is a weakening of this contrast and emergence of secondary stress on the third syllable of longer words. this change in prosody gives words of four syllables a trochaic rhythm in normal speech. korhonen takes a language-driven approach to meter. consequently, he considers middle protofinnic to have most likely had an accentual meter based on metrical stress followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables as a formalization of rhythms in conversational speech. the change in stress in late proto-finnic then, in its turn, produced a meter that formalized the new rhythms of conversational speech, producing a syllabic, trochaic rhythm. korhonen further proposes that the change in stress prominence was essential in enabling contrastive stress to become a metrical condition for short, lexically stressed syllables. in overview, korhonen sees the development of late proto-finnic first yielding a shift to syllabic rhythms, then developing a standard line length, and finally developing the contrastive stress of short stressed syllables in metrically unstressed positions. he considers this last development of contrastive stress as a strategy for using words with one, three or five syllables in the trochaic tetrameter (korhonen 1994: esp. 84–86). methodologically, korhonen’s approach views meter as unilaterally determined by spoken language prosody and phonology. he thus observes that finnic and mordvinic meters are both syllabic, but rejects a common protometrical system with a syllabic rhythm because he considers an accentual rhythm more probable at earlier stages of the proto-languages, probably back to proto-uralic (1994: 77–82). he does not consider that oral poetry will be performed in a way that distinguishes it from normal speech (e.g. tsur 1992), reflexively drawing attention to itself as verbal art (e.g. bauman 1984), nor does he consider that the mode of performance can thus become a primary determinant on rhythm and enunciation. sung performance of this finnic poetry generally subordinates lexical stress to metrical stress and vowel length to the performance rhythm, as well as smoothing over transitions between words (collinder 1946: 38; sadeniemi 1951: 95; leino 1994: 67–68). pentti leino (1994: 69), for example, proposes that sung performance was a key to enabling contrastive stress in the meter, thus attributing this development to a 34 frog different factor than korhonen. of course, the metrical structure of oral poetry will not maintain distinctions that are not present in the language and perceivable by language users, but meters evolve in a symbiotic relationship with language rather than in a unilateral relationship to it (foley 1996). if syllables are distinguished in a language, there is nothing to inhibit an isosyllabic meter or a trochaic rhythm. this is not to say that helimski is right and korhonen is wrong, only that korhonen’s approach is no less problematic than helimski’s. korhonen’s approach produces a justification for contrastive stress that only accounts for why lexical stress would not be uniformly identified with metrical stress rather than why contrastive stress would be systematically metricalized. the general view seems to be that the poetry first developed a trochaic rhythm and later metricalized contrastive stress. paavo ravila (1935) proposed that contrastive stress developed specifically in relation to sung performance in order to avoid confusing long and short vowels (e.g. tuuli = ‘wind’ vs. tuli = ‘fire’). however, pentti leino (1994: 61–62) points out that this only concerns vowel length and, in context, this concern would be relevant to very few words to motivate such a rule. the dominant explanation has been that the trochaic rhythm initially aligned all metrical stresses with lexical stresses, but this created a difficulty that the meter limited the use of words to those with even numbers of syllables. korhonen (1994: 86) sees this as one practical solution that could also have been accomplished by either allowing more syllables in unstressed positions or allowing single syllables to stretch across metrical positions. leino (1994: 69) sees the metrical development as a gradual formalization of pragmatic variations produced by occasional uses of words with odd numbers of syllables. these explanations are unsatisfying. the proposal that contrastive stress developed in order to enable use of the full range of vocabulary has four weaknesses. first, this model does not account for why a trochaic rhythm would become established at all if the limits it placed on vocabulary made it difficult to use; it is simply taken for granted. second, the initial restrictiveness of the poetic form seems inconsistent with the range of genres for which the tetrameter was later used. if the form was hard to use, it seems improbable that it would have spread across a wide range of genres; if it only spread after innovation, it is unclear why it would displace alternative poetic forms. third, it is unclear why the solution to the problem of limitations to vocabulary use would be resolved by an increase in metrical complexity. finally, it is unclear why that solution would be the metricalization of an otherwise counter-intuitive contrast between lexical and metrical stress made systematic according to syllable length or weight. basically, korhonen’s theory reduces to a narrative that the meter was a spontaneous product of natural language which was, however, unsuited to people’s needs, and so they 35the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? added constraints to the meter that seem counter-intuitive to natural language in order to be able to use more vocabulary. in korhonen’s approach to the history of the trochaic tetrameter and possible solutions to the problem he sees of how to use words with an odd number of syllables (1994: 86), he overlooks that verbal art evolves its diction – the register of verbal art – in relation to metrical constraints (foley 1996). the use of words with an odd number of syllables could have potentially been accommodated in a number of ways. for example, they could have been accompanied by expletive particles – i.e. words or sounds that have a metrical but not a semantic value in the verse (as the word on = ‘is’ can be used in finno-karelian poetry); they could also be extended with affixes such as diminutive suffixes, frequentative affixes for verbs, and so on (frog 2017b: 438).10 they could have used parallel forms that might derive historically from different dialects or periods maintained as metrical alternatives (e.g. haukka and havukka = ‘hawk’), stretch long vowels across two positions and so forth (cf. foley 1996: 27–37; coleman 1999: 36–45; lauerma 2004; sarv 2014–2015; also helimski 1998: 44). the hypothesis that the metricalization of contrastive stress was a secondary development owing to limitations on vocabulary fails to consider that the vocabulary would have first evolved symbiotically with the meter in order to suitably express what was customarily required through the poetic form (see also frog 2015: 82–89). from the perspective of interactions between language and meter, korhonen’s argument yields a compelling point concerning changes in language prosody and the emergence of the finnic tetrameter. the levelling of contrasts between stressed and unstressed syllables in spoken language does seem to provide conditions for the metricalization of contrastive stress. in other words, the relative weakening of the prominence of lexically stressed syllables allowed the meter to organize their placement according to a relationship between syllabic quantity and metrical stress. lexical stress determined which syllables were metrically relevant but they could more naturally be destressed in the performance rhythm without this being perceived as a deformation of pronunciation. in middle proto-finnic, the more substantial difference 10 amid the extensive literature on kalevalaic poetry, i recall (i hope not falsely) a reference to an otherwise unfamiliar work, probably from the second half of the 20th century, that treats uses of such devices in the meter. unfortunately, i have not been able to find it when rereading any of the articles where i thought i encountered the reference and have not otherwise identified the relevant work. these devices and their use in the syllabically structured of kalevala-meter can be compared to corresponding devices in the more flexible poetic form of karelian laments (on which, see stepanova, e. 2014: ch. 4; 2015). 36 frog in prominence between lexically stressed and unstressed syllables makes the emergence of the meter less likely. the more pronounced this contrast, the more likely destressing a stressed syllable and stressing the following syllable would be perceived as deformation unless people had already been naturalized to contrastive stress through the performance tradition. thus, the metrical convention of contrastive stress might survive through the momentum of the singing culture in a linguistic environment where stressed syllables increased in relative prominence, but, the greater the contrast, the less likely contrastive stress is to emerge as a metricalized feature. 4. a theory of hybridization the transition from middle to late proto-finnic potentially created conditions in which the finnic tetrameter could emerge. there is no reason to believe that these changes spontaneously produced an isosyllabic meter with a trochaic rhythm per se: syllabic rhythms may have already been part of the inherited performance culture (e.g. rüütel 1998), as indeed could have been trochaic rhythms, as proposed by helmiski. however, the change in language prosody may have been an essential condition for the metricalization of contrastive stress. petri kallio (p.c.) notes that changes also involved syncope that produced a long stressed monosyllable in high-frequency words such as pää = ‘head, end’ and maa = ‘land’ (kallio, p. 2007). this may have been relevant by increasing the vocabulary available for metrically stressed positions if these excluded short lexically stressed syllables, while the trochaic rhythm would require such monosyllables in nominative, genitive or accusative cases to be followed by a lexically stressed syllable in a metrically unstressed position.11 however, these conditions do not themselves account for the emergence of the metrical form, and most particularly do not account for the distinctive features of metricalized contrastive stress and unmetricalized alliteration. loanword evidence allows the transition to late proto-finnic to be dated as beginning around a.d. 200 according to the absolute chronology of germanic 11 as noted above, ravila’s (1935) theory that metricalized contrastive stress was driven by the need to distinguish between long and short vowels in stressed syllables does not hold up under scrutiny (leino 1994: 61–62). however, riho grünthal (p.c.) observes that luobbal sámmol sámmol ánte’s (2012b) recent work on finnic long vowels indicates that the vowel system did not develop a full set of quantity contrasts until late proto-finnic, which may reflect and entail sensitivities to quantity relevant to the metricalization of stressed syllable quantities. 37the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? languages.12 late proto-finnic is characterized by intensive contacts with proto-scandinavian languages, which seem to occur especially in the period of proto-scandinavian language dated to roughly a.d. 200–550 as is observable especially through the remarkable number of loanwords (see läglos and the overview in kallio, p. 2015). by around a.d. 800, the number of word stems in late proto-finnic borrowed from germanic was probably greater than the number inherited from a pre-finnic language phase, and perhaps several times the number borrowed from baltic languages (ahola et al. 2014: 258). petri kallio (2015: 26) has treated this as a superstrate comparable to that of french in english – i.e. a layer of influence from a language and culture that was valorized, presumably owing to social power or prestige of speakers identified with it (cf. also mufwene 2007: 75–79). the scope and magnitude of influences from proto-scandinavian language make it reasonable to consider that influences may have extended from vocabulary and syntax to things that people do with language, such as practices of verbal art. germanic languages exhibit a common metrical and poetic system that was used across a wide range of genres (e.g. sievers 1893; árnason 1991; russom 1998). features of this poetic system relevant here are: 1. an accentual tetrameter. verses were organized in half-lines or hemistichs. each half-line customarily had two metrically stressed positions and two unstressed positions; unstressed positions could have one or more syllables each, and one or more syllables could be in anacrusis (i.e. be extrametrical) at the beginning of each hemistich.13 because the rhythm is based on accents rather than syllables, a half-line was composed of two or more words, although some are built from compounds. 2. placement of metrical stress. metrical stress was coordinated with phrasal stress, so metrical stress was on words with greater weight in a phrase within a hemistich, especially nouns and adjectives, and which words 12 germanic languages can be dated on an absolute chronology back to roughly the beginning of the present era on the basis of runic inscriptions. the ability to identify sound changes in germanic languages on an absolute chronology makes it possible to date periods of changes in finnic languages on the basis of loanword evidence. 13 the verse form is most commonly known through edvard sievers’ (1893) typology, in which verses are regularly identified with four stressed positions divided into two hemistichs comprised of two stressed positions and two unstressed positions or one unstressed and one with secondary stress. sievers’ typology gets treated quite often as a theoretical model of germanic verse, but, as kristján árnason (2016: 74–76, 79) has recently stressed, sievers himself saw it as only a descriptive tool with much variation that falls outside of it. there is also a variation known as a hypermetric line, with an additional stressed position in one hemistich, which is not relevant here. 38 frog carried stress and alliteration was connected with relative weight within the phrasal unit. 3. syllabic quantity rules. syllabic quantities were distinguished in the meter. these are customarily referred to as ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ syllables but equated to long and short syllables in the period of most intense contact and were directly comparable to quantities in proto-finnic. metrically stressed positions could only be filled by a heavy stressed syllable or its equivalent (2 morae). a light stressed syllable (1 mora) could only fill a metrically stressed position with what is called ‘resolution’: it had to be accompanied by a second light syllable and the two together would act as a single heavy syllable (1+1=2 morae). 4. metricalized alliteration. one or both stressed syllables in stressed positions in the first hemistich would carry alliteration with the stressed syllable in the first stressed position in the second hemistich. if we posit the hypothesis that the proto-finnic poetic system had a prominent isosyllabic meter or generally relied on syllable-based rhythms, then metrical hybridization with the germanic poetic system would account for the finnic tetrameter including its distinctive features. 4.1. difference in rhythm the main hurdle of this account is the difference in rhythm. it requires the premise of an isosyllabic meter or isosyllabism as a metrical principle more generally in the proto-finnic poetic ecology, a premise that finds support in comparative evidence in combination with later evidence of the kalevalameter. however, this premise must more narrowly specify that isosyllabism held such a position that the germanic poetic form was restructured by it in such a way that verse length developed a periodic syllabic metrical form. this premise is required to account for the germanic accentual verse form with four strong positions across two half-lines becoming a finnic syllabic tetrameter. if helimski’s theory is accepted that finnic and samoyedic preserve a proto-uralic trochaic tetrameter associated with ritual and epic, then the difference in rhythm could be explained as the product of mapping the germanic accentual poetic form on the inherited trochaic tetrameter that held comparable status and functions in finnic society. however, helmiski’s theory is here considered only a possibility, so the alternative and more basic possibility of a metrical ecology that only imposed isosyllabism is considered here. 39the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? for the difference in rhythm, certain differences between the languages are relevant. finnic had systematic word-initial stress while germanic had stem-initial stress, so prefixes were unstressed, and germanic used a variety of prepositions where finnic would use case endings. whereas germanic could easily have unstressed syllables before the first stressed position in a verse, finnic word-initial stress would regularly align the first metrical stress at the onset of a verse. this difference would break from the floating stress patterns of germanic meter and may have supported movement to a syllabic rather than accentual rhythm. if the poetic ecology drove the germanic form into a periodic syllabic structure, maintaining four stressed positions with the first at the onset of a verse would presumably incline these to be regulated within the syllabic structure. if the rhythm of the germanic form with its four stressed positions were aligned with the prosodic structure of late proto-finnic rather than inclining to some other structure, this would yield a trochaic rhythm (which may have already been a familiar structure of the poetic ecology). at this point, the model is no less speculative than the proposals of helimski or korhonen. korhonen’s model lacks motivation for a tetrameter rather than a pentameter or longer trochaic verse form, whereas this stage of comparison gives the same system of four features that helimski proposed as having continuity from proto-uralic: a) an isosyllabic meter b) of eight positions that is c) rhythmically organized as a tetrameter d) with a trochaic rhythm. the model presented here would account for this set of features, but, it does not exclude the possibility that hybridization may have occurred with an inherited syllabic or trochaic form, such as that proposed by helimski. however, the description here would at least account for how a syllabic structure was aligned with the germanic form to produce a trochaic tetrameter. 4.2. contrastive stress the metrical conventions for the placement of long and short stressed syllables are both the most distinctive feature of the poetic form and also the most regular organizing principle of verses after the constraint on line length to eight positions (violation of which would disrupt sung rhythms whereas violation of stressed syllable quantity would only disrupt metrical texture). the conventions governing stressed syllable placement thus appear crucial to understanding the poetic form. korhonen’s theory proposes a metrical proto-form in which the formalization of language prosody identifies metrically strong positions with primary and secondary stresses while excluding these from metrically weak positions; the consequence that only words of even 40 frog numbers of syllables can be used is then proposed to motivate the metricalization of contrastive stress as an innovation allowing use of words with an odd number of syllables (cf. also leino 1994). if the model of hybridization is accepted, rather than a secondary development, metricalized contrastive stress emerges as a direct outcome of restructuring the germanic poetic form into a trochaic tetrameter. an octosyllabic structure combined with late proto-finnic word length would normally allow only two to four words per line, closer to what would be in a germanic hemistich. consequently, there were only exceptionally more lexically stressed syllables in a line than metrical feet. the proportion of metrically strong positions to lexically stressed syllables would neutralize the germanic meter’s requirement of a heavy syllable in every metrically strong position because of the potential for disproportion between strong positions and stressed syllables. organization based on phrasal stress rather than lexical stress would also be neutralized: syllabic weight or quantity would become relevant for all stressed syllables, irrespective of word class and word order. the germanic meter’s constraints based on phrasal stress and quantity regularly resulted in lexically stressed syllables in metrically weak positions. if the germanic quantity rules are applied in an isosyllabic verse, all long, stressed syllables would need to be placed on metrically stressed positions by default.14 at the same time, resolution is incompatible with isosyllabism and short stressed syllables would become excluded from metrically stressed positions, giving metricalized contrastive stress. the flexibility of the first foot is not directly accounted for by the germanic tradition. however, flexibility at the onset can also be compared to anacrusis in germanic verse, allowing extra syllables at the onset of hemistichs (greater for the first than the second), and it aligns with the widely-found tendency for increasing regularity toward the end of a verse, which also manifests right justification in the finnic tetrameter, suggesting its presence in the ecology. functionally, the flexibility of the first foot plays a key role in enabling variation in word order so that conditions of syllabic quantity can be met elsewhere. the relaxing of this constraint in the first foot can thus be seen as an organic outcome of developing the utility of the poetic form by allowing flexibility while limiting it to the onset of the verse. the exceptional complexity (fabb 14 the exception to this is the verb olla = ‘to be’ – on = ‘is’ – which stands outside of this constraint. however, it might be noted that within germanic phrasal stress, verbs were generally weak except in certain phrasal word order. although on is formally a long syllable, the fact that it can operate as a short syllable in the meter, perhaps coincidentally, is consistent with the germanic poetic system. 41the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? 2009: 163) of the dual metrical constraint associated with long and short stressed syllables is then explained as emerging from a poetic system with central principles governing syllables that could be used in metrically strong positions, only allowing for short stressed syllables under conditions that could not be met in a syllabic rhythm. 4.3. unmetricalized alliteration notably, discussions of the origins of the finnic tetrameter tend not to give consideration to alliteration, which is either ignored or taken for granted as a ‘natural’ outcome of initial stress. alliteration may be found in a wide range of poetries, but nigel fabb (2015: ch. 5) observes that it is nevertheless relatively infrequent as an integrated feature of poetic form. proto-uralic had wordinitial stress, which was maintained in several of its descendent languages. uses of alliteration are found in uralic languages both with and without initial stress (leino 1970: 13), but it does not appear as a primary or systematic verseorganizing principle in poetic composition (cf. latvian dainas above). finnic and germanic languages both employ alliteration as a central, systematic feature in their poetry traditions, forming an isogloss along with celtic poetries. moreover, alliteration in these traditions is formally similar as line-internal, in contrast to so-called ‘vertical alliteration’ that links the beginnings of verses in series, prominent in mongolian poetry (kara 2011) and some turkic poetry traditions (radloff 1866: 86–91; reichl 1992: 176 and cf. 199–200, 272–274). in both finnic and germanic, systematic use of alliteration reflects an innovation in the poetic systems from their respective uralic and indo-european heritages (see also roper 2009; koptjevskaja-tamm, wälchli 2001: 638–640). the position of alliteration as a basic and yet unmetricalized feature of lines in the finnic tetrameter cannot not be taken for granted as a ‘natural’ outcome of initial stress. the apparent isogloss of verse-internal alliteration as a central poetic feature in the north suggests a role of historical contacts. as daniel abondolo (2013) observes, the fact that alliteration is not metricalized in the finnic tetrameter makes it appear secondary, even if alliteration remains valorized and a conventional feature of a verse line. this is more striking when compared, for example, to poetries in iceland, where the valorization of alliteration leads it to be integrated into assimilated meters where alliteration was otherwise lacking (árnason 2011). alliteration in the germanic meter has a metrical function of linking paired hemistichs. the finnic tetrameter lacks a caesura and thus a verse has no hemistichs to link. if alliteration were assimilated through germanic influence on poetics, it could 42 frog not fill an identical role in this meter. of the normally two to four words within the proto-finnic octosyllabic verse structure, two should alliterate. the only metrical position in which a stressed syllable predictably falls is the first syllable of a line. although the first syllable in a verse may be either long or short, word order in the remaining feet is governed by the constraint on the placement of stressed syllables within very flexible syntax.15 metricalizing alliteration in that position would place a constraint on the foot offering flexibility in the placement of stressed syllables, creating a competition between constraints as fixed and free in the opposite feet, with all but the second of eight verse positions governed by one or the other. utility of the poetic form would seem to require one of these principles to be primary, and maintaining both would likely severely limit its range of uses. such a competition also seems unlikely to develop from the germanic verse form, where alliteration was coordinated with strong metrical positions governed by the quantity rules. hypothetically, alliteration could have been metricalized for one or more other positions in a finnic line, but this would have almost certainly been at the expense of constraints on the placement of long and short stressed syllables. alliteration appears secondary to quantity rules in the hierarchy of metrical conventions. it may have been pragmatically unmetricalized owing to the limitations of an octosyllabic rhythm in which the quantity rules were maintained as primary. 4.4. alliteration as a poetic organizing principle in proto-finnic when alliteration in the finnic tetrameter is viewed exclusively in comparison with germanic verse, influence may appear relatively straightforward. however, viewing the finnic tetrameter as an outcome of hybridization does not exclude the possibility that alliteration may have already been a prominently-established part of the poetic ecology. alliteration was used across a remarkably wide range of genres in finnic languages, but for historical comparative purposes it is necessary to look to whole poetic systems that can arguably be traced to a common proto-finnic heritage. alliteration was also a primary organizing principle for the poetry of finnic laments, which were performed with a distinct poetic system that does not appear to have been historically based on syllabic rhythms or periodically repeating metrical 15 for a recent study of verse-internal syntax in the northern karelian dialect of this poetry, see saarinen 2018: ch. 4; the number of words in a verse is so few that inter-linear syntax is particularly significant, but these topics are beyond the scope of the present discussion. 43the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? structures (frog, stepanova 2011; stepanova, e. 2012; 2014).16 as a genre of practice, finnic lament likely has an unbroken (if continuously evolving) continuity from proto-uralic (stepanova, e. 2012; 2014; see also stepanova, e. 2011). alliteration’s use as a primary organizing principle for this type of verbal art seems to be specific to finnic languages. as with the finnic tetrameter and germanic verse, alliteration is internal to poetic units of lament utterance rather than linking them in series. finnic alliteration has been suggested to have deep roots that may extend back to an uralic heritage (e.g. leino 1970: 13–14; sarv 1999: 132). alliteration can be found across several of these languages, which is unsurprising for languages that have historically had initial stress. in other uralic languages, alliteration is found in sayings, idioms, proverbs and also used in poetry, both as alliteration proper and as a by-product of figura etymologica or lexical repetitions, but other uralic poetries do not seem to support alliteration as a systematic verse-organizing principle. in other uralic languages, verse-internal alliteration can be compared, for example, to its use in turkic oral poetries (radloff 1866: 87–88), and it is found less prominently even in indo-european languages without word-initial stress (watkins 1995: 23; cf. lord 1960: 42 etc.). 16 finnic laments were a women’s tradition of sung ritual poetry that survived to documentation only in orthodox areas (i.e. it generally disappeared from estonia and finland). formal structuring principles of finnic laments vary considerably on a continuum of regional traditions. at the southern end of this continuum in setomaa (southeast estonia and adjacent russia), laments were formally quite similar to and convergent with local forms of the finnic tetrameter, which had shifted toward and accentual form and become a women’s singing tradition. in ingria and progressing through regions to the north toward the white sea, the verbal units become variable in scope composed in relation to correspondingly variably musical structures, and the scope of individual units also increase from a more verse-like structure to poetic ‘strings’ that may be up to ca. 40 words in length organized according to a single pattern of alliteration. (see frog, stepanova 2011: 204–209 and works there cited.) finnic laments are here considered to have been historically a flexible form of poetic speech sung in relation to correspondingly flexible musical structures (e.g. niemi 2002; silvonen 2020). it is considered to have been closer to forms of lament in regions of karelia where the language had undergone fewer changes through syncope and apocope, and where the finnic tetrameter remained closer to what is reconstructed for proto-finnic. a problem for historical analysis is that lament was only documented in north finnic languages, in votic, a so-called central finnic language in dynamic interaction with north finnic groups, and in seto, representing so-called inland finnic, the most distantly related language branch from north finnic (kallio, p. 2014). as a consequence, the reconstruction allows a strong comparative perspective on north finnic lament, a perspective on lament in the culturally dynamic region of ingria, where votic and local north finnic lament may have received considerable contact-based influence, and then a extensive gap to seto lament. the continuum of variation in finnic lament tradition appears to parallel the continuum of variation in kalevalaic poetry (which gives a fuller picture). 44 frog fabb observes that “alliteration is widespread as an unsystematic characteristic of lines in many poetries” but “predictable and systematic alliteration is rare” (2015: 124). such rarity is in spite of the number and variety of the world’s languages with initial stress. this global perspective makes systematic alliteration in proto-uralic still less probable. alliteration in finnic poetry seems to diverge from that in other uralic languages as a systematic (if not metricalized) organizing principle for metrical verses and equivalent poetic units rather than simply being a ‘non-random’ and ‘statistically significant’ (sebeok, zeps 1959: 370, 384) complementary feature added to the poetic form. most likely, alliteration was a familiar and potentially even a common device in protouralic that only became systematic in finnic as a subsequent development. because this development is not exclusive to the tetrameter but also prominent in the poetic system of lament, it suggests a broader valorization of alliteration in finnic poetics, which raises the question of whether alliteration was a primary and systematically employed poetic principle prior to germanic language influence or germanic language influence carried more significant and extensive impacts on finnic poetics. the question of the background of alliteration in finnic poetics can be considered in relation to the history of language contacts. with its spread to the baltic sea region, finnic became established on the frontier of a continuum of uralic languages and dialects that spread across northern eurasia. whereas sámi languages exhibit significant evidence of so-called palaeo-european languages that were superseded to extinction by indo-european and uralic languages (luobbal [aikio] 2012a), finnic languages lack evidence of significant loans from any such languages (kallio, p. 2020).17 this suggests that the rise of alliteration can be most reasonably attributed to internal innovation or contact with an otherwise known language family. impacts from other uralic languages are more difficult to assess, but there is not evidence of 17 this is the common current view. however, there is a substantial amount of vocabulary shared by finnic and sámi which gets left outside of this discussion because it was earlier considered to derive from a common language phase, although it could also reflect contacts with a third language. on the other hand, there is no reason to believe that such hypothetical language contact would have introduced alliteration as a central feature in proto-finnic ethnopoetics when alliteration is not prominent in other languages east of the baltic sea. similarly, words considered germanic loans into proto-finnic but which lack cognates in other indo-european languages also require reassessment, although the number of such words is probably not so significant as to suggest potential impacts on the poetic system. more generally, it seems rather unlikely that a single language would have significant presence on both sides of the baltic sea presumably in the bronze age leading it to impact both finnic and germanic ethnopoetics independently. 45the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? significant impacts from such languages, nor that other uralic languages had comparable uses of alliteration that could have been carried into finnic. this is not surprising when the branch of proto-finnic that survived was on the frontier of contacts with baltic languages along the south, germanic to the west, and mobile cultures to the north (cf. frog, saarikivi 2015–2016), where etymological evidence suggests the flow of linguistic influence to have been predominantly unidirectional from finnic to sámi languages (aikio 2009; luobbal [aikio] 2012a). the finnic lexicon reveals a generally-recognized series of major strata of influences from different indo-european languages. an early group of vocabulary from an indo-iranian language or languages (which may have been mediated through networks) is shared by several other western uralic languages (koivulehto 2001) and is unlikely to have impacted finnic poetics. the baltic substrate observed above could have impacted poetics, but alliteration does not appear as a primary structuring principle of baltic poetries, giving no reason to believe the baltic substrate has any connection to finnic alliteration. significant contacts with slavic language begin around the beginning of the viking age, corresponding to the time when protofinnic dialects were diversifying into different languages (kallio, p. 2014; frog, saarikivi 2015–2016); alliteration is not a primary principle for slavic versification, and contact seems too late for the rise of finnic alliteration. germanic is the only language family with which finnic had extensive contacts and also exhibits alliteration as a significant poetic feature. the quantity of germanic loanword vocabulary in late proto-finnic also appears substantially greater than from any other stratum of linguistic influence, increasing the possibility that influence may have extended to poetics. as a systematic verse-organizing principle, alliteration is improbable for proto-uralic and unlikely to have entered proto-finnic through contact with any language other than germanic (noting that the review above also eliminates likelihood of a third language impacting the poetics of both finnic and germanic). although independent emergence of this principle might be hypothetically possible, contextualizing finnic and germanic alliteration with their intense history of contacts among alliteration in poetries of the world more generally makes multigenesis appear so improbable that it does not warrant serious consideration. intensive contacts with finnic began between late proto-finnic and north germanic / early proto-scandinavian, after proto-germanic had already diversified (schalin 2018). the alliterative, accentual verse form is common across the germanic languages; its emergence 46 frog is obscure, but most likely comes from a common language phase,18 quite probably connected with the shift to stem-initial stress already in early protogermanic / pre-germanic.19 moreover, germanic and celtic alliteration exhibit a number of striking parallels (travis 1942: 99) that make a historical relation unambiguous, and this relation must antedate germanic and finnic contacts.20 systematic alliteration in germanic thus seems to antedate significant contacts with proto-finnic, and thus can be assumed to have entered finnic through language contacts. this scenario would be consistent with the tremendous flow of vocabulary into late proto-finnic, and with the flow of culture across the baltic sea more generally, whereas alternative scenarios are difficult to reconcile with language history.21 although alliteration may have been an established device in middle proto-finnic and perhaps earlier, its advance to a systematic verse-structuring principle appears to have emerged through germanic language contact. this development can be reasonably correlated with linguistic influences in late proto-finnic, when impacts connected with the finnic tetrameter are also 18 although identification of the germanic alliterative verse form as a proto-germanic heritage is a reconstruction, etymological evidence shows the prominence of alliteration already prior to sound changes that distinguish north germanic: for example, the god óðinn’s male kin with names starting with /v/ must have been established in an earlier language phase when his name would have participated in the same alliteration (< proto-germanic *wōdinaz/*wōdanaz). 19 this development could potentially reflect a palaeo-european substrate resulting from language shifts, producing pre-germanic language in the spread of indo-european (see e.g. discussions in rifkin 2007; kroonen 2012; but see also the critical discussion in mees 2003), although connecting systematic alliteration to such substrate influence would be pure speculation. 20 the problem with a model of germanic influence on celtic after finnic contacts is one of chronology. other issues aside, the alliterative form would first need to spread from north to west germanic to reach the british isles with population mobility in the fifth century or later, but alliteration in old irish seems to have been established prior to phonological changes that occurred some centuries earlier (stifter 2016: 66). 21 proposing the reverse direction of influence from finnic to germanic or the emergence of alliteration as a verse-structuring principle in both languages through contacts faces three major issues. first, it appears incompatible with a historical relation between germanic and celtic alliteration. second, the restructuring of metrical principles for the most common and elevated form of germanic discourse is not comparable to etymologies of single words or individual images or narrative motifs: such an impact on a whole poetic system contrasts sharply with the lack of general evidence of finnic impacts on germanic. third, the emergence of the alliterative verse form in north germanic requires an explanation for the social process of the new poetic form’s spread to other germanic languages after proto-germanic’s diversification. 47the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? most probable. this yields three possibilities: a) alliteration first entered the ethnopoetics system with the emergence of the finnic tetrameter and gradually extended use; b) alliteration first became established in the ethnopoetic system, which supported its use in the development of the tetrameter; or c) the emergence of the tetrameter was one part of a broader transformation of the finnic ethnopoetic system. there is no way to determine which of these three is the case. i consider it least probable that alliteration entered finnic ethnopoetics through the tetrameter (a) and then became adapted to other poetic forms. this would not seem to account well for alliteration in lament, which seems to have been maintained as a distinct poetic system not based on periodic metered verse units.22 rather than alliteration entering ‘first’ (b), it seems most likely that these developments reflect broader changes in society and practices across a period of perhaps a few generations, during which the radical developments in ethnopoetics were negotiated and became established in more or less stable forms (c). 4.5. a perspective on the emergence of the finnic tetrameter these considerations lead me to theorize that the finnic tetrameter, as currently understood, emerged through a process of metrical hybridization, as a scandinavian metrical model was assimilated into the vernacular poetic system. scandinavian conventions of requiring long syllables in stressed positions were directly assimilated while the vernacular isosyllabic structure prevented the resolution of two short syllables in a single stressed position, with the outcome that short stressed syllables were excluded from metrically stressed positions. the prosodic changes in the transition to late proto-finnic reduced the contrast between lexically stressed and unstressed syllables allowing the meter to assimilate the scandinavian conventions while also retaining a syllabic rhythm with the placement of short stressed syllables in metrically unstressed positions. alliteration was quite probably already familiar as a device, yet its systematic use was assimilated as a valorized feature for forming verses or corresponding units of poetic utterance, making it a feature that also structured 22 on laments’ poetic form, see frog, stepanova 2011; stepanova, e. 2014; on differences in mythology between these systems in north finnic traditions, see stepanova, e. 2012; 2014; note that differences in mythology and symbolism across these systems in north finnic traditions is at least partly connected to changes in religion at a later period that appear not to have impacted traditions in estonia and setomaa (ahola et al. 2017: 926–927). 48 frog word choice.23 however, the primary feature with metrical priority was the placement of long and short stressed syllables, to which alliteration remained secondary and thus could not be interfaced with the meter. alliteration was not only valorized for the finnic tetrameter but also seems to have become an organizing feature of the independent poetic system of laments, and a valorized ethnopoetic feature more generally. taken together, these traditions suggest a process within which finnic ethnopoetics underwent profound and wide-ranging impacts. the assimilation of alliteration as an aesthetic priority at the level of acoustic texture in the tetrameter becomes somewhat ambiguous within the context of its more pervasive impacts on ethnopoetics. however, the isolated assimilation of syllabic quantity rules from a poetic system in one language and transplanting them into a meter used in another would seem rather peculiar. it is possible that the quantity rules were assimilated more widely and the finnic tetrameter is the only poetic form in which it survived, but it seems most probable that the tetrameter results from the adaptation of a full metrical form rather than individual principles being taken up from another language. in addition to contrastive stress and alliteration, scandinavian influence could potentially also be responsible for the finnic form being a tetrameter. this theory of metrical hybridization is compatible with the model of helimski, which attributes the octosyllabic rhythm of the meter and its trochaic rhythm to a proto-uralic heritage. it rejects korhonen’s theory that middle proto-finnic would have maintained a poetic system with an accentual 23 this also shaped the poetic register (see also roper 2012; cf. frog 2015: 82–89; frog with tarkka 2017: 217–221). in a discussion at the 2018 nordmetric conference in stockholm, paul kiparsky questioned why the poetic form would be assimilated without also assimilating kennings as basic rhetorical device of the poetic idiom. the question of kennings is too involved to elaborate here. however, it may be briefly noted that kennings are not common to all old germanic alliterative verse traditions (gardner 1969: 111), which makes their prominence in the period of contact uncertain. more significantly, the role of kennings and their potential for variation in old germanic poetry is connected to metricalized alliteration, so a kenning in one hemistich could vary lexical components in relation to the needed alliteration. the finnic tetrameter had fewer words per verse and lacked a caesura: rather than variation motivated by the need to link metrical units with alliteration, finnic verses tended to crystallize into whole-line formulae. in old english and old norse, kennings are frequently used in so-called apposition, a type of semantic parallelism in which a kenning fills a hemistich, accomplishing alliteration, while it repeats a semantic unit of a noun in the preceding hemistich or verse (hopkins 2020; also frog with tarkka 2017: 207). apposition as such is not relevant in the finnic tetrameter, although it might be compared to how semantic parallelism commonly elides semantic elements from the preceding verse (saarinen 2017) and how parallel verses exhibit a greater tendency to have alliteration than main verses (sarv 1999). 49the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? rhythm that was displaced during language change. however, it is compatible with korhonen’s views on the significance of prosodic changes in the language from middle to late proto-finnic. korhonen’s argument can be placed in dialogue with helimski’s theory to question long-term continuity of a trochaic rhythm while also accounting for it in the late proto-finnic verse form. unlike korhonen’s model, helimski’s theory would account for the length of the line, and, if the octosyllabic form was emblematic of ritual discourse, it would confer social significance on the poetic form that would account for its later use and spread across genres. the current theory offers metrically motivated accounts of the emergence of metricalized contrastive stress and unmetricalized but systematized verse-internal alliteration. the scandinavian model could also account for the tetrametric rhythm while contemporary language structure discussed by korhonen would account for its trochaic structure. the spread of the poetic form would be attributed to the valorization of the scandinavian poetic form, and possibly also its range of uses in the source language, which in later evidence are comparable to those of the finnic tetrameter. the antecedent poetic form, whether or not helimski is correct, would have been completely obscured in this process. 5. creolization of the north germanic poetic form? the finnic tetrameter appears to have emerged in a context of broad impacts on both the lexicon and ethnopoetics. in spite of the apparent magnitude and scope of the impacts of north germanic on late proto-finnic, there seems to be no significant impact of late proto-finnic on north germanic. this situation suggests a marked asymmetry in the languages and cultures of the speakers of the different languages, which has implications for semiotic ideologies. language ideologies can be inferred to be behind the general paucity of loanwords from uralic languages in scandinavian, of loanwords from celtic in old english or old icelandic, and from sámi in finnic. the resistance to loanwords suggests that these languages became iconic of their emblematic speakers as ‘other’ (irvine, gal 2000), with the implication that the evaluative stance taken to those others is such that their identities are not desirable and difference should be maintained. in contrast, the tremendous amount of loanword vocabulary borrowed into late proto-finnic from north germanic suggests a valorized position of the speakers or culture of which the language is iconic. this stance extends to poetics. 50 frog if it is correct that systematic alliteration was adopted in this context, the valorization of germanic culture and practices resulted in fundamental impacts on the ethnopoetic system. rather than a symmetrical interaction between languages and cultures with the spread of, for example, a new, trendy genre of practice like the cross-cultural spread of ballads or ring dancing in the middle ages, the finnic tetrameter appears as part of a broader process that produced a new poetic form used across a variety of genres. the north germanic alliterative verse form seems to have carried with it the syllabic quantity rules that were apparently not part of earlier finnic versification, while the proto-finnic metrical ecology gave priority to isosyllabic rhythm, producing metricalized contrastive stress. the restructuring of ethnopoetics suggests that associations with germanic culture and practices conferred a positive social evaluation on such adaptations among proto-finnic speakers that never seems to be matched by germanic speakers. the poetic form is a hybrid, but it seems to emerge in an environment where there is a marked asymmetry between the languages and cultures from which elements are being selected and combined, which makes it relevant to view as a creolization. i would carry this proposition a step further and advance that the finnic tetrameter is unlikely to have emerged without the asymmetrical cultural relations that led to creolization. if the finnic tetrameter is accepted as having historically been the primary mode of epic and associated ritual discourse, it means a poetic form adapted from another language replaced inherited modes of genres tied to social and religious identities. this type of change depends on exceptional conditions of social asymmetry. the model of creolization suggests a situation of intense language and cultural contact in dual-language environments. the adaptation of protoscandinavian syllabic quantity rules into a proto-finnic syllabic rhythm requires an environment a) where speakers of proto-finnic had native-like sensitivity to the rhythms of scandinavian verbal art, and b) where speakers’ native-like sensitivity to proto-finnic ethnopoetics required that verses conform to syllabic rhythms. even within such an environment, it would not be sufficient for the ‘translation’ of the poetic form from one language to another to occur at the level of isolated individuals. the requisites of the environment would have to operate at a social level: for scandinavian quantity rules to become established in a proto-finnic metrical system, proto-finnic speakers would have to develop sensitivity to those rules at a social level. moreover, people would need to have a motivation to creolize a proto-scandinavian medium of verbal art and also to maintain it. the poetic form and types of performance associated with it would need value and relevance in the protofinnic language environment. the emergence of the poetic form would also 51the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? likely be gradually negotiated into a more stable social practice rather than emerging spontaneously as a stable poetic system. even if its emergence were on the platform of helmiski’s hypothetical trochaic tetrameter, the introduction of conventions governing the placement of stressed syllables would require a fairly comprehensive restructuring of formulaic diction (cf. frog 2015: 82–89). the introduction of alliteration as a compositional priority would correspondingly motivate the development of a rich equivalence vocabulary that would make it possible to say ‘the same thing’ while meeting different patterns of alliteration, augmented by semantic parallelism, repeating ‘the same thing’ with different alliterations in a series of verses (roper 2012; see also sarv 1999; frog with tarkka 2017: 217–221). these developments most likely took shape as a social process within a speech community or network of speech communities of relatively limited size and scope that subsequently spread through the dialect continuum. 6. reverse-engineering spread the preceding sections have focused on the earliest periods for which the finnic tetrameter is probable, arguing that the distinctive features of conventions of contrastive stress and unmetricalized alliteration most likely developed as a creolization of a north germanic poetic form connected to evidence of intensive language contacts in the late proto-finnic era. late proto-finnic sets a terminus post quem for this process at roughly a.d. 200, while the poetic form seems unlikely to post-date the era of intensive contacts, which would make a terminus ante quem of roughly a.d. 550. however, if we accept that the process of creolization could not be a spontaneous and uniform development for a broad language area, then we face the question of how it spread from a more limited network of speech communities to be found almost as widely as late proto-finnic’s surviving descendant languages. perspective on this can be gained by applying a descendant historical reconstruction methodology, working backward from the evidence from the more recent into the more distant past (frog, saarikivi 2014–2015: 67). 52 frog 6.1. the tetrameter among surviving finnic languages the finnic tetrameter is clearly part of an integrated poetic system found across all finnic languages, with two exceptions. in the eastern-most finnic language, vepsian, only a few riddles and proverbs are found in the meter, and these may be attributable to relatively recent exchange (krohn 1918: 133; kuusi 1994: 47). on the south-western frontier in livonian, the common finnic tetrameter is lacking, although, for example, matti kuusi observes that about one in five proverbs that he surveyed seemed to be in a looser trochaic tetrameter; these livonian proverbs are not paralleled by proverbs in the finnic tetrameter elsewhere and vice versa (kuusi 1994: 47, 54). in addition to metrical evidence, the shared poetic system is supported by common features of formulaic the idiom and its rhetorical structures (harvilahti 2015: 311–315), as well as phraseology and rhetoric that appears to have been interfaced with the long-term transmission of whole narrative poems (e.g. kuusi 1963: 158). more generally, the poetic diction exhibits distributions of linguistic archaisms that would be inconsistent with recent, rapid spread (e.g. frog 2010; sarv 2011). in areas of southwest finland, ingria, western and southeast estonia, phonological changes in language alongside contacts with poetries in other languages had tremendous impacts on the poetic form with the result that formal structure of verses was considerably affected (lauerma 2004; sarv 2008; 2011; kallio, k. et al. 2016–2017). overall, the features of the tradition suggest that the poetic system was shared in all of the languages where it was found already when they were dialects of a common proto-finnic language. vepsian is a north finnic language, belonging to one of the most recent branches of the language: if the finno-karelian forms of the poetic system and that of votic and north estonian derive from a common language phase, it must have been lost from vepsian. the identification of the tetrameter as a common proto-finnic heritage has led to the inference that it was earlier also once an established part of livonian oral culture, although the absence of the tetrameter from vepsian and livonian have also opened the question of whether the poetic form spread through finnic languages after they had diversified. 53the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? 6.2. an early stage of diversification observable through north finnic traditions most diversification of the finnic tetrameter that can be placed on a chronology is from the middle ages or later (e.g. sarv 2011: 16–17). this places it after proto-finnic had broken up and thus after the poetic form is assumed to have been established in all languages where it was preserved, so it is not relevant to dating the tetrameter’s origin and spread. ingrid rüütel’s (e.g. 1998) valuable research on musical structures in singing culture identifies relationships with potentially deeper historical roots, but this work does not present positive evidence for the early poetic form and its diversification. musical structures and poetic form are complementary, interacting through text-setting. the history of particular musical structures in proto-finnic could antedate their use with the poetic form, for example if the poetic form spread through proto-finnic dialects. if one accepts helimski’s theory, the poetic form could have spread early pro to -fin n ic m id d le pro to -fin n ic inland finnic east finnic? south estonian livonian north estonian votic gulf of riga finnic g u lf o f fin lan d fin n ic ladogan finnic n o rth fin n ic c en tral fin n ic late pro to -fin n ic c o astal fin n ic ižorian vepsian finnish karelian figure 1. a family tree of finnic languages (source: kallio, p. 2014: 163); although early, middle and late proto-finnic language phases can be distinguished on the basis of internal linguistic evidence, other language branches in the diversification of earlier language phases went extinct before they could be documented, some of which may have disappeared in language shifts to late proto-finnic. 54 frog principally by adapting an inherited trochaic tetrameter, adding contrastive stress and verse-internal alliteration. such a scenario would make the new poetic form compatible with existing musical and performance structures, with the possibility that the new form might be locally shaped by their impacts on the earlier tetrameter. in addition, singing styles and social practices are not tied to language, so they can spread through performance traditions for use with the local poetic dialect and also across languages, thus researchers focusing on music will see a major boundary in the singing of the finnic tetrameter further north than text-oriented researchers, for whom continuity at the level of poems and verbal sections of poems in north finnic (excluding vepsian) poetry becomes more prominent. of course, vocabulary and phraseology may move across languages and whole songs may be translated (cf. vargyas 1983 i: 137), but it is the in poetry where arguments for continuity and diversification of the poetic system become methodologically grounded, and thus makes the earliest distinguishable diversification of the poetry tradition of particular interest. when considering the history of the poetic tradition, innovations that distinguish north finnic from finnic languages south of the gulf of finland present another relevant terminus ante quem for the finnic tetrameter. continuities are particularly apparent in north finnic epic and incantations, which can be observed at a textual level of verses, even if the relevant traditions did not survive to documentation in much of finland. in finland and karelia, finnic languages had, in the early viking age, generally been spoken in the south, concentrated in south-western regions of finland proper, häme and satakunta on the one hand, and around inland waterways on the northwest shores of lake ladoga and on the karelian isthmus on the other hand. the proto-finnic dialects of these areas evolved later finnish and karelian, which spread north through mostly sámi-speaking territories across the centuries. the spread of these languages was directly connected to the spread of ways of life and social organization into which sámi speakers and any other language groups were assimilated. this spread of language and culture carried the finnic tetrameter, its genres and poems, as well as finnic lament, religion and practices by which sámi cultures seem to have been completely eclipsed (see e.g. frog 2013; ahola, frog 2014; kallio, p. 2014; frog, saarikivi 2014–2015). variation in the metrical form in western finland can be assumed to have developed since that time, as can the breakdown and disappearance of relevant traditions in southwest finland. the north finnic traditions seem to have undergone developments through scandinavian contacts during the iron age that produced significant differences in the poetry traditions (for discussion, see further frog 55the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? 2013). although it is possible to observe incantations shared across the gulf of finland, the north finnic traditions exhibit whole genres of fairly long, highly variable, versified ritual incantation poetry in the tetrameter associated with the type of ritual specialist called a tietäjä = ‘knower, one who knows’; although some types of incantations like some cattle charms are found across finnic languages, the incantations characteristic of this type of ritual specialist lack parallels in estonian tradition (e.g. krohn 1901; 1924; see also roper 2008).24 more generally, the tetrameter seems not to have been as significant in the incantation tradition south of the gulf of finland (rüütel 1998; cf. kõiva 2011). although scant non-christian vernacular mythology was preserved in estonian and seto traditions in contrast to remote regions of karelia, the differences in incantation traditions cannot be simply accounted for by loss when incantation traditions seem to have been quite vital and extensively documented.25 even the features and formulae related to the banishment of illnesses and harm on either side of the gulf of finland do not necessarily trace back to a common proto-finnic heritage (brummer 1908). these incantations are an integrated part of a broader range of innovations that seem to have had pervasive impacts on the poetry tradition. the incantations were the verbal art of the ritual technology used by the tietäjä as a primary medium for interacting with and manipulating forces and entities in the unseen world. unlike many incantation traditions in europe, this ritual poetry did not affect the world mechanically: it was dependent on the innate power of the specialist. ideally, a tietäjä would perform rituals in a state of ‘raised’ power, which can be described physiologically as a motoric trance state. both in rituals for raising his power and in the ensuing healing or other ritual, the verbal art of incantations had a function of directing the tietäjä’s perceptions and experience to the unseen, mythic world, which it verbally both described and manipulated (see siikala 2002; frog 2013; cf. frog 2017a). these incantations were integrated with the mythological epic traditions, relying on shared image systems and epics and parts of epics could also be performed as incantations. the mythological poetry and incantations provided a primary medium through which the tietäjä internalized and structured his knowledge of the unseen world, and ritual performances relying on this technology were imaginally conceived as actualizing a real-time drama 24 prominent in this respect are so-called ‘origin incantations’, which include an origin story of the source of illness or harm, an incantation strategy that sets this tradition apart from other incantation traditions of europe and asia. 25 already in 1901, when the collection of such folklore was still in full swing, kaarle krohn mentions “over 50,000 variants” of estonian charms. 56 frog of interactions with agents and forces in the unseen world (e.g. haavio 1967; siikala 2002; frog 2013). as i have discussed elsewhere, the innovations associated with this ritual technology were not only linked to the emergence of the tietäjä as a type of ritual specialist as such. the technology (like any medical technology) was also interfaced with images of the body, which were incompatible with conceptions of a separable soul fundamental to forms of classic shamanism or sámi shamanism.26 the emergence of the tietäjä also involved a radical restructuring of the mythology with significant influence from scandinavian models in relation to the ideology, technology and role of the tietäjä, symbolically organized to contrast the tietäjä with forms of classic or sámi shamanism as ‘other’. this contrastive opposition seems to have been maintained through the spread of the tietäjä institution and associated mythology through sámi-speaking regions. traditions of sámi shamanism completely disappeared from these regions, suggesting that the spread with finnic language and culture of the tietäjä institution, its mythology and ideology, was equivalent to a conversion process for groups previously associated with shamanism. this mythology and the incantation tradition are interfaced with more fundamental symbolism that pervades lyric, wedding songs and other genres. this symbolism seems to have undergone changes that distinguish the north finnic traditions of poetry from those south of the gulf of finland. in the north finnic poetry, the eagle or raptor becomes symbolic of a threatening other and especially of a suitor or groom as a predator in relation to maidens as waterfowl or domestic fowl (ahola et al. 2017: 905–919). the raptor symbolism, and such predator symbolism more generally, sets these traditions apart from the symbolism of karelian laments (ahola et al. 2017: 924–927; cf. stepanova, a. 2012).27 this contrast is more striking because the same women who would lament were also singers of wedding songs incorporating the raptor symbolism. it is doubly noteworthy when these poetry traditions were maintained alongside one another in the same communities apparently for centuries. this symbolism also seems to be lacking from estonian and 26 following anna-leena siikala, ‘classic shamanism’ refers to the system of features characteristic of shamanic traditions across central and northern eurasia. as i have recently discussed, treating attested forms of sámi shamanism as forms of classic shamanism is problematic. this is not only owing to formal differences that have often been explained away as historical developments, but also because proto-sámi spread rapidly through other language areas resulting in language shifts of local populations, and thus later sámi shamanism may reflect indigenous traditions of cultures that simply began speaking proto-sámi language (frog 2017c). 27 i would like to thank eila stepanova for her assistance and consultation on this topic. 57the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? seto poetry in the finnic tetrameter, which appears instead to exhibit similar symbolic patterns to karelian laments (peegel 2004).28 the raptor symbolism in poetry of the north finnic tetrameter thus seems to be an innovation, and its interface with both the mythology and ritual poetry suggest it belongs to the same package of innovations as the emergence of the tietäjä institution (ahola et al. 2017: 927–930; cf. frog 2013). the fact that innovations in symbolism appear uniformly across north finnic regions, and also in genres not characteristic of the tietäjä, increases the likelihood that they spread with the poetic system itself, and thus with the north proto-finnic dialect, much as can be observed with the spread of finnish and karelian through sámi language areas. the spread of the north proto-finnic dialect appears to be linked to immigration from southwest finland during the second half of the eighth century to points of access to inland waterways on the western side of lake ladoga and the karelian isthmus, anticipating the opening of the eastern route (uino 1997). the mixing of these groups with local populations gradually gave rise to distinctively karelian culture, and ižorian seems to have separated off from this evolving language not long thereafter (frog, saarikivi 2014–2015: 89–90). with the opening of the eastern route, the north proto-finnic dialect seems to have been a prominent contact language (frog, saarikivi 2014–2015: 88–98; cf. also ahola et al. 2014: 257–259; bjørnflaten 2006). although the absence of the finnic meter from vepsian has been interpreted as a loss owing to impacts from other cultures, it is also possible that vepsian is the result of populations along the eastern route undergoing a shift to the proto-finnic dialect used in contact relations. vepsian exhibits a lexical substrate of vocabulary from a language of a branch of proto-finnic separate from surviving finnic languages, and has been described as an ‘east finnic’ language (itkonen 1983: 216–217; kallio, p. 2014: 157–158, 163). the ethnonym identified with vepsians also seems to refer to non-finnic language groups farther east in the earliest sources and, whether or not those other language groups underwent a language shift, was subsequently identified with speakers of a finnic dialect (frog, saarikivi 2014–2015: 91; see also grünthal 1997: 108–109). if vepsian emerged primarily from the use of a north proto-finnic dialect as a contact language and populations undergoing language shifts, it may have spread primarily as a medium of communication without the full range of verbal art or 28 i would like to thank jonathan roper for discussing this topic with me and assisting me with the use of juhan peegel’s dictionary, of which i had not been aware. 58 frog the package of religious technology and mythology of the tietäjä.29 in summary, the north finnic traditions suggest that the poetic form was established in areas of finland by the first half of the eighth century. moreover, traditions using the poetic system in finland had already undergone significant evolution before their spread east at that time.30 the absence of vepsian traditions of the poetic form could be a result of the north proto-finnic dialect spreading as a contact language for trade along the eastern route rather than as a spread of a full range of cultural practices from which the poetic tradition subsequently disappeared. internal evidence of linguistic diversity points to the emergence of late proto-finnic as south of the gulf of finland (frog, saarikivi 2014–2015: 105). it is not clear when proto-finnic arrived in southwest finland, which cannot be clearly distinguished in the archaeological record. following the socalled climate catastrophe of a.d. 536–537, the flow of culture from estonia to finland was reversed, following which the fixed-settlement culture of southwest finland became actively engaged in long-distance trade and evolved a distinct culture (see tvauri 2014). proto-finnic language almost certainly became established in finland before that reverse in the flow of culture and associated role in long-distance trade. in fact, that role in long-distance trade likely established conditions for the north proto-finnic dialect to be a significant language at the opening of the eastern route. it is unclear precisely when 29 on questions surrounding the vepsian sky god, see frog 2017d: 107–110. this is not inconsistent with vepsian exhibiting a lament tradition, which may have continuity from, for example, an east finnic or other uralic language (cf. rahkonen 2013) through a language shift. indeed, if vepsian spread in connection with eastern trade, it most probably occurred predominantly through movement of men rather than full households. as a women’s tradition of verbal art and ritual practice, vepsian lament would not be carried and regulated by the men; it would emerge and evolve in relation to the linguistic-cultural background of the women in society. if those women were predominantly or entirely of non-vepsian background in a local community, the tradition would presumably reflect that background, becoming translated through vepsian language within one or a few generations. alliteration is not a systematic feature of vepsian laments: it is found almost exclusively in formulaic circumlocutions, which can correspond to circumlocutions in other finnic lament traditions (frog, stepanova 2011: 208), but this may only reflect a background of vepsian lament in an otherwise extinct branch from late protofinnic, or even perhaps from middle proto-finnic, eclipsed in a language shift. 30 although it is of course possible that the tietäjä institution evolved e.g. in karelia at the beginning of the viking age, the cultures of southwest finland and karelia seem to become increasingly distinct from the immigration onward rather than exhibiting a reciprocal flow of culture back to southwest finland, which rapidly became peripheral to the eastern route. however, there is no doubt that traditions in karelia also evolved in those and subsequent centuries. 59the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? the institution of the tietäjä emerged, but it may be connected with the north germanic loan into north finnic of runo = ‘performer of poetry; poem’. this word seems to have been borrowed into the northern dialect of proto-finnic during the ca. a.d. 200–550 period without spreading to other proto-finnic dialects (willson 2019), which could be another relevant indicator that the dialect was already geographically separated across the gulf of finland. when the tietäjä institution emerged, the finnic tetrameter must have already been a primary medium for authoritative poetic discourse in order to be adopted as the mode of verbal art for the assimilated ritual technology. the finnic tetrameter was most likely established north of the gulf of finland before the reverse of the flow of culture after a.d. 536–537. if the loan of runo is connected to the tietäjä institution, it would suggest that the poetic system and genres of the finnic tetrameter had already diversified across the gulf of finland in connection with religious change in ca. a.d. 200–550. 6.3. invisible synchronic variation when reconstructing the poetic form, there is a tendency to treat it as uniform during the proto-finnic language period. however, distinctive developments in north finnic discussed above can be traced back to the proto-finnic dialect and most likely go back to the sixth century or earlier. on the one hand, these developments spread with language to form a distinct branch of the tradition from finland to karelia and ingria. by the time of collection, this branch had spread across a geographical area greater than those of all other branches of the tradition together. the developments in this branch are readily observable at the level of genres and symbolism. nevertheless, synchronic variation is no less to be expected south of the gulf of finland. mari sarv (2008; 2014–2015) has shown that the poetic form evolves symbiotically with dialects of language (cf. foley 1996: 14 etc.). north finnic is only one branch of the finnic languages, whereas central finnic, gulf of riga finnic and inland finnic branches (see figure 1) are all south of the gulf of finland. rather than changes in the poetic system north of the gulf of finland being anomalous in themselves, they are more likely symptomatic of how the poetic tradition evolved in different networks of speech communities. what is exceptional about the development in north finnic is that it can be distinguished in later evidence, owing both to the expansive geographical spread of north finnic traditions and also to geographical factors that led local forms to interact more with one another on either side of the gulf of finland rather than across it. it is reasonable to assume that the poetic form was already evolving variation in 60 frog relation to different dialects during the late proto-finnic period. even if the ongoing interaction of adjacent communities with different dialects blurred the differences between them into more of a continuum, variations would have developed in contact networks linking singing communities. there is no reason to presume that the singing tradition and poetic form were homogeneous across all of estonia by e.g. a.d. 500 any more than corresponding traditions in finland would be with those in other proto-finnic language areas (see also rüütel 1998). the question of variation already in ca. a.d. 500 leads to another question that may have still more significant implications. middle proto-finnic and subsequently late proto-finnic tend to be assumed to have been spoken across fairly extensive geographical areas – let us say of at least the size of estonia and probable larger. the reconstruction of language chronology basically erases synchronic variation for each common stage that is reconstructed. however, middle proto-finnic had been spoken for centuries and there were without doubt many dialects of it. late proto-finnic tends to be imagined as a more or less fluid set of changes in phonology that happened more or less uniformly for everyone who spoke middle proto-finnic. the etymologies of words borrowed from germanic speakers can then be compared with whether they happened before or after a certain set of changes. the situation with a poetic form is slightly more complex because it is not simply a question of a single word, the pronunciation of a particular sound, or what case ending one uses with a particular verb. the poetic form is an organizational system for oral poetry, which is dependent on performance practices. even within a language area such as late proto-finnic became, the spread of a poetic form would not be a potentially subtle process but rather connected with things that people are actively doing as agents in a community. particularly if the poetic form were to be socially valorized as a form of authoritative discourse, it would have to spread from community to community of speakers. 6.4. uniformity of the tetrameter’s features across language areas generally speaking, meters do not seem to readily spread from one language and culture to another easily without sufficiently shared frameworks of poetics already established in the receiving language. when a meter of oral poetry does spread from one language to another, it does not do so abstractly: it does so as an integrated part of practices connected with one or more genres and associated situations of use. the finnic tetrameter is used with a striking range of poetic genres, and this is the case across language areas. rather than spreading 61the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? across finnic languages and cultures as a mode of performance associated with individual practices, the tetrameter appears to have spread with a broader ‘package’ of culture. extensive packages of culture, which include numerous genres, ideology and extend through a wide range of areas of social life, can be carried through language areas and even move across linguistic-cultural groups, as is apparent in the spread of world religions or modern western culture. in the case of the finnic tetrameter, the spread of the poetic form through a continuum of diversified dialects and languages seems unlikely. the uniformity of the finnic tetrameter’s features across finnic areas is a potential relevant indicator that it is linked to a common linguistic heritage rather than having spread through a continuum of dialects and languages. if it is accepted that the finnic tetrameter’s distinctive features of metricalized contrastive stress and unmetricalized alliteration emerged under scandinavian influence, these can be assumed to have been foreign features to the poetic systems of dialects and languages where they were not already established. constraints on stressed syllable placement depend on native-like sensitivity to the metrical differentiation of long and short syllables. their spread would require acceptance of metricalized contrast between lexical and metrical stress in each consecutive ethnopoetic environment to which they would be foreign as they moved from one dialect or language to the next, at least some of which are likely to have less direct familiarity with scandinavian poetics. considering that the conventions of stressed-syllable placement according to quantity are both complex and would be ‘foreign’, a spread through different ethnopoetic environments could easily lead them to be simplified or eliminated (cf. trudgill 1989 on interactions between linguistic dialects). alliteration would be only somewhat less vulnerable in this respect. alliteration was presumably a generally perceivable quality of text, and its spread though finnic languages as a systematic verse-structuring principle is thus much more possible. that it would spread with the finnic tetrameter as a constitutive and yet unmetricalized feature of the poetic form is, however, more precarious. if alliteration were a saliently perceivable poetic principle while metricalized contrastive stress was not, or perceived as peculiar and puzzling rather than aesthetically pleasing, the hierarchy of poetic principles could have been restructured. however, we do not see regions of the poetic tradition where alliteration is reduced to an occasional ornamental feature or, conversely, where it is metricalized at the expense of syllabic quantity rules. instead, as discussed above, forms of the finnic tetrameter in all areas where it is found appear to derive from a common form organized on the same principles, its absence from vepsian can be reasonably attributed to loss or language spread without a full package of culture, while the case of livonian will be returned to below. 62 frog the variations in the finnic traditions can be contrasted with the parallel forms in latvian dainas: if the latvian meter is an assimilation of the finnic tetrameter, it has lost the syllabic quantity conventions and alliteration has been reduced to occasional ornamentation. in attested finnic languages, the spread of the poetic system seems to have occurred without significantly impacting the peculiar and distinctive features of the poetic form. these observations further support that the finnic groups have maintained the poetic form from an earlier common language phase. in this case, it would already have been pervasive when proto-finnic was diversifying into different dialects and certainly no later than its breakup into increasingly distinct languages sometime around the beginning of the viking age or ca. a.d. 800 (on which, see kallio, p. 2014). 6.5. early presence of late proto-finnic north of the gulf of finland it is unclear whether proto-finnic became established in southwest finland prior to the transition from middle to late proto-finnic. there are three possibilities: a) proto-finnic only spread to finland after ca. a.d. 200; b) the proto-finnic speech communities of southwest finland were still sufficiently networked across the gulf of finland that they underwent the same changes more or less uniformly; or c) middle proto-finnic spread across the gulf of finland and later late proto-finnic spread through areas where middle protofinnic was spoken, producing language shifts (cf. the spread of vepsian above). i have elsewhere argued that certain loanwords are likely to have been borrowed into proto-sámi from late proto-finnic before proto-sámi, which also emerged sometime around a.d. 200, spread from an area in southern finland and karelia north and across both the kola and scandinavian peninsulas (frog 2017c: 51–52). although the loans cannot be dated with precision nor is the location of the loans certain, proto-sami seems never to have spread south even onto the karelian isthmus (luobbal [aikio] 2012: 64), so these loans suggest late proto-finnic’s presence north of the gulf of finland closer to ca. a.d. 200. if the finnic tetrameter is considered only to have emerged in late protofinnic, it seems more likely that the poetic form spread with late proto-finnic across the gulf of finland rather than that a new poetic form and practices spread once the language had already been established there. the emergence of late proto-finnic seems to have been south of the gulf of finland in roughly a.d. 200. late proto-finnic contacts with proto-sámi must have been north of the gulf of finland at a time that before proto-sámi significantly spread, 63the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? and thus fairly close to when late proto-finnic emerged (frog 2017c: 52). this suggests either a quite rapid geographical spread of late proto-finnic or a connection of late proto-finnic with contact networks. if the loanword evidence reflects spread of culture, it would suggest that the finnic tetrameter emerged at roughly the same time as late proto-finnic, and possibly in connection with it (otherwise the tetrameter would be secondary and have to spread through multiple and dispersed speech communities). if the loanword evidence is related to contact networks, it presents the possibility that late proto-finnic emerged from middle proto-finnic in connection with such networks. the possibility of language spread and connection to networks are not mutually exclusive. the late proto-finnic loans into proto-sámi include words related to death and burial31 and words related to conceptions of the body and illness,32 which suggest impacts on practices and understandings of the world (frog 2017c: 51–52), increasing the probability that the contacts with late proto-finnic were connected with culture rather than being only a pragmatic language of intergroup communication. 6.6. social significance and range of genres if the theory of creolization is roughly accurate, the history of the finnic tetrameter would not only involve its emergence as a ‘new’ poetic form but also its spread as a valorized mode of expression across speech communities on a respectable geographical scale. a process of spread would, of course, not be of the poetic form only but rather a spread of practices through which it would be valorized as a mode of expression. valorization implies that the practices would be socially significant in some way, such as through public ritual performance, perhaps significant for emblems of social identities (e.g. epic), mediating models for understanding the world (e.g. mythology), or valorized through associations with elites of society (e.g. charged with ‘germanicness’). whatever the case, spread as a valorized medium of expression and communication was likely associated with changes in practices in society, and likely with social, political and/or religious changes that affected identities. 31 proto-sámi *hāvtē = ‘grave, hole’ ~ finnish hauta = ‘grave, hollow, hole’; proto-sámi *kālmē = ‘grave’ ~ finnish kalma = ‘place of the dead, force of death’. 32 proto-sámi *heaŋke̮ = ‘breath; spirit’ ~ finnish henki = ‘breath; spirit’; *vājmō = ‘marrow; heart’ ~ finnish vaimo, which developed into a word for ‘wife’; *tāvte̮ ‘illness, malady’~ finnish tauti = ‘illness, malady’. 64 frog particularly noteworthy is also the range of genres with which the poetic form is associated in later traditions. this is not a genre-specific poetic form like the meter of russian bylina epic and thus not comparable to the crosslinguistic spread of something like the medieval ballad (cf. vargyas 1983). if the finnic tetrameter had started off as a genre-specific form, it could, in theory, have extended its use across a wide range of genres, especially if the primary genre made the poetic form valuable and desirable to use, as discussed in relation to helimski’s theory above. in this case, extension across genres would presumably have happened quite early to account for it on both sides of the gulf of finland. conversely, the range of genres associated with the poetic form is directly paralleled by the range of uses of old germanic meters. if the finnic tetrameter is a creolization of a north germanic meter, this range of use may reflect its initial application across a range of genres paralleling the scandinavian tradition. if the finnic tetrameter’s diversity of genres is connected to that of the north germanic poetic form, it would reflect the connection of creolization with a corresponding range of practices. such a breadth of practices further reduces the probability that the poetic form spread through language or dialect areas without more comprehensive transformations of culture. in this case, etymological evidence that late proto-finnic speakers were having cultural impacts on proto-sámi speakers already close to a.d. 200 suggests that the finnic tetrameter was already carried north of the gulf of finland at that time. if the finnic tetrameter spread not with a particular practice or narrow set of practices but rather as a poetic medium linked to multiple areas of culture, the changes accompanying its spread were presumably no less pervasive. this observation returns us to the probable emergence of alliteration as a valorized feature in ethnopoetics during the same period. if the creolization of the meter was one part of more a comprehensive transformation of finnic ethnopoetics, this whole process may have developed largely within a single dialect area or in connection with, for example, networks of groups, perhaps elites, involved in trade that spanned the baltic sea. rather than being a process separate from the transition from middle to late proto-finnic, these developments may have been in a middle proto-finnic dialect that became late proto-finnic. in this case, the whole dialect (or language) would then have gradually spread through groups of speakers of middle proto-finnic, presumably with changes in culture of which the poetic system was a part.33 such would be comparable to the spread 33 such a spread of late proto-finnic could offer a frame for considering so-called east finnic features in languages around the lakes on the eastern side of estonia (cf. itkonen 1983: 217). 65the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? of north finnic since the viking age through areas where sámi language forms were predominantly spoken. in this case, livonian would have emerged as a dialect through the shift to late proto-finnic. rather than the absence of the tetrameter being necessarily attributable to loss, the poetic form may never have assimilated, not unlike what has been argued for the spread of vepsian above. within this scenario, the finnic tetrameter would have emerged as part of the process of the emergence of late proto-finnic and associated transformations of the ethnopoetic system around a.d. 200. the range of practices associated with the finnic tetrameter suggest a broad range of transformative impacts on culture. this situation increases the likelihood that the poetic system of finnic lament underwent a transformation of poetics as part of a process of cultural transformation. it may be noted that mythology is built into these poetic systems and their associated ritual practices (stepanova, e. 2012; 2014), so restructuring the poetics through systematic alliteration was likely accompanied by restructuring of symbols and conceptions as well. viewed in this light, the remarkable number of germanic words borrowed into late proto-finnic during the language phase from ca. a.d. 200–550 seem unlikely to have been evenly distributed across centuries and dialects. instead, their concentration may stem from the same process of creolization that produced the finnic tetrameter and the vocabulary established at that time then spread with the dialect or language now labelled late proto-finnic (which does not exclude subsequent loans in the same phase like runo above). this model separates the emergence of the poetic form from its spread, but in this case the spread of the poetic form would be part of the spread of broader changes in language and culture. considering the finnic tetrameter as a creolization of a poetic form in this context then leads to the question of whether late protofinnic as a language form may be viewed as emerging through a process of creolization, producing a new language form that was advanced to dominance in relation to forms of finnic from which it evolved and which it gradually superseded as it spread. 7. a possible biography developments in the transition from middle to late proto-finnic seem to have established conditions for the emergence of the metrical form. at that time, the tradition ecology presumably maintained isosyllabic systems of versification. the middle proto-finnic verse form of comparable status remains hypothetical, and there is no way to tell whether it may have been the octosyllabic 66 frog tetrameter proposed by helimski. however, the syllabic rhythm of the finnic tetrameter is difficult to account for without assuming that it had a syllabic structure (pace korhonen), which seems probable on the basis of comparative evidence. syllabic and even trochaic rhythms could be a feature of an uralic heritage, but this remains difficult to assess. late proto-finnic is characterized as the most intensive period of scandinavian language contacts. the scope and magnitude of influence makes it reasonable to consider that these contacts may also have had significant influences on linguistic behaviour. the creolization of the proto-scandinavian alliterative tetrameter would account for the tetrametric organization of lines in the finnic tetrameter, the quantitative rules governing stressed syllables producing metricalized contrastive stress, and also unmetricalized alliteration attached to the metrical template. the social status and diverse roles of the meter make it unlikely to have spread through late proto-finnic in connection with individual practices of verbal art. its spread was far more probably connected with broader changes in culture. the range of genres associated with the poetic form and indications that it emerged in conjunction with more extensive and pervasive changes in finnic ethnopoetics present the more likely possibility that these innovations were linked to the emergence of late proto-finnic, which itself spread in connection with culture through other proto-finnic language areas. according to this theory, the finnic tetrameter would have emerged in a multilingual environment where people had native-like sensitivity to both finnic and north germanic poetics. the creolization of the germanic poetic form appears directly connected to a restructuring of the ethnopoetic system that introduces systematic verse-internal alliteration. the finnic tetrameter’s range of genres seems to cover areas of religion (ritual poetry and mythology) and ethnic identity (epic) as well as more mundane secular genres (proverbs, riddles), suggesting strikingly extensive impacts that reciprocally reframe the remarkable body of germanic loanwords, supporting petri kallio’s (2015: 26) description of them as a superstrate. rather than the majority of these loans accumulating across centuries, it seems more probable that perhaps the majority of them are connected with the multilingual environment and cultural impacts connected with the emergence of the finnic tetrameter. the poetic form thus most probably emerged somewhere in estonia. if it is accurate that sámi loanword evidence indicates the presence of late proto-finnic north of the gulf of finland not long after a.d. 200, the process that produced it must have been followed by quite rapid spread. this spread carried late protofinnic through other language areas with a full package of culture, which opens the question of whether lack of evidence for the tetrameter in livonian 67the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? is attributable to loss, or an area where the tetrameter was not assimilated in earlier language spread. the spread of late proto-finnic through dialects or languages of middle proto-finnic (and perhaps other languages) necessarily displaced established forms of verbal art, in which case, speakers of some communities and perhaps whole regions may have been resistant to assimilating the oral poetry traditions. however the sámi loanword evidence is interpreted, late proto-finnic seems to have been established in southwest finland by the climate event of a.d. 536–537. once it reached finland, the poetic form subsequently became the verbal medium for new ritual technologies in the emergence of the tietäjä institution. the loanword runo is a potential indicator that this transformation had occurred already before ca. a.d. 550, but the subsequent spread of language offers evidence of an unambiguously distinct form of the tradition by ca. a.d. 750 at the latest. it is not clear whether the poetic form spread along the eastern route in the process from which vepsian language emerged. although the developments in the north dialect of proto-finnic may be distinctive, they highlight that the tradition likely also developed elsewhere and evolved multiple dialects in estonia, where language variation was greater, but where such variations may have been levelled in a continuum of dialects through ongoing networks of immediate interaction. once established in late proto-finnic areas of finland, karelia, and estonia, the poetic form evolved in a symbiotic relationship with changes in dialect and also in relation to contacts with singing traditions in other dialects and languages. at the age of about 16 centuries, poetry in the finnic tetrameter began to be actively documented, by about 17, its situation had become more serious, and now, at about 18, it has largely matured into heritage, and we look back on its life with reflection.34 34 this publication presents research of the academy of finland project mythology, verbal art and authority in social impact of folklore studies at the university of helsinki. versions of this argument have been presented at the regilaulukonverents of the estonian literary museum, regilaulu seitse nahka: vaateid regilaulule mitmest küljest (30.11.–1.12.2016, tartu, estonia), and also at the nordmetrik conference metrics and versification in poetry and song (13.–15.9.2018), where it benefitted from lively discussions. an estonian version of this article is in preparation for publication in proceedings from the 2016 regilaulukonverents, and this article has benefitted from discussions with that collection’s editor taive särg, and the anonymous review that she organized for that venue. 68 frog references aasmäe, niina; lippus, pärtel; pajusalu, karl; salveste, nele; zirnask, tatjana; viitso, tiit-rein 2013. moksha prosody. helsinki: société finno-ougrienne. abondolo, daniel 2013. synchronic means, diachronic ends. unpublished paper presented at the conference alliterativa causa held at the warburg institute, 18.– 19.01.2013, london, u.k. ahola, joonas; frog 2014. approaching the viking age in finland: an introduction. in: ahola, joonas; frog; tolley, clive (eds.), fibula, fabula, fact – the viking age in finland. helsinki: sks, 21–84. ahola, joonas; frog; schalin, johan 2014. language(s) of viking age åland: an irresolvable riddle? in: ahola, joonas; frog; lucenius, jenni (eds.), the viking age in åland: insights into identity and remnants of culture. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica, 227–265. ahola, joonas; frog; laakso, ville 2017. the roles and perceptions of raptors in iron age and medieval finno-karelian cultures through c. ad 1500. in: grimm, oliver; gersmann, karl-heinz (eds.), the origin and importance of falconry until 1500 ad with an emphasis on northern europe. wachholz: neumünster, 243–290. aikio, ante: see also luobbal sámmol sámmol ánte (ante aikio). aikio, ante. 2009. the saami loanwords in finnish and karelian. oulu: university of oulu. árnason, kristján. 1991. the rhythms of dróttkvætt and other old icelandic metres. reykjavík: university of iceland, institute of linguistics. árnason, kristján 2011. alliteration in iceland: from the edda to modern verse and pop lyrics. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. houndmills: palgrave macmillan, 123–140. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_9 árnason, kristján 2016. text and form in fornyrðislag: four lifts and how many types? in: árnason, kristján; carey, stephen; dewey, tonya kim; þorgeirsson, haukur; aðalsteinsson, ragnar ingi; eyþórsson, þórhallur, approaches to nordic and germanic poetry. reykjavík: university of iceland press, 63–115. bailey, james 1992. three russian lyric folk song meters. columbus: slavica publishers. balode, laimute; holvoet, axel 2001. the latvian language and its dialects. in: dahl, östen; koptjevskaja-tamm, maria (eds.), the circum-baltic languages: typology and contact. amsterdam: john benjamins, 3–40. 69the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? bauman, richard. 1984. verbal art as performance. prospect heights: waveland press. bjørnflaten, jan ivar 2006. chronologies of the slavicization of northern russia: mirrored by slavic loanwords in finnic and baltic. in: slavica helsingiensia 27, 50–77. bronner, simon j. 2005. “gombo” folkloristics: lafcadio hearn’s creolization and hybridization in the formative period of folklore studies”. in: journal of folklore research 42(2), 141–184. https://doi.org/10.1353/jfr.2005.0020 brummer, onni johannes 1908. über die bannungsorte der finnischen zauberlieder. helsinki: société finno-ougrienne. chaudenson, robert; rev. in collaboration with mufwene, salikoko s. 2001. creolization of language and culture. london: routledge. coleman, robert g. g. 1999. poetic diction, poetic discourse and the poetic register. in: adams, james noel; mayer, roland g. (eds.), aspects of the language of latin poetry. new york: oxford university press, 21–93. collinder, björn 1946. kalevala ja ruotsi. in: kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 25–26, 19–41. fabb, nigel 2009. formal interactions in poetic meter. in: dewey, tonya kim; frog (eds.), versatility in versification. new york: peter lang, 147–165. foley, john miles 1993. traditional oral epic: the odyssey, beowulf, and the serbocroatian return song. los angeles: university of california press. foley, john miles 1996. guslar and aoidos: traditional register in south slavic and homeric epic. in: transactions of the american philological association 126, 11–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/370170 fox, james j. 2014. explorations in semantic parallelism. canberra: australian university press. frog 2010. baldr and lemminkäinen: approaching the evolution of mythological narrative through the activating power of expression. london: university college london. frog 2012. confluence, continuity and change in the evolution of myth: cultural activity and the finno-karelian sampo-cycle. in: frog; siikala, anna-leena; stepanova, eila (eds.), mythic discourses: studies in uralic traditions. helsinki: finnish literature society, 205–254. frog 2013. shamans, christians, and things in between: from finnic-germanic contacts to the conversion of karelia. in: słupecki, leszek; simek, rudolf (eds.), conversions: looking for ideological change in the early middle ages. vienna: fassbaender, 53–98. 70 frog frog 2014. from mythology to identity and imaginal experience: an exploratory approach to the symbolic matrix in viking age åland. in: ahola, joonas; frog; lucenius, jenni (eds.), the viking age in åland: insights into identity and remnants of culture. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica, 349–414. frog 2015. registers of oral poetry. in: agha, asif; frog (eds.), registers of communication. helsinki: finnish literature society, 77–104. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvggx2qk.8 frog 2017a. multimedial parallelism in ritual performance (parallelism dynamics ii). in: oral tradition 31(2), 583–620. https://doi.org/10.1353/ort.2017.0022 frog 2017b. parallelism and orders of signification (parallelism dynamics i). in: oral tradition 31(2), 425–484. https://doi.org/10.1353/ort.2017.0017 frog 2017c. sámi religion formations and proto-sámi language spread: reassessing a fundamental assumption. in: rmn newsletter 12–13, 36–69. frog 2017d. language and mythology: semantic correlation and disambiguation of gods as iconic signs. in: mátéffy, attila; szabados, györgy; csernyei, tamás (eds.), shamanhood and mythology: archaic techniques of ecstasy and current techniques of research: in honour of mihály hoppál, celebrating his 75th birthday. budapest: hungarian society for religious studies, 85–134. frog; saarikivi, janne 2014–2015. de situ linguarum fennicarum aetatis ferreae, pars i. in: rmn newsletter 9, 64–115. frog; stepanova, eila 2011. alliteration in (balto-)finnic languages. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. houndmills: palgrave macmillan, 195–218. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_13 gardner, thomas 1969. the old english kenning: a characteristic feature of germanic poetical diction? in: modern philology 67, 109–117. https://doi.org/10.1086/390147 gershon, ilana (ed.) 2010a. media ideologies. special issue of journal of linguistic anthropology 20(2). gershon, ilana 2010b. media ideologies: an introduction. in: journal of linguistic anthropology 20(2), 283–293. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1395.2010.01070.x grünthal, riho 1997. livvistä liiviin: itämerensuomalaiset etnonyymit. helsinki: helsingin yliopisto. haavio, martti 1967. suomalainen mytologia. porvoo: werner söderström osakeyhtiö. häkkinen, jaakko 2012. after the protolanguage: invisible convergence, false divergence and boundary shift. in: finnisch-ugrische forschungen 61, 7–28. 71the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? hanson, kristin; kiparsky, paul 1996. a parametric theory of poetic meter. in: language 72(2), 287–335. https://doi.org/10.2307/416652 haring, lee 2004. cultural creolization. in: acta ethnographica hungarica 49(1–2), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1556/aethn.49.2004.1-2.1 harvilahti, lauri 1990. jumalat, tammet ja laulut: piirteitä balttien kansankulttuurista. in: vento, urpo (ed.), dainojen henki: latvian ja liettuan kirjallisuudesta ja kulttuurista. helsinki: sks, 55–91. harvilahti, lauri 2015. register in oral traditional phraseology. in: agha, asif; frog (eds.), registers of communication. helsinki: sks, 307–321. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvggx2qk.19 hautala, jouko 1954. suomalainen kansanrunouden tutkimus. helsinki: sks. helimski, eugen 1998. samojedit ja šamanismi: viisi luentoa samojedeista, šamanismista ja uralilaisesta kulttuurista. leisiö, larisa; leisiö, timo (eds.). tampere: tampereen yliopisto, kansanperinteen laitos. helimski, eugene 2003. nganasan shamanistic tradition: observations and hypotheses. in: hoppál, mihály; kósa, gábor (eds.), rediscovery of shamanic heritage. budapest: akadémiai kiadó, 195–210. helimsky, evgeny a.; kosterkina, nadezhda t. 2004. small séances with a great nganasan shaman. in: znamenski, andrei (ed.), shamanism: critical concepts in sociology i. london: routledge curzon, 212–244. irvine, judith t. 1989. when talk isn’t cheap: language and political economy. in: american ethnologist 16(2), 248–267. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1989.16.2.02a00040 irvine; judith t.; gal, susan 2000. language ideology and linguistic differentiation. in: kroskrity, paul v. (ed.), regimes of language: ideologies, polities, and identities. santa fe, mn: school of american research press, 35–83. itkonen, terho 1983. välikatsaus suomen kielen juuriin. in: virittäjä 87, 190–229, 349–386. jakobson, roman 1981 [1966]. grammatical parallelism and its russian facet. in: jakobson, roman, selected writings iii. poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry. rudy, stephen (ed.). the hague, 98–135. janhunen, juha 1986. siberian shamanistic terminology. in: lehtinen, ildikó (ed.), traces of central asian culture in the north. helsinki: suomalais-ugrilainen seura, 97–117. 72 frog kallio, kati 2013. laulamisen tapoja: esitysareena, rekisteri ja paikallinen laji länsiinkeriläisessä kalevalamittaisessa runossa. helsinki: university of helsinki. available at: http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:978-952-10-9566-5. kallio, kati 2020 (forthcoming). performance, music and meter in finnic kalevalametric poetry. in: frog; grünthal, satu; kallio, kati; niemi, jarkko (eds.), versification: metrics in practice. helsinki: sks. kallio, kati; frog; sarv, mari 2016–2017. what to call the poetic form: kalevalaic, regivärs, runosong, finnic tetrameter, or something else? in: rmn newsletter 12–13, 139–161. kallio, petri 2007. kantasuomen konsonanttihistoriaa. in: ylikoski, jussi; aikio, ante (eds.), sámit, sánit, sátnehámit: riepmočála pekka sammallahtii miessemánu 21. beaivve 2007. helsinki: suomalais-ugrilainen seura, 229–249. kallio, petri 2014. the diversification of proto-finnic. in: ahola, joonas; frog; tolley, clive (eds.), fibula, fabula, fact – the viking age in finland. helsinki: sks, 155–168. kallio, petri. 2015. the stratigraphy of the germanic loanwords in finnic. in: askedal, john ole; nielsen, hans frede (eds.), early germanic languages in contact. amsterdam: john benjamins, pp. 23–38. kallio, petri 2020 (forthcoming). substrates in finnic. in: aikio, ante; palviainen, santeri (eds.), substrate languages in northern europe: case studies and methodological perspectives. berlin: de gruyter. kara, györgy 2011. alliteration in mongol poetry. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. houndmills: palgrave macmillan, 156–179. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_11 kiparsky, paul 2014. kalevala and mordvin meter. unpublished paper presented at frontiers in comparative metrics 2, in memoriam lucyllae pszczołowskae, 19–20 april 2014, tallinn, estonia; quotation from lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics 2, in memoriam lucyllae pszczoławskae: conference abstracts. tallinn: tallinn university press, 36–37. kõiva, mare 2011. eesti loitsud. tallinn: pegasus. koptjevskaja-tamm, maria; wälchli, bernhard 2001. the circum-baltic languages: an areal-typological approach. in: dahl, östen; koptjevskaja-tamm, maria (eds.), the circum-baltic languages: typology and contact. amsterdam: john benjamins, 615–750. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.55.15kop 73the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? korhonen, mikko 1994 [1986]. the early history of the kalevala metre. in: siikala, anna-leena; vakimo, sinikka (eds.), songs beyond the kalevala: transformations of oral poetry. helsinki: sks, 75–87. krikmann, arvo 2015. on the vowel euphony in finnic alliterative folksongs. in: ff network 46, 12–17. krohn, kaarle 1901. wo und wann entstanden die finnischen zauberlieder? in: finnisch-ugrische forschungen 1, 52–72, 147–181. krohn, kaarle 1918. kalevalankysymyksia i–ii. helsinki: sks. krohn, kaarle 1924. magische ursprungsrunen der finnen. bussenius, arno (trans.). helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. kroonen, guus 2012. non-indo-european root nouns in germanic: evidence in support of the agricultural substrate hypothesis. in: grünthal, riho; kallio, petri (eds.), a linguistic map of prehistoric northern europe. helsinki: suomalaisugrilainen seura, 239–260. kroskrity, paul v. 2001. language ideologies. in: duranti, alessandro, a companion to linguistic anthropology. malden: blackwell, 496–517. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996522.ch22 kuusi, matti 1952. kalevalaisen säkeen, säeryhmän ja runon painavoituvuudesta. in: virittäjä 56(4), 241–261, 351–352. kuusi, matti 1963. varhaiskalevalainen runous. in: kuusi, matti (ed.), suomen kirjallisuus, i. helsinki: sks, 129–215. kuusi, matti 1994. questions of kalevala meter: what exactly did kalevala language signify to its users? in: siikala, anna-leena; vakimo, sinikka (eds.), songs beyond the kalevala: transformations of oral poetry. helsinki: sks, 41–55. kuusi, matti; bosley, keith; branch, michael (eds.; trans.) 1977. finnish folk poetry – epic: an anthology in finnish and english. helsinki: sks. läglos = kylstra, a. d., et al. 1991–2012. lexikon der älteren germanischen lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen sprachen, i–iii. amsterdam: rodopi. larsson, lars-gunnar 2001. baltic influence on finnic languages. in: dahl, östen; koptjevskaja-tamm, maria (eds.), the circum-baltic languages: typology and contact. amsterdam: john benjamins, 237–253. lauerma, petri 2004. larin parasken epiikan kielellisestä variaatiosta. helsinki: sks. leino, pentti 1970. strukturaalinen alkusointu suomessa: folklorepohjainen tilastoanalyysi. helsinki: sks. 74 frog leino, pentti 1986. language and metre: metrics and the metrical system of finnish. helsinki: sks. leino, pentti 1994. the kalevala metre and its development. in: siikala, anna-leena; vakimo, sinikka (eds.), songs beyond the kalevala: transformations of oral poetry. helsinki: sks, 56–74. leisiö, timo 2001. on the octosyllabic metric pattern and shamanism in eurasia. in: pentikäinen, juha; saressalo, hanna; taksami, chuner m. (eds.), shamanhood, symbolism and epic. budapest: akadémiai kiadó, 89–134. lord, albert b. 1960. the singer of tales. cambridge: harvard university press. lotz, john 1954. kamassian verse. in: journal of american folklore 67(266), 369–377. https://doi.org/10.2307/536413 luobbal sámmol sámmol ánte (ante aikio) 2012a. an essay on saami ethnolinguistic prehistory. in: grünthal, riho; kallio, petri (eds.), a linguistic map of prehistoric northern europe. helsinki: suomalais-ugrilainen seura, 63–117. luobbal sámmol sámmol ánte (ante aikio) 2012b. on finnic long vowels, samoyed vowel sequences, and proto-uralic *x. in: jalava, lotta; saarikivi, janne; sandman, erika; hyytiäinen, tiina (eds.), per urales ad orientem: iter polyphonicum multilingue: festskrift tillägnad juha janhunen på hans sextioårsdag den 12 februari 2012. helsinki: suomalais-ugrilainen seura, 227–250. mees, bernard 2003. substrate and shadow. in: andersen, henning (ed.), language contacts in prehistory: studies in stratigraphy. amsterdam: john benjamins, 11–44. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.239.04mee mu f we ne, s a l i koko s . 2 0 0 7 . popu l at i on move me nt s and c ont a c t s i n language evolution. in: journal of language contact 1, 63–91. https://doi. org/10.1163/000000007792548332 niemi, aukusti robert 1918. vanhan suomalaisen runomitan synnystä. helsinki: sks. niemi, jarkko 2002. musical structures of ingrian laments. in: nenola, aili (ed.), inkerin itkuvirret – ingrian laments. helsinki: sks, 708–728. niemi, jarkko 2015–2016. description of poetic form as a tool for stylistic analysis of a traditional song performance: a case of a western nenets narrative song. in: rmn newsletter 11, 17–32. niemi, jarkko 2020 (forthcoming). versification among the indigenous ethnic groups in the northern uralic linguistic area: preliminary results of a comparative structural analysis of the musical styles. in: frog; grünthal, satu; kallio, kati; niemi, jarkko (eds.), versification: metrics in practice. helsinki: sks. 75the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? paasonen, heikki 1897. itämerensuomalaisten kansojen runoudesta. in: valvoja 17, 1–26. paasonen, heikki 1911. über den versbau des mordwinischen volksliedes. in: finnisch-ugrische forschungen 10, 153–191. peegel, juhan 2004. nimisõna poeetilised sünonüümid eesti regivärssides. tallinn: eesti keele sihtasutus. radloff, wilhelm 1866. ueber die formen der gebundenen rede bei den altaischen tataren. in: zeitschrift für völkerpsychologie und sprachwissenschaft 4(1), 85–114. rahkonen, pauli 2013. south-eastern contact area of finnic languages in the light of onomastics. jyväskylä: bookwell. ravila, paavo 1935. vanhan suomalaisen runomitan probleema. in: virittäjä 39, 35–44. reichl, karl 1992. turkic oral epic poetry: traditions, forms, poetic structure. new york: garland. rifkin, matthew j. 2007. a spatial analysis of neolithic cultures throughout eastern, central and northern europe in relation to proto-germanic. in: journal of indoeuropean studies 35(1–2), 53–81. roper, jonathan 2008. estonian narrative charms in european context. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), charms, charmers and charming: international research on verbal magic. palgrave macmillan, 174–185. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583535_13 roper, jonathan 2009. on finnic and english alliterative metres. in: kilpiö, matti; kahlas-tarkka, leena; roberts, jane; timofeeva, olga (eds.), the anglo-saxons and the north: essays reflecting the theme of the 10th meeting of the international society of anglo-saxonists in helsinki, august 2001. tempe: acmrs, 89–108. roper, jonathan 2012. synonymy and rank in alliterative poetry. in: sign systems studies 40(1/2), 82–93. https://doi.org/10.12697/sss.2012.1-2.05 ross, jaan; lehiste, ilse. 2001. the temporal structure of estonian runic songs. berlin: mouton de gruyter. russom, geoffrey 1998. beowulf and old germanic metre. cambridge: cambridge university press. rüütel, ingrid 1998. estonian folk music layers in the context of ethnic relations. in: folklore (tartu) 6. available at: http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol6/ruutel.htm. saarikivi, janne 2007. uusi vanhoja sanoja. in: ylikoski, jussi; aikio, ante (eds.), sámit, sánit, sátnehámit: riepmočála pekka sammallahtii miessemánu 21. beaivve 2007. helsinki: suomalais-ugrilainen seura, 325–347. 76 frog saarikivi, janne 2011. saamelaiskielet. nykypäivää ja historia. in: seurujärvi-kari, irja; halinen, petri; pulkkinen, risto (eds.), saamentutkimus tänään. helsinki: sks, 77–119. saarinen, jukka 2017. “said a word, uttered thus”: structures and functions of parallelism in arhippa perttunen’s poems. in: oral tradition 31(2), 407–424. https://doi.org/10.1353/ort.2017.0016 saarinen, jukka 2018. runolaulun poetiikka: säe, syntaksi ja parallelismi arhippa perttusen runoissa. helsinki: helsingin yliopisto. sadeniemi, matti 1951. die metrik des kalevala-verses. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennicae. sarv, mari 1999. regilaul: clearing the alliterative haze. in: folklore (tartu) 10, 126– 140. https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf1999.10.alliter sarv, mari 2008. loomiseks loodud: regivärsimõõt traditsiooniprotsessis. tartu: eesti kirjandusmuuseum. sarv, mari 2011. possible foreign influences on the estonian regilaul metre: language or culture? in: lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina (eds.), frontiers in comparative prosody. berlin: peter lang, 207–226. sarv, mari 2014–2015. regional variation in folkloric meter: the case of estonian runosong. in: rmn newsletter 9, 6−17. schalin, johan 2018. preliterary scandinavian sound change viewed from the east: umlaut remodelled and language contact revisited. helsinki: department of finnish, finno-ugrian and scandinavian studies, university of helsinki. sebeok, thomas a.; zeps, valdis j. 1959. on non-random distribution of initial phonemes in cheremis verse. in: lingua 8, 370–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(59)90036-1 sievers, eduard 1893. altgermanische metrik. halle: niemeyer. siikala, anna-leena 2002. mythic images and shamanism: a perspective on kalevala poetry. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. silvonen, viliina 2020 (forthcoming). formulaic expression in olonets karelian laments: textual and musical structures of the composition of non-metric oral poetry. in: frog; lamb, william (eds.), weathered words: formulaic language and verbal art. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 77the finnic tetrameter – a creolization of poetic form? steinitz, wolfgang 1934. der parallelismus in der finnisch-karelischen volksdichtung untersucht an den liedern des karelischen sangers arhippa perttunen. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. stepanova, aleksandra 2012. karjalaisen itkuvirsikielen sanakirja. helsinki: sks. stepanova, eila 2011. reflections of belief systems in karelian and lithuanian laments: shared systems of traditional referentiality? in: archaeologia baltica 15, 128–143. https://doi.org/10.15181/ab.v15i1.18 stepanova, eila 2012. mythic elements of karelian laments: the case of syndyzet and spuassuzet. in: frog; siikala, anna-leena; stepanova eila (eds.), mythic discourses: studies in uralic traditions. helsinki: sks, 257–287. stepanova, eila 2014. seesjärveläisten itkijöiden rekisterit: tutkimus äänellä itkemisen käytänteistä, teemoista ja käsitteistä. joensuu: suomen kansantietouden tutkijain seura. stepanova eila 2015. the register of karelian lamenters. in: agha, asif; frog (eds.), registers of communication. helsinki: sks, 258–274. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvggx2qk.18 stifter, david 2016. metrical systems of celtic traditions. in: north-western european language evolution 61(1), 38–94. https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.69.1.02sti tkačenko, orest borisovich 1979. sopostavitel’no-istoricheskaja frazeologija slavjanskikh i finno-ugorskikh jazykov. kiev: naukova dumka. travis, james 1942. the relations between early celtic and early germanic alliteration. in: the germanic review: literature, culture, theory 17(2), 99–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/19306962.1942.11786083 trudgill, peter 1989. contact and isolation in linguistic change. in: breivik, leiv egil; jahr, ernst håkon (eds.), language change: contributions to the study of its causes. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 227–237. tsur, reuven 1992. toward a theory of cognitive poetics. amsterdam: north-holland. tvauri, andres 2014. the impact of the climate catastrophe of 536–537 ad in estonia and neighbouring areas. in: estonian journal of archaeology 18(1), 30–56. https://doi.org/10.3176/arch.2014.1.02 uino, pirjo 1997. ancient karelia: archaeological studies – muinais-karjala: arkeologisia tutkimuksia. helsinki: suomen muinaismuistoyhdistys. urban, greg 1991. a discourse-centered approach to culture: native south american myths and rituals. austin: university of texas press. 78 frog vargyas, lajos 1983. hungarian ballads and the european ballad tradition, i–ii. budapest: akadémiai kiadó. watkins, calvert 1995. how to kill a dragon: aspects of indo-european poetics. oxford: oxford university press. wilson, william a. 1976. folklore and nationalism in modern finland. bloomington: indiana university press. willson, kendra 2019 (in press). runo revisited: borrowing and semantic development. in: rmn newsletter 14. versification and poetics through the lens of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics (“juri lotman 100”: a report from poetry and poetics panels) versification and poetics through the lens of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics (“juri lotman 100”: a report from poetry and poetics panels) maria-kristiina lotman, igor pilshchikov* the international congress juri lotman’s semiosphere, held in tallinn and tartu from 25–28 february 2022, was organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of juri lotman (1922–1993).1 the main goal of the congress was to promote lotman’s scholarly legacy worldwide and bring together an interdisciplinary network of researchers to create a dialogue between experts with different academic backgrounds. among other topics discussed by lotman and his fellow members of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics, versification, poetics and the history of poetry were addressed. several papers focused on signs in poetic texts and poetic text as a sign system. natalya fateeva’s “poetry as a self-reproducing system” elaborated on juri lotman’s model of autocommunication to study the phenomenon of poetic inspiration as described by the poets themselves in their works. such selfdescriptions often refer to introspection and autocommunication. fateeva proposed that a poet simultaneously acts in two guises: first, as someone experiencing an extraordinary physical and mental state and, second, as an actual poet-creator who describes this state in rhythmic-phonetic formulas. jurgita katkuvienė’s “strategies of reading visual poetry” highlighted a feature of modern poetry in which the formation of meaning often takes place not on the content plane but on the expression plane (to use louis hjelmslev’s * authors’ addresses: maria-kristiina lotman, department of classical studies, college of foreign languages and cultures, university of tartu, lossi 3, tartu 51003, estonia. e-mail: maria.lotman@mail.ee; igor pilshchikov, university of california, los angeles, department of slavic, east european and eurasian languages and cultures, 320 kaplan hall, ucla, los angeles, ca 90095; tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee. 1 for the program, abstracts and other information about the congress visit the event page: https://jurilotman.ee/en/juri-lotman-100/congress-2022/ https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.06 studia metrica et poetica 9.1, 2022, 112–118 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.06 113versification and poetics through the lens of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics terms). the most vivid forms of such poetry destroy the boundaries of traditional verbal discourse and expand the very concept of poetry. at the same time, a question arises about the possibilities of reading such poetry. considering visual poetry sampled from lithuanian literature and using a. j. greimas’s tools for semiotic analysis of the forms of content and expression in various texts, katkuvienė addressed the issue of applying greimas’s model of reading to poetic texts in which verbal discourse is minimized or even completely absent. oleg zaslavsky discussed hidden structures concealed in artistic works. his paper “the hidden plot in pushkin’s poetics” was based on studying several of pushkin’s texts. the working hypothesis was that pushkin, aiming for extreme semantic saturation and conciseness, removed all the intermediate links of the plot that can be unambiguously restored from the narrative. by reconstructing these elements, the study demonstrates that the “hidden plot” is an essential factor in pushkin’s narrative construction. ekaterina dmitrieva’s paper “silence as a semiotic sign in european poetry of the late 19th century and its precedents in gallant poetry of the 18th century” examined the issue of the semiotic nature of silence (emptiness) and the signifiers used to express it. she analyzed the modernist poetics of mallarmé and maeterlink, demonstrating different ways of constructing such signs, and then pointed to their precedents in french poésie légère of the 18th century. in the paper “the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ in estonian poetics”, maria-kristiina lotman and rebekka lotman addressed one of the basic binary antinomies in tartu-moscow semiotics, the question of foreign and ‘own’ (domestic, native estonian) in estonian theories of poetry. they demonstrated how this dichotomy has been expressed in poetical treatises since the earliest period of estonian literature. they show how estonian poetic culture has been a constant dialogue between the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’, while the bases for determining the estonian ‘own’ are changing, as are the boundaries of the ‘foreign’. on one hand, the ‘own’ has been idealized, but on the other hand, it sometimes acquires a negative meaning as something worn-out or constrictive. irina melnikova’s talk “on the problem of the iconicity of a (poetic) text” proceeded from the concept of poetic text as a sign system involved in the process of communication. the material for the study was the poetry collection “immersion” (grimzdimas, 2017) by a contemporary lithuanian poet, gytis norvilas. it is a semiotically heterogeneous text that uses different types of coding, combining symbolism and iconicity in different forms and proportions. melnikova concluded that norvilas’s poetry is clearly a manifestation of what lotman associates with the dynamics of literary texts and literary evolution – the oscillation between semiotic homogeneity and semiotic 114 maria-kristiina lotman, igor pilshchikov heterogeneity – and this makes it possible to reveal the collision of various semiotic systems described in lotman’s theory. suren zolyan’s “poetics of modality: pushkin’s ‘if only i were tsar…’” was dedicated to the semantic function of modality in pushkin’s oeuvre. zolyan showed how aleksandr pushkin’s biographically important prosaic fragment “if only i were tsar…” presents some principles of pushkin’s poetics that were later embodied primarily in his prose works. a play with modalities can take various forms, thus making the real and the imaginary mutually permeable. using intratextual analysis and comparison with other works by pushkin, zolyan offered an interpretation according to which “if only i were tsar…” can be seen as a short story, while its textual ambiguity (some fragments are erased while others are erased and then restored) is an artistic device. the plot dynamics, which are normally created by links between the events, are created here by changes in modal relations – relations of attainability between worlds and transition from one possible world to another. an avant-texte functions as an equivalent of a hypertext. several presentations demonstrated how computational methods can be applied to the study of thematics and the semantic halos of metrical structures. oleg sobchuk and artjoms šeļa’s paper “towards computational thematics” proposed a new direction in the digital humanities: the study of automated detection of thematic similarities between texts by comparing various algorithms for text analysis and measuring their performance for unsupervised detection of thematic similarities between literary texts. to perform such an analysis, a corpus of 200 novels in four genres (detective, science fiction, fantasy, and romance) was assembled, and after removing the genre labels, algorithms were applied to divide the texts into groups as similar as possible to the original genres. the aim of this method is to provide better tools for detecting literary influences (borrowing plots, settings, etc.) for the study of literary traditions on a large scale and, eventually, for detecting patterns of cultural evolution in literature. in their paper “the semantic halo of meter in european syllabic-accentual poetry: quantitative evidence and formal modelling”, artjoms šeļa and petr plecháč attempted to research the semantics of verse on a quantitative basis and build a formalized model of the semantic halo for several european syllabicaccentual traditions such as english, danish, german, russian and czech. the aim was to achieve a sufficiently abstract representation of the semantic structure of different verse meters. another group of papers was dedicated to various issues of sound in poetry. gennady obatnin’s presentation “on the history of the description of rhyme and rhyming in russian poetry” examined different topoi of describing rhyme 115versification and poetics through the lens of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics in russian poetry, criticism and normative versification, such as ‘rhyme-rattle’ or ‘rhyme bell’; ‘rhyme-arrow’; ‘rhyme-breath’; ‘marriage of rhymes’ and others. the study also addressed the internal connections and sources of these descriptions. boris maslov and tatiana nikitina’s “comparative approaches to rhyme and rhythm” presented some recent results on the interaction between different levels of organization of verse that support the basic insights of lotman’s structuralist poetics. the research material was drawn from russian and english syllabic-accentual poetry (complex stanzas used by shakespeare, pushkin and byron). michael wachtel presented a paper on “hiatus in russian poetry”. hiatus is a relatively rare feature in the russian poetic tradition and often suggests foreign influence. using examples from golden and silver age poetry, wachtel demonstrated several ways in which this phonetic device has been used for semantic effect. the congress also featured papers devoted to the poetics of ideology and the poetics of politics. konstantin polivanov’s presentation “boris pasternak’s strategies of literature and life in the perception of his contemporaries” discussed the political subtexts of pasternak’s works, the argumentation of critics of his political position, and the reactions of the authorities to his behaviour and speeches in the 1930s. lea pild’s paper “alexander blok in the poetry by mikhail kuzmin in the late 1910s and early 1920s” analyzed changes in kuzmin’s attitude towards alexander blok. amidst the horrible events after the bolshevik revolution in russia, which the poet regarded as the destruction of culture, kuzmin’s former critical attitude towards the symbolists became less sharp and even indulgent. andrei fedotov and pavel uspensky’s paper “nikolai nekrasov’s love poems and avdotya panaeva’s prose: the poetics of mansplaining and emancipation” presented nekrasov’s so-called panaeva cycle in light of gender theory. one of this cycle’s distinctive features is instructiveness, which manifests itself in persistent appeals to the poet’s beloved with requests, commands and instructions. the instructions were given with the intention to develop her self-awareness and self-sufficiency, but they can be viewed as typical mansplaining. the prose of avdotya panaeva gives a unique opportunity to understand how an emancipated woman of the nineteenth century reacted to mansplaining. the paper examined in detail the strategies of panaeva’s female representation and her ways of deconstructing masculine ideas and practices. one panel focused on the history of poetic theories and shifts in theoretical frameworks and concepts. 116 maria-kristiina lotman, igor pilshchikov mihhail lotman’s talk “verse theory: formalism  – structuralism  – generativism” was devoted to the development of theoretical approaches that had a significant impact on the development of ideas in twentieth-century poetics. the speaker pointed out that the formalists did not create a unified theory of verse. boris tomashevsky’s technological approach differs significantly from the functionalism of boris eichenbaum and, especially, yuri tynianov. there is a significant continuity between formalism and structuralism, and roman jakobson’s theories form a link between these schools. thus, the poetic function of language in jakobson can be considered a development of tomashevsky’s ideas. the theory of meter in jakobson and trubetskoy, which is based on the mechanism of privative oppositions, is fundamentally different from all previous theories of verse. morris halle, the founder of generativism in verse theory, can be considered a link between structuralism and generativism. halle and keyser continued the structuralist tradition, giving up the concept of verse feet. what was new in their approach was a specific set of criteria for metricality and the calculation of the complexity of a metrical structure. mihhail lotman concluded that the main difference between generativism and previous approaches is its consideration of the phenomena of verse at the level of deep and superficial structures. igor pilshchikov’s paper “system vs. structure in the formalist and structuralist parlance” traced the use of the terms and concepts of ‘system’ and ‘structure’ in russian-language literary and cultural studies from the 1920s to the 1970s. in his classic metapoetics of russian formalism, peter steiner defined ‘system’ as one of the basic tropological models in formalist discourse. the use of ‘system’ is characteristic of petrograd formalism (yuri tynianov), whereas ‘structure’ was preferred by moscow (para)formalists (gustav shpet, and his followers, among them grigory vinokur). in 1928, roman jakobson collaborated with tynianov and disputed with vinokur. jakobson added the term structure to the term system in the formula he elaborated together with tynianov: “synchronic studies replaced the notion of a mechanical agglomeration of phenomena with the notion of a system, structure”. for jakobson, ‘structure’ was the basic concept of new, post-romantic and post-positivist sciences, and he excluded ‘system’ from all post-1929 versions of this formula. juri lotman initiated two important conceptual shifts. using the post-saussurean dichotomy of langue/code/grammar and parole/message/text, he ascribed ‘system’ to la langue and ‘structure’ to la parole. hence, he derived his concepts of “art as a secondary modelling system” vs. “the structure of artistic (poetic) text” (1970). furthermore, lotman developed the dialectics of system and structure: in art, a structure (text) generated by a system (language) becomes 117versification and poetics through the lens of the tartu-moscow school of semiotics itself a system (language) that generates other structures (texts). this led to his concept of “the text as a dynamic system” (1981). a few papers discussed and interpreted poetry through the lens of lotman’s ideas. silvi salupere’s paper “structural-semiotic modelling of reading” focused on the structural-semiotic method of reading a literary text developed by juri lotman. it demonstrated how, since the 1960s, lotman actively developed a new metalanguage in which the concepts of model, system, and structure were at the nucleus of the structuralist approach, while the concepts of sign and communication were associated with semiotics. structural-semiotic methods are useful for the analysis of a poetic text, which is defined as “a semiotic structure organized in a special way” and, as such, a meaning-making device that is interconnected with its environment and modified under its influence. a literary text as a mental object (along with the consciousness of an individual and culture as collective intelligence) is therefore a cognitive-communicative model, since all these objects have been developed from an expanded understanding of natural language. according to lotman, in addition to natural language, a person has at least two more powerful modelling systems that actively shape their consciousness: a system of ‘common sense’ and their spatial-visual view of the world. the role of art is to introduce freedom into the automatism of these worlds, destroying the unambiguity of the connections prevailing in them and thereby expanding the boundaries of perception. tatiana stepanishcheva’s paper “russian poetry anthologised by juri lotman, early 19th-century poets and poets of the 1790–1810s” focused on the poetry collections edited and commented on by lotman and examined these corpora as reflections of concepts that lotman presented in the introductions of the volumes. the presenter demonstrated how lotman’s interest in turning points of cultural history manifested in his selection and interpretation of poetic texts included in these anthologies. a group of presentations was devoted to the sources of and influences in poetry and poetic language. dina magomedova’s paper “biblical quotations and their sources in the work of alexander blok” examined notes on pages of the bible from blok’s home library. magomedova observed that these marginalia are most numerous in the pentateuch, ecclesiastes, the book of wisdom of solomon, the gospel of john, the 1st epistle of john and the revelation of john the theologian and analyzed a number of quotations found in blok’s poems, dramas and articles. natalia yakovleva’s paper “natalia benard and vera ilyina: the formation of poetic language” examined the formative impact of the early work of boris 118 maria-kristiina lotman, igor pilshchikov pasternak on the poetic language of two undeservingly forgotten poets of the 1920s, natalia benard and vera ilyina, in the context of their biographies. igor nemirovsky’s “ignat lebyadkin in the circle of contemporary poets” was devoted to the poetry of ignat lebyadkin – a character in dostoevsky’s novel demons, whose verses have acquired the status of an independent and self-sufficient historical and literary phenomenon (defined as ‘the poetry of a literary character’ by vladimir f. markov). the paper discussed the poetic context and environment relevant to lebyadkin, which until now have not received the attention they deserve. natalia mazur’s “boris pasternak as a secret petersburger” focused on the meaning of saint petersburg and the “petersburg text” in pasternak’s collection of poems, twin in the clouds (1914). the presenter demonstrated that two urban poems in this book depict saint petersburg, while the lyrical hero feels a special spiritual closeness to this city. the congress ended with a public statement on the war in ukraine. the participants from 37 different countries including ukraine and russia demanded an immediate cessation of russia’s aggression.2 2 this report was written with the support of the estonian research council (grant no. prg319) and the base funding of the university of tartu (grant no. phvlc21924). studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik (following osip brik’s, boris jarcho’s and andrei fedorov’s remarks on the russian translations from heine) sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov*6 abstract. th is paper develops some of the ideas that were expressed at the meeting of the translators’ section of the soviet writers’ union (28 december 1934) where osip brik’s talk on new russian translations from heinrich heine was presented and discussed. brik argued for equirhythmical translations of heine’s dolniks and maintained that equimetrical translations are impossible due to the diff erences between the russian and the german systems of verse. his opponents, on the contrary, argued for equimetrical translations and maintained that equirhythmical translations are impossible due to the diff erences between the accentual systems of the russian and the german languages. boris jarcho, who presided the meeting, developed a theory, according to which every versifi cation system is characterised by primary and secondary features. th e primary features represent a determinist norm and should be reproduced in translation to the full extent, while the secondary features represent a statistical norm: they may be reproduced in a proportion that the language and the poetic tradition can aff ord and that is at the same time similar to the proportion found in the original text. th e authors of the present paper discuss three russian poetic translations of heine’s celebrated “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam...” from the point of view of their equimetricity/equirhythmicity, and compare their metrical and rhythmical structures with various rhythmic types of the russian dolnik. keywords: dolnik, equimetricity, equirhythmicity, poetic translation * authors’ addresses: igor pilshchikov, tallinn university, estonian institute of humanities, uus-sadama 5, tallinn 10120, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee; sergei liapin, pulkovskaia str. 19–50, st. petersburg 196158, russia, email: liapin@mail.ru. studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 58–80 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.03 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.03 59“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik [brik] used to say that rhythm is, fi rst and foremost, a property, an attribute of motion. i know that people in europe and america, who are now creating a new theory of rhythm, forget to fi x the name of the man who gave them an idea how to revise the approach to this topic. (shklovsky 1978) th is paper develops some of the ideas that were expressed at the meeting of the translators’ section of the soviet writers’ union (28 december 1934) where the ex-formalist left ist critic osip brik’s (1888–1945) talk on new russian translations of heinrich heine’s deutschland: ein wintermährchen was presented and discussed (see brik et. al. 2012). at the beginning of the 1930s, this poem was translated into russian by several translators, including a prominent translator, writer and literary theorist, yurii tynianov (1894–1943), one of the leaders of the petrograd association of the formalists – opoyaz (the society for the study of poetic language). th e prominent literary theorist boris jarcho (1889–1942), a former member of the moscow association of the formalists, the moscow linguistic circle, presided over the meeting, which was attended by the leading russian translators – in particular, dmitri usov (1896–1943) and lev penkovsky (1894–1971). brik’s talk was focused on the rhythm of heine’s dolnik verse and its russian equivalents. as we shall see further, brik argued for equirhythmical translations of heine’s dolniks and maintained that equimetrical translations are impossible due to the diff erences between the russian and the german systems of verse. usov and penkovsky, on the contrary, argued for equimetrical translations and maintained that equirhythmical translations are impossible due to the diff erences between the accentual systems of the russian and the german languages. th eir practice was supported by the theory developed by andrei fedorov (1906–1999), a disciple of tynianov at the institute of the history of arts and later a classic fi gure in soviet translation studies (the petersburg state university centre for translation studies is named aft er him). he was not present at the discussion, but published a few articles on the same topic (see fedorov 1928; 1935). ‘dolnik’ (дольник) is the russian term that describes various forms of non-syllabo-tonic metrics. its defi nition, which was proposed in the 1960s by a prominent russian verse theorist, mikhail gasparov (1935–2005), diff ers from earlier descriptions of similar forms in russian verse theory, including those discussed in the present article. we will, however, attempt to combine the existing 60 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov approaches and use their respective accomplishments in order to develop them and achieve a deeper understanding of the phenomena under consideration. unlike the ‘classical’ syllabo-tonic (syllabic-accentual) metres (such as iambic, trochaic, dactylic, anapaestic, and amphibrachic metres), the length of the inter-ictic interval in a dolnik line is not constant. in syllabo-tonics, the amplitude of the variation of inter-ictic intervals is equal to zero (the inter-ictic intervals are invariable), while in dolniks the amplitude of the variation of interictic intervals is equal to one (the inter-ictic intervals can be either monosyllabic or disyllabic). th us, syllabo-tonic metres are ‘stricter’ than the dolnik. in the same sense, accentual verse, or ‘stress-metre’, where the amplitude of the variation of inter-ictic intervals is one or more, is ‘looser’ than the dolnik (hence the english descriptive term for dolnik: ‘strict stress-metre’, see tarlinskaja 1993). nevertheless, “‘dolnik’ is a metre in its own right, not just a looser variant of iamb, or a stricter variant of accentual verse” (tarlinskaja 1992: 3). th is term is sometimes used in english-language scholarship and applied to russian as well as english and german verse (tarlinskaja 1992, 1995, 2002; duff el 2008; plungian 2011; attridge 2012, 2013). historically, however, the russian dolnik is characterised by an isosyllabic tendency that gasparov noticed but whose value he did not fully appreciate (cf. liapin 2014, reviewed in pilshchikov 2014: 153). we have to take into account not only the tonic factor, but also the syllabic factor, if we want “to situate the rise of dolnik in the historical tendencies characteristic of, specifi cally, russian verse lines: the tendency of russian verse to favour medium length and roughly equal lines, and its rejection of sharp deviation from syllable-counting in favour of stresscounting regularities” (klenin 2008: 274). like a syllabo-tonic line, a dolnik line may contain unstressed ictuses (or, in other words, it may skip schematic stresses). here the linguistic factor seems to play its role. russian words are long enough, and compound words (with rare exceptions) do not bear a secondary stress (unlike most compound and some polymorphemic words in german or english). th e average number of syllables per word in russian is ca 2.5–3,1 i.e. an average russian word is almost twice as long as an average english word (ca 1.5 syllables).2 th is is why one or more metric stresses in russian disyllabic metres (iambs and trochees) and in the 1 2.8, according to tomashevsky (1919: 32). to be more precise: 2.74 for nouns, 3.11 for verbs, 3.44 for adjectives, 2.68 for adverbs, 1.98 for pronouns, 2.21 for other parts of speech, for an average of 2.72 (gasparov 1984: 173). or, using a diff erent corpus and a diff erent classifi cation: 2.6 for content words, 1.9 for pronouns, 1.0 for form words (zubkova 2010: § 3.1). 2 to compare: 1.5 for content words, 1.15 for pronouns, 1.05 for form words (zubkova 2010: § 3.1). 61“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik russian dolnik are more oft en than not skipped (as opposed to, say, english disyllabic and strict-stress meters). th us, we are dealing with the problem of unstressed ictuses: not all the downbeats are actually stressed. th e structure of the 3-ictus dolnik may be presented as (0/1/2) × (1/2) × (1/2) × (0/1/2/3) here × denotes ‘strong’ positions (ictuses), numbers denote a number of syllables in ‘weak’ (metrically unstressed) inter-ictic positions, anacruses and clausulae, and variable intervals are divided by slashes and bracketed. th is metre has fi ve rhythmic forms, as described by gasparov (1968: 67–70; 1974: 223–225): i (0/1/2) × 2 × 2 × (0/1/2/3) ii (0/1/2) × 1 × 2 × (0/1/2/3) iii (0/1/2) × 2 × 1 × (0/1/2/3) iv (0/1/2) × 1 × 1 × (0/1/2/3) v (0/1/2) × 4 × (0/1/2/3) th e last ictus is normally stressed (exceptions will be discussed further). forms ii, iii, and iv can either be fully stressed or skip the stress in the fi rst ictus. in forms i and iv, the stress can also be skipped in the second ictus (in rare cases, it can be skipped on both the fi rst and second ictuses, although in form i, with its disyllabic inter-ictic intervals, a skip of metrical stress is less probable due to the average length of russian words). form v is a very peculiar form with a virtual (or movable) unstressed ictus or a prolonged inter-ictic interval as an ‘equivalent of stress’ (see discussion below). forms ii and iii would turn into form v if their second ictus were not stressed. th us, in form v, the syllabic factor prevails over the tonic factor. some rhythmic forms of the 3-ictus dolnik are isomorphic to syllabo-tonic lines. form i with a zero anacrusis is isomorphic to the 3-foot dactyl; form i with a monosyllabic anacrusis – to the 3-foot amphibrach; form i with a disyllabic anacrusis – to the 3-foot anapaest (that is, dactylic, anapaestic, and amphibrachic trimeters). form iv with a zero anacrusis is isomorphic to the 3-foot trochee (trochaic trimeter); form iv with a monosyllabic anacrusis – to the 3-foot iambus (iambic trimeter); form iv with a disyllabic anacrusis – to the 4-foot trochee (trochaic tetrameter) with a skip of stress in the fi rst ictus. form ii with a zero anacrusis (with or without stress in the fi rst ictus) is isomorphic to the 2-foot anapaest (anapaestic dimeter). only forms ii with monosyllabic and disyllabic anacruses, as well as forms iii and v are specifi c 62 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov to the dolnik, i.e. the lines of these forms are never isomorphic to classical syllabo-tonic lines (cf. gasparov 1974: 235).3 let us consider the rhythm of the most well known poem of heine, “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam...” from the ‘russian’ point of view, the metre of “ein fichtenbaum...” is 3-ictus dolnik. in the following schemes, roman numerals denote its rhythmic forms, arabic numerals denote the number of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, underlined arabic numerals denote the number of syllables in anacruses and clausulae, and bullets denote the stressed syllables that coincide with ictuses.4 th e “accentually ambiguous” words (as viktor zhirmunsky called them), such as articles and pronouns, are considered stressed when they are placed on ictuses, but are considered unstressed when they emerge in the inter-ictic positions (zhirmunsky 1925: 90–130; gasparov 1974: 131–138). both main and secondary stresses are interpreted as metrically relevant accents. ictic positions are henceforth italicised, syllables in anacruses and clausulae underlined: ein fichtenbaum steht einsam im norden auf kahler höh’. ihn schläfert; mit weißer decke umhüllen ihn eis und schnee. er träumt von einer palme, die fern im morgenland einsam und schweigend trauert auf brennender felsenwand. iv iii iii iii iv iv iii iii 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • th e prominent russian linguist lev shcherba (1880–1944) did not consider the secondary stress on the fi nal syllable of the compound word fíchtenbaum a fullfl edged, metrically relevant accent. moreover, he regarded the rhyming syllables of the second quatrain (mórgenland and félsenwand) as unstressed (shcherba 1936: 106–107). nevertheless, we interpret such lines as fully accented, following brik, who stated that “in the german language, the number of unstressed syllables around the stressed syllables is very small, and, for instance, compound words, such as sommermorgen [...], have two stresses, which cannot be 3 in fact, form v with a disyllabic anacrusis, a disyllabic clausula and a compulsory caesura aft er the fi ft h syllable – 2 × 2 | 2 × 2 – is isomorphic to the so-called “koltsov’s pentasyllabic meter” (“penton iii”) used in imitations of russian folkloric verse, but a detailed discussion of non-classical syllabo-tonic metres lies outside the scope of our paper. 4 gasparov used dots instead of bullets. 63“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik skipped. [...] th e germans use additional stresses, which sometimes are no less strong than the primary accents” (brik et al. 2012: 289; see also bailey 1969: 19, note 22). th e consensus in modern phonological theory is that such words do have fi nal secondary stresses (to cite just a few examples: giegerich 1985; eisenberg 1991; wiese 1996; etc.). shcherba also admitted that “in russian, weak and strong accents are functionally diff erent from german accents” (1936: 108), so that he was, in a somewhat self-contradictory way, not unwilling to qualify the secondary accent in german as metrically and rhythmically relevant: it is particularly important to point out that all content words [in heine’s ‘ein fichtenbaum...’] bear a full-fl edged stress, which is not blurred in the phrase, due to which every word is as if hammered in the listener’s head. th e number of such fullfl edgedly stressed syllables, in proportion to the total number of syllables [in the poem], is about 35% (and if the syllables with the secondary accent are reckoned in the stressed syllables, it will increase to 41%). (shcherba 1936: 106–107) we count the line “er träumt von einer palme” as having three stresses, notwithstanding the (probably justifi ed) opinion of shcherba who considered the article einer a proclitic (shcherba 1936: 107). here we also accept brik’s opinion that, in such lines of heine as “zu aachen langweilen sich auf der straß’,” the prepositions and articles should be regarded as stressed: “we have got four stresses here, not three. if you sputter and mumble, no good will come of that. [th e preposition] auf [...] should also be stressed here” (brik et al. 2012: 289). let us compare the rhythm of “ein fichtenbaum...” with the rhythm of usov’s translation of this poem. it is found in his private letter of 8 june 1942 and remained unpublished until recently (in brik et al. 2012: 318–319): на севере кедр одиноко на голом холме растёт. он дремлет. покровом белым одел его снег и лёд. всё снится ему, что пальма в полуденной стране, молча, одна тоскует на знойной крутизне.5 5 here and henceforth, unstressed ictuses in forms i to iv are both italicised and doubleunderlined. vowels of tetrasyllabic inter-accentual intervals in form v will be double-underlined without added italics. 64 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov or, schematically: h e i n e u s o v iv iii iii iii iv iv iii iii 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • i iii iii iii iii iv iii iv 1 • 2 • 2 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 3   • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 3   • usov’s translation does not take into account anything of what brik was trying to say at the heine meeting.6 in eff ect, brik formulated a new concept of metrorhythmic equivalence in the poetic translation from german (and some other languages) into russian, using the example of one of the most understudied metres – the dolnik. at the same time, usov’s translation eloquently reveals the most important aspects of metro-rhythmic equivalence that brik wanted to problematise: it seems to me that, in order to reproduce a rhythmic-intonational structure in translation, it is wrong, as we get used to doing, to confi ne ourselves to a merely external calculation of syllables, to establish certain external features of the metre. it turns out that the metre, the rhythmic-intonational structure is a much more complicated thing, and we have to fi nd, in the russian language and russian versifi cation, such possibilities that would not contradict our versifi cation, on the one hand, and what is found in the original, on the other. in particular, in this case, i would not, for example, overuse the skipped stresses, i would attempt to imitate the high number of stresses, characteristic of the german language, because otherwise, when you read [...] translations, you oft en get an impression that the metre is lost and the line somehow fi nds itself out of the structure. (brik et al. 2012: 291) in the 1930s a systematic study of dolniks did not yet start, but contemporary verse theory can clear up and specify brik’s statements. first and foremost, two 6 even if usov translated heine’s poem before december 1934, he had an opportunity of revising his translation by 1942 (if he had been convinced by brik’ s arguments). 65“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik of his ideas should be pointed out: the high number of stresses in the german dolnik (as compared to the russian dolnik) and the observation concerning the rhythmic heterogeneity of the russian translations from heine, which creates “the impression that the metre is lost”. according to brik, the “basis” of the german dolnik is “the iamb [...] complemented with additional unstressed syllables” (brik et al. 2012: 288). in heine’s “fichtenbaum”, form iv of the 3-ictus dolnik, which is isomorphic to iambic trimeter, is used in the fi rst, fi ft h and sixth lines (therefore, each of the two quatrains begins with an ‘iambic’ line). other lines belong to form iii, in which the fi rst inter-ictic interval is longer than an iambic interval by one syllable. however, the 7th line, which has a zero anacrusis (and not a monosyllabic anacrusis, as all other lines) can also be interpreted diff erently: it sounds like an iambic trimeter with a trochaic inversion in the fi rst foot.7 since all the eight lines of heine’s poem are fully stressed (all ictuses bear accents, no stresses are skipped), there are no trisyllabic, tetrasyllabic or pentasyllabic interaccentual intervals in the text. th erefore, argues brik, in translation we should not ignore this rhythmic-intonational structure and cannot overuse what we oft en overuse in the russian language, i. e. skipped stresses. such skips of stresses on the downbeats8 cannot be admitted because when we start skipping the downbeats, the rhythmic-intonational structure will be violated. (brik et al. 2012: 289) indeed, usov’s translation features a diff erent repertoire of rhythmic forms in comparison with heine’s, and a completely diff erent rhythmic composition – that is, the arrangement of these forms. at the same time usov faithfully reproduces the structure of the anacruses and clausulae. th e translation begins with an ‘amphibrachic’ line (form i) instead of the ‘iambic’ line (form iv), whereas form i is not at all featured in the german original. th e next three 7 cf. gasparov’s description of aleksandr blok’s poem “голос из хора” (“a voice from the chorus”, 1910–14), “where, side by side with additional syllables (‘и вéк послéдний, ужáсней всéх...’), a shift of the initial stress is used (‘хóлод и мрáк грядýщих днéй’)” (gasparov 1974: 317; accents and bold italics belong to us. – sl, ip). 8 udarnye doli in the original; hence dolnik. contemporary russian verse theory, following andrei kolmogorov and mikhail gasparov, interprets dolia as an entire tact, which contains both the ictus and the ‘weak’ syllables, rather than the ictus itself. kolmogorov (1903–1987), one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, was among the partisans of the statistical-probabilistic approach to the study of verse (on dolniks see kolmogorov 1963; kolmogorov, prokhorov 1963, 1964). 66 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov lines belong to form iii, in compliance with the original. th e second quatrain of the translation presents a crisscross rhythmic composition iii-iv-iii-iv (instead of the contiguous composition iv-iv-iii-iii in heine). moreover, in the original, the second stanza begins with form iv and ends with form iii, whereas in the translation, just the opposite, the opening line belongs to form iii and the concluding line belongs to form iv. furthermore, in both ‘iambic’ (form iv) lines of the russian translation, the stress skips the second ictus, and a trisyllabic interaccentual interval emerges. ‘long’ interaccentual intervals are very rarely featured in the german dolnik, so that their appearance drastically changes the sound of the poem and creates a substantially diff erent intonational expression. speaking of the rhythm of heine’s dolnik, brik emphasises the fact that, distinctly from the russian language, “in german this rhythmical impulse, [...] this rhythmical scheme [...] is very easily formed by the verbal material” (brik et al. 2012: 289). th e concept of “rhythmical impulse” was exposed in detail by boris tomashevsky (1890–1957), an active participant in both opoyaz and the moscow linguistic circle, who borrowed this term from brik’s earlier papers. th e impulse emerges on the way from metre to rhythm and back: the poet obeys the rhythmical impulse and fi nds for it “an expression in the actual rhythm of individual lines”, while the listener grasps it “due to his/her perception of a sequence of verse-lines” (tomashevsky 1923: 83). rhythmical impulse is not a determinist, but a statistical type of norm (červenka 1984: 30). from the point of view of the reader of the poem, the rhythmical impulse is the same as rhythmic inertia (as viktor zhirmunsky called it). scholars of russian verse also defi ned this phenomenon in statistical terms, as a rhythmic tendency or a stressing profi le (kiril taranovski), a rhythmic profi le of the metre (mikhail gasparov), or the “image of the metre” (andrei kolmogorov).9 in this case we can speak of diff erent ‘national images of the metre’. th is problem was ardently debated at the meeting on 28 december 1934. th e fi rst discussant was usov, who opposed brik’s thesis about the inadmissability of skipping stresses in the ictuses: i do not fully agree with [brik] here. th e thing is that a double-beat line sometimes has an equivalent of the third accent, a phenomenon already noted by the acmeists and symbolists. consider, for example, the following line: ‘на 9 on these terms see rudy 1976: 510; brik 2012: 535–536 (marina akimova’s note); gasparov 2012: 505; liapin, pilshchikov 2013: 54. taranovski and gasparov’s stressing/rhythmic profi le is not, in fact, identical with the statistics of rhythmic forms and does not usually describe the diff erences between various types of rhythm adequately (dobritsyn 2014). 67“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik шелковом одеяле’. you can fi nd similar things in both tynianov’s translation and [penkovsky’s] translation. in the russian language, they very oft en animate the motion of verse. why [...] shouldn’t we use what is allowed: stresses on two syllables? sometimes the two-stress lines sound very good. (brik et al. 2012: 301) th e term ‘equivalent (of text/metre/stress)’ was introduced by tynianov (1924: 22 sq.) and developed by other opoyaz members. tomashevsky explained that, in what will be later called ‘dolnik’, a skip of metrical stress is possible: “th e accent is a feature of the rhythmical unity, [or] the rhythmical group”; however, “a group of unstressed syllables [...] can form a rhythmical group even without stressing. long unstressed series of syllables can become an equivalent of rhythmical stress” (tomashevsky 1925: 100). a poetic line quoted by usov is taken from a poem composed by the acmeist anna akhmatova in 1914 (incipit “бесшумно ходили по дому...”). th e metre of this poem is 3-ictus dolnik, but the line “на шёлковом одея́ле” contains only two stressed syllables with a tetrasyllabic interval between them. th is example was also analysed by tynianov (1924: 75). th ere is no surprise then that, in usov’s translation of “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam...”, skipped stresses are found. th e stress skips the second ictus twice, in the 6th and the 8th line: “в полýденной странé”; “на знóйной крутизнé”. let us now compare the rhythm of akhmatova’s poem mentioned by usov and the rhythm of his translation from heine. to make the sizes of the texts comparable, we take only two quatrains from akhmatova’s seven-stanza poem (the opening stanza and the fourth stanza – the one quoted by usov): a k h m a t o v a u s o v бесшумно ходили по дому, не ждали уже ничего. меня привели к больному, и я не узнала его. [...] казалось, стены сияли от пола до потолка. на шёлковом одеяле сухая лежала рука. i i iii i ii v v i 1 • 2 • 2 • 1 1 • 2 • 2 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 1 • 4 • 1 • 4 • 1 1 • 2 • 2 • i iii iii iii iii iv iii iv 1 • 2 • 2 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 3 • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 3 • th e total number of accents in each of these texts is 22: both usov’s translation and two quatrains from akhmatova’s poem contain two two-stress lines. (in compliance with zhirmunsky’s rule of the “accentually ambiguous” words, we do not ‘count’ the extra-schematic stresses on the pronouns он, его and всё in the third, fourth and fi ft h lines of usov’s translation.) for comparison: 68 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov the german original is fully stressed, it contains 24 stressed syllables (three stressed syllables in each of eight lines). however, the diff erence between akhmatova’s rhythm and usov’s rhythm is drastic. gasparov identifi ed three types of the 3-ictus dolnik, according to their frequency in the works of three outstanding poets of russian modernism (the epoch when dolniks began to fl ourish): “esenin’s type” with predominant forms i and iii, “gumilëv’s type” with predominant forms iii and ii, and “cvetaeva’s type”, in which forms iii and v stand out (gasparov 1968: 100–102; 1974: 241–242). akhmatova’s poem is a standard example of an ‘average’ russian 3-ictus dolnik, which combines the features of all three above-described types. a high frequency of form v is characteristic of “tsvetaeva’s type”, a combination of forms ii and iii is typical for “gumilëv’s type”, whereas an abundance of ‘amphibrachic’ forms (form i) characterises “esenin’s type”. usov’s translation does not refl ect any of these tendencies: it is a spontaneous juxtaposition of the german and russian ‘images’ of dolnik. on the one hand, form iii, which is signifi cantly less frequent in akhmatova, predominates both in heine’s original and usov’s translation. on the other hand, usov departs from the original rhythm by skipping schematic stresses (twice). however, the two-stress lines in his translation do not belong to form v, as in akhmatova, but present form iv with a skipped stress, the frequency of which is vanishingly small in both akhmatova and heine. th ey sound as a dissonance against the background of either heine’s or akhmatova’s dolnik. but usov did not apparently intend to imitate the rhythm of akhmatova, whose authority he cited. when he pointed to akhmatova’s dolnik, he only meant skipping ictic stresses, rather than preference for particular rhythmic forms. lev penkovsky shared a similar position. on the one hand, he emphasised the diff erence between the rhythm of inter-ictic intervals in heine and akhmatova: what is the diff erence between heine’s dolnik and akhmatova’s and other [russian poets’] dolnik? th e diff erence is that his dolnik contains many purely [...] iambic lines. [...] moreover, the peculiarity of heine’s rhythmical construction consists in the fact that he sometimes gives 2 to 2½ iambic stanzas one aft er another, two stanzas of pure iambs, and sometimes inserts an additional [syllable] in this or that line. (brik et al. 2012: 309) penkovsky was not against reproducing such dolnik forms in translation and even using them in original russian poetry (brik et al. 2012: 309). nevertheless, he utterly opposed the idea of imitating heine’s fully stressed lines. if heine’s line is isomorphic to a classical russian syllabo-tonic metre, e.g. iambus, then 69“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik why, penkovsky argues, should we reproduce this iambus retaining all schematic accents? th e real russian iambus is very seldom fully stressed. “i have the ready-made metres – why should i look for another equivalent?” is a “diff erent number of accents” the only reason? (brik et al. 2012: 310). and what happens if we imitate the german rhythm? in penkovsky’s opinion, such literalism is of no use: “such an iambus is impossible to observe, or it will be a clumsy iambus which nobody can read” (ibid.). brik’s point of view is that of a “rhythmist”, and from this point of view, to state the iambic base of heine’s dolnik is not enough. th e concept of the rhythmical impulse or rhythmic-intonational structure also includes the number of the actual accents in the line of verse: 4-3-4-3 for deutschland, 3-3-3-3 for “ein fichtenbaum...” (brik et al. 2012: 288–289). for brik, the issue of fully-stressed lines is of utmost importance, whereas usov and penkovsky, whose practice was supported by fedorov’s theory, considered a lack of equirhythmicity in the poetic translation not only possible, but even necessary, provided that the metre is preserved (i.e. the principle of equimetricity is observed). such a deviation is, to their opinion, dictated by the pressure of the russian poetic tradition. th eir position is that of the “metrists”. an equimetrical translation necessarily involves some features of the original rhythm, but other features of the original rhythm can be ignored (in this case the feature to be ignored is the predominance of fully stressed lines). th e main thing is to reproduce the metre. with all this in view, fedorov argues, “an absolute rhythmical fi delity seems to be needless”: “what is important is not the actual alternation of strong and weak elements of sound, but a principle and а sign of the system” (fedorov 1928: 52). for brik, however, an abstract metrical scheme only means the “external features of the metre”, a reproduction of which is not suffi cient: the translators quite oft en focus on them and “simply destroy the rhythmicintonational system found in the original” (brik et al. 2012: 288).10 th e scholar who discussed the problem of correspondence between equirhythmicity and equimetricity six decades later, using the russian translations of “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam...” as examples, was a leading russian verse theorist maksim shapir (1962–2006). in 1994 he attempted to translate heine’s 10 besides equimetrical and equirhythmical translations, an equiprosodic translation is possible, “which conveys the versifi cation system of the source text” (lotman 2012: 447). we assume that the russian and german dolniks (as well as the russian and german syllabo-tonic metres) belong to the same versifi cation system, although they represent diff erent national systems of verse (as parts of diff erent national poetic cultures). th e german tradition of verse theory might give a diff erent metrical interpretation to what we refer to as the german dolnik (cf., e.g., heusler 1929). 70 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov poem equirhythmically, but, according to his own evaluation, succeeded in a complete equirhythmicity only in four lines out of eight (lines 3, 5, 6 and 7): 11 12 s h a p i r ’ s t r a n s l a t i o n h e i n e ’ s o r i g i n a l стоит на севере кедр11 один на склоне крутом. под белым он спит покровом, укутан снегом и льдом. он видит сон о пальме. одна в чужой земле молча она тоскует на раскалённой скале.12 ii ii iii ii iv iv iii i 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 1 3 • 2 • iv iii iii iii iv iv iii iii 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • in 2005 shapir delivered a lecture course to the seminar on verse theory at moscow state university. one of the lectures was devoted to the comparative rhythmics of german, english and russian iambs and dolniks. he used his own translation to substantiate the conclusion: “a complete equimetricity is possible, but equirhythmicity is not, and this is language pressure”.13 indeed, as has already been stated, he managed to observe the rhythm of the original only in half of the lines. it is interesting to note that in all other lines he used form ii, which is not found in the original. moreover, in three cases form ii is fully stressed, while in the last line, the stress skips the fi rst ictus. as a result, the concluding line begins with a sequence of three unstressed syllables, which obviously contradicts the ‘rhythmical impulse’ of heine’s poem. furthermore, in two of the four lines, which shapir translated equirhythmically, the syntax of the original is transformed. in the german original, the third line has a strong syntactic pause aft er the third syllable, and there is an enjambement 11 “кедр” is a disyllabic word here, with a syllabifi ed [r̥]. 12 formally, the concluding line of shapir’s translation can be also interpreted as form ii, with a monosyllabic anacrusis (‘на раскалённой скале’). th e stress skips the fi rst ictus in both interpretations. 13 we quote the notes from the course compiled by the members of the seminar. th is lecture was taken down by anastasia belousova, alina bodrova, riva evstifeeva, kirill golovastikov, vera polilova, maria rachinskaia and mikhail trunin. preparatory notes for the course written on numbered cards are preserved in the family archive of maksim il’ich shapir. in particular, card 9 contains a thesis: “metrical equivalence is attainable, a complete rhythmical [equivalence] is apparently not”. 71“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik between the third and the fourth line: “ihn schläfert; mit weißer decke...” [“it slumbers; with a white cloak...”]. cf. usov’s translation: “он дремлет. покровом белым...” [“it slumbers. with a white cloak...”]. in the original, the fi rst sentence of the second quatrain does not end with the fi ft h line – in the next line a subordinate clause begins: “...von einer palme, / die...” [“...of a palm, / which...”]. both usov and shapir failed to reproduce this construction. other available russian translations are less faithful than those two.14 th e authors of the present article tried to take into account the pluses and minuses of usov’s and shapir’s translations and ventured to put forth their own attempt at an equirhythmical translation of heine’s poem: 15 o u r t r a n s l a t i o n h e i n e ’ s o r i g i n a l один на голом склоне на севере кедр15 растёт. он дремлет; покровом белым одел его снег и лёд. всё грезит он о пальме, что там в чужой земле молча одна тоскует на знойной крутой скале. iv iii iii iii iv iv iii iii 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • iv iii iii iii iv iv iii iii 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 1 1 • 2 • 1 • nevertheless, even this translation is equirhythmic only to a certain extent. th us, in the fi ft h line we managed to place an ‘accentually ambiguous’ word (the pronoun он ‘he’) in the second ictus, in accordance with an ‘accentually ambiguous’ word in the original (the indefi nite article einer, which can be recited with a weaker stress or as an unstressed word). however, in the very fi rst line of heine’s poem the stressed monosyllable steht occupies a weak position. such a confi guration is quite common in german verse, but very rare in the russian dolnik. none of the existing translations (including ours) reproduces this extra-schematic stress. in lines 6 and 8 heine rhymes the compound words mórgenland and félsenwand, in which the last (rhyming) syllable bears a weaker, secondary stress (nebenton, nebenakzent), and we were unable to reproduce this eff ect. at the end of the dispute aft er brik’s talk, boris jarcho suggested, perhaps drawing from tynianov’s experiments, that 14 see http://www.ruthenia.ru/tiutcheviana/publications/trans/heine-fi chte.html. 15 in this text, “кедр” is a monosyllabic word, with a nonsyllabic [r]. http://www.ruthenia.ru/tiutcheviana/publications/trans/heine-fi chte.html. 72 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov the rule of “the compulsory stress on the last downbeat of the line”16 might sometimes be deliberately violated in translation: let us say, i will rhyme ‘кóсть’ [‘a bóne’] and ‘вúдимость’ [‘illúsion’], such as, for example: то, что пёс не гложет кость, / есть одна лишь видимость [‘th e fact that the dog is not gnawing a bone / is a mere illusion’]. th e question is where such [dactylic] endings can be placed. if they are placed on strong syllables, they will sound good. if i translated [german poetry], i would play upon such accents because they would create an impressive sound eff ect. (brik et al. 2012: 315) in his translations from heine, tynianov used heteroaccentual (разноударные) rhymes such as “существó : имýщество” or “привестú : сóвести” (quoted and discussed in fedorov 1928: 56).17 very few translators, however, use this device when translating from german into russian, so we can only agree with shapir who stated: but even if some wonderworker succeeds in making the rhythmical structure of the russian translation correspond precisely to heine’s original, this text would be an exception, not a rule.18 a way to a solution of the problem of equimetricity and equirhythmicity was outlined by jarcho in his closing statement on 28 december 1934. jarcho, who was not only an outstanding theorist, but also a fi ne translator himself,19 pointed out “a certain confusion” in the theories of metre developed by the participants in the discussion: of general questions i venture [...] to touch upon the issue of rendering the verse [in translation] because, as far as i can see, there is a certain confusion here. th is confusion mainly consists in the continuous mix-up of the [syllabic] principle with the tonic principle. (brik et al. 2012: 313) 16 as formulated later by roman jakobson (1955: 168). th ere and elsewhere (in “linguistics and poetics”) he called this rule one of the “constants” observed “in the classic pattern of russian syllabic accentual verse (‘syllabotonic’ in native nomenclature)” (jakobson 1960: 361). th e violation of this rule (which is also applied to dolniks) is very rare and is perceived as exceptionally unusual. 17 on russian heteroaccentual rhymes (разноударные рифмы) see sherr 1986: 204–205. 18 preparatory notes for the course on verse theory (card 15). 19 brik also translated poetry (from french, spanish, english and german), but the amount of his translation is much less signifi cant in comparison with jarcho’s (see polilova 2014). 73“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik by the “syllabic principle” of the construction of the dolnik jarcho means the number of syllables in a particular dolnik line (the number of ictuses, and the maximum and minimum length of inter-itic intervals). th e tonic principle comprises secondary features: (1) a particular distribution of strong and weak positions in the line; and (2) skipped ictic stresses and extra-schematic stresses (that is, accents on weak syllables). however, these principles and the series of features that they condition are not equal hierarchically. to demonstrate this, jarcho developed a theory, according to which every versifi cation system is characterised by primary (constant) and secondary (variable) features (brik et al. 2012: 314). th e primary features represent a determinist norm and should be reproduced in translation to the full extent, while the secondary features represent a statistical norm: they may be reproduced in a proportion that the language and the poetic tradition can aff ord and that is at the same time similar to the proportion found in the original text (jarcho 2006: 32, 50, 621– 622n52, 638n133). various individual instances of metre are diff erent from each other due to the diff erent statistical distributions of secondary features. from the point of view of jarcho, the syllabic principle is the primary feature of the dolnik line, which is necessary and suffi cient for defi ning the text as a dolnik and distinguishing it from all other metres. th is feature is necessarily present in poetic work written in this metre, and it should be compulsorily preserved in the translated text. reproduction of variable features is not compulsory, but desirable. it is advisable to preserve them as far as the language allows: is it necessary to observe the constant number of accents [...] in translation? it turns out that the russian dolnik admits a certain freedom in this respect, but i think it is possible to reproduce this in russian without great diffi culty. (brik et al. 2012: 315) th us, according to jarcho, when we render the german dolnik in russian, we should faithfully reproduce the primary features, and this is equimetricty. th e secondary features may be reproduced “approximately” (brik et al. 2012: 315). we should defi ne which features constitute the national image of the metre and use them in an approximately equal proportion. th is is equirhythmicity. in translation, it is possible to lean on particular variations of the metre already available in the recipient national tradition. as recent studies have demonstrated, several rhythmic types (‘images’) of the 3-ictus dolnik, which can be justifi ably compared to heine’s type sensu stricto, are possible and actually exist in russian poetry. th is is, for example, the dolnik marina tsevetaeva’s uses in many of the poems from her émigré period and, in particular, of the 74 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov fi rst poem from the verse cycle entitled “магдалина” (“th e magdalene”, 26 august 1923): меж нами – десять заповедей: жар десяти костров. родная кровь отшатывает, ты мне – чужая кровь. во времена евангельские была б одной из тех... (чужая кровь – желаннейшая и чуждейшая из всех!) к тебе б со всеми немощами влеклась, стлалась – светла масть! – очесами демонскими таясь, лила б масла и на ноги бы, и под ноги бы, и вовсе бы так, в пески... страсть по купцам распроданная, расплёванная – теки! пеною уст и накипями очес и пóтом всех нег... в волоса заматываю ноги твои, как в мех. некою тканью под ноги стелюсь... не тот ли (та!) твари с кудрями огненными молвивший: встань, сестра! iv iii (iv)20 iv iii (iv?)21 iii (iv)22 iv iv v iv iv iii iv v (iii) iii iii v iii iv iii iii iii iv iii iii 1 • 1 • 1 • 3 • 2 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 3 • 2 • 1 • 3 • 1 • 3 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 3 1 • 4 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 3 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 3 1 • 1 • 1 • 1 • 4 • 3 1 • 2 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 3 1 • 4 • • 2 • 1 • 3 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 3 • 2 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 2 1 • 1 • 1 • • 2 • 1 • 3 • 2 • 1 • 20 21 22 20 in a diff erent rhythmical context this could also be interpreted as an ‘iambic’ form iv with an extra-schematic stress on the monosyllable (жáр десятú кострóв.). 21 th e logical stress on the personal pronoun ты ‘you’ (‘ты мне – чужая кровь’ [you, to me, are foreign blood]) does not allow us to interpret the rhythm of this line as form iv, as some readers insist (*‘ты мне – чужая кровь’ [you, to me, are foreign blood]). 22 if we suppose that the stress skips the fi rst ictus (fi lled by the preposition во), the line then 75“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik let us consider briefl y the rhythmical composition of tsvetaeva’s poem. of course, it is not easy to compare its rhythm with the rhythm of “ein fichtenbaum...” intuitively, by ear, due to the hyperdactylic clausulae in “th e magdalene”, but for the rest the rhythmic-intonational similarity between the two poems is striking: “th e magdalene” “ein fichtenbaum...” form i form ii form iii form iv form v 0% 0% 50% 37.5% 12.5% 0% 0% 62.5% 37.5% 0% forms i and ii are utterly absent from both the 3-ictus dolnik of tsvetaeva’s “th e magdalene”23 and the 3-ictus dolnik of heine’s “fichtenbaum”. th e frequency of the ‘iambic’ forms (form iv with a monosyllabic anacrusis) is equal in both poems: 37.5%. gasparov described a high frequency of form iv as a peculiar feature of the german dolnik and pointed to its dysillabic (iambic) basis as opposed to the trisyllabic basis of the russian dolnik (gasparov 1968: 88–89, 91; 1974: 234–235). at the same time he did not notice the existence of a very similar type of dolnik in russian poetry: apparently, the reason is that, when he started to examine this metre in the 1960s, he did not have access to the majority of tsvetaeva’s émigré poems, which were banned in soviet times. meanwhile, the share of form iv in these poems is as high as in the average german dolnik. th e most frequent form in all widespread types of the russian dolnik is form iii. its share is even higher in heine than in tsvetaeva, who also uses form v, so that the proportion of form iii decreases. th e proportion of form v in tsvetaeva is 12.5%, but this does not contradict a ‘heine-like’ rhythmical impulse of the poem thanks to a specifi c structure of ‘secondary features’. th e fi rst line of form v appears amid the fully stressed ‘iambic’ lines (form iv). th ey make it possible to perceive it as verse that is constructed à la heine, that is by inserting an additional syllable to one of the iambic ‘feet’: и чýж¦ дей-ша+я | из всéх! 2+(2+1)+2 belongs to form iii. if we suppose, however, that the stress skips the second ictus (which is less likely for linguistic reasons), the line could belong to form iv. 23 th is is not to be confused with “tsvetaeva’s type” in gasparov’s classifi cation. th e type with predominating forms iii and v, described by gasparov, should rather be called “the early tsvetaeva type”. 76 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov th e second line belonging to form v reads as follows: и нá-ноги-бы, | и пóд (-ноги-бы)24 but it can be recited as form iii with an unstressed second ictus fi lled by the particle бы, which in this case acquires the quality of rhythmical ‘ambiguity’: и нá-ноги бы̀, | и пóд (-ноги-бы) th e third and last instance of form v ‘catches up’ the inertia determined by the fi rst two. it has the same verbal-rhythmical structure – a word boundary aft er the fi ft h syllable, forming a pentasyllabic phonetic word with the second syllable stressed: расплёванная | теки́! 5+2 cf.: и-чýждейшая | из всéх! 5+2 и-нá-ноги(-)бы̀, | и-пóд (-ноги-бы) 5+2(+3) th e lines of form v, the frequency of which in “the early tsvetaeva type” (see note 23) yields only to that of form iii, have low frequency in “th e magdalene”, while the lines of form iv, absent from “the early tsvetaeva type”, are as frequent here as in german dolniks. a dolnik of this type could be used as a good approximation of the german metre. at the same time, some features that form an integral part of the “image” of the german dolnik (such as a relatively high frequency of extra-schematic stresses) are diffi cult to render in russian. th e question of the admissibility of form v in equirhythmical translations from german also needs further discussion. another signifi cant diff erence between tsvetaeva’s and heine’s dolniks seems to be a high level of isosyllabism in “th e magdalene” (80% of its lines either belong to form iv or have the same syllabic length) as compared to “fichtenbaum” (50%). we are going to focus on this phenomenon in our next study.25 24 each of the two phonetic words in this line consists of a stressed preposition + an enclinomen (unstressed noun) + an enclitic. 25 th is research was made possible by the russian foundation for basic research grant 14-0600034 and the russian foundation for humanities grant 15-04-00541. we want to express our gratitude to ivan eubanks and two anonymous reviewers of studia metrica et poetica for their critical and stylistic comments. 77“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik references attridge, derek 2012. th e case for the english dolnik; or, how not to introduce prosody. in: poetics today 33(1): 1–26. attridge, derek 2013. moving words: forms of english poetry. oxford: oxford university press. bailey, james 1969. blok and heine: an episode from the history of russian dol’niki. in: th e slavic and east european journal 13(1): 1–22. brik, osip мaksimovich 2012. ritm i sintaksis (materialy k izucheniju stikhotvornoj rechi). edited with introduction and notes by marina v. akimova. in: prokhorov, aleksandr v.;  skulacheva, tat’jana v.  (eds.), slavjanskij stikh ix. moscow: rukopisnye pamjatniki drevnej rusi, 501–550. [brik, osip мaksimovich, et al.] 2012. doklad o. m. brika o novykh perevodakh “germanii” gejne i ego obsuzhdenie na sektsii perevodchikov sojuza pisatelej (1934). published with notes by tat’jana f. neshumova. in: philologica 9(21/23): 280–333. url: http://rvb.ru/philologica/09pdf/09brik.pdf. republished in: belousova, anastasia; pilshchikov, igor (eds.), res philologica: essays in memory of maksim il’ich shapir (pegasus oost-europese studies 23). amsterdam: pegasus, 2014, 341–400. červenka, miroslav 1984. rhythmical impulse: notes and commentaries. in: wiener slawistischer almanach 14: 23–53. dobritsyn, andrei aleksandrovich 2014. raspredelienie form jamba i ritmicheskaja entropija. paper presented at the 11th international conference slavjanskii stikh [slavic verse], vinogradov russian language institute of the russian academy of sciences (moscow, russia), june 20–24, 2014. duff ell, martin j. 2008. a new history of english metre. london: modern humanities research association and maney publishing. eisenberg, peter 1991. syllabische struktur und wortakzent: prinzipien der prosodik deutscher wörter. in: zeitschrift für sprachwissenschaft 10(1): 37–64. fedorov, andrei venediktovich 1928. zvukovaja forma stikhotvornogo perevoda (voprosy metriki i fonetiki). in: poetika: vremennik otdela slovesnykh iskusstv (gosudarstvennogo instituta istorii iskusstv) 4. leningrad: academia, 45–69. fedorov, andrei venediktovich 1935. “germanija” gejne v chetyrekh perevodakh. in: zvezda 5: 222–230. 78 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1968. russkij trekhudarnyi dol’nik хх veka. in: kholshevnikov, vladislav e. (ed.), teorija stikha. leningrad: nauka, 59–106. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh: metrika i ritmika. moscow: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1984. ritmicheskij slovar’ i ritmiko-sintaksicheskie klishe. in: grigoriev, viktor p. (ed.), problemy strukturnoj lingvistiki 1982. moscow: nauka, 169–185. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2012. a. n. kolmogorov v russkom stikhovedenii. in: gasparov, mikhail leonovich, izbrannye trudy, vol. iv: lingvistika stikha; analizy i interpretatsii. moscow: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 503–513. giegerich, heinz 1985. metrical phonology and phonological structure: german and english (cambridge studies in linguistics 43). cambridge etc.: cambridge university press. heusler, andreas 1929. deutsche versgeschichte: mit einschluß des altenglischen und altnordischen stabreimverses, bd. 3: teil iv und v: der frühneudeutsche vers; der neudeutsche vers (grundriß der germanischen philologie 8/3). berlin: w. de gruyter. jakobson, roman 1955 [1979]. russian binary meters [review of: taranovski, kiril. ruski dvodelni ritmovi, i–ii. belgrade: naučna knjiga, 1953]. in: jakobson, roman, selected writings, vol. v: on verse, its masters and explorers. th e hague & paris: mouton, 167–169. jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, th omas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: th e m.i.t. press, 350–377. jarcho, boris isaakovich 2006. metodologija tochnogo literaturovedenija: izbrannye trudy po teorii literatury (philologica russica et speculativa 5). edited, with notes (pp. 611–807), by marina v. akimova, igor a. pilshchikov and maksim i. shapir (general editor). moscow: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur. klenin, emily 2008. m. l. gasparov and the defi nition of verse. in: th e slavic and east european journal 52(2): 208–222. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich 1963. k izucheniju ritmiki majakovskogo. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 4: 64–71. kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1963. o dol’nike sovremennoj russkoj poezii (obshchaja kharakteristika). in: voprosy jazykoznanija 6: 84–95. 79“ein fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the russian dolnik kolmogorov, andrei nikolaevich; prokhorov, aleksandr vladimirovich 1964. o dol’nike sovremennoj russkoj poezii (statisticheskaja kharakteristika dol’nika majakovskogo, bagritskogo, akhmatovoj). in: voprosy jazykoznanija 1: 75–94. liapin, sergei evgenievich 2014. on an understudied mechanism of formation of the russian dolnik (against the background of german and english poetic traditions). in: lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail (eds.), frontiers in comparative metrics 2: in memo riam lucyllae pszczołowskae: conference abstracts. april 19–20, 2014, tallinn university, estonia. tallinn: tallinn university press, 38–39. liapin, sergei evgenievich; pilshchikov, igor alekseevich 2013. o trudakh miroslava chervenki po teorii i istorii stikha (k vykhodu pervogo russkogo izdanija ego rabot). in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk, serija literatury i jazyka 72(3): 53–65. lotman, maria-kristiina 2012. equiprosodic translation method in estonian poetry. in: sign systems studies 40(3/4): 447–472. pilshchikov, igor 2014. frontiers in comparative metrics 2, in memoriam lucyllae pszczołowskae (april 19–20, 2014, tallinn university, estonia). in: studia metrica et poetica 1(2): 144–157. plungian, vladimir aleksandrovich 2011. two requiems, or the english dolnik on russian soil. in: scherr, barry p.; bailey, james; kazartsev, evgeny v. (eds.), formal methods in poetics: a collection of scholarly works dedicated to the memory of professor m. a. krasnoperova. lüdenscheid: ram-verlag, 173–181. polilova, vera sergeevna 2014. osip brik i stikhotvornyj perevod (k probleme ekviritmicheskogo perevoda). in: vekshin, georgii viktorovich (ed.), metodologija i praktika russkogo formalizma (brikovskij sbornik 2). moscow: azbukovnik, 158–169. rudy, stephen 1976. jakobson’s inquiry into verse and the emergence of structural poetics. in: matejka, ladislav (ed.), sound, sign and meaning: quinquagenary of the prague linguistic circle (michigan slavic contributions 6), ann arbor: th e university of michigan. department of slavic studies, 477–520. shcherba, lev vladimirovich 1936 [1957]. opyty lingvisticheskogo tolkovanija stikhotvorenij: ii. “sosna” lermontova v sravnenii s ee nemetskim prototipom. in: scherba, lev vladimirovich, izbrannye raboty po russkomu jazyku. moscow: uchpedgiz rsfsr, 97–109. sherr, barry p. 1986. russian poetry: meter, rhythm, and rhyme. berkeley; los angeles: university of california press. 80 sergei liapin, igor pilshchikov shklovsky, viktor borisovich 1978 [2014]. [osip maksimovich brik]. published with notes by georgii v. vekshin. commentary by sergei s. shaulov. in: vekshin, georgii viktorovich (ed.), metodologija i praktika russkogo formalizma (brikovskij sbornik 2). moscow: azbukovnik, 499–502. tarlinskaja, marina 1992. metrical typology: english, german, and russian dolnik verse. in: comparative literature 44(1): 1–21. tarlinskaja, marina 1993. strict stress-meter in english poetry: compared with german and russian. calgary: university of calgary press. tarlinskaja, marina 1995. beyond ‘loose iamb’: th e form and themes of the english ‘dolnik’. in: poetics today 16(3): 493–522. tarlinskaja, marina 2002. verse text: its meter and its oral rendition. in: küper, christoph (ed.), meter, rhythm and performance – metrum, rhythmus, performanz: proceedings of the international conference on meter, rhythm and performance, held in may 1999 at vechta (linguistik international 6). frankfurt/m., berlin, bern, bruxelles, new york, oxford & wien, 39–58. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1919 [1923]. pjatistopnyj jamb pushkina. in: ocherki po poetike pushkina. berlin: epokha, 7–143. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1923. russkoe stikhoslozhenie: metrika (voprosy poetiki 2). petrograd: academia. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1925. teorija literatury (poetika). moscow & leningrad: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. tynianov, yurii nikolaevich 1924. problema stikhotvornogo jazyka (voprosy poetiki 5). leningrad: academia. wiese, richard 1996. th e phonology of german. oxford etc.: oxford university press. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1925. vvedenie v metriku: teorija stikha (voprosy poetiki 6). leningrad: academia. zubkova, liudmila georgievna 2010. printsip znaka v sisteme jazyka. moscow: jazyki slavjanskoi kul’tury. comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation lucylla pszczołowska the first project to carry out international team research on comparative slavic metrics was developed forty years ago in warsaw, at the institute of literary research of the polish academy of sciences. in time, an “inter-slavic” team was formed – a group of people joint by warm friendship who worked on the topic with genuine passion, ever broadening the scope of research. i should also mention that the atmosphere of our warsaw meetings – working conferences of our team, lasting a few days – has always been special. not only because of the absolute freedom of sharing scientific views, but also because – in spite of the fact that the composition of the team would change over the years – we have trusted each other in all respects. i would like to recall the time when the first project of comparative slavic metrics was being prepared; it was – according to our first volume – “słownik rytmiczny i sposoby jego wykorzystania” [“rhythmical vocabulary and ways of using it”]. initiators of this first systematic team research in the field of poetics, including many slavonic versifications were: maria renata mayenowa, an expert on poetry and verse, then the deputy director of the institute of literary research and the head of the theoretical poetics unit; maria dłuska, jagiellonian university professor who cooperated with the institute, the author of an excellent, pioneering book studia z teorii i historii wiersza polskiego [“studies in the theory and history of polish verse”]; and roman jakobson, a great slavicist with enormous achievements in linguistics, history of literature and versology, who often visited warsaw in the 60s to attend various conferences. taking advantage of his visits, we would have discussions on the new project in which four younger versologists took part: two former students of professor maria dłuska – zdzisława kopczyńska and lucylla pszczołowska as well as two former students of professor jan mukařovský – kveta sgallová and miroslav červenka. the four of us were the beginning of the future team and the project we worked on then concerned the most basic issues of versology, namely the relations between the versification system and the linguistic system. in practical sense, it was supposed to be a widened and deepened – as well as systematised – realisation of pre-war concepts of roman jakobson, relating to his comparative studies on the rhythmical vocabulary of czech and russian as well as bulgarian and russian (used in his book o cheshskom doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.06 studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 130–141 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.06 131comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation stikhe v sopostavlenii s russkim, berlin 1923, and in his study “piatistopnyj bolgarskij jamb v sopostavlenii s russkim”, sbornik v chest’ na prof. l. miletich, sofija 1933). what is rhythmical vocabulary? it is a list of the rhythmical types of words – not specific words, but types of words specified by their length (number of syllables) and the position of stress – placed in order of frequency, with an indication of their frequency of occurrence in a given verse form in the works of a certain poet or poets or – more broadly – in a given period of the history of poetry. besides such frequency lists of rhythmical types of words, we also prepared – and here i have the work of the complete team in mind – frequency lists for rhythmical types of accentual units. the dual character of the rhythmical vocabulary (vocabulary of words and vocabulary of accentual units) is of vital importance primarily because of the functional differentiation between a word and accentual unit, which reveals itself particularly in the area of monosyllables. having the two variants of the rhythmical vocabulary at one’s disposal, one can say what types of syllable (with the main word stress, or with a secondary stress, or unstressed) correspond to the strong positions in the verse pattern, how words and units combine to form lines, what kind of combinations are created and which ways of filling in a line with vocabulary items – i.e. which rhythmical variants – are characteristic of the given verse form. in both stages of research it is mandatory to compare the results with a neutral linguistic frame of reference. if one wants to establish regularities concerning the occurrence (behaviour) of linguistic factors in poetry, one should know how they occur in prose; that is, when they are not ruled by the “higher” directives of organisation. it could happen that one might consider the features characteristic of any text as verse-creating. without going into description of all the possibilities, i will simply state that as our frame of reference we chose literary prose from the same period in which the poetry we researched was written. before our planned, methodical team research commenced it was necessary to form a team representing a few national versifications. and this was not easy, since we needed such people, who – like our polish-czech foursome – treated verse as a poetic utterance with double segmentation: syntactic and poetic; an utterance considered in relation to language and poetics, stylistics and history of literature. at the end of the 60s, a bulgarian linguist, atanas slavov, joined us. together with him we published the first, fragmented results of our research of the rhythmical vocabulary of our respective versifications. at the beginning of the 70s, tone pretnar, a slovenian on the fulbright program, came to poland for a year. tone was a lecturer at the university of ljubljana; he asked me to be his academic mentor and i soon drew him into the work 132 lucylla pszczołowska of our group. as a result, we had versifications of four slavic nations, but – to make a complete team – we needed russian versification; the versification of world-famous poetry, with a rich literary tradition and a well developed theory of research on poetry, stylistics and poetics. we managed to convince the most outstanding expert on versology in soviet russia, mikhail leonovich gasparov, to cooperate with us. he took up the work on the vocabulary together with his student, dina ivanovna geliukh. and so, the work had begun. it was continued under the auspices of the institute of literary research, which has published the results – successive volumes of comparative slavic metrics. we took the second half of the 19th century to be the time of origin of our sources. this is because – in all five versifications being the subject of our study – the syllabic-accentual verse had been fully developed, providing us with common dimensions for making comparisons. (we also discussed the most popular types of polish syllabic verse in the so called “polish chapter” of volume i.) here are a few of the most important findings of the research. it turned out that in all the analysed versifications the average syllabic length of words and accentual unit is lower than in literary prose of those languages. this means that poetry employs short words and accentual units more readily than prose. it also means that the accentual network is more thickly woven than in prose, although verse contains more “compound” accentual units (i.e. containing more than one word) than prose. the structure of particular element of the rhythmical vocabulary, particularly the structure of accentual units, is greatly influenced by the stress system of a given language. there is a contrast between the languages with movable stress (russian, bulgarian, slovenian) and those with fixed stress (penultimate syllable – polish, initial syllable – czech). the rhythmical vocabulary pertaining to the languages with movable stress is richer in various types of accentual structure of words and accentual units. this contrast can also be seen in the area of whole verse structure. in the versifications with movable stress, entropy in the distribution of rhythmical variants of verse structure is very high and it is impossible to establish a clear hierarchy. in the languages with fixed stress, the entropy of rhythmical variants is low and usually one variant is clearly frequent; the remaining ones are of marginal character. there is one more finding of the research on polish verse: the rhythmical vocabulary of the 8-syllable trochaic verse – seemingly suited so well to polish – is the furthest from the rhythmical vocabulary of prose; the closest to prose is the rhythmical vocabulary of the 13-syllable verse, with a caesura after the seventh syllable. the last, comparative chapter contains rich material on the results of our research and – whenever possible – their interpretation. most of such 133comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation comparative and introductory chapters, devoted to the research program and the methods used, i wrote together with miroslav červenka. since volume vii my co-author of those chapters was dorota urbańska and in the last volume ix it was mihhail lotman. comparative chapters in the first two volumes contain an extensive summary in english, and in the next seven volumes they have been translated into english unabridged. beginning from volume vi, the chapters on particular versifications are followed by a summary in english. the following stage of research on the relations between the verse and the linguistic system concentrated on the syntactic structure of verse. our research was based on the poetry of the same era for which the rhythmical vocabulary was being prepared and the same texts as before. we had to work out the program of research ourselves, just like in all subsequent topics, but it was a much easier task than in the case of the rhythmic dictionary. nearly every one of us had analysed and interpreted relations between poetic and syntactic segmentation. therefore, we knew what elements of the verse-syntax relations were of particular importance and what was worth looking into. we did not have to – and simply could not – observe such uniformity in methodology as in the previous project mainly because syntactic units are classified differently in different languages. our research was carried out in two directions, which can be specified as: from verse to syntax and from syntax to verse. when following the first direction, we tried to specify – on the basis of the statistical occurrence of the relevant phenomena – the participation of syntactic boundaries (that is the boundaries between utterances and between clauses) in emphasising metrical boundaries; in other words – the end of the line, hemistich or stanza. when following the second direction – from syntax to verse – we wanted to capture the features of syntactic structure which emerge in verse as a result of realisation of metric norms. syntactic structure influences primarily the length of clauses or the frequency of occurrence of syntactic units with a specified number of syllables and sometimes even words. that “normalisation” of syntax of verse merely by its segmentation into lines, hemistichs and structures higher than a line varies in different systems and metric structures. in our work on the “syntactic” project we also used literary prose as a frame of reference for verse, but not by way of systematic comparison, as before. this time we were concerned with many problems which have no reflection in prose or such which were certain to present differently in regular verse than in prose, as – for example – the average syllabic length of clauses. whenever we suspected that the studied phenomenon might be characteristic of language in general, like the average length of complex utterances or the participation of parataxis and hypotaxis, it was necessary to make comparisons to prose. 134 lucylla pszczołowska when working on the syntactic organisation in verse, we frequently had to consider the significance of such factors as literary tradition or genre differentiation and sometimes even an individual contribution of poets to the plane of relationship between verse and syntax. many issues of this nature could not be covered in a general comparison of research results; therefore, they can only be found in the detailed descriptions of national versifications. we presented the results of our work mainly as general tendencies, serving as the background for the development of verse forms. our basic aim was to define system relations allowing us to determine whether given poems observe the established conventions on the verse-syntax plane; and whether – and to what extent – they violate those conventions by introducing innovations. here not only general features were prominent, but also the differentiation of those features, depending on a particular national versification. one of the general tendencies in the area of the influence of syntax on verse is worth mentioning: when a strong syntactic boundary, like the end of an utterance or clause, coincides with the end of a line, the line-end is stressed, emphasised. our research showed that the degree of line-end emphasis by syntax is the highest in slovenian verse and the lowest in russian verse. (polish and serbian versification are in this respect close to russian, except decasyllabic 4+6 and dodecasyllabic 6+6 verses.) these observations, combined with the knowledge of poetics of slavonic literature, allow us to maintain that one of the reasons could be the fact that some slavonic versifications are based on the tradition of literary poetry, others – on the tradition of folk poetry. the more grounded the specialisation of literary verse, its distinctive character and peculiarity, the less dependence on syntax in the formation of lines. for this reason, serbian and – to some extent – polish decasyllabic 4+6 verse and dodecasyllabic 6+6 verse, which are the closest to folk verse, are characterised by such high presence of mechanisms of syntactic organisation of text. the influence of verse segmentation of a poem on its syntactic structure is the most visible in the length of sentences. to a small extent it concerns whole complex utterances, but to a great extent single clauses. in most versifications the syllabic length of sentences seems to be dictated by the syllabic length of lines. the shorter the lines in a poem and the more regular elements there are, the more pronounced that influence is. for example, in 8-syllable trochaic poems the syllabic length of nearly all clauses is determined by the length of the line. thus, most frequently they consist of 8 syllables, which is the same in length as one line. 16-syllable sentences come next (they encompass two lines), then 12-syllable sentences (1.5 lines) and 4-syllable ones (equal to half a line). it can be called “rhythmisation” of syntax, which takes place thanks to segmentation into lines. 135comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation the research resulting in the creation of the first two volumes of comparative slavic metrics: “słownik rytmiczny” [“rhythmical vocabulary”] and “organizacja składniowa” [“syntactic organisation”] required the most time and work. we had to analyse a lot of verse and prose material in order to make the results of our work reliable. these analyses had to be done; it was our fundamental work because, as we wrote in the first, methodological chapter of volume i: “a thorough knowledge of the interaction between the versification system and the linguistic system is [...] an important prerequisite to the interpretation of verse forms in entire poems, genres or literary trends, historical poetics.” in fact, in our subsequent team work – and when working individually – we have frequently referred to the first two volumes. but we added: “this interpretation should also be based on a good understanding of cultural tradition, which – together with linguistic conditioning – influences the distribution of verse forms, on the poets’ motivation in choosing versification systems and metric structures and the ways they are used in texts.” we made it clear that “such studies on the hierarchy of systems and metres as well as on the semantic significance are to be the next stages of our work.” volume iii was given the same title as – several years earlier – my theoretical essay on the subject: “semantyka form wierszowych” [“semantics of the verse forms”]. when we started research on that volume, all of us had written books and studies in which that area was taken into consideration. for the first time, however, we were to tackle the problems of verse semantics in the “inter-slavic” comparative aspect. the range of versifications we analysed increased by serbian and croatian, represented in the team by an outstanding literary scholar and versologist svetozar petrović and his students. i will add that the author of the russian chapter is mihhail lotman – in volume iii, and my co-author of the chapter on polish verse is – like in all subsequent volumes – dorota urbańska. that “semantic” volume was – from the point of view of our interests and work – the breakthrough one. although in the title of this article i mention the evolution of aims of investigation, in reality it was close to a revolution, as far as both the approach to the subject matter and the methodology are concerned. analyses and interpretations of semiotic functions of the systems, metres and arrangements of verse, types and patterns of rhyme, demanded considerable freedom in the choice of investigation methods and methodology which was different from the one used so far. within the period commonly agreed upon for the study, the second half of the 19th century, every “national” chapter has a specific starting point and takes a specific course, sometimes even a specific focus. for example, in the polish chapter we studied the topic on the basis of the output of three generations of poets because in this way 136 lucylla pszczołowska semiotic changes – shaping the subject matter and style – were more clearly visible. mihhail lotman dealt with these aspects in poetry of fet and nekrasov; these two names show the contrastive character of the researched features of verse semantics. understandably, the freedom of research activity could not be without limits. we all used the same categories for describing verse structure, themes, style and intonation. we all tried to specify what values and meanings were brought to literature by various verse forms. that is, what information contained in them and what connotations signalled by them are used by poets, by literary genres and trends, by historical poetics. our common aim was not to obtain detailed results (this was treated like one of the stages), but – so to say – universals in the semantics of poetry. and so, the research shows that slavic poetry of the second half of the 19th century is characterised by the existence of two opposite semiotic functions of verse in the awareness of poets and readers: “naturalness” or “familiarity” and “artificiality” or “strangeness”. (here i mean the articulated awareness, which we also tried to look into.) these contrasting features of particular types of verse are a kind of reflection of the constant endeavour of slavic literatures – on one side to preserve their identity by being faithful to the traditions of national poetry (which in some versifications coincide with the traditions of folk poetry), on the other side – with the endeavour to adopt all the achievements of world literature. in all researched versifications, the iambic verse is the most strongly marked in this period. its semiotic function is the orientation towards the generally accepted values of european humanism, towards world poetry. in contrast to the iamb stands the trochaic verse – the verse flow regarded as natural, which is frequently explained by the prosodic structure of language. when it comes to semiotic functions of the trochaic verse, folk stylisation is one of the most universal ones; of course, with the involvement of vocabulary and syntax. the most frequent trochaic form at that time is the tetrameter. in the majority of researched versifications, the interaction of these two types of syllabic accentual verse changes towards the end of the 19th century – as far as their status and frequency of occurrence is concerned. it is most clearly seen in polish poetry, where the trochaic 8-syllable metre was used very often in the poems dealing with rustic and patriotic themes, written – because of censorship – in the “rural” allegorical convention. this led to satiation with this type of verse, and – as a result – it almost disappeared. the “artificial”, “literary” or “artistic” verse which was gaining strength was the iamb. this shift in the hierarchy of verse forms is connected simply with the changes in the orientation of different poetic trends. 137comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation in russian poetry the iambic tetrameter keeps – in this period – its position as “unmarked” and almost universal. a similar position is held by the polish 11-syllable syllabic verse. its strength is undoubtedly a result of the influence of romantic poetry on polish culture. from when we started to work on the project devoted to semantics of the verse forms, which is realised in volume iii, the problems of their semiotic functions and semantic value which they bring to poems, to literary genres and to historical poetics in general – accompanied us constantly. much is written about these problems in all “national” chapters of volume iv, whose topic is the verse of translation. here we limited our scope to poetry, not to a specific epoch, but to “inter-slavic” translations of poetry of mickiewicz and pushkin. diachronic analysis of these translations had to include the historical-literary context of the epoch in which the original as well as the translation were created. we had to include the knowledge of the hierarchy of verse forms functioning in both national versifications. we wanted to establish how the choice of metric structure, type of stanza and rhyme influences semantic and stylistic relations of the translated texts, whether the verse form selected by the translator corresponds to the form of the original. in this context we posed a question about the use of the functional metric equivalent by translators. this category, introduced by roman jakobson, denotes a verse form of translation which to the highest possible degree corresponds to the form of the original. it corresponds to the original not outwardly, but because the function it plays in the system of verse forms of the target language is – as it were – a reflection of the function the form of the original plays in its national versification. we tried to specify these functional equivalents, but it turned out that translators did not always use them frequently. our research shows that in the history of translation of both mickiewicz and pushkin certain periods usually stand out. in the earliest period what matters is that the poem is translated; what verse is used and sometimes even whether it is verse or prose – the translators do not seem to have been concerned. the subsequent period, lasting at least to the end of the 19th century, is characterised by a general endeavour to produce equimetrical translation. when syllabic verse is translated into syllabic-accentual (for example: poetry of mickiewicz into russian), already then metric equivalents are often employed and they are of functional character, like iambic pentameter corresponding to the 11-syllable 5+6 verse. syllabicaccentual verse of pushkin was translated into syllabic-accentual polish verse since the end of the 19th century. the fully functional metric equivalent of the most frequent metric structure in russian versification – iambic tetrameter appears as late as the middle of the 20th century, when adam ważyk used it in his translation of “onegin”. 138 lucylla pszczołowska while researching metric equivalents, we obtained interesting information concerning the influence of foreign versification on the poetic language of translation. we saw the importance of literary trends and individual poets’ tastes for the choice of verse forms used in translation. in volume v, which is a relatively small book, we dealt with the sonnet. we wanted to examine the stanzaic form functioning in the national literature of each of our countries, not as common and universal as the quatrain; nevertheless, the form which had a strong connection with the tradition of literary styles and genres. (the sonnet, as we know, was treated by some critics as a “minor genre”.) we subjected the verse of the sonnet – in the diachronic perspective – in each “national” chapter. we took into consideration its prosodic and syntactic structure as well as – so important in this case – rhyme patterns and the distribution of the genre and style. we presented – in the context of historical poetics – the main cultural function of the sonnet, which was the connection of slavic literatures with the literatures of western europe. a lot of interesting material was obtained as a result of comparing opinions of poets and critics on the sonnet. for the realisation of the next project we obtained the only research grant in the history of comparative slavic metrics  – awarded by the european university. this happened not only because of the efforts of our czech friends, but also because of the topic of volume vi: “europejskie wzorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich” [“european metres in slavic literatures”]. in our work on this topic the analyses and comparative interpretations carried out before proved to be very useful. they allowed us to characterise the most important verse systems and structures functioning in the history of slavic literature. but within that topic we presented not only the linguistic conditions of adaptation of those “european models” and the shaping in the diachronic development of the verse with metric norms (i.e. historically determined constants). we also showed the relations between phonological elements of particular languages and their metric structures. in the context of european repertory of verse forms we described semiotic functions of these structures and their thematic and stylistic distribution. we examined the connections between slavic and european literatures from which the adapted (or imitated) verse patterns came; it turned out that the degree of openness to foreign literature can influence the frequency of particular patterns and their semantic associations. this volume can be treated as the most up-to-date description of six slavic versifications, including comparison in all areas which we set out to cover. when volume vi was already in print and we were working on the next volume, another versification joined us, the ukrainian one. it was represented in 139comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation the team by nina chamata from taras shevchenko institute of literature and natalia kostenko from the university of kiev. professor chamata expressed her readiness to complete the content of volume vi by analysis and interpretation of ukrainian versification of romanticism, which is of particular importance because of the transition from syllabic to syllabic-accentual verse in that period. her work was published as a supplement to volume vii. volume vii bears the title “wiersz wolny. geneza i ewolucja do roku 1939” [“free verse. its origins and its evolution up to the year 1939”]. although there are differences between “national” chapters in the theoretical assumptions and the ways of interpreting the structure of free verse (even in terminology), thanks to our research it is possible to see some common features of this verse form and its conditioning and references. in all “national” chapters free verse is treated as basically not subjected to metre, not connected with the prosody of language. in this respect it can be regarded – to a much higher degree than other verse forms – as having an “international” poetic structure. a characteristic feature of the structure of free verse in all versifications we have researched is that the lines are varied in length. those variations are not connected with metric directives; this fact has been pointed out in the previous observation. in almost all slavic literatures, where free verse exists, poets reject the metre and an exact or imperfect rhyme or even the idea of rhyming in general. an important role in free verse of any versification is played by its syntactic structure. in the period under discussion, there is a strong tendency for syntactic boundaries to coincide with line boundaries. in most slavic literatures free verse is one of the tokens of avant-garde poetry; their constructivist attitude refers to the structure of free verse poems as well. volume viii deals with short native metres. it is the native origin of the 8-syllable verse and shorter ones which is typical of all slavic versifications researched by us. native lines exceeding 8 syllables exist only in some versifications. short metres are used in literary verse and in the verse of popular literature; as a rule, they are also (particularly 8-, 7and 6-syllable verse) part of the system of folk versification. in literary poetry of most slavic versifications short native metres are used mostly in lyrical and satirical genres, their semiotic function is stylistic simplicity and frequently – song-like quality of poems. a distinguishing feature of syllabic forms of 8-, 7and 6-syllable verse, historically earlier than their syllabic-accentual forms, is – in the majority of slavic versifications – susceptibility to syllabic-accentual verse. this is how that susceptibility manifests itself: main rhythmical variants of these syllabic metres are – in the period of adopting syllabic-accentual verse – the basis for 140 lucylla pszczołowska the metres of the new system. in all analysed versifications (except bulgarian) one common feature of rhythmical structure can be seen in the syllabic 8-syllable metre. that common feature is a clear prevalence of the “trochaic” variant, in which there is a strong tendency to a symmetrical division of the metre, independent of the language of poetic texts together with its accentual system and rhythmical vocabulary. not everywhere is that feature equally motivated in a direct way, but its wide scope suggests a possibility of proto-slavic origin of the 8-syllable metre. volume ix of comparative slavic metrics titled “heksametr. antyczne wzorce wiersza i strofy w literaturach słowiańskich” [“hexameter. ancient verse patterns and stanzas in slavic literatures”], was edited by mihhail lotman and lucylla pszczołowska (warsaw, 2011). the volume deals with attempts to adopt hexameter in slavic as well as the sapphic stanza, elegiac distich and stanzas occurring only in some national versifications – like the alcaic and asclepiadean. the content of this volume shows the connections of slavic literatures with the all-european tradition of mediterranean culture.1 references červenka, miroslav; pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1995. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. vi: europejskie wzorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. kopczyńska, zdzisława, pszczołowska, lucylla (eds.) 1978. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. i: słownik rytmiczny i sposoby jego wykorzystania. wrocław: ossolineum. kopczyńska, zdzisława, pszczołowska, lucylla (eds.) 1984. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. ii: organizacja składniowa. wrocław: ossolineum. pszczołowska, lucylla (ed.) 1988. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. iii: semantyka form wierszowych. wrocław: ossolineum. pszczołowska, lucylla 2002. wiersz – styl – poetyka. kraków: universitas. pszczołowska, lucylla; lotman, mihhail (eds.) 2011. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. ix: heksametr. antyczne wzorce wiersza i strofy w literaturach słowiańskich. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. 1 for the polish version of this paper see ulicka, bolecki 2012: 161–170. 141comparative slavic metrics. evolution of aims and methods of investigation pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1992. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. iv: wiersz przekładu. mickiewicz i puszkin. wrocław: ossolineum. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1993. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. v: sonet. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1998. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. vii: wiersz wolny. geneza i ewolucja do roku 1939. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 2004. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. viii: krótkie rozmiary wierszowe. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. ulicka, danuta; bolecki, włodzimierz (eds.) 2012. strukturalizm w europie środkowej i wschodniej. wizje i rewizje. warsawa: wydawnictwo ibl. metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists accessed via lda topic modelling metre and semantics in the poetry of czech postsymbolists accessed via lda topic modelling petr plecháč, robert kolár*1 abstract. the article deals with the relationship between semantics and poetic meter in the works of czech post-symbolist poets and their predecessors. we access the phenomena by means of a machine-driven meter recognition on one hand and lda topic modelling on the other. we first show how the poetic groups differ in their general preferences for particular topics. next we analyze the topic distributions in two dominant metres (i.e. iamb and trochee) across the poetic groups. keywords: czech poetry, semantic halo, topic modelling, versification introduction in european (mostly slavic) versification studies, the semantic halo of metre is a well-established theory which holds that poetic metre is not merely ornamental but rather carries its own semantic associations based on previous usage. first noticed by russian formalists, described by kiril taranovsky (1963) and later systematically analysed by mikhail gasparov (1979, 1999), this theory has found supporting evidence in different traditions (cf. e.g. tarlinskaja, oganesova 1986; pszczołowska 1988; shapir 1991; piperski 2017; orekhov 2019). in the context of 19th-century czech poetry, miroslav červenka and květa sgallová (cf. červenka, sgallová 1988, červenka 1991, červenka 1992) have documented this phenomenon in a number of studies. their findings, when focusing only on two most common meters without distinguishing their variants, may be summarised roughly as follows: 1. early in the development of accentual-syllabic versification (dobrovský 1795), a basic opposition arose between the trochee and the iamb where the former (the prevailing form in poetic works) was seen as “local” and “traditional”, while the latter was considered “foreign” and “contrived”. * authors’ address: petr plecháč / robert kolár, institute of czech literature, czech academy of sciences, na florenci 1420/3, 110 00 prague, czech republic, e-mail: plechac@ucl.cas.cz, kolar@ucl.cas.cz. studia metrica et poetica 9.1, 2022, 7–19 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.01 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.01 8 petr plecháč, robert kolár 2. in the second half of the 19th century, the iamb became the dominant metre. the earlier semantic opposition was largely preserved, but the original negative associations of the iamb disappeared. as a result, what had been “foreign” became “cosmopolitan” while what had been “contrived” became “artistic”. in the poetry of the parnassian generation (dating mainly from the 1870s to the 1880s), this led to the iamb (namely iambic pentameter) becoming essentially a universal metre, while the trochee was associated with specific themes and genres such as historical events, rural settings and poetry for children. 3. in the poetry of the symbolists and decadents of the 1890s, a new form came into play: vers libre. the iamb came to be seen as “traditional”, while the trochee basically disappeared. in fact, after some juvenile experimentation, members of the post-symbolist generation abandoned vers libre and incorporated not just the iamb but also the trochee into their poetry. to date, however, there has been no attempt to analyse semantic aspects of their poetic metre. this study aims to fill this gap. unlike our predecessors, we apply statistical modelling of semantics (as introduced into the study of metrical semantics in šeļa et al. 2020). against this backdrop, we analyse not only the poetry of these post-symbolist authors, but also that of preceding generations to determine whether our approach replicates earlier findings. materials and methods we draw on data from the corpus of czech verse (plecháč, kolár 2015) – a collection of approximately 80,000 19thand early 20th-century poems. this is supplemented by 1718 poems that together represent the work of four post-symbolist poets, namely fráňa šrámek (1877–1952), františek gellner (1881–1914), viktor dyk (1877–1931) and karel toman (1877–1946). each poem has its metre labelled. to model the semantics, we use latent dirichlet allocation (lda; blei, ng, jordan 2003), which has become a common practice in large-scale semantic analyses of poetry (navarro-colorado 2018; haider 2019; plecháč, haider 2020; šeļa et al. 2020; šeļa et al. 2022). to reduce lexical variability, we perform the common pre-processing steps: we rely on lemmatised texts and remove all parts of speech except for nouns, adjectives and verbs. finally, to capture some common synonym rings and further simplify the vocabulary, we train a word2vec model (mikolov et al. 2013} to filter words as follows: 1. we retain only the 1000 most common words. 9metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists 2. for other words, we iterate over their 10 nearest neighbours in the word2vec model. if the word arrived at belongs to the 1000-most-frequent-words group, it replaces the current word; otherwise, the word is dropped. this method results in replacements such as peřej (rapids) > vlna (wave), pološero (semigloom) > šero (gloom) and východní (eastern) > východ (east)1 along with the dropping of many low-frequency words. an lda model is then trained on the entire (simplified) corpus to identify 100 topics. since for the lda, a single topic represents a probability distribution over the entire vocabulary, we follow standard practice and label each topic based on its 5 highest-scoring words and an arbitrarily assigned index ranging from 1 to 100. this generates topics such as (1) year, time, period/age, day, long and (2) woman, man, partner, young, beautiful. (for a full list of topics in czech, see the acknowledgements below.) among the authors in the corpus, we focus our analysis on four schools based on standard literary periodisations. besides the post-symbolists, who are our main concern, these schools are symbolist and decadent authors (grouped together as “symbolists”) and two older groups generally known to contemporary literary historians under the umbrella term “parnassians”: lumír (a cosmopolitan group) and ruch (a national group). from the works of these authors, we exclude both very short (less-than-4line) and very long (more-than-100-line) texts. for the remaining works, lda model is used to infer the topic probabilities in particular poems. finally, each poem is represented as a vector of 100 topic probabilities and labelled with its (1) poetic metre, (2) author and (3) the group to which that author belongs. topic distribution across three generations of authors we first address the relationship between poetic movements and topic distributions. since poetic schools and movements are generally thought to favour specific themes and motifs, we expect our groups to differ in their overall affinities to particular topics. to test this hypothesis, we represent each author by the average of all their poem-vectors and transform these values into z-scores. this gives us a simple way to measure the distances between particular authors so that topics that are generally less common have the same weight as the more frequent ones. 1 some high-frequency synonyms such as matka, matička and máť (all of which denote mother) are, however, retained in our data after this step. 10 petr plecháč, robert kolár figure 1 shows that there are indeed affinities between poetic schools and topic preferences. four clusters (labelled a, b, c, d) can be discerned that correspond roughly with the four schools. even apparent misclassifications tend to accord with literary historians’ findings: both borecký and auředníček appear in cluster b along with the lumír authors. although the two are labelled here as symbolists, their work is generally thought to lie on the boundary between two generations (i.e. the lumír/ruch generation on the one hand and the symbolists on the other) (červenka 1991: 16, 27). sládek’s poetry, on the other hand, is seen as rather civil and less rhetorical than that of his lumír contemporaries (červenka, sgallová 1988). it is sometimes even explicitly compared to the work of the post-symbolist toman (novák 1994: 255; červenka 1966: 153). 0.00.20.40.60.81.01.21.4 krásnohorská, eli ka ech, svatopluk pokorný, rudolf quis, ladislav dyk, viktor gellner, franti ek toman, karel sládek, josef václav rámek, frá a klá terský, antonín au ední ek, otakar borecký, jaromír kvapil, franti ek vrchlický, jaroslav rosenzweig-moir, josef rá , arno t ha ek, roman hendrych, jaroslav ro ek, karel hlavá ek, karel karásek ze lvovic, ji í bíbl, franti ek b ezina, otokar d c b a lumír ruch symbolists postsymbolists figure 1. dendrogram of authors’ works in a topic-defined vector space (cosine distance, complete linkage) 11metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists to determine which topics are most typical for particular groups, we employ supervised machine learning. we first evaluate the accuracy of these models using cross-validation and then record the most significant features for particular classes. this experiment is set up as follows: • we balance our dataset by reducing the symbolist group to the 4 most prolific authors (borecký, bíbl, březina, karásek). • 5 random samples are taken from each author. • the topic probabilities for each poem are transformed into z-scores. • each sample is represented by the average of the $z$-scores across its 10 poems. • leave-one-out cross validation is performed with a support vector machine (svm) (linear kernel, c = 1). • the procedure is repeated 10,000 times for each of the sample sizes n ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20}. figure 2 shows that even a classification of standalone poems significantly outperforms the random baseline (mean accuracy = 0.4, s.d. = 0.07; random baseline = 0.25). nevertheless, these results fall far short of the values reported in haider’s 2019 large-scale study of german poetry; in that case, however, the classification was performed with isolated stanzas (which reportedly improved its accuracy) and the classes covered longer time spans. in our model, accuracy increases steadily as the sample size grows until at n = 20 (i.e. the largest possible sample size when 5 samples are taken from each author), it is as high as 0.92 (s.d. = 0.04). 1 2 3 4 5 10 15 20 # of poems in sample 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 a c c u r a c y random baseline figure 2. cross-validation of svm models trained on samples of different sizes 12 petr plecháč, robert kolár table 1 lists the five most significant features for each group (this is based on the mean of the respective values for normal vectors across 100 models where n = 20). these findings largely conform with expectations. in the lumír group, topics with bright and optimistic connotations are common, while in the symbolist group, gloomy and obscure topics (36, 50, 90) prevail. in the ruch group, human collectives are a key topic, and this may involve humanity in general (51), the nation (78) or the family (40). in contrast, among the post-symbolists, poems often centre on the human individual and their activities, feelings and inter-personal relations. (notably poets in this group also use a significantly higher proportion of verbs than their counterparts in other schools2). table 1. five most contributing features for each group lumír ruch (84) to see, sight, cheek, face, dream (45) bird, to fly, wing, nest, butterfly (23) dream, youth, to dream, fairytale, soul (69) child, small, childish, kid, big (96) laughter, joy, ball, cheery, to laugh (52) eye, cheek, word, dark, sight (78) motherland, czech, czech, nation, bohemia (13) beautiful, flower, grove, sweet, sun (51) age, glory, big, humanity, famous (40) mother, mother, child, mother, father symbolists postsymbolists (83) flame, fire, hot, blood, heat (36) shadow, soul, evening, fog, gloom (90) soul, sadness, pain, sad, heart (50) space, mysterious, eternity, earth, secret (95) pearl, golden, nymph, breast, flower (35) to come, to wait, to be coming, to enter, to long for (27) to believe, friend, companion, to remember, name (2) woman, man, partner, young, beautiful (11) to play, to laugh, to dance, game, circle (56) to want, to say, to give, to get, to do 2 cf. „just like the symbolists, the [post-symbolists] have a dream, but this dream is grounded in reality. poets dream of a better life, and to make this beautiful dream come true, they require courage and daring, action, commitment, a sense of greatness and the ability to convey human truths and desires through ordinary intelligible signs.“ (vodička 2001: 34, translation: pp). 13metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists association between topics and poetic metres we proceed to the association between topic distribution and poetic metre. our aim is to determine whether – despite the apparent differences in overall topic probabilities – some continuity exists between the lumír and ruch groups and the post-symbolists in terms of how particular topics affect the choice of metre. to ensure sufficient data, we confine our analysis to the two most common metres (the iamb and the trochee) and do not distinguish among their variants. (iambic trimeter, iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter are, thus, all treated as members of the same iambic class.). in addition, we focus exclusively on the lumír, ruch and post-symbolist groups since most symbolist poems are written in iambic metre or vers libre and contain very few trochees. figure 3 shows the results of clustering performed in the same manner as in figure 1, only here each author’s works are divided into iambic and trochaic poems3 and z-scores are calculated not for the entire dataset but for each author’s works separately.4 the dendrogram clearly shows that the same metres tend to cluster together irrespective of the group that the author belongs to: there is a purely iambic cluster at the top, a purely trochaic cluster at the bottom and a mixed cluster in the middle comprising three samples only. 3 only monometric poems, i.e. those written exclusively in iambs or trochees are taken into account. 4 in other words, our concern is not whether author a writes iambic poems about topic t more often than author b, but rather whether topic t is more likely to appear in an iambic poem than in a trochaic poem within a’s works. 14 petr plecháč, robert kolár 0.000.250.500.751.001.251.501.75 (i) vrchlický, jaroslav (i) sládek, josef václav (i) krásnohorská, eli ka (i) ech, svatopluk (i) pokorný, rudolf (i) quis, ladislav (i) gellner, franti ek (i) rámek, frá a (i) dyk, viktor (i) klá terský, antonín (t) pokorný, rudolf (t) klá terský, antonín (t) ech, svatopluk (t) rámek, frá a (t) dyk, viktor (t) vrchlický, jaroslav (t) krásnohorská, eli ka (t) gellner, franti ek (t) sládek, josef václav (t) quis, ladislav iamb trochee lumír ruch postsymbolists figure 3. dendrogram of authors’ iambic and trochaic works in a topic-defined vector space (cosine distance, complete linkage) this does indeed suggest some sort of continuity of topic–metre associations. to track this further, we train a new set of support vector machine models to recognise poetic metre with each group separately. this experiment is set up as follows: • from each of the 3 groups, 15 random samples are taken; each sample comprises 20 poems for each poetic metre. • the model is used to classify samples from the 2 remaining groups. • the procedure is repeated 10,000 times. figure 4 shows the results. when models are trained with the group that the samples came from (cross-validation), the average accuracy rate is between 0.71 and 0.8. the accuracy for cross-group metre recognition is lower (between 0.6 and 0.77 on average), but it still markedly outperforms the random baseline level (0.5). 15metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists lumír ruch postsymbolists training set 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 a c c u r a c y random baseline test set lumír ruch postsymbolists figure 4. accuracy of metre recognition a general picture emerges when we consider the most important features for each of the three sets of models (tab. 2). for the lumír group, this list seems to confirm the observations of červenka and sgallová that are summarised in our introduction (iambic pentameter is the universal metre while the trochee is reserved for specific themes and genres such as historical events, rural settings and poems for children). in the iambic group, we, thus, find the signature topics of art (74) and humanity (51) along with other somewhat unrelated and obscure themes; in contrast, in the trochaic list, the prevailing topics are linked to historical events (68, 10) and youth (34, 53). the poems in the ruch school’s iambic list also concern typical topics for this group such as humanity (51) and emancipation (89), to which also the theme of war (10) may be added. this may seem an opportunistic inclusion since in the lumír group, we linked this topic to historical events. a closer look, however, reveals that the thematic context is quite different for the two groups. while in poems from the lumír group, topic (10) is associated most often (based on pearson’s r measure) with historical references such as (68) emperor, rome, to give, god, to go and (64) king, throne, empire, proud, crown, in the ruch group, it rather relates to emancipation and co-occurs with topics such as (51) age, glory, big, humanity, famous, (65) power, labour, strong, work, hand and (77) shackles, free, slave, wild, freedom. overall trochaic topics appear more likely to be rooted in folklore. 16 petr plecháč, robert kolár table 2. five most contributing features by poetic metre for each group lumír iamb trochee (84) to see, sight, cheek, face, dream (51) age, glory, big, humanity, famous (74) beauty, art, shape, charming (30) blood, fear, death, anger, murderer (95) pearl, golden, nymph, breast, flower (68) emperor, rome, to give, god, to go (34) boy, girl, girl, young, girl (9) sir, man, thing, wise, advice (10) fight, army, sword, weapon, hero (53) old, new, young, nice, school ruch iamb trochee (51) age, glory, big, humanity, famous (84) to see, sight, cheek, face, dream (10) fight, army, sword, weapon, hero (89) people, nation, freedom, flag, liberty (52) eye, cheek, word, dark, sight (32) boyfriend, dear, to cry, girlfriend, to meet (71) head, hand, hair, white, golden (1) year, time, period/age, day, long (9) sir, man, thing, wise, advice (60) window, door, cottage, village, room post-symbolists iamb trochee (94) rose, to bloom, red, flower, bush (36) shadow, soul, evening, fog, gloom (83) flame, fire, hot, blood, heat (90) soul, sadness, pain, sad, heart (50) space, mysterious, eternity, earth, secret (4) to say, to ask, to know, to tell, to tell (42) god, heaven, to protect, to give, to create (66) sea, boat, wave, shore/bank, to sail (16) horse, to drive/hurry, to run, jump, to drive (35) to come, to wait, to be coming, to enter, to long for to confirm that these results are not based on cherry-picking of the data (i.e. over-reliance on top-scoring words), we model the action/description ratio for each poem using the busemann coefficient (cf. e.g. andreev, místecký 2018). this is defined as table 2. five most contributing features by poetic metre for each group lumír iamb trochee (84) to see, sight, cheek, face, dream (51) age, glory, big, humanity, famous (74) beauty, art, shape, charming (30) blood, fear, death, anger, murderer (95) pearl, golden, nymph, breast, flower (68) emperor, rome, to give, god, to go (34) boy, girl, girl, young, girl (9) sir, man, thing, wise, advice (10) fight, army, sword, weapon, hero (53) old, new, young, nice, school ruch iamb trochee (51) age, glory, big, humanity, famous (84) to see, sight, cheek, face, dream (10) fight, army, sword, weapon, hero (89) people, nation, freedom, flag, liberty (52) eye, cheek, word, dark, sight (32) boyfriend, dear, to cry, girlfriend, to meet (71) head, hand, hair, white, golden (1) year, time, period/age, day, long (9) sir, man, thing, wise, advice (60) window, door, cottage, village, room post-symbolists iamb trochee (94) rose, to bloom, red, flower, bush (36) shadow, soul, evening, fog, gloom (83) flame, fire, hot, blood, heat (90) soul, sadness, pain, sad, heart (50) space, mysterious, eternity, earth, secret (4) to say, to ask, to know, to tell, to tell (42) god, heaven, to protect, to give, to create (66) sea, boat, wave, shore/bank, to sail (16) horse, to drive/hurry, to run, jump, to drive (35) to come, to wait, to be coming, to enter, to long for to confirm that these results are not based on cherry-picking of the data (i.e. over-reliance on top-scoring words), we model the action/description ratio for each poem using the busemann coefficient (cf. e.g. andreev, místecký 2018). this is defined as 𝑄𝑄 = 𝑉𝑉 𝑉𝑉 + 𝐴𝐴 where v is the number of verbs and a is the number of adjectives. the results strongly corroborate our hypothesis. in the post-symbolist group, the values for q are significantly higher in trochaic poems (mean = 0.73, s.d. = 0.12) than they are in iambic poems (mean = 0.69, s.d. = 0.11); t = 6.75, p > 10-10, cohen's d = 0.44. this does not hold for where v is the number of verbs and a is the number of adjectives. the results strongly corroborate our hypothesis. in the post-symbolist group, the values for q are significantly higher in trochaic poems (mean = 0.73, s.d. = 0.12) than they are in iambic poems (mean = 0.69, s.d. = 0.11); t = 6.75, p > 10-10, cohen’s d = 0.44. this does not hold for the lumír group where the difference is far more negligible (mean(trochee) = 0.684, mean(iamb) = 0.679, s.d.(trochee) = 0.13, s.d.(iamb) = 0.12; t = 1.38, p = 0.17, cohen’s 17metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists d = 0.03) or for the ruch group where the difference hovers around the 0.05 alpha level (mean(trochee) = 0.64, mean(iamb) = 0.63, s.d.(trochee) = 0.16, s.d.(iamb) = 0.12; t = 2.01, p = 0.05, cohen’s d = 0.1). conclusions despite marked differences in the topic preferences of the poetic groups that we analysed, our findings show that the post-symbolist association of two dominant metres (the iamb and the trochee) with specific topic distributions stems from 19th-century poetics. a closer look also reveals the emergence of a new organising principle, which relates to the distinction between action and description. acknowledgements for both lda and word2vec, we used the implementation in gensim python library (rehurek, sojka 2011). lemmatisation and pos-tagging were performed using the morphodita tagger (straková et al. 2014). metrical recognition was achieved via the metrical tagger květa (plecháč 2016). data (including a full list of topics in czech) and the code to reproduce the analysis are available at https://github.com/versotym/lda-czech.5 references andreev, sergey; místecký, michal 2018. activity in czech and russian nineteenthcentury sonnets: a contrastive study. in: glottotheory 9(1), 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1515/glot-2018-0004 blei, david m.; ng, andrew y.; jordan, michael i. 2003. latent dirichlet allocation. in: journal of machine learning research 3, 993–1022. https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/papers/v3/blei03a.html červenka, miroslav 1966. symboly, písně a mýty. praha: československý spisovatel. 5 this study was supported by czech science foundation (gačr 20-15650s). https://github.com/versotym/lda-czech 18 petr plecháč, robert kolár červenka, miroslav 1991. z večerní školy versologie ii: sémantika a funkce veršových útvarů. prague: akcent. červenka, miroslav 1992. lumírovec: sémantika verše v zeyerově epice. in: slovo a slovesnost 53, 241–247. červenka, miroslav; sgallová, květa 1988. český verš. sémantika metra v poezii lumírovců. in: pszczołowska, lucylla (ed.), slowiańska metryka porównawcza 3: semantyka form wierszowych. wrocław: zaklad narodowy imienia ossolińskich, 55–104. dobrovský, josef 1795. böhmische prosodie. in: pelcl, františek martin, grundsätze der böhmishen grammatik. praha: františek jeřábek, 209–246. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1979. semanticheskij oreol metra. k semantike russkogo trekhstopnogo jamba. in: lingvistika i poetika. moskva: nauka, 282–308. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1999. metr i smysl. ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamjati. moskva: rggu. haider, thomas nikolaus 2019. diachronic topics in new high german poetry. in: dh2019 book of abstracts. utrecht university. https://dev.clariah.nl/files/dh2019/ boa/1031.html mikolov, tomas; chen, kai, corrado, greg; dean, jeffrey 2013. efficient estimation of word representations in vector space. in: arxiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.3781 navarro-colorado, borja 2018. on poetic topic modeling: extracting themes and motifs from a corpus of spanish poetry. in: frontiers in digital humanities 5, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2018.00015 novák, arne 1994. dějiny českého písemnictví. praha: brána. orekhov, boris 2019. bashkirskij stikh xx veka. korpusnoe issledovanie. st. petersburg: aletejia. piperski, aleksandr 2017. semantic halo of a meter: a keyword-based approach. in: komp’juternaja lingvistka i intellektual’nye tekhnoloigii / computational linguistics and intellectual technologies 16(2), 342–354. https://www.dialog-21.ru/media/3936/piperskiach.pdf plecháč, petr 2016. czech verse processing system květa: phonetic and metrical components. in: glottotheory 7(2), 159–174. https://doi.org/10.1515/glot-2016-0013 plecháč, petr; haider, thomas nikolaus 2020. mapping topic evolution across poetic traditions. in: dh2020: book of abstracts. https://dh2020.adho.org/wp-content/ uploads/2020/07/600_mappingtopicevolutionacrosspoetictraditions.html 19metre and semantics in the poetry of czech post-symbolists plecháč, petr; kolár, robert 2015. the corpus of czech verse. in: studia metrica et poetica 2(1), 107–118. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.05 pszczołowska, lucylla (ed.) 1988. slowiańska metryka porównawcza 3: semantyka form wierszowych. wroclaw: zaklad narodowy imienia ossolińskich. rehurek, radim; sojka, petr 2011. gensim–python framework for vector space modelling. in: nlp centre, faculty of informatics, masaryk university, brno, czech republic 3(2). šeļa, artjoms; orekhov, boris; leibov, roman 2020. weak genres: modeling association between poetic meter and meaning in russian poetry. in: chr 2020: workshop on computational humanities research. amsterdam: ceur-ws, 12–31. http://ceur-ws.org/vol-2723/long35.pdf. šeļa, artjoms; plecháč, petr; lassche, alie 2022. semantics of european poetry is shaped by conservative forces: the relationship between poetic meter and meaning in accentual-syllabic verse. in: plos one 17(4). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266556 shapir, maksim 1991. “semanticheskij oreol metra”: termin i ponjatie (istorikostikhovedskaja retrospektsija). in: literaturnoe obozrenie 12, 36–40. straková, jana; straka, milan; hajič, jan 2014. open-source tools for morphology, lemmatization, pos tagging and named entity recognition. in: proceedings of 52nd annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics: system demonstrations. baltimore, maryland: association for computational linguistics, 13–18. https://doi.org/10.3115/v1/p14-5003 taranovsky, kiril 1963. o vzaimootnoshenii stikhotvornogo ritma i tematiki. in: american contributions to the fifth international congress of slavists. the hague: mouton & co., 287–332. tarlinskaja, marina; oganesova, naira 1986. meter and meaning: the semantic halo of verse form in english romantic lyrical poems (iambic and trochaic tetrameter). in: the american journal of semiotics 4(3/4), 85–106. https://doi.org/10.5840/ ajs198643/422 vodička, felix 2001. literatura na počátku 20. století. in: janáčková, jaroslava; hrabáková, jaroslava (eds.), česká literatura na předělu století. jinočany: h&h, 125–148. studia metrica et poetica sisu 4_1.indd metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry a cognitive approach reuven tsur*1 abstract: this essay integrates what i have written on the contribution of meter and rhythm to emotional qualities in poetry, opposing them to emotional contents. i distinguish between “meaning-oriented” approaches and “perceived effects” approaches, adopting the latter; and adopt a qualitative (rather than quantitative) method of research. providing a simplified list of structural elements of emotion, i explore structural resemblances between rhythmic patterns and emotions. i investigate such issues as convergent and divergent poetic styles, convergent and divergent delivery styles, hypnotic poetry, the contribution of meter and rhythm to a “dignified quality”; and the rhythmic performance and emotional effect of stress maxima in weak positions. finally, i locate my work between impressionist criticism on the one hand, and meaning-oriented criticism on the other. keywords: poetic rhythm; emotional qualities; “meaning-oriented” criticism; “perceived-effects” criticism; qualitative approach; quantitative approach; cognitive poetics introductory this essay is an attempt to integrate what i have written during the past fortyfive years on the contribution of meter and rhythm to emotion in poetry, that is, emotional qualities rather than emotional contents, and locate it among other approaches. impressionist criticism devotes much attention to emotions in poetry, but fails to relate them to the texts. analytic criticism excels in the verbal analysis of the texts, but sometimes has difficulties to relate them to human qualities. cognitive poetics explores emotions as described by cognitive psychologists, and offers plausible hypotheses (margolis 1962) to justify systematically the attribution of emotional qualities to poetic texts. one must distinguish between emotional contents and emotional qualities in a poem. the former are closer to thought processes, the latter to perception. “chilling and killing my annabel lee” may be thought to be a sad event, but perceived as playful or * author’s address: reuven tsur, tel aviv university, tel aviv 69978, israel; email: tsurxx@post.tau.ac.il. studia metrica et poetica 4.1, 2017, 7–40 doi: doi.org/10.12697/smp.2017.4.1.01 8 reuven tsur as suggesting simplified mastery of reality. perception, as opposed to thinking and remembering, occurs in a situation defined here and now, while the stimulus is present. in other words, perception is characterized by immediacy; thought and memory may be directed to more remote things. one becomes aware of the contents of this verse line by focusing on the extralinguistic world to which it refers; one becomes aware of its emotional quality by immediate attention to the interaction of its contents, syntactic structure and sound patterns. sentences like “my sister is sad” and “this music is sad” are used in different senses (bouwsma 1961). in the former, “sad” refers to a mental process of a flesh-and-blood human. in the latter, it does not refer to a mental process of the music; nor does it refer to the emotions the music arouses in the listener. one may be perfectly consistent when saying “this sad music inspired me with great happiness”. “sad” means here that the speaker has detected some structural resemblance between the music and an emotion (hepburn 1968). this is its perceived effect, its aesthetic quality. approaches to the versification–emotion relationship when discussing approaches to the contribution of versification to emotion in poetry, one must make two consecutive distinctions. first, one must distinguish between approaches that rely on ad hoc principles and those that are governed by explicit, consistently applicable principles. within the latter, one may distinguish between “meaning-oriented” approaches and “perceived effects” approaches. the former tends to displace attention from the sound of words to their meaning; the latter attends to resemblances between the sound structure and the structure of some emotion. methodologically, one may distinguish between exploratory-qualitative method and confirmatoryquantitative method. the latter counts the number of subjects who claim to have perceived a certain emotion in a text; the former offers “plausible” hypotheses based on psychological and linguistic research to account for such perceptions, even of a single participant. cognitive poetics is an instance of the former, the statistical methods adopted by literary studies from the social sciences are instances of the latter. as i have demonstrated elsewhere (tsur 2012: 271–274), rigorous confirmatory-quantitative studies in reader response that are not preceded by proper exploratory-qualitative analysis are prone to predetermine the results of the research. another direction in confirmatoryquantitative studies is large-scale statistical investigation of certain stylistic devices in literary texts. the present study adopts the “perceived effects” 9metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry approach, in the exploratory-qualitative mode, within a theoretical framework of cognitive poetics. in the rest of this section i will present several issues as discussed by the ad hoc approach, a statistical meaning-oriented approach, and an analysis that oscillates on the verge of the perceived-effects and meaningoriented approaches, and then suggest how the perceived-effects approach would treat them. traditionally, emotions belong to the domain of impressionistic criticism. the critic is concerned with his own emotional responses rather than the structure of the text. analytic criticism, by contrast, displays great concern for the structure of the text and the underlying principles. in the age of analytic criticism impressionism is frequently disguised by linguistic analysis; in such cases, however, the critic cannot point at some consistently applicable principle that would justify the attribution of some emotional quality to a text structure. consider the following passage from pope: 1. our plentous streams a various race supply; the bright-ey’d perch with fins of tyrian dye, the silver eel, in shining volume roll’d, the yellow carp, in scales bedrop’d with gold, swift trouts, diversify’d with crimson stains, and pikes, the tyrants of the wat’ry plains. (“windsor forest”, 141–146) john a. jones, in his book on pope’s couplet art, quotes this passage, and makes the following comment on its third line: because the participle “roll’d” is the rhyme word, the verb quality of “rolling” is emphasized rather than adjectival or substantive quality. “shining volumes” is more effective coming before the rhyme “roll’d” than it would be after it, for it is the climactic rolling or writhing that is highlighted. we do not always think of volumes as round but here it means “coils”; and when “roll’d” describes “volumes”, the eelish quality is heightened, as the reader can easily imagine, even if he has never landed an eel. (jones 1969: 74–75) doubtless, ‘the climactic rolling or writhing” of a landed eel has strong emotive connotations. but, unfortunately, pope used the past participle “rolled” and not the present participle “rolling”. to smoothen the transition, jones mentions only “participle”, without specifying “present” or “past”. or, consider the first sentence of this quotation from jones. the word because suggests a logical, causal relationship between its two clauses. but is there? to justify 10 reuven tsur such a statement, there must be some unmentioned generalization that can be consistently maintained as, for instance, “when a past participle occurs in the rhyme word, its verb quality is emphasized rather than adjectival or substantive quality”. i am not aware of any such valid generalization. nor am i aware of any principle that would justify shifting the meaning of the passive “rolled” in a context of “shining volume” from ‘being formed into a mass by turning over and over’ into active “climactic rolling or writhing”. “volume” suggests precisely such a mass. rather than “climactic rolling”, it is the anticlimactic “rolled” that is manipulated into the rhyme. in fact, all the available grammatical and stylistic evidence suggests that the adjectival quality is emphasized in this epithet. jones’s interpretation, however, crucially seems to depend on the past participle’s active “verb quality”. since, however, everybody feels that rhymes do something important to words, and so little is known about what they do to them, jones quite safely resorts to the rhyme word to enlist it in the service of the “verb quality” construal of the participle. as a matter of fact, a straightforward adjective would do the job equally well, if it were possible to construe it as suggesting activity rather than a passive state. when words with certain meaning components are systematically manipulated into the rhyme, one can, perhaps, make a case for its significance; but even that cannot justify any generalization of this kind. whenever the critic claims that there is some interaction between sound and meaning, he must make explicit the principles on which he is relying. briefly, even if one could make out a case for a “climactic rolling or writhing” construal on metaphoric grounds, it would have nothing to do with versification. actually, such syntactic inversion is not confined to this couplet in pope’s poetry: he quite frequently resorts to this stylistic device, manipulating the verbal element into the rhyme, with the complement preceding it, in precisely the first line of the couplet. consider, for instance, the following couplet: 2. sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d: the glory, jest and riddle of the world. (pope: “an essay on man”, ii. 17–18) the antithesis leaves little room for doubt that error in the first line is a word of key importance. although hurl’d contributes such components to the image as helplessness, passive endurance and inconstancy, its decisive component, physical transfer, has little relevance to the thought. as a matter of fact, its main function is syntactic: to attribute somehow “error” to man (‘victim to endless error’ would do as well). hurl’d constitutes a virtuoso rhyme with world, but this has been achieved at the double price of an “inelegant” syntactic 11metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry inversion and manipulating the word of key importance out of the rhyme. is it possible that a great master of poetic technique like pope should be guilty of such incompetence? and how could we explain, then, that precisely this “incompetent” line constitutes one of the most famous couplets on which pope’s reputation as a major poet rests? the “perceived effects” approach, by contrast, assumes that the syntactic inversion and the manipulation of the key word out of the rhyme serve one common effect (not necessarily meaning). likewise, semantically, “rolled” in excerpt 1 serves to reinforce “volumes”; syntactically it is required to complete the attribution of “shining volumes” to “eels”. as the casual collection of couplets in my book (2008: 120–121) may suggest, such inversions, manipulating words of relatively little importance into the rhyme, are not uncommon in pope. in all but one of those couplets the inversion occurs at the end of the first line. i shall argue that this is quite significant.1 briefly, while jones’s discussion presupposes an ad hoc principle, the “perceived effects” approach invokes here an explicit principle formulated by gestalt psychologists and art critics: the rule that governs the process is evident. the effect depends on the degree of simplicity of the whole as compared with the degree of simplicity of the parts. greater simplicity of the whole makes for greater unity. the simpler the parts, the more clearly they tend to stand out as independent entities (arnheim 1967: 61). “on the whole, however, the simplicity of any part must be modified or weakened sufficiently to make the part dependent on, and therefore integrated with, its context” (arnheim 1967: 65). by inverting the phrase and by manipulating the word of lesser importance into the rhyme, pope weakens the simplicity of the first line and increases its dependence on the couplet, enhancing the punchline quality of the second line. briefly: it is perfectly true that the syntactic inversion manipulates “rolled” into the rhyme; the only question is, how does this affect the couplet’s perceived quality, and by what principle one may account for this. rhyme cannot change the meaning of the word; but the manipulation of a word of lesser importance into the rhyme may affect the perceived quality of the rhyme. persons who read poetry for mainly its meaning will not notice such quality changes. meaning-oriented approaches tend to displace the source of emotional qualities from the sound patterns of poetry to the meaning of the words. an 1 in the first 50 couplets of “an essay on man” such line-final inversions occur in twelve first lines and in two second lines. 12 reuven tsur illuminating case can be found in benjamin hrushovski’s 1980 paper “the meaning of sound patterns in poetry: an interaction view”, at the very meeting point of the meaning-oriented and perceived-effects approaches. while i agree with much of what he says in that paper, i wish he went one step further. here i will quote his analysis of one of his examples and consider how metric structure may or may not interfere with the sound-expressive process. traditional poetics has important things to say about how tones, moods and emotions are abstracted from the meaning of the words; but how are they abstracted from the speech sounds? my 1987 book can be described as an inquiry into possible sources of the “tone” or “emotional quality” generated by speech sounds and the way these traits are grasped as parallel to an abstraction from the meaning of the words (tone, mood, emotion, etc.). one important aspect of the issue is that sounds are what i call “double-edged”; that is, they may be “expressive” of vastly different, or even opposite, qualities. thus, for instance, the sibilants /s/ and /š/ may have a hushing quality in one context, and a harsh, noisy quality (to varying degrees) in some other. thus, for instance, hrushovski quotes poe’s line 3. and the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain where the sibilants may be onomatopoetic, imitating the noises; or they may reinforce – or be expressive of – a quiet mood in shakespeare’s sonnet: 4. when to the sessions of sweet, silent thought i summon up remembrance of things past, i sigh the lack of many a thing i sought and with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste. hrushovski argues that the source of the difference is that the two excerpts exemplify two different types of logical relationship between sound and meaning. the “perceived effects” approach would rely here on the assumption that sounds are bundles of features, on the acoustic, phonetic and phonological levels, and that the various features may have different expressive potentials. the claim i have elaborated in my 1987 book is that in different contexts, different potentials of the various features of the same sounds may be realized. thus, for instance, the sibilants [s] and [š] may have at some level of description features with noisy potentials as well as features with hushing potentials. to spell this out: speech sounds are typically encoded, that is, the acoustic information that transmits it is restructured into an abstract phonetic category, and excluded from consciousness. some speech sounds are more thoroughly, 13metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry some less thoroughly encoded. if you ask “which one is acoustically higher, [ba], [da], or [ga]”, most people will answer that they don’t know what you are talking about. if, however, you ask which one is higher [s] or [š], most people will easily answer that [s] is higher. in certain circumstances, responsiveness to abstract categories goes with rigidity; responsiveness to rich elusive sensory information with flexibility. the double-edgedness of the sibilants is related to different aspects of the same noises. the tender or hushing quality of [s, š] may have to do with their feature [+continuous] and with their being of the few consonants that are less thoroughly restructured in the course of phonetic decoding of the signal, enabling the perceiver to attend to some rich, inarticulate sensory information; tenderness is typically correlated with openness to rich sensory information. that is why mothers are wont to sound a prolonged [š] sound to hush their crying babies. the “noisy” quality of these sibilants springs from the aperiodic nature of the very same sensory information, a stream of irregular noises. in poe’s line, the contents realize the noisy potential, in shakespeare’s quatrain the hushing potential. in wittgenstein’s terms, readers are “aspect-switching” from one excerpt to the other. on the other hand, speech sounds may definitely lack certain other potentials, as a rewriting exercise performed by hrushovski (1980: 44) may suggest: now, if this is the case, would not any sound pattern do? let us try to “rewrite” the shakespearean lines using words similar in content: 5. when to the crux of crucial quiet thought i crave and call remembrance of things past we have already created a very similar network of sounds, this time based on the repetition of k, strengthened by the cluster k + r (involving the original word “remembrance” too). nevertheless, it seems that this sound pattern cannot possibly express silence, though “quiet thought” starts with k as “silent thought” starts with s. it is plausible that a reader will impute to this text something strong and harsh, reinforced by the sound pattern. the pivotal word may become “crux”, though its counterpart “sessions” was subordinated to “sweet silent thought”. one may generalize that, in a part of a text in which a sound pattern coexists with a number of semantic elements, the sound pattern may contribute to shifting the center of gravity from one direction of meaning to another. had the speech sounds no expressive potential of their own, the network of sounds based on /k/ would have readily assumed the emotional quality of quietness, which it doesn’t. here the sound tends to confer upon the text 14 reuven tsur “something strong and harsh”, and “may contribute to shifting the center of gravity from one direction of meaning to another” (e. g., from quiet to crux). but hrushovski does not go into the phonetic-acoustic source of this potential. according to the present conception, voiceless plosives are perceived as hard, because they are abrupt and thoroughly recoded: none of the rich precategorial sensory information reaches awareness. this putative shifting of the center of gravity became possible only through a regularization of metre in the transcription: metric deviation, the two successive, alliterating stressed syllables in “sweet silent” foreground these words and focus attention on their meanings. so, let us amend the transcription to 6. when to the quorum of kind, quiet thought now notice this: even though we are prevented now from shifting the center of gravity to some other “pivotal word”, the /k/ sound retains its hard and strong quality, and by no means becomes expressive of some “kind, quiet” atmosphere originating in the meaning of the words. the sound pattern becomes either “neutral”, or improper to the emotion expressed. in view of the present analysis, one can account for the harsh qualities of the [k] and the hushing qualities of the sibilants without having recourse to the meaning of the alleged “pivotal words”, by the oppositions abrupt vs. continuous and more vs. less encoded. as this exercise may suggest, speech sounds do have (sometimes conflicting) emotional potentials of their own and one may not ascribe to them just any quality suggested by the meaning of the text. the meaning of the words may activate one or the other potential, but cannot generate them. metric structure can focus attention on the emotional connotations of certain words; but, typically, it generates perceived effects through its gestalt qualities (as demonstrated throughout this essay). highly relevant to the present inquiry, maria kraxenberger’s recent phd dissertation “on sound–emotion associations in poetry” (2017) explores the associations of a variety of prosodic aspects with emotions in poetry. our approaches differ at least in two respects: her work is confirmatory-quantitative; and we differ in the “object of imitation” too, to use aristotle’s term. she relies on “acoustic profiles that are dependent on suprasegmental parameters” that characterize people as they speak. i, by contrast, focus on the resemblance between the structure of texts and the structure of emotions. in this, i rely mainly on gestalt qualities and precategorial auditory information behind the phonetic categories. in discussing vocal performances, kraxenberger relies on the following parameters: 15metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry we tested the extent to which the suprasegmental features that are known to influence joyful and sad prosody in general are actually characteristic of how native-speaking participants recite poetry. to do this, we analyzed the acoustic features of the emotional prosody of nonprofessional native german speakers’ recitations of joyful and sad german poems. in line with previous research, we focused on mean pitch, mean intensity, and articulation rate. i said that this approach represents people as they speak, because joyful people typically display greater pitch span, greater span of intensity in speech, and speak faster than sad people. the fact that she relies on the mean rather than the span of pitch, intensity, and articulation rate obscures, of course, the issues to some extent. as we shall see, i on the other hand, argue that the structure of e.g. divergent poetry resembles in significant respects the divergent streams of information in emotions. i also treat, following henry j. todd, milton’s phrase “supréme kíng” as displaying some structural resemblance between the consecutive heavy stresses and the outward manifestation of dignity in humans (not necessarily as they speak),, when performed as a spondee. kraxenberger, maria “on sound–emotion associations in poetry” (2017). unpublished freien universität berlin dissertation. at this point, i want to mention marina tarlinskaja’s work in metrics. her approach is diametrically opposed to mine in many respects, among others, it is strongly meaning-oriented and confirmatory-quantitative. perceived effects are not within the scope of her research. it is based “not so much on insight and intuition as on wide quantitative analyses of observable facts”. in spite of this, our findings are considerably overlapping, but with quite different implications. i will present these overlaps and differences below, in the context of my discussion of stress valleys.2 2 the lakoff school of “cognitive poetics” is essentially meaning-oriented, and has very little interest in the sound patterns and perceived qualities of poetry. one of the rare studies in this respect, eve sweetser’s (2006) paper on versification in cyrano de bergerac, is extremely meaning-oriented. in my (2008a) detailed counterproposal (reprinted in tsur 2008b), i point out the perceived effects she misses owing to her unduly rapid shift of attention from the sound patterns to meaning. 16 reuven tsur emotion and emotional qualities at the beginning let us give in a nutshell a simplified list of some structural elements of emotion. any element in the description of emotions may “typically count toward” more than one aesthetic (or emotional) quality, sometimes toward incompatible qualities (sibley 1962). emotions involve situation appraisal through thought processes, plus undifferentiated energy. they consist of streams of information that display a tendency toward an object judged suitable or away from an object judged unsuitable. emotions involve deviation from normal levels of energy; e. g., low energy level may count toward such emotions as sadness or calm; high energy level may count toward such emotions as gladness or anger. emotions are active in the background, without preempting everything else. weak gestalts are associated with emotional qualities, strong gestalts with rational or witty qualities. a special combination of weak and strong gestalts tends to yield “hypnotic poetry” (see below). psychologists distinguish “convergent thinking” and “divergent thinking abilities” (for logical and creative thinking, respectively) (guilford 1970 [1959]). emotions are more divergent than creative thinking. some altered states of consciousness as mindfulness meditation are highly correlated with divergent thinking (berkovich-ohana et al. 2016). there is no fixed point on this spectrum where one category turns into another (duffy 1968 [1941]). language and logic are typically related to the left hemisphere of the brain, emotions to the right hemisphere. our aim is to create critical tools that have sufficient descriptive contents to describe the resulting structures in a text. this paper will explore the contribution of metre and rhythm to emotional qualities in poetry. emotional contents will concern us only as part of a more complex configuration. the assumption is that the sound patterns contribute to poetry something that cannot be reduced to meaning, only to perceptual qualities. they generate some general psychological atmosphere, that can be individuated by semantics in a withdrawn, and receptive attitude, or an assertive, outward directed and actively organising attitude, respectively, in a wide variety of emotions. convergent and divergent poetry poetic rhythm has three dimensions: versification, language, performance (wellek & warren 1956). versification and language may act in convergence or divergence. when they conflict, a rhythmical performance may accommodate 17metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry them such that both can be perceived in one vocal actualisation. i conceive of a rhythmical performance as a problem-solving activity. in performance, we must assume “triple-encodedness”: the same noises may have simultaneously three different functions: a falling intonation contour, for instance, may indicate the end of a syntactic unit (sentence), of a rhythmic unit (the line); at the same time, it may be expressive of a long fall or, alternatively, of coming to a rest. in a convergent style, phrase endings and line endings tend to converge; stressed syllables tend to occupy metrical strong positions, unstressed syllables – weak positions; alliterations tend to coincide with stressed syllables in strong positions; stanza forms tend to be symmetrical. in a divergent style, all these tend to diverge, and stanza forms tend to be asymmetrical. up to a theoretically undefined point, divergent style tends to yield increasingly emotional poetry, as in milton and shelley; beyond that point, it tends to yield witty poetry, as in donne’s satires. a convergent style, in certain circumstances may yield witty poetry, as in alexander pope, or simplified mastery of reality, as in nursery rhymes and folk poetry. leonard b. meyer accounts for the association of weak and strong gestalts in music with emotional and intellectual qualities respectively, as follows. “because good shape [and we could add “convergent structures”] is intelligible in this sense, it creates a psychological atmosphere of certainty, security, and patent purpose, in which the listener feels a sense of control and power as well as a sense of specific tendency and definite direction” (meyer 1956: 160). a combination of regular metre with irregular or asymmetrical stanzas and/or frequent enjambments (and some additional characteristics, see below) may yield hypnotic poetry, as in coleridge’s “kubla khan”, or in edgar allan poe’s “the raven” and “ulalume”; in “annabel lee” the beginning suggests a childish attitude, simplified mastery of reality, but the last stanza becomes hypnotic poetry (prosodic structure remains the same, the difference is in the situation appraisal). structuralist phonetics conceives of speech sounds as bundles of distinctive features (jakobson [et al.] 1952). according to one of the gestalt rules of perception, interaction between gestalt-free elements (colour in visual perception and overtones in music) is increased within, but inhibited across strong gestalt boundaries; but it is boosted across weak gestalt boundaries. this may apply to distinctive features too. in convergent and divergent poetry, alliteration assumes different characters: the alliterating speech sounds are more scattered in divergent than in convergent poetry; in convergent style, they tend to reinforce meter, in divergent style they tend to blur meter; at the same time, the distinctive features are perceived as more closely packed in convergent 18 reuven tsur alliteration, more diffuse in divergent alliteration, interacting across the weak gestalt boundaries. consider two excerpts from poe and milton: 7. that the wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my annabel lee. poe: “annabel lee” 8. of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe, with loss of eden, till one greater man restore us, and regain the blissful seat, sing, heavenly muse, milton: paradise lost where is alliteration more intensive? more likely than not, we will get the answer that “chilling and killing” is more intensive. but consider this. in milton’s passage, there is an unusually great number of intensive alliteration patterns. f-r-t in first and fruit; s-t in first, taste, restore, seat; l-s in loss and bliss; eden is wholly included in -bidden which, in turn, is wholly included in -bedience. now notice this too. in the poe excerpt, stressed syllables occur in all and only strong positions, unstressed syllables in all and only weak positions; there is one exception: “came” in a weak position, but it too is subordinated to “out”. the alliteration pattern consists of two symmetrical whole words that comprise identical speech sounds (all but one), in the same order. the alliteration patterns reinforce metric regularity. in milton’s excerpt, by contrast, stressed syllables occur in mainly, but not all and not only strong positions; unstressed syllables occur in mainly, but not all and not only weak positions. consequently, poe’s metric shape is convergent, much stronger than milton’s. conversely, milton’s verse is highly divergent, has much weaker metric gestalts. what is more, milton’s passage displays an exceptionally complex enjambment, blurring the line boundaries. it begins with a preposition (“of ”) predicting a verb, which occurs six lines later (sing). all the time, the reader must remember he has a loose end, while following the proceeding of the text. in addition, we have such minor enjambments, as “and the fruit/of ”, or “mortal taste/brought”, or “till one greater man/restore us”. consider a rewriting of excerpt 8 as “heavenly muse, sing /of man’s first disobedience and the fruit”, etc. it has a more straightforward, single-minded psychological atmosphere. consequently, the actual milton passage has exceptionally weak 19metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry gestalts at all levels. this boosts the interaction of the precategorial phonetic and acoustic features of the alliteration patterns across all those boundaries. briefly, in poe’s text, alliteration is focused on two compact words, perceived as playful punning rather than diffuse musical texture. milton’s alliterations, on the contrary, are backgrounded as rich, diffuse, but fused, precategorial, “musical” texture. consequently, milton’s “great argument” assumes an intense emotional quality (tsur 1978). convergent and divergent delivery style in poetic structure i have distinguished “divergent” and “convergent” styles. pope is the archetypal convergent poet, usually perceived as witty; milton and shelley are the archetypal divergent poets, usually perceived as emotional. in my later work i found that in performance too there is a divergent and a convergent delivery style. the performer has considerable freedom in choosing his delivery style. sometimes the same actor performs the same verse line in a convergent style on one occasion, and in a divergent style on another. i will present my categories of “convergent” and “divergent” delivery styles by way of scrutinising two recordings by sir john gielgud, sixteen years apart, of the last line of shakespeare’s sonnet 128 (tsur 2006): 9. to shún the héaven that léads mén to this héll. w s w s w s w s w s when i first listened to these two performances by gielgud, i tried to get an overall intuitive impression of the difference between them, rather than analyse it. i had an unexplained impression that gielgud 2 is much more complex, artistically more sophisticated, rhythmically more satisfying. the best way to characterise my impression of gielgud 1 was, perhaps, by punning on the english idioms “flat-out” and “flat out”. the former is usually used as an intensive, that is, a modifier that has little meaning except to intensify the meaning it modifies; the latter suggests “in a blunt and direct manner”. later, when i compared the two readings’ handling of the complexities of the verse line, this intuitive contrast was amply accounted for. if you encounter the stretch of language “to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” in a prose utterance, it may be uttered as a single unit, or will at most be segmented into two segments, the relative clause, and what precedes it. both readings of shakespeare’s verse are parsed into more segments. now when you look at the wave plots 20 reuven tsur and pitch plots extracted from the two readings, an immediately-perceived difference becomes conspicuous (figures 1–2). in gielgud 1 there is a huge 413-msec pause between “shun” and “the”; and an even longer, 503-msec pause between “heaven” and “that” [listen3]. in the wave plot extracted from gielgud 2, by contrast, no such pauses are visible. discontinuation is achieved here by means other than straightforward pauses [listen]. notwithstanding this, one of my associates could hardly believe that there is no pause there in this reading. figure 1. wave plot and pitch extract of “to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” gielgud 14 what is more, as figure 2 shows, in gielgud 2 the words “heaven” and “that” are uttered on one falling intonation contour, effectively grouping “that” backward rather than forward. it is the prolongation and overarticulation of the word-final /n/ that bears all the burden of generating discontinuity at the 3 sound files are available in the online version of this paper. ed. 4 the lower window presents the wave plot display which shows a plot of the wave amplitude (in volts) on the vertical axis, as a function of time (in milliseconds) on the horizontal axis. the upper window presents a fundamental frequency plot, which displays time on the horizontal axis and the estimated glottal frequency (f0 = pitch) in hz on the vertical axis. 21metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry caesura. perceptually, what happens here is quite sophisticated. we have got here conflicting cues for continuity and discontinuity. the shared intonation contour and the lack of pause group the word “that” backward; the listener’s syntactic knowledge and the sustained /n/ indicating a lack of progression suggest a new start after “heaven”. consequently, a caesura and a “metrical impulsion” across it are perceived at the same time. the line exerts pressure for completion upon which the caesura obtrudes. figure 2. wave plot and pitch extract of “to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” gielgud 2 i said above that in gielgud 1 i intuitively felt that the same syntactic juncture was thrust upon the reader “in a blunt and direct manner” and, at the same time, acted as a modifier that has little meaning except to intensify the meaning (or quality) it modifies. this happens because the grouping cues cluster differently from gielgud 2, displaying great redundancy. the beginning of a relative clause constitutes a major syntactic juncture. this is reinforced by an unusually long pause, and is further reinforced by the prolongation of the word-final /n/. it is this overarticulated syntactic juncture that confirms a prosodic event – a caesura. in other words, in gielgud 1 the cues act in convergence, in gielgud 2 in divergence. two differences between the falling 22 reuven tsur intonation contours on “heaven” seem to be quite obvious, one measurable, the other perceptual. first, in gielgud 1 the falling intonation contour of “heaven” is much longer than in gielgud 2: it begins at 127.457 hz (much higher than in the other reading), and falls to 77.915 hz, slightly below the bottom line of “that” in the other reading. second, concomitantly, the falling curve in gielgud 1 arouses a feeling of “homecoming”, whereas in gielgud 2 there is a feeling that the curve fails to reach the point of rest, demanding completion. what is more, the /n/ is prolonged at this unsatisfactory point, generating a sense of arrest and a sense of impulsion across it at the same time. in gielgud 1, by contrast, the “homecoming” of the falling intonation contour coincides with a major syntactic juncture, and the beginning of a longish pause, and a longer-than-usual word-final /n/. exceptionally great stability is achieved. in gielgud’s readings /n/ is about 1.77 times longer than the combined duration of the preceding sounds h+ε+v. by comparison, in the audio edition of merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary, and in simon callow’s reading of the same line the combined duration of the preceding sounds is over twice as long as that of /n/. in the marlowe society’s reading /n/ is insignificantly longer than the combined duration of the preceding sounds. a similar story can be told, mutatis mutandis, about the sequence “shun the”. in gielgud 1 there is a longish pause between them (413 msec); in gielgud 2 they are run one into the other. in both readings /n/ is considerably longer than the combined duration of the preceding sounds; in gielgud 2 its relative duration is insignificantly longer than in gielgud 1. in merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary, by contrast, /n/ is considerably shorter. as after “heaven”, after “shun” too gielgud 1 resorts to redundant cues: the prolongation of /n/ reinforces discontinuity that is also signified by a longish pause; whereas in gielgud 2 it indicates discontinuity where the two words are run one into another. there are good prosodic and syntactic reasons (caesura and syntactic juncture) to indicate discontinuity after “heaven”, with or without a pause. after “shun” it has neither syntactic, nor prosodic justification. it seems to be gratuitous – unless it has some rhetorical or paralinguistic justification. i have quoted meyer on the psychological atmosphere inspired by convergent structures in music and poetry (cf. meyer 1956: 160). in gielgud 1 some elements of that atmosphere are present, the combination of cues for discontinuity thrusts upon the listener a psychological atmosphere of patent purpose as well as a sense of specific tendency and definite direction; but coupled with the voice quality, it inspires a psychological atmosphere of insecurity and anxiety. i made an attempt to assess how listeners respond to gielgud’s two readings. though i was asking about “rhythmical performance”, my informants could not keep it apart from the emotional element. as far as pauses are 23metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry concerned, the same element may be an exponent of both the rhythmic and emotional quality. it is the latter that may justify the huge pause after “shun” too in gielgud 1. most informants agreed that the first reading is more emotional. they differed, however, in their evaluation of this emotionality, as well as on its relation to other elements in the performance. two of them spoke of “ominous rhythm” and “awesome emotional tone”, respectively. they probably referred to the same perceived quality, though attributed it to different aspects (rhythm, tone). in these comments, the emotional quality was implicitly judged as a “good-making” feature of the performance. one respondent squarely declared that he definitely preferred number 2, because the other was “full of pathos”. this person agrees, then, with the others as to the presence of the emotional quality, but makes an opposite value judgment. by the way, i happen to sympathize with his judgment. in terms of the foregoing discussion, in gielgud 1 the intensive human quality is not balanced by complexity. as we have seen, the effect of divergent cues may be subtler; that of convergent cues – more robust. to conclude, then, in gielgud 1 the combination of cues for discontinuity is thrust upon the reader “in a blunt and direct manner”, acting as a modifier that has little meaning except to intensify any perceptual or emotional qualities present, in this case anxiety inspired by the voice quality. hypnotic poetry edward d. snyder (1930) put forward the fruitful idea that “certain poems have a peculiar trance-inducing technique; that they owe their mysterious ‘spell’ to a magic no more incomprehensible than that of hypnotism; that by intensifying the listeners’ suggestibility they permit experiences where – for better or for worse – the poet holds sway over the listeners’ conscious and subconscious mind” (snyder 1930: 38). in an effort to isolate the personality variable “absorption”, devised to predict the hypnotisability of a person, tellegen (1981: 222) propounded the dichotomy “experiential” and “instrumental set”, the former being “a state of receptivity or openness to undergo whatever experiential events, sensory or imaginal, that may occur, with a tendency to dwell on, rather than go beyond, the experiences themselves and the objects they represent”; in the latter, input from receptors is not used to enhance experiencing but to make the discrimination needed for guiding instrumental acts and evaluating achievements. such altered states of consciousness as hypnosis or meditation strongly presuppose an experiential set. 24 reuven tsur one of the distinguishing marks of hypnotic poetry is its “obtrusive rhythm”. the poems mentioned above as hypnotic are of the most metrically regular poems in english. the regular rhythms do not generate here rationalist poetry as in pope, for instance. such obtrusive rhythm may amplify our involuntary physiological and psychological processes and, by the same token, it has been suggested, give “false security to the platonic censor in us” – so that the reader may feel freed to attend to ambiguities, or the irruption of the irrational, in the other layers of the poem. regular, predictable meter gives security. sometimes it turns “false” owing to the ambiguities and the irruption of the irrational in the poem, as in the afore-mentioned poems by poe and coleridge. but sometimes the source of insecurity is in the versification itself: unpredictable rhyme patterns, unpredictable line length, irregular stanza forms, etc. poe is the grand master of highly predictable rhyme words, but irregular stanza forms. in hypnotic poetry, as in “the raven” or “kubla khan”, alliteration may reinforce both security and insecurity. alliterations like “on the pallid bust of pallas” and “of a demon that is dreaming” reinforce security; the diverging and interlacing sound patterns that blur each other inspire insecurity. jakobson pointed out such interlacing alliterations in the poem, e. g., “raven” contiguous to the bleak refrain word “never” appears once more as an embodied mirror image of this “never”: /n.v.r/ – /r.v.n/. salient paronomasias interconnect both emblems of the everlasting despair, first “the raven, never flitting” at the beginning of the very last stanza, and second, in its very last lines the “shadow that lies floating on the floor” and “shall be lifted – nevermore”: /nεvәr flítíŋ/ – /flótíŋ/ ... /flɔr/ ... /líftәd nεvәr/. (jakobson 1960: 372) jakobson quotes these alliterations as instances of the poetic function in general; i am quoting them as characteristic of emotional poetry, and in combination with more than usually regular meter as characteristic of hypnotic poetry. in “kubla khan” we have such alliterations as “kubla khan”, “measureless to man”, “sunless sea”, “woman wailing”, “mingled measure” where the alliterations fall on stressed syllables in strong positions. at the same time, we have got such alliterations as “xanadu did”, “dome decree”, where the alliterations occur in adjacent positions and blur meter. in poe, obstinately repeated stock phrases and rhyme words, verse lines repeated with minute changes suggest “a tendency to dwell on, rather than go beyond, the experiences themselves and the objects they represent”. the enormous energies in “kubla khan” and the drastically reduced energy levels in “ulalume” generate different modes of experiencing the irruption of the irrational (in “ulalume”, the obstinate repetitions also suggest a psychological atmosphere of lack of progression). 25metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry glicksohn, tsur and goodblatt (1991) tested the responses of highand low-absorption participants to a hebrew hypnotic poem. the former evaluated it as interesting, tense, pleasant and complex; the latter, as boring, relaxed, unpleasant and simple. the different qualities perceived by highand lowabsorption participants in this poem are hypothesized as being the result of the application of different cognitive strategies in organizing the poem as a whole. the latter tend to foreground those elements in the poem that induce “certainty, security, patent purpose” and minimize those that inspire awe and anxiety (ambiguities and the irruption of the irrational); the former tend to balance them against each other. glicksohn et al. assume, therefore, that the different cognitive strategies used in organising the poem in question as a whole involve mainly the factors that determine whether the rhythm is perceived as one of false or genuine security. this may explain, why some readers regard poe’s poetry as the quintessence of poetry, whereas others as rather mediocre, minor poetry. let us have a look at the first stanza of “ulalume”. 10. the skies they were ashen and sober; the leaves they were crispèd and sere – the leaves they were withering and sere; it was night in the lonesome october of my most immemorial year; it was hard by the dim lake of auber, in the misty mid region of weir – it was down by the dank tarn of auber, in the ghoul-haunted woodland of weir. the verbal structure of this stanza displays a conspicuous tendency to dwell on, rather than go beyond, the experiences themselves, and also conveys considerable minute, precategorial information. none of the finite verbs suggest action, all are forms of the copula be, with descriptive phrases as predicates. the reader must also dwell on the obstinately-repeated rhyme words sere, auber, weir at unpredictable points of the stanza, suggesting lack of progression. so does the almost verbatim repetition of line 2. by the same token, this repetition upsets the symmetry of the stanza, inspiring uncertainty. in the second and third line there are three near-synonyms: crisped, sere, and withering. lines 2 and 3 are literally identical, except for the substitution of the adjective withering for its near-synonym crisped. this generates a minimal semantic pair, based on the opposition crisped ~ withering, the latter emphasizing the process of losing moisture and vitality, the former emphasizing the resulting texture. these 26 reuven tsur synonyms emphasize different features in sere. thus, the two tokens of sere have, and do not have, identical meanings, at one and the same time, generating a diffuse, precategorial texture. a similar, though less elusive, story can be told of the other parallel phrases in the lines with repeated rhyme words: dim lake ~ dank tarn, misty mid region ~ ghoul-haunted woodland, that also include an element of amplification. on the phonetic level, excerpt 10 contains an unusual number of liquids ([l, r]), nasals ([m, n, ŋ]) and semivowels ([w, y]). these speech categories share two features: they are periodic and relatively unencoded. in periodic speech sounds the same wave form is repeated, inducing a relaxed attitude (there will be no surprises). speech sounds are encoded: we perceive the unitary speech categories rather than the acoustic information that transmits them. in liquids, nasals and semivowels some of the acoustic information is perceptible in the background, contributing to the diffuse, precategorial background texture. thus, both on the semantic and phonetic levels “chaotic over-differentiation” is generated, enhancing “the falseness” of security, and openness to the subtleties of experience. consider the same stanza with the repetitions-plus-variations omitted. it suggests a much more straightforward, goal-oriented psychological atmosphere: 11. the skies they were ashen and sober; the leaves they were crispèd and sere – it was night in the lonesome october of my most immemorial year; it was hard by the dim lake of auber, in the misty mid region of weir – note that the first four lines of excerpt 11 constitute a closed and stable symmetrical a-b-a-b quatrain. the addition of two more lines restructures the perception of the stanza, and generates a fluid ab-ab-ab structure that displays a psychological atmosphere of definite direction and patent purpose, going beyond, rather than dwelling on, the experiences themselves. a poem becomes hypnotic, then, when greater than usual regularity is coupled with greater than usual irregularity, ambiguity and irruption of the irrational, inspiring awe and anxiety – as well as substantial deviation from normal energy level, either increasing or decreasing it, with a tendency to dwell on, rather than go beyond, the experiences themselves. 27metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry metre, rhythm, dignity i will introduce this issue via a controversy regarding the first line of the following excerpt from milton: 12. and sat as princes, whom the supreme king exalted to such power, and gave to rule, milton’s 1809 editor, henry j. todd comments on the first line of this excerpt: “i conceive that milton also intended the last foot of the following verse to be a spondee, as more dignified and impressive than the accentuation, not uncommon indeed in our old poetry, of súpreme on the first syllable” (todd 1970: 199). one hundred eighty years later, gilbert youmans takes issue with him: “todd is almost certainly mistaken about milton’s intention in this case. […] otherwise, these lines would violate one of kiparsky’s categorical rules for milton” (youmans 1989: 349–350). the issue at stake here is whether rhythm ought to be regularized or not. the two agree about the structure of the verse line; they disagree about its performance. and they support their respective positions by reasons of different kinds. youmans invokes metricality judgments, todd – poetic effects. psychologically, “the rhythmical performance” of a poem is a perceptual solution to a perceptual problem: when the linguistic and versification patterns conflict, they are accommodated in a pattern of performance, such that both are perceptible simultaneously. youmans and todd seek their solutions to this line within a convergent and a divergent delivery style, respectively. where several delivery styles are possible, one reason for choosing one rather than another may be aesthetic. beardsley (1958: 465–469) speaks of three “general canons” of evaluation: unity, complexity, and some intense human quality. the greater the complexity of an aesthetic object, or the greater its unity, other things being equal, the better it will be considered. if the reciter “accentuates súpreme on the first syllable”, straightforward unity may be greatly enhanced, but at the expense of complexity. if, however, the reciter strongly emphasizes both -preme and king, he may offer, in certain circumstances, a “rhythmical performance”, so that both unity and complexity are enhanced, relative to each other.5 the “certain circumstances” include the 5 arnheim (1967: 49) speaks of “simplicity” and “complexity”, and observes: “in an absolute sense, a thing is simple when it consists of a small number of structural features. in a relative sense, a thing has simplicity when it organizes complex material with the smallest possible number of structural features”. this holds true, mutatis mutandis, for unity and complexity as well. 28 reuven tsur over-articulation of -preme, to free mental processing space for the perception of the versification pattern conflicting with it. the present assumption is that listeners decode the consecutive heavy stresses using their knowledge of the phonological and versification features whose interaction produced their intonation signals; by the same token, they perceive the metric gestalt as blurred. finally, when todd defends his reading as a spondee on the grounds that it is “more dignified and impressive”, he invokes the general canon of “intense human quality”. what may “dignified” mean with reference to metric structures? it suggests that the listener may detect some structural resemblance between the consecutive heavy stresses and the outward manifestation of dignity in humans, such as weightiness, reserve of manner, and clearly articulated gestures. “weightiness” in a context of a disyllable with its stressed syllable in a weak position, followed by another stressed syllable, suggests “having considerable mass”; in a context of dignified human behaviour it suggests “of much importance or consequence”. as to “reserve”, a stressed syllable in a weak position (followed by another stressed syllable) “holds back” the rhythmic movement of the line, whereas a dignified person “holds back”, “controls” his responses, the expression of his emotions or thoughts. as to “clearly articulated gestures” in poetry, i have suggested that the rhythmical performance of such constructs as a disyllable with its second, stressed, syllable in a weak position requires exceptionally clear articulation. i do not mean to imply that this is the permanent perceptual quality of consecutive stresses. as i have suggested, one poetic structure may typically count toward a wide variety of sometimes conflicting perceived effects. such expressions as milton’s “supreme king” and pope’s line “and ten low words oft creep in one dull line” exploit different potentials of slow movement induced by successive stresses. shakespeare spelled out the nature of slowness of a desirable kind: 13. they that have power to hurt and will do none, that do not do the thing they most do show, who, moving others, are themselves as stone, unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, they rightly do inherit heaven’s graces ... (sonnet 94) we must clear one more obstacle on the way of this solution. wimsatt and beardsley (1958: 598) write: “the notion of an accentual spondee (or ‘level’ foot) in english appears to be illusory, for the reason that it is impossible to pronounce any two successive stresses in english without some rise or fall of stress – and some rise or fall of stress is all that is needed for a metrical ictus”. 29metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry if they are right, todd’s analysis is fallacious. but they are wrong. with reference to the line “to a green thought in a green shade” they write: “whatever we do with the two pairs of syllables, it remains absolutely certain that ‘thought’ is stronger than ‘green’ and that ‘shade’ is stronger than ‘green’” (595). this absolute certainty is not as well founded as it could be. thus, for instance, in his investigation of eleven recorded readings of shakespeare’s sonnet xviii, chatman (1965) played excised segments of two syllables each to a panel of twenty-one professors of english, asking them to make judgments on their relative stresses. the professors voted unanimously that, e. g., in four out of eleven performances, rough and winds were performed with level stresses, in six winds was performed as slightly more prominent, whereas in one performance rough was slightly more prominent. this i take as evidence that “the notion of an accentual spondee (or ‘level’ foot) in english” is not illusory. there is another way to generate a dignified quality by metre in poetry, pointed out by aristotle in his rhetoric: of the various rhythms, the heroic has dignity, but lacks the tones of the spoken language. the iambic is the very language of ordinary people, so that in common talk iambic lines occur oftener than any others: but in a speech we need dignity and the power of taking the hearer out of his ordinary self. the trochee is too much akin to wild dancing: we can see this in tetrameter verse, which is one of the trochaic rhythms. (aristotle 3.8, 1408b) aristotle had, then, considerable interest in the perceived effects of poetic rhythm. i will argue that his assertions about the iambic are doubtful; but about the rest, i tend to agree with him. generations of critics during the past two millennia repeated aristotle’s assessment of the iambic with reference to many languages. roger fowler (1966) was the first one to point out that this assertion fails to conform with the facts. “this, paradoxically, may help to explain why the iambic measure is felt to be suited to english: not because its pattern corresponds to the prose rhythms of language, for it does not; but because it necessitates a constant syncopation of prose rhythm against its own rhythm, inviting poets to be metrically complex, not to jog along with simple regularity” (1966: 99). moreover, as the great hungarian poet, miklós radnóti (1943) pointed out in the afterword to his volume of poetry translations, even hungarian poets consider the iambic as the most natural metre (even though in hungarian, stress falls invariably on the first syllable of the word). in my chapter on the iambic and the trochaic in my book (tsur 1977; reprinted in tsur, 2017) i quote h. woodrow, who found in his tick-tack experiments, back in the beginning of the twentieth century, that in a series 30 reuven tsur of tick-tacks, “with equal temporal spacing, a regularly recurring, relatively greater intensity exerts a group-beginning effect, and a regularly recurring, relatively greater duration a group-ending effect” (woodrow 1951: 1233). “intensity has a group-beginning effect: duration, a group-ending effect: pitch, neither a group-ending nor a group-beginning effect” (woodrow 1911: 77). in his doctoral dissertation, curt rice (1992) replicated woodrow’s experiments. “the technological resources for conducting this research are dramatically more sophisticated than those which woodrow had available”. at variance with woodrow, rice (1992: 198) showed that variations in pitch do lead to a significant shift towards iambic groupings. coming back to verbal rhythms, spoken language consists of syllables of varying duration. schramm (1935), fry (1958), and chatman (1965) demonstrated that the acoustic cue to linguistic stress is a complex of pitch, duration, and loudness, in that order of decreasing effectiveness. usually, at least two of these three components are present. if pitch differences are irrelevant to grouping direction and duration differences are more effective in stress perception than amplitude differences, end-accented meters should be more natural in poetry in a variety of languages. if variations in pitch also lead to a significant shift towards iambic groupings, it should reinforce this effect. aristotle had in mind a metric system based on duration differences. in english and in many other modern western languages there is a prevalent intuition that in syllabotonic metre too, the iambic is more natural than the trochaic (since fry found that duration is a more effective cue for stress perception than intensity, this too is explained by woodrow’s findings). in a completely different cultural tradition and different metric systems, in mediaeval arabic and hebrew poetry in spain, based on the alternation of longer and shorter units, there is a huge number of metres available to poets. i have found that, nevertheless, mediaeval hebrew poetry is dominated by one end-accented metre (tsur, bentov 1996); golston and riad (online) found that arabic poetry too is dominated by end-weighted metres. i hypothesized that this is the result of some natural selection, to conform with the constraints of the cognitive system. in this context, however, there is a disconcerting issue. the natural selection suggested here works well in some poetic traditions, but other traditions force rigid limitations upon poets and prevent them from preferring the metrical patterns that have a good fit to the natural constraints of cognitive economy. for instance, the venerable greek and roman epic tradition is dominated by the dactylic hexameter (“the heroic rhythm”). the dactylic foot is the least natural of the most frequent feet; namely, the iambic, the trochee, the anapest and the dactyl. the trochaic and the dactylic feet are relatively unnatural because the strong position (longer syllable) precedes the weak one(s). the 31metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry dactylic is less natural than the trochaic, because two weak positions lean back upon one strong position. this would conform with aristotle’s description of these metres. why should, then, precisely that rhythm prevail and multiply that has a poor fit to the constraints of the cognitive system, that is, is the least natural of the rhythms? i found the solution to this riddle only recently, when i re-read, for a different purpose, aristotle’s paragraph. aristotle claims that “of the various rhythms, the heroic has dignity” and “the power of taking the hearer out of his ordinary self ”. in other words, the heroic action does not demand the most natural rhythms, but those that take the hearer out of his ordinary self – i. e., precisely the least natural metre. this is how the most “dignified” rhythm is generated, so as to support the intense human quality of the epic. the “heroic rhythm” (the dactylic hexameter) is the most dignified one because of its deviation from the commonplace “tones of the spoken language”. poor fit may have its own expressive value. one may even assume that poets sometimes deliberately seek out the conventions that have a poor fit, for effects that the structuralists would call “marked”. now notice this too: in what aristotle calls “the heroic rhythm”, the dactylic hexameter, in most parts of the verse line a spondee may be substituted for a dactylic foot. in other words, the heroic rhythm consists of two kinds of feet that, for different reasons, may suggest a dignified quality. stress maxima in weak position one of the unique features of my work in prosody is my handling of stress maxima in weak position. i will try to explain this in a nutshell, and then point out its emotive implications. morris halle and samuel jay keyser (1971) proposed in their generative theory an exceptionally parsimonious criterion for distinguishing all “metrical” lines from all “unmetrical” ones, assuming that this criterion is somehow internalized by poets and readers. the iambic pentameter line consists of an abstract pattern of regularly alternating weak and strong positions, upon which the sequences of linguistic stresses are “mapped”. the “stress maximum” is a theoretical construct, defined as “a stressed syllable between two unstressed ones, within the same line and the same syntactic constituent”. the phrase “a gárden” contains a stress maximum; “a bíg gárden” contains no stress maximum, because neither of the two stressed syllables occurs between two unstressed ones – they “neutralize” each other. all mappings are “allowable”, except one: a stress maximum in a weak position, that renders the line unmetrical, as in the following lines: 32 reuven tsur 7 14. how many bards gild the lapses of time! (keats, “how many bards gild the lapses of time”) 7 15. and made him bow to the gods of his wives (pr, 171) 7 16. burnt after them to the bottomless pit milton, paradise lost, vi. 865–866 7 17. with them from bliss to the bottomless deep (pr, i. 361) 7 18. and whelm on them to the bottomless void (shelley, prometheus unbound, iii. i. 76) 7 19. buffet and scoffe, scorge, and crucifie mee (donne, holy sonnet 11. 2) i have found that the distribution of the violating stress maxima is far from random. over sixty instances of stress maxima in weak positions have been recorded in iambic pentameter lines, in major english poetry. two thirds of them occurred in the seventh position (out of four positions available for violation). this suggests that the distribution is not random, and that poets like milton, shelley and keats assumed that their readers can perform such lines rhythmically. i predicted that experienced readers will tend to agree that a verse line with a stress maximum in the seventh position can be performed rhythmically. the solution to the perceptual problem will arise not with reference to the isolated stress maximum, but within a larger group. such groupings are the performance patterns available to the reciter (halle and keyser declare that they have nothing to say about how such lines should be performed). if a reader is requested to read the line rhythmically, so as to preserve the stress pattern of the words and as much of the metre as possible, he is likely to group together, emphatically, the last four syllables and segregate the group from the preceding context. in other words, he will foreground in his performance a unitary perceptual group called “stress valley”. a stress valley is a cluster of four syllables; in terms of gestalt theory it has a closed symmetrical (that is, “good”) shape: two stressed syllables embrace two unstressed ones, as in “píty the wórld” or “bóttomless pít”. such a perceptual organization may save mental processing space, needed for the perception of the conflicting linguistic and versification patterns simultaneously. a stress valley that begins in the seventh position ends in the tenth position, imposing upon the line an exceptionally strong closure. i have found that experienced readers of poetry did indeed tend 33metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry to foreground such a stress valley; they were surprised to discover that rather than playing down the violating stress, they all tended to overemphasize it. in what follows, i will give first an example of what i don’t mean by “the expressive potential of stress valley”, and then briefly suggest my conception of it, when initiated by a stress maximum in the seventh position. consider excerpt 14 above. the first syllable of lapses in this line constitutes a stress maximum in a weak position; according to the halle-keyser theory, this renders the line unmetrical. halle and keyser attempt to “save” this line as a “metrical lapse”, a kind of onomatopoeia, a metric joke. “the line is literally what it speaks of figuratively, a ‘lapse of time’” (1971: 171). according to the conception of performance outlined here, confirmed by a great number of readings, such configurations as the four syllables of lapses of time can be performed rhythmically, by grouping them together. this renders the line acceptable, and the ad hoc explanation of “metric joke” becomes superfluous. keats and halle and keyser use “lapses” in different senses and the “metric joke” construal of the deviation is far-fetched. my solution to the problem relies on leonard b. meyer’s discussion of emotion and meaning in music (1956). emotion or affect is aroused, meyer says, when a tendency to respond is arrested or inhibited (14). the pleasantness of an emotion seems to lie not so much in the fact of resolution itself as in the belief of resolution – the knowledge, whether true or false, that there will be a resolution (19). that is why we can know whether an emotion is pleasant or unpleasant before it is actually over (that is, before apprehension is dispelled, or stability is achieved). “the sensation of falling through space, unconditioned by any belief or knowledge as to the ultimate outcome, will, for instance, arouse highly unpleasant emotions. yet a similar fall experienced as a parachute jump in an amusement park may, because of our belief in the presence of control and in the nature of the resolution, prove most pleasurable” (20). now a stress valley beginning with a stressed syllable in a weak position and ending in a strong position at precisely the most stable points of the pentameter line (in the tenth or the fourth positions), may initiate an experiencing of such a “pleasurable apprehension”. loss of control is experienced during three syllables; but one also knows that control and stability will be regained at the fourth unit, where the stress pattern and the metric pattern have a coinciding downbeat, and the metre becomes fresh and new. in the verse lines in which the first syllable of “bottomless” occurs in the seventh position, anxiety is much stronger, there is a greater danger that the line will return to chaos, than when a stress valley begins in the first position, because it involves a stress maximum in a weak position; thus, what applies to a stress valley beginning in the first position is much more forcefully valid here. 34 reuven tsur how does a listener know, before the stress valley is completed, that there will be a coinciding downbeat? speech processing is governed, at any given time, by immediate memory and anticipation. to give just one example of anticipation, [d] is a voiced stop; its enunciation consists of a gesture articulating a [t] and the activation of the vocal folds. this requires the prolongation of the preceding vowel, to foreground the contrast between a (voiced) vowel and a voiced stop. when a vowel is prolonged, the listener anticipates a voiced stop and hears a [d] even if actually a [t] is articulated. likewise, cooper and meyer observe that “in musical performance, the placing of some extra accent may affect the grouping of sounds. […] [a]n accent on a weak beat, presents the group as end-stressed” (1960: 8). when a reciter overemphasizes (rather than downplays) a stress maximum in the seventh (weak) position, he expects an exceptionally strong stress in the tenth (strong) position. and so does the listener. the stress valley has no semantic meaning, only perceptual dynamics. but this dynamics may generate a combinational potential, that is, a potential to combine with semantic elements that are relevant in one way or other to that dynamics. “downward movement, falling”, for instance, has an element of loss of control; but in the present instances, this loss of control may be pleasurable, because the reader believes that the stress valley and the pairs of iambic feet will have a coinciding downbeat, where stability and control will be regained – even though the “pit”, the “void”, the “deep” are “bottomless”; that is, control can be regained in the stress valley only, not in the endless fall. it makes us perceive the loss of control but, by the same token, it gives false security, to face it. applying, then, leonard b. meyer’s phrases to stress maxima in the seventh position, this infringement inspires the reader with “awe, apprehension, and anxiety” that the utterance may escape back to chaos, “arousing powerful desires for, and expectations of, clarification and improvement”. these desires and expectations are fulfilled, precisely, in the last position of the line, generating a strong feeling of closure. the line becomes well shaped and, paradoxically, at the same time, near-chaotic. hence its strong emotional impact. the feeling of uncertainty, of “anxiety”, as it were, is felt in the active violation of metre by an unsupported stressed syllable followed by unstressed syllables of such polysyllables as crúcifie or bóttomless, where they must lean back on that broken reed of a stress maximum in the seventh position, or one must wait until regularity is reasserted again, in the tenth position. in excerpts 16, 17, 18 above, bótis a stress maximum in a weak position, adding momentum to the feeling of “anxiety”. considering the relative scarcity of stress maxima in weak positions, these examples – whether independently arrived at, or imitated by shelley from milton – cannot be dismissed as insignificant. 35metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry they are the more remarkable since the poets could easily have avoided the stress maximum in a weak position – by using “to bottomless abyss”, for example. i have emphasized above that the pattern illustrated here may appear to have an iconic impact, because what we have is not exactly iconic; it is more accurately handled in terms of “individuation of a general psychological atmosphere”. the “falling” analogue is not part of the metric pattern; it is merely a metaphor to suggest a peculiar psychological atmosphere of insecurity and anxiety, which are perceptual qualities of the metric shape under discussion. this metric shape is associated with a feeling of momentum and craving for stability that may combine with any content and lend impetus to such expressions as “crucifie mee”, or almost any other instance quoted here. when it combines with “bottomless pit” and its near-synonyms, the feeling of insecurity and anxiety and the craving for stability may combine with the content of the line, reinforcing each other. in halle and keyser’s handling of “the lapses of time” the parallel between metric structure and contents crucially depends on the words by which we describe the metric figure: if we describe it as “metric lapse”, the parallel exists; if we describe it as “metric deviance”, it does not exist. moreover, it also depends on assigning to the word “lapses” a meaning that is different from the one suggested by the context. my discussion of “the bottomless pit”, by contrast, concerns an atmosphere of anxiety generated by the loss of control caused by the extreme metric deviation, “arousing powerful desires for, and expectations of, clarification and improvement”. this is a possible source of a sense of “momentum” seeking “focal stability”. tarlinskaja and the stress valley i have said that marina tarlinskaja’s work in metrics is diametrically opposed to mine in many respects; among others, it is strongly meaning-oriented and confirmatory-quantitative. perceived effects are not within the scope of her research. it is based “not so much on insight and intuition as on wide quantitative analyses of observable facts”. in spite of this, our findings are considerably overlapping, but with quite different implications. in her 1987 paper “rhythm and meaning: ‘rhythmical figures’ in english iambic pentameter, their grammar, and their links with semantics” she touches on issues which i treat under the heading of “stress valley” (but do not involve a stress maximum in a weak position).  consider the first two examples from a group of lines quoted by tarlinskaja (1987: 20), in my metric notation: “to stand in thy affairs, fáll by thy síde” (sh. w . s w s 36 reuven tsur son. 151.12); “fáll like amázing thunder on the casque”(sh. r2 1.3.81), and so forth. i have marked in these lines the linguistic stresses and the underlying weak and strong positions in a stretch of four syllables. in the terminology of the present study these are “stress valleys” beginning in the first or seventh (weak) position and ending in the fourth or tenth (strong) position. while in my work the group of four constitutes the unit of analysis, tarlinskaja refers only to the first two syllables of these groups as a metric figure, labelling them as ws, that is, a stressed syllable in a weak position and an unstressed syllable in a strong position. it would appear that tarlinskaja was interested here only in the deviating portion of the line. rhythmical figures may stretch for her over as far as 5 and more syllables; but in these instances she focuses on the two deviating syllables only. by contrast, i was interested in the perceptual unit in which the deviance is accommodated. she is concerned with the observable facts, not with how such figures should be rendered acceptable in an iambic context. this difference is in perfect harmony with her statistical, and my cognitive approach. tarlinskaja found by statistical means what are the meanings typically associated with this figure. one of them is, she says, “motion downward”. all the examples she quotes in this group contain the word “fall” or “fell” in a weak position. but “motion” and “falling” is just one of the most frequent semantic areas coupled with this rhythmical figure; the verb is frequent, but not obligatory; other parts of speech may appear, but the context may still be “motion”, and the verb of motion may be absent, or placed outside the figure. tarlinskaja offers the following explanation for this association of “downward motion, falling” with this metrical figure: “the semantic component ‘falling’, so frequent in the figure ws-1, probably has something to do with the accentual-syllabic structure of the figure itself, which usually begins a verse line or a phrase within the line: it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones; possibly this arrangement does produce a physical impression of a heavy weight falling down”. it will be remembered that with reference to “bóttomless pít” and its near synonyms in milton and shelley i argued that the metric figure with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, beginning in a weak position, does not contain the falling analogue, but displays a general sense of loss of control; the fourth, stressed syllable in a strong position, in turn, yields (false) security that enables to face the anxieties associated with endless fall. the word “fall” does not occur in these lines, but the violent downward motion is there. it is rather the adjective “bottomless” that occupies the critical metrical positions, reinforced by the metric figure’s sense of loss of control. the main difference between tarlinskaja’s and my own approach seems to be, in this respect, that while she conjectures some hidden link between the metric w s w s w s w s 37metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry figure and the specific meaning “vigorous fall”, i discern a general perceptual dynamics of “loss of control” that can be individuated by association with a variety of meanings. the present conception assumes that no amount of “observable facts” in the text may suggest the nature of that dynamics. for this, one must assume the immediate responses of a human perceiver. it is also obvious that the answer should be sought in the structure of signs that have no predetermined semantic meaning. consequently, leonard b. meyer’s analysis of emotion and meaning in music (1956) as discussed above may be the clue to this issue.  tarlinskaja quotes 17 lines that contain such figures, with “fall” or “fell” in the critical weak position, by poets ranging from shakespeare, through pope, swift, byron, shelley, wordsworth, to arnold. 13 of the resulting stress valleys end in the fourth position, 4 in the tenth. one of the latter does not belong to this discussion, because it occurs in an iambic hexameter line, beginning immediately after the caesura. in another group, with the verbs “fly”, “run”, “rush” (that is, indicating vehement movement away) tarlinskaja quotes 8 lines, by shakespeare and shelley; in 5 of them the stress valley ends in the fourth position, in 2 in the tenth position, and only in 1 in the eighth position. thus, out of 24 pentameter lines quoted in these two groups, only in one line (by shelley) the stress valley ends in a position other than fourth or tenth (that is, at the unmarked caesura and the line ending).  to sum up. i have propounded a qualitative “perceived effects” approach to the contribution of meter and rhythm to emotion in poetry. i have briefly compared it with john a. jones’s disguised impressionistic approach, and to three thoroughly systematic works: marina tarlinskaja’s large-scale statistical “meaning-oriented” analysis, benjamin hrushovski’s structuralist work focusing on four types of logical relationship between sound and meaning that, nevertheless, implicitly acknowledges that speech sounds may have inherent (sometimes conflicting) perceived effects; and to maria kraxenberg’s quantitative study of sound–emotion associations. one of my main assumptions was that sound effects cannot be reduced to meanings: they can only generate some general psychological atmosphere that may be individuated by meaning into a variety of more specific emotional qualities. while emotional meanings are subject to understanding, emotional qualities are subject to immediate perception. the emotional quality of a poem consists in a structural resemblance between some emotion and a poetic text. we have explored the contribution of meter and rhythm to this resemblance. 38 reuven tsur references aristotle. the rhetoric of aristotle, tr. w. rhys roberts. http://libertyonline.hypermall. com/aristotle/rhetoric/rhetoric.html arnheim, rudolf 1967. art and visual perception. london: faber. beardsley, monroe c. 1958. aesthetics: problems in the philosophy of criticism. new york, burlingame: harcourt, brace & world. berkovich-ohana, aviva; glicksohn, joseph; ben-soussan, tal dotan; goldstein, abraham 2016. creativity is enhanced by long-term mindfulness training and is negatively correlated with trait default-mode-related low-gamma interhemispheric connectivity. in: mindfulness 8(3), 717–727. bouwsma, oets kolk 1961. the expression theory of art. in: philipson, morris (ed.), aesthetics today. cleveland & new york: meridian books, 145–168. chatman, seymour 1965. a theory of meter. the hague: mouton. duffy, elizabeth 1968 [1941]. an explanation of emotional phenomena without the use of the concept emotion. in: arnold, magda b. (ed.), the nature of emotion. harmondsworth: penguin, 129–140. fowler, roger 1966. ‘prose rhythm’ and metre. in: fowler, roger (ed.), essays on style and language. london: routledge & kegan paul. fry, dennis b. 1958. experiments in the perception of speech. in: language and speech 1, 126–151. glicksohn, joseph; tsur, reuven; gootblatt, ch. 1991. absorption and tranceinductive poetry. in: empirical studies of the arts 9(2), 115–122. golston, chris; riad, tomas. the phonolog y of classical arabic meter. http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~chrisg/index_files/arabicmeter.pdf guilford, joy paul 1970 [1959]. traits of creativity. in: vernon, philip ewart (ed.), creativity. harmondsworth: penguin, 167–188. halle, morris; keyser, samuel jay 1971. english stress: its growth and its role in verse. new york: harper and row. hepburn, ronald w. 1968. emotion and emotional qualities. in: osborne, harold (ed.), aesthetics in the modern world. london: thames and hudson, 81–93. hrushovski, benjamin 1980. the meaning of sound patterns in poetry: an interaction view. in: poetics today 2(1a), 39–56. 39metre, rhythm and emotion in poetry jakobson, roman 1960. closing statement: linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: the mit press, 350–377. jakobson, roman; fant, c. gunnar m.; halle, morris 1952. preliminaries to speech analysis: the distinctive features and their correlates. cambridge, ma: the mit press. margolis, joseph 1962. the logic of interpretation. in: margolis, joseph (ed.), philosophy looks at the arts: contemporary readings in aesthetics. new york: charles scribner’s sons, 108–118. meyer, leonard b. 1956. emotion and meaning in music. chicago: chicago university press. radnóti, miklós 1943. orpheus nyomában. budapest: pharos. schramm, wilbur l. 1935. approaches to the science of english verse. iowa city: iowa university. sibley, frank 1962. aesthetic qualities. in: margolis, joseph (ed.), philosophy looks at the arts: contemporary readings in aesthetics. new york: scribner, 63–88. snyder, edward d. 1930. hypnotic poetry: a study of trance-inducing techniques in certain poems and its literary significance. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. sweetser, eve 2006. whose rhyme is whose reason?: sound and sense in cyrano de bergerac. in: language and literature 15(1), 29–54. tarlinskaja, marina 1987. rhythm and meaning: “rhythmical figures” in english iambic pentameter, their grammar, and their links with semantics. in: style 21(1), 1–35. tellegen, auke 1981. practicing the two disciplines for relaxation and enlightenment: comment on ‘role of the feedback signal in electromyograph biofeedback: the relevance of attention’ by qualls and sheehan. in: journal of experimental psychology: general 110(2), 217–226. todd, henry j. 1970 [1809]. the poetical works of john milton, with notes of various authors. london: law and gilbert. tsur, reuven 1978. emotions, emotional qualities and poetry. in: psychocultural review 2, 165–180. tsur, reuven 2006. delivery style and listener response in the rhythmical performance of shakespeare’s sonnets. in: hogan, patrick colm; pandit, lalita (eds.), cognitive shakespeare: criticism and theory in the age of neuroscience (college literature 33(1)), 170–196. 40 reuven tsur tsur, reuven 2008a. comparing approaches to versification style in cyrano de bergerac. in: cognitive semiotics 2, 146–168  tsur, reuven 2008b. toward a theory of cognitive poetics. second, expanded and updated edition. sussex academic press: brighton and portland. tsur, reuven 2017. poetic conventions as cognitive fossils. oxford: oxford university press. tsur, reuven; bentov, yehosheva 1996. the rhythmic and strophic organization of mediaeval hebrew poetry (a cognitive approach). in: empirical studies of the arts 14, 183–206. wellek, rené; warren, austin 1956. theory of literature. new york: harcourt, brace & co. wimsatt, william k.; beardsley, monroe c. 1959. the concept of meter: an exercise in abstraction. in: pmla 74(5), 585–598. woodrow, herbert 1911. the role of pitch in rhythm. in: psychological review 18(1), 54–77. woodrow, herbert 1951. time perception. in: stevens, stanley s. (ed.), handbook of experimental psychology. new york: wiley, 1234–1236. youmans, gilbert 1989. milton’s metre. in: phonetics and phonology 1: rhythm and meter. new york: academic press, 341–379. studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii: from metric-structural type to compositional system frog*1 abstract. th is article explores patterns of language use in oral poetry within a variety of semantic formula. such a formula may vary its surface texture in relation to phonic demands of the metrical environment in which it is realised. th is is the third part of a four-part series based on metrically entangled kennings in old norse dróttkvætt poetry as primary material. old norse kennings present a semantic formula of a particular type which is valuable as an example owing to the extremes of textural variation that it enables. th e study concentrates on two-element kennings meaning ‘battle’. th e fi rst part in this series introduced the approach to kennings as semantic formulae and illustrated their formulaicity through evidence of the preferred lexical choices with which they were realised. th e second part presented a case study illustrating that preferred word choices could extend beyond the kenning to additional elements in the line like rhyme words. th e third case study presented here concentrates on the potential for a formula of this type to develop a general preference for elements of the kenning to come from one semantic category rather than another without such choices being metrically motivated per se. keywords: oral poetry, variation, formula, skaldic poetry, dróttkvætt, kenning th e present case study is concerned with a phenomenon of variation in oral poetry. th e approach focuses on oral poetry as language practice. th e study looks at a type of semantic formula in old norse poetry that is metrically entangled with the dróttkvætt meter. emphasis is on socially conditioned preferences in word choice for realising that formula. th e semantic formula addressed here has been identifi ed and analysed through the circumlocutions called kennings. th e analysis is built as a survey of kennings with the same referent (‘battle’) occurring in equivalent metrical positions in a dróttkvætt line – i.e. kennings of the same metric-structural type. th e dataset of 40 * author’s address: frog, folklore studies / department of philosophy, history, culture and art studies, university of helsinki, p.o. box 59 (unioninkatu 38 a), 00014 university of helsinki, finland. e-mail: mr.frog@helsinki.fi . studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 7–33 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.01 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.01 8 frog examples was assessed to consider whether distinctive patterns of language use indicative of formulaicity could be observed. th is is the third of a series of three case studies in a four-part discussion; it will be later followed by a discussion of the relationships between the studies and their broader implications. part i (mndf i) presented the register-based approach to oral poetry employed here as well as the framework for approaching semantic formulae. th is was illustrated through a case study of metric-structural type 12(p)xyy battle-kennings. th is study showed that personal names associated with mythology could vary with other nouns in a battle-kenning as a formula in these metrical positions. moreover, it revealed the crystallisation (i.e. obtaining a relative degree of fi xity) of lexical material in the formation of battle-kennings of a metric-structural type. particular attention was given to the value of these personal names for meeting metrical demands, especially rhyme. part ii (mndf ii) focused on the metrical entanglement of the lexicon within a basic (metric-structural) type, reviewing 80 examples of type 1(p)yyxx battlekennings. attention focused on the index or link of association of particular base-words when used in this metric-structural type to a semantic category of determinant completing the kenning. it also gave further attention to the indexical links formed with other material completing the line. th is study showed that personal names as a broad category could become metrically entangled in the realisation of particular battle-kennings as a preferred choice to accompany certain base-words and not others. names from mythology appeared among these as an integrated resource in composition. th e present case study treats basic type yyx456 battle-kennings in order to consider the potential for the metrically entangled formula itself to index a semantic category of determinant. in other words, it sets out to consider whether the use of a battle-kenning in certain metrical positions is not only formulaic, but that the formula may have a tendency to use a mythological name as a determinant. it may be stated at the outset that evidence from earlier studies anticipate this fi nding. th e pilot study preceding the present series of case studies already revealed metrically entangled kennings in certain metrical positions through evidence of preferred word choices (frog 2015a). th e preceding case studies in this series have shown that certain choices for one word in such a formula may not only index choices for an accompanying word (mndf i) but also a whole category of semantically equivalent words (mndf ii). it is only a short step to consider that the preference of drawing on a particular semantic category may occur for the whole metrically entangled kenning. th e purpose here is to explore that possibility. to aid the accessibility of this article for readers who may not be familiar with the fi rst parts of this series, the case study will be preceded by a short review of the background of the study and the framework used here. 9mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii background and terms th is series of case studies is developed on the basis of a pilot study that set out to test the hypothesis that kennings could become metrically entangled semantic formulae (frog 2015a). th e pilot study surveyed 340 kennings in dróttkvætt-meter poetry that had the referent ‘battle’. th ese kennings were analysed in their metrical contexts in order to assess whether any of them exhibited evidence of formulaicity. th e material was viewed through a register-based approach to oral poetry as language practice. th is approach links with current understandings of oral-formulaic th eory, which has developed considerably in roughly the half-century since the publication of albert lord’s singer of tales (1960). register is a term to describe a variety of language or other semiotic behaviour linked to certain types of communicative situations (e.g. agha 2007; cf. also halliday 1978) and is well suited to approaching a tradition of oral poetry (e.g. foley 1995). th is term is an analytical tool, the sensitivity and scope of which can be calibrated to the research object (frog 2015b). th e register or sub-register of dróttkvætt describes especially those expressive resources conventional to the dróttkvætt meter and associated with its particular metrical demands. a formula, whether simple or complex, is a meaning-bearing integer of the linguistic register that develops an exclusive entry in the mental lexicon of competent users (e.g. wray 2009: 28–34; foley & ramey 2012: 80). key indicators of formulaicity are therefore evidence that the potential formula is somehow formally and or semantically distinctive within the register. dróttkvætt is essentially a syllabic meter (with rule-governed fl exibility) of six-position lines composed in couplets, with two couplets forming a halfstanza. rules of syntax allowed a remarkable scrambling of language through a half-stanza unit, and two (rarely more) clauses or independent statements could be interwoven across those four lines. th e main conventional formal constraints of the meter are rhyme, alliteration and syllable weight. two lexically stressed syllables in odd lines should alliterate with the fi rst stressed syllable in the following even line of a couplet. rhyme was more variable in practice, but normally the penultimate syllable (but not the following infl ectional ending) of each line should rhyme with a preceding syllable; in odd lines, this should be skothending rhyme, not including the vowel (e.g. 1a.v below: geira veðrs til góðrar); in even lines, this should be aðalhending rhyme, including the vowel (e.g. 1a.iii below: hǫgna veðr í gǫgnum). th e syllabic quality described metaphorically as ‘weight’ was also signifi cant, although the precise metrical rules surrounding it remain debated. syllabic weight has only limited relevance to the present discussion and need not be introduced 10 frog in detail: it is suffi cient to observe that certain stressed syllables were ‘heavy’ and this quality aff ected the metrical positions in which words were used.1 a kenning is a rhetorical fi gure that forms a noun phrase (np). th is rhetorical fi gure is formed of a noun called a base-word (np1) complemented by a second noun called a determinant (np2) in the genitive case or forming a compound, and these together signify a third, nominal referent (thus: np2-gen np1 or np2-np1 = np3 when np3 ≠ np1 or np2). for example, the base-word veðr = ‘weather; wind’ can be complemented by the determinant geirr = ‘spear’ to form a battle-kenning in the following ways: veðr geirs = ‘weather of the spear’, veðr geira = ‘weather of spears’ or geirveðr = ‘spear-weather’. in most registers (poetic or otherwise), kennings are for the most part crystallised formulaic expressions or have become wholly lexicalised, fossilised and idiomatic. kennings in skaldic poetry are exceptional because they functioned generatively: the register was characterised by a rich lexicon of semantically equivalent terms called heiti (sg. also heiti) which could be interchangeable in realising a particular kenning as a semantic unit according to “paradigmatic substitution” (clunies ross et al. 2012: lxxi). in the above example, veðr is a weather-heiti interchangeable with él = ‘squall’, drífa = ‘snowstorm’, hregg = ‘rainstorm’, hríð = ‘storm’, regn = ‘rain’, skúr = ‘shower’, etc. at the same time, geirr can vary with other spear-heiti, and also within a broader equivalence class with other weapon-heiti, and still more generally with heiti for implements of battle. th is potential for variation is expanded by the potential for especially the np of the determinant to be realised through another kenning, and the determinant np of that kenning to be realised through yet another kenning, and so on. a two-element kenning can be called a basic kenning or a simple kenning. th is type of variation turns a basic kenning into a complex kenning (i.e. [[npn-gen np3]-gen np2]-gen np1 = np4, etc.). in the pilot study, the metrical positions for each element of each battlekenning were ‘mapped’ within a line or across lines of a half-stanza. mapping is done by representing each six-position line as a numerical sequence 123456. each position fi lled by a kenning’s base-word is replaced with an ‘x’ and each fi lled by the determinant with a ‘y’ (‘z’ was used to represent the determinant in the determinant kenning) and ‘p’ replaced a preposition (placed in parentheses if optional). uppercase characters represent the stressed onset syllable and lowercase characters represent unstressed positions. th us, the line geira veðrs til góðrar = ‘weather of spears...’ (1a.v) can be mapped geira-veðrs-p56, 1 on the dróttkvætt meter, syntax and structuring of stanzas, see further kuhn 1983: 33–214; árnason 1991: 81–148; gade 1995: 1–72; on complexity in skaldic composition, see wills 2009. 11mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii yy-veðr-p56, yyx(p)56, yyx456, etc. mapping the kennings in this way distinguished them according to the metric-structural types described by these codes. a kennings of only two elements presented a ‘basic type’ while a kenning of three or more elements presented a ‘complex type’ (although only two-element kennings are surveyed in the case-study below).2 th e working hypothesis of the pilot study was that kennings could develop conventional use “under the same metrical conditions” (parry 1928: 16). albert lord (1960: 48–53) had observed that one lexical element of a formula might vary between poetic synonyms. it was hypothesised that, in dróttkvætt poetry, kenning use could develop corresponding formulae able to “express a particular essential idea” (parry 1928: 16) in particular metrical positions (i.e. a metric-structural type) but the heiti of both kenning elements could vary. dominant models for approaching kennings have focused on the semantic categories of constituent heiti and the relationship of these heiti to one another (e.g. meissner 1921; marold 1983: 24–36). accordingly, it was hypothesised that both elements of a kenning formula targeted by the study would vary within their respective equivalence classes of heiti. surprisingly, the vast majority of kennings in the pilot study appeared in quite a limited number of basic metric-structural types (with variations) with indications of formulaicity. contrary to expectation, however, variation between heiti in examples of the apparent formulae did not remain within individual semantic equivalence classes. instead, syllabic structure seemed to be a primary determinant on which possible heiti were used. a survey of the heiti used as base-words and ‘basic’ determinants3 revealed that these fell into groups by relative frequency and, for example, the high-frequency heiti of the corpus appeared to be characterised by their ability to meet diff erent patterns of alliteration irrespective of semantic class. th is led to an alternative model of viewing metrically entangled kennings as formulae within which lexical variation was in terms of functional rather than semantic equivalence for realising the formula as a unit meaning ‘battle’ (frog 2015a; mndf i: 109–117; mndf ii: 45–47). for example, weather-heiti such as veðr can form a battle-kenning with heiti for implements of battle like geirr as in (1a.v) below, or with heiti for agents of battle like the valkyrie-name gǫndul (veðr gǫndlar as in mndf ii, ex. 3b.vi). in practice, variation occurs between geirr and gǫndul within a formula of this 2 descriptions of complex types accounted for all elements in complex kennings, but kennings of three elements or more were observed to generally refl ect two or more basic types in combination that could be viewed as systematic expansions varying a basic type. 3 on basic determinants as a category for analysis of data including both basic and complex kennings, see further frog 2015a. 12 frog type because these heiti could be functionally equivalent for realising a formula meaning ‘battle’ in the appropriate metrical positions irrespective of their individual semantics. similarly, the base-word þing = ‘assembly’ may belong to a diff erent semantic equivalence class than veðr, but these are nevertheless functionally equivalent as base-words in producing the semantic unit ‘battle’, as in þing gǫndlar in (1b.ii) below or þing geira in mndf ii (ex.5b.v). any combination of these base-words and determinants will realise the same integer ‘battle’: they are functionally equivalent in forming the kenning and metrically equivalent for the particular metrically entangled formula (cf. 1a–b). basic type yyx456 battle-kennings in overview in the pilot study, 22 of the 340 battle-kennings analysed were basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings (including variations). of these, 9 or approximately 41% had a personal name of a mythic agent as a determinant. th e prominence of personal names was quite striking within the context of that data. th is basic type was therefore selected to explore the possibility that mythic agents of battle could become a preferred category of determinant in a metrically entangled kenning as a semantic formula (observable in kennings of a particular metric-structural type). searching the corpus for this particular basic type approximately doubled the size of the dataset with a total of 40 examples. as in the preceding studies of other basic types, adjectives are not counted as variations on the type.4 in general, variations of this basic type that expanded it into a complex kenning were only infrequently observed (i.e. [np3-gen np2]-gen np1 = np4). th ese variations are not counted in the data discussed here. of the 40 examples, 17 or 42.5% have a proper name as a determinant, of which 15 or 37.5% are proper names for mythic agents of battle. th is proportion remained generally consistent with the proportion observed in the pilot study, making it less likely that the pattern is an accident of sampling. basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings are found in both odd and even lines. th e formal structure of course places constraints on the number of syllables of both the base-word and the determinant. syllabic weight also appears to be 4 th ese were not found to metrically or semantically impact the formulaic unit; cf. examples in eskál vell 10i.7–8, þjóða sex 2ii.5–6, sigv víkv 2i.1,3, sigv frag 1iii.3–4 and anon gyð 5vii.3–4. citations are by sigla and stanza numbering of the skaldic database. citations are with reference to the published editions of the associated skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages (spsma) edition where these were available and with reference to finnur jónsson’s critical edition (1967) where they were not. 13mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii entangled with kennings of this type: the determinant always exhibits a heavy stressed syllable in its two-syllable genitive infl ection whereas the base-word invariably appears as a heavy monosyllable whatever its infl ection. th e formula is also always followed by a preposition or other light particle of speech. as stress is regular in position 5 (also a heavy syllable), use of this formula produces a clear trochaic rhythm in the line. in even lines, the determinant is metrically required to carry alliteration. in odd lines, the determinant also invariably carries alliteration, and always with the penultimate syllable; never with the base-word. th is metric-structural type of kenning therefore appears entangled with the distribution of alliteration in the line beyond the kenning (forming line-type a2; cf. gade 1995: 18). unlike basic types addressed in parts i and ii of this series, line-positions 5–6 stand outside of the positions of kenning elements in this type. line-position 5 is required to carry rhyme for the line, which is most oft en also carried by the base-word here but it is carried by the determinant roughly a quarter of the time.5 rhyme does not appear entangled in this formula to the same degree as alliteration. yyx(p)56 battle-kennings not infrequently appear as determinants in complex kennings (genitive infl ections are indicated by ‘.gen’ in the translations of examples). th e kenning gǫndlar þing = ‘assembly of gǫndul (valkyrie)’ (1b.ii) is the determinant for another common battle-kenning determinant gnýr = ‘roar’ in the four-element warrior-kenning gǫndlar þings gný-þróttr (hskv útdr 7ii.7–8) = ‘þróttr (odin) of the roar of the assembly of gǫndul’.6 participation in complex kennings appears to be a normal function of many basic-type kenning formulae and did not warrant distinction in analysis (frog 2015a; cf. however sverdlov 2015). th is use of a formulaic kenning only requires morphological variation for a genitive infl ection of the determinant. morphological variation is subject to metrical constraints as in other formulaic metric-structural types, which in this case is relevant to the formation of extended kennings. th e requirement of a heavy monosyllable base-word has 5 in 9 of the 40 examples (1a.i–iii, 1b.iii–iv, 2a.ii, 2a.iv, 3b.i, 4b.ii; although see also below), noting that 3a.i lacks rhyme and a lacuna follows 4a.iv (although the metric-structural type of the kenning in the line can be considered unambiguous). 6 cf. e.g. odda þings hyr-þróttr (anon pl 48vii.2–3) in which hyr = ‘fl ame’ forms a swordkenning: np2-þróttr is the same metric-structural type in both examples and it is also in a line adjacent to the yy-þings-(p)56 battle-kenning, yet gný-þróttr follows the battle-kenning and carries alliteration in the couplet while hyr-þróttr precedes the battle-kenning in the preceding couplet. 14 frog consequences here such as, for example, gnýr only being metrically viable in the nominative or genitive singular (gný-r or gný-s but not gný-ø).7 th e use of yyx(p)56 kennings as determinants is of interest from the perspective of the rhythm and metrics of these lines. it is rhythmically unsurprising that metrical position 4 in these lines is invariably fi lled by a light particle of speech. th is fact becomes interesting because, metrically, this use of a light particle of speech does not seem like it should be signifi cantly different than an infl ectional ending on the preceding noun. however, yyx(p)56 battle-kennings do not exhibit a variation of extending the kenning into position 4 by adding an infl ectional ending to the base-word (i.e. yyx(p)56 → yyxx56) and no battle-kennings of type yyxx56 were found in the test corpus of the pilot study.8 it seems probable that the absence of type yyxx56 battlekennings somehow refl ects conventions of the rhythms of the meter.9 th e monosyllabic base-words are always heavy in this formula. when searching the skaldic database for examples of this basic type, it was also observed that battle-kenning base-words with a heavy monosyllable stem and infl ected with a genitive singular ending -s seem almost never to occur outside of this position (e.g. mót = ‘meeting’, gen. móts; þing, gen. þings; veðr, gen. veðrs) unless they form part of a compound. th e use of this morphological form in position 3 but not elsewhere further suggests that this formula is somehow interfaced with a relationship between syllabic weight and rhythm in the meter. unlike examples of basic types in parts i and ii, lexically identical kennings of basic type yyx(p)56 occur in both odd and even lines. th is appears related to the fact that neither the base-word nor the determinant fi lls the rhyme-determining position 5. however, the structure of the line nevertheless requires one of the elements of the kenning to carry the rhyme (if rhyme is not absent) and recurrent rhyme-collocations in the data may be considered evidence of conventional resources in this area as well (see below). th e preceding case studies in this series organised the presentation of examples according 7 th is was especially clear in basic type 12(p)xyy battle-kennings, where the base-word had to be a light monosyllable, which had the opposite consequence of eff ectively limiting use to -ø infl ections. 8 mention of basic type yyxx56 in footnote 13 of mndf ii (p. 48) is a labelling error for complex type zyxx56 in which zy is a compound. 9 two examples of type xxyy56 battle-kennings were found in test corpus (eþver lv 1i.8 and gþorg lv 1v.7), but their word order can be considered ‘inverted’ and there is no reason to believe that these were formulaic as battle-kennings. on the potential for conventional, metrically entangled formulae to reveal qualitatively better information in the metrical analysis of oral poetry, see frog 2014a. 15mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii to their use in odd and even lines, but examples of identical kennings in both odd and even lines makes such a division seem inappropriate here, especially as the set of 40 examples does not present more than fi ve examples with any single base-word or determinant. th e present data is therefore grouped by base-word in order of the number of examples. owing to the limited number of examples for any one base-word in basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings, it is not possible to draw unambiguous conclusions regarding how that base-word is used. th e use of names with any one base-word also does not seem astounding. although examples are grouped by base-word, the methodological focus in this survey is the observance of a cumulative trend or tendency. th e survey of the pilot study provides a frame of reference for the use of proper names here. in the pilot study, 41 or ca. 12% of the 340 battle-kennings (including complex kennings) employed proper names in/as determinants. part i of this study drew attention to the crystallisation of verbal formulae incorporating names (mndf i: 124–125) and part ii highlighted that certain base-words within a formulaic metric-structural type may show preferred use of personal names as determinants (mndf ii: 62–64). th ose phenomena were already to some degree observable in the pilot study, where it was clear that proper-name determinants were more frequent in at least some basic types than in others (which led to the present series of case studies). if this is taken into account and a rough and general calibrated average of uses of proper-name determinants is estimated at ca. 1 in 10 examples (cf. mndf ii: 25), proper names in 17 of the 40 examples here and mythic agents of battle in 15 of 40 (i.e. 3 in 8) examples looks remarkable. base-words in five examples th e base-words veðr = ‘weather’ and þing = ‘assembly’ are each found in 5 examples. th ese were both found to be high-frequency base-words in the pilot study and the number of examples in which they are found here is not necessarily surprising in itself.10 within each set of 5, one determinant is also found twice: these 10 cf. the appearance of þing as the base-word in ca. 9% of the 340 examples in the sample corpus and veðr in ca. 6.5%. base-words were considered high frequency when found in more than 5% of the examples, the highest-frequency base-word being él = ‘squall’ in 33 examples or ca. 10%. in the present case study, 5 of 40 examples is 12.5%. th is may look a bit high at fi rst glance, but the calculations made in the pilot study included all base-words, whereas here only base-words that are a heavy monosyllable are metrically viable. if only the base-words in the pilot study that are metrically viable here were tallied, their relative frequency would rise. 16 frog account for 4 of the 9 examples in which the determinant carries the rhyme in the line and they produce phonetically and verbally similar lines (1a.i–ii, 1b.iii–iv). (1a) yy-veðr(s)-(p)56 11 laufa veðr at lífi ‘weather of laufi (sword)...’ eskál vell 10i.7 laufa veðrs, þeirs leyfa ‘weather.gen of laufi (sword)...’ þorhv lv 2v.7 hǫgna veðr í gǫgnum ‘weather of hǫgni (hero)...’ arn magndr 13ii.6 hamðis veðr11 – á heiðar ‘weather of hamðir (hero)...’ godds lv 2iv.3 geira veðrs til góðrar ‘weather.gen of spears...’ gsvert hrafndr 5iv.7 (1b) yy-þing(s)-(p)56 12 13 fjǫlnis þings an hingat ‘assembly.gen of fjǫlnir (odin)...’ hást lv 3iv.6 gǫndlar þings, með gengi ‘assembly.gen of gǫndul (valkyrie)...’ hskv útdr 7ii.7 odda þing12 í eyddri ‘assembly of points...’ sigv víkv 2i.3 odda þings, ok eyddi ‘assembly.gen of spears...’ anon pl 48vii.3 darra þing13 við drengi ‘assembly of darts...’ hsn lv 2ii.7 th at 2 of 5 examples with þing have a proper-name determinant could, of course, be an accident of the small sample. as was pointed out in part ii, the base-word veðr is not uncommonly found with a proper-name determinant in two-element kennings: if the examples of basic type 1(p)yyxx are not included, veðr still appears with a proper-name determinant in 11 of the 28 remaining examples of basic kennings surveyed by meissner (mndf ii: 55). th e prominence of proper names could therefore here, too, potentially be an accident of the data, although the appearance of 4 proper names in 5 examples is directly comparable to proper names occurring with 8 of 10 examples with veðr in basic type 1(p)yyxx battlekennings (mndf ii: 54–55). th ese are the only two examples of laufi as 11 finnur jónsson interprets the base-word væðr (from váð = ‘a piece of cloth’) making this an armour-kenning, as also done with the kenning hǫgna veðr (1a.iii), but the manuscripts generally present veðr. 12 one manuscript reads hríð. 13 th is kenning is commonly represented as a compound in editions of the verse, although it does not appear consistently as a compound in manuscript variants; as in the pilot study, kennings in generative constructions are editorially represented as two words here. 17mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii a determinant for veðr in meissner’s survey (1921: 181). th is makes it less likely that the two examples here are coincidental and also draws attention to the phonetic similarity of the words in positions 5–6, which carry both alliteration and skothending rhyme (i.e. not including the vowel) with the determinant. it also warrants pointing out that laufi belongs to the same grammatical category as other proper names, but aligns semantically with the category ‘implements of battle’ rather than with ‘mythic agents of battle’. if only mythic agents of battle are counted, the relative frequency of occurrences with veðr here is approximately that observed in meissner’s data. however, proper-name determinants do not appear common for þing and the occurrence of names for agents of battle in 40% of the examples here remains striking, even if the dataset is too small to be conclusive. th is raises a methodological point for the data reviewed here. within examples with veðr, the sword-name laufi carries both alliteration and rhyme (1a.i–ii), increasing the probability that this choice of determinant is primarily or exclusively attributable to meeting phonic demands. similarly, hǫgni (1a.iii) carries alliteration and aðalhending-rhyme (i.e. with the participation of the vowel), and hǫgni appears to be the only attested determinant in any battle-kenning capable of rhyme in -ǫgn(cf. björnsson –2001). it thus also seems probable that the choice of hǫgni is related to meeting phonic demands. when 4 of these 10 examples exhibit recurrence of a determinant, it warrants observing that hǫgna veðr could be a type of variation in h-alliteration associated with hamðis veðr (1a.iv). th is possibility may fi nd some support in the observation that these are the only two names of heroes or kings found in this basic type (although cf. laufi ). it therefore seems probable that lexical choice or variation is directly related to meeting phonic demands, which would have motivated and conditioned such variation. although the prominence of proper names occurring with veðr might in one respect appear the most prominent in the data, it could also be attributable, at least in part, to realising the metricstructural type through verbal systems of association identifi able with quite specifi c personal names rather than with a broad semantic category of heiti. base-words in four examples th e base-words leikr = ‘play, sport, game’ and seiðr = ‘magic, sorcery’ are each found in four examples. leikr was found in the pilot study to be a midfrequency base-word in battle-kennings in dróttkvætt but still among the nine most frequent base-words, which were each able to meet a diff erent pattern of 18 frog alliteration (frog 2015a). alliteration (except for its avoidance) is not however a determinant on base-words in type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings. it is therefore not particularly surprising to fi nd leikr in a number of examples here even when more frequent base-words associated with common patterns of alliteration (e.g. hríð) are not. more striking is the otherwise infrequent base-word seiðr, of which meissner (1921: 197) lists only fi ve examples as a battle-kenning base-word (which does not include (2b.ii) below) or two in addition to the examples of type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings. of the four examples here, two are lausavísur attributed to the same poet preserved in the same prose text. th e prominence of the genitive infl ection of seiðr is striking in the metricstructural type, three exhibit the same rhyme-word (2b.i–ii, iv), and two have the same determinant (2b.ii–iii). (2a) yy-leik-(p)56 14 yggjar leik hvé auka ‘play of yggr (odin)...’ anon pl 34vii.3 hildar leik und skildi ‘play of hildr (valkyrie)...’ þjóða sex 2ii.6 hildar leik, þars hvassir ‘play of hildr (valkyrie)...’ anon krm 14viii.7 eggja leik14 við seggi ‘play of blades...’ þormól ár 5iv.2 (2b) yy-seiðs-(p)56 15 16 fjǫlnis seiðs á heiði ‘magic.gen of fjǫlnir (odin)...’ eviðs lv 6v.6 lǫgðis seiðs15 á heiði ‘magic.gen of the stabber (sword)...’ eviðs lv 5v.2 lǫgðis seið(s)16 af láði ‘magic(.gen) of the stabber (sword)...’ þhorn gldr 8i.7 vigra seiðs of heiðar ‘magic.gen of spears2...’ gkǫrt lv 1 iv.6 th e set of examples is small, yet it is striking that 3 of 4 leikr examples have names of agents of battle as determinants. th e recurrence of the valkyrie-name hildr is consistent with meissner’s (1921: 199) data: he shows 7 examples of hildr among the 13 simple kennings using leikr with a proper-name determinant, or 7 of 11 with a proper name of a mythic agent of battle. according to his data, there is only one example of combination with a diff erent valkyriename and this is his only example of an odin-name as a determinant. th e only other name for a mythic (or mytho-heroic) agent that meissner lists is freyr (gen. freys) in two examples, which would not be metrically acceptable 14 th e manuscript variant fund = ‘meeting’ would not aff ect this line metrically or semantically. 15 th e variant skeiðs appears in manuscripts: skeið means ‘a race; a course; a period of time’. 16 th e infl ection of seiðr in this line varies in the manuscripts (one variant also reads eiðs = ‘oath.gen’); interpretations of the syntax of the helming do not seem to have been consistent. 19mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii in this formula. th e valkyrie-name hildr may be indexed as a determinant for leikr within the register generally. it should therefore not be assumed that the lexical parallel in examples (2a.ii–iii) is indicative of a direct relation between lines or of the crystallisation of the verbal formula within this basic type (cf. mndf i: 124–125). th e use of fjǫlnir with seiðr is the only example of seiðr as a battle-kenning base-word listed by meissner with a proper-name determinant. within these eight examples, half have proper-name determinants. base-words in three examples th e base-words þeyr = ‘thaw; thawing wind, breeze’, él = ‘squall’ and gnýr = ‘roar’ are each found in three examples. él was the highest-frequency base-word observed in the pilot study (33 of 340 examples, including all metric-structural types); gnýr was also a high-frequency base-word and þeyr was mid-frequency. all examples with þeyr or gnýr are infl ected in the genitive singular. th is highlights that the use of these (and other) terms in the formula is morphologically conditioned: the base-word should be a heavy monosyllable, which limits the use of these terms to the infl ectional forms -r and genitive -s, although only the genitive infl ection is met in the data. (3a) yy-þeys-456 17 gǫndlar þeys, ok grími ‘breeze.gen of gǫndul (valkyrie)...’ þkolb gunndr 1v.3 gǫndlar17 þeys ok eyjar ‘breeze.gen of gǫndul (valkyrie)...’ hst rst 11i.4 hlífar þeys sem eyjar ‘breeze.gen of the shield...’ anon óldr 12i.2 (3b) yy-él(s)-(p)56 hristar éls, ór kistu ‘squall.gen of hristr (valkyrie)...’ egils guðkv 34iv.6 hjǫrva éls á halsi ‘squall.gen of swords2...’ kolb lv 1 iv.3 nadda él en, nýla ‘squall of barbs...’ sigv frag 1iii.3 (3c) yy-gnýs-(p)56 sverða gnýs at frýja ‘roar.gen of swords1...’ sigv nesv 4 i.,2 hjǫrva gnýs ok skýjum ‘roar.gen of swords2...’ hst frag 1 i.6 odda gnýs við œsi ‘roar.gen of points...’ anon (sne) 5iii.1 17 th e manuscript reading “gvnnlar” could also be emended to the valkyrie-name gunnar without compromising the metricality of the line, although gǫndlar is statistically more probable. 20 frog th e name gǫndul appears twice as a determinant with þeyr (3a.i–ii) and the third example (3a.iii) shares a rhyme-word with one of these (3a.ii). meissner (1921: 182) lists only one of these (3a.i) and only a total of two examples of þeyr with the name of a mythic agent of battle as a determinant. th e lines are structurally similar and both appear in verses with a number of contextually relevant pronouns, increasing the likelihood that they are somehow related. th e two examples in which þeyr carries rhyme with the toponym eyjar are in half-stanzas that are thematically related as well as being proximately presented in the same manuscript and potentially have quite a direct relationship of poets adapting socially circulating verses.18 th e three examples with þeyr should thus be considered to refl ect a closer relationship between full-line models, as has been found also for uses of þeyr in other metric-structural types.19 th e remaining examples present only one proper name: the valkyrie-name hrist (16b.i), which accomplishes aðalhending-rhyme in addition to alliteration. th ere appear to be only two attested battle-kenning determinants that can accomplish rhyme in -istand both are valkyrie-names: hrist and mist (cf. björnsson –2001). it is probable that phonic demands have conditioned this lexical choice. although proper-name determinants are not distributed evenly across these examples, they account for 3 of 9 or one third of them. base-words in fewer than three examples examples with base-words that occur only twice or in a single example are particularly diffi cult to assess. th e base-words dómr = ‘doom, judgement’,20 mót = ‘meeting’, hregg = ‘rainy wind, tempest’ and regn = ‘rain’ are each found twice. with the exception of dómr, these were all found to be mid-frequency base18 the possibility that the individual transcribing both verses has been responsible for remembering them in relationship to one another must also be considered, although the diff erence between ok and sem in the light particle (cf. jónsson 1967 bi: 570) would seem to be counterevidence to any suggestion that the person writing out the verses was consciously repeating material across poems. 19 th e pilot study revealed three examples of basic type yx3456 battle-kennings in which þeyr carried rhyme with a two-element toponym of which -eyjar was the second element (frog 2015a). 20 it is interesting also to note that the line heiðins dóms at háða (tindr hákdr 7i.7) in the same poem as (4a.i) aligns with this structure although heiðinn = ‘heathen’ appears rather than a kenning determinant. also interesting is the line iðja dóms á miðjum (þormól ár 2iv.6) = ‘judgement.gen of iði (giant)...’ in which the same basic type with dómr forms a gold-kenning. 21mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii words in the pilot study. only the two examples with the base-word hregg = ‘rainy wind, tempest’ present a potential aðalhending-rhyme collocation, and this collocation is not specifi c to the basic type,21 so this pair could simply refl ect independent uses of a common compositional resource. th e remaining 5 base-words found in one example each were low-frequency in the pilot study (i.e. found in ca. 1% or less of examples). th e kenning morð hǫlða = ‘murder of men’ is generally unusual. what is intriguing to note here is that all but one of these 13 examples exhibit a genitive inflectional -s on an already heavy syllable. (4a) yyxx(p)56 with base-words attested twice 22 23 24 25 svǫlnis22 dóms, í rómu ‘judgement.gen of svǫlnir (odin)...’ hst rst 5i.8 gǫndlar dóms23 at glaumi ‘judgement.gen of gǫndul (valkyrie)...’ tindr hákdr 5i.3 hlakkar móts – til blóta ‘meeting.gen of hlǫkk (valkyrie)...’ eskál vell 15i.2 ǫrva móts …24 ‘meeting.gen of arrows...’ anon pl 58vii.8 geira hregg við seggi25 ‘rainstorm of spears1...’ þhorn gldr 5 i.2 vápna hreggs – fyr seggjum ‘rainstorm.gen of weapons...’ þorm þorgdr 3iv.2 odda regns við þegna ‘rain.gen of points...’ anon gyð 5vii.4 geira regns í gǫgnum ‘rain.gen of spears1...’ stúfr stúfdr 8 ii.3 21 cf. anon leið 2vii.4, godds lv 7iv.2; grhj lv 1iv.6. 22 one manuscript reads snælinns = ‘snow-serpent’ = ‘sword’. 23 th is reading follows the manuscript text, which has been emended to gǫndlar dóm* in the spsma edition. 24 th e rest of the line cannot be read, but the metric-structural type of the kenning seems unambiguous. 25 one manuscript has a variant line geirs hreggviðar seggi which preserves the basic kenning as geirs hregg- = ‘tempest of the spear’, reinterpreting the preposition við = ‘with’ as an infl ected form of viðr = ‘wood, tree’ to form a warrior-kenning ‘spear’s tempest-tree’ = ‘battle-tree’ = ‘warrior’. th is variation is metrically well-formed but changes the metrical positions of words by moving the infl ectional syllable of geir-a to við-ur. 22 frog (4b) yyxx(p)56 with base-words attested once 26 27 28 þundar gráps26 með vǫpnum ‘sleetstorm.gen of þundr (odin)...’ bjhít lv 18v.6 hǫlða morðs27 ok halda ‘murder.gen of men...’ eskál vell 20i.3 odda28 frosts fyr austan ‘frost.gen of points...’ sigv nesv 3i.3 þremja storms, at ormi ‘storm.gen of swords3...’ hst rst 21 i.4 malma galdrs, at halda ‘incantation.gen of metals...’ gunnli lv 3v.2 among base-words found fewer than three times, 4 of the 13 examples or nearly one third exhibit the use of proper names. in two cases, this is with dómr, yet even if only one of these is counted, 3 of 12 cases would still be 25%, and quite a high proportion. although the group of examples remains small, this higher frequency is generally consistent with proper name use in basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings. metrical entanglement of the lexicon before concentrating attention on the use of proper names in type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings, it warrants observing that this basic type seems to exhibit general indications of the metrical entanglement of the lexicon. although no single base-word predominates, the dataset shows a striking proportion of base-words in multiple examples: two base-words are found in fi ve examples each; two in four examples each; three in three examples each; four in two examples each, and only fi ve singly. th is could be a natural statistical outcome with some high-frequency battle-kenning base-words, but cannot easily be dismissed, for example, in the case of seiðr. in contrast, the second most frequent base-word according to the pilot study, hríð = ‘storm’ (cf. also hagl = ‘hail’ etc.), is metrically viable but not found at all in this data (with the exception of one manuscript variant of 1b.iii). th e patterns in base-word use are thus suggestive 26 th e manuscript reads garps = ‘warrior’ but the required rhyme in the line and the semantic context suggest this is a scribal error. 27 th is example is uncertain. one manuscript reads “morz” while others read njǫrðr, which can be read as a kenning for ruler. finnur jónsson places the kenning hǫlda morðs in his edition of the stanza whereas it is presented as a note in the spsma edition. 28 one manuscript reads eggja = ‘of edges’ here, which would be consistent with the battle kenning and the line would remain metrically well-formed. one manuscript reads orða = ‘of words’, which would be metrically well-formed but not produce a battle kenning. 23mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii of general conventions of preferred word choice. some evidence of metrical entanglement of the lexicon may also be observed for determinants: oddr = ‘point’ is found in fi ve examples; the valkyrie-name gǫndul is found in four examples; geirr = ‘spear’ in three examples;29 fi ve base-words are found twice (fjǫlnir, hildr, hjǫrr, laufi , lǫgðir) and eighteen singly. identifying certain heiti as potentially lexically preferred for realising type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings is to suggest that they are metrically entangled with the semantic formula, as was the case with vápn = ‘weapon’ as a determinant in 12 of 80 examples of basic type 1(p)yyxx (mndf ii: 48–49, 64–65). comparison with vápn seems especially relevant to consider in the case of the determinant oddr here, found in fi ve examples with four diff erent base-words (1b.iii–iv, 3c.iii, 4a.vii, 4b.iii). of 40 examples, 24 exhibit a base-word and/or determinant found four times or more in the data (60%) and 31 exhibit a base-word and/or determinant found three times or more (over 75%). although no single base-word or determinant is found in more than 5 examples, there are fi ve pairs of lexically identical kennings (1a.i–ii, 1b.iii–iv, 2a.ii–iii, 2b.iii–iv, 3a.i–ii), which accounts for 1 in 4 examples. when considering the metrical entanglement of the lexicon, morphology is a relevant factor. th e morphology of determinants is necessarily a genitive infl ection in the formation of kennings in this basic type. metrically entangled determinants are therefore necessarily only those which form a two-syllable word in a genitive infl ection and it is easily taken for granted that geirr = ‘spear’, for example, appears only in the genitive plural geira and never in the genitive singular geirs. more striking is the fact that, in 29 of the 40 examples, the base-word is in the genitive infl ection (although the infl ection of example 2b.iii with seiðr exhibits morphological manuscript variation). th e preponderance of use in the genitive may be in large part associated with a broad pattern of use of this formula as a determinant in complex warrior-kennings of 3–4 elements, leading to metrical entanglement of the kenning formula at the level of the syntax of the helming. th at does not, however, account for all of the genitive uses. th e prominence of genitive infl ections is more striking owing to the generally unusual appearance of base-words having a heavy monosyllabic stem that is further infl ected with a genitive -s. as pointed out above, when not in compounds, a heavy monosyllable in a genitive -s infl ection is used especially in position 3. in the dataset, more than half of the examples 29 geirr was the most frequent basic determinant in the pilot study, found in ca. 7% of the examples (frog 2015a); its appearance here in 3 of 40 examples (7.5%) appears statistically consistent with its general presence in the corpus and most likely is not an outcome of metrical entanglement with the formula. 24 frog (23 of 40) have base-words of this special (superheavy) weight. th e limited range of positions in which such a syllable was desirable in the rhythm of a line may have converged with this kenning formula leading to a tendency or preference to complete the kenning in this way and to infl ect the base-word in the genitive case more generally. th e genitive infl ection may also be connected to the metrical entanglement of specifi c vocabulary. it was also noted that the use of the base-words gnýr and þeyr with light monosyllabic stems was morphologically conditioned to produce a heavy monosyllable. although both þeyr (3a) and gnýr (3c) would be metrically viable in the nominative, only the genitive infl ection is found in the data. th e morphology of these base-words may potentially have been metrically entangled with their use in this formula, noting that these are the only basewords in the dataset with a light-syllable stem. it also becomes striking that leikr (2a) is the only base-word not found in the genitive infl ection, accounting for 4 of the 11 cases in which the base-word is not in the genitive case. other basewords are found in the genitive roughly half the time or more: veðr (1a) is found in the genitive in 2 of 5 examples; þing (1b) in 3 of 5 examples; él (3b) in 2 of 3 examples; hregg (4a.v-vi) in 1 of 2 examples; seiðr (2b) in all but a manuscript variant of one example (2b.iii); all other base-words are only found in the genitive infl ection. th e base-word seiðr, attested with equal frequency to leikr, also is potentially linked to use in the genitive infl ection. among the 40 examples, all base-words are masculine or neuter monosyllabic strong nouns. feminine monosyllabic strong nouns such as the high-frequency hríð = ‘storm’ and midfrequency skúr = ‘shower’ are completely absent.30 feminine strong nouns receive a genitive singular infl ection -ar (hríðar, skúrar). th eir absence is a potential indicator that the metrical entanglement of the lexicon for realising the formula was limited to nouns that remained a monosyllable in the genitive infl ection – i.e. the formula was not conventionally completed with base-words that could not also be used in the genitive. patterns in the morphology of base-words remain obscure without further investigation. nonetheless, there is a possibility that the metrical entanglement of an individual base-word potentially extended to the case in which it was used and that the declension of the noun was a determinant on whether it became entangled with the formula. th e diffi culty that arises is that the dataset remains quite limited to fully assess the patterns of use of individual base-words.31 30 i am thankful to an anonymous peer-reviewer for this observation. 31 it was observed above that the kennings hǫgna veðr (1a.iii) and hamðis veðr (1a.iv) could potentially be related through the tradition in some way. neither of these examples is in the 25mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii when considering the metrical entanglement of language, it may warrant explicitly observing that the internalisation of a formula of basic type yyx(p)56 would occur through participation in language practice. th e internalisation of the preferred heiti for completing the formula and how these were used would develop from the generalisation of experience concerning which heiti were used eff ectively without violation of the meter. in the case of determinants, that means heiti with a heavy stressed syllable followed by one additional syllable when in the genitive infl ection. in the case of base-words, that meant heiti that formed a heavy monosyllable in the syntax of the verse. th e data suggests that the capacity to form a heavy monosyllable in the genitive infl ection was a determinant on lexical preference (as opposed to hríð, gen. hríðar) and especially those forming a monosyllable of special (superheavy) weight. viewed in this light, it should be expected that an individual fl uent in the register would develop indexical associations between the formula and metrically viable vocabulary without needing to resort to refl ective consideration of which among the great diversity of heiti would work in certain positions. it appears that use of the battle-kenning formula of basic type yyx(p)56 had socially developed indexical associations with vocabulary with which the kenning would be formed. in other words, the choice of using the formula linked to vocabulary appropriate for completing it. th is type of association would have functioned cognitively in the mind of individual poets: rather than being a function of ‘remembering’, it would function at the level of how the individual processed language in use. th e association of the formula with specifi c vocabulary must have been internalised through patterns of language use in the poetry. th ose patterns of language use are also refl ected as preferred lexical choices in the corpus that can be observed in analysis. alongside conventional elements forming the kennings, there are 9 examples of recurrent rhyme-pairs in the data (in even lines: 2b.i–ii and 2b.iv, 3a.ii–iii, 4a.v–vi; in odd lines: 1b.iii–iv and cf. also the rhymes in 1a.i–ii). for genitive infl ection, accounting for 2 of the 7 cases outside of the examples with leikr. considering the potential for the infl ection to become entangled with language use, the generally unusual lack of the genitive infl ection here could potentially be an additional indicator that these two examples are somehow connected. if this is the case and the lack of the genitive infl ection in the 4 examples with leikr is indeed a consequence of the metrical entanglement of the morphology of leikr in the formula, then these together account for 6 of 11 cases where the base-word is not in the genitive, leaving only 5 in the remaining 34 examples. on the one hand, this would signifi cantly strengthen the case for the metrical entanglement of the base-word’s morphology with the formula, but on the other hand the use of the genitive in roughly 7 of 8 examples in the rest of the dataset would leave the prominence of the genitive infl ection with gnýr, þeyr and seiðr as probably accidents of the limited size of the corpus. 26 frog the most part, these rhyme-pairs exhibit complementary distribution to lexically recurrent kennings: 17 of the 40 examples or slightly less than half exhibit one or both of these. th ese rhyme-pairs could potentially be conventional collocations. th ey could also be linked more specifi cally to the formula. in the latter event, the rhyme collocations would also be linked in the minds of poets with preferred lexical choices for completing the formula in a fl exible verbal system called a ‘multiform’ for the production of metrically well-formed lines (mndf ii: 53, 66). some cases could also potentially refl ect poets directly adapting a line known from another poem into a new composition as in the example of þeyr–eyjar above (see frog 2014b: 299–301). however, it must be remembered that only a fraction of the verse circulating orally is preserved. fluency in the poetic idiom would involve the internalisation of patterns in language use and presumably obviate the need to refl ect on existing lines as specifi c models, making direct textual adaptation more of an exception than a rule. th e rhyme-word that recurs in positions 5–6 may carry rhyme with either the base-word or the determinant. where rhyme is with the base-word, the rhyme-pair appears independent of a recurrent determinant; where rhyme is with the determinant, it is only found with a single base-word and linked to a lexically recurrent kenning. th is apparent pattern could in part be owing to limitations of the data, but it is observed in rhyme-pairs found in roughly 1 in 4 examples. th e evidence makes it probable that base-words have greater centrality in the formation of verbal systems of collocations for realising the line. in other words, base-words in basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings seem to be centers around which multiforms have developed. nevertheless, the most frequent determinants oddr, gǫndul and geirr are not bound to basewords, suggesting that these are preferred choices for completing the formula more generally. th e examples of yyx(p)56 identifi ed here also present cases of lexical parallels in the rhyme-position independent of recurrent rhyme collocations in the data. some of these are vocabulary otherwise found in rhyme-pairs (cf. 1a.iv and 2b.i–ii, iv; 2a.iv and 4a.v–vi). others lack such evidence of collocations in this basic type (cf. 4b.ii and 4b.v; a full prepositional phrase in 1a.iii and 4a.viii). th is is a potential indicator that the semantic formula was not only linked to lexical material for completing the base-word and determinant but also linked to additional lexical material for completing the line. th e additional material appears in some instances linked to a particular multiform. however, the present data suggests that this additional material could also be drawn on to some degree independently. it may be hypothesised that the indexical association of such material with the formula developed as part of the process of internalising the oral-poetic register. th e data is quite limited 27mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii and these considerations remain dependent on the representativeness of that data. nonetheless, it is somewhat remarkable that, for example, evidence of a verbal system including both determinant and rhyme-collocation linked to þeyr seems to be observable in only three examples of that base-word (3a) within a corpus of only 40 items. personal name determinants and the formula th e metrical entanglement of the lexicon with basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings appears at least to some degree to extend to personal names of mythic beings. th e valkyrie-name hildr is used twice with leikr (2a.ii–iii) and the mytho-heroic sword-name laufi is used twice with veðr (1a.i–ii; n.b. morphological variation in the base-word’s infl ection). within such a limited corpus, it remains uncertain whether these kennings are lexically identical because of a direct adaptation of socially circulating lines, or because the verbal expressions have developed into crystallised formulae as was observed with gnýr gunnar = ‘roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ in basic type 12(p)xyy (mndf i: 124–125, 131), or simply because they are the outcomes of independent generative production. th e odin-name fjǫlnir is found with two diff erent base-words in its two uses (1b.i, 2b.i), but the same phenomenon has also been found in the previous studies for the valkyrie-names hildr (mndf ii: 54–56), gunnr (just noted) and also gǫndul (mndf ii (pp. 55, 57–58), as well as for the hero-name heðinn (mndf ii: 52, 57). th ese latter four names are all fairly common in the production of battle-kennings (cf. björnsson –2001), which is why hildr is diffi cult to assess. in contrast, fjǫlnir seems to be rare in battle-kennings: it is found in the two simple battle-kennings here (3b.i, 4b.i) and as a determinant in kennings for shield (hskv útdr 1ii.2) or sword (tindr hákdr 1i.3) that then form complex battle kennings (cf. björnsson –2001). th is makes it less probable that the two examples here are merely coincidental. in addition, four examples present the valkyrie-name gǫndul used with three diff erent basewords (1b.ii, 3a.i–ii, 4a.ii). although gǫndul is a more common valkyrie-name according to the pilot study (frog 2015a), the four examples here are twice the number of appearances of gǫndul in other metric-structural types reviewed in parts i and ii of this series.32 in this series of case studies, there are only two other cases in which a personal name is found more than twice in the data for 32 see mndf i (pp. 126, 130–131), which also discusses the relative uses of this name and the valkyrie-name gunnr; see also mndf ii (pp. 55, 57–58). 28 frog a type: the fi ve examples of the crystallised formula gnýr gunnar in basic type 12(p)xyy along with its parallel use with dynr = ‘din’ (on which, see mndf i: 124–125, 131) and the three examples of the common valkyrie-name hildr among the 80 examples of type 1(p)yyxx (mndf ii: 54–56). although gǫndul seems to be connected to a compositional system in its two uses with þeyr, its presence still seems pronounced as appearing in 1 of 10 examples. together, the recurrent names gǫndul, hildr, laufi and fjǫlnir in yyx(p)56 account for 10 examples or 25% of the data. th is prominence makes it more diffi cult to dismiss as a simple anomaly. examples with gǫndul and fjǫlnir could, like those with oddr, be symptomatic of patterns of preferential word-choice at a more general level of the metric-structural type, yet the use of proper-name determinants is not concentrated in these few terms. th e case study on basic type 1(p)yyxx (mndf ii) showed that proper names could be indexed as a preferred category of determinant for certain base-words within a metric-structural type. a look across the data reviewed here could off er an initial impression that this is also the case for veðr in yyx(p)56 battle-kennings (1a), where proper names appear as determinants in four of fi ve cases. here, however, the two uses of laufi and the corresponding uses of hǫgni and hamðir could refl ect much more specifi c associations. such specifi c associations may also be behind uses of gǫndul with þeyr (3a.i–ii). uses of hildr with leikr are more ambiguous (2a.ii–iii) because these could be an outcome of a more general association of hildr as a determinant with leikr as a base-word, observing that leikr does not carry either alliteration or rhyme in these examples and thus there is no metrical motivation for its use in these lines (but cf. its use in skothending rhyme in 2a.i). in any case, use of proper names does not appear exclusively concentrated with certain base-words. th ese three base-words are connected with only 6 of the 10 uses of gǫndul, hildr, laufi and fjǫlnir, or slightly more than half. th e recurrence of base-words and determinants is thus intersecting and complementary rather than exhibiting a direct correlation. in addition to examples with these four names, 8 additional examples present proper names as determinants that are used only once. th us 17 of the 40 examples (42.5%) exhibit personal names as determinants, 15 of which (37.5%) are names for agents of battle. if examples with veðr, leikr and þeyr are removed from the data, this still leaves 8 of 28 examples with names of mythic agents of battle as determinants, or close to 30%.33 th is is three times what might be expected as average on the basis of the pilot study. whereas basic type 1(p) 33 if examples with dómr are also removed, the numbers only drop to 6 out of 26 or 23%. 29mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii yyxx showed that mythic personal names could become preferred for determinants when using certain base-words in the semantic formula, variation in evidence of basic type yyx(p)56 suggests that such mythic names could become more generally preferred as determinants for realising the metrically entangled formula. th e category of determinant that is metrically entangled here may not be that of proper names as such. among the 17 personal names, names for odin and valkyries predominate: 5 odin-names, 8 valkyrie-names, 2 uses of the heroic sword-name laufi , and 2 hero-names. th us slightly more than 75% are names for mythological beings. th is proportion rises to more than 85% if the sword-heiti laufi is excluded and only names for agents of battle are considered. th e two hero-names (1a.iii–vi) may be linked as rhyme-based variations for accomplishing h-alliteration collocated narrowly with veðr (along with laufi , which carries alliteration and rhyme in both cases). although there are so few examples that it is diffi cult to assess the signifi cance of these uses with veðr, the heroic names do not appear distributed through the data in the same way as names for odin and for valkyries.34 if the data available on this formula is generally representative and it is also correct to view the two heroic personal names as narrowly collocated with a single base-word, then this would suggest that the category of determinants linked to the formula of type yyx(p)56 is ‘mythological agents of battle’ or odin-names and valkyrie-names. th e metrical entanglement of this category of determinant needs to be considered in relation to the evidence of the metrical entanglement of the lexicon and also the concentration of proper-name determinants in conjunction with certain base-words. th e most striking aspect of the metrical entanglement of the lexicon is that it is so apparent in what is, practically speaking, a relatively small set of 40 examples. if a greater number of examples were available – as with the 80 examples of basic type 1(p)yyxx surveyed in mndf ii – then it is probable that better images of indexing between certain base-words and determinants (or its lack) would become visible as would the verbal systems and variation of multiforms (or their absence). it nevertheless remains striking that preferred lexical items such as oddr and gǫndul seem to have distributed use. if the preserved corpus is considered more or less representative of the relative proportions of metric-structural kenning types to which individuals 34 comparison can be made with personal names in examples of basic type 1(p)yyxx: there are an equal number of examples with odin-names and mytho-heroic names (7 each; cf. also 10 valkyrie-names) and the heroic names are distributed through the data rather than concentrated. 30 frog were exposed when internalising the register,35 then basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings probably had only about half the token frequency of 1(p)yyxx. in other words, people only used it about half as much. th is means that the use of yyx(p)56 battle-kennings was internalised through a much narrower range of models. regarded in this light, the prominence of lexically identical kennings and rhyme collocations recurrent in the data can be considered outcomes of a narrower range of models with which this basic type was realised.36 of course, this narrower range of models from which use of the formula is internalised can only be partly attributed to the lower token frequency. th e range would also in some sense have been socially built into the conventional ranges of variation of how the formula was used – much as basic type 12(p)xyy battlekennings were seen to center quite tightly around only two of a base-words attested for basic type 12(p)xyy battle-kennings in mndf i. nevertheless, the tightness of the verbal elements realising type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings seems linked to its narrower use that – for whatever reason – prominently maintained a constrained set of preferred lexical material as metrically entangled with the basic type’s formula. whereas basic type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings exhibited preferred heiti for realising the formula and the preference for names of mythic agents of battle as determinants for particular base-words, basic type yyx(p)56 battle kennings suggest that preferred heiti and the preferred semantic category of names for mythological beings were complementary and without such structured relations. postscript th is concludes the third case study in this series. each of these case studies has concentrated on a specifi c metric-structural type in order to demonstrate 35 any such estimate is necessarily speculative, especially noting that a) only certain parts of the oral-poetic culture are represented in the data; b) we cannot at all assess the token frequency with which individual texts were encountered/used (i.e. we count each text once whereas some texts would be experienced hundreds of times and others only exceptionally); and c) there is presently no framework for considering registral variation by social practice and poetic genre (i.e. whether certain models had quite narrow contexts of usage). 36 in the pilot study, it was found that low-frequency basic types could also exhibit lexical correspondences even where there were less than fi ve examples. th is was interpreted as evidence that either models were drawn directly from socially circulating verses or that in formulae of quite limited usage the lexicon was more inclined to become metrically entangled (frog 2015a). such cases were, it should be noted, far less frequent than basic type yyx(p)56 battle-kennings. 31mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii the formulaicity of kennings of the respective type and also to explore how the lexicon has become metrically entangled with use of the particular formula. th e fourth part in the series will shift focus from individual metric-structural types to the generalisations about compositional practice in the skaldic register that can be drawn by looking across them. on the one hand, the fi nal part in this series will consider the implications for formulaic language use and multiforms as resources in composition. on the other hand, that discussion will consider implications for understanding the historical construction of the registral lexicon, its categories of heiti, and especially the personal names of mythological beings in that lexicon. 37 references agha, asif 2007. language and social relations. cambridge: cambridge university press. árnason, kristján 1991. th e rhythms of dróttkvætt and other old icelandic metres. reykjavík: university of iceland, institute of linguistics. björnsson, eysteinn –2001. “lexicon of kennings and similar poetic circumlocutions: th e domain of battle”. url: https://notendur.hi.is//~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/ kennings.html clunies ross, margaret (ed.) 2007. poetry on christian subjects (2 vols.). (skald ic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 7). turnhout: brepols. clunies ross, margaret; gade, kari ellen; marold, edith; nordal, guðrún; whaley, diana; wills, tarrin 2012. general introduction. in: whaley, diana (ed.), poetry from the kings’ sagas i: from mythical times to c. 1035 (2 vols.). turnhout: brepols, xiii–xciii. egilsson, sveinbjörn; jónsson, finnur 1931. lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog. 2nd edn. københavn: s. i. møllers. foley, john miles 1995. th e singer of tales in performance. bloomington: indiana university press. 37 research presented here has been accomplished within the framework of the academy of finland project “oral poetry, mythic knowledge and vernacular imagination” of folklore studies, university of helsinki. 32 frog foley, john miles; ramey, peter 2011. oral th eory and medieval studies. in: reichl, karl (ed.), medieval oral literature. berlin: de gruyter, 71–102. frog 2009. speech-acts in skaldic verse: genre, formula and improvisation. in: dewey, tonya kim; frog (eds.), versatility in versifi cation: multidisciplinary approaches to metrics. (berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics 74). new york: peter lang, 223–246. frog 2014a. degrees of well-formedness: th e formula principle in the analysis of oral-poetic meters. in: rmn newsletter 8, 68–70. frog 2014b. oral poetry as language practice: a perspective on old norse dróttkvætt composition. in: huttu-hilttunen, pekka et al. (eds.), song and emergent poetics – laulu ja runo – pesnja i vidoizmenjajushhajasja poetika. kuhmo: juminkeko, 279–307. frog 2014c. mythological names in dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? in: studia metrica et poetica 1(1), 100–139. frog 2014d. mythological names in dróttkvætt formulae ii: base-word–determinant indexing. in: studia metrica et poetica 1(2), 39–70. frog 2015a (forthcoming). metrical entanglement and dróttkvætt composition – a pilot study on battle-kennings. in: árnason, kristján; aðalsteinsson, ragnar ingi; eyþórsson, þórhallur; carey, stephen mark (eds.), approaches to germanic metre [working title]. reykjavík: university of iceland press. frog 2015b (forthcoming). registers of oral poetry. in: agha, asif; frog, registers of communication. (studia fennica linguistica). helsinki: finnish literature society. gade, kari ellen 1995. th e structure of old norse dróttkvætt poetry. ithaca: cornell university press. gade, kari ellen (ed.) 2009. poetry from the kings’ sagas ii: from c.1035 to c.1300 (2 vols.). (skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 2). turnhout: brepols. halliday, michael a. k. 1978. language as social semiotic: th e social interpretation of language and meaning. london: edward arnold. jónsson, finnur (ed.) 1967. den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning a–b. københavn: rosenkilde & bagger. kuhn, hans 1983. das dróttkvætt. heidelberg: carl winter. lord, albert bates 1960. th e singer of tales (harvard studies in comparative literature 24). cambridge: harvard university press. 33mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae iii marold, edith 1983. kenningkunst: ein beitrag zu einer poetik der skaldendichtung (quellen und forschungen zur sprachund kulturgeschichte der germanischen völker, neue folge 80). berlin: de gruyter. meissner, rudolf 1921. die kenningar der skalden: ein beitrag zur skaldischen poetik. bonn: schroeder. mndf i = frog 2014c. mndf ii = frog 2014d. parry, milman 1928. l’é pithè te traditionnelle dans homè re. paris: société d’éditions les belles lettres. skaldic database. url: http://abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php. skj = jónsson 1967. spsma – i = whaley 2012; ii = gade 2009; vii = clunies ross 2007; electronic edition = skaldic database. sverdlov, ilya v. 2015 (forthcoming). “man is the measure of all th ings”: th e system of kennings as a tangible object. in: rmn newseltter 9: 18–34. whaley, diana (ed.) 2012. poetry from the kings’ sagas i: from mythical times to c. 1035 (2 vols.). (skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 1). turnhout: brepols. wills, tarrin 2009. th e development of skaldic language. in: ney, agneta; williams, henrik; ljungqvist, fredrik charpentier (eds.), á austrvega: saga and east scandinavia. preprint papers of the 14th international saga conference, uppsala, 9th–15th august 2009. gävle: university of gävle, 1032–1038. wray, alison 2009. identifying formulaic language: persistent challenges and new opportunities. in: corrigan, roberta et al. (eds.), formulaic language i–ii. (typological studies in language 82–83). amsterdam: john benjamins publishing, i, 27–51. comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries ivan sarkisov*1 abstract. the article analyzes and classifies the meters used in thai and burmese poetry. though both poetic traditions have a rich literary heritage and an advanced repertoire of poetic meters, their structural properties have not received significant scholarly attention. along with summarizing preexisting scholarly research on the subject, the article provides description of meters used in traditional thai poetry and their typological classification. the analysis of meters in burmese poetry is based on the 18th century long drama “maniket” by padethayaza as well as on a collection of short burmese classical poems. the article describes and classifies the five meters of thai classical poetry (klon, chan, khlong, kap and rai). burmese traditional poetry used one or two syllabic meters as well as other meters, which have not yet been classified in the scholarly literature. the article concludes with a comparative analysis of rhyme in thai and burmese poetry. keywords: thai poetry, burmese poetry, meters, syllabic poetry, syllabic-metric poetry, rhyme, verse, thai language, burmese language, southeast-asian languages 1.1. introduction the aim of the research is to describe and compare meters of the two main poetic traditions of the southeast asia – thai and burmese. for this purpose, it proposes classification of the main thai poetic meters and examines the meters of burmese poetry, which have been largely unstudied. the 700-year-old thai poetic tradition has a very rich literary heritage and a sophisticated repertoire of genres and poetic meters. though traditional thai study of poetry gives a comprehensive explanation of all these meters, they have been never described in terms of modern verse theories nor compared to other poetic traditions (ivanova 2018: 20). the number of scientific studies dedicated to the meters of thai poetry is also very small. to my knowledge this research is the first attempt to integrate findings of traditional thai philology with the modern theory of verse. * author's email: vanya.sarkisov@gmail.com. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.02 studia metrica et poetica 9.1, 2022, 20–38 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.02 21comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries burmese poetry is older than the thai one and is equally rich and highly developed (osipov 1980). at the same time, the burmese poetry is not only very poorly studied by modern philologists and linguists, but even documents related to the burmese traditional theory of verse have not yet been found. this paper covers both the findings of the prior studies related to meters of both poetic traditions and the results of my own research, including the comparative analysis of traditional verses of thai and burmese poetry. 2. brief overview of thai poetry and language 2.1. thai poetry thai poetry first appeared between the 14th and 15th centuries, approximately 150 years after establishment of the first thai state sukhothai and creation of thai script (kornev 1985: 617). the first examples of thai verses have not been preserved, but the poem “lilit yuan phai” (‘defeat of the yuan’) written by anonymous author in the middle of xv century already shows a high development of poetry in thailand (hudak 2001: 32). poetry remained the main type of literature keeping its paramount role until the end of the 19th century, when prose became more important (ivanova 2018: 19–20). poetry has always been a significant part of thai culture. poetry received the patronage of the kings, who were often poets themselves. poetry was also one of the markers showing belonging to the high society (ivanova 2018: 20). thai poetry, as well as thai literature in general, has always been strongly influenced by buddhism and indirectly influenced by indian tradition (osipov 1980: 30). the main topics of lyric poetry usually included glorification of monarchs, love and philosophical buddhist concepts. epic poems and plays often used plots of different jatakas (stories about earlier reincarnations of buddha shakyamuni from the sacred writing of buddhism – “tripitaka”) and indian story of rama, but some original plots were common as well (osipov 1980: 150–200). the most significant examples of thai poetry include the big epic poems “lilit yuan phai” (osipov 1980: 239) about the war between thai kingdom of ayutthaya and a northern thai kingdom lanna, “lilit phra lo” (osipov 2018: 240) about forbidden love between people from adversary countries and “thet mahachat”, which is a thai adaptation of “vessantara-jataka” from “tripitaka” (osipov 2018: 251). the authors of all these three poems are unknown. also, the poem about competition between two old friends for the love of one woman “kun chang and khun phaen” and the thai national version of the 22 ivan sarkisov story about rama “ramakien” are very popular in thailand. they originally existed in the folk versions and were adapted by different poets in xix century. the most famous example of thai literature is the legacy of the poet sunthorn phu (1786–1855), who is considered the most famous and important thai poet, especially known for his lengthy romantic-adventure poem “phra aphai mani” (osipov 2018: 243). over time many different genres and poetic meters have been created and developed by thai poets. the system and rules of these meters are very sophisticated, because the form has always been very important in thai poetry while complexity of structure and vocabulary have been considered as a display of a high poetic skill (ivanova 2018: 20). traditional thai philology, which has also advanced to a high level, gives a full description of the most part of thai poetic meters. on the other hand, this description is not connected to modern approaches of the theory of verse. given the above, i believe that the main challenge with regards to the thai poetic meters is to ‘translate’ the traditional classification and description of thai meters into the terms of modern science of versification. the existing scientific papers on thai meters, do not go beyond examining the meters within the traditional framework. insofar as i am aware there were no attempts to analyze these meters by applying the modern methodology of studying poetry nor to compare them to other poetic traditions. also, there are no studies, which provide full overview of all meters used in thai traditional poetry. usually, each research is limited to one or maximum to a few meters. in this study i provide a brief description of all five the most important thai classical poetic meters as well as their analysis and classification in terms of the typology of verse. 2.2. overview of thai grammar before discussing meters of thai traditional poetry, it is important to highlight some basic features of the grammar of the thai language. thai language belongs to the tai branch of kra-dai (tai-kradai) language family. its closest relatives are lao and shan languages. consonant phonemes of thai language are shown in table 1. 23comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries table 1. consonant sounds of thai language (according to slayden 2009: 2) bilabial labiodental alveolar postalveolar palatal velar glottal plosive p ph b t th d kkh nasal m n trill r fricative f s h affricates t͡ ɕ t͡ ɕh approximants w l ɟ j thai language has 9 vowel phonemes, each of them can be pronounced either short or long. there are also 17 diphthongs (some of them have short and long pairs and some do not) and 3 triphthongs. five tones are distinguished for all kind of vowel phones as well. the length and tone are not connected to each other (slayden 2009: 8–9). these features of thai phonetics allow to use in thai poetry at least three different types of meters syllabic, syllabic-metric and meters based on the sequence of tones, like in classical chinese and vietnamese poetic traditions. it is also important to say some words about thai script, because, as it will be shown later, some meters can be based on the sequences of graphical elements as well. thai language uses its own alphabet. in this script letters are written and read from left to right. a letter written in the main line marks the consonant sounds. the vowels are marked by symbols written under, above, to the left or to the right of the consonant. long and short vowels are marked by different symbols. the rules of tone marking are very complicated. the tone of the syllable depends on three different factors: type of the syllable (according to thai traditional grammar syllables are divided into two classes: ‘live’ – open and long syllables and ‘dead’ – short or closed syllables); class of the consonant letter (thai consonant letter are divided into three classes – low, middle and high: this division is based only on the tradition and does not have any phonetical explanations) and length of the syllable. the rules of tone marking in thai language are shown in the table 2 and table 3. 24 ivan sarkisov table 2. rules of tone marking for dead syllables in thai script (according to smyth 2002: 16–17) initial consonant short vowel long vowel low class high tone falling tone middle class low tone low tone high class low tone low tone table 3. rules of tone marking for live syllables in thai script (according to smyth 2002: 16–17) initial consonant no tone mark may eek may tho low class middle tone falling tone high tone middle class middle tone low tone falling tone high class rising tone low tone falling tone according to these features of thai script, graphical sequences (such as sequences of certain letters or diacritic signs) do not have to be equal to phonetic sequences. as we will see later, this fact is very important for classifying one of the meters of thai traditional poetry. 3. brief overview of burmese poetry and language 3.1. burmese poetry the earliest examples of burmese poetry (burmese language is the official language of myanmar, which used to be called burma before 1989) appeared not later than in the xiv century. in that period, according to the views of the modern scientists, one of the most famous burmese poems “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya was written (hla pe 1963: 40). at the same time, according to burmese traditional scholars this poem was written in the 11th century. also, according to some historical and archeological sources, poetry was already common in the times of the first burmese state, the kingdom of bagan, which existed in the 11th–13th centuries (osipov 1980: 141–150). after the 15th century and until 1887, when myanmar became part of british colonial empire, burmese poetic tradition was developing quickly. in many respects it was always ahead of other poetic traditions of the southeast 25comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries asian region: usually, new genres (for example, the modern drama) and plots first appeared in myanmar and only later became popular in the neighboring countries. as well as in thai tradition, the main topics of burmese lyrical poetry were philosophical thoughts related to buddhism and glorification of the kings. big poems and dramas, as well as in thai poetic tradition, were usually based on plots from jatakas. in the xviii century the indian story about rama also became very popular. the most famous examples of burmese poetry are drama “maniket” by padethayaza (xviii century) based on a jataka tale, “yagan rama” by u tou (18th century), which is burmese national version of indian story about rama and dramas of u ponnya (19th century) (osipov 1980: 141–150). insofar as i am aware, the meters of burmese poetry were not studied. i was not able to locate any papers or references dedicated specifically to this topic. having said this there are two papers (hla pe, allot, okell 1963 and burman 1971), which provide some information about it. also, while thai traditional scholars give the full description of all the poetic meters used in thai poetry, i was not able to find any sources about burmese traditional theory of verse. as a result, to my knowledge, is not clear whether the burmese tradition of verse has ever existed or the modern linguists have not yet revealed it. in any case so far, we do not have any understanding about the perceptions of burmese traditional poets and philologists about the rules of their poetry. 3.2. brief description of burmese grammar burmese language belongs to lolo-burmese subgroup of tibeto-burman branch, which is a part of sino-tibetan language family (bradley 1997: 38–39). vowel phonemes of burmese include 7 monophthongs a, e, i, o, u, ɛ, ɔ and ə and four diphthongs: ei, ai, au and ou. consonant phonemes of burmese are represented in the table 4. 26 ivan sarkisov table 4. consonant phonemes of burmese language (according to (green 2002: 4)). voiced voiceless aspirated plosive p, d, g ph, th, kh ph, th, kh fricative (ð), z θ, s, ʃ, h sh affricates d͡ʒ t͡ ʃ, t͡ ʃh nasal m, n, ɲ, ŋ ɲ̩ ŋ̩ approximants w, j, l, r w̩ l̩ glottal ʔ burmese language, as well as thai, has tones, but different linguists estimate their number differently: from three to five. according to the most popular interpretation of burmese tonal system, the language distinguishes four tones, which are usually called ‘creaky’, ‘low’, ‘high’ and ‘checked’ or just by numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 (watkins 2000: 139–140). the phonological difference between them is complicated for describing. it includes not only pitch, like in thai, but also other aspects, such as length and secondary articulation (for example, the checked tone can be called glottalized, because it always has ʔ sound in the end) (green 2002: 9). not like in thai, the length of the vowels in burmese does not have phonological meaning separately from tone, but different tones are usually pronounced with different length (the longest tone is the low one and the shortest is the checked one (green 2002: 9)). according to this, in burmese poetry syllabic meters or meters based on the sequences of tones can be used easily, but meters or syllabic-metric versification may also be possible, because different tones are pronounced with different length. similar to thai language, burmese language uses its own script. and like in thai, only consonants are written in the main line and vowels are written under, above, right or left to them. pronunciation of a certain vowel sound with a certain tone is marked by a combination of different signs, but unlike in thai language, each sign usually marks only one tone. burmese script is much more phonetically oriented than the thai one and there is not a big difference between the spelling and pronunciation, though there are some exceptions (yanson 2017: 12–13). according to this, all possible graphical sequences would be a reflection of the phonetic sequences. therefore, the meters based only on graphical representation, and not on pronunciation would not be possible in burmese poetry. 27comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries 4. methodology of the study the research about thai poetry is mostly based on the description of meters of thai traditional poetry, which can be found in already existing studies. though none of these studies tries to classify any meters according to typology of versification, these descriptions are quite comprehensive, because they describe all the meters used in thai traditional poetry. along with the findings of the existing studies i have used the findings of my analysis of some thai poetic texts, such as parts of “phra aphai mani” and “nirat wat chao fa” by sunthorn phu and “lilit phra lo”. also, i made a comparative analysis of the findings of my previous research on thai meters and on the meters of burmese poetry. my research on burmese poetry is based on analysis of a text of 212 lines from a long poem “maniket” by padethayaza written in the 18th century and 12 short burmese classical poems from two sources: lustig 1966 and hla pe, allot, okell 1963. 5. the main meters of thai poetry the main poetic meters of thai classical poetry are klon, chan, khlong, kap and rai. i will provide the description of each of them. 5.1. klon in klon each line must contain 8 syllables. any other factors, such as order of tones, length of vowels of stress do not play any role (chitakasem 1987: 1971: 73). each stanza usually consists of 4 lines. the rhyme connects the last syllable of the first line with the third syllable of the second line and the last syllables of the second and the third lines with the third syllable of the fourth one (chitakasem 1987: 73–79). the patterns of klon is shown on the picture 1. picture 1. structure of klon (by chitakasem 1987: 79) 28 ivan sarkisov for the reason that the structure of klon is based only on the number of the syllables in the line, it can easily be classified as a syllabic meter. 5.2. chan chan was borrowed from sanskrit and pali poetry (davids, sted 1921–1925: 1) and its name comes from pali word chando meaning ‘poetic meter’ or ‘prosody’ (davids, sted 4: 309). in this meter each line is a strict sequence of the so-called “heavy” (long or closed) and “light” (short and open) syllables (hudak 1986: 1). stanza usually also consists of 4 lines. the third line has the same structure as the first one, and the fourth line – the same as the second one. therefore, a minimal element of stanza is a distich. there are many variants of chan, which differ from each other by the number of syllables in the distich (hudak 1986: 55). the structures of 11-syllabic and 20-syllabic chans are introduced on the picture 2 and picture 3. 0 0 * 0 0 * * 0 * 0 0 (а) 0 0 * 0 0 (а) * * 0 * 0 0 0 – heavy syllable, * light syllable picture 2. structure of 11-syllabic chan (by hudak 1992: 280) 0 * 0 * 0 * 0 * 0 (а) *0 * 0 * 0 * 0 (а) * 0 0 (b) picture 3. pattern of 20-syllabic chan (by hudak 1986: 54) according to the fact that chan is based on a sequence of long and short syllables, it should be classified as a syllabic-metrical meter. 5.3. khlong the most difficult for classification thai meter is khlong. in this meter each line should contain a certain number of syllables and at the same time certain syllables should be marked by one of diacritical symbols mai tho and mai ek. as it has been shown before, these symbols are used for tone marking, but in modern thai none of them is a symbol of a certain tone, because the 29comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries tone depends on three different factors: the diacritical symbol, class of the consonant and the type of the syllable. as a result, the mai tho can mark high or falling tone and the mai ek falling or low one (diller, early 2017: 16–17). the structure of one of the variants of khlong – khlong si suphap is shown on the picture 4. in this meter the first and the third lines should contain 7 or 9 syllables and the second and the fourth ones – 7 syllables. here the fourth syllable of the first line, the second and the sixth syllables of the second line, the third and the seventh syllables of the third line and the second syllables of the fourth line should be either marked by mai-ek symbol or be ‘dead syllables’. the fifth syllable of the first line, the seventh syllable of the second line, and the fifth and the seventh syllables of the fourth line should be marked by maitho symbol (cooke 1980: 427). if we translate this graphical pattern into the tonal one, we will get a distribution of tone, which is shown on the picture 5. 0 0 0 01/2 03 0 0(а) [0 0] 0 01/2 0 0 0(а) 01/2 03(b) 0 0 01/2 0 0(а) 0 01/2(b) [0 0] 0 01/2 0 0 03(b) 0 03 0 0 0 – syllable, 1 – mai ek sign, 2 – dead syllable, 3 – mai tho sign. syllable in square brackets are optional. picture 4. structure of klong si suphap (by cooke 1980: 427) 0 0 0 0h/l/f 0h/f 0 0 [0 0] 0 0f/l/f 0 0 0 0h/l/f 0h/f 0 0 0 h/l/f 0 0 h/l/f 0 0 [0 0] 0 0 h/l/f 0 0 0h/f 0 0h/f 0 0 0 – syllable, h – high tone, l – low tone, f – falling tone picture 5. tone pattern in khlong si suphap. the above shows that two or even three of the five tones can mark most of the syllables. therefore, the order of the tones is not rigid enough to become a basis of the verse structure. given this, we cannot identify khlong as a determined sequence of tones, but should call it a determined sequence of graphemes – mai ek and mai tho. accordingly, the best decision would be to introduce a special term “syllabo-graphical meter” for classifying khlong. though in different poetic traditions spelling can sometimes be more important than pronunciation, we have not found yet in other languages any meters, which 30 ivan sarkisov are fully based on a sequence of graphemes. so, the existence of “syllabographical” meter probably makes thai poetry typologically unique. the origin of such uncommon meter is unknown. we can put forward a hypothesis that at the time when khlong appeared, mai ek and mai tho symbols used to have other meanings, which were unambiguous (sarkisov 2020). if it is true, khlong originally used to be a meter based on the number of syllables and on the sequence of tones at the same time. the history of thai script is not studied enough to prove or disprove this hypothesis. we know that originally thai language used to have not 5, as it is now, but only 3 tones. one of these tones used to be marked by mai ek symbol and another one by my chattawa symbol while mai tho symbol did not exist at that time (diller 2017: 230–233). the khlong appeared for the first time later, during the period of instability, when both the phonetics and the script were changing drastically (diller 2017: 242). in that period thai language got two more tones and the mai tho symbol appeared in thai script also at the same time. the meaning of all three diacritic signs and the rules of tone marling were unstable: sometimes the tones were not marked at all and sometimes, diacritic signs were even used for marking vowel sounds, but not the tones. as a result, it is still not quite clear, how exactly the meaning of mai ek symbol has been evolving and what the original meaning of mai tho symbol has been. therefore, the real nature of khlong cannot be fully understood. 5.4. kap and rai there is very little information about two other meters of thai poetry: kap and rai. the only known work about kap states that in this meter each line should contain a certain number of syllables, which is 5 or 6 (hudak 1986: 55). if it is so, kap together with klon should be classified as a syllabic meter. rai is usually described not as poetic meter, but as a type of rhymed prose. it is always written without dividing into poetic lines, like prose. at the same time, dr. hudak says that rai meter is a sequence of groups of 5 syllables (hudak 1986: 44). this means that this meter has a strict structure, which is much more common for poetry rather than for prose. according to hudak, this structure also seems to be syllabic. 31comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries 6. rhyme in thai poetry rhyme is a very important element of traditional thai poetry, which should never be ignored (hudak 2001: 41). rhymed syllables in thai poetic tradition should have similar vowel as well as similar final consonant, if they end with a consonant. it seems that similarity of tones is not necessary, because i have found some examples, where the tones of two syllables connected by rhyme are different (see example). example. rhymes between syllables with different tones in thai poetry (by hudak 2001: 42) dii ~ kîi tɛ̀ɛk ~ lɛ̂ɛk unlike the european versification, rhyme in thai poetry usually connects not only the last syllables of two or more different lines but the last syllable of one line with a certain syllable inside another line, as it has been shown in the above examples (chitakasem 1987: 79, cooke 2017: 427, hudak 1992: 54–58). this type of rhyme appears in the most part of all five traditional meters of thai poetry discussed in this article: klon, khlong, chan, kap and rai. such structure of rhyme seems to be very unusual for the most part of the world poetic traditions. it occurs neither in european poetry nor in arabic, indian or chinese poetic traditions. on the other hand, the rhyme connecting the last syllables of one line with syllables inside other lines can be also found in other poetic traditions of southeast asia, for example in burmese poetry. 7. burmese meters and its comparison with thai 7.1. previous research on burmese poetry comparative studies of thai meters and meters of other southeast asian poetic traditions are important for exploring their mutual influence. unfortunately, the description of meters of khmer and lao poetry do not exist while the studies of meters of burmese poetry are very limited. therefore, it is difficult to make any conclusions in this area. i was not able to find out any sources of information about burmese traditional philology and traditional descriptions of meters, which were in use in burmese classical poetry. in this respect burmese studies are very different from the thai ones. the only two previous scientific researches regarding the meters of burmese poetry (hla pe, allot, okell 1963 and burman 1971) say 32 ivan sarkisov only that traditionally burmese poets used to use a meter, in which each line had to consist of 4 syllables, but later they started to use “less strict” meters. 7.2. burmese poetic meters in order to understand better the burmese traditional poetic meters, i have undertaken a research which was based on the text of approximately 212 poetic lines from the drama “maniket” by padethayaza and of 12 short burmese classical poems. these short poems were taken from two sources. one of them was the book lustig 1966 containing poems of different burmese poets of 14th– 19th centuries in burmese and their english translations. the second source was the article hla pe, allot, okell 1963, which contains full original versions of three burmese poems: “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya, “poem written in exile”, by let-we thon-dara and “the song of the chastened”, by u ponnya. having said this, our study of burmese meters has shown that two types of meters are used in burmese traditional poetry. one of them is a syllabic meter and typological classification of the second one is unclear. it looks very similar to free verse, though the fact of existing of free verse in asian poetry in the 18th century seems quite strange. in the syllabic meter each line may contain 4 or 5 syllables. the most common meter is the meter with 4 syllables in each line. the poems “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya (table 5), “poem written in exile”, by let-we thon-dara and “take to heart” by sahton sayadaw are written only with this type of meter. in the poem “deliverance cannot be distant” by shin maharattathara 85 of 91 lines consist of 4 syllables (table 6). table 5. number of syllables in а line in “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya. number of syllables number of lines of this length % of all lines 4 41 100 in 212 lines from the drama “maniket” by padethayaza, which was quite “modernistic” for its time in terms of the style and structure (it was the first burmese drama, which had division into dialogs and remarks for the actors and orchestra), lines consisting from 2–10 syllables have been found. nearly 60% of them (125, which is 59%) contain 4 syllables and 18.4% contain 3 syllables and 4.3% contain 5 (table 7). in total, number of lines, containing 3, 4 or 5 syllables, is 173, which is 81.6%. according to this, we can conclude that this piece is 33comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries also written by the same syllabic meter with 4 syllables in each line, which is sometimes violated or is used together with some other, more rare meters. in all other burmese poems, which have been analyzed during my research on burmese meters, the number of syllables in different lines is absolutely different and can vary from 3 or even 2 to 15 or 16 (the statistic for some poems is represented in the table 6–7). the percentage of lines with certain number of syllables does not show any strict regularity. this type of meter looks very similar to european free verse and can be easily classified this way. on the other hand, such early appearance of free verse in traditional asian poetry seems unlikely. therefore, i provide a hypothesis that this type of meter can be classified as disintegrated syllabic, which is the step between the classical strict syllabic meter and the free verse. table 6. number of syllables in “maniket” by padethayaza (a fragment of 212 lines) number of syllables in a line number of lines containing this number of syllables % of all lines analyzed 2 8 3.8 3 9 4.3 4 125 59.0 5 39 18.4 6 3 1.4 7 8 3.8 8 2 0.9 10 1 0.5 table 7. number of syllables in the poem “the song of the chastened” by u pon nya number of syllables in a line number of lines containing this number of syllables % of all lines analyzed 3 2 12.5 4 2 12.5 5 1 6.25 6 4 25 7 2 12.5 8 3 18.75 9 2 12.5 34 ivan sarkisov table 8. number of syllables in the poem “carved bullock-cart” by u ya kyaw number of syllables in a line number of lines containing this number of syllables % of all lines analyzed 4 1 7 6 1 7 8 8 57 9 3 21 10 1 7 table 9. number of syllables in the poem “the golden-yellow padauk” by u kyaw number of syllables in a line number of lines containing this number of syllables % of all lines analyzed 3 5 25 4 2 10 5 7 35 6 3 15 7 2 10 9 1 5 table 10. number of syllables in the poem “song of the forest” by princess hlaingteik-kaung-tin number of syllables in a line number of lines containing this number of syllables % of all lines analyzed 4 5 31 3 4 25 5 5 31 6 1 6 8 1 6 my research has not discovered any meters based on the sequence of tones or graphical elements (like khlong) in burmese poetry. for example, in the poem “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya the distribution of tones seems to be accidental rather than influenced by meters structure (table 11). it allows me to propose a hypothesis that burmese poetry does not use tonal meters. 35comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries table 11. distribution of tones in the poem “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya tone position in the line 1 2 3 4 1 24 (58.5%) 26 (63.2%) 20 (48.8%) 14 (34.2%) 2 9 (21.96%) 5 (12.2%) 13 (31.7%) 16 (39%) 3 4 (9.7%) 6 (14.6%) 4 (9.8%) 7 (17.1%) 4 2 (4.9%) 6 (14.6%) 4 (9.8%) 4 (9.8%) 7.3. rhyme in burmese poetry the very few existing studies about burmese rhyme argue that the rhyme in burmese poems often connects the last syllable of the first line of stanza with the next-to-last syllable of the second line and the third from the end syllable of the third line (burman 1971: 140, hla pe 1963: 563). though my research did not aim at studying the rhyme, it has revealed that this rule is not always followed and very often not all the syllables, which should be rhymed, are actually rhymed. on the other hand, like in thai poetry, usually, the last syllable of one line is rhymed with a syllable inside another line. the example of both these features can be seen in the example 1, which shows the rhyme pattern of the first ten lines of the poem “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya example 1. rhyme pattern of the first 10 lines of the poem “allaying the royal anger” by anantathuriya а а – а b b b c d d d e e 36 ivan sarkisov the above findings allow us to conclude that there are no significant similarities between thai and burmese poetry in terms of the verse structure, and the only type of meters, which is used in both traditions, is the syllabic meter. the syllabic meter is one of the most common in the world literature. according to this, it would be more logical to conclude that this type of meter appeared in burmese and thai poetries independently and did not result from their mutual influence. a strong argument, which supports this hypothesis relates to the fact that the number of syllables in each line in syllabic meters of thai and burmese poetries is absolutely different: in thai verses lines are at least seven syllables long and in burmese syllabic poetry each line has only four or five syllables. at the same time, in both poetic traditions internal rhyme, which is not used in all other poetic traditions of the world, is very common and probably is the most popular type of rhyme. given this, internal rhyme seems to be a typical feature of poetry on southeast asian languages and may be a result of mutual influence between their poetic traditions. the origin of the internal rhyme is an important question, which should be addressed in the future research in order to better understand the history of southeast asian poetic traditions. 8. conclusion summarizing the results of the research, which intended to describe and compare meters of thai and burmese poetries, i would like to highlight the following key findings: thai poetry uses syllabic (klon, kap and, probably, rai) and syllabic-metric (chan) meters and the meter khlong, however, its typological classification is not clear. in modern language this poetic meter is not based on order of any phonetic elements, and it seems to be a syllabic-graphical meter. given the fact, that any other meters based only on graphical representation, and not on phonetic correlations, are not known, we can propose a hypothesis that historically khlong used to be based on the sequence of tones, which has disappeared later. so far, i was not able to prove or disprove this hypothesis. in order to test this hypothesis more in depth studies of the khlong meter in south east asian poetry are needed. burmese poetry uses one or two syllabic meters (one with four syllables in a line and may be another one with) and a meter or many meters, in which any regularity have not yet been discovered. this meter (or these meters) looks like free verse but needs to be studied further for making any final conclusions. thai and burmese poetic traditions do not show any similarities in terms of meter, which could be possibly interpreted as a result of influence between 37comparative description of meters in thai and burmese poetries them. internal rhyme, which usually does not appear in european or other asian poetic traditions, is very common in thai poetry as well as in burmese one. therefore, it may be a regional feature of southeast asian poetry. future studies in thai meters should explore the nature of khlong and the mutual influence on thai, burmese, and khmer poetry. i believe these areas of research will yield valuable insight into the interconnectedness of these poetic traditions.1 references bradley d. 1997. tibeto-burman languages and classification. in: bradley, david (ed.), papers in southeast asian linguistics 14: tibeto-burman languages of the himalayas. canberra: pacific linguistics, 1–72. burman, anna 1971. nekotorye osobennosti birmanskoj rifmy [some specifics of burmese rhyme]. in: strany i narody vostoka xi [countries and peoples of the east]. moskva: nauka, 140–145. chitakasem, manas 1987. thai poetry: problems of translation. in: davidson, jeremy h. c. s. (ed.), lai su thai, essays in honour of e. h. s. simmonds. london: university of london, 73–97. cooke, joseph r. 1980. the thai khlong poem: description and examples. in: journal of the american oriental society 100(4), 421–437. https://doi.org/10.2307/602087 davids, t. w. rhys; stede, william 1921–1925. the pali text society’s pali-english dictionary. london: pali text society. diller, anthony 2017. early thai orthography: innovative tone-marking or recent hoax? in: written language & literacy 20(2), 227–251. https://doi.org/10.1075/ wll.00005.dil green, antony dubach 2002. word, foot, and syllable structure in burmese. http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/5511002/551-1002-green-0-0.pdf hla pe; allot, anna j., okell, john 1963. three ‘immortal’ burmese songs. in: bulletin of the school of oriental and african studies, university of london 26(3), 559–571. hudak, thomas john 1986. meta-rhymes in classical thai poetry. in: journal of the siam society 74, 38–61. 1 the author wants to thank sincerely swe zin aung, prapatsorn wattana and kantita sangjumpa for help with translations of thai and burmese texts. https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journal https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/15706001/20/2 38 ivan sarkisov hudak, thomas john 1992. further observations on the thai chan poetic conventions. in: compton, carol j.; hartmann, john f. (eds.), papers on tai languages, linguistics, and literatures in honor of william j. gedney on his 77th birthday (occasional paper 16). dekalb: center for southeast asian studies, northern illinois university, 278–285. hudak, thomas john 2001. limericks and rhyme in thai. in: tingsabadh, m. r. kalaya; abramson, arthur s. (eds.), essays in tai linguistics. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press, 41–50. ivanova, vera 2018. liricheskaja poema “kamsuan siprat” (2-aja polovina xvii v.) i stanovlenie zhanra tajskoj literatury nirat [lyric poem “kamsuan siprat” and development of nirat genre in thai literature]. moskva: institut mirovoj literatury imeni a. m. gor’kogo ran. kornev, vladimir 1985. tajskaja (siamskaja) literatura [do kontsa xvi v.] [thai literature]. in: istorija vsemirnoj literatury [history of world literature], vol. 6. moskva: nauka, 616–618. lustig, friedrich v. 1966. burmese classical poems. selected and translated by the most rev. friedrich v. lustig, buddhist archbishop of latvia. rangoon: u khin pe gyi, osipov, yuri 1980. literatury indokitaja. zhanry, sjuzhety, pamjatniki [indochinese literatures. genres, plots, oeuvres]. leningrad: izdatel’stvo leningradskogo universiteta. sarkisov, ivan 2020a. pri la klasifikado de la taja poetika metro khlong [about classification of thai poetic meter khlong]. in: vaprosy jazykoznania: megasbornik nanostatej. moskva: buki vedi, 136–140. sarkisov, ivan 2020b. k voprosu o metricheskoj klassifikatsii razmerov tajskoj poezii [towards a classification of thai poetic meters]. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 79(2), 39–49. slayden, glenn 2009. central thai phonology. http://www.thai-language.com/resources/slayden-thai-phonology.pdf smyth, david 2002. thai: an essential grammar. london and new york: routledge. watkins, justin 2000. notes on creaky and killed tone in burmese. in: soas working papers in linguistics and phonetics 10, 139–149. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/1948/ yanson, rudolph 2017. sources of written burmese -ac and related questions in burmese historical phonology. in: journal of the southeast asian linguistics society 201(2), xi–xviii. http://hdl.handle.net/10524/52408 http://www.thailanguage.com/resources/slayd studia metrica et poetica sisu 2_1.indd early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms (‘free verse’ and others) in japanese and arabic scott mehl* abstract. in the first half of the twentieth century, when japanese and arabic poets began writing free-verse poetry, many terms were proposed as labels for the new form. in addition to the calques on “free verse,” neologisms were created to name the new poetry. what is striking is that, in these two quite different literary spheres, a number of the proposed neologisms were the same: for example, in both japanese and arabic the terms prose poetry, modern poetry, and colloquial poetry were proposed (among others) as alternatives to the label free poetry. this essay provides an annotated list of the neologisms in japanese and arabic, with a list of english terms for comparison; and by referring to the contemporary japanese and arabic criticism on the topic of poetic innovation, this essay attempts to explain the similarity between the japanese and arabic neologisms. in short, the japanese and arabophone arguments in favour of adapting the free-verse form were based on similar premises regarding modernity, freedom, and a vision of literary history that was rooted in an evolutionary theory of genre development. key words: free verse, modern japanese poetry, modern arabic poetry, poetic form introduction near the end of his study a history of european versification, mikhail leonovich gasparov describes free verse – or to use the chronologically earlier term, vers libre1 – as a new verse form that has found success in a broad multinational context: “vers libre is international: it has integrated all the traditions developed by different languages and cultures. earlier vers libre was perceived against the background of the traditional, more rigorous forms, through its contrast with the latter; now, having become widespread, vers libre itself constitutes a * author’s address: scott mehl, independent scholar, 4752 tatton park circle 2b, winston salem, nc 27103. e-mail: mehl_scott@hotmail.com. 1 a useful general overview of the history of free verse and vers libre in english is available in steele 1990: 3–28. on the history of vers libre, vers libres, and vers libérés in french, see scott 1980: 182–241; scott 1986: 157–188; scott 1990: 54–119; scott 1998: 73–81. studia metrica et poetica 2.1, 2015, 81–106 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.04 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.1.04 82 scott mehl background against which all other verse forms are perceived” (1996: 286). gasparov’s study treats vers libre as a pan-european phenomenon, but free verse is observable in a far wider geographical area. there are free-verse poems being written in chinese (yeh 1991: 22–23; manfredi 2014: xx–xxi), japanese, persian (karimi-hakkak 1978: 21–22; karimi-hakkak 1995: 247–248), arabic, and hebrew (burnshaw et al. 2003: 355–356), as well. the reasons for this situation are various, but some of them relate to free verse’s formal qualities. as t. s. eliot puts it in a famous formulation in his 1917 essay “reflections on ‘vers libre,’” free-verse poetry is characterised by “(1) absence of pattern, (2) absence of rhyme, [and] (3) absence of meter” (eliot 1975: 32) – three absences that it should be possible to replicate in any language. but why would a poet want to replicate those absences? gasparov would answer that one attraction of the free-verse form is its translatability: “one of the principal reasons why vers libre succeeded was its (relative) ease of translation. free verse was not linked to national forms of versification and required from its translators only precision of sense and distinctness of style. therefore it was especially happily accepted by poets in the minor literatures, whose works could find international recognition only in translation” (1996: 284). the prestige of having one’s poems translated into other languages is one consideration in favour of a poet’s choice to write in a form replicable (in principle) in any language; but it might be added that prestige accrues to the creator of a successful translation of poems, as well, from other languages into her own.2 it was precisely the translation of european-language poetry into japanese and arabic – to name the two languages under consideration in this essay – that catalysed the appearance of free-verse poetry and other new poetic forms. the japanese and arabophone critics who set about explicating, debating, advocating, and disparaging the practice of non-traditional poetries in the early twentieth century sought to explain the contemporary literatures of europe and the americas even as they sought to come to grips with what was happening in literature in japanese and in arabic. there is a distinct comparability between the japanese and the arabophone experiences of encounter with european civilisations in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. as the poet and scholar muhammad badawi has put it, “there may be some useful parallels to be drawn between the experiences of both 2 which is not to say that free-verse poetry must be translated into free-verse poetry. metrically regular poetry is frequently translated into nonmetrical forms; rhymed verse is frequently translated into unrhymed verse. it should be possible to translate free verse into verse-forms that feature patterns of meter or rhyme that would ostensibly make the verse “unfree” in the target language. 83early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms arabic and japanese poetry as both were exposed to profound and pervasive western influences at roughly the same time” (badawi 1973: 182). by way of suggestion, badawi adds that this hypothetical parallel between arabic and japanese poetries may actually be only one example of a phenomenon observable in “most” of the “world”: “there are great stylistic similarities in most of the sophisticated poetry written in the world today, irrespective of the language in which it is composed. […] [w]e may be moving toward an ideal of poetry which, paradoxical as it may seem, is almost as international as science” (badawi 1973:182).3 i hesitate to endorse badawi’s claim that the free-verse form is an ideal to which all poetry aspires regardless of language; nevertheless, i agree that free verse has made inroads into a multinational and multilingual literary field. as a poetic form, free verse is on its way to becoming an international lingua franca. while badawi compares free-verse poetry with science in point of internationality, it seems that free-verse poetry might also be compared with the novel, another literary form that has established a presence in a wide range of languages and literatures. in my understanding of the modern novel’s polyglot globality, i follow the comparatist mary layoun. in her 1990 study travels of a genre: the modern novel and ideology, which centers on novels in greece, egypt, and japan, layoun claims that “the novel was not and is not a singular, monolithic, and fixed genre but one that emerged in a particular conjunction of sociocultural and literary circumstances and that developed variously in relation to its circumstances” (layoun 1990: 7). layoun continues: [t]he modern west european novel was apprehended and, at least initially, produced in greece or egypt or japan as the paradigmatic genre of the rational, modern, and democratic west, as an ‘advanced’ cultural technology. of course, to designate a genre (or a text) as inherently and definitively anything ahistorically ignores the extent to which such designations are themselves historically situated and produced. (9) in this paper, i beg the reader to make allowances for the differences between the situations of free verse in japanese and in arabic. to return to eliot, if free verse attains its freedom by avoiding some feature of literary language that has traditionally been deemed poetic, then that feature will be tradition-specific: 3 compare taha hussayn: “literature is in need of freedom. […] literature should be like all other sciences, subject to research and criticism, analysis, doubt, rejection and denial. the arabic language should become subject to the work of researchers as matter is to the experiments of scientists” (aboussena 1986: 208). 84 scott mehl a verse that appears free in one language might not appear free in another. indeed, there can be disagreement over what constitutes a “free” verse even among commentators who share a common language and therefore might be expected to share standards concerning questions of versification. i emphasise that what is referred to as free-verse poetry in japanese is not the same as its counterpart in arabic, just as it is not the same as free verse in english or french or any other language. instead of attempting a comparison of free-verse poetries in japanese and arabic, then, this essay compares the labels, the generic designators that were proposed as names for the new form in both languages: a comparison not of the texts themselves but of the paratexts around them.4 these paratexts reveal something – not the whole picture, to be certain, but a crucial part of it – about how the new poetic form free verse was received in two literary traditions in which the prevalent poetic forms were regulated by different prosodic rules. (the point about prosodic rule applies, of course, to the poetries of european languages, too.) when japanese and arabophone poets began writing freeverse poetry on european and american models, in both languages a calque was proposed, a phrase that translated “free verse.” but at nearly the same time as the calques on “free verse,” there also appeared a number of alternative neologisms, new phrases that were proposed as labels for the new poetic forms. what is striking is that in japanese and in arabic, many of the neologisms proposed as alternatives to “free verse” were the same. (by “same,” i mean only that the terms have approximately the same meaning. of course the terms were not identical in the two languages.) the japanese and arabic cases differ from that of english, in which relatively few terms were proposed; in english, the french term vers libre was and still is used frequently, and the calque free verse established early dominance. in the first part of this essay, i provide an annotated list of the terms that were proposed in japanese and in arabic as labels for the new verse forms; in the second part, i contrast the japanese and arabic terms with the terms for free verse in english as a way to foreground what the congruence between the japanese and arabic terminological spaces 4 paratexts are the texts that appear around a text: the title, the back cover, the colophon, and so on. my understanding of the paratext is derived from genette 1987: 7–19. genette examines generic designations, for example, at genette 1987: 89–97. however, he concentrates on those generic designations that appear inscribed in or printed on the text itself (e.g., shakespeare’s the comedy of errors, flaubert’s trois contes). for the purposes of this study, a formal/generic designator that is proposed as a name for a (putatively) new literary form is treated as part of the paratext of any texts written in that form, even if that proposed designation soon falls out of circulation. 85early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms might tell us about the japanese and arabic experiences of the “new” or the “modern” in poetry. a final note about the principle of selection, before delving into the minutiae. the terms that are under examination in this essay were proposed, usually, by a poet or a critic, as designators for the new, nontraditional poetic forms in japanese and arabic. borrowing a term from saul kripke, one might think of the proposal of such a generic designator as a kind of baptism (kripke 1980: 90–97).5 in his naming and necessity, kripke explains his baptismal model of naming roughly as follows (i simplify): someone bestows a name upon something, and, if the conditions permit, the initial bestowal sets in motion a causal chain, as the next person repeats the designation, and then a third person repeats the designation, and so on down the line (kripke 1980: 135–140). the appearance of free-verse poetry in japanese and arabic is interesting in part because the new poetic form was baptised with many different names in each language, at different times and by different poets and critics. in some cases, new names were proposed by critics who were unaware of the older names; in other cases, it seems that the critics (or poets) are in competition with one another, vying to be the one who gives the new form a name that becomes common usage. a full-length consideration of these various generic designations would provide a window onto the standards of the literary establishment and onto the relationships among the various poets and critics as they vie for prestige. this essay, be it noted, does not attempt so wide-ranging an investigation. it is simply the beginning piece of such a study, insofar as it assembles the relevant terms for free verse in japanese and arabic and offers a commentary on some of the salient similarities between them. japanese terms for new verse forms in japan in the first decade of the twentieth century, the most general term for non-traditional poetry written on a largely western model was shintaishi, meaning “new-style poetry.” while the shintaishi is a metrically regular form of poetry, it is an important precursor to japanese free-verse poetry. in summary, the shintaishi, dating back to the early 1880s, was the creation of three young scholars who had studied in the united states and sought a new japanese poetic form into which to translate the anglo-american poetry to which 5 kripke’s original argument is about proper names and the theory of reference; i have adapted his term for the present essay. 86 scott mehl they had been exposed. (to my knowledge, no attempt was made to translate western poetries into haiku or tanka.) the shintaishi could include any number of lines, with variable stanzaic/strophic patterns; in principle it was a flexible form, free to be any length. each line of a shintaishi was metrically regular, usually based on some combination of 5or 7-mora clausulae.6 most poems of the seminal 1882 translation anthology shintaishishō (collection of new-style poetry), for example, were constituted of 12-mora lines in 7-5. later variants of the shintaishi included recurring lines of 5-7; lines of 5-7-5 alternating with lines of 7-5-7; and others. metrical and strophic regularity was the rule. the japanese symbolist poets of the middle years of the first decade of the twentieth century experimented with alternative shintaishi metrical patterns that included (for example) 4-, 6-, or 8-mora clausulae. an early mention of the term jiyūshi (“free poetry”) appears in the introduction to kaichōon (the sound of the tide, 1905), an anthology of translations of european poetries into japanese shintaishi. the translator of this anthology, ueda bin, explains the context in which french vers libre appeared, yet he suggests that japanese poets would not be amenable to such poetry: modern french poetry reached a height in parnassianism, the resplendent beauty of which was the result of ultimate refining and polishing. but then, at the very apogee of parnassianism, a ‘change of state’ was necessitated, and the necessity was realised by mallarmé and verlaine. the moment was decisive; they provided the impetus. they began to propagandise for ‘symbolisme’; they encouraged and elucidated the phenomenon of the vers libre form [jiyūshi kei]. the translator of this volume is scarcely the one to say that japanese poetry should imitate them exactly; my particular bent is more in sympathy with the parnassians… (adaptation of kamiyama et al. 1975: 111; ueda 1905: 240) bin’s translation of vers libre is jiyūshi, “free poetry,” a calque of the french term. the term jiyūshi was at first not widely circulated.7 one factor that limited the use of the term was the absence of free-verse poetry being written 6 in english-language scholarship, mora is sometimes preferred over syllable to designate the unit of japanese prosody. i argue elsewhere that the best term is neither mora nor syllable but rather moji, meaning “written character,” which is the term that appears in japanese discussions of japanese prosody (mehl 2013: 220–226). 7 which may explain why some scholars have overlooked ueda bin’s 1905 use of jiyūshi in their historical treatments of the term. hitomi enkichi (tōmei), for example, contends that the earliest use of the term jiyūshi is in october 1908: see hitomi 1954b: 45. okkotsu akio later repeats hitomi’s date and cites him as his source (okkotsu 1991: 3). 87early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms in japanese; the consensus among japanese critics is that the first free-verse poems in japanese were published by kawaji ryūkō in the journal shijin in september 1907.8 a little over a year later, in october 1908, the term jiyūshi began appearing in writings about poetry; for example, the poet and critic sōma gyofū, writing in october 1908, describes the recent debates over “the difference between […] free poetry [jiyūshi] and prose” (hitomi 1954b: 45). henceforth the term jiyūshi would become a standard term to refer to nonmetrical poetry in japanese (hattori 1963: 161–176).9 the term kōgoshi, “colloquial poetry,” appeared as early as may 1907 in hitomi enkichi’s review of a poetry collection by noguchi ujō (hitomi 1954a: 64–66, hattori 1963: 148–153). at first the term referred to metrically regular poetry written in the so-called colloquial register or kōgo, which was distinguished from bungo, the “literary language”; the term later came to refer primarily to nonmetrical poetry written in the kōgo register. to put the matter schematically: with the beginning of the meiji reign in 1868 and the subsequent program of broad reform, many writers, educators, and politicians held that the difference between spoken japanese and written japanese was inconveniently great and might hamper japanese attempts to adapt the practices of european societies. hence the so-called genbun itchi movement, the “unification of speech and print,” which is typically said to have begun in the 1870’s. a new, so-called genbun itchi literary style – marked especially by certain verb endings and adjectival forms that typically had not appeared in literary texts prior to this period – was devised, appearing in literary prose by the mid-1880s (twine 1991; tomasi 2004; jacobowitz 2006). (there is debate over which japanese fiction was written in the genbun itchi style first, but the usual benchmark is futabatei shimei’s novel ukigumo, serialised in 1886–87.) the new genbun itchi style of prose became, within a generation, the default register of literary prose in japanese. but poetry during the 1880s, 1890s, and the first decade of the 1900s continued to be written in a diction that was marked as archaic-poetic; and with the effects of the genbun itchi movement on contemporary prose, the perceived difference between prose diction and 8 the definition of free verse – what a free-verse poem actually is and what distinguishes a free-verse poem from any other kind of poem – is ultimately not at issue in this essay; what is at issue is whether there are readers who agree to call a poem a free-verse poem. on this point see mehl 2015. 9 by nonmetrical poetry i refer primarily to poetry in which it is not generally possible to explain the disposition of line breaks by referring to the number of syllables or morae or accents in any given line. the poetry that i describe as metrically regular is lineated in accordance with a discernible pattern of syllables/morae/accents. 88 scott mehl poetic diction widened. the kōgo register was initially identified with contemporary prose, bungo with poetry and the style of pre-meiji literary texts. by early 1907, poets began publishing metrically regular shintaishi in a colloquial register with gradually increasing frequency; this poetry was referred to as kōgoshi (hitomi 1954a).10 by early 1908 – approximately half a year after the publication of the first nonmetrical poems in a colloquial register – the term kōgoshi began to overlap with the term jiyūshi, insofar as both terms were used to refer to nonmetrical poetry written in a prose-like register. other terms related to kōgoshi include kōgotai no shi, “poetry of the colloquial style” (by april 1908), its near-equivalent kōgotai shi, “colloquial-style poetry” (also by april 1908), and kōgotai no jiyūshi, “free poetry in a colloquial style” (by june 1909) (okkotsu 1991: 12–15). the latter term is an early version of what is now probably the most common term to refer to modern japanese poetry in nontraditional forms: kōgo jiyūshi. the term genbun itchi shi, “poetry of genbun itchi,” similarly refers originally to metrically regular shintaishi poetry in a colloquial (or genbun itchi) register, from as early as july 1907.11 not long after the publication of the earliest nonmetrical poetry, this term is reconceptualised to refer primarily to nonmetrical poetry – in a colloquial register, as the term suggests. the term gendaishi, “modern (or contemporary) poetry,” was used as early as november 1907; an early instance appears in the critic shimamura hōgetsu’s article “gendai no shi” (“poetry of the current age”) (shimamura 1967 [1907]). shimamura uses the term to describe the poetry of whitman and wordsworth and calls for japanese poets to write similar poetry; he seems not to have known of kawaji ryūkō’s poems published only two months earlier (and in the same journal, no less). another term, kindaishi, which also can mean “modern poetry,” begins to be used not much later; glimmers of it can be seen in the title of hattori yoshika’s article “iwayuru kindaiteki shiika,” “the so-called modern poetry” (hitomi 1967: 898). the term shizenshugi shi, “naturalist poetry,” refers to nonmetrical poetry in a colloquial register and is used as early as august 1908 (okkotsu 1967: 10 other terms for metrically regular, colloquial-register shintaishi include a range of terms that imply a connection with song. the terms zokuyōshi, “popular tune poetry” (as early as september 1908); riyō, “common/popular tunes” (as early as 1908); shinpa zokuyō, “popular tunes of the new school/faction” (as early as 1909); shin zokuyō, “new popular tunes” (as early as 1910); and zokkyoku chō, “the rhythm of popular melody” (as early as 1910) are examined in okkotsu 1991: 16. 11 used in an article of the same title by morikawa kison, writing under the pen name “kuzunoha,” in the july 1907 issue of the journal shijin (okkotsu 1991: 4). 89early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms 728; okkotsu 1991: 6). there was a vogue for what was called naturalism in contemporary japanese novels in the first decade of the twentieth century; the term “naturalist poetry” implicitly compares the poetry so designated with the naturalist novels, especially in terms of theme.12 the journal waseda bungaku (waseda literature, which originated in waseda university) was most closely associated with the term shizenshugi shi, and when the journal folded the term fell out of use.13 the term sanbunshi, “prose poetry,” initially refers to nonmetrical poetry in a colloquial register and is used in that sense as early as august 1908.14 in its first uses, it is approximately synonymous with the terms jiyūshi and kōgoshi. as the poet sōma gyofū put it in an article published in january 1909, “in the history of poetry in our country there has probably never been so happy a year as 1908. poetry [now] goes by many names: kōgoshi, or sanbunshi, or jiyūshi…” (okkotsu 1991: 9–10). within a few years, however, the term sanbunshi ceases to refer to nonmetrical colloquial-style poetry and is repurposed instead to mean what we generally call “prose poetry” in english or the poème en prose in french: short, unlineated prose pieces. there is also a variant term, kōgoteki sanbunshi, “colloquial prose poetry” (okkotsu 1991: 12). arabic terms for new verse forms one of the earliest descriptions of european prosody and rhyme in modern arabic appeared in an 1897 essay by najīb al-ḥaddād, who uses the term shi‘r abyaḍ or “white poetry” as a calque on the english term blank verse. in al-ḥaddād’s description, shi‘r abyaḍ refers to unrhymed, metrically regular poetry; the absence of rhyme is treated as a defect, a misfortune brought about 12 one of the anonymous readers questioned this description of shizenshugi shi, claiming that the poetry so designated “mostly happened to be nonmetrical and in the colloquial language[;] but poetry of the same sort by non-naturalists would not be characterised in the same way.” that is true. my point is not that shizenshugi shi was the only name for such poetry; i am precisely asserting that it was one of many such designations. 13 hattori yoshika also mentions other short-lived terms, such as tanpenshi (“fragment poetry”) and inshōshi (“impression poetry”) (hattori 1963: 105–106). 14 okkotsu akio has written that the term sanbunshi appears as early as 1899 but does not give a reference (okkotsu 1967: 739). as okkotsu indicates in the same essay (again 1967: 739), the term also appears in ueda bin’s anthology miotsukushi (1901), in which there is a selection of ivan turgenev’s sanbunshi in translation (bin 1901: 112–131). 90 scott mehl by the relative paucity of rhyming words in the european languages. the term shi‘r abyaḍ seems not to have entered into general use (van gelder 1996: 148).15 the term shi‘r manthūr, “prose poetry,” appeared in print as early as 1905.16 the lebanese jurjī zaydān, founder and editor of the cairo periodical al-hilāl, used the term to describe a poem published (in the same periodical) by the ottoman syrian-born poet amīn al-rīḥānī. as rīḥānī himself would later explain in a two-paragraph explanation of “al-shi‘r al-manthūr,” his poetry was an imitation of walt whitman’s.17 in this brief explanation, rīḥānī explains that the term shi‘r manthūr renders “vers libres” [sic] in french or “free verse” in english. he then glosses the term in arabic as al-shi‘r al-ḥurr al-ṭalīq: “free unrestrained poetry.” this form of poetry is distinguished by absence of rhyme (albeit with occasional use of rhyme) and absence of recurring meter (although again it seems that occasionally the presence of a metrical rhythm could be felt).18 the adjective manthūr is based on the root n-th-r, meaning “scatter.” the word “prose” is nathr, which appears in the term qaṣīdat al-nathr, “qasida in prose,” a term coined by the syrian-lebanese poet adūnīs as early as 1958 to refer to unrhymed, usually nonmetrical prose-like poetry.19 the term shi‘r mursal, which also means “prose poetry,” appeared in print as early as 1908. (the adjective mursal is based on the root r-s-l, meaning “send 15 al-ḥaddād’s essay is reprinted in manfalūṭī 1965 [1912]: 120–138 (relevant pages 132–133). cf. moreh 1966: 498. 16 i have not been able to inspect the original text in which this term appears. it seems that scholars are divided as to the precise bibliographic reference. shmuel moreh gives the following reference: al-hilāl, xiii.ii (october 1905), pp. 97–98 (moreh 1976: 292). salma khadra jayyusi gives the following reference: al-hilāl, xiv.ii (november 1905), pp. 97–98 (jayyusi 1977: 2.631 and 1977: 2.808). 17 al-rīhānī renders the name as “witman” in the original (al-rīḥānī 1910: 2.181; cf. al-rīḥānī 1955: 9). cf. also rīḥānī’s essay “al-shi‘r al-manthūr” (al-rīḥānī 1957: 45–47). nadeem naimy suggests that rīḥānī’s avoidance of the traditional rhyme and meter might be attributed in part to the fact that rīḥānī had not been schooled in an arabic-speaking milieu, living as he did in the united states: rīḥānī’s “break from the classical seems not to represent a genuine new development, being in reality more of a necessity for him rather than a deliberate artistic choice” (naimy 1985: 20). 18 on rīḥānī and the shi‘r manthūr, sources available in english include moreh 1968; moreh 1976: 292–296; jayyusi 1977: 2.631; khouri 1987: 103–104; and imangulieva 2009: 85–121 (where the translator renders shi‘r manthūr as “shi‘r mansur”). cf. in arabic for example dāwūd 1967: 87–92; ‘izz al-dīn 2007: 107. 19 an early example of the qaṣīdat al-nathr is adūnīs’s poem “waḥdat al-ya’s,” which combines short, lineated, occasionally rhymed verse with brief prose paragraphs (adūnīs 1958). on the qaṣīdat al-nathr see for example moreh 1976: 305–309; jayyusi 1977: 2.626–640; khouri 1987: 109–110. 91early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms forth, unleash.”) the iraqi poet jamīl ṣidqī al-zahāwī published an unrhymed metrically regular poem, dated 1905, titled “al-shi‘r al-mursal” (moreh 1966: 490). moreh describes al-zahāwī’s poem as “us[ing] the ṭawīl metre, the traditional diction, and the end-stopped line,” as well as a “var[iable] type of foot in the ḍarb (the last foot in the line), a technique which is forbidden in arabic prosody” (moreh 1966: 491).20 the term shi‘r mursal is also used by ‘alī aḥmad bākathīr to refer to the “mixture of blank run-on verse and free verse” he used in translating romeo and juliet (moreh 1966: 496). the term shi‘r ḥurr, “free poetry,” appears as early as 1910 as a calque simultaneously upon two terms, the french vers libres and the english free verse, as explained above in the paragraph on shi‘r manthūr. in context, then, the term shi‘r ḥurr refers originally to unrhymed nonmetrical poetry (albeit with occasional rhymes and with some lines written partially in meter). as the scholar ahmed al-tami shows, the term shi‘r ḥurr would subsequently be used to refer to a variety of other poetic forms, as well. for instance, in 1926 the poet aḥmad zakī abū shādī used the term to refer to unrhymed, polymetric poetry, that is, poetry which “mix[es] different metres in one poem” (al-tami 1993: 187).21 in 1932 the poet khalīl shaybūb used the term to refer to unrhymed, polypodic, polymetric poetry, seemingly equating the shi‘r ḥurr with the shi‘r muṭlaq (altami 1993: 188). in 1943, duraynī khashabah defined shi‘r ḥurr as unrhymed, polymetric, monopodic poetry, with the added proviso that shi‘r ḥurr “gives the poet the freedom to create new rhythms” (al-tami 1993: 188). the iraqi poet nāzik al-malā’ikah mainly agrees with khashabah’s definition, although malā’ikah promotes strict monopody, for example in the introduction to her 1949 poetry collection shaẓāyā wa-ramād. malā’ikah is a major proponent of shi‘r ḥurr as unrhymed, polymetric, monopodic poetry, and her understanding of the term has come to have a wide acceptance; but at the same time, other poets have understood shi‘r ḥurr to mean a kind of unrhymed, polymetric, polypodic verse form (al-tami 1993: 188–191). by way of summary, it should be noted that the term shi‘r ḥurr has referred to a number of different poetic forms over time, and the meaning of the term is largely context-dependent. several critics have tried their hands at clarifying the history of the term, and 20 on al-zahāwī and shi‘r mursal see also badawi 1975: 50–51; ‘izz al-dīn 2007: 107. 21 al-tami refers to abū shādī’s poetry collection al-shafaq al-bākī, in which the term shi‘r ḥurr is followed by the english-language term “free verse” in parentheses. (in the same brief prose interpolation, shi‘r mursal is followed by the term “blank verse” in parentheses.) abū shādī 1926: 535. 92 scott mehl while there is some agreement as to dates and persons, there is little agreement on why the term has evolved as it has.22 proposed by the writer mikhail naimy in his essay collection al-ghirbāl (1923), the term shi‘r muṭlaq (unconstrained poetry) refers originally to unrhymed monometric monopodic poetry (moreh 1966: 498). the poet khalīl shaybūb would later use the term shi‘r muṭlaq to refer to his unrhymed polymetric polypodic poetry, which “employ[ed] more than one metre in each poem, abandon[ed] the two symmetrically formed hemistichs, the monorhyme of the poem, and var[ied] the length of each line according to the exact form of the metre being used” (al-tami 1993: 188). as noted above, shaybūb uses the term shi‘r muṭlaq as a synonym of shi‘r ḥurr. the adjective muṭlaq derives from the root ṭ-l-q, which means “release, unbind, set free.” critics often described the new form of poetry as having been set free from the “strictures” or “bonds” (quyūd) of the old poetry; in such descriptions the word for “set free” is typically derived from the root ṭ-l-q. for instance, niqūlā fayyāḍ labels an unrhymed, polymetric, monopodic poem he publishes in 1924 as a shi’r ṭalq (moreh 1988 [1977]: 430–431). fayyāḍ also uses the term shi’r ṭalīq (moreh 1976: 211). another related term is shi’r munṭaliq, used as early as 1937 to designate unrhymed polymetric monopodic verse.23 in 1957 the poet yūsuf al-khāl proposed the term shi‘r ḥadīth, “modern poetry,” as a designator for the new non-traditional poetries (al-tami 1993: 191). (the term had appeared in print as early as 1953.)24 according to ahmed al-tami, al-khāl proposed the term shi‘r ḥadīth as an improvement over shi‘r ḥurr. al-tami summarises what he perceives to be the disadvantages of the term shi‘r ḥurr as follows: the word ḥurr has, then, generated a kind of contempt for any metrical or rhymed poetry; […] the word has implied that traditional poetry is ‘enslaved.’ 22 see moreh 1966: 503–504; badawi 1975: 225–226; moreh 1976: 190–212; and jayyusi 1977: 1.89–91 for an attempt to clarify the various meanings of shi‘r ḥurr, shi‘r mursal, and qaṣīdat al-nathr; see also jayyusi 1977: 2.630, khouri 1987: 101–105, and al-tami 1993. in arabic cf. also al-yāfī 1986: 103–150; ‘izz al-dīn 2007: 107–112. 23 ‘alī aḥmad bākathīr described his 1937 translation of romeo and juliet as shi‘r munṭaliq. muḥammad al-nuwayhī proposed the same term as a designator for the nontraditional poetry being written with increasing frequency during the postwar years: “an-nuwayhī […] explains that the word munṭaliq means the freedom to vary the number of feet in each line rather than being restricted by traditional prosody, although this freedom does not extend as far as relinquishing all meter” (al-tami 1993: 195). 24 al-tami claims that “modernity” was being used, by the writer nihād al-takarlī, “not only in its historic sense but also its artistic and philosophical sense” (1993: 191). 93early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms this arises from an inaccurate application of non-arabic poetic terms, and some critics believe that the term ‘free verse’ has been imposed on arabic poetry. to resolve this problem, poets and critics have introduced, individually, a number of alternative terms. […] we are seeking a term which distinguishes the poetry based on the irregular recurrence of a traditional taf ‘īlah [metrical foot] […] (al-tami 1993: 191). as a point of clarification, shi‘r ḥadīth, like the term shi‘r ḥurr in one of its 1950s meanings, refers to unrhymed, polymetric, monopodic verse. the adjective ḥadīth is derived from the root ḥ-d-th, which can mean “new, modern.” the same root yields several other terms for the new poetries: shi‘r al-ḥadāthah (“poetry of modernity”) (al-tami 1993: 194), al-shi‘r al-muḥdath (“modern or recent poetry”),25 al-shi‘r al-mustaḥdath (“modern or new poetry”).26 similar to the terms invoking modernity is the term shi‘r jadīd, “new poetry,” proposed in 1961 by the egyptian intellectual zakī najīb maḥmūd (al-tami 1993: 193). shi‘r jadīd was meant to be an improvement on the term shi‘r ḥurr. so was the term shi‘r mu‘āṣir, “contemporary poetry,” a commonly used label that may ambiguously refer to the new forms of poetry (roughly equivalent, then, with shi‘r ḥurr), or to any poetry, regardless of form, written in the twentieth century (al-tami 1993: 194). the term shi‘r al-taf ‘īlah (“poetry of the taf ‘īlah [metrical foot]”) was proposed by ‘izz al-dīn al-amīn in 1964 as a way to emphasise the monopody of the unrhymed and polymetrical verse being written with increasing frequency in the postwar years (al-tami 1993: 195). although the number of feet per line may vary in the new form of poetry (polymetry), and although rhyme is optional, the poetry called shi‘r al-taf ‘īlah hews to one of the sixteen traditional taf ‘īlāt throughout the poem.27 25 proposed by yūsuf al-khāl in 1978, twenty-one years after he had proposed the term al-shi‘r al-ḥadīth (al-tami 1993: 197). 26 used by ibrāhim al-ibyārī in 1963 (al-tami 1993: 197). 27 al-tami praises the term shi‘r al-taf ‘īlah as the least ambiguous of the labels for the new poetry: it “distinguishes the movement’s poetry from other forms, whether new or traditional. as already mentioned, the prosody of [this] poetry […] is based on using the taf ‘īlah freely in each line. this is the main characteristic of this poetry; that is to say, its stylistic structure is based on the taf ‘īlah. […] furthermore, this term can not [sic] apply to any other form of poetry. thus, it achieves what all the other terms have failed to do. another advantage is that, unlike ash-shi‘r al-ḥurr, it is not a translated term that is liable to be confused with its meaning in its language of origin” (al-tami 1993: 198). 94 scott mehl the term shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya, “poetry in the colloquial,” refers to poetry written “in the egyptian spoken rather than the standard written register of arabic” (radwan 2012: 37). the term was coined in 1961 by a group of egyptian poets who had written poetry in a diction that drew from the local spoken dialect, rather than from the established canon of poetry alone. “not all ‘āmmiyya poetry is written in free verse,” the scholar noha radwan writes, suggesting that much of it is written in nontraditional prosodic forms (2012: 51). the distinguishing characteristic of shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya is its use of vocabulary that has not hitherto been present in the canonical poetic register – i.e., vernacular or colloquial diction. rhyme may be present or absent in shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya; likewise with recurrent patterns of meter, line length, or strophic contour. conclusions while it may not be surprising that in both japanese and arabic there are calques for the term “free verse” (jiyūshi and shi‘r ḥurr; cf. shi‘r ṭalq and other terms in root ṭ-l-q), what is striking is, first, that in both languages a number of neologisms were proposed as alternative terms. (there is no reason to assume that a new poetic form will be greeted with many different names. the situation is different in english, as will appear below.) second, in both languages a calque on “free verse” appeared relatively early in the history of the new form’s reception, and in neither language, apparently, did the calque establish such dominance that it prevented the formation of competing neologisms. in schematic form, the following similarities are most noteworthy: prose poem: japanese: sanbunshi arabic: shi‘r mursal, shi‘r manthūr, qaṣīdat al-nathr modern poem: japanese: gendaishi, kindaishi arabic: shi‘r ḥadīth, other terms in root ḥ-d-th colloquial poem: japanese: kōgoshi, genbun itchi shi arabic: shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya 95early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms why would similar terms be proposed in such different literary contexts? some of the evidence is to be found in the critics’ and poets’ writings about the new poetic forms. poets and critics gave various reasons both for and against writing the new non-traditional free-verse poetry, but it is possible to tease out a few important themes that are common to the japanese and arabic cases.28 for one, the new poetic forms were often described as being better adapted to, or more fit for, or better suited to, societies that were undergoing pervasive transformation, and it is not hard to surmise – although it is difficult to prove conclusively – that a vocabulary derived from darwinian evolutionary theory lay behind such descriptions.29 “there can be no doubt whatsoever,” sōma gyofū comments in an article published in february 1908, “that the complex weave of feelings felt by people today [gendaijin] must suffer severely from the restrictions imposed by historically determined [poetic] forms” (sōma 1967 [1908]: 336). “unless poetry breaks its harmful habits, it will not be able to make contact with the hearts of people today [gendaijin],” gyofū later claims in the same essay (sōma 1967 [1908]: 337). the poet miki rofū places a similar emphasis on the necessity of what might be called relevance to present concerns when he writes, “it is evident that an elegant poetic diction, being at a distant remove from life as it is actually lived [jissai seikatsu], cannot express the thoughts and feelings of the present age” (miki 1967 [1908]: 355).30 new forms of modern arabic poetry have been described in similar terms. shmuel moreh writes: “shi‘r manthūr [prose poetry] was an artistic necessity for a new spiritual and emotional sensibility among young writers who were unable to master arabic metrics and the diction of conventional arabic poetry, or felt that the form of the arabic qaṣīda was not suitable for their new themes and 28 a different approach would have been to place more emphasis on the differences between the japanese and arabic terms – for example, attending to the fact that in japanese there was the term “naturalist poetry” but not in arabic, or the fact that in arabic there was the term “poetry of the [metrical foot]” but not in japanese, and so on. i believe such a course has merit, but for reasons of space i have decided to concentrate on the similarities between the two traditions. 29 social darwinism had a great impact on japanese thought in the late nineteenth century, by way of translation and by inclusion in university syllabi (thomas 2001: 103–108); a complete translation of darwin’s origin of species had appeared in arabic by 1928, with partial translations before then (elshakry 2013: 261–305). 30 compare chuzan senshi’s preface to the shintaishishō: “the ideas which we can exhaustive[ly] convey through such modes of expression as the thirty-one syllables, or satirical verse, are those of a duration no longer than fireworks or shooting stars. when we get ideas in our head with the slightest continuity and try to enunciate them, such modes of expression are basically inadequate” (kamiyama et al. 1975: 23). 96 scott mehl diction” (moreh 1974: 233). experiments in shi‘r mursal were motivated by a wish to “inject [arabic poetry] with new blood so as to cope with the development of european literature” (moreh 1988 [1977]: 427). the claim that new verse forms were better suited to the contemporary environment was rooted in an attitude toward the past that can best be described as ambivalent. on the one hand, the language in which traditional poetry is written comes to be defined as the non-modern, the not-new: this view is crystallised in the critic oritake ryōhō’s pronouncement, “the language of the past is a foreign language” (oritake 1967 [1908]: 351). similar views can be found in the writings of poets who played a role in promoting non-traditional poetic forms in arabic. the poet amīn al-rīḥānī characterises his poetic practice in the following terms, comparing his poetic innovations with resistance to ankylotic manifestations of authority: [m]y aim throughout has been twofold, namely: to expose and combat the evils of the autocracy and hierarchy under which my country is tottering and to establish a new school of literature in arabic. […] contemporary arabic literature is still swathed with classic formulas, and i find myself bound to break with the past even in this. the grammarians are just as bad as the priests and the autocracy in point of authority. i am also introducing a sort of free verse into my language […] such is my work in arabic. (naimy 1985: 17–18) in contrast, some poets and critics who supported the new poetic forms attempted to establish a link between the new and the old. as one of the compilers of the shintaishishō explains it in his preface: in western lands people usually compose poetry using the ordinary vocabulary of the people, and everyone directly expresses what is on his mind. in ancient times we did the same thing in japan, but when today’s scholars compose poetry (shi) they use chinese words; and when they write japanese verse (uta) they choose an archaic vocabulary. ordinary language, treated as inferior and vulgar, is not employed. this cannot but be an error in judgment. (kamiyama et al. 1975: 19) again, a similar type of claim can be found in the writings of arabophone critics and poets: in seeking justification for emancipating their verse from […] rigid quantitative patterns, this group of poets [i.e., who write prose poems] insists on reminding their critics of the often forgotten fact that their freedom is in effect a return to 97early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms the freedom of composition which, three centuries before [the 8th century ce grammarian] al-khalīl formulated his metrics, stimulated the poetic creativity of several generations of preand early islamic poets and gave rise to the rich and varied rhythms of their poetic productions. (khouri 1987: 112) while some poets and critics tried to characterise the new verse forms as a salutary break with the stagnant, maladapted forms of the past, other poets and critics asserted that the new forms were actually a recursion to old poetic ideals. the above considerations help to explain why japanese and arabic poets might see fit to refer to the new free-verse poetry as “modern poetry.” it is a little harder to explain how the term “colloquial poetry” came to be used in both languages, even granting that the referent of “colloquial” is not precisely the same. in the japanese case, one of the immediate reasons for promoting a colloquial style in poetry was that the colloquial had made such headway in contemporary prose. the perceived success of the genbun itchi style novel encouraged poets to imitate that success, and the free-verse form was presented as the form of the future – i.e., the form of the present, the form of modernity. if the colloquial register enjoyed such popularity in prose, the poets reasoned, it was because the colloquial register was better suited for addressing the problems of contemporary, real life. in an essay titled “gendai no shi” (“modern poetry”), the critic shimamura hōgetsu concludes, “if we think historically, twenty years ago, in japanese prose, no one would have dreamed of deeming the endings de aru and arimasu suitable for literature [bunshō], but in prose [being written] now, genbun itchi has won. and so shall it be in poetry” (shimamura 1967 [1907]: 332). the japanese symbolist poet kanbara ariake likewise compares the colloquial register with contemporary prose: “by genbun itchi, i do not mean the style of popular songs [zokuyōchō, min’yōchō] but rather the language found in contemporary fiction [ima no shōsetsu], the everyday language [futsū no kotoba]…” (kanbara 1967 [1908]: 333). in modern arabic, however, it appears that the colloquial language retains a nonliterary stigma both in prose and in poetry. writing of the modern arabic drama and the novel, the scholar pierre cachia has stated that “[t]he most important development concerning the colloquial in modern times is that it has gained a foothold in the theatre” – a form that is at least nominally intended for a viva voce presentation – “and [only] a toe-hold in the dialogue of the novel and short story” (cachia 1990: 66). in their studies published in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the scholars salma khadra jayyusi and shmuel moreh both indicate that the use of the colloquial in poetry remains rare: jayyusi grudgingly admits that “[t]he sporadic use of colloquial words […] is perhaps more easily achieved in a prose medium” (1977: 637; cf. 98 scott mehl 658–675), while moreh concludes his study of modern arabic poetry by saying that “a growing number of poets and critics agree […] that colloquial poetry is part of the modern arabic literary heritage and should not be cast out as an inferior genre which has no right to exist,” leaving it implicit that the opposition to the colloquial in poetry has been vehement (1976: 318). one of the pioneers of modern colloquial poetry in arabic intended to create “a popular genre” of poetry, in noha radwan’s words, “inspired first and foremost by the need for mass communication, and mass education” (2012: 42). as for the term “prose poetry,” a case-by-case analysis is probably the soundest way of proceeding. in the japanese case, “prose poetry” (sanbunshi) – a synonym, temporarily, for the terms “free poetry” (jiyūshi) and “colloquial poetry” (kōgoshi) – probably referred to the alleged resemblance between the diction of the new poetry and that of contemporary prose (cf. the discussion of the term “colloquial poetry” above). in arabic, though, there was a “centuries-old […] tradition of restricting the term shi‘r to poetry written in the canonical literary language” (radwan 2012: 37), and any poetry that did not fit the prescribed scheme of rhythm or rhyme was already partly on its way to being prose. another point worth mentioning, however, in connection with the term “prose poetry” is the prominence of the novel in both modern japanese and in modern arabic. the novel, as has already been suggested in the introduction of this essay, has enjoyed a remarkable international success. one might hypothesise that the novel, even early in the twentieth century, was establishing itself as what the polish critic ireneusz opacki would call a royal genre, a genre whose dominance affects all other literary forms in its environment. according to opacki, a royal genre “draws toward itself all the remaining literary genres of a given period” (opacki 2000: 122). “but,” opacki continues, “this does not lead to the fusion of all literature into one genre. the distinguishing features of the various genres survive” (2000: 122). with prose being the medium of the royal genre (i.e., the novel) in both modern japanese and in modern arabic, the advocates of a new kind of poetry might positively wish to proclaim it as having the qualities of prose.31 these reflections must remain at the level of speculation, however. it also should be stated that without investigation into other languages and literary traditions, it remains difficult to gauge how noteworthy the similarities 31 one might suppose that only the advocates of a free-verse poetry would want to assert its similarity to the (putatively dominant) novel by calling it prose poetry, but it is easy to see that opponents of the free-verse poetry might also see the aptness of such a designation: because they might be likely to argue that free-verse poetry is not poetry at all, but prose. 99early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms between the japanese and arabic terminologies for free verse really are.32 a multi-language, multi-tradition study is beyond the scope of this essay, but i will mention that, in comparison with the japanese and arabic cases, the english-language terminology for free verse presents a different prospect. the english-language field is dominated by two terms: vers libre, a direct borrowing from french; and free verse, the english calque on the french term. in reference to new forms of poetry being written in english in the first decade of the twentieth century, annie finch has written that “it is […] no accident that the first term used for the new [poetry] movement in english was the french phrase vers libre” (2000: 86). the term appears in english as early as the mid-1880s, with initial reference, as might be expected, to poetry in french.33 the term free verse appears as a calque on different but related french terms: vers libres and vers libre.34 (the earlier vers libres allowed variable feet and rhyme schemes; vers libre typically referred to unrhymed, unmetrical verse.) for an early use of free verse in a meaning that approximates that of vers libre, one can look to vance thompson, whose french portraits includes the following encomium of free verse: “what is called free verse is merely verse that obeys a larger law than that of uniform syllables and ordered rhyme. the great, brawling strophes of whitman are based upon a well-reasoned law of verse. and just as poe created modern french prose, whitman re-created modern french verse” (thompson 1900: 70). it is true that individual poets proposed other terms for their own free-verse poetries, but these terms did not have a wide circulation.35 32 i thank one of the anonymous readers for this point. the earlier versions of this essay treated the japanese and arabic cases only; the anonymous reader recommended that i situate these two terminological fields in relation to a third. 33 “…vers libre, in which the ordinary reader sees nothing but a succession of unequal verses put together without rule at the caprice of the poet” (tilly 1886: 260). this is tilley’s translation of a passage from the french; he leaves vers libre untranslated. 34 for an example of free verse calqued on vers libres, see warren 1890. 35 the english writer martin tupper described the texts in his 1837 proverbial philosophy as “rhythmics.” these were unrhymed short texts without a discernible regular prosody (hudson 1949: 42–43). the american poet amy lowell referred to some of her poems as unrhymed cadence (1921 [1914]: x). she preferred the term “unrhymed cadence” to the term vers libre primarily because the english term was, she supposed, clearer to english-speaking readers (1921 [1914]: x). stanley k. coffman has said that the term “unrhymed cadence” was coined by f. s. flint (1951: 98–99). (coffman adds that flint’s unrhymed cadence “is not precisely the concept of the french vers libristes” [1951: 111].) the attribution of the term “unrhymed cadence” seems a contested point: as rené taupin has written, “if amy lowell deserves credit for pursuing scientific studies of rhythm the furthest, she was not responsible for originating the theory of 100 scott mehl the term “new poetry” was “[t]he contemporary name [in english] generally used for modern verse,” according to chris beyers (2001: 61). the term had its greatest visibility in connection with the anthologies titled the new poetry, edited by harriet monroe, with the first version appearing in 1917 (abbott 1984: 90). walt whitman also uses the term “new poetry” as the heading of a subsection in his short essay “ventures on an old theme,” but it appears he is using the term in a general way (whitman 1902 [1882]: 271). for the purposes of this essay, the term new poetry catches the eye because of its resonance with the arabic shi‘r jadīd (new poetry) and with the japanese shintaishi (new-style poetry), even though the latter referred to metrically regular poetry. i grant that it is not particularly surprising that a non-traditional variety of poetry would be called new poetry, but it is instructive to note how different were the circumstances in which these terms appeared, and the poetic forms to which they were applied. the japanese term was coined in 1882 to apply to metrically regular poetry in lyrics of an indeterminate number of lines; the english term was used as early as 1917 to apply, in the main, to what was otherwise called free verse; the arabic term was proposed as an improvement on the more common shi‘r ḥurr as late as 1961 (even though the phrase shi‘r jadīd had almost certainly been used earlier than that, albeit without the intention to baptise a poetic form, in the kripkean sense mentioned in the introduction to this essay). one point where the english case evidently differs from the japanese and arabic is that the terminology for free verse in english has not been perceived as a problem for critical scrutiny. the welter of terms in japanese and arabic has occasioned the work of scholarly sifting and reflection; the english terms, it would appear, have not.36 a minimal explanation of the similar clusters of japanese and arabic neologisms for “free verse” would amount to a history of several concepts in radically different contexts. it would entail a rendering of the ecologies of the concepts of prose, the colloquial, and the modern, to say nothing of the concepts of poetry and freedom, both in japan and in the arab world. at the unrhymed cadence, or ‘free verse.’ the whole imagist group, and especially [f. s.] flint, were responsible for its origin” (1985: 109). in the preface to her 1918 collection can grande’s castle, lowell dubbed the four long writings collected therein “polyphonic prose” (lowell 1918: x). but, aside from a number of lineated passages in the title “poem,” the texts in this collection are typeset as prose without line breaks. 36 steele offers a provocative reflection on the meaning of the fact that the english calque came to be “free verse” instead of “free poetry” (steele 1990: 285). 101early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms time when free verse poetry was first being written and debated, japanese and arabophone critics were actively engaged with many of the literatures of europe, and therefore it would be necessary to describe and historicise the ecologies of the same concepts in (to set a pragmatic limit) french and english, as well. there is no space here for undertaking so comprehensive a study; for the moment, let this essay stand as a preliminary to future work in comparative poetics.37 references abbott, craig s. 1984. publishing the new poetry: harriet monroe’s anthology. in: journal of modern literature 11(1) (march), 89–108. aboussena, mona 1986. language as culture. in: szabolcsi, miklós; kovács, józsef (eds.), change in language and literature: proceedings of the 16th triennial congress of the fédération internationale des langues et littératures modernes. budapest: akadémiai kiadó, 201–230. abū shādī, aḥmad zākī 1926. al-shafaq al-bākī. misr: al-matba‘ah al-salfiyah. adūnīs 1958. waḥdat al-ya’s. in: shi‘r 7/8, 10–23. badawi, muḥammad muṣṭafā 1973. convention and revolt in modern arabic poetry. in: von grunebaum, gustave edmund (ed.), arabic poetry: theory and development. wiesbaden: otto harrassowitz, 181–208. badawi, muḥammad muṣṭafā 1975. a critical introduction to modern arabic poetry. cambridge university press. beyers, chris 2001. a history of free verse. fayetteville, arkansas: university of arkansas press. 37 the author wishes to thank the editors of studia metrica et poetica for their guidance; the two anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions; and the participants in the conference “words, concepts, metaphors: new advances in historical semantics” at the university of chicago in may 2014: robert bird, joel calahan, monica felix, luba golburt, yury kagarlitskiy, ilya kliger, michèle lowrie, boris maslov, william nickell, jillian porter, haun saussy, victoria somoff, davide stimilli, and leon wash. nicholas albertson, mika endō, and mamiko suzuki made incisive comments on a postconference draft of the paper. this article is dedicated to my first arabic teacher, kay heikkinen, and to the memory of my last arabic teacher, farouk mustafa. 102 scott mehl burnshaw, stanley et al. (eds.) 2003. the modern hebrew poem itself: from the beginnings to 1990… one hundred five poems in a new presentation, a new and updated edition. detroit: wayne state university press. cachia, pierre 1990. an overview of modern arabic literature. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. coffman, stanley k. 1951. imagism: a chapter for the history of modern poetry. norman, ok: university of oklahoma press. dāwūd, anas 1967. al-tajdīd fī shi‘r al-mahjar. cairo: dār al-kātib al-‘arabī. eliot, thomas stearns 1975. selected prose of t. s. eliot. new york city: hbj/farrar, straus and giroux. elshakry, marwa 2013. reading darwin in arabic 1860–1950. chicago: university of chicago press. finch, annie 2000. the ghost of meter: culture and prosody in american free verse. ann arbor: university of michigan press. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. history of european versification. oxford: oxford university press. genette, gérard 1987. seuils. paris: seuil. hattori yoshika 1963. kōgoshi shōshi. tokyo: shōrinsha. hitomi enkichi 1954a. kōgoshi no hattatsu (3). in: gakuen (october), 6–106. hitomi enkichi 1954b. kōgoshi no hattatsu (4). in: gakuen (november), 6–65. hitomi enkichi (ed.) 1967. nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten. hudson, derek 1949. martin tupper: his rise and fall. london: constable. imangulieva, aida 2009. gibran, rihani and naimy: east-west interactions in early twentieth-century arab literature. thomson, robin (trans.). oxford: inner farne press. ‘izz al-dīn, yūsuf 2007. al-tajdīd fī al-shi‘r al-ḥadīth. damascus: al-mada. jacobowitz, seth 2006. the scene of writing in meiji japan: media, language, and realism in the modern japanese novel. [unpublished dissertation. cornell university]. jayyusi, salma khadra 1977. trends and movements in modern arabic poetry (2 vols.). leiden: brill. 103early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms kamiyama, tamie et al. (eds.) 1975. toward a modern japanese poetry. in: literature east and west xix, 1–4. kanbara ariake 1967 [1908]. genbun itchi no shiika. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 333–334. karimi-hakkak, ahmad 1978. an anthology of modern persian poetry. boulder, co: westview press. karimi-hakkak, ahmad 1995. recasting persian poetry: scenarios of poetic modernity in iran. salt lake city: university of utah press. khouri, mounah 1987. the prose poem as a new form in modern arabic poetry. in: khouri, mounah, studies in contemporary arabic poetry and criticism. piedmont, ca: jahan book co., 101–121. kripke, saul 1980. naming and necessity. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. layoun, mary 1990. travels of a genre: the modern novel and ideology. princeton university press. lowell, amy 1918. can grande’s castle. new york: macmillan. lowell, amy 1921 [1914]. sword blades and poppy seed. boston and new york: houghton mifflin. manfalūṭī, muṣṭafā luṭfī 1965 [1912]. mukhtārāt. misr: al-maktabah al-tijārīyah alkubrā. manfredi, paul 2014. modern poetry in china: a visual-verbal dynamic. amherst, ny: cambria press. mehl, scott 2013. the concept of expression in modern japanese poetics: thought, consciousness, language. [unpublished ph.d. dissertation, university of chicago]. mehl, scott 2015. the beginnings of japanese free-verse poetry and the dynamics of cultural change. in: japan review 28, 53–82 (forthcoming). miki rofū 1967 [1908]. jiyū naru shiika. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 354–357. moreh, shmuel 1966. blank verse (al-shi‘r al-mursal) in modern arabic literature. in: bulletin of the school of oriental and african studies, university of london, 483–505. moreh, shmuel 1968. poetry in prose (al-shi‘r al-manthūr) in modern arabic literature. in: middle eastern studies, 4(4), 330–360. 104 scott mehl moreh, shmuel 1974. five writers of shi‘r manthūr. in: middle eastern studies 10(3), 229–233. moreh, shmuel 1975. an outline of the development of modern arabic literature. in: oriente moderno, anno lv, 102, 8–28. moreh, shmuel 1976. modern arabic poetry 1800–1970: the development of its forms and themes under the influence of western literature. leiden: brill. moreh, shmuel 1988 [1977]. technique and form in modern arabic poetry up to world war ii. in: moreh, shmuel, studies in modern arabic prose and poetry. leiden: brill, 116–135. moussa-mahmoud, fatma 1996. changing technique in modern arabic poetry: a reflection of changing values? in: smart, jack r. (ed.), tradition and modernity in arabic language and literature. surrey: curzon, 61–74. naimy, nadeem 1985. the lebanese prophets of new york. american university of beirut. okkotsu akio 1967. kōgo jiyūshiron sono ta. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 727–772. okkotsu akio 1991. jiyūshi sōseiki ni kansuru shōken. in: gendai shijin gunzō minshūshiha to sono shūken. tokyo: kasama shoin, 3–32. opacki, ireneusz 2000. royal genres. in: duff, david (ed.), modern genre theory. pearson education limited, 118–126. oritake ryōhō 1967 [1908]. genbun itchi shi. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 350–352. radwan, noha 2012. egyptian colloquial poetry in the modern arabic canon: new readings of shi‘r al-‘ammiyya. new york: palgrave macmillan. al-rīḥānī, amīn 1910. al-rīḥānīyāt. beirut: maṭba‘at al-‘ilmīyāt. al-rīḥānī, amīn 1955. hutāf al-awdiyāt: shi‘r manthūr. beirut: dār rīḥānī. al-rīḥānī, amīn 1957. adab wa-fann. beirut: dār rīḥānī. scott, clive 1980. french verse-art: a study. cambridge: cambridge university press. scott, clive 1986. a question of syllables: essays in nineteenth-century french verse. cambridge: cambridge university press. scott, clive 1990. vers libre: the emergence of free verse in france 1886–1914. oxford: clarendon press. 105early twentieth-century terms for new verse forms scott, clive 1998. the poetics of french verse: studies in reading. oxford: clarendon press. shimamura hōgetsu 1967 [1907]. gendai no shi. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 331–333. smart, jack r. (ed.) 1996. tradition and modernity in arabic language and literature. surrey: curzon press. sōma gyofū 1908. mizukara azakeru shikai. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 335–337. steele, timothy 1990. missing measures: modern poetry and the revolt against meter. university of arkansas press. al-tami, ahmed 1993. arabic ‘free verse’: the problem of terminology. in: journal of arabic literature 24(2) (july), 185–198. taupin, rené 1985. the influence of french symbolism on modern american poetry. new york: ams press. thomas, julia adeney 2001. reconfiguring modernity: concepts of nature in japanese political ideology. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. thompson, vance 1900. french portraits: being appreciations of the writers of young france. boston: richard g. badger & co. tilley, arthur 1886. la fontaine’s fables. in: macmillan’s magazine 54 (1886), 250–260. tomasi, massimiliano 2004. rhetoric in modern japan: western influences on the development of narrative and oratorical style. honolulu: university of hawaii press. twine, nanette 1991. language and the modern state: the reform of written japanese. london and new york: routledge. ueda bin 1901. miotsukushi. tokyo: chikeidō shoten. ueda bin 1967 [1905]. kaichōon jo. in: hitomi enkichi (ed.), nihon kindai shiron no kenkyū: sono shiryō to kaisetsu. tokyo: kadokawa shoten, 240–242. van gelder, geert jan 1996. najīb al-ḥaddād’s essay on the comparison of arabic and european poetry. in: smart, jack r. (ed.), tradition and modernity in arabic language and literature. surrey: curzon press, 144–152. warren, frederick morris 1890. review of becker, zur geschichte der vers libres in der neu-französischen poesie. in: modern language notes 5(2) (february), 58. 106 scott mehl whitman, walt 1902 [1882]. ventures on an old theme. in: bucke, richard maurice; harned, thomas b.; traubel, horace l. (eds.), the complete writings of walt whitman, vol. 5. new york and london: g. p. putnam’s sons, 270–274. al-yāfī, na‘īm 1986. al-shi‘r al-‘arabī al-ḥadīth. damascus: dār al-majidd. yeh, michelle 1991. modern chinese poetry: theory and practice since 1917. new haven and london: yale university press. verse forms as bearers of semantic values teresa dobrzyńska*1 abstract. verse forms may be employed as bearers of semantic values. the present paper intends to show the richness of this resource in literary texts. the semantic values of particular verse structures are interpreted here in terms of the semiotic categories introduced by c. s. peirce: as symptoms, symbols, or iconic signs. the basis for this kind of reflection is earlier systematic study of various verse forms and their linguistic morphology conducted by a group of polish and slavic researchers (as part of the comparative slavic metrics programme). the semantic value can be attributed to the fact that verse forms function as filters of various linguistic units. it is why the metrical organisation of a text determines its stylistic characteristics. a verse form may be employed and interpreted in many different ways; for instance, to represent the social status of the speaker or to differentiate between various literary genres. many metrical forms perform an iconic function. some semantic values are derived from the intertextual relationships of a poem. verse structure may also be seen as a kind of author’s signature. it may also be employed to perform axiological functions. keywords: verse forms, metrics, versology, semiotics, semantic value, intertextual relationship, axiology 1. introductory remarks as is known, verse is a form of utterance where the text is doubly segmented as to syntax and verse/line, with the equivalent segments of a poem often being detached on the metrics principle: based on a fixed number of syllables, feet, or accents. this additional segmentation of text makes the difference between poem and prose, the latter being ‘unfettered speech’. both segmentations, the syntactic and the verse (line)-related one, make use in ‘spontaneous speech’ of a set of prosodic signals of fragmentation. segments are signalled by shorter or longer pauses, and the preceding ‘fallings’ or ‘risings’ of the voice (cadences and anti-cadences). verse is a product of the archaic oral culture and, in spite of the expansion of writing, it has retained an association with its original oral form (the association that makes its presence * author’s address: teresa dobrzyńska, institute of literary research, polish academy of sciences, 00-714 warszawa, ul. czerniakowska 34 m. 120, poland. e-mail: dobter@hotmail.com. studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 103–128 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.05 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.05 104 teresa dobrzyńska felt even during silent reading, as one senses the rhythmical structure of a text in verse form). here it becomes quite clear that verse makes use of particularly diversified, doubly motivated prosodic means, which indicate segmentations of a text into sentences/phrases and their parts, as well as lines of verse and rhythmical segments thereof.1 a piece set in verse form features intonation segments isolable in line with the two corresponding segmentations, but the two segmentation rules may as well cross over each other: a sentence/phrase or a part of it may smoothly run over from one line into another (enjambment), or the sentence’s/phrase’s limits fall within a line, thus breaking its cohesive course. as a result, the double segmentation adds richer means of shaping the poem’s utterance, which is decisive for the piece’s stylistic uniqueness. application of varied metrical rules and employment of other means which highlight the segments inside the text, such as rhymes or strophic arrangements of a specified sort, additionally enriches the repertoire of verse forms in use in a given literature. a stylistic characterisation of various verse structures results from the fact that they create different conditions of ‘filtering’ the linguistic material. the verse segmentation rule, as assumed for a given metrical variety, is the reason why the language ‘timber’ is selected and matched in a specific manner; thus, the individual linguistic elements appear at a lesser or higher frequency. a poem which realises a certain rhythmical pattern admits, prefers, or obstructs words with a specified width or stretch and place of stress, certain parts of speech, or even certain specified types of sentence or phrase. verse utterances representing diverse metrical arrangements form, therefore, a separate variety of texts. they differ as to the linguistic filling within the specific types of poem. consequently, these stylistically diverse kinds of poem may become carriers of various sign-related functions. approaching the oratio vincta as a characterised fashion of speaking, encumbered with a certain meaning, is apparent already with the oldest uses of verse – those, in specific, where rhythm-bound utterances, imbued with parallelisms, became set against ‘ordinary’ everyday speaking. the simple, and conspicuous, rhythmising procedure based on repeating a certain structure, has a universal reach, to all appearance. it is discoverable in archaic sacred texts across cultures. let us observe that the ‘verse/prose’ opposition, which overlaps with the contradistinction ‘solemn speech’/‘daily speech (colloquial language)’, reflects the basic cultural opposition: the sacred/the profane, and valorises 1 in longer lines (verses), a constant word boundary also separates the caesural segment from the clause segment. 105verse forms as bearers of semantic values both poles, in parallel. rhythmised form was applied with what expressed a divine order of the world, thus being deemed important, worthy of fixing – being part of the realm of common good. a shape of the sort was given to texts connected with religious rituals, mythological stories, or poems about heroes (or braves), as well as to hymns and other prayers as these directly addressed god (a god), or a deity. other important texts, worthy of remembrance, were also expressed in verse form: those which solidified the ideas and concepts of the world/universe, and recommended certain forms of behaviour – one example being proverbs as manifestations of collective wisdom. within the reach of prose remained what was ‘human’, earthly or mundane, of casual value, things related to everyday reality. these oppositions in the use of verse forms, contrasted with prose, have, to a degree, remained viable today. some cultures approach verse as solemn, inspired speech; hence, poetic pieces are delivered using a voice modulated in a special way. 2. systematic studies on the semantic aspects of verse forms semantic potencies residing in various forms of verse have become the subject of systematic investigation – cf. kiril f. taranovsky (taranovsky 1963), mikhail l. gasparov (gasparov 1973), jurij i. levin (levin 1982), mihhail y. lotman (lotman 1988), marina tarlinskaja (tarlinskaja 1989). since the late 1960s – early 1970s these studies also had been started in poland; they were stimulated by the development of the science of signs and sign systems, that is, semiotics, which in the polish milieu was bred by structuralism and developed in strict interrelation with the achievements of the tartu-moscow semiotic school. intense research on verse, including with regards to the sign functions, has been carried out for almost forty years at the institute of literary research, by a team of polish scholars, in association with some outstanding verse researchers from other slavic countries.2 as part of the slavonic comparative metrics programme, coordinated by lucylla pszczołowska and zdzisława kopczyńska (till 1982), the uses of linguistic material in individual forms of verse have been analysed, alongside the function performed by these forms in various slavic literatures; investigated has been the verse form, 2 the research project was joined by: miroslav červenka, svetozar petrović, mikhail l. gasparov, kveta sgallová, raja kuncheva, nina chamata, miriana stefanović, tatiana v. skulacheva, aleksander bjelčevič, mihhail y. lotman. 106 teresa dobrzyńska with the distinguishment of the genres, and ways in which verse structure is projected in translation. the outcomes of this systematic research of verse have been published in a nine-volume study (the series słowiańska metryka porównawcza [‘slavonic comparative metrics’]: kopczyńska, pszczołowska 1978, 1984; pszczołowska 1988; pszczołowska, urbańska 1992, 1993, 1998, 2004; červenka, pszczołowska, urbańska 1995, pszczołowska, lotman 2011), with the first two collections deserving special attention, as they show the tendencies in linguistic realisation of the most popular formats in different slavic literatures, thereby disclosing the reasons for the stylistic peculiarity of metrical structures used in other literatures. the all-slavonic comparative research project in question, unique internationally in its design, has been accompanied by systematic studies on polish verse, conducted by zdzisława kopczyńska, maria-renata mayenowa and lucylla pszczołowska (mayenowa 1969; kopczyńska, pszczołowska 1969, 1971, 1986; kopczyńska 1970; pszczołowska 1981, 2002; kopczyńska et al. 2007). in the subsequent years, these issues were taken up by teresa dobrzyńska (dobrzyńska, kopczyńska 1974) and dorota urbańska (urbańska 1995). interest in the semantic aspects of use of verse forms influenced the third volume of the abovementioned project edition, entitled semantyka form wierszowych [‘the semantics of verse forms’], as well as in a few other studies presented by the aforementioned group of students of verse. of key importance for this project was the concept of the ‘meta-metrical’ function of verse, as proposed by svetozar petrović (petrović 1968), which concerns the sign function of a given format. this manifests in a whole group of texts of similar rhythmic organisation where the metrical pattern itself becomes the carrier of meaning. this function ought to be seen as different from local semantic effects which occur in a given text resulting from a specific coupling of rhythmical phenomena with other textual components. maria dłuska has described local semantic effects of this type as ‘particular’ or ‘instantaneous expression’ (dłuska 1980: 64). these effects must be taken into account while interpreting individual pieces written in verse form. although research in semantic value of verse forms has a rich tradition in poland, so far the studies have focused primarily on identifying the characterised (marked) rhythmic patterns and determining the scope of individual phenomena. the sign-creation processes taking place in verse would call for more detailed analysis in terms of their semiotic aspect. 107verse forms as bearers of semantic values 3. verse forms as indexes, iconic or symbolic signs the aforementioned rhythmical phenomena used as a distinguishing feature of sacred texts or solemn style could be described in terms of the semiotic typology proposed by charles sanders peirce (buczyńska-garewicz 1975; komendziński 1996; mayenowa 2000:120), then, in search of the sources of semantisation of foot-bound speech, and of the origins of utterance of this type, one would point out the association between verse and rhythmical behaviours in humans: the rhythmical/measured movement(s) people make when dancing, marching, or parading in a religious procession; or, slow and even breathing disclosing one’s inner peace, as opposed to irregular hasty breathing being, a symptom of animation or anxiety (taranovsky 1939). orderly behaviours, different than irregular or casual behaviours, assume an indexal value: they are corporal heralds of composure, calm, self-control – the states that represent the first segment of the cosmos/chaos opposition and (as the demanded ones) are positively evaluated. the indexal marking of a rhythmic order is liable to further cultural ‘processing’. texts of metrical structure exhibit regularity, and so the cosmos/chaos opposition extends to them: they represent the pole of order and carry the related positive connotations. as part of the general category of rhythmised speech, various specialised varieties subsequently appear, which function in various ethnic circles and in various times as conventional rhythmical formations of individual genres from the sphere of sacrum. thus, signs emerge within this sphere which peirce would categorise as symbols. in antiquity, such sign value is added to hexameter as the widely adopted and recommended rhythmic form of a mythological story, epos. as the research of maria dłuska (dłuska 1980: 68, 112) and maria-renata mayenowa (mayenowa 1969) has shown, the possibility of attributing the various forms of verse to the notional categories of relevance for social life has been confirmed in the monuments of old-polish literature from the midsixteenth century: mikołaj rej’s żywot józefa [life of joseph] and marcin bielski’s komedia justyna i konstancjej [comedy of justin and constance]. there, the opposition of ‘man’/‘woman’ is the point, in its correlation with the values such as ‘important’/‘unimportant’. this opposition is expressed through contrasting sizes of syllabic verse: long lines (13/14/15-syllable verse), with a caesura, and much shorter, internally indivisible eight-syllable lines. research into the verse structure of both aforementioned plays has revealed that the opposition of these syllabic formats has been used for contrasting the speech of people occupying specified places in the social hierarchy (as holders of higher social status, men speak through a verse of considerable syllabic span, whilst 108 teresa dobrzyńska women, positioned lower in the social hierarchy, classed alongside servants, speak using octosyllables). the different treatment of the aforementioned sizes is stylistically justified, as it stems from the differences in linguistic filling of the lines. research done on thirteenand eight-syllable polish verse forms (cf. kopczyńska, pszczołowska 1978) have unveiled the differing tendencies as far as the use of rhythmic glossary and of certain syntactic structures in both formats is concerned. thirteen-syllable polish verse appears predestined to express utterances, being that they are more sophisticated in terms of syntactic structure, and thus capable of actualising a narrative technique of consideration, and shaping their oratorical genres. as a result, use of thirteen-syllable verse allows (albeit not without exception) for situating a given piece in the high register. the linguistic filling of eight-syllable lines predetermines this polish format to express intellectually uncomplicated speech, kept in the colloquial style; owing to the historical-cultural circumstances of the old-polish period, this was transposed to the ‘folk’ category. these connotations are confirmed by examples of use of eight-syllable verse in jan kochanowski’s pieśń świętojańska o sobótce [song for saint john eve festivity ‘sobotka’]; moreover, the octosyllable is related to didactics, speech targeted for children. in all the hitherto evoked situations, verse appears to be a peculiar stylistic register of speech; its sign functions are shaped as stemming from indexal signs – from the speaking style used by specific groups. a colloquial style depicted in a literary piece is an iconic projection of a real phenomenon; its correlation with the eight-syllable format of verse results from operational convention. the reasons for a different characterisation for both formats rest not only in their different spread and the possibilities of ‘filtering’ the linguistic material. any cultural phenomenon, including the forms of oratio vincta, may be viewed against their previous uses and are subject to valorisation owing to their earlier affiliation to some contexts. with this aspect in view, the octosyllable is diametrically different in polish literature from thirteen-syllable verse. whilst the ‘eight’ is a native, and thus ‘ordinary’ form, the ‘thirteen’ was borrowed from latin hymns, which gives it a value of ‘peculiarity’, ‘significance’ or ‘loftiness’. intertextual influences of this sort imbue verse structures with connotations, and thereby, certain forms of verse become carriers of meanings. another interesting interdependence becomes observable by noting the co-occurrence of specified formations of verse with the subject-matter of pieces expressed by means of them and the type of speaking ‘i’ they embraced. namely, the connotations of the syllabic eight-syllable polish format that were referred – that is, primarily, ‘ordinariness’ and ‘simplicity’, get transferred to the forms of verse that have evolved from the eight-syllable size in the later ages of 109verse forms as bearers of semantic values development of polish literature: to the trochaic tetrameter, introduced in the nineteenth century (as e.g. in the colloquial/chatty style of the fable on ‘janek who sewed boots for dogs’ from juliusz słowacki’s kordian); or, to three-stress tonic verse (oscillating around eight-syllable size) used as a carrier of quiet colloquial speech, bearing no oratorical features (as e.g. in jan kasprowicz’s księga ubogich [the book of the poor]).3 referring to the above-specified semantic phenomena, one more thing should be taken into account: the format of verse can be taken advantage of to express certain derivative meanings situated within a notion’s connotation field. for instance, polish octosyllable, when used as a verse determining the status of a piece’s protagonist or literary subject, is not necessarily a symptom of a simple background of the speaking individual, but can indicate simplicity as a positive feature of personality, as well as an element that marks the person’s restraint, his or her quitting the use of high style and the saturation of speech with rhetorical figures. with this function in mind, as a determinant of a terse and reserved style, the syllabic octosyllable was used in juliusz słowacki’s poem sowiński w okopach woli [sowinsky in wola treches] where it emphasises the heroic virtue of the dying general. 4. several examples of the semantic potency of verse forms 4. 1. generic identity of the poem and its rhythmical shape back with syllabic thirteen-syllable verse, which has been one of the most frequently employed verse forms across several centuries of the development of polish literature, a sign-related potential, hidden in the way the format is internally shaped, is identifiable. jan kochanowski pointed out to this potential by using, in two of his songs (kochanowski 1960 [1586]: 298–300), some diametrically different stylistic varieties of this particular verse size. what this 3 the stylistic features of three-stress tonic verse are described in the monograph on tonism (i.e. dobrzyńska, kopczyńska 1979: 41-42): “[…] three-stress verse – no caesura, short, as if easier to produce; residing at its root was the octosyllable, deemed a not-quite-high-ranking verse: in spite of a certain expressiveness, it could build a simple, i.e. un-artful form. it mainly served basic personal utterances, afterthoughts often avoiding top sophistication, being at times rather commonplace, everyday – thus, in general, such shapes of speaking which were marked by a kind of simplicity and ordinariness. the choice of a tonic form meant, however, that for the speaking individual, these matters have also been important, if not very important at times – whereas their significance remained, as it were, within the privacy sphere, never being exposed to public use.” 110 teresa dobrzyńska author did on this occasion was he made use of the primary characteristic of verse-formatted text: the fact that it is shaped based on a fusion of the syntactic and the metrical arrangement. czego chcesz od nas, panie, za twe hojne dary? czego za dobrodziejstwa, którym nie masz miary? kościół cię nie ogarnie, wszędy pełno ciebie, i w otchłaniach, i w morzu, na ziemi, na niebie. […] (jan kochanowski, pieśń xxv, księgi wtóre [song xxv, second book of songs], a fragment) niezwykłym i nie leda piórem opatrzony polecę precz, poeta, ze dwojej złożony natury: ani ja już przebywać na ziemi więcej będę; a więtszy nad zazdrość, ludnemi miasty wzgardzę. on, w równym szczęściu urodzony, on ja, jako mię zowiesz, wielce ulubiony mój myszkowski, nie umrę ani mię czarnymi styks niewesoła zamknie odnogami swymi. […] (jan kochanowski, pieśń xxiv, księgi wtóre [song xxiv, second book of songs]4, a fragment) the first of these examples expressively exposes its rhythm, accurately harmonising the (in-)line and the syntactic segmentations. this produces a text meeting the needs of choral singing: an elevated and dignified text whose course is distinctly rhythmical, appropriate to community prayer described in genre terms as hymn. the second text, although written in syllabic thirteensyllable verse, makes an unrestrained course of utterance overlapped with the rhythmic pattern of the poem. a number of enjambments have been used, appearing also between the stanzas, the lines cut off by the borderlines of syntactic segments. the content of the second quoted poem suggests that it is a poetic epistle to piotr myszkowski, the poet’s patron and friend. when set in unofficial register, the epistle becomes stylistically close to a free conversation, 4 for the english version see appendix ii. 111verse forms as bearers of semantic values and is shaped into prose, as a general rule. hence, what we find in kochanowski is a genuine bundle of traits juxtaposed in an oppositional manner and proving of relevance to cultural models, whilst expressed by means of formal oppositions within a single verse measure. let me add that the artistry kochanowski displayed in his poetic letter is astonishing. at the time when a regular syllabic verse was just being hatched, this poet proved capable of using it in its most unrestrained form, quitting to a considerable extent the rhythmising influence of the balanced syntactic segments. the stylisations into community prayer and letter, applied in the respective examples above, redirect our attention on the extensive sphere of applications of verse as a means that shapes various genres of utterance which form a repertoire of petrified communication forms within a culture. verse evidences its capability as a carrier of genres used in a variety of stylistic registers as well as contexts: in everyday life, religious rituals, official communications, or literature. let us now take a look at another case in point (mickiewicz 1952 [1832]: 275): duchy nocne: puch czarny, puch miękki pod głowę podłużmy, śpiewajmy, a cicho – nie trwóżmy, nie trwóżmy. duch z lewej strony: noc smutna w więzieniu, tam w mieście wesele, u stołów tam muzyki huczą; przy pełnych kielichach śpiewają minstrele, tam nocą komety się włóczą: komety z oczkami i jasnym warkoczem. (więzień usypia) kto po nich kieruje łódź w biegu, ten zaśnie na fali, w marzeniu uroczem, na naszym przebudzi się brzegu. […] (adam mickiewicz, dziady [forefathers’ eve], part iii, a fragment5) a fragment of a larger whole, the text being referred to is isolable through its form from a greater polymetric composition. the locally utilised amphibrachic rhythm forms a monotonous course, while the verbal message enables one to guess that the fragment quoted above works as a lullaby – a devilish one, to be sure. 5 for the english version see appendix iii. 112 teresa dobrzyńska we are dealing here with an instance of a cultural text being re-coded from one system of signs into another. a musical or verbal-and-musical piece, such as the song, is imitated in this particular case in a rhythmic course of the language. in parallel, the function of the genre of speech used therein has been modified with respect to the peculiar performers of the text and their evil intents; hence, what we deal with is a mutation of an original genre form, with a new variant of lullaby, encumbered with daemonic connotations. the amphibrachic course of this piece has a special structure and it embosses the banality of amphibrachic metre constructed with paroxyton words dominating within the polish language. delivering the individual metrical feet with the complete accentual unit6 heightens the monotony of the text, rendering it particularly expressive in its assumed stylisation. the steady, soothing rhythm of this lullaby is numbing in order to undermine the young prisoner’s vigilance. thus, a lullaby expressed through a verse form takes on itself many of the implications that could have been triggered by its archetype: lullaby crooned to a baby or child. with its words and melody, it is designed to soothe – and to distract one’s attention from the external situation. lulling somebody to sleep causes, moreover, numbing them into a false sense of security. lullaby is connected with the night-time, and thus may imply the symbolic values which in our culture are represented by night. the point made in dziady [forefathers’ eve] is that night is, primarily, the time when evil spirits act – and it is they who are singing to the prisoner. the example above has implied interesting consequences as far as the uses of verse forms are concerned. a monotony that puts one’s rational thinking and vigilance to sleep, and the daemonic characteristics of an easy-to-deliver rhythm have deprived the amphibrachic four-foot lines an opportunity to expand unrestrainedly. mickiewicz penetratingly noted that tempting lilt of this metrical device, and its disturbing connotations. the semantic marking of amphibrach, which we have observed in the above example, is echoed in the later uses of this rhythm. for instance, a disturbing daemonic characterisation is contributed by a monotonous amphibrachic rhythm imitating the rhythm of a waltz in a new year’s eve ball described in czesław miłosz’s poem walc [waltz] (miłosz 2013 [1945]: 26–29)7. dancing 6 accentual unit is a prosodic entirety formed of a single notional word, or such a word together with a clitic (e.g. ‘give me’, ‘go home’, ‘and he stayed’, and the like). 7 zdzisława kopczyńska has proposed an excellent analysis of the rhythmic structure and the composition of this piece (kopczyńska 1981; kopczyńska et al. 2007: 20-49). 113verse forms as bearers of semantic values is shown in this poem in an ambivalent manner, which, after all, is a frequent trait in actualisations of the motif of dance as withering in a whirling movement. submission to the rhythm and charms of amusement has a concealed danger of detachment from real life and historical order of reality. the waltz becomes a serpent-tempter: “walc pełza tam liśćmi złotymi zduszony” [there, the waltz’s creeping, strangled with golden leaves]. its hypnotic influence incites the poem’s (female) character to forget about the threats borne by the historical reality, and revealed to her in the vision of siberia and the lamentable fate of her future son. 4. 2. verse form as an iconic sign let us stick to the type of semantisation of verse form which was visible in the last quoted examples: the amphibrachic lullabies as well as the pieces inheriting the daemonic connotations of these monotonous forms. the regularity of the rhythm of a poem, which appears particularly clearly in syllabotonic pieces, is quite often taken advantage of as an iconic sign that reproduces some extralingual phenomenon. one has to notice, however, that the rhythm of a verse does not in itself offer sufficient potential for precise expression of a specified phenomenon. a given rhythmic structure may imitate things as different as falling rain or snow, horse riding, dance, etc. the only shared element is the representation of a rhythm, regular movement, the iconic function being concretised as influenced by the meanings expressed in the text with the use of verbal means. this is an important issue in terms of recognising the semantic potential of verse as a form of utterance: in most cases, the sign function belongs to poetic pieces in their verbal-and-rhythmic form. the iconic function, interconnected with other sign values, is fulfilled by the verse form in a not-too-well known sonnet lodokół „bajkał” (birkenmajer 1927): z komina /sypnęły się /iskry // – furcząc / na wietrze / rozwiała się / flaga; kapitan / coś krzyknął / przez tubę // – i pokład / w jednej się / chwili /zaludni; z hurkotem / wbiegli / majtkowie // – jak małpy / zwinni, / krępawi / i brudni, do wind / się wzięli, / do putków, // wszędy / robota / zawzięta / się wzmaga. warknęły / liny / i koła // – kocioł / parowy / głucho / zadudni, pierś / okrętu / dygoce // w prężnym / wysiłku, / w kurczowym / wstrząsie; zgrzytają / lodów / zębiska, // w zjadliwym / śmiechu / się szczerzą / i skrzą się… zrywa się / okręt / z uwięzi // – poleci! – / zatrzymać / coraz go / trudniej!... 114 teresa dobrzyńska wszystkie / siły / wytężył // – aż kłębem / pary / się zdyszał / i zziajał, słupem / wody / modrawym,// jak klingą / stalową, / wymachnął / naokół, pod jego / gorącym / tchnieniem // jak piana / mydlana / roztajał 6 stresses (!) pancerz / lodowy, / którym // olbrzym/-bajkał / pierś swoją / okuł… 7 stresses (?) ruszył / po krach / – krach opornych // – rycerz / stalowy: / groźny / lodokół – i szklane / tafle / jeziora, // niby / diamentem, / ostrogą / krajał. (józef birkenmajer, lodokół „bajkał” [icebreaker “baikal”]8) this poem represents a measure that proves unique to polish poetry: a sevenstress tonic verse (3+4)9. it is a large-span pattern, unique in itself as well as against the sonnet tradition. the long size of tonic lines has in this case a function similar to long syllabic formats, such as those appearing in pieces of ‘significant and serious’ content. telling a story of an icebreaker, the poem is kept in a pathetic tone, its emphatic accentual course seeming to imitate the effort of the people and machines collaborating in breaking the ice on a lake. a systemic property of the tonic metre used in this particular piece is its ability to highlight the accents. the speech, saturated with stresses, becomes emphatic and capable of expressing the concentration of will, which constitutes one of the functions of tonic verse in polish literature (dobrzyńska, kopczyńska 1974: 101). in this way, the hard labour of the icebreaker is imaged in the poem’s rhythm, dealt with as an iconic sign. let us add that numerous onomatopoeias contribute in this poem to the image of ice crushing (e.g. “warknęły (liny)”, “w kurczowym wstrząsie”, “zgrzytają (…), szczerzą i skrzą się”, “się zdyszał i zziajał”, “ruszył po krach – krach opornych – rycerz (…) groźny”, “ostrogą krajał”) as well as to the image of spirting water (“wody modrawym (…) wymachnął”). similarly as in the previous cases, the meaning or sense of the sign is clarified only after the content of the verbal message is taken into account. a polyvalent sign, encompassing the lexical layer (setting the subject-matter), phonetic construction and the rhythm of the poem, is the carrier of meaning, in this case. 8 the content of this poem is built with a series of onomatopoeias that is why the wordfor-word translation would not represent it in a suitable way and the result would be rather ludicrous. in that case a discussion of the poem serve better our ends. 9 there are some irregularities in the rhythmical structure of this poem. the 11th verse is irregular with its 6 stresses. a regular caesura after 3 accentual units is less obvious but possible in the 12th verse. 115verse forms as bearers of semantic values what this example shows, in parallel, is that expressing evaluations is feasible with the use of verse form: the poem is, in fact, a sui generis paean in honour of modernist projects to tame nature. the piece’s extreme format emphasises the uniqueness of the work of the engineers exploring difficultto-access asian territories. the verse form in this sonnet would serve as a peculiar imitation of the scale of this effort; thus, we are faced with a diagram, as a variety of iconic sign. 4. 3. verse form as bearer of axiological value an instance of negative and grotesque representation of an object with the use of verse form is zbigniew herbert’s poem mona lisa (herbert 1995 [1961]: 25–27): przez siedem gór granicznych (three-foot iamb – as in a song) kolczaste druty rzek „ i rozstrzelane lasy „ i powieszone mosty „ szedłem – przez wodospady schodów „ wiry morskich skrzydeł i barokowe niebo „ całe w bąblach aniołów – do ciebie jeruzalem w ramach stoję w gęstej pokrzywie wycieczki na brzegu purpurowego sznura i oczu no i jestem (syntagmatic free verse in różewicz’s style) widzisz jestem „ nie miałem nadziei „ ale jestem „ pracowicie uśmiechnięta smolista niema i wypukła (four-foot iamb) jakby z soczewek zbudowana „ na tle wklęsłego krajobrazu „ między czarnymi jej plecami „ 116 teresa dobrzyńska które są jakby księżyc w chmurze „ a pierwszym drzewem okolicy „ jest wielka próżnia piany światła „ no i jestem (syntagmatic free verse in różewicz’s style ) czasem było „ czasem wydawało się „ nie warto wspominać „ tyka jej regularny uśmiech (four-foot iamb) głowa wahadło nieruchome „ oczy jej marzą nieskończoność „ ale w spojrzeniach śpią ślimaki „ no i jestem (syntagmatic free verse in różewicz’s style) mieli przyjść wszyscy „ jestem sam „ kiedy już „ nie mógł głową ruszać „ powiedział „ jak to się skończy „ pojadę do paryża „ między drugim a trzecim palcem „ prawej ręki „ przerwa „ wkładam w tę bruzdę „ puste łuski losów „ no i jestem „ to ja jestem „ wparty w posadzkę „ żywymi piętami „ tłusta i niezbyt ładna włoszka (four-foot iamb) na suche skały włos rozpuszcza „ od mięsa życia odrąbana „ porwana z domu i historii „ o przeraźliwych uszach z wosku „ szarfą żywicy uduszona „ jej puste ciała woluminy „ są osadzone na diamentach „ między czarnymi jej plecami „ a pierwszym drzewem mego życia „ 117verse forms as bearers of semantic values miecz leży wytopiona przepaść (zbigniew herbert, mona liza [mona lisa]10) among other means, this polymetric poem uses iamb – in the fragments where gioconda is portrayed. the impetuous rhythm of the four-foot iamb, known in polish literary tradition by its frequent polemical uses, is employed here in order to emphasise the dehumanisation of the title character. her degradation is brought about, among other factors, through the metaphor showing mona lisa’s famous smile as a ticking clock, which is rendered clear through a ‘clocklike’ use of iamb. expressed by the poem’s rhythm, the iconic sign grows concrete thanks to the verbal stratum and the metaphor therein used. herbert’s is a complex rhythmic composition and conceals another singularity. the lyrical character’s utterances are formatted as brief, concise phrases or elliptical sentences which sharply stand out against the surrounding parts of the poem, and especially against the vigorous iambic rhythm, which is used with a polemical purpose in mind. they assume the shape of syntagmatic free verse (urbańska 1995: 39–47) and evoke a certain known stylistic register. such course of versifying and style of poetic speech was introduced in polish poetry after the second world war by tadeusz różewicz. his softened, short-formatted poems, featuring no rhetorical traits, have remained extremely genuine in their simplicity and emotionally muffled diction, and become an indexal sign of the behaviours of man, whom through experiencing war has been deprived of enthusiasm.. the way of speaking being evoked is simple, substantive, and reliable. różewicz’s verse becomes a carrier of axiological connotations, as it underwrites the veracity of what is pronounced (dobrzyńska 2012). let us compare herbert’s stylisations with their archetype (różewicz 1994 [1947]): mam dwadzieścia cztery lata ocalałem prowadzony na rzeź. [...] szukam nauczyciela i mistrza niech przywróci mi wzrok słuch i mowę niech jeszcze raz nazwie rzeczy i pojęcia 10 for a more detailed analysis of this poem see dobrzyńska 2003: 163-177. for the english version see appendix iv. 118 teresa dobrzyńska niech oddzieli światło od ciemności. mam dwadzieścia cztery lata ocalałem prowadzony na rzeź. (tadeusz różewicz, ocalony [survivor], from the collection niepokój [trouble]11) 4. 4. verse form as an index revealing the author quite an interesting situation motivated by intertextual relations occurs where a poem’s rhythmic form turns it into its author’s signature, an indexal sign indicative of the author. the prison scene in adam mickiewicz’s dziady [forefathers’eve] (mickiewicz 1952 [1832]: 282) is a case in point. the songs sung by the prisoners form a sort of triptych, konrad being the last to sing: konrad (śpiewa) [sings] pieśń ma była już w grobie, już chłodna – krew poczuła – spod ziemi wygląda – i jak upiór powstaje krwi głodna: i krwi żąda, krwi żąda, krwi żąda. tak! zemsta, zemsta, zemsta na wroga, z bogiem i choćby mimo boga! (chór powtarza) [repeat chorus] i pieśń mówi: ja pójdę wieczorem, naprzód braci rodaków gryźć muszę, komu tylko zapuszczę kły w duszę, ten jak ja musi zostać upiorem. tak! zemsta, zemsta, etc. etc. […] (adam mickiewicz, dziady [forefathers’ eve]. part iii, a fragment12) konrad’s song excels in its boisterous and dynamic rhythm, which is masterly harmonised with, and attuned to its rebellious content. mickiewicz has 11 for the english version see appendix v. 12 for the english version see appendix vi. 119verse forms as bearers of semantic values obtained its vehement tone through the use of a syllabotonic rhythm, threefoot anapaestic hypercatalectic verse (i.e. featuring feminine rhyme). apart from imitating a state of emotional tension (which is connected with the iconic function of the rhythm being used), the fragment under analysis offers certain other identifiable sign functions. konrad’s song is contrasted against the traditional verse structure of the songs of feliks and jankowski, his two colleagues. both of these pieces have used syllabic forms and compositional forms known from the polish song tradition. konrad, for a change, uses a syllabotonic verse, an absolute novelty to polish literature at the time. the use of this novel rhythm carries an indexal piece of information: here comes an innovative poet, a unique creative artist. this is how this use of an innovative rhythm, enhanced by a metrical contrast of the patterns applied, can be interpreted in the three songs. still, researchers specialising in the history of polish verse can discover an even deeper semantic level. konrad uses in his song a verse rhythm that has only been taken up by one polish poet: three years before he wrote part iii of dziady [forefathers’ eve], mickiewicz used nearly the same anapaestic patterns in his ballads trzech budrysów [three budryses] and czaty [keeping a lookout]13. thus, the rhythm of the anapaestic song gains a particular indexal value, as a sui generis identification mark of mickiewicz the poet. a signature of this sort brings the piece’s character closer to the one who has authored it. the unique rhythm (by the standards of the time) seems to imply an identity of the work and its author. such identification is part of the romanticist canon, whereby lyric poetry is approached as expression of sentiments not only of the lyrical subject (‘i’) but also of the author himself. 5. conclusions as revealed by these analyses, the sign value of various forms of verse is founded upon their stylisation-founded relation of verse-formatted texts to different varieties of discourse, stylistic registers and genres of utterance functioning in social life, as well as to conventions prevalent in literature. repartition of verse forms confirms that ‘fettered speech’ reflects, to an extent, the segments of oppositions functioning in a given culture – recoded into various semiotic systems and expressed through various cultural texts. a poem’s rhythmic structure enables us to use it as iconic sign which imitates certain phenomena in its own peculiar manner. this form may also become a carrier of axiological 13 in the two ballads mentioned here the 4-feet and 3-feet anapestic verses alternate. 120 teresa dobrzyńska values. intertextual associations indicated by the metrical form also produce the possibility of treating this form as an indicator of a relation with a given author in case a unique verse rhythm functions as his (her) signature. recognition of this semantic potential of forms of verse discloses the sphere of signs that enrich a given culture – and forms an indispensable element in interpreting a poetic text.14 references dłuska, maria 1980. próba teorii wiersza polskiego, 2nd edition. kraków: wydawnictwo literackie. birkenmajer, józef 1927. poszumy bajkału. zakopane: tadeusz zwoliński. buczyńska-garewicz, hanna 1975. znak – znaczenie – wartość. szkice o filozofii amerykańskiej. warszawa: książka i wiedza. dobrzyńska, teresa; kopczyńska, zdzisława 1974. tonizm. wrocław: ossolineum. dobrzyńska, teresa 2003. tekst – styl – poetyka. kraków: universitas. dobrzyńska, teresa 2012. intertextual relations and axiology: verse structures as vehicles of axiological values in poetry. in: slovo a slovesnost 73(4), 299–311. herbert, zbigniew 1995. studium przedmiotu. wrocław: wydawnictwo dolnośląskie. herbert, zbigniew 2007. the collected poems: 1956–1998. valles, alissa (ed., transl.), miłosz, czesław; scott, peter dale (transl.). new york: ecco. an imprint of harper collins publishers. czachowska, jadwiga et al. (eds.) 2002. instytut badań literackich polskiej akademii nauk 1948–2001. książki i czasopisma. bibliografia. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. červenka, miroslav; pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1995. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. vi: europejskie wzorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. gasparov, mikhail l. 1973. k semantike daktilicheskoj rifmy v russkom khoree. in: jakobson, roman, van schooneveld, c. h., worth, dean s. (eds.), slavic poetics. essays in honor of kiril taranovsky. the hague, paris: mouton, 143–150. 14 this article is due to be published in a slightly revised version in polish, as part of the collection znakowe wartości kultury [semiotic values of the culture], z. kloch et al. (eds.), forthcoming. the paper was translated into english by tristan korecki. 121verse forms as bearers of semantic values hollander, john 1975. vision and resonance: two senses of poetic form. new york: oxford university press. kloch, zbigniew et al. (forthcoming). znakowe wartości kultury. warszawa: uniwersytet warszawski. kochanowski, jan 1960. pieśni. księgi wtóre. in: kochanowski, jan, dzieła polskie. krzyżanowski, julian (ed.). warszawa: piw, 274–300. komendziński, tomasz 1996. znak i jego ciągłość. semiotyka peirce’a między percepcją a recepcją. toruń: wydawnictwo uniwersytetu mikołaja kopernika. kopczyńska, zdzisława; pszczołowska, lucylla 1969. znaczenie wyboru form wierszowych w kontekście literackim epoki. (poezja polskiego baroku). in: pamiętnik literacki 3, 195–210. kopczyńska, zdzisława 1970. znaczenie wyboru formy wierszowej (na przykładzie polskiego 8-zgłoskowca). in: pamiętnik literacki 4, 179–195. kopczyńska, zdzisława 1981. o wersyfikacji ‘walca’ czesława miłosza. in: pamiętnik literacki 4, 177–190. kopczyńska, zdzisława et al. 2007. znaczenie wyboru formy wiersza. trzy studia. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. kopczyńska, zdzisława, pszczołowska, lucylla (eds.) 1978. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. i: słownik rytmiczny i sposoby jego wykorzystania. wrocław: ossolineum. kopczyńska, zdzisława, pszczołowska, lucylla (eds.) 1984. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. ii: organizacja składniowa. wrocław: ossolineum. kopczyńska, zdzisława; pszczołowska, lucylla 1986. funkcje semantyczne form wierszowych w poezji polskiego romantyzmu. mickiewicz – słowacki – zaleski. in: pamiętnik literacki 3, 143–156. levin, jurij i. 1982. semanticheskij oreol metra s semioticheskoj tochki zrenija. in: isakov, sergej (ed.), finitis xii lustris. sbornik statej k 60-letiju ju. m. lotmana. tallinn: eesti raamat. lotman, mihhail 1988. russkij stikh: semantika stikhotvornogo metra v russkoj pojezii vtoroj poloviny xix v. (a. a. fet i n. a. nekrasov). in: słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. iii: semantyka form wierszowych. wrocław: ossolineum. mayenowa, maria renata 1969. miejsce 10-zgłoskowca w literaturze xvi w. (przyczynek do rekonstrukcji systemu). in: jakubowski, jan zygmunt; kulczyckasaloni, janina (eds.), europejskie związki literatury polskiej. praca zbiorowa poświęcona zofii szmydtowej. warszawa: pwn, 89–98. 122 teresa dobrzyńska mayenowa, maria renata 1971. z zagadnień semantyki form wierszowych. in: zdzisława kopczyńska, lucylla pszczołowska (eds.), metryka słowiańska. wrocław: ossolineum, 285–292. mayenowa, maria renata 2000. poetyka teoretyczna. zagadnienia języka, 3rd edition. wrocław: ossolineum. mickiewicz, adam 1952. wybór pism. warszawa: książka i wiedza. mickiewicz, adam 1944. poems. noyes, george rapall (ed.). new york: the polish institute of arts and sciences in america. mikoś, michael j. (ed.) 1995. polish renaissance literature: an anthology. columbus, ohio: slavica. miłosz, czesław 2013. poezje wybrane, wybór i oprac. zdzisław łapiński. wrocław: ossolineum. petrović, svetozar 1968. the metametrical function of verse forms. in: teorie verše. theory of verse. teorija stikha, t. ii. brno: univerzita jep. pszczołowska, lucylla 1981. semantyka form wierszowych. in: pamiętnik literacki 4, 191–203. pszczołowska, lucylla 1982. verse forms – their stylistic and semantic values. in: international journal of slavic linguistic and poetics xxv/xxvi, 391–396. pszczołowska, lucylla (ed.) 1988. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. iii: semantyka form wierszowych. wrocław: ossolineum pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1992. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. iv: wiersz przekładu. mickiewicz i puszkin. wrocław: ossolineum. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1993. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. v: sonet. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 1998. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. vii: wiersz wolny. geneza i ewolucja do roku 1939. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. pszczołowska, lucylla 2002. wiersz – styl – poetyka. kraków: universitas. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota (eds.) 2004. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. viii: krótkie rozmiary wierszowe. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. pszczołowska, lucylla; lotman, mihhail (eds.) 2011. słowiańska metryka porównawcza. t. ix: heksametr. antyczne wzorce wiersza i strofy w literaturach słowiańskich. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. 123verse forms as bearers of semantic values różewicz, tadeusz 1994. poezje wybrane  – selected poems. czerniawski, adam (transl.). kraków: wydawnictwo literackie. taranovski (taranovsky), kiril 1939. metode i zadaci savremene nauke o stihu kao discipline na granici lingvistike i istorije književnosti (problemi pesničkog ritma). in: izdanja izvršnog odbora iii međunarodnog kongresa slavista 4, 108–132. taranovskij (taranovsky), kiril 1963. o vzaimootnoshenii stikhotvornogo ritma i tematiki. in: american contributions to the fifth international congress of slavists i. the hague: mouton, 287–322. tarlinskaja, marina 1989. meter and meaning: semantic associations of the english verse form. in: style 23, 238–260. urbańska, dorota 1995. wiersz wolny. próba charakterystyki systemowej. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl. weintaub, wiktor 1952. kochanowski’s renaissance manifesto. in: the slavonic and east european review 30(75), 412–424. 124 teresa dobrzyńska appendix i. what wilt thou from us, lord, for thy bounteous gifts, what for thy goodness which is measureless? the church will not contain thee; everything is full of thee: limbo and sea and earth and heaven. […] (jan kochanowski, second book of songs, xxv; weintraub 1952: 412) ii. endowed with a pinion that is mighty and rare, a poet of two forms, i will take to the air: i will not remain on this earth any longer, but, above envy, i will look with disfavor at crowded cities. not i, the one lowly-born, not i, whom you call your friend, by death shall be borne, dear myszkowski, nor will i be held prisoner by the black arms of the mournful stygian water. […] (jan kochanowski, second book of songs, xxiv; mikoś 1995: 171) iii. spirits of night: lay him on eider down, shadow fis brows, sing to him, whisper him, let him not rouse. spirit from the left side: here it is prison gloom, out in the town music and dancing and light; goblets are foaming, all sorrow to drown, comets are ranging the night; their tresses are trailing, their pretty eyes beam; [ the prisoner sleeps.] who steers by their guidance to land, falling asleep in a ravishing dream, will waken upon our strand. (adam mickiewicz, forefathers’eve, part iii (a fragment); mickiewicz 1944: 252) 125verse forms as bearers of semantic values iv. through seven mountain frontiers barbed wire of rivers and executed forests and hanged bridges i kept going – through waterfalls of stairways whirlings of sea wings and baroque heaven all bubbly with angels  – to you jerusalem in a frame i stand in the dense nettle patch of a cook’s tour on a shore of crimson rope and eyes so i’m here you see i’m here i hadn’t a hope but i’m here laboriously smiling on resin-colored mute convex as if constructed out of lenses concave landscape for a background between the blackness of her back which is like a moon in clouds and the first tree of the surroundings is a great void froth of light so i’m here sometimes it was sometimes it seemed that don’t even think about it 126 teresa dobrzyńska only her regulated smile her head a pendulum at rest her eyes dream infinity but in her glances snails are asleep so i’m here they were all going to come i’m alone when already he could no longer move his head he said as soon as all his is over i’m going to paris between the second and the third finger of the right hand a space i put in his furrow the empty shells of fates so i’m here it’s me here pressed into the floor with living heels fat and not too nice signora loosens her hair upon dry rocks hewed off from the meat of life abducted from home and history with horrifying ears of wax smothered with a scarf of glaze the empty volumes of her flesh are set in diamonds 127verse forms as bearers of semantic values between the blackness of her back and the first tree of my life lies a sword a melted precipice (zbigniew herbert, mona lisa; herbert 2007: 170–172) v. i am twenty-four led to slaughter i survived. ... i seek a teacher and a master may he restore my sight hearing and speech may he again name objects and ideas may he separate darkness from light. i am twenty-four led to slaughter i survived. (tadeusz różewicz, the survivor, a fragment; różewicz 1994: 7) vi. konrad [sings.] song lay cold within the grave; it scented blood – from underground it rose as vampires rise that crave the blood of corpses scattered round. then vengeance, vengeance on the foe, god upon our side or no! [the chorus repeats the refrain.] then up spoke song: “i’ll walk by night and first i’ll gnaw each brother worm; when he feels my serpent bite he shall rise in vampire form.” aye, vengeance, vengeance on the foe, god upon our side or no! 128 teresa dobrzyńska then we’ll seek the foe at last, suck his blood from him, and hew his body fine and nail it fast let he rise a vampire too. then his soul to hell we’ll snatch squeeze its immorality from it. we will gnaw and scretch while it yet feels agony. then vengeance, vengeance on the foe, god upon our side or no! (adam mickiewicz, forefathers’ eve, part iii; a fragment; mickiewicz 1944: 268–269) latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio annika mikkel* abstract. this paper studies 14th-century latin prose rhythm as exemplified by dante and boccaccio. the texts observed in this analysis are samples from de monarchia, de vulgari eloquentia, quaestio de aqua et terra and epistole by dante and de mulieribus claris and de casibus virorum illustrium by boccaccio. in ancient rhetoric, rhythmical units were used at the ends of sentences and clauses in prose texts. these units were called clausulae, and the rhythm of classical prose was based on the quantity of syllables. medieval latin prose rhythm, however, was based on word stress and was called cursus. the aim of this paper is to study what kinds of cursus occur in the given text samples and their frequency. the research method used in this paper is comparativestatistical analysis. the distribution of cursus in these samples is also analysed by chapters and different types of cursus are distinguished. keywords: prose rhythm, cursus, clausula, dante, boccaccio 1. introduction in ancient rhetoric, rhythmical units were used at the ends of sentences and clauses in prose texts. in classical prose, these units were called clausulae, and the rhythm of classical prose was based on the quantity of syllables.1 medieval latin prose rhythm, however, was based on word stress and was called cursus. this paper focuses on 14th-century latin prose as exemplified by dante and boccaccio. the texts observed in this analysis are samples from de monarchia, de vulgari eloquentia, quaestio de aqua et terra and epistole by dante and de mulieribus claris and de casibus virorum illustrium by boccaccio. the use of cursus in the prose of dante and boccaccio has been studied before, and it has been said that the presence of cursus is obvious in both authors’ texts. * author’s address: annika mikkel, lecturer in romance philology, college of foreign languages and cultures, university of tartu, lossi 3, 51003, tartu, estonia. e-mail: annika.mikkel@ut.ee. 1 the use of clausulae is seen, for example, in the works of livy, sallust and cicero. see, for example, aili (1979), albrecht (2003). https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.04 studia metrica et poetica 9.1, 2022, 66–88 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.04 67latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio however, according to paget toynbee, the main researcher of dante’s prose, dante did not use cursus regularly throughout the books. instead, he employed them more in rhetorical and personal sections appearing mostly at the beginnings and at the ends of the books (1920: 231). toynbee’s studies, which date back almost a century (1918, 1920, 1923), do not include systematic statistical analysis. as regards boccaccio, parodi (1913) notes that his letters in latin also follow the rules of cursus.2 previous studies have not examined the different types of cursus according to the chapters in which they occur but have instead compared the use of cursus with other structures used to end sentences. the aim of this paper is to study the kinds of cursus and their frequency in the given text samples. the distribution of cursus in these samples is also analysed according to the chapters in which they occur, and different types of cursus are distinguished. based on this, patterns are investigated, including rhythms that the authors seem to have preferred and those they avoided, whether certain types of cursus accumulate in particular sections of the texts, and what differences appear when comparing texts. 2. prose rhythm: theoretical basis and methodology wilhelm meyer (1905: 236–286) appears to have been the first to formulate a method for describing the accentual cursus of late antiquity and the middle ages, which has become fundamental in more recent scholarship on the subject. according to meyer, the crucial factor is the number of syllables between the last two accents and after the last one, and the length of the last word is unimportant (tunberg 1992: 126). a number of modern studies and reference works employ this kind of method of describing cursus (tunberg 1996: 115). medieval prose rhythm also allows consillabicatio, in which the last word is replaced by two or three short words that include the same number of syllables (janson 1975, lausberg 1960). in the middle ages, there were four basic rhythmical units: cursus planus, cursus velox, cursus tardus and cursus trispondaicus. cursus planus consists of a trisyllable word with stress on the penultimate syllable, which is preceded by a word with a similar stress (xx#xxx – fide servantur). in addition to the regular cursus planus, the forms x#xxxx (pars imperabant) and xxx#xx (tempore messis) are also used. cursus velox comprises a tetrasyllabic word with stress on the penultimate syllable preceded by a word with stress on 2 see also the works of vittore branca (1967, 1975, 1983). 68 annika mikkel the third syllable from the end of the word (xxx#xxxx – animus gratuletur). another form of cursus velox is xx#xxxxx (where the last word contains not four but five syllables: for example, cedit utilitatem). cursus tardus includes a tetrasyllabic word with stress on the third syllable from the end of the word preceded by a word with stress on the penultimate syllable (xx#xxxx – divina custodiet). an alternative form involves a proparoxytone followed by a trisyllabic proparoxytone, in which the caesura comes after the third syllable of the clausula (xxx#xxx – omnia impleant). cursus tardus may also occur in the form x#xxxxx (est inpossibile). cursus trispondaicus comprises a tetrasyllabic word with stress on the penultimate syllable preceded by a word with similar stress (xx#xxxx – declinare arbitratur). cursus trispondaicus can also occur as xxx#xxx (opere patrate) or x#xxxxx (pax universalis).3 each of the cursus forms can have its longer word units resolved by combinations of monosyllabic and disyllabic words as long as the rhythm is retained. for example, the final tetrasyllable of the cursus velox can be represented by a trisyllabic paroxytone preceded by a monosyllable (rescribere non cessato) or by two disyllables (feliciter dici solet). alternatively, the second word component of the tardus can be resolved by a disyllabic paroxytone and a monosyllable (oneri mihi sum) or by a trisyllabic paroxytone and a monosyllable (stellarumque contentus sit) (oberhelman, hall 1984: 115). the research method of this paper is a comparative statistical analysis carried out in stages. in the first stage, all clauses in the samples were analysed. cursus may appear both at the ends of sentences and clauses and in this study, all endings before punctuation marks were analysed. in the second stage, all the analysed samples were collected into different databases for each author and each text. in each database, the endings corresponding to the cursus are treated as separate categories (cursus planus, cursus trispondaicus, cursus tardus, cursus velox); endings that are different from cursus are all grouped together under the category “other endings”. the aim of this paper is to study the occurrence of cursus; therefore, the different rhythms under the category “other endings” are not distinguished. in the final stage, the data were compared (comparisons were made between the two authors, different texts by the same author, and different chapters of the same work) and statistically analysed. 3 see more about medieval cursus in clark 1910, janson 1975, lindholm 1963, norberg 1968, oberhelman, hall 1984. 69latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio 3. dante alighieri malato (1999) notes that dante adapted with the stylistic structures relying on classical rhetoric tradition and that he used cursus in his latin prose, therefore the regular use of cursus is obvious in de vulgare eloquentia, monarchia, quaestio de aqua et terra and especially in epistole. according to malato (1999: 1035), in de vulgari eloquentia, cursus planus is dominant, cursus tardus is frequent, and cursus velox is preferred at the end of a sentence. epistole aside, dante’s work in latin prose consists of scholarly texts in which the use of cursus was not prescribed. however, even within these works, dante does not disdain to apply the rules of rhythmic prose. for example, chiesa and tabarroni (2013: lxxxii–lxxxiv) note that rhythmic clauses also appear in the proemial parts and rhetorical sections of the monarchia, and in the prologues, the cursus is used almost constantly. according to paget toynbee (1918, 1920, 1923), who studied cursus in dante’s latin prose, dante did not use cursus regularly throughout a text but employed it in rhetorical and personal passages occurring mostly at the beginning and end of each book (toynbee 1920: 231). other scholars have also noted that the use of rhythmic clauses is not distributed uniformly and can oscillate considerably from chapter to chapter even within the same work. in epistole, the use of cursus is more intense and regular (mengaldo 1970: 292). for this study, i analysed the occurrence of cursus in dante’s latin books de vulgari eloquentia, de monarchia, epistole and quaestio de aqua et terra.4 the sample was formed from the first eleven chapters of de monarchia (474 sentence and clause endings) and the first ten chapters of de vulgari eloquentia (474 endings). from epistole, the sample was formed from the first six letters, which contributed 478 endings altogether. in addition, 500 sentence and clause endings from quaestio de aqua et terra were analysed. unlike paget toynbee’s analysis, this study shows the proportions of the frequencies of different cursus types in each sample and, where possible, also analyses the distribution of cursus by chapters (including the distribution of different cursus types by chapters). the results of the analysis of de monarchia are shown in the following chart:5 4 all samples of dante’s texts in this paper were taken from fallani et al. 1993. 5 figures 1–25 in this paper also appear in mikkel 2020: 41–126. 70 annika mikkel figure 1 figure 2 figure 3 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 1. cursus in de monarchia (%%) the results demonstrate the presence of cursus in this sample (63.3%) and the prevalence of cursus planus (22.8%) (e.g., primo agentem, esse credendum). cursus velox (15.6%), (e.g., opera ordinatur, hominum salutabat) and cursus tardus (15.4%) (e.g., intellectum possibilem, habet imperium) are used nearly equally. the least frequently used form in this sample is cursus trispondaicus (9.5%) (e.g., bone voluntatis, totum universum). the analysis of the occurrence of cursus by chapters in this sample shows that there are chapters in which the frequency of a particular cursus form is far higher or lower than the average. closer study shows a higher presence of cursus velox in chapters 1.i (27.6%) and 1.viii (24.0%), while the average percentage of cursus velox in this sample is 15.6%. the first chapter also has the highest occurrence of cursus tardus (34.5%) in this sample. in chapter 1.ix, cursus tardus does not occur at all. the percentage of cursus planus is highest in chapter 1.ix (34.8%), and cursus trispondaicus occurs more in chapters 1.vi (22.7%), 1.viii (20.0%) and 1.ix (17.4%). 71latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio figure 1 figure 2 figure 3 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 2. cursus in de monarchia chapter 1.i (%%) figure 1 figure 2 figure 3 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 3. cursus in de monarchia chapter 1.vi (%%) 72 annika mikkel figure 4 figure 5 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 4. cursus in de monarchia chapter 1.viii (%%) in de monarchia, the rhythmic aspect of the initial chapter stands out. compared to the average throughout the analysed sample, the occurrence of cursus in the first chapter is 89.7%. the results of the analysis of de vulgari eloquentia can be seen in the following chart:figure 4 figure 5 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 5. cursus in de vulgari eloquentia (%%) 73latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio the results show that the percentage of cursus in this sample is 73.2% and that the most frequently occurring type is cursus planus at 29.7% (e.g., aves locuntur, rationem portare). cursus velox is present in this sample with 21.3% (e.g., medium sensuale, operantium deridebant), and cursus tardus with 14.3% (e.g., esse flexibile, pauci perveniunt). the least used type in this sample is cursus trispondaicus (7.8%) (e.g., sermo variatur, versus orientem). examining the occurrence of cursus in the given sample by chapters reveals a higher percentage of cursus velox in chapters 1.i (33.3%), 1.vii (27.3%), 1.viii (32.6%). the average percentage of cursus velox in this sample is 21.3%. in chapter 1.viii, the percentage of cursus trispondaicus is the highest (10.9%), while the average in this sample is 7.8%. figure 4 figure 5 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 6. cursus in de vulgari eloquentia chapter 1.i (%%) 74 annika mikkel figure 7 figure 8 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 7. cursus in de vulgari eloquentia chapter 1.vii (%%)figure 7 figure 8 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 8. cursus in de vulgari eloquentia chapter 1.viii (%%) in chapter 1.i, it is possible to observe the accumulation of cursus tardus (23.3%, while the average percentage is 14.3%), and chapter 1.viii contains the lowest percentage of cursus tardus (4.3%) in this sample. like in de monarchia, in de vulgari eloquentia, we can also see a very high occurrence of cursus in the first chapter (93.3%). the results of the analysis of quaestio de aqua et terra are summarized in the following chart: 75latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio figure 7 figure 8 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 9. cursus in quaestio de aqua et terra (%%) the results show that the percentage of the cursus in this sample is 55.6%, and cursus planus (21.0%) is predominant (e.g., veritatis amore, esse videntur). next in frequency is cursus trispondaicus (15.0%) (e.g., centrum universi, membrum declarandum), followed by cursus velox (10.6%) (e.g., omnibus confirmatur, ordine discendorum), and finally cursus tardus (9.0%) (e.g., verum ostendere, esset concentrica). it is interesting to note the quite high frequency of cursus trispondaicus in quaestio in comparison with dante’s other latin texts and, at the same time, the less frequent use of cursus velox and tardus. the results of the analysis of epistole are summarized in the following chart:figure 9 figure 10 figure 11 figure 12 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 10. cursus in epistole (%%) 76 annika mikkel the results show that the percentage of cursus in this sample is 79.5%. cursus planus (28.0%) is predominant (e.g., forma conformis, signetur intentum). next in frequency is cursus tardus (25.5%) (e.g., fecit exilium, nobis consilia) followed by cursus velox (22.0%) (e.g., persolvere attentabit, vitia repellentem), and finally, cursus trispondaicus (4.0%), (e.g., arbitrato carceratum, declinare arbitrator). examining the occurrence of cursus in the given sample by letters (see, for example, figures 11 and 12) reveals that, in the first letter, we can see a higher frequency of cursus, 91.8%. in epistole, there is a very low frequency of cursus trispondaicus and, on the other hand, equal presence of all three other cursus forms. in the third letter, the percentage of planus is 10.7%, tardus is present with 30,4%, and the occurrence of all types of cursus is 71.4%. figure 9 figure 10 figure 11 figure 12 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 11. cursus in epistole i (%%) figure 9 figure 10 figure 11 figure 12 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 12. cursus in epistole iii (%%) 77latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio 4. giovanni boccaccio of boccaccio’s latin writings, the first that can be dated with certainty are some letters written from naples around 1339. all these letters follow the rules of cursus. according to ernesto parodi, one of boccaccio’s main models was dante, and only from him could he learn the respect for the rhythm (parodi 1957: 480). i have analysed the occurrence of cursus in boccaccio’s latin texts de mulieribus claris and de casibus virorum illustrium.6 the sample was formed from proemio and the first five chapters of de mulieribus claris (472 sentence and clause endings) and from proemio and the first six chapters of de casibus virorum illustrium (478 endings). the results of the analysis of de mulieribus claris are summarized in the following chart: figure 13 figure 14 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 13. cursus in de mulieribus claris (%%) the percentage of cursus in the analysed sample of de mulieribus claris is about 56%. the most frequent form in this sample is cursus tardus (23.1%) (e.g., agitata laboribus, insignis splendoribus) followed by cursus planus with 18.4% (e.g., viros illustres, legem agentes), then cursus velox (7.8%) (e.g., publice salutare, memoria celebranda), and finally, cursus trispondaicus with 7.2% (e.g., votum advocasset, silvas incolentem). i also analysed this sample by chapters (see, for example, figures 14 and 15). there is a high percentage of cursus tardus and, at the same time, a lesser 6 the samples of boccaccio’s texts in this paper are taken from branca 1967 and branca 1983. 78 annika mikkel presence of cursus velox, which was more common in latin medieval prose rhythm. we can see a higher percentage of velox in the proemio.figure 13 figure 14 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 14. cursus in de mulieribus claris, proemio (%%) figure 13 figure 14 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 15. cursus in de mulieribus claris chapter v (%%) the results of the analysis of de casibus virorum illustrium are summarized in the following chart: 79latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio figure 16 figure 17 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 16. cursus in de casibus virorum illustrium (%%) here we can see that the percentage of cursus is 64% and the favoured form is cursus planus with 27.8% (e.g., rapte sororis, genus humanum). next in frequency is cursus tardus (23.2%) (e.g., hostium viribus, volatus longissimus), then cursus velox (6.7%) (e.g., veteri civitate, incola paradisi), and finally, cursus trispondaicus (6.3%) (e.g., eventus novitate, ipsos ignoratis). in the analysis of this sample by chapters (see, for example, figures 17 and 18), we can again note a relatively low presence of cursus velox. only in chapter ii is the percentage somewhat higher at 12.7% (while the average use of velox in this sample is 6.7%). cursus planus and tardus are represented more or less equally. 80 annika mikkelfigure 16 figure 17 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 17. cursus in de casibus virorum illustrium chapter ii (%%) figure 16 figure 17 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% planus trispondaicus velox tardus other figure 18. cursus in de casibus virorum illustrium chapter vi (%%) 81latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio 5. comparison and analysis the results of the analysis of all samples from dante’s texts are compared in the following chart: figure 19 figure 20 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% cursus pla nus cursus velox cursus tardus cursus trispondaicus other dve de mona rchia quaestio epistol e 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0 5 10 15 20 25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e figure 19. cursus in all samples of dante (%%) as shown in the chart, cursus planus appears more often than other cursus types in all samples. in epistole, the presence of cursus was usual and expected, including a nearly equal occurrence of planus, velox and tardus and a lower frequency of trispondaicus. the percentage of other endings in this sample is 20.5%. compared to the epistole, in de vulgari eloquentia, the frequency of planus and velox is similar, but the frequency of tardus is slightly decreased. in the sample from de monarchia, planus still the most preferred ending, but velox has been used less and trispondaicus more. quaestio de aqua et terra is different in that the frequency of planus is comparable, for example, to the sample from de monarchia, but there are fewer occurrences of velox and tardus in quaestio. a higher rate of trispondaicus can be seen instead. the percentage of other endings in this sample from quaestio is also higher at 44.4%. previous dante researchers have noted that the use of rhythmic clauses is not distributed uniformly and can oscillate considerably within the same work. in earlier studies, different cursus types have not been distinguished in favour of a more general observation on the concentration of cursus. the analysis of samples of epistole, de vulgari eloquentia and de monarchia by chapter, which separately observes the frequencies of every cursus type, also demonstrates a clearly uneven distribution of different rhythmic clauses. 82 annika mikkel in general, cursus planus is distributed through the samples more or less equally, but at the same time, the percentages of velox, tardus and trispondaicus are very different in different chapters. in the epistole, both velox and tardus occur throughout the sample. analysing by chapters, cursus occur more in the first chapters of the books: in the first chapter of de vulgari eloquentia (93.3%), in the first chapter of de monarchia (89.7%) and even in the first letter of epistole (91.8%). in the sample from de monarchia, there are also chapters in which certain cursus types do not appear at all. for example, in chapter 1.i, trispondaicus does not occur, and in chapter 1.ix, tardus is not present. the presence of cursus tardus in this sample is higher in the first chapter (34.5%), but at the same time, there is no trispondaicus. however, in the samples from de vulgari eloquentia and epistole, all cursus types are present in every chapter. as an example, we can see here in the sample from de monarchia, the occurrence of cursus by chapters compared to the average percentage of cursus in the whole sample.figure 19 figure 20 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% cursus pla nus cursus velox cursus tardus cursus trispondaicus other dve de mona rchia quaestio epistol e 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0 5 10 15 20 25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e figure 20. cursus planus in de monarchia (%%) the frequency of cursus planus remains nearly the same in all chapters. the presence of planus is a little higher at the beginning of the book and in chapters 7–9. 83latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio figure 19 figure 20 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% cursus pla nus cursus velox cursus tardus cursus trispondaicus other dve de mona rchia quaestio epistol e 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0 5 10 15 20 25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e figure 21. cursus trispondaicus in de monarchia (%%) cursus trispondaicus shows rather big differences from the average: in the first chapter, the percentage of trispondaicus is 0%, but in chapter 6, it is 22.7%. the presence of trispondaicus is also greater than the average in chapters 7–9. figure 22 figure 23 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus velox tardus trispondaicus other de casibus de mulieribus figure 22. cursus velox in de monarchia (%%) 84 annika mikkel with cursus velox, we can see higher occurrence in the first chapter (27.6%) and in chapter 8 (24%). at the same time, there are chapters with a lower presence of velox, for example, in chapters 6 (4.5%) and 7 (6.7%). figure 22 figure 23 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus velox tardus trispondaicus other de casibus de mulieribus figure 23. cursus tardus in de monarchia (%%) also, in the case of cursus tardus, there is a higher occurrence in the first chapter (34.5%) and chapter 10 (26.9%). there are some chapters in which the percentage of tardus is not so different from the average percentage of this sample, and in one chapter, this cursus does not occur at all (chapter 9). the results of the analysis of boccaccio’s texts are compared in the following chart: 85latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio figure 22 figure 23 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obser ved occurrence averag e 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% planus velox tardus trispondaicus other de casibus de mulieribus figure 24. cursus in de mulieribus claris and de casibus virorum illustrium (%%) the chart shows that cursus planus and cursus tardus occur most frequently in the boccaccio samples. in the sample from de mulieribus claris, the presence of tardus even exceeds planus, but at the same time, velox occurs less often, at a similar rate to cursus trispondaicus. in the sample from de casibus virorum illustrium, planus and tardus appear to be the preferred types, and there is a nearly equal distribution of velox and trispondaicus. the analysis of those samples by chapters does not show that boccaccio used more cursus in some chapters and less in others. comparing the works of dante and boccaccio, we can conclude the following: 1) in dante, there is a higher occurrence of cursus in the first chapters of the books. this is not the case in the samples from boccaccio.7 2) the two authors use cursus planus more often and cursus trispondaicus the least. the exception is the quaestio de aqua et terra by dante, where a high frequency of trispondaicus is apparent. 3) comparing the use of cursus velox and tardus by both authors, there is a clear preference for tardus and lower presence of velox in the samples from boccaccio, while in the samples from dante, they tend to be used nearly equally. 7 see, for example, figure 14; in the proemio of de mulieribus claris, the percentage of cursus is 56,8%. 86 annika mikkel 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% dve de mona rchia quaestio epistol e de casibus de mulieribus planus velox tardus trispondaicus other figure 25. cursus in all samples from dante and boccaccio (%%) 6. conclusion in conclusion, cursus occur in all samples from both analysed authors, and there are more cursus planus, tardus and velox and less trispondaicus. comparing dante’s latin works, planus is the most used cursus form, and tardus and velox appear less often. the exception is dante,s epistole, where planus, tardus and velox are nearly evenly present. the presence of all three cursus types in epistole is predictable, as constant usage of cursus was a rule in letters. however, in de vulgari eloquentia and in de monarchia, it also appears that the presence of planus and velox is not significantly lower than in epistole, the proportion of tardus has decreased, and the proportion of trispondaicus has slightly increased. both in the samples of de vulgari eloquentia and de monarchia, the percentage of cursus is higher than average in the first chapter of both works, which may indicate that for the author, cursus is one of the stylistic elements to be presented to the reader at the beginning of a book. quaestio de aqua et terra differs from the three works mentioned above: here we can see more modest use of cursus velox and tardus and a greater presence of cursus trispondaicus. in his latin samples, boccaccio clearly prefers cursus tardus and cursus planus. cursus velox, generally considered the most elegant form of cursus in latin prose, is less present in his samples. previous researchers have claimed that dante does not use cursus evenly throughout his works: they occur more frequently at the beginnings and ends 87latin accentual clausula as exemplified in 14th-century prose texts by dante and boccaccio of works, and their occurrence may be very different within the same book. in previous studies, analyses made by chapters did not distinguish between different types of cursus and simply examined the presence of cursus versus other sentence endings. the results of the present research confirm that dante’s samples have a very high incidence of cursus in the first chapters (for example, 93.3% in de vulgari eloquentia). analysis by chapters ascertained that cursus planus is distributed evenly, but the presence of velox, tardus and trispondaicus varies to a great extent in different chapters. the results of this analysis are certainly not definitive, but they offer several directions for future analyses. references aili, hans 1979. the prose rhythm of sallust and livy. stockholm: almquist & wiksell international. albrecht, michael von 2003. cicero’s style: a synopsis, followed by selected analytic studies. leiden: brill. branca, vittore 1967. tutte le opere di giovanni boccaccio, vol. x: de mulieribus claris. milano: mondadori. branca, vittore 1975. boccaccio medievale, firenze: g.c. sansoni editore. branca, vittore 1983. tutte le opere di giovanni boccaccio, vol. ix: de casibus virorum illustrium. milano: mondadori. chiesa, paolo; tabarroni, andrea 2013. dante alighieri. le opere, vol. iv: monarchia (introduzione). roma: salerno editore. clark, albert curtius 1910. the cursus in medieval and vulgar latin. oxford: clarendon press. fallani, giovanni; maggi, nicola; zennaro, silvio (eds.) 1993. dante alighieri. tutte le opere: divina commedia, vita nuova, rime, convivio, de vulgari eloquentia, monarchia, egloghe, epistole, quaestio de aqua et terra. milano: newton comptor editori. janson, tore 1975. prose rhythm in medieval latin from the 9th to the 13th century. stockholm: almquist & wiksell. lausberg, heinrich 1960. handbuch der literarischen rhetorik: eine grundlegung der literaturwissenschaft. münchen: hueber. 88 annika mikkel lindholm, gudrun 1963. studien zum mittellateinischen prosarhythmus, seine entwicklung und sein abklingen in der briefliteratur italiens. stockholm: almquist & wiksell. malato, enrico 1999. dante. in: malato, enrico (ed.), storia della letteratura italiana. volume i. dalle origini alle dante. roma: salerno editrice, 773–1052. mengaldo, pier vincenzo 1970. cursus. in: bosco, umberto (ed.), enciclopedia dantesca, vol. 2. roma: istituto della enciclopedia italia, 290–295. meyer, wilhelm 1905. die rhythmische lateinische prosa. in: meyer, wilhelm, gesammelte abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen rhythmik. berlin: weidmannsche buchhandlung, 236–286. mikkel, annika 2020. rütmilised lauselõpud 14. sajandi ladinakeelsetes ning itaalia rahvakeelsetes proosateostes. tartu: tartu ülikooli kirjastus. norberg, dag 1968. manuel pratique de latin médiéval. paris: picard. oberhelman, steven m.; hall, ralph g. 1984. a new statistical analysis of accentual prose rhythms in imperial latin authors. in: classical philology 79(2), 114–130. https://doi.org/10.1086/366843 parodi, ernesto giacomo 1913. osservazioni sopra il cursus delle opere latine e volgari del boccaccio. in: miscellanea storica della valdelsa xxi. castelfiorentino: società storica della valdelsa, 231–248. parodi, ernesto giacomo 1957. intorno al testo delle epistole di dante e al cursus. in: folena, gianfranco (ed.), lingua e letteratura. studi di teoria linguistica e di storia dell’italiano antico. parte seconda. venezia: neri pozza editore, 399–442. toynbee, paget 1918. dante and the ‘cursus’: a new argument in favor of the authenticity of the ‘quaestio de aqua et terra’. in: the modern language review 13(4), 420–430. https://doi.org/10.2307/3714033 toynbee, paget 1920. dantis aligherii epistolae. the letters of dante. emended text with introduction, translation, notes, and indices and appendix on the cursus. oxford: clarendon press. toynbee, paget 1923. the bearing of the cursus on the text of dante’s de vulgari eloquentia. oxford: oxford university press. tunberg, terence o. 1992. a study of ‘clausulae’ in selected works by lorenzo valla. in: humanistica lovaniensia 41. leuven: leuven university press, 104–133. tunberg, terence o. 1996. prose styles and cursus. in: mantello, frank; rigg, arthur georg (eds.), medieval latin. washington: the catholic university of american press, 111–121. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? frog* abstract. this article explores patterns of language use in oral poetry within a variety of semantic formula. such a formula may vary its surface texture in relation to phonic demands of the metrical environment in which it is realized. metrically entangled kennings in old norse dróttkvætt poetry provide material for a series of case studies focusing on variation in realizing formulae of this type. old norse kennings present a semantic formula of a particular type which is valuable as an example owing to the extremes of textural variation that it enables. focus will be on variation between two broad semantic categories in expressing the formula’s consistent unit of meaning that are otherwise unambiguously distinct: proper names for mythological beings and poetic terms for weapons and armour. this article introduces an approach to kennings as semantic formulae and includes an illustrative case study on kennings meaning ‘battle’ in the last three metrical positions of a dróttkvætt line. the case study is simultaneously used to demonstrate the degree of integration of mythological proper names in the poetic register. this article contains only the first case study of a series. it provides foundations for examining variation in the associative links exhibited by names of mythic beings as a category according to the metrical positions in which a battle-kenning is realized. key words: oral poetry, variation, formula, skaldic poetry, dróttkvætt, kenning this is the first part of a four-part discussion that considers the vocabulary of proper names associated with mythology as potentially being fully integrated into the oral-poetic register (language as used in the poetry) of medieval icelandic skaldic verse. the overall discussion is an exploration of the possibility that, like other nouns in this register, the lexicon of proper names functioned in generative composition1 as a resource for meeting metrical demands * author’s address: frog, university of helsinki folklore studies, department of philosophy, history, culture and art studies, pl 59, 00014 helsingin yliopisto, finland. e-mail: misterfrogfrog@yahoo.de. 1 the expression ‘generative composition’ is used here to distinguish generative language production within the tradition of poetry from objectively conscious composition (even if, in practice, these are extremes on a spectrum). generative composition thus highlights reliance on internalized and intuitive understandings of the meter and the poetic register, with its constructions and conventions for realizing the meter, in contrast to an objectified handling of the register with a more analytical apprehension of the meter. studia metrica et poetica 1.1, 2014, 100–139 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.06 mailto:misterfrogfrog@yahoo.de mailto:misterfrogfrog@yahoo.de http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.06 101 of alliteration, rhyme, syllabic quantity and syllable-count. recognizing that the lexicon of mythology is integrated into the register of skaldic poetry is not a surprising finding in itself. however, the use of this lexicon has generally been taken for granted: the meter and the language of the poetry tend to be acknowledged as complementary aspects of the skaldic poetic tradition but receive focused address in isolation from one another rather than focus on their interface.2 little or no consideration has been given to how this area of skaldic vocabulary functioned in versification or the relationship of metrical circumstances to word-choice in the generative production of new verses.3 this is probably in large part owing to the methodological problem of determining the influence of meter on word-choice (cf. marold 1983: 43). this problem is relevant to individual cases but it is alleviated when attention is shifted to social patterns of language use. the present discussion examines verbal variation in a metrically entangled type of semantic formula called a kenning in dróttkvætt-meter poetry. although this discussion is focused on a variety of old norse poetry that is exceptional in its metrical complexity and its conservatism in transmission, this poetry’s exceptional qualities make the corpus a valuable testing-ground for investigating certain types of variation that will be of general interest in research on formulaic language. although the old norse kenning is a semantic formula of a particular type, this discussion has potential to elucidate the phenomenon discussed here as a semantic formula more generally. in the background of the present discussion is an exploratory pilot study on formulaic language in skaldic dróttkvætt poetry (frog forthcoming). the pilot study tested the possibility that kennings might become ‘metrically entangled’, although these metrically regular formulae might be concealed beneath a surface of synonymic variation as a function of skaldic diction. 2 e.g. meissner 1921; de vries 1934; fidjestøl 1997; árnason 1991; see also note 7 below. 3 a relationship between the richness of the skaldic register and the demands of the dróttkvætt meter is generally recognized – e.g. kari ellen gade (1995: 3) observes: “although it is not possible to trace the origin of the kenningar, it is clear that the nominal kenning system is intimately connected with the strict formal requirements of skaldic meter, and that the kenningar provided the skalds with the tools they needed to fulfil the requirements imposed by rhyme, alliteration, syllable counting, and sentence structure.” nevertheless, this relationship frequently remains implicit (cf. frank 1985: 163–164) or only noted in passing (cf. meissner 1921: 36n; sullivan 2008: 32–33). the practical and functional aspects of language are easily overshadowed by consideration of their aesthetics (e.g. frank 1978: 33–54 and passim; cf. kuhn 1983: 221–222; whaley 2005: 487–488; clunies ross et al. 2012: lxxiii) or by consideration of how kennings work (e.g. lindow 1975; amory 1982; sverdlov 2003). the question of how meter relates to word-choice has never really penetrated the discourse and generally remains outside of consideration. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 102 frog research on formulaic language and compositional practice in oral poetry tends to remain rooted in oral-formulaic theory (also called oral theory), building from the early definition of the formula proposed by milman parry (1928: 16): “an expression which is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea” (also lord 1960: 4). such formulae can be considered metrically bound insofar as they are exclusive to a particular metrical context and will not ‘naturally’ occur outside of that metrical context or are otherwise specific to and invariable in it. the present approach considers this degree of fixity as an extreme on a spectrum of metrical entanglement. the term metrical entanglement is here used to describe the phenomenon by which use of the lexicon of an oralpoetic system becomes bound up with metrical positions or other metrical parameters. items in the poetic lexicon, including semantic formulae, can be considered metrically entangled if there is reason to believe that they are conventionally associated with one or more metrical contexts and are uncommon outside of that metrical context or those contexts, even if it is not necessarily striking when they do so. with the assistance of the skaldic database, the pilot study was carried out on a random (from the perspective of the study) dataset of 340 metrically situated kennings with the referent ‘battle’ (cf. parry’s “essential idea”). the study revealed that kennings exhibit clear metric-structural ‘types’. a metric-structural type was defined in terms of the metrical positions filled by each element forming the kenning. within the dataset, 10 ‘basic types’4 accounted for more than 70% of the examples. individual battle-kenning types also exhibited, for example, conventions of lines in which they would occur that could not be accounted for by metrical factors alone.5 this indicated that battle-kennings were not always inserted freely into the meter. the 10 most frequent basic metric-structural types were deemed reasonably well attested and with a sufficient relative frequency to be considered to reflect metrically entangled but verbally variable semantic formulae. furthermore, individual types also exhibited lexical preferences and/or were associated with lexical collocations such as rhyme-pairs (i.e. associated with phonic demands of the meter), only one part of which would be an element in the kenning. these suggested varying degrees of 4 on the distinction between ‘basic types’ and ‘complex types’, see frog forthcoming. 5 e.g. the most frequent battle-kenning basic type (yx3456, with 60 examples) was specifically associated with even lines, although kennings with other referents of this basic metric-structural type appear in odd lines. 103 ‘crystallization’6 of the lexicon in relation to metrically entangled semantic formulae that could advance toward metrically bound formulae, approaching parry’s early description. such collocations could appear specific to a basic type rather than distributed across types, making it improbable that these patterns were merely an accident of convergent probabilities in the dataset. in other words, the lexicon could also be metrically entangled with a basic type, including words that were not part of the formula itself. this suggested compositional resources that could allow types of flexibility in realization (most of which do not concern us here). the first three parts of the present discussion are case studies of metrically entangled semantic formulae of dróttkvætt-meter poetry. each of the three case studies will focus on the occurrences of proper names in a different metric-structural type of semantic formula meaning ‘battle’ (types 123xyy, 12yyxx and yyx456, respectively). these were three frequent types according to the pilot study. they are here addressed in larger datasets that have been extended laterally through the corpus for the identification of as many examples as possible. the examples surveyed should not, however, be considered exhaustive of the basic type, nor do they include variations on the basic types addressed (although a few cases of expansion into a complex type are introduced for discussion). the first half of the present article introduces the approach to the material and to kennings as semantic formulae. the second half presents the opening case study which has been chosen to offer an accessible introduction to the metrical entanglement of kennings in dróttkvætt. the two later case studies will illustrate different ways in which the lexicon of mythological proper names becomes metrically entangled in the realization of a basic type. the fourth part in this series will situate the case studies in relation to one another, discuss certain ramifications of the findings and consider their potential to provide a foothold for future investigations. discussions of skaldic diction generally address kennings in terms of lexicon, syntax, structure, referentiality, ambiguity, interpretation, aesthetics 6 anna-leena siikala (1990 [1984]) advanced the term ‘crystallization’ for approaching relative fixity in the reproduction of traditional narrative related to the degree of fixity in individual memory, which can then be inferred as characteristic in social patterns reflected in larger corpora. the term emphasizes relative fixity rather than suggesting binary opposition between ‘fixed’ and ‘free’ or that these are ideals rather than extremes. within studies of oral poetries (and especially of old norse poetries), this is significant because of long-standing presumptions of a binary opposition between ‘memorization’ and ‘improvisation’ (see frog 2011a: 23–24, 51–54), whereby skaldic poetry becomes ‘memorized’, ‘fixed’ and suffers ‘corruption’ rather than ‘variation’. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 104 frog and/or mnemonics, as well as typologies, systems and historical development within those systems.7 the present study differs from these in its focus on pragmatic variation in lexical choices in particular metrical contexts. rather than addressing how kennings refer, the case studies concern language use in realizing, as practice, formulaic expressions that are associated with a particular referent. rather than focusing on variation between terms or names within a category of semantic equivalence (cf. frank 1985: 168–169), the focus here engages questions of variation between categories of semantic equivalence. this is done with emphasis on names associated with mythology. this is a vocabulary that has been regarded as particularly marked in use as well as receiving special attention in scholarship as source material for research on vernacular mythology.8 the discussion opened here will consider the degree to which these names were integrated into the lexicon of the poetic tradition and whether, as a part of pragmatic variation in the practice of realizing semantic formulae, a valkyrie could alternate with a spear. kennings and heiti a kenning is a rhetorical figure of two nouns in a syntactic relationship indicating a third, nominal referent. one noun, called a base-word, is open to morphological variation according to its use. this is complemented by a second noun, called a determinant, in the genitive case or as an uninflected stem 7 e.g. meissner 1921; marold 1983; lindow 1975; amory 1982; frank 1978; gade 1995; fidjestøl 1997; sverdlov 2003; holland 2005; sverdlov 2006; würth 2007; birgisson 2007; potts 2011; osborne 2012. in her study of syntax in dróttkvætt, kari ellen gade (e.g. 1995: 107) observes a few cases of kenning constructions characterized by the metrical distribution of their constituents in a line, but she does not explore the relationship of these constructions to lexical variation although she analyzes them in relation to metrical structures. some studies have addressed the distribution of elements constitutive of kennings across lines of a stanza (e.g. kuhn 1983: 224–228; sverdlov 2003; wills 2009; n.d. a; n.d. b; cf. sverdlov 2006), but these do not extend to addressing metrical positions of kenning elements within the line or lines. 8 names of odin and valkyries tend to be interpreted in terms of mythological significance or use with reference to particular mythological narratives. little or no consideration is given to the metrical conditions under which such names appear or to their relationship to the poetic system more generally, unless this is to determine the correct/historical form of a name or whether a proposed name is based on a textual error or misinterpretation. cf. e.g. falk 1924; de vries 1934; 1956–1957; turville-petre 1964: 61–63; price 2002: 100–107, 337–346; abram 2011; cf. however also lindow 2001: 250. 105 preceding the base-word to form a compound.9 thus, when the base-word hríð = ‘storm’ is complemented by the determinant sverðr = ‘sword’, it forms a kenning with the referent ‘battle’. this can take the forms hríð sverðs = ‘storm of the sword’, hríð sverða = ‘storm of swords’ or sverðhríð = ‘sword-storm’. this rhetorical figure can be approached as a type of construction – i.e. a “conventionalized pairing of form and function” (goldberg 2006: 3). thus when two relevant nouns are encountered in an appropriate syntactic relationship (and context of language use), the recognisability of the construction leads the expression to be interpreted as a kenning. skaldic kennings are nevertheless concentrated within certain subject domains and have limited sets of conventional referents. in addition, base-words and determinants used in kennings for a particular referent also tended to be representatives of conventional semantic categories, in which lexical variation was enabled according to “paradigmatic substitution” (clunies ross et al. 2012: lxxi). (see also meissner 1921; fidjestøl 1997.) lexical variation was enabled by a rich vocabulary of semantically equivalent poetic terms called heiti = (lit.) ‘that which something is called; name’. in the semantic formula ‘storm of swords’, the base-word could be filled with any of a large number of weather-heiti, such as él = ‘snow-shower’, drífa = ‘a fall of snow, sleet’, hregg = ‘rainstorm’, regn = ‘rain’, skúr = ‘shower’, veðr = ‘weather; wind’, etc. potential for variation expands considerably because other, additional semantic fields with their own sets of terms can equally fill this 9 as either noun in a kenning can be a more developed noun phrase, including adjectives, article or number, or may even be another kenning, the rhetorical figure can be abstractly described as realizing two syntactic constructions: np2-gen np1 or np2-np1 = np3. the constraint that the referent should not be semantically the same as the base-word or the determinant (i.e. np3 ≠ np1 or np2) is relevant to the consideration of mythic personal names in kenning constructions. a battle-heiti cannot be used to form a battle-kenning, but a personal name that is also a battle-heiti is acceptable (e.g. valkyrie-names like hildr, gunnr; cf. also meissner 1921: 73–74, 201–202). this ostensibly produces ambiguity regarding whether certain words are in fact personal names. however, if they are not names, the construction is not formally a kenning. this does not mean that inconsistent uses and interpretations did not occur (cf. styrr as a base-word in anon líkn 34vii.6, 8). however, the social pattern of use of these lexemes in battle-kennings can be considered historically rooted in their interpretation as personal names for formal reasons. although individuals could flex their interpretations of those terms in relation to ideology (cf. osborne 2013), formal continuities in patterns of use within the register can be reasonably considered to reflect earlier uses of the personal name. conventional formulaic expressions, such as those explored here, may be generatively produced and/or interpreted without a need to resolve whether a conventional lexeme is a battle-heiti or a personal name (wray 2002: 130–132; cf. lindow 1985: 27–28). the present investigation is on the realization of conventional formulae through the register, and therefore the ostensible ambiguity of individual cases is eclipsed where these appear to be historically rooted in conventions of social practice. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 106 frog function, producing the kenning as ‘noise of swords’, ‘voice/song of swords’, ‘meeting of swords’, ‘game of swords’, etc. the determinant could similarly be filled with other sword-heiti, such as hjǫrr = (poet.) ‘sword’ or even a recognizable proper name of a specific sword, such as laufi, the name of the sword of the hero bǫðvarr bjarki. battle-kenning determinants such as egg = ‘edge, blade’ and malmr = ‘metal’ easily blur into a broader category of ‘weapons’ and are not necessarily specific to ‘sword’. other determinants such as hjalmr = ‘helmet’ and brynja = ‘armour’ can be considered in a broader category of ‘armour’, which can in turn be seen with ‘weapons’ as a still broader category of ‘implements of battle’. personal names of valkyries, odin-heiti, names of mythic heroes and kings can be similarly viewed in equivalence classes advancing to a broad category of ‘mythic agents of battle’. this category nevertheless remains semantically distinct from ‘implements of battle’, even if these potentially have functional equivalence in realizing battle-kennings. in any case, the recognisability of the construction enables unfamiliar kennings to be resolved when encountered in a contextually appropriate environment, such as bekkþiðurr = ‘stream-partridge’ = duck (egill lv 2v (eg 5).5)10 or viðbjǫrn veggja11 = ‘woodbear of the wall’ = mouse (anon bjark 7iii.3–4), as well as kennings for more common referents that may deviate from conventional patterns of paradigmatic substitution, such as hǫlða morð = ‘murder of men’ = battle (eskál vell 20i.3). a usage-based approach to language and variation the present investigation is developed on a usage-based approach to language and variation. register is here used as a term and concept for approaching contextually-based variation in language. the term ‘register’ developed in linguistics to designate language as it is used and realized in accordance with a communicative context, thus a register is one conditioned variation 10 citations are by sigla and stanza numbering of the skaldic database. citations are with reference to the published editions of the associated skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages edition where these were available at the time of writing (clunies ross 2007; gade 2009) and with reference to finnur jónsson’s critical edition (1967) where they are not. 11 it may be noted that this mouse-kenning may not have been unique to the verse in which it is preserved. richard perkins (1982–1985: 169–170) points out that in 19th century folklore, veggja dýr = ‘animal of the walls’ was used as a circumlocution for ‘mouse’ when at sea. this was part of an avoidance vocabulary owing to taboos against using certain words because certain words (like ‘mouse’) could have negative effects or consequences. thus, this kenning (or associated semantic formula) could have been conventional outside of verse. 107 of language among others (see e.g. halliday 1978; adapted to the analysis of oral poetries centrally by foley 1995; 2002). register will here be used as a tool for approaching variation in how lexical items are handled and interpreted in relation to poetic systems and poetic genres as socially established contexts of variation in language use. in oral poetries, meter only exists as an abstraction realized through the rhythmic patterns exercised in elocution, maintained through a conventional mode or modes of expression in social practice. the mode of expression consequently shapes the register – the language used to realize those rhythmic structures – as a historical process.12 this has long been acknowledged in uses of formulaic expressions (see e.g. foley 1991) and is also recognized as a significant factor in the development of the vocabulary of semantic equivalence classes for meeting compositional constraints (cf. roper 2012). the constraints imposed by the system narrow and focus general linguistic processes so that, to borrow the pseudo-maxim of john miles foley (2002: 127–128): oral poetry works like language, only more so. accordingly, the register of an oral poetry simultaneously reflects outcomes of linguistic processes and has the potential to offer insights into those areas. the present investigation is of the register of dróttkvætt, the meter that is considered characteristic or even iconic of so-called skaldic poetry, in which it is associated with a number of genres. old norse scholarship customarily distinguishes between ‘eddic’ (folk) and ‘skaldic’ (court) poetries, but this binary distinction is an artificial construct that is more intuitive and practical than scientific; ‘eddic’ and ‘skaldic’ cannot be considered formally defined, analytical categories (see e.g. frank 1985: 159–160; clunies ross 2005: 21–28; frog 2009: 229–231). the old norse poetic system was extremely dynamic and is better approached as systems of registers, modes of expression (through which meters were realized) and prosodies (including syntactic complexity) fulfilling conventional constellations according to 12 halliday did not address oral poetries. in his adaptation of the concept, foley treated register as generally inclusive: he saw meter as part of register without engaging the concept of ‘mode’. however, if register is approached as a system of signifiers that can be adapted and manipulated across modes of expression, it may be more efficient to acknowledge meter as an aspect of the mode of expression through which the register is realized (see also frog 2012: 52–54). the dependence of meter on a mode of expression for long-term continuity in an oral tradition is highlighted by the fact that when one mode of expression is exchanged for another (e.g. in dictation rather than a conventional performative mode), registral expressions may be maintained but the meter will be impacted, whether loosening, tightening or dissolving altogether (cf. salminen 1934: 200–203; lord 1991: 41, 45–49; honko 1998: 81–88; saarinen 2013: 40). mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 108 frog genre and application.13 register is a flexible analytical tool, and its sensitivity and scope can be calibrated in relation to the research object. it is therefore possible to address a common register of germanic epic poetics,14 a broad old norse poetic register shared across eddic and skaldic verse,15 or to distinguish registers of skaldic poetics and of eddic narrative genres, as well as still more sensitive distinctions of particular genres or meters. conventions of language use in old norse poetry varied in relation to meter (wills 2009).16 the role of register in realizing metrically well-formed expressions interfaces formulaic expressions with meters. consequently, metrically entangled formulae are characteristic of particular meters and do not move freely between them, even if they are metrically viable across those contexts (cf. frog 2012: 52–54). at the same time, characteristics such as kenning density and complexity of syntax could vary considerably across genres and uses of a single meter. this 13 this differentiates the group of old norse poetries under the umbrellas of ‘eddic’ and ‘skaldic’ from many oral-poetry traditions to which register has been applied, where a meter is consistent for modes of expression and different genres, where there is a co-variation between genre and meter, or where a genre or meter is in focus and alternative resources do not require address (e.g. foley 1995; harvilahti 2003; tarkka 2005; sykäri 2011; cf. stepanova 2012; frog 2013). 14 this sort of broad perspective on diverse regional and cultural reflexes of a common oralpoetic register has been addressed by eila stepanova (2012: 264; forthcoming) as the ‘general register’ of a widespread tradition when addressing the genre and poetics of laments in finnic cultures. 15 this would be narrower than lauri harvilahti’s (2003: 90–115) ‘ethnocultural substrate’, which accounts for the constitutive resources of the full breadth of oral-poetic traditions in a cultural region, or what stepanova (2012: 281; forthcoming) addresses as ‘supra-registral’ elements and features. the resources described by an ethnocultural substrate form conventional constellations which are socially recognizable as belonging together – i.e. as registers of a particular poetry genre, meter or group of genres – while supra-registral elements and features are shared across these constellations but do not themselves form a constellation characterizable as a register. the register of (attested) eddic and skaldic poetries is representative of only certain parts of the poetry traditions of the culture associated especially with men and bound up with a heroic ideology. women’s genres of poetry are not preserved in documented texts (although some skaldic verses by women are preserved). it is nevertheless probable that there was, for example, a vernacular tradition of lament poetry sharing features with other lament traditions linked to the circum-baltic contact zone (stepanova 2011: 140), and which may have been distinct from the poetic systems of male-dominated genres (cf. frog, stepanova 2011; stepanova 2012). 16 ragnar ingi aðalsteinsson (2005) has observed that alliteration fell on different parts of speech in dróttkvætt and the eddic fornyrðislag meter. however, the examples of alliteration in (early) fornyrðislag were drawn from eddic narrative genres and did not extend to use of the same meter by skaldic poets. it therefore remains ambiguous whether this variation is a function of meter or genre (cf. corresponding variation in genres of kalevala-meter poetry: leino 1970: 132–137, 186). 109 is significant when the same meter could be characteristic of several genres and uses.17 thus, skaldic poets could also employ ‘eddic’ formulae when using meters associated with ‘eddic’ genres.18 at the same time, a formulaic expression characteristic of a particular meter could maintain formal continuity across genres while varying in semantics according to the narrower generic register (frog 2013). in this tradition, registers of genre and meter could intersect and diverge: a single composition could employ multiple meters and the same meter could be used across multiple genres as well as having extra-generic uses (frog 2009). when turning attention to the register of a particular meter, this means focusing attention on an area within a broader register associated with a number of genres, which could also allow it to be described as a ‘sub-register’ or a special type of “context-dependent lexicon” (stepanova 2012: 264–265) within the broader register. this approach appears valid for old norse poetries because the corpus is characterized by registral resources conventional across genres while being characteristic of certain meters and not others. the area that is being distinguished is characterized by the mode or modes of expression interfaced with the particular meter as a determinant condition on register use (cf. halliday 1978: 61–64).19 those mode(s) reciprocally shaped those resources while the strategies for realizing metrically well-formed expressions develop historically in relation to social use across different genres. kennings as semantic formulae it was proposed above that kennings could be approached as a type of construction, through which form conveys information about the function or meaning 17 there are also potential indicators that skaldic uses of ‘eddic’ meters employed a different mode of expression. this can be inferred from indications that many skaldic uses of these meters (ideally) realized them with syllable-based rhythms rather than stress-based rhythms (cf. turville-petre 1976: xvii). 18 cf. thorvaldsen 2008: 154; but on differences in syntactic structures, see also mellor 1999 [2008]: 156–160. 19 within an oral-poetic tradition, the characterization of such a register by formal constraints allows it to be approached centrally through the system of signifiers as resources in expression rather than what these signify, which may vary considerably according to genre and context of use. the ambiguity of formally conventional expressions and symbols enables flex and adaptability that may be fundamental to their ability to remain interesting and compelling resources, especially through significant changes in social and semiotic environments (cf. bell 1992: ch. 8; osborne 2013). mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 110 frog of an expression. constructions exist on a continuum from abstract grammar and rhetorical figures to lexicalized idioms. formulae constitute one area along this continuum. rather than determining whether something ‘is’ or ‘is not’ a formula in parry’s terms of fixity, the area of formulae along this continuum can be approached in terms of degrees of crystallization that may be quite fluid. a formula is approached here is as a broad linguistic phenomenon, which, in oral poetry, occurs within a metrical context (cf. kiparsky 1976), rather than defining the poetic formula separately, as was done across the early stages of oral-formulaic theory. alison wray (2002) defines the linguistic formula in terms of morphemeequivalence: it is characterized by a coherent unit of meaning with an exclusive entry in the mental lexicon of language users, even if it can be analyzed and appropriately interpreted according to rules of the grammar.20 parry’s verbal expression communicating an “essential idea” correlates with wray’s morpheme-equivalence conjoined with metrical boundedness. the emphasis on metrical fixity in defining the oral-poetic formula proved overly narrow even for the poetic traditions on which the definition concentrated (see e.g. hainsworth 1968; foley 1991; harvilahti 1992a). the model was based on long epic forms of south slavic and homeric traditions and it could not be effectively applied to other traditions without adaptation.21 the early approach emphasized so-called ‘composition in performance’, focusing on traditions in which the verbal level of the text was realized more or less freely in the progression of epic narration. for traditions of shorter poetry, the difference in length had significant implications for variation in reproduction.22 thus, the old norse short epic form was not ‘oral-formulaic’ in the manner of long epic forms. like any other tradition, oral-formulaic theory had to be adapted to approach the poetry on its own terms. the register of old norse poetry is characterized by formulaic language and formulaic strategies, even if their use when reproducing individual poems may 20 this difference in approach has consequences affecting what qualifies as a ‘formula’ as opposed to other constructions in an oral-poetic system. this includes conventional patterns of syntax (e.g. mellor 1999), meter (e.g. foley 1976) and collocative sets of words accomplishing alliteration or rhyme without producing a coherent unit of meaning (cf. frog 2009: 236–239). 21 for an accessible overview, see foley 1988; cf. finnegan 1977: 52–87; in old norse poetries, see also acker 1998: 85–110; frog 2011a: 19–28 and works there cited. 22 see e.g. holoka 1976: 572; lönnroth 1971; harvilahti 1992a; lord 1995. it may be observed that the greatest obstacle in this discussion was that the parry–lord model had become an iconic image of oral-formulaic theory, and this image was then popularly interpreted as a hegemonic model to be applied or rejected. 111 have been far less flexible than the epics studied by parry and albert lord.23 in its development, oral-formulaic theory remains concerned with the basic linguistic phenomenon of the formula24 as this is formally realized in relation to a vernacular poetic system and as it functions in relation to the tradition. when addressing traditions of shorter poetry, it is important to distinguish between the reproduction of socially recognized texts or textual entities25 and the production of new texts within (or in relation to) generic strategies and realized through the traditional register. it is equally important to recognize that the degree of conservatism or acceptable variation is not simply a function of meter, but also of convention in how poetry is presented and used (see e.g. harvilahti 1992b). in addition, the crystallization of a textual entity will not necessarily be uniform – i.e. some sites in a text will exhibit less variation than others, even in south slavic epic.26 regarding the reproduction of textual entities, formulaic language can potentially function mnemonically to reinforce conservative reproduction, and even where conventions of reproduction are quite variable, competence in the idiom plays an essential mnemonic role in the ability to learn new texts (cf. rubin 1995; harvilahti 2000). irrespective of conventions of reproduction, the composition of new poetic text relies on competence in the idiom, including formulaic language. that competence is internalized through exposure to and participation in practice of the tradition. it is acknowledged that the skaldic “kenning is based on traditional paraphrasing patterns, and is not primarily the product of individual poetic inspiration” (clunies ross et al. 2012: lxxiii). nevertheless, a persistent myth of scholarship is that oral-formulaic theory has no relevance to skaldic poetry – with the implication that dróttkvætt poetry has no formulae comparable to those relevant to oral-formulaic theory (cf. birgisson 2007: 15). this myth is rooted in a misconception that oral-formulaic theory and poetic formulae are only relevant to extremes of flexible composition in performance or 23 cf. lönnroth 1971; harris 1983 [2002]; acker 1998; mellor 1999 [2008]; haymes 2004; thorvaldsen 2006; frog 2011a; þorgeirsson 2010; 2013. 24 however, the distinction of ‘formula’/‘not formula’ among the broad range of compositional resources does not always remain entirely clear (cf. foley 1991). for those unfamiliar with oralformulaic theory, it should also be pointed out that oral-formulaic theory is not exclusively concerned with verbal formulae, but also with constitutive content units represented through formulaic language as well as compositional wholes. 25 on textual entities, see frog 2011b: 8–11. 26 e.g. gil’ferding 1894: 24; lord 1960: 58–63, 69–71; 1995: 22–62, 167–182; cf. also foley 1991: 206; siikala 1990: 84–85. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 112 frog improvisation. skaldic poetry was, in contrast, oriented to the production of unique texts and the conservative reproduction of these as socially circulated textual entities. however, the use of crystallized, metrically entangled diction for the production of well-formed poetic lines is not exclusive to composition in performance.27 internalizing the tradition in relation to exemplars was essential to both composition and the mnemonics of reproduction. the longterm continuities in conventions of meter and diction alone suggest that this poetry tradition maintained and communicated strategies and resources for meeting metrical demands when realizing these through the register.28 in order to introduce kennings as semantic formulae in skaldic verse, it is useful to begin from an extreme of crystallization that produces a more familiarly recognizable ‘formula’ and then to gradually advance into ranges of flexibility. first, however, it is necessary to point out that the statistical methods of early oral-formulaic theory produced the misleading impression that a formula is qualified by statistical demonstrability – i.e. because the research method demonstrated formulae statistically. it simultaneously suggested a formula was qualified by multiple contexts of occurrence – i.e. according to research questions about variation in reproduction, and research aims to demonstrate that particular texts were neither produced as works of written literature nor transmitted as ‘memorized’ textual entities. neither of these are valid criteria for determining formulaicity (wray 2002: 25–26). these conditions had the significant consequence of excluding expressions conventionally used in only a single context of a single textual entity because these were aligned with memorization rather than composition in performance.29 thus in studies of old norse poetry, independently attested lines and their variations in the same textual entity were not regarded as reflecting conventional formulae. 27 it may be observed that oral-formulaic systems can be maintained for the composition of new poetic texts even where the textual entities are conventionally circulated in written form (blackburn 1988: esp. 24–25). 28 a broad range of evidence suggests that complex skaldic verses could be composed in situ, including different types of verse exchanges and challenges for skilled poets to compose on prescribed topics. this evidence suggests that the rapid, generative production of contextually appropriate and metrically well-formed text was part of social practice (frog 2009; cf. grove 2008). if this was the case, it implies conventional resources and strategies that would enable rapid composition as a socially and historically sustainable aspect of practice. 29 this same framework in fact could be used to disqualify repeated expressions only documented in a single poem from being considered ‘formulae’ (acker 1998: 91–94; cf. also frog 2010b: 101–102). for indications of formulae in germanic poetry traditions that only became acknowledged through cross-cultural comparison or historically remote evidence, see e.g. kellogg 1965; þorgeirsson 2013: 351, 355–356, 363–366, 368–370. 113 however, albert lord (1995: 62) observes, “the larger the sample with which one works, the less adequate is the concept of word-for-word memorization as a means of song transmission.” thus in the corpus of kalevalaic poetry, where there may be a hundred or more examples of a single textual entity, the size of the corpus motivates recognizing such context-specific lines and their variations in terms of formulae (cf. frog 2010a: 400–405). moreover, the conventional use of a formula in a single textual entity does not prevent it from being used elsewhere (tarkka 2005: 65–67).30 when this is acknowledged, kennings in socially circulating verses of skaldic poetry can be regarded as verbally crystallized31 and metrically bound formulae. in addition, it was not always necessary or even motivated for everyone to reflect on why such a kenning meant e.g. ‘battle’ if the verses were transmitted with information relevant to their content or the referent of the kenning was otherwise formally and/or contextually transparent (see wray 2002: 130–132; cf. lindow 1985: 27–28). in other words, users familiar with verses and conventions of versification need not necessarily analyze them in order to interpret a kenning appropriately (cf. wray 2002: 131).32 although it has not been customary to view such textualized kennings as formulae of the classic parry–lord type, this category of formula becomes relevant for consideration where verbally identical kennings are encountered realizing the same metric-structural basic 30 the number of compositions in which a verbal sequence is preserved should also not be conflated with the number of times particular verses are heard and used by individuals (i.e. its average token frequency). where a formula is conventional to a single context, it might index that context referentially if it were recognizable (see frog 2010b: 102–103). 31 in oral transmission, the degree of verbal fixity would always be open to degrees of variation. in the basic type addressed below, for example, the base-words in even-line uses of the formula could, in theory, be freely interchangeable without affecting either meter or sense as long as they did not alliterate. 32 the contextual recognition of a familiar type of kenning construction would also enable someone fluent in the poetic idiom and its patterns of paradigmatic substitution to intuitively apprehend its significance without recourse to parsing it analytically according to patterns of kenning formation. a dróttkvætt poem of only thirteen stanzas would exceed one hundred lines. continuous oral delivery of 13 stanzas can be estimated to minimally require 5–10 minutes (n.b. – delivery could also be characterized by regular repetition at the level of some unit of composition such as a line, couplet or half-stanza). the faster the rhythm of the mode of expression, the greater the need for reliance on immediately apprehending conventional verbal constructions in order to follow the sequence of the composition. it may also be noted that a fairly high degree of apprehension by at least prestige members of an audience would seem to be historically required as a norm for the debut performance of longer oral poems to remain interesting, desirable and worthy of patronage in long-term social practice. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 114 frog type, especially where these are found in full identical lines, as in examples (1a.i–v) and (2b) below.33 linguistic formulae may potentially vary in the morphology of participating lexical items. the base-word (np1) of a kenning may vary morphologically while the determinant’s (np2) morphology is dependent on the syntax of the construction (np2-gen np1 or np2-np1). nevertheless, the frequently-occurring odin-heiti yggr, for example, can receive alternative genitive markers /s/ and /jar/ (ygg-s, ygg-jar). these alternative markers are allomorphs – interchangeable morphemes – that realize the morpheme-equivalent unit ‘odingen’. the choice of allomorph is metrically conditioned in dróttkvætt, varying in relation to the syllabic rhythm of the line in which it appears. participating lexical items of a formula vary according to ‘slots’ in the construction. in other words, the formula is constituted of a construction in which, following wray, certain lexical items have crystallized into a distinct, morpheme-equivalent expression. these slots will be syntactically and (at least to some degree) semantically conditioned in relation to the construction. classes of slot-fillers might be as general as the subject or object of a verb as in x thinks nothing of y, or they may be as narrowly idiomatic as to know/learn the ropes (wray 2002: 50; schmitt & carter 2004: 5–7). in the latter case, these may come to qualify as distinct, crystallized formulae (also called ‘prefabs’) realizing a distinct unit of meaning, groups of which forming what parry (1930: 85) called ‘systems’ of formulae (cf. foley 1988: 28–33; acker 1998: 39–43). a still narrower category of open-slot formula realizes a consistent unit of meaning, such as a piece/slice of the action (wray 2002: 50). in most discourses, variation in such an idiom is most likely attributable to dialect, because alternate realizations of such conventionalized expressions appear in general to “repel one another”: a competent user will not normally alternate between them (kuusi 1975: 59; although cf. frog 2010b: 100). in oral poetry, open slots will also be metrically conditioned. thus an oral-poetic register that has developed in relation to phonic and/or syllabic metrical requirements will normally maintain archaisms and be enriched by dialectal words as well as foreign loans that facilitate realizing the meter and associated stylistic devices such as parallelism (coleman 1999: 38; foley 1999: 74–83). in addition, “[p]honic demands have semantic implications” (roper 2012: 83), stretching the semantics of terms and subordinating them to synonymy (ibid.), or employing formulaic elements for purely 33 it should also be born in mind that the preserved corpus of skaldic poetry reflects only a fraction of the verse that was composed and circulated in the various regions of scandinavia across a period of several centuries. 115 metrical reasons with little or no semantic weight.34 albert lord (1960: 48) drew attention to a formula zasedit x = ‘to mount x’, in which the verb varied morphologically in relation to the subject and the formula could be realized with 13 different two-syllable words for ‘horse’. the completed formula invariably realized a coherent unit of meaning – i.e. the formula ‘to mount x’ was in fact ‘to mount a horse’. lord observes that the diversity of terms realizing an otherwise stable formula of this type is attributable to pragmatic variation according to the “acoustical context” while maintaining “the same essential meaning and metrical value” (ibid.: 53). when the formula is approached as a morpheme-equivalent unit, variation between semantically equivalent lexemes according to the metrical environment is equivalent to the variation between ygg-s and ygg-jar mentioned above. the 13 two-syllable terms for ‘horse’ can therefore be considered allomorphs in realizing the formula. old norse heiti are conventionally approached according to categories of semantic equivalence.35 heiti present equivalent sets of elements in the poetic register that have undergone semantic levelling to a degree that paradigmatic substitution in kenning formation can vary pragmatically according to the metrical environment. they can therefore be approached as registral allomorphs, or variants of the same morpheme. this does not mean that variation between allomorphs cannot be semantically significant or indexically marked in individual cases (even in use of ygg-jar as opposed to ygg-s). however, it allows heiti to vary pragmatically, especially where these are used to realize a formulaic unit of meaning to which the heiti may be wholly subordinated (cf. frog 2011a: 32). such pragmatic variation appears to have been fundamental to compositional practice. examples (1–2) below present metrically entangled kenning formulae directly comparable to lord’s example from south slavic epic above: one element of the kenning is stable and the second element is in variation realizing a single semantic unit with a consistent metrical value (dynr/gnýr [np2-gen] = battle in the final three positions of a line). these illustrate the same phenomenon in dróttkvætt poetry. defining the formula 34 the classic example is parry’s (1928) discussion of ‘swift-footed achilles’, in which the epithet ‘swift-footed’ can appear for purely formal reasons of the meter and the whole formula simply means ‘achilles’; for corresponding examples from old norse eddic poetry, see e.g. frog, roper 2011; frog 2011a: 33; for examples of alliteration as a determinant on lexical choice or formula in eddic poetry, see e.g. mellor 1999: 119–122; lönnroth 2002: 17; acker 1998: 64–65; frog 2011a. 35 this has not always been the case: scholarship has been characterized by a long-standing inclination to approach individual heiti as “never completely interchangeable” (frank 1978: 41), particularly where aesthetics of verses as unique works are emphasized and traditionality of diction is marginalized. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 116 frog according to morpheme-equivalence emphases not only continuity in a unit of meaning but also in signifying elements as well. in kennings, however, a metrically entangled kenning can vary both lexical constituents at the level of surface texture without altering the semantic unit being realized. rather than one element of the formula being stable and the other an allomorph, elements in both metrical positions may be realized according to allomorphic variation. in this case, morpheme-equivalence can be considered to be maintained through allomorphic variation according to contextual phonic demands conditioned by constraints of the number and weight of syllables for the metrical positions with which the formula is entangled. this is described as a semantic formula – a formula that corresponds to a morpheme-equivalent unit although all of its elements may exhibit allomorphic variation (cf. holland 2005). the approach to the oral-poetic formula through metrical entanglement rather than parry’s (and lord’s) metrical boundedness results in viewing such kennings as a linguistic phenomenon of (registral) semantic formulae that have become metrically entangled through the social historical conditioning of language use in the tradition. consequently, metrically entangled kennings characterized by the same semantic formula should not be regarded as independent of one another but rather as metrically entangled reflexes of a common semantic formula of the register. this leads to the question of the degree to which the allomorphic constituents of battle-kenning formulae were restricted or open in generative production and whether battle-kennings are characterized by one or several semantic formulae. contrary to expectation, the pilot study revealed that the allomorphic elements realizing metric-structural basic types of battle-kenning were not bound by semantic equivalence class. moreover, the relative frequency of both base-words and determinants could be correlated especially with patterns of alliteration and secondarily by capacity for rhyme. this suggested that battlekennings realize a relatively coherent and flexible semantic formula in one of two syntactic constructions (np2-gen np1 or np2-np1 = ‘battle’) rather than a set of distinct semantic formulae all meaning ‘battle’.36 some exceptional 36 in other words, ‘(weather) (of weapons)’, ‘(weather) (of a valkyrie)’, ‘(meeting) (of implements of battle)’, ‘(sound) (of a mythic agent of battle)’, and so forth were not exhibited as distinct semantic formulae within the data at the level individual metric-structural types. this does not reduce the value and relevance of different typologies of kennings based on distinguishing such categories, but it suggests that the differentiation of semantic equivalence class could be subordinated to the pragmatics of the metrical context in which the kenning was realized. this finding cannot be generalized to all kennings. for example, kennings for the god ‘thor’ reflecting kinship relations, such as ‘son of his mother’, are clearly distinct from kennings reflecting his relationship to adversaries, such as ‘slayer of a monster’ (otherwise generative 117 words appeared in variations on the formula that conditioned the semantic class of the co-occurring heiti (cf. 5.i–iii below). this approach does not exclude more general conventions of preferred association between certain semantic categories (cf. meissner 1921), which requires further study. the present series of case studies explores the functioning of equivalence classes in relation to kennings as semantic formulae and the metrical entanglement of verbal elements where battle-kennings are conventional to certain metrical positions. these case studies will offer perspectives on the degree to which metric-structural types must be taken into consideration before attempting to assess more general conventions of association between equivalence classes of heiti because of their potential to skew data (cf. 1a.i–v, 1a.xvii and 2b below). the dróttkvætt meter among the oral poetries of europe, dróttkvætt is an exceptionally complex and demanding meter. in practice, the meter had a number of conventional variations with slight differences in metrical constraints, although the basic features remained generally consistent. dróttkvætt was essentially a syllabic meter (with rule-governed flexibility) composed in couplets, with two couplets forming a half-stanza called a helming and a total of eight lines forming a stanza. its rules of syntax (see gade 1995) allowed a remarkable scrambling of language across the four lines (two couplets) of a helming, and two (rarely more) clauses or independent statements could be interwoven across those four lines (cf. wills 2009). the main conventional constraints relevant to the present discussion are rhyme, alliteration and syllable weight. although it is not relevant here to open the details (and the debate) of qualifying ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ syllables, a syllabic quality referred to metaphorically as ‘weight’ is a factor which prefers or prevents certain syllables from occurring in certain metrical positions (see kuhn 1983; árnason 1991; gade 1995). although the meter is conventionally recognized as three metrically stressed positions, the relationship between metrical stress, syllabic weight and word stress or phrasal stress is unresolved and will not be debated here. for the present discussion, it suffices to observe that conventions of syllabic weight condition the fourth and variation would produce expressions like ‘son of a monster’ and ‘slayer of his mother’ = thor). nevertheless, the data of the pilot study suggests that the paradigms according to which kennings exhibit variation are not necessarily limited to individual equivalence classes of heiti, hence paradigmatic substitution may occur within sets of equivalence classes conventional to the kenning as a semantic formula. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 118 frog fifth positions of the six-position line (the final position being an unstressed inflectional ending). this results in constraints on which heiti can be used in realizing kennings of certain metric-structural types. two lexically stressed syllables in odd lines should alliterate.37 in even lines, the first position should share this pattern of alliteration, uniting the couplet, but not any of the following lexically stressed positions. the penultimate strong position in a line should carry a syllable that rhymes with a preceding lexically stressed syllable in the same line. in odd lines, the rhyme should (normally) not include the syllable’s vowel, a type of rhyme called skothending (e.g. 3b.ii below: lind sprakk í rym randa). in even lines, the vowel should participate in the rhyme, a type of rhyme called aðalhending (e.g. 2a.i below: hjalmstall í gný malma). however, dróttkvætt variations had different degrees of flexibility. the precise requirements of rhyme varied and rhyme was sometimes neglected (e.g. 1b): rhyme was generally secondary to alliteration in conventional requirements of dróttkvætt composition. most important to recognize is that odd and even lines thus present slightly different metrical conditions. the difference in these conditions must be taken into consideration when observing formulaic language which can develop distinct conventions for each of these two metrical environments. 'mapping' metrically entangled constructions in dróttkvætt the term basic type is used to designate the distribution of ‘simple’ kennings, consisting of only a base-word and a single determinant, across the metrical positions in a line, couplet or helming. complex types consisted of three or more elements (complex kennings). within the pilot study, complementary adjectives, numbers and articles were, in general, found to be freely distributable through a stanza surrounding a ‘simple’ kenning, without structural or semantic effect on the kenning as such. for the present study, such examples are considered to complement basic types but not to produce variations on 37 it is common to presume that alliteration in dróttkvætt should be identified with metrically stressed positions on analogy to other germanic alliterative meters which have a stressed-based rhythm (ultimately following sievers 1893). however, dróttkvætt is characterized first and foremost by a rule-governed syllabic rhythm, and it remains unclear how conventions of stress-based rhythms may have been integrated into it or subordinated to syllabic-based rhythms. it thus warrants observation that the adjacent finnic cultures also had an alliterative syllable-counting meter with quantity-based rules for stressed syllables, and those rules in fact conventionally require certain alliterating syllables to occur in metrically unstressed positions (cf. frog 2010). 119 the basic type. adjectives are only seen as producing variations on basic types in cases where this affects the position of the base-word or the determinant in the manner of developing a complex kenning. complex kennings appeared as extensions or expansions of basic types by combining two basic types that have intersecting metrical positions. the details of this are not relevant here because such variations are not included in the examples surveyed here, although a few will be mentioned in the associated discussion. for the purposes of this study, constructions are ‘mapped’ in the six metrical positions of lines with the simple system used in the pilot study. the six-position sequence is represented numerically for each line (123456). positions filled with a kenning’s base-word are replaced with an ‘x’ and those of the determinant with a ‘y’. uppercase characters represent the stressed onset syllable and lowercase characters represent unstressed positions. in a few examples for discussion, complex kennings can be extended with ‘z’ representing the determinant in the determinant kenning. thus the battle-kenning sverða glaumr = ‘racket of swords’ in the line glaum-herðǫndum sverða (kolli ingdr 3ii.6) = ‘racket-strengtheners of swords’ = warriors is mapped x234yy. the warrior-kenning in the same line is mapped yxxxzz. when relevant, ‘p’ indicates a preposition, and is placed in parentheses where this is presented as conventional but subject to variation (cf. 2a below). in cases where metrically entangled words or strings are observed, these will be separated by hyphens. thus, depending on the emphasis, the formula in the line eiríkr í dyn geira = ‘eiríkr in the din of spears’ (hst rst 22i.6; þhjalt lv 1i.8) can be mapped 12-í-dyn-geira, 12-í-dyn-yy, 123-dyn-56, 12pxyy, 12(p)xyy or 123xyy. the basic types reviewed here are all situated within a metrical line. variations which involve an element in an adjacent line will indicate the line-break with ‘/’. although the detailed mapping of types is less essential for the opening case study, it will become increasingly important as different types are placed in relation to one another. dynr in basic type 12(p)xyy as observed above, it is practical to begin approaching metrically entangled semantic formulae through examples exhibiting pronounced verbal crystallization, producing formulae in a sense that is widely familiar from parry’s definition. the verbal fixity enables the formula to be observable at a rather superficial surface level of the text, which makes this type of example an accessible point of departure for considering more complex phenomena. in example (1), the noun dynr = ‘din’ provides a base-word in a battle-kenning construction. in dróttkvætt poetry, the simplex noun dynr (i.e. not used in a mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 120 frog compound word) appears invariably as the base-word in battle-kennings and is found almost exclusively in a single metrical position, and more specifically in battle-kennings of the metric-structural type 12(p)xyy and its variations, all but one of which are found in even lines (frog 2009: 234–236). the basic formula is the phrase í dyn = ‘in the din’ followed by a two-syllable determinant that forms a battle-kenning (í dyn [np2-gen] = ‘in battle’). together, these fill the last four syllables of a line. the formula has a simpler form or variation without the preposition. the near-exclusive attested use of the simplex dynr in a single metrical position and in regular constructions makes formulaic use statistically unambiguous. examples in even and odd lines are separated here for easier reference in later discussion. the two variations on the basic type (frog 2009: 236) are not relevant to the present discussion and are not included here. the near-exclusive use of dynr in battle-kennings of this metric-structural type is an unambiguous relevant indicator that this is a ‘formula’ in a classic parry–lord sense. the use of dynr in this construction is itself metrically conditioned. the determinant in position 4 must be ‘light’. this means that if it has a short vowel (dynr), the vowel cannot be followed by a consonant cluster (inflected dyn, but not inflected dyns = ‘of the din’). if it has a long vowel (gnýr = ‘roar’), this cannot be followed by a consonant (inflected gný but not inflected gnýs = ‘of the roar’). consequently, this battle-kenning basic type cannot form a determinant of a complex kenning. gnýr and dynr are both heiti for ‘noise’. although the corresponding conditions in other basic types may prevent the use of dynr in particular contexts, this does not explain its limited range of use in the poetry, especially in contrast to the far more common gnýr. significantly, the restricted use of dynr is an indicator that this lexical item has become metrically entangled with a specific metric-structural type of battle-kenning: it was not employed as a base-word in battle-kennings with a more even distribution across basic types. in other words, the use of dynr was not freely generative in versification although it was otherwise a common noun rather than a strictly poetic term (cf. frog 2012: 58–60). the formulaic use of dynr is a useful case to begin with when considering potential cases of metrical entanglement involving terms or classes of equivalent terms that may otherwise also be employed with a greater range of uses in the corpus. in this regard, it may be observed that 5 of the 19 examples, or more than 25%, are realized with the determinant geirr = ‘spear’ (1a.i–v). this could be a relevant indicator of a degree of metrical entanglement leading to conventional preferences in word-choice when realizing the formula. this would mean that an associative index developed and became socially established between this battle-kenning basic type and certain lexical items in compositional practice. however, in this case, 3 of the examples may reflect conventionalized expressions at the level of the full line eiríkr í dyn geira (1a.i–iii, used with reference to 121 different kings of the same name). this suggests the possibility of crystallization at the level of a full line. the prominence of geirr in this data may thus be at least partially dependent on its association with a crystallized line. table 1a. 12-í-dyn-yy in even lines38 39 40 12(p) x yy translation of (p)xyy38 source eiríkr í dyn geira ‘...in the din of spears1’ hst rst 22 i.6 eiríkr í dyn geira ‘...in the din of spears1’ þhjalt lv 1 i.8 eirekr í dyn geira ‘...in the din of spears1’ bbreiðv lv 6 v.4 ófár í dyn geira ‘...in the din of spears1’ anon krm 18 viii.6 meir framm í dyn geira ‘...in the din of spears1’ gunnhám lv 10 v.6 sigurðr fell í dyn vigra ‘...in the din of spears2’ anon (nj) 3 v.6 morðteins í dyn fleina ‘...in the din of shafts’ kormǫ sigdr 2iii.2 einarðr í dyn sverða ‘...in the din of swords1’ anon krm 23 viii.8 hné ferð í dyn sverða ‘...in the din of swords1’ ingj brandfl 3 iv.2 skǫrungr fell í dyn hjǫrva ‘...in the din of swords2’ ingj brandfl 4 iv.2 hjalmskúr í dyn malma ‘...in the din of metals’ rvhbreiðm hl 58iii.2 almskúr ok dyn hjalma ‘...and the din of helmets1’ þtréf lv 1 iv.4 malmþings í dyn hjalma ‘...in the din of helmets1’ skúli svǫlðr 2 iii.6 malmr gnast í dyn hjalma ‘...in the din of helmets1’ anon (nj) 3 v.4 folkvaldr í dyn skjalda ‘...in the din of shields1’ esk geisl 14 vii.6 hvít, svǫrt, í dyn rítar ‘...in the din of the shield2’ rvhbreiðm hl 39 iii.8 lét ek sunnr í dyn gunnar39 ‘...in the din of gunnr (valkyrie)’ hfr lv 13v.6 bryngǫgl í dyn skǫglar40 ‘...in the din of skǫgul valkyrie)’ þhorn gldr 5i.4 table 1b. 12-í-dyn-yy in odd lines 12(p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source áðr létti dyn darra ‘... the din of darts’ bjbp jóms 39i.7 38 translations are presented only of the semantic formula. the flexibility of syntax in the poetry tradition makes the formula’s relationship to other elements in the same line highly variable. these words may participate in a different clause or sentence (indicated by ‘–’ in examples 2a.vii and 2a.x below). translating these and explaining the kennings which in some cases occur would only distract from the purpose of the examples. 39 one manuscript reads for this line: lét ek baldr riðins skjaldar. 40 this line reads “bryngaul ara skǫglar” in the flateyjarbók manuscript. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 122 frog it may initially be observed that the different metrical conditions of odd and even lines have implications for the realization of the basic type. the battle-kenning is realized in positions 4–6 in the line. in even lines, alliteration should occur only in position 1, dictating that neither the base-word nor the determinant carry alliteration (1a), whereas both elements carry alliteration in the one odd-line example (1b). the situation of the determinant in positions 5–6 requires that it carry the rhyme in the line. the unambiguous predominance of even-line use highlights a potential value for meeting aðalhendingrhyme – i.e. rhyme in which the vowel participates. variation in determinants is not constrained to a narrow semantic field. even if heiti for ‘weapons’ (1a.i– xi, 1b) and for ‘armour’ (1a.xii–xvi) are considered a broad category of ‘implements of battle’, the valkyrie-names (1a.xvii–xviii) unquestionably belong to a distinct category of heiti. although only 2 of the 19 examples employ names associated with mythology, these appear to be involved in an otherwise regular generative formulaic model. within that model, these names are engaged with the metrical requirement of rhyme no less than words like geirr. before opening a discussion of the role of these words in rhyme, it is practical to first introduce other examples of this basic metric-structural type of battle kenning with different base-words and discuss their use as determinants in that context. gnýr in basic type 12(p)xyy basic type 12(p)xyy also exhibits a formula of the parry–lord variety corresponding to that with dynr but realized with gnýr = ‘roar’, which is much more widely and flexibly employed in the poetic register of dróttkvætt. this formula is also found with greater frequency and greater variation, including literal uses of 12-í-gný-[np-gen] without forming a kenning (e.g. hallm hallkv 1v.7–8; anon (mberf ) 7ii.7). the data presented in example (2) is considered sufficient to illustrate that use is formulaic. the flexibility of this formula and the range of variations on basic type 12(p)xyy are not relevant to the present discussion and will not be explored here. examples of formulaic uses of dynr and gnýr illustrate metrically entangled or potentially bound formulae with conventionally established base-words and variable determinants forming battle-kennings. use of both formulae is predominantly in even lines, even if gnýr exhibits greater flexibility in this regard. even-line use situates kennings of this type outside of alliteration requirements and only the determinant exhibits participation in rhyme. the diversity of determinants across these examples illustrates the variability of heiti in composition. it also highlights that variation must be considered in dialogue with the role of 123 rhyme as a determinant on word-choice in generating a metrically well-formed line. in other words, the base-word of basic type 12(p)xyy is not subject to needs of meeting phonic requirements (as opposed to e.g. type 1(p)yyxx). in odd lines, the requirement that alliteration be carried by two lexically stressed syllables makes it probable that at least one element of the kenning, comprised of nouns, will alliterate. in odd lines, the base-word still does not participate in rhyme, but both the base-word and determinant carry alliteration in the line. table 2a. 12(p)-gný-yy in even lines 12(p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source lands folk í gný branda ‘...in the roar of brands (swords)’ ótt hfl 9i.6 fjǫrspell í gný hjǫrva ‘...in the roar of swords2’ þfagr sveinn 1 ii.2 sigrtrúr í gný vigra ‘...in the din of spears2’ anon líkn 39 vii.4 saddr varð í gný nadda ‘...in the roar of barbs’ haukrv ísldr 5iv.6 herr œxti gný darra ‘... the roar of darts’ bjbp jóms 30i.2 áláf, í gný stála ‘...in the roar of steel’ esk geisl 54vii.4 málgrǫ́ðr – í gný stála ‘...in the roar of steel’ gunnli lv 10v.8 þokum framm í gný stála ‘...in the roar of steel’ rv lv 31ii.6 hjalmstall í gný malma ‘...in the roar of metal’ hharð lv 14ii.8 almþing – í gný malma ‘...in the roar of metal’ þorm þorgdr 10iv.6 þórbjǫrn í gný fjǫrnis ‘...in the roar of a helmet2’ haukrv ísldr 17 iv.8 aldrœn í gný skjalda ‘...in the roar of shields1’ sturlas lv 1 iv.2 hug-baldr í gný skjalda ‘...in the roar of shields1’ hfr lv 13 v.2 benvǫnd í gný randa ‘...in the roar of borders (shields)’ þbrún lv 4v.2 table 2b. 12(p)-gný-yy in odd lines 12 (p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source þar varð í gný geira ‘...in the roar of spears1’ glúmr gráf 5 i.3 jafn vas mér í gný geira ‘...in the roar of spears1’ egill lv 34 v.7 ok tveir at gný geira ‘...at the roar of spears1’ tindr lv 2 v.3 en sunnr at gný gunnar ‘...at the roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ hókr eirfl 8i.5 hinn’s fór í gný gunnar ‘...in the roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ eskál vell 33i.3 frák hann við gný gunnar ‘...at the roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ rvhbreiðm hl 65iii.3 vér unnum gný gunnar ‘... the roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ ólhelg lv 6i.3 einn háði gný gunnar ‘... the roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ refr giz 1iii.1 mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 124 frog the difference in odd-line and even-line distribution of the two base-words can be considered as potentially related to the relative frequency of different patterns of alliteration, among which d-alliteration is rare while g-alliteration is fairly frequent in old norse poetry (cf. hollmerus 1936). it is therefore striking that dynr, otherwise rare in dróttkvætt, is better attested in even-lines (without constraints of alliteration or rhyme) than gnýr, which is otherwise common in the register. however, alliteration may in some cases have functioned as a negative factor in the sense that dynr or gnýr could not occur with the determinant carrying rhyme in an even line without creating an alliteration that should be avoided. this is only a potential factor in one case with gnýr, where dynr would otherwise alliterate with the determinant darr = ‘dart’ (2a.xiv). however, this is found in 6 cases with dynr, where otherwise gnýr would alliterate with geirr = ‘spear’ (1a.i–v) or with the valkyrie-name gunnr (1a.xvii), as well as an additional potential case where gnýr would produce an undesired alliteration with the verb in the line (1a.xiv). this suggests that the choice of formula in even lines when realizing the metric-structural basic type may have been conditioned by the avoidance of alliteration with the kenning determinant.41 odd-line uses of gnýr are suggestive of the possibility that the kennings geira gnýr (2b.i–iii) and gunnar gnýr (2b.iv–viii) may have been fully conventionalized expressions realizing the kenning in this basic type. thus the semantic formula crystallized at the lexical level into an open-slot formula, and the open-slot formula potentially crystallized into distinct, conventional formulae, while the relationship of í dyn geira to eiríkr í dyn geira above (1a.i–v) can be viewed as a similar process at the level of a full line. in addition to the 5 examples of the kenning gunnar gnýr in the basic type, there is also an extended variation: gunnar gagls gnýr in the couplet hnigu menn í gný gunnar / gagls fyr strengjar hagli (esk ingdr 3ii.5–6) = ‘the clash of the gosling of gunnr before the hail of the bowstring’. ‘gunnr’s gosling’ is a kenning for ‘bird of carrion’ (eagle or raven) and ‘roar of the bird of carrion’ forms a battlekenning.42 the complex kenning does not affect the form of the basic (í) gný 41 corresponding alternation of semantically and functionally equivalent open-slot formulae according to alliteration is attested for eddic narrative poetry (acker 1998: 64–65; frog 2011a: 40–44). in the use of gunnr with dynr, it may also be observed that rhyme with sunnr is also found in (2b.iv), which exhibits aðalhending rhyme although it is an odd line, and gunnr is also used in aðalhending rhyme in (2b.vii). 42 cf. meissner (1921: 147, 190), who seems to interpret this not as ‘raven’ but as ‘arrow’, which is perhaps an attempt to confer more logic on the kenning than it warrants and is certainly influenced by the alternative reading of the even line as strengjar gagls hagl = ‘hail of the gosling of the string’. both battle-kennings would be complete independent of gagl, which is not a semantic improvement to either of them. 125 gunnar kenning: gagl is outside of that structure and the 5 examples make it clear that the kenning would be semantically complete without the additional element (cf. noreen 1921: 27–28; sverdlov 2003). the term gagl carries alliteration at the onset of the following line and also carries the rhyme of that line. the number of additional examples of the gunnar gnýr kenning realizing this metric-structural type is itself exceptional in the corpus (cf. björnsson –2001). it is therefore highly improbable that a sixth example as a complex kenning is independently compositional. this kenning can most reasonably be regarded as a variation on a conventional, verbally crystallized formula (gunnar gnýr → gunnar gagls gnýr)43 that appears to be motivated by phonic demands of the meter as a strategy for meeting them. it can therefore be seen as a sixth example of gunnar gnýr of the 12(p)xyy metric-structural type. the example is also of interest because the determinant ‘bird of carrion’ is otherwise only attested in battle kennings with the determinant ‘joy’ (cf. meissner 1921: 201; björnsson –2001). the equivalence class of determinants in other examples of this basic type varies between a broad category of ‘implements of battle’ and the category ‘valkyrie’ or more broadly ‘mythic agent of battle’. this example varies a verbally crystallized formula with the determinant ‘valkyrie’ by producing a complex kenning in the process of meeting metrical requirements. the formation of the complex kenning alters the class of determinant to a third, distinct semantic category of ‘birds of carrion’ or more broadly ‘beasts of the battlefield’ (meissner 1921: 116–119).44 the fact that this is accomplished without formally altering the verbally crystallized formula highlights the fluidity of equivalence classes of heiti in compositional practice. when evidence of the 12(p)-gný-yy formula is brought into comparison with examples of the 12-í-dyn-yy formula, the prominence of geirr as a determinant (1a.i–v, 2b.i–iii) should be considered as at least potentially related to its alliterative use with gnýr. this presents potential for interference in preferential wordchoice according to the basic type, a variety of metrical entanglement that will be explored in the subsequent case studies. the use of the valkyrie-name gunnr is found only once in the 12-í-dyn-yy formula (1a.xvii) and is therefore more 43 12(p)xyy + 1234yy/x23456 → 12(p)xzz/y23456. 44 it may be noted that the variation allows gunnr to be interpreted as a common noun rather than as a proper name (i.e. gunnar gagl = ‘gosling of battle’ = bird of carrion) without violating the rhetorical figure of the kenning (see meissner 1921: 73–74, 201–202). insofar as the use of gunnr/gunnr in this kenning is inextricable from the kenning gunnar gnýr, this example highlights the possibility that semantic ambiguity need not have been resolved in the production and interpretation of kennings. additional examples of this strategy of varying basic types in relation to metrical demands will be observed in subsequent case studies in this series. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 126 frog ambiguous in this regard. however, questions concerning the prominence of this valkyrie-name will be returned to at the conclusion of the present paper. other determinants in basic type 12(p)xyy whereas 12-í-dyn-yy and 12(p)-gný-yy can be considered conventional formulae in their own rights, several additional examples of basic type 12(p)xyy are attested with sharply contrasting low frequency. as observed above, position 4 is metrically conditioned, requiring that the base-word be a ‘light’ monosyllable. this has a consequence that the majority of high-frequency basewords otherwise used in battle-kennings (e.g. hríð, él) cannot be employed in this position. example set (3) presents variants with a base-word in the semantic equivalence class of ‘noise’ to which dynr and gnýr belong. table 3a. 12(p)xyy with ‘noise’-heiti base-words in even lines 12 (p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source siðfornir, glym járna ‘... the crash of iron’ bjbp jóms 7i.6 table 3b. 12(p)xyy with ‘noise’-heiti base-words in odd lines 12 (p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source sveit varð í rym rítar ‘...in the noise of the shield2’ esk elfv 2ii.7 lind sprakk í rym randa ‘...in the noise of borders (shields)’ eviðs lv 5v (heið 16).3 þrǫng at rym randa ‘...at the noise of borders (shields)’ þgísl búdr 3i.3 verit hefr í þrym þremja ‘...in the thunder of swords3’ kormǫ lv 30v.7 bitu sverð í hlym rítar ‘...in the clash of the shield2’ skáldh branddr 5iv.4 hnigu fjandr at glym gǫndlar ‘...at the crash of gǫndul (valkyrie)’ anon (sne) 6iii.1 immediately observable is a shift in predominance from even-line examples employing dynr and gnýr to odd-line examples. odd-line realizations of basic type 12(p)xyy battle-kennings exhibit integrated conventions of alliterating the base-word and determinant. verbal variation in these examples can be directly associated in almost all cases with not simply meeting the alliteration 127 requirement of the meter, but with meeting that requirement according to the conventions of the metrically entangled formula. in addition, it is rather striking that all of the base-words in this group have a stem containing -rymor -lym-, and all appear to be particular to the poetic register (although þrymr also appears as an epithet attached to personal names and as the name of a giant in the eddic poem þrymskviða). if additional semantic fields of heiti are included for base-words, more examples of 12(p)xyy battle-kennings can be observed. for example, the term byrr = ‘breeze’ is a weather-heiti which can function as a base-word for battle-kennings (4a–b). the simplex inflectional form byr seems only to occur in the position appropriate to this metrical-structural type of battle-kenning. although infrequent, this base-word exhibits even distribution across odd and even lines. table 4a. 12-í-byr-yy in even lines 12 (p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source ítr varð í byr rítar ‘...in the breeze of the shield2’ þórðh lv 6 v.6 vápnsóttr í byr þróttar ‘...in the breeze of þróttr (odin)’ grett lv 21v.2 table 4b. 12-í-byr-yy in odd lines 12 (p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source nema rǫnd í byr branda ‘...in the breeze of brands (swords)’ esk geisl 53vii.5 hinn’r skyndi byr branda ‘...in the breeze of brands (swords)’ rvhbreiðm hl 59iii.7 other base-words used in corresponding expressions include semantic fields that condition or limit the determinants: svipr = ‘a swoop’ can only form a battle-kenning with terms for hand-held weapons whereas flug = ‘a flight’ forms a battle-kenning with terms for weapons that can be used as projectiles (5). these base-words can be considered variations on the battle-kenning as a broad semantic formula that do not allow free combination with determinant heiti. however, meissner (1921: 192) identifies one example of the valkyriename gunnr as a determinant for svipr, suggesting flexibility even here. table 5. 12(p)xyy with other base-words in odd lines 12 (p) x yy translation of (p)xyy source þars gerðum svip sverða ‘... the swoop of swords1’ hharð gamv 5 ii.3 harðr rauð í svip sverða ‘...in the swoop of swords1’ rvhbreiðm hl 65 iii.5 en mín at flug fleina ‘...at the flight of shafts’ sigv nesv 5i.5 mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 128 frog taken in isolation, the less frequent base-words do not stand out in the data. taken together, a pattern is exhibited suggestive of a metric-structural construction for realizing kennings through an extensive lexicon of possible heiti. among these kennings, gnýr (22 examples) and dynr (19 examples) stand at the centre of potential base-words. the significantly lower frequency of other base-words (14 total examples) makes it possible that additional metrically and semantically viable heiti may also have been occasionally used but have not been observed owing to limitations of the data. if this were the only identified metrically bound kenning formula of this sort, the relationship between the alternative base-words would remain highly ambiguous, as would the degree to which this type of metrically bound semantic formula should be seen as the exception rather than a fundamental of skaldic compositional practice. 12(p)xyy does appear to be exceptional – exceptional in the marked predominance of two base-words with which it is primarily realized: the base-words dynr and gnýr account for 41 of the 55 examples of the basic type that have been identified (without including variations). this is approximately 75%, which, on the basis of the pilot study, appears to be quite exceptional among variation observable in different basic types. on the other hand, this exceptional quality makes it easier to approach the principles of metrically entangled kenning formulae in later parts of this discussion where basic types exhibit variation in both the determinant and also in the base-word. the patterns beneath the surface of lexical variation might not otherwise be immediately transparent to readers less familiar with skaldic dróttkvætt poetry. noise of swords, noise of a valkyrie in the 55 examples listed above, names from the mythology appear as determinants in 9 cases, which is approximately one in six or a bit more than 16%. these are the three valkyrie names gunnr (1a.xvii, 2b.iv–viii), gǫndul (3b.vi) and skǫgul (1a.xviii), and one example of the odin-heiti þróttar (4a.ii). the 5 examples of gunnar gnýr and the sixth variation in a complex kenning were hypothesized above to reflect a conventionally crystallized expression. this finds support in the fact that the other three odd-line uses of gnýr in the data all have the determinant geirr (2b.i–iii), two of the three odd-line uses of rymr have the alliterative determinant randr (3b.ii–iii), both odd-line uses of byrr carry alliteration with brandr (4b.i–ii), and both uses of svipr do the same with sverðr (5.i–ii). of the 19 examples of odd-line uses of the 12(p)xyy, only 5 do not exhibit a recurring pairing of base-word and determinant (1b, 3b.iii– v, 5.iii). of the 5 exceptions, 4 are only attested once and may therefore only 129 appear to be exceptional owing to limitations of the data. the general pattern in the data suggests crystallization in the pairing of alliterative determinants with base-words in odd-line use for the accomplishment of alliteration. in the examples of 12(p)xyy, the determinant of the kenning always forms a final troche and the stressed syllable of this word always carries the rhyme of the line. this makes it reasonable to consider that lexical choice is conditioned by phonic demands in composition. in odd lines, the valkyrie-name gunnr rhymes in -nn-. following the index of eysteinn björnsson (–2001), the attested heiti used in simple battle-kennings exhibit three other words accomplishing rhyme in -nn-. two of these three function as base-words in battle-kennings (senna = ‘insult exchange’, renna = ‘rush’) and are therefore not relevant to this metric-structural type. the only other determinant listed with this rhyme is unnr = ‘sword’ (or the odin-heiti unnr), where the kenning is the result of editorial emendation of the manuscript text (þorb lv 2v; cf. jónsson 1967 a2: 449; 1967 b2: 481). rhyme in -nnon a determinant in battle-kennings was therefore conventionally accomplished with gunnr or extension into a complex kenning would be required. this increases the probability that use of gunnr as a determinant and its general prominence in the corpus is related to its value as a practical resource for meeting phonic requirements of rhyme. in three of the cases with proper names, the kenning construction is in an even line. this requires the determinant to carry aðalhending rhyme – i.e. the vowel must participate in the rhyme-pattern. one of these is an example with gunnr (1a.xvii), which can be considered to engage a more specific variation of rhyme in -nn-. skǫgul (1a.xviii) is the only determinant (or base-word) used in battle-kennings listed by eysteinn björnsson (–2001) that can carry rhyme in -ǫgl-. in the line above, skǫgul rhymes with gǫgl = ‘goslings’ (sg. gagl). the only other case in which i have found gǫgl carrying aðalhending rhyme, it also rhymes with skǫgul (gizsv frag 1iii.4; cf. þmáhl máv 10v.1). moreover, skǫgul is the only determinant of those listed which can carry rhyme in -gl-, while the only base-word with this capacity is hagl = ‘hail’.45 this produces a high probability that skǫgul has a functional role as a resource in composition related to particular phonic demands. the odin-heiti þróttr (4a.ii) is similarly the only determinant listed capable of carrying rhyme in -ótt-, which is only otherwise attested for battle kennings in the exceptional base-word íþrótt = ‘sport’ (cf. also -ótonly found in the determinant spjót = ‘lance’, while also in 45 although not exhibiting exclusivity, hagl carries aðalhending rhyme with gagl in esk ingdr 3ii.6; hfr hákdr 3iii.2; snst ht 62iii.2; tindr hákdr 3i.4. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 130 frog the base-word mót = ‘meeting’ and a few others that are less frequent). skǫgul and þróttr are terms associated with mythology found as determinants in several battle-kennings. their realizations of 12(p)xyy battle-kennings can be directly associated with the fulfilment of metrical requirements for which other heiti capable of completing the kenning are lacking. gǫndul (3b.vi) is the only determinant listed by eysteinn björnsson (–2001) capable of aðalhending rhyme in -ǫnd-, but in the present case appears carrying skothending rhyme in the much more common rhyme of -nd-. the heiti realizing attested battle-kennings show that the poetic register was well equipped for this rhyme, with more frequent determinants of brandr = ‘brand’ = ‘sword’ (cf. 2a.i, 4b.i–ii), randr = ‘edge’ = ‘shield’ (cf. 2a.xiv, 3b.ii–iii), þundr (odin) as well as hrund (valkyrie) and some more peripheral terms, not to mention base-words such as vindr = ‘wind’ and fundr = ‘meeting’. however, gǫndul is the only such determinant that can also carry g-alliteration as in the example above. the ambiguity of this case can be cross-referenced laterally with other uses of gǫndul in the poetry. a rapid survey of the skaldic database (which cannot be considered exhaustive at this time) reveals that, across all meters of skaldic verse, the genitive inflection gǫndlar invariably appears carrying alliteration or (in a few cases) carrying aðalhending rhyme. this suggests that it has a functional role in composition associated with alliteration as well as with a rhyme which it is unusually equipped to carry. correlating this observation with the examples of gunnr, skǫgul and þróttr, it is reasonable to view use of gǫndul in this 12(p)xyy battle-kenning construction as conditioned by phonic demands of the meter. the interface of determinants in kennings realizing basic type 12(p)xyy suggests that word-choice has been conditioned by metrical demands, but it does not necessarily follow that the determinant is selected on the basis of a preceding rhyme-word rather than vice versa. the whole formula or even the basic type itself may also have been selected in a more reciprocal dialectic between form and sense in the production of the particular line. the valkyrie-name gunnr is striking for its marked predominance in basic type 12(p)xyy rather than varying with the valkyrie-name gǫndul. gǫndul is the only other name of a valkyrie or of odin in attested battle-kennings which could carry g-alliteration as a determinant in this battle-kenning basic type (following björnsson –2001). gǫndul appears in general to be more frequent in genitive kenning constructions (gǫndlar np1; cf. the case studies in parts ii–iii) whereas gunnis common in forming compounds (gunn-np1). use in 12(p xyy contradicts this pattern. the appearance of gunnr rather than gǫndul may therefore, at least potentially, not be independent of its clearly conventionalized use with gnýr. in other words, the use of type 12(p)xyy 131 in odd lines producing g-alliteration may have been highly conventionalized rather than freely generative. to the degree that this formula had crystallized at the lexical level, it would be resistant to alternation between gunnr and gǫndul as determinants. the valkyrie-name gǫndul rather than gunnr appears in the only odd-line example of this battle-kenning basic-type in which g-alliteration is not carried by gnýr. use of the base-word glymr = ‘crash’ is not conditioned by rhyme-constraints and gnýr would be appropriate in this position. this makes it interesting to observe the possibility that co-variation in both the determinant and base-word is somehow related to deviation from the otherwise highly conventionalized gnýr gunnar kenning. it becomes more noteworthy because the determinant carries the rhyme in the line. if the absence of gǫndul from evidence of 12(p)-gný-yy is not accidental, this suggests that use of this gnýr-formula in odd lines was metrically entangled with the rhyme in the line, and the use of an alternative rhyme with g-alliteration in the basic type could then motivate variation in the base-word. this review of vocabulary associated with mythology in battle-kennings of the 12(p)xyy metric-structural type does not show that heiti were never strategically employed for meaning-generation, nor has that been the purpose here. the survey of use of genitive gǫndlar indicates a direct relationship between uses of this term and phonic demands of the meter (in contrast to, e.g., dynr). when a single example is observed in isolation, participation in alliteration and rhyme can be interpreted as a strategy to emphasize the name and the valkyrie as a mythic being. focus here is, however, on considering such names as integrated resources of the lexicon. turning attention from the use of these names in kennings generally to their contextualized occurrence in metrically entangled kennings as semantic formulae allows their use to be situated in the context of lexical variation of the particular basic type. type 12(p)xyy is exceptional in the degree to which it displays crystallization in the use of determinants and, in odd lines, also of kennings as crystallized alliterating expressions. the kenning gunnar gnýr as a crystallized formula accounts for 5 of the 9 uses of mythic names in this basic type. if gunnar dynr is seen as an even-line variation on that crystallized formula, this accounts for fully two thirds of these examples. personal names do not otherwise exhibit prominence in battle-kennings of this basic type. however, situating these names within the context of variation of this type highlights the conventionalized usage of the kenning gunnar gnýr on the one hand, while simultaneously foregrounding the fact that other mythic names in this basic type appear interfaced with phonic demands of the meter and appear to function like other determinants in battle-kennings. turning emphasis from the names themselves to the metrically situated kennings illustrates the degree to which these terms are integrated into variation mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 132 frog with other determinants of different semantic categories such as sverðr = ‘sword’ and hjalmr = ‘helmet’. this was especially evident in the variation producing the complex kenning gunnar gagls gnýr, which shifted the determinant to a different semantic equivalence class without affecting the form of the otherwise crystallized formula. consequently, when considering the use of the conventionalized kennings gnýr geira and gnýr gunnar, in many if not most cases, the only difference between a ‘the sound of a valkyrie’ and ‘the sound of a spear’ was a question of which had the better ring to it.46 references abram, christopher 2011. myths of the pagan north: the gods of the norsemen. london: continuum. acker, paul 1998. revising oral theory: formulaic composition in old english and old icelandic verse. new york: garland. aðalsteinsson, ragnar ingi 2005. nokkrar athuganir á hlutföllum orðflokka í stuðlasetningu. in: íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 27, 171–188. amory, frederic 1982. towards a grammatical classification of kennings as compounds. in: arkiv för nordisk filologi 97, 67–80. árnason, kristján 1991. the rhythms of dróttkvætt and other old icelandic metres. reykjavík: university of iceland, institute of linguistics. bell, catherine 1992. ritual theory, ritual practice. oxford: oxford university press. birgisson, bergsveinn 2007. inn i skaldens sinn: kognitive, estetiske og historiske skatter i den norrøne skaldediktingen. phd dissertation, university of bergen. https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2732/dr.avh._b_birgisson. pdf ?sequence=1 (accessed february 24, 2013). björnsson, eysteinn –2001. lexicon of kennings and similar poetic circumlocutions: the domain of battle. https://notendur.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/kennings.html (accessed july 24, 2013). blackburn, stuart h. 1988. singing of birth and death: texts in performance. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. 46 i would like to thank my two anonymous reviewers for comments and observations that helped to strengthen this paper. research presented here has been accomplished within the framework of the academy of finland project “oral poetry, mythic knowledge and vernacular imagination” of folklore studies, university of helsinki. https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2732/dr.avh._b_birgisson.pdf?sequence=1 https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2732/dr.avh._b_birgisson.pdf?sequence=1 133 clunies ross, margaret (ed.) 2007. poetry on christian subjects (2 vols.). skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 7. turnhout: brepols. clunies ross, margaret 2005. a history of old norse poetry and poetics. cambridge: d. s. brewer. clunies ross, margaret; gade, kari ellen; marold, edith; nordal, guðrún; whaley, diana; wills, tarrin 2012. general introduction. in: whaley, diana (ed.) 2012. poetry from the kings’ sagas i: from mythical times to c. 1035 (2. vols). skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 1. turnhout: brepols, xiii–xciii. coleman, robert g. g. 1999. poetic diction, poetic discourse, and the poetic register. in: adams, james noel; mayer, roland (eds.), aspects of the language of latin poetry. oxford: oxford university press. falk, hjalmar 1924. odensheiti. videnskapsselskapets skrifter ii: hist.-filos. klasse 10. kristiania: brøggers. fidjestøl, bjarne 1997. the kenning system: an attempt at a linguistic analysis. in: haugen, odd einar; mundal, else (eds.), selected papers, trans. foote, peter. viking collection 9. odense: odense university press, 16–67. finnegan, ruth 1977. oral poetry: its nature, significance and social context. cambridge: cambridge university press. foley, john miles. 1976. formula and theme in old english poetry. in: stolz, benjamin a.; shannon, richard s. (eds.), oral literature and the formula. ann arbor: center for the coördination of ancient and modern studies, university of michigan, 207–232. foley, john miles 1988. the theory of oral composition: history and methodology. bloomington: indiana university press. foley, john miles 1991. traditional oral epic: the odyssey, beowulf, and the serbocroation return song. los angeles: university of california press. foley, john miles 1995. the singer of tales in performance. bloomington: indiana university press. foley, john miles 1999. homer’s traditional art. university park: pennsylvania state university press. foley, john miles 2002. how to read an oral poem. urbana: university of illinois press. frank, roberta 1978. old norse court poetry: the dróttkvætt stanza. islandica 42. ithaca: cornell university library. frank, roberta 1985. skaldic poetry. in: clover, carol j.; lindow, john (eds.), old norse-icelandic literature: a critical guide. islandica 45. ithaca: cornell university library, 157–196. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 134 frog frog 2009. speech-acts in skaldic verse: genre, formula and improvisation. in: dewey, tonya kim; frog (eds.), versatility in versification: multidisciplinary approaches to metrics. berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics 74. new york: peter lang, 223–246. frog 2010. listening to poetry in a dead language: could dróttkvætt have been trochaic? in: rmn newsletter [1], 23–28. frog 2011a. alvíssmál and orality i: formula, alliteration and categories of mythic being. in: arkiv för nordisk filologi 126, 17–71. frog 2011b. distinguishing continuities. textual entities, extra-textual entities and conceptual schemas. in: rmn newsletter 2, 7–15. frog 2012. on the case of vambarljóð ii: register and mode from skaldic verse to sagnakvæði. in: rmn newsletter 5, 49–61. frog 2013. the (de)construction of mythic ethnography i: is every þurs in verse a þurs? in: rmn newsletter 6, 52–72. frog (forthcoming). metrical entanglement and grammaticization: kennings, constructions and compositional strategies in skaldic verse. in: árnason, kristján; aðalsteinsson, ragnar ingi; eyþórsson, þórhallur; carey, stephen mark (eds.), approaches to germanic metre [working title]. reykjavík: university of iceland press. frog; roper, jonathan 2011. the vanir versus verses: response to simek’s ‘vanir obituary’. in: rmn newsletter 2, 29–37. frog; stepanova, eila 2011. alliteration in (balto-)finnic languages. in roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. houndmills: palgrave macmillan, 195–218. gade, kari ellen 1994. on the recitation of old norse skaldic poetry. in: uecker, heiko (ed.), studien zum altgermanischen: festschrift für heinrich beck. ergänzungsbände zum reallexikon der germanischen altertümskunde 11. berlin: de gruyter, 126–151. gade, kari ellen 1995. the structure of old norse dróttkvætt poetry. ithaca: cornell university library. gade, kari ellen (ed.) 2009. poetry from the kings’ sagas ii: from c.1035 to c.1300 (2 vols.). skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 2. turnhout: brepols. gil’ferding, a. f. 1894. onezhskija byliny, zapisannyja aleksandrom fedorovichem gil’ferdingom letom 1871 goda i. st. petersburg. goldberg, adele 2006. constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language. oxford: oxford university press. grove, jonathan 2008. skaldic verse-making in thirteenth-century iceland: the case of the sauðafellsferðarvísur. in: viking and medieval scandinavia 4, 85–131. hainsworth, john b. 1968. the flexibility of the homeric formula. oxford: clarendon press. 135 halliday, michael a. k. 1978. language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. london: edward arnold. harris, joseph 1983 [2008]. eddic poetry as oral poetry: the evidence of parallel passages in the helgi poems for questions of composition and performance. in: harris, joseph, “speak useful words or say nothing”: old norse studies. descis, s. e.; hill, t. d. (eds.). islandica 53. ithaca: cornell university library, 189–225. harvilahti, lauri 1992a. kertovan runon keinot: inkeriläisen runoepiikan tuottamisesta. helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. harvilahti, lauri 1992b. the production of finnish epic poetry: fixed wholes or creative compositions? in: oral tradition 7, 87–101. harvilahti, lauri 2000. variation and memory. in: honko, lauri (ed.), thick corpus, organic variation and textuality in oral tradition. studia fennica folkloristica 7. helsinki: finnish literature society, 57–75. harvilahti, lauri 2003. the holy mountain. ff communications 282. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. haymes, edward r. 2004. the germanic heldenlied and the poetic edda: speculations on preliterary history. in: oral tradition 19, 43–62. holoka, james p. 1976. the oral formula and anglo-saxon elegy: some misgivings. in: neophilologus 60, 570–576. holland, gary 2005. kennings, metaphors, and semantic formulae in norse dróttkvætt. in: arkiv för nordisk filologi 120, 123–147. hollmérus, ragnar 1992. studier över allitterationen i eddan. helsinki: svenska litteratursällskapet i finland. honko, lauri 1998. textualising the siri epic. ff communications 264. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. jónsson, finnur (ed.) 1967. den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning a–b. københavn: rosenkilde og bagger. kellogg, robert 1965. the south germanic oral tradition. in: bessinger, jess b.; creed, robert p. (eds.), franciplegius: medievaland linguistic studies in honor of francis peabody magoun, jr. new york: new york university press, 66–74. kiparsky, paul 1976. oral poetry: some linguistic and typological considerations. in: stolz, benjamin a.; shannon, richard s. (eds.), oral literature and the formula. ann arbor: center for the coördination of ancient and modern studies, university of michigan, 73–106. kuhn, hans 1983. das dróttkvætt. heidelberg: carl winter. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? 136 frog kuusi, matti 1975. ‘the bridge and the church’: an anti-church legend. in: leino, pentti; kaivola-bregenhøj, annikki; vento, urpo (eds.), finnish folkloristics 2. studia fennica 18. helsinki: finnish literature society, 37–75. leino, pentti 1970. struukturaalinen alkusointu suomessa: folklorepohjainen tilastoanalyysi. helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. lindow, john 1975. riddles, kennings, and the complexity of skaldic poetry. in: scandinavian studies 47(3), 311–327. lindow, john 1985. mythology and mythography. in: clover, carol j.; lindow, john (eds.), old norse-icelandic literature: a critical guide. islandica 45. london: cornell university press, 21–67. lindow, john 2001. norse mythology: a guide to gods, heroes, rituals, and beliefs. oxford: oxford university press. lönnroth, lars 1971. hjalmar’s death-song and the delivery of eddic poetry. in: speculum 46, 1–20. lönnroth, lars 2002. the founding of miðgarðr (vǫluspá 1–8). in: acker, paul; larrington, carolyn (eds.), the poetic edda: essays on norse mythology. new york: routledge, 1–25. lord, albert bates 1960. the singer of tales. harvard studies in comparative literature 24. cambridge: harvard university press. lord, albert bates 1991. epic singers and oral tradition. ithaca: cornell university press. lord, albert bates 1995. the singer resumes the tale. lord, mary louise (ed.). london: cornell university press. marold, edith 1983. kenningkunst: ein beitrag zu einer poetik der skaldendichtung. quellen und forschungen zur sprachund kulturgeschichte der germanischen völker, neue folge 80. berlin: de gruyter. meissner, rudolf 1921. die kenningar der skalden: ein beitrag zur skaldischen poetik. bonn: schroeder mellor, scott 1999 [2008]. analyzing ten poems from the poetic edda: oral formula and mythic patterns. mellen: lewiston. (publication of function and formula: an analysis of ten poems from the codex regius. phd dissertation, university of wisconsin, madison, 1999.) noreen, erik 1921. studier i fornvästnordisk diktning. uppsala universitets årsskrift 1921, filosofi, språkvetenskap och historiska vetenskaper 4. uppsala: a.b. akademiska bokhandeln. osborne, emily margaret 2012. thinking outside the hall: the conceptual boundaries of skaldic verse. unpublished phd dissertation, university of cambridge. 137 osborne, emily 2013. categorising christ within an age-ǫld paradigm: the ‘kenning system’ and shifting cultural referents. in: frog; latvala, pauliina; leslie, helen f. (eds.), approaching methodology (2nd rev. edn.). annales academiae scientiarum fennicae humaniora 368. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica, 331–346. parry, milman 1928. l’épithète traditionnelle dans homère. paris: société d’éditions “les belles lettres”. parry, milman 1930. studies in the epic technique of oral verse-making. i. homer and homeric style. in: harvard studies in classical philology 41, 73–147. perkins, richard 1982–1985. rowing chants and the origins of dróttkvæðr háttr. in: saga-book of the viking society 21, 155–221. potts, deborah 2011. a cognitive approach to the analysis of the extant corpus of kennings for poetry. unpublished phd dissertation, university of cambridge. price, neil s. 2002. the viking way: religion and war in late iron age scandinavia. uppsala: department of archaeology and ancient history. roper, jonathan 2012. synonymy and rank in alliterative poetry. in: sign systems studies 40(1–2), 82–93. rubin, david c. 1995. memory in oral traditions: the cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes. oxford: oxford university press. saarinen, jukka 2013. behind the text: reconstructing the voice of a singer. in: rmn newsletter 7, 34–43. salminen, väinö 1934. suomalaisten muinaisrunojen historia. helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. schmitt, norbert; carter, ronald 2004. formulaic sequences in action: an introduction. in: schmitt, norbert (ed.), formulaic sequences: acquisition, processing and use. amsterdam: john benjamins. sievers, eduard 1893. altgermanische metrik. sammlung kurzer grammatiken germanischer dialekte erzänzungsreihe 2. halle: niemeyer. siikala, anna-leena 1990 [1984]. interpreting oral narrative. ff communications 245. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. skaldic database. http://abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php (accessed december 4, 2013). stepanova, eila 2011. reflections of belief systems in karelian and lithuanian laments: shared systems of traditional referentiality? in: archaeologia baltica 15, 128–143. stepanova, eila 2012. mythic elements of karelian laments: the case of syndyzet and spuassuzet. in: frog; siikala, anna-leena; stepanova, eila (eds.), mythic discourses: studies in uralic traditions. studia fennica folkloristica 20. helsinki: finnish literature society, 257–287. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? http://abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php 138 frog stepanova, eila forthcoming. karjalan seesjärven itkukieli. phd thesis, university of helsinki. sullivan, karen 2008. genre-dependent metonymy in norse skaldic poetry. in: language and literature 17(1), 21–36. sverdlov, ilya v. 2003. extra elements in kennings, or ‘different ways to feed the wolf single-wordedly’. in skandinavistik 33(2), 101–113. sverdlov, ilya v. 2006. kenning morphology: towards a formal definition of the skaldic kenning, or kennings and adjectives. in: mckinnell, john; ashurst, david; kick, donata (eds.), the fantastic in old norse / icelandic literature – sagas and the british isles. preprint papers of the 13th international saga conference, durham and york 6–12 august 2006. durham: the centre for medieval and renaissance studies, durham university, 928–934. sykäri, venla 2011. words as events: cretan mantinádes in performance and composition. studia fennica folkloristica 18. helsinki: finnish literature society. tarkka, lotte 2005. rajarahvaan laulu: tutkimus vuokkiniemen kalevalamittaisesta runokulttuurista 1821–1921. helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. þorgeirsson, haukur 2010. gullkársljóð og hrafnagaldur: framlag til sögu fornyrðislags. in: gripla 21, 229–334. þorgeirsson, haukur 2013. poetic formulas in late medieval icelandic folk poetry: the case of vambarljóð. in: frog; latvala, pauliina; leslie, helen f. (eds.), approaching methodology (2nd rev. edn.). annales academiae scientiarum fennicae humaniora 368. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica, 347–375. thorvaldsen, bernt øyvind 2006. svá er sagt í fornum vísindum: tekstualiseringen av de mytologiske eddadikt. phd dissertation university of bergen. https:// bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2236/dr_avh_bernt_oyvind_thorvaldsen. pdf ?sequence=1 (accessed january 1, 2011). thorvaldsen, bernt øyvind 2008. om þrymskviða, tekstlån og tradisjon. in: maal og minne 2008, 142–166. turville-petre, edward oswald gabriel 1964. myth and religion in the north: the religion of ancient scandinavia. new york: holt, rinehart & winston. turville-petre, edward oswald gabriel 1976. scaldic poetry. oxford: clarendon press. de vries, jan 1934. de skaldenkenningen met mythologischen inhoud. nederlandsche bijdragen op het gebied van germaansche philologie en linguistiek 4. haarlem: h.d. tjeenk willink & zoon n.v. de vries, jan 1956–1957. altgermanische religionsgeschichte i–ii. 2nd edn. berlin: de gruyter. https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2236/dr_avh_bernt_oyvind_thorvaldsen.pdf?sequence=1 https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2236/dr_avh_bernt_oyvind_thorvaldsen.pdf?sequence=1 https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/2236/dr_avh_bernt_oyvind_thorvaldsen.pdf?sequence=1 139 whaley, diana 2005. skaldic poetry. in: mcturk, rory (ed.), a companion to old norse-icelandic literature and culture. london: blackwell, 479–502. wills, tarrin 2009. the development of skaldic language. in: ney, agneta; williams, henrik; ljungqvist, fredrik charpentier (eds.), á austrvega: saga and east scandinavia. preprint papers of the 14th international saga conference, uppsala, 9th–15th august 2009. gävle: university of gävle, 1032–1038. wills, tarrin n.d. a. analysis: features by lemmatised line (bars) (various features by line of lemmatised helmingr). https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=1 40&if=default&table=php_reports&val=&view= (accessed december 12, 2013). wills, tarrin n.d. b. analysis: features by line (various features by line of dróttkvætt helmingr). https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=135&if=default&table=p hp_reports&val=&view= (accessed december 12, 2013). wray, alison 2002. formulaic language and the lexicon. cambridge: cambridge university press. würth, stephanie 2007. skaldic poetry and performance. in: quinn, judy; heslop, kate; wills, tarrin (eds.), learning and understanding in the old norse world: essays in honour of margaret clunies ross. medieval texts and cultures of northern europe 18. turnhout: brepols, 263–281. mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=140&if=default&table=php_reports&val=&view= https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=140&if=default&table=php_reports&val=&view= https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=135&if=default&table=php_reports&val=&view= https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=135&if=default&table=php_reports&val=&view= the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman eric weiskott* abstract: the c version of piers plowman has yet to earn much attention from metrists relative to the outgrowth of research into fourteenth-century alliterative meter since 1986. langland’s relationship to metrical tradition is idiosyncratic, a judgment that involves both this author’s divergence from conventions characteristic of other alliterative poems and the recognizability of his own metrical habitus across his career. scansion of an inconsistently alliterating passage new in c (prol.95–124) illustrates in miniature the unusual problems thrown up by langland’s metrical practice and suggests that his metrical signature persisted over the years of his writing life. the ophni and phineas insertion is of special interest because it has been thought an unfinished draft. keywords: a-verse, alliterative meter, b-verse, piers plowman c, revision, william langland introduction: william langland’s metrical signature the principles governing alliterative meter in the fourteenth century have been discovered and elaborated in an efflorescence of specialist scholarship since the late 1980s. an area of focus is the “b-verse” or second half of the alliterative long line, which has been revealed to be an exceptionally well rehearsed dance of stressed syllables, unstressed syllables, and vowel sounds. while metrical experts initially bracketed william langland’s piers plowman as formally aberrant (duggan 1986: 577–578; 2000: 75 n. 53; 2009: 169; cable 1988: 63; 1991: 86; putter et al. 2007: 5; yakovlev 2008: 25; russom 2017: 127), ian cornelius (2017: 7–17, 126–129; cf. burrow 2012) has delivered an authoritative and concise analysis of the meter of piers plowman b in light of research progress.1 cornelius concludes, “piers plowman, in any of its versions, more persistently * author’s address: eric weiskott, stokes hall s407, boston college, chestnut hill, mass. 02467, usa; email: eric.weiskott@bc.edu. 1 barney (1995, 2009: 277–285) gives two interim assessments. cf. lawton 1988: 244–246. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.04 studia metrica et poetica 9.2, 2022, 117–132 mailto:eric.weiskott@bc.edu https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.04 118 eric weiskott invites unmetrical readings than any other contemporary poem in this meter” (128). this conclusion superficially resembles the received view that langland was not bound by the same principles of verse construction as coeval alliterative poets, except that, as adumbrated by the verb invites, cornelius attends to the historically and phenomenologically dynamic practice of metrical scansion. cornelius finds that most of langland’s b-verses do fulfill the principles of fourteenth-century alliterative meter. exceptions are numerous, and occasionally intractable, but by no means do they constitute a majority. nor are exceptional b-verses mere chaos. they pose a small number of difficulties over and over again. langland has a metrical signature. his relationship to poetic tradition is idiosyncratic, a judgment that has two sides. idiosyncrasy involves both this author’s divergence from conventions characteristic of other alliterative poems and the consistency of his own metrical style across his career. langland is the only middle english alliterative poet for whom such a judgment is possible at the scale of the career, in the nature of the surviving evidence for a largely anonymous poetic tradition. this essay supplements cornelius’s work with scansion of a passage new in piers plowman c. although the b version dominates study of piers plowman, due to the importance of b to the poem’s reception and critical estimation of its literary excellence, the c version commands attention as the final form of the poem promulgated by langland. it, too, is excellent literature. cornelius (2017: 128) notes that most prima facie unmetrical b-verses in piers plowman b were retained in c, strong evidence that these patterns go beyond scribal error or a momentary lapse of authorial reason. “in his line-work, as in other aspects of his poem, langland was singularly adventurous” (128–129), and this remained true through the end of his writing career. piers plowman “invites unmetrical readings,” but there exist strategies for declining the invitation. i assess the metricality of the ophni and phineas insertion (c.prol.95–124). the passage is of special interest to metrical study (cf. salter 1978: 32; hanna 1998: 182; duggan 2009: 183–185) because it has been thought an unfinished, incompletely alliterative draft. editors george russell and george kane guessed it was “the roughest of langland’s drafts” (1997: 87) and “put in here without his direction” (88)! however that may be, the ophni and phineas passage is of a piece metrically with other and earlier segments of piers plowman. it illustrates in miniature the unusual problems thrown up by langland’s metrical practice. crucially for this inconsistently alliterating passage, i follow cornelius and others in distinguishing metrical stress assignment from the disposition of 119the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman alliteration.2 ironies of nomenclature notwithstanding, alliteration is not a metrical entity in alliterative verse. i avoid tilting the scansion toward the alliterating syllables. alliteration and metrical stress sometimes do not coincide in piers plowman (kane 1981; duggan 1987a: 26–39; 1987b: 56–59; 2009: 172–179; lawton 1988: 225–227, 230–233, 241). here is an example of both stress shift and what might be termed alliteration shift (displacement of alliteration from a metrically stressed syllable to a nearby metrically unstressed syllable) in a single polysyllabic word (quoted from russell, kane 1997): x x x a x s x s x that here parsch[e] were pore sithe þ[e] pestelence tyme. (langland, piers plowman c.prol.82) in the notation i will employ, “a” represents a metrically stressed alliterating syllable, “s” represents a metrically stressed non-alliterating syllable, “x” represents a metrically unstressed non-alliterating syllable, and “a” represents a metrically unstressed alliterating syllable in a verse with no metrically stressed alliterating syllable. scanned with stress shift and alliteration shift, piers plowman c.prol.82b fulfills the choreography described for b-verses in specialist scholarship, in that this b-verse contains exactly two “lifts” or metrically stressed syllables (s), exactly one “long dip” or sequence of two or more metrically unstressed syllables (x...x), and a final “short dip” or lone metrically unstressed syllable (x), and all short dips are realized as the minimal vowel schwa (-e in pestelence and tyme). strange as it sounds, the separation of alliteration from metrical stress assignment in metrical theory implies the possibility of blank, that is non-alliterating, alliterative verse (lewis 1935: 13). while alliteration shift represents only a minor adjustment to the mapping of alliteration onto metrical stress, it exemplifies the non-identity of the two systems in theory, a situation that could be felt – by fourteenth-century poets, audiences, or scribes, and by modern readers – as a step on the path toward the disentanglement of alliteration from stress in practice. the ophni and phineas passage comes closer to being blank alliterative verse than most any other bit of surviving english alliterative poetry.3 modern editors are not the only ones who look askance at the pas2 cable 1991: 132 (“the word ‘alliterative’ refers to a superficial feature”); yakovlev 2008: 24 (“end-rhyme or alliteration [...] are ornamental, rather than structural devices”); cornelius 2017: 16 (“the taxonomic approach [to alliteration] misapprehends surface effects as realia”). 3 lawton (1983: 75) describes joseph of arimathea as “an unrevised first draft of a full alliterative poem.” 120 eric weiskott sage. the reviser behind the wayward text of the ilchester manuscript of piers plowman rewrote the ophni and phineas insertion in order to spruce up the alliteration (pearsall 1981: 190–192; hanna 1996: 209–213; smith 2013: 209). a second nuance concerns metrical phonology, or the metrically relevant shapes of words. in working up a model of the structure of the fourteenthcentury alliterative b-verse, specialists have found it necessary to posit a variety of historically motivated but linguistically obsolescent -e’s (cable 1988: 50–53, 1989, 1991: 78–79; putter et al. 2007: 19–117; yakovlev 2009a).4 metrically significant phantom syllables include the vocalic endings of old english, french, and norse nouns and the historical inflections of infinitive and imperative verbs and weak and/or plural adjectives. these historical -e’s are not rare metrical expedients but normal usage in alliterative verse. nicolay yakovlev (2009b) went so far as to argue that the schwa of historical -e and certain types of terminal -y were the only vowels permitted in medial and final short dips in the fourteenth-century b-verse, for example, x...xsxsx. i will return to this surprising phonological requirement in the next section. langland’s b-verse it is well to begin with the b-verse, where alliterative metrics has achieved a stringent consensus statement of basic principles, before proceeding to the “a-verse” or first half of the line, which remains rather mysterious. a first pass through the thirty-line passage turns up ten b-verses that do not adhere to either of the normative patterns in fourteenth-century alliterative meter as it is known from other poems, (x)sx...xsx and x...xs(x)sx.5 certain hypotheses about meter and phonology can salvage metrical scansion for eight of these b-verses, though at significant theoretical cost as will be explained. the other two b-verses exhibit a rare but authentic asystematic metrical pattern found throughout the alliterative corpus. three b-verses can be accommodated by discounting historically justified -e: 4 by contrast, and to the detriment of the sharpness of his model of metrical structure and metrical history, duggan (1986: 573–574 n. 18; 1988; 2010) posited a contemporary phonology for alliterative verse, discounting most historically justified but linguistically obsolescent -e’s in scansion, except for langland (duggan 1990). cornelius (2017: 75–79) analyzes and historicizes the debate. 5 i assume metrical demotion of some semantically weak content words: langland’s piers plowman c.prol.104b writ, 109b do (inf.), and 116b, 118b holy. 121the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman x x a s x s x consience cam and [ac]cu[s]ed hem  – and þe comune herde hit (langland, piers plowman c.prol.95) x a x x x s x and chastisid hem noght þerof and nolde noght rebuken hem (110) x x x s x s x wel hardere and grettere on suche shrewed faderes.6 (122) forms without -e appear in three different classes of word with historical -e, namely singular verbs (herde), infinitive verbs (rebuken), and plural adjectives (shrewed, -e not spelled out). the form herde “heard” derives from oe hyrde. in faderes, -e-1 represents a syllable dropped through syncope (cf. oe fæd(e)ras). the first two verses have a further metrical complication. an unstressed pronoun (hit, hem) occupies the final short dip, contravening yakovlev’s principle that the final dip in the b-verse must be filled by schwa. while ignoring certain historical -e’s salvages these verses for expected metrical scansion, the manner in which language fills the last metrical position is still unexpected in these two cases. langland, like other alliterative poets, normally used a linguistically retrograde metrical phonology, but, unlike other alliterative poets, he sometimes substituted an innovative contemporary form for the traditional historical form. this is an unorthodox proposal and bears some discussion (cf. duggan 1990: 181–191). variable metrical treatment of words with historical -e characterizes geoffrey chaucer’s metrical practice, for example (quoted from benson 1987): x s x s x s x s x s x hym thoughte that his herte wolde breke (canterbury tales 1.954) x s x s x s x s x s into myn herte, that wol my bane be. (1097) 6 frog has suggested to me that this b-verse could show double alliteration. yet suche is a function word that would not normally contribute a metrical stress. alliteration shift would be applicable in instances where the alliterating sound had been established in the a-verse, but the a-verse here appears blank or unalliterated. 122 eric weiskott in the first line, herte < oe heorte counts an etymologically justified -e, while in the second line the -e in herte is discounted in scansion. the disyllabic scansion is more common in chaucer than the monosyllabic scansion, but it cannot be relied upon absolutely. if chaucer provides a contemporary point of reference, old english verse supplies historical precedent for facultative metrical phonology. there, verbal prefixes and the negative particle ne may optionally be excluded from the metrical count, a curious phenomenon yakovlev – in the old english branch of his important study of the development of alliterative meter – codifies as “the prefix license” (2008: 59–60). in b-verses like piers plowman c.prol.95b and þe comune herde hit, langland seems to implement an analogous option, deselecting historical -e from the count of metrically significant syllables. the analogy to old english is admittedly imperfect, for there the excluded syllable remains present within contemporary grammar and, presumably, in performance, whereas the -e’s apparently dropped by langland were already ghosts by c. 1390, when piers plowman c was first published. four other b-verses in the ophni and phineas passage have three lifts: x a x x s x s x and seide, ‘ydolatrie ʒe soffren in sondrye places manye’ (piers plowman c.prol.96) x s x s x a x x thei were discomfited in batayle and losten archa domini (108) x s x s x x s x fro his chayere þer he sat and brake his nekke atwene (114) x s x s x x s x god was wel þe wrother and took þe raþer vengeance.7 (117) the form manye is disyllabic (cf. oe mongum). note stress shift in vengeance. although two lifts are undoubtedly the norm in the fourteenth-century 7 langland’s piers plowman c.prol.112b and 113b can be scanned with two or three lifts indifferently, depending whether a content word (112b domini, 113b anon) is or is not demoted. the latin gen. domini in the phrase archa domini and the adv. anon occupy the gray zone between content word and function word. 123the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman alliterative b-verse, yakovlev (2008: 180–184, 246–248) identifies b-verses with three lifts in both lawman’s brut (c. 1200) and sir gawain and the green knight, and these can be explained diachronically within yakovlev’s formalism as descendants of old english half-line patterns with three lifts. such verses, although outliers in langland, are thoroughly attested. two-lift scansion is possible, with demotion of 96b places, 108b losten, 114b brake (and discount historical -e in nekke < oe hnecca), and 117b took, but this strategy inevitably would begin to undermine the two-tiered prosodic hierarchy, in which content words like nouns outrank function words like articles. one must pick one’s poison. verse 108b incurs a further problem, in that it ends in a prohibited long dip. an anglicized realization dom’ni is conceivable. latin in piers plowman tends to be domesticated latin. yet 95b and 110b, if they do not show anomalous loss of historical -e, establish a type to which other problematic b-verses may be assimilated. two b-verses have two long dips and are almost identical: x x a x x s x what cheste and meschaunce to þe children of irael (langland, piers plowman c.prol.105) x x s x x s x anon as it was tolde hym that þe children of irael. (111) these scansions assume synaeresis in irael. b-verses with two lifts, two long dips, and a final short dip are rare but authentic in piers plowman (duggan 1987a: 39–40; cornelius 2017: 14; cf. barney 2009: 283–285). such patterns occur, rarely but authentically, in beowulf (83b, 455b, 487b, etc.), in the b-verses of lawman’s brut (yakovlev 2008: 244), and in the b-verses of other fourteenth-century alliterative poems (cable 1991: 90, cleanness). the two long dips in piers plowman c.prol.105b and 111b cannot be reduced by positing elision, synaeresis, or syncope. nor is there evidence of textual corruption.8 this pair of asystematic b-verses is robustly asystematic, like others of the same metrical form in piers plowman. both b-verses show the further difficulty of a non-schwa -ein the final short dip, after synaeresis. in these 8 at langland’s piers plowman c.prol.105b, seven manuscripts omit þe, but the art. is necessary to the sense and supported by 111b, where no manuscript omits it. 124 eric weiskott cases the repetition of a syntactical frame, [x] þe children of irael, appears to swamp metrical normativity. one problematic b-verse in the ophni and phineas passage, once again with a non-schwa -ein the final short dip, does call for syncope: a x s s x in menynge of myracles muche wex hangeth there. (langland, piers plowman c.prol.99) without syncope, the verse has three lifts, with promotion of the function word there (axssxs), or else it has a long final dip (axssxx). even with syncope, 99b is unusual, with a separate word in the final short dip, like 95b and 110b, instead of a syllable with schwa as prescribed by yakovlev. probably syncope was a metrical option for langland, to be used sparingly and in a restricted subset of grammatical contexts. syncope of verbal -eth, a southern dialect marker, is attested in chaucer’s pentameter, for example: x s x s x s x s x s x what eyleth the man, so synfully to swere? (canterbury tales 2.1171) in piers plowman c.prol.99b, syncope triggers the placement of a non-schwa syllable in the final short dip, in a chain reaction of metrical divergence. or the reverse: a non-schwa syllable in a short dip disturbs adjacent metrical regularities. cornelius (2017: 129) suggests that relaxation of the non-schwa principle was langland’s original metrical sin, tempting him to others. the ophni and phineas passage happens to provide no further evidence for this interesting claim about prosodic hamartiology, beyond the five otherwise problematic b-verses already mentioned as contravening the non-schwa principle in the final dip (piers plowman c.prol.95b, 99b, 105b, 110b, 111b). that is, the twenty b-verses in the passage with expected accentual shapes also assign schwa to the expected positions. in this short passage, all medial short dips are occupied by schwa. nonetheless, it may be preferable in future work on langland’s meter to follow cornelius’s lead by prioritizing phonology over accentuation. certainly, in many other lines in piers plowman one finds b-verses with expected accentual shapes but unexpected placement of syllables with full or non-schwa vowels. flouting of the non-schwa principle is part of langland’s metrical signature and the way he least tallies with hoyt n. duggan’s early overstatement that “langland’s concept of the b-verse did not differ from that of other alliterative poets” (1987b: 51, retracted in 2009: 169). 125the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman cornelius’s powerful insight about the centrality of phonology to the metrical organization of the fourteenth-century alliterative b-verse swims against the accentualist tide of research in this area (cf. cornelius 2017: 53–54). the insight has yet to be elaborated, even by cornelius. none of the ten problematic b-verses in the ophni and phineas passage is a convincing instance of a pattern with no final dip. some of them raise the specter of a final long dip, though alternative construals recommend themselves in each case. to the extent that the alternative scansions are attractive, one can say that while individual verses occasionally violate general metrical principles, for historical as well as perceptual reasons, still some aspects of versification in the alliterative tradition were categorical. the fact that individual b-verses can usually be ‘solved’ in more than one way bespeaks the multiformity of langland’s metrical eccentricity. langland’s a-verse turning now to the a-verse, most everything is in flux. the a-verse is not well understood. it can be expected to remain so, given the dissimilarity between a-verse and b-verse in fourteenth-century alliterative meter. the large metrical repertoire of the a-verse counterbalances the small metrical repertoire of the b-verse. there never will be a succinct template for the a-verse like the one duggan (1986; 1987a: 32–33; 1987b: 44–45; 1988; 1990: 158–159) and thomas cable (1988: 53–54, 67–68; 1989: 53–55; 1991: 85–113) independently discovered for the b-verse. combining theoretical proposals from four corners of the field, one can say that fourteenth-century a-verses minimally obey four principles. i list them in descending order of scholarly confidence and consensus opinion, beginning with a claim no one in the field disputes and ending with one that requires significant qualification: 1. the a-verse must have at least two lifts (cornelius’s historically based principle: 2017: 15, 121). 2. the a-verse must have at least one long dip (ad putter, judith jefferson, and myra stokes’s empirically based principle, 2007: 222–225; cf. duggan 2001: 482–487, 494–497). 3. the a-verse must not end in a long dip. polysyllabic content words at the end of the a-verse that would form a long dip instead acquire a second metrical stress, or function words at the end of the a-verse from what would be a long dip instead receive stress (yakovlev’s hypothesis of compound stress or metrical promotion, 2008: 163–167). 126 eric weiskott 4. the a-verse must not have a metrical pattern that would be systematic in the b-verse, namely (x)sx...xsx or x...xs(x)sx (cable’s principle of asymmetry, 1991: 86). the first and third principles are holdovers from old english meter; the second and fourth are fourteenth-century crystallizations of long-term metrical-historical tendencies.9 while there is strong empirical and historical support for each of these four a-verse principles, one misses an overarching theory to explain why these (and only these?) regularities obtain.10 indeed, the present essay is the first to combine them. in advance of a hoped-for theoretical synthesis, i address the four principles seriatim. measured accordingly, langland’s a-verses are conventional. they are rhythmically complex, but complex within the wide latitude characterizing the a-verse in fourteenth-century practice. 1. none of the thirty a-verses in the ophni and phineas passage contravenes cornelius’s minimum of two lifts, assuming the promotion of for or another function word in piers plowman c.prol.116a and for þei were prestis. justification for promotion of a function word from a verse-initial long dip in a verse that would otherwise have only one lift comes from old english verse, where all scholars accept it for an alliterating function word in the b-verse and yakovlev (2008: 53), following cable (1974: 23–24), argues convincingly for the same license for a non-alliterating function word in the a-verse. 2. all thirty a-verses have at least one long dip, as predicted by duggan’s scansion of a large corpus including parts of piers plowman b (2001: 9 all current theories of old english meter posit at least two lifts per verse as the norm. yakovlev (2008: 70–82) represents the two-lift minimum as a corollary of the principle of four positions per verse and the definitions of strong and weak positions (lifts and dips). long dips were optional in certain definable contexts in old english meter (cable 1991: 9–13). for avoidance of final long dips, see cable (1991: 16) (old english) and yakovlev (2008: 249) (early middle english). compound stress at the end of the half-line, even for words with relatively light linguistic stress on the second stressable syllable, characterized old english meter, for example, beowulf 2860b grim andswaru (sssx) (cable 1991: 16–26). (nb: cable 1991 employs a different scansional notation than that of the present essay, but the difference is immaterial to the points of agreement between old english and middle english alliterative metrical theory identified in this note.) promotion of a verse-final function word was a principle of old english verse syntax, for example, beowulf 24b lofdædum sceal (ssxs) (kendall 1991: 43–47). old english meter showed symmetry in metrical repertoire between the halves of the line; early middle english alliterative meter fell in between old and middle in this regard. 10 promising work toward a unified theory of the fourteenth-century alliterative a-verse, based in metrical history, includes yakovlev 2008: 155–184; russom 2017: 176–258. 127the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman 499–500 n. 14) and putter, jefferson, and stokes’s scansion of alexander and dindimus and the siege of jerusalem. 3. nearly all the a-verses with apparent final long dips have two content words, as yakovlev found to be the case for sir gawain and the green knight: 1 2 in menynge of myracles muche wex hangeth there (langland, piers plowman c.prol.99) 1 2 that lewed men in mysbileue lyuen and dyen (102) 1 2 ful on hem þat fre were thorwe two fals prestis (106) 1 2 thei were discomfited in batayle and losten archa domini (108) 1 2 anon as it was tolde hym that þe children of irael (111) 1 2 were disconfit in batayle and archa domini lorn (112) 1 2 and al was for vengeance he bet noght his children (115) 1 2 that soffreth men do sacrefyce and worschipe maumettes (119) 128 eric weiskott 1 2 god shal take vengeaunce on alle suche prestis (121) 1 2 for ʒoure shrewed soffraunce and ʒoure oune synne. (124) the common noun 119a men and the infinitive verb 121a take are sufficiently bland not to count as content words. by the lights of yakovlev’s analysis, versefinal content words like 119a sacrefyce and 115a, 121a vengea(u)nce have compound stress, while the verse-final function words 106a were and 111a hym are promoted. both phenomena mirror the treatment of polysyllabic content words and verse-final function words in old english verse. the concentration of apparent final long dips in a-verses with two content words was yakovlev’s smoking gun for establishing the gawain poet’s avoidance of final long dips in the a-verse. yakovlev noticed that a-verses with apparent final long dips in gawain overwhelmingly (207 of 210 instances) had only two content words, and that the vast majority of these a-verses ended in a word capable of carrying secondary stress on its final or penultimate syllable. as yakovlev puts it pithily, “2+1 is fine, but 3+1 is too much” (2008: 166). however, he found that the gawain poet did write a very small number of “3+1” a-verses – a finding that does not deprive yakovlev’s statistical observation of its force. one a-verse in the ophni and phineas passage has a “3+1” pattern: 1 2 3 consience cam and [ac]cu[s]ed hem  – and þe comune herde hit. (95) verse 95a may have four lifts (cf. duggan 2000: 53–55, 74; cornelius 2017: 118, 120) with promotion of hem; or three lifts with demotion of cam and promotion of hem; or even a hyper-rare final long dip. whichever scansion langland might have favored at the moment of composition or a later moment of proofreading, he composed such superheavy a-verses more often than the gawain poet did. 4. as to cable’s principle of asymmetry, five a-verses would make good b-verses: x a x x x x a x i leue, by oure lord, for loue of ʒoure coueytise (103) 129the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman x a x x x a x what cheste and meschaunce to þe children of irael (105) x s a x s x for offines s[yn]ne and fines his brother (107) x x a x a x and his sones slawe anon he ful for sorwe (113) x s x x x s x and for þei were prestis and men of holy chirche. (116) the noun lord counts an unwritten historical -e representing the second syllable of old english hlaford (cable 1991: 79). verses 107a and 116a are particularly b-verse-like in lacking double alliteration, a typical a-verse feature. cable’s principle of a-verse/b-verse asymmetry is a brilliant generalization and clearly grasps something basic about the alliterative long line, but it is incompletely systematized in fourteenth-century alliterative verse. langland is more resistant to it than most. conclusion: langland’s metrical eccentricity the ophni and phineas passage and, by extension and a fortiori, the c version of piers plowman as a whole, metrically resembles b as cornelius and other students of alliterative meter describe it (cf. weiskott 2016: 131–153). langland’s metrical style will have fluctuated from passage to passage and over time, yet there is a certain identifiable sameness, a recognizable house style, in all his verses. the qualities that threw metrists into doubt about the character of the ophni and phineas passage as alliterative verse fall well within the tolerance of “langland’s metrical habitus” (148, 150), according to a formalization made possible by progress in alliterative metrics. contrast duggan’s conclusion: “langland in the successive versions of his great poem moved further and further from the rhythmic, syntactic, and lexical constraints that governed other alliterative poets” (1990: 181; reiterated 2009: 184). the ophni and phineas insertion, as i scan it, contradicts the metrical side of duggan’s 130 eric weiskott assertion, at least, and aligns rather with ralph hanna’s holistic sense of a poet who “wrote only one poem” (1996: 203), a poem continously held in prospect, sometimes updated and refined, and sporadically leaked or disseminated to reading publics. the c version completes the picture of the career langland made of rethinking alliterative verse. so far from spinning further and further out of orbit and away from consensual forms, langland perfected his own eccentricity. more work is needed on langland’s meter, particularly in its inter-versional development and in the c text. because all other fourteenthand fifteenthcentury alliterative poetry of any length is both anonymous or effectively so, and poorly attested compared to piers plowman, langland furnishes a unique opportunity to track metrical change not over the usual scale of centuries but in a single author’s mind over decades. so far, by and large, the results are negative. langland had his metrical preferences, and he stuck to them. references barney, stephen a. 1995. langland’s prosody: the state of study. in: tavormina, m. teresa; robert f. yeager (eds.), the endless knot: essays on old and middle english in honor of marie borroff. cambridge: d. s. brewer, 65–85. barney, stephen a. 2009. a revised edition of the c text [review of pearsall, derek (ed.), piers plowman: a new annotated edition of the c-text, rev. ed. exeter: university of exeter press, 2008]. in: yearbook of langland studies 23, 265–288. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.1.100479 benson, larry d. (ed.) 1987. the riverside chaucer. 3rd ed. boston, ma: houghton mifflin. burrow, john a. 2012. the endings of lines in “piers plowman” b. in: notes and queries 59(3), 316–320. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjs065 cable, thomas 1974. the meter and melody of “beowulf ”. urbana: university of illinois press. cable, thomas 1988. middle english meter and its theoretical implications. in: yearbook of langland studies 2, 47–69. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.2.302951 cable, thomas 1989. standards from the past: the conservative syllable structure of the alliterative revival. in: tennessee studies in literature 31, 42–56. cable, thomas 1991. the english alliterative tradition. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.1.100479 https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjs065 https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.2.302951 131the meter of the ophni and phineas insertion in piers plowman cornelius, ian 2017. reconstructing alliterative verse: the pursuit of a medieval meter. cambridge: cambridge university press. duggan, hoyt n. 1986. the shape of the b-verse in middle english alliterative poetry. in: speculum 61(3), 564–592. https://doi.org/10.2307/2851596 duggan, hoyt n. 1987a. the authenticity of the z-text of piers plowman: further notes on metrical evidence. in: medium ævum 56(1), 25–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/43629058 duggan, hoyt n. 1987b. notes toward a theory of langland’s meter. in: yearbook of langland studies 1, 41–70. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.2.302968 duggan, hoyt n. 1988. final -e and the rhythmic structure of the b-verse in middle english alliterative poetry. in: modern philology 86(2), 119–145. https://www.jstor.org/stable/438542 duggan, hoyt n. 1990. langland’s dialect and final -e. in: studies in the age of chaucer 12, 157–191. https://doi.org/10.1353/sac.1990.0005 duggan, hoyt n. 2000. extended a-verses in middle english alliterative poetry. in: parergon 18(1), 53–76. https://doi.org/ 10.1353/pgn.2000.0031 duggan, hoyt n. 2001. some aspects of a-verse rhythms in middle english alliterative poetry. in: yeager, robert f.; morse, charlotte c. (eds.), speaking images: essays in honor of v. a. kolve. asheville, nc: pegasus, 479–503. duggan, hoyt n. 2009. notes on the metre of piers plowman: twenty years on. in: jefferson, judith; putter, ad (eds.), approaches to the metres of alliterative verse (leeds texts and monographs, new series 17). leeds: school of english, university of leeds, 159–186. duggan, hoyt n. 2010. the end of the line. in: burrow, john a.; duggan, hoyt n. (eds.), medieval alliterative poetry: essays in honour of thorlac turville-petre. dublin: four courts, 67–79. hanna, ralph, iii 1996. pursuing history: middle english manuscripts and their texts. stanford: stanford university press. hanna, ralph, iii 1998. a new edition of the c version [review of russell, kane 1997]. in: yearbook of langland studies 12, 175–188. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.2.302769 kane, george 1981. music “neither unpleasant nor monotonous.” in: heyworth, peter l. (ed.), medieval studies for j. a. w. bennett. oxford: oxford university press, 42–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/2851596 https://doi.org/10.2307/43629058 https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.2.302968 https://www.jstor.org/stable/438542 https://doi.org/10.1353/sac.1990.0005 https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.2.302769 132 eric weiskott kendall, calvin b. 1991. the metrical grammar of “beowulf ”. cambridge: cambridge university press. lawton, david a. 1983. the unity of middle english alliterative poetry. in: speculum 58(1), 72–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/2846614 lawton, david a. 1988. alliterative style. in: alford, john a. (ed.), a companion to “piers plowman”. berkeley, los angeles, and london: university of california press, 223–249. lewis, c. s. 1935. a metrical suggestion. in: lysistrata 2, 13–24. pearsall, derek 1981. the “ilchester” manuscript of piers plowman. in: neuphilologische mitteilungen 82(2), 181–193. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43345690 putter, ad; jefferson, judith; stokes, myra 2007. studies in the metre of alliterative verse. oxford: society for the study of medieval languages and literature. russell, george; george kane (eds.) 1997. piers plowman: the c version. london: athlone. russom, geoffrey 2017. the evolution of verse structure in old and middle english poetry: from the earliest alliterative poems to iambic pentameter. cambridge: cambridge university press. salter, elizabeth 1978. alliterative modes and affiliations in the fourteenth century. in: neuphilologische mitteilungen 79(1), 25–35. http://www.jstor.com/stable/43343170 smith, d. vance. 2013. the shadow of the book: piers plowman, the ilchester prologue, and inhumane revision. in: calabrese, michael; shepherd, stephen h. a. (eds.), yee? baw for bokes: essays on medieval manuscripts and poetics in honor of hoyt n. duggan. los angeles: marymount institute press, 203–218. weiskott, eric 2016. piers plowman and the durable alliterative tradition. in: yearbook of langland studies 30, 123–173. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.5.111397 yakovlev, nicolay 2008. the development of alliterative metre from old to middle english. diss., university of oxford. yakovlev, nicolay 2009a. on final -e in the b-verses of sir gawain and the green knight. in: jefferson, judith; putter, ad (eds.), approaches to the metres of alliterative verse (leeds texts and monographs, new series 17). leeds: school of english, university of leeds, 135–157. yakovlev, nicolay 2009b. prosodic restrictions on the short dip in late middle english alliterative verse. in: yearbook of langland studies 23, 217–242. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.1.100477 https://doi.org/10.2307/2846614 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43345690 http://www.jstor.com/stable/43343170 https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.5.111397 https://doi.org/10.1484/j.yls.1.100477 the accentual structure of estonian syllabicaccentual iambic tetrameter maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman*1 abstract. this paper is part of a project aimed to analyse the rhythm of estonian binary verse metres. it is the first complex analysis of estonian syllabic-accentual iamb. the analysis is comprised of poetry by 20 prominent authors from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and, all in all, more than 9000 verse lines. in order to find out which regularities are specific to poetry in general or to a particular poet, these data were compared with pseudoiambic segments extracted from prose. differently from the earlier studies, stress is treated as a phenomenon of gradation, with altogether five different degrees of stress distinguished. the performed study showed that the rhythmical structure of iambic poems allows the clear distinction between two groups of poets, whom we conditionally call traditionalists and modernists. keywords: estonian verse, iambic tetrameter, rhythm, statistical analysis of verse 0. about the project this paper is part of a larger project which is the first systematic description of estonian syllabic-accentual verse. the two most widespread verse metres in the 19th century estonian poetry have been chosen as research subjects: trochaic tetrameter (t4) and iambic tetrameter (i4). the standard sample for the analysis is 500 lines per author; if an author has less than 500 lines in the given metre, the study includes all the lines in this metre that the author produced. the analysis comprises the accentual and quantitative structure of verse, as well as the distribution of word boundaries. some results of the analysis of the accentual structure of estonian t4 are presented in lotman and lotman 2011; the quantitative structure of estonian t4 is described in lotman and lotman 2013. the paper will give an overview of the syllabic-accentual structure of the estonian iambic tetrameter. * authors’ addresses: maria-kristiina lotman, department of classical philology, university of tartu, ülikooli 17, 51014 tartu, estonia. e-mail: maria.lotman@mail.ee; mihhail lotman, department of semiotics, university of tartu, jakobi 2, 51014 tartu, estonia, e-mail: mihhail@ehi.ee. studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 71–102 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.04 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.04 72 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman 0.1. a historiographical note one of the first to perform statistical analysis of estonian verse rhythm was walter anderson, the results of whose study of the estonian regisong (anderson 1935) are still relevant. jaak põldmäe systematically analysed the rhythmical structure of literary poetry, but confined himself only to the legacy of one author (betti alver) and that too only partially (see põldmäe 1975). jaak põldmäe chose for his analysis a remarkable author and gained some important results. nevertheless, since his sample is restricted to just one author, the outcomes cannot be generalised and the methods are also problematic. he did not not draw sufficient distinction between metrical and linguistic prosody and studied only the distribution of main stresses (põldmäe 1975: 173; 1978: 59). 0.2. binary metres iamb and trochee are the so-called binary metres, that is, verse forms where two elements (α and β) alternate in the deep structure: (1) αβαβαβ... since neither of these elements means anything else than that it is different from the other (that is, α ≠ β), the given scheme can be the basis of description for both iamb and trochee. however, since our project involves the comparison of iamb and trochee, it is useful to fix the meaning of these symbols in a way that the correspondence rules would be the same in the case of both metres. that is, if we decide to mark in trochee the positions where stressed syllables are more frequent with the symbol α, and accordingly the positions where unstressed syllables occur more frequently with the symbol β, it would be practical to use the same notation also in the case of iamb, keeping in mind symbols α and β by themselves do not have anything which would connect them with stresses, meaning that the converse solution would be possible as well. it has to be added here that in actual verse, not all the αand β-positions behave similarly. for example, in the estonian verse the constant stress is on the first strong position, in the russian iamb on the last one. for that reason in the following description x is used to mark the first position, while indexes mark the sequence of positions. while the scheme (1) characterises a binary metre on the most general level, we will hereafter use a more particular form of it1: 1 the symbols α and β signify different metrical positions, while the subscripts indicate the corresponding sequential numbers. 73the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter (2) (x)α1β1α2β2α3β3α4(β4) metre is realised on linguistic units by the means of correspondence rules. a set of correspondence rules constitutes a system of versification. the system of versification is the central part of our model, since it is a way how metre is realised with the means of natural language. (3) m → sv → r, where m is metre, sv is system of versification and r is verse rhythm. theoretically, in estonian, iamb can be realised in the following versification systems: 1) in the syllabic-quantitative system, the syllable corresponds to each metrical position and quantity is regulated, but these rules are more complicated (for example, instead of simple alternation of heavy and light syllables, some positions can be ancipitia). a simplified scheme of estonian iambic dimetre is ×∪×∪−. 2) in the quantitative-syllabic system, the number of quantities is fixed, while the syllable count can vary. an artificial and simplified example of it is ∪∪∪∪. 3) in the syllabic-accentual system, the syllable count is fixed, the disposition of stresses is regulated, but these rules are more complicated (for example, instead of simple alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, more irregular configurations are admitted, like in most of syllabic-accentual verse metres in european poetry). an artificial and simplified example of it is ××××××××, where (´) marks potential stress. 4) in the accentual-syllabic system, the number of stresses is fixed while the number of unstressed syllables can vary within a certain range (for example, german knittelvers). an example of it is ××́×(×)×́×(×)×́×(×)×.́ 5) in the syllabic-accentual-quantitative system, the syllable count is fixed, accent is more regulated than quantity (such system can be used in translating strictest ancient lyric metres into estonian). an artificial and simplified example of it is ×́∪́×́∪−. 6) in the syllabic-quantitative-accentual system, the syllabic count is strictly regulated, quantity is more regulated than accent (for example, translations of strictest ancient lyric metres into estonian). an artificial and simplified example of it is ×∪×∪−. 7) in the accentual-quantitative-syllabic system, the number of stresses 74 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman is fixed, while quantity is more regulated than the syllabic structure: ×(×)×(×)×(×)×(×)− (for example, translations of roman comic iambus by ain kaalep and ülo torpats). 8) in the quantitative-accentual-syllabic system, the quantitative structure is strictly regulated, the number of accents and syllables can vary (for example, translations of ancient dramatic iambus by mari murdvee). compare the following scheme: ×(×)×(×)×(×)×(×)− . the given are purely illustrative and simplified examples: the actual verse has almost always additional constraints, while in the shortest text it is not easy to distinguish between the 7th and 8th. 1. estonian iambus in many european traditions iambus and trochee are antithetical. while in german and russian poetry traditions of 18th to 19th century iambus is, first of all, iambic tetrameter, (i4) and trochee is, first of all, trochaic tetrameter (t4), contrasting as a metre of european high culture and as a popular verse form (gasparov 1989: 214–215), in estonian verse, just like in english tradition, trochaic tetrameter is, in the first place, opposed to the iambic pentameter. for that reason there are authors in our material whose work does not contain as much as 500 iambic tetrameters, which is a standard sample in our analysis. however, just like in other european verse traditions, in estonian poetry i5 starts to dominate somewhat later at the beginning of the 20th century, when the native poetry tradition has already shaped out. in our previous studies (e.g., lotman, lotman 2011, 2013) we distinguished between traditionalist and modernist authors, and demonstrated how the scarcity of i4 is first and foremost characteristic to modernists. just like the estonian trochee, iambus as well is realised with the syllabicaccentual system of versification. there are some translations of ancient texts where we can find iambic verses governed by the quantitative principle. in these cases we can distinguish between at least two possibilities. the first can be seen, for instance, in the syllabic-accentual-quantitative iambic fragment from prudentius’s cathemerinon (37–40)2, where every metrical position is filled with one and only one syllables, every β-position carries at least some stress signal, all β-positions are filled with heavy syllables, all α2 and α4 posi2 see o’daly 2012: 30-31 on prudentius’ metres. 75the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter tions with light syllables, α1 and α3 are ancipitia, all conveying the dipodic structure of the source text (×∪×∪∪): öö rüpes rõõmsalt uitamas  ́ ∪ ́  ́ ∪ ∪ on kuulu järgi deemoneid,  ́ ∪ ́ ∪ ́ ∪  kes kukelaulust kohkunult  ́ ∪ ́  ́ ∪  täis hirmu kiirelt taanduvad  ́ ∪ ́  ́ ∪ ∪ (translated by maria-kristiina lotman) on the other hand, let us compare quantitative-accentual-syllabic (where the quantitative principle is the most important and the syllabic one is the freest) verses3 from plautus’s pseudolus (921–924a). in this form, iambic feet can be transformed into tribrachs (quantitative equivalence) or spondees (syllabic equivalence). as for anapestic feet, their frequency can be explained by the circumstance that they can be derived both from spondees (quantitative equivalence) and tribrach (syllabic equivalence). this can be summarised in the following simplified scheme (this scheme does not reflect an important constraint, according to which the feet shaped  ∪ and ∪∪ are not allowed at the beginning of a verse): . mis sa ruttad! rahune, kõik on hea! ∪∪  ́∪ ∪́ ∪ ∪ ́ ∪ ́ niimoodi tehku jupiter, ́  ∪ ́ ∪ ́ ∪ ∪ et siia ilmuks pealiku  ́ ∪ ́  ́ ∪∪ poolt läkitatuna mingi mees!   ́∪  ́ ∪ ∪ ∪ ́ ∪ ́ (translated by ain kaalep) our material, however, did not comprise any texts in quantitative iambic tetrameter or dipodic iambic dimeter. differently from the trochaic tetrameter, which had a background of european syllabic-accentual verse (from the standpoint of estonian poetry, the main influencers were the german and russian poetry) as well as the tradition of regisong and its literary imitation, the estonian iambic tetrameter is oriented only within the european literary tradition. the main rule of estonian syllabic-accentual binary metres is the prohibition of transaccentuation: the main accent of a polysyllabic word can occur in trochees only on odd syllables and in iambi only on even syllables. there are only a few exceptions in our material, all connected with the anacrusis of iambus (see below for the examples). 3 see, e.g., fortson 2008 on plautus’s iambic metres. 76 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman the ban of transaccentuation (or inverted verse feet) is valid in most european syllabic-accentual verse forms. english iambic pentameter admits certain licences under pressure of accentual verse, and so does czech or polish iambus under pressure of syllabic verse (levý 1974: 282–283). this dependence is so strong in the analysis of rhythm masculine and feminine verses that it cannot be collected from the same sample; for example, in the case of trochaic tetrameter sevenand eight-syllabic lines, while in the case of iambic tetrameter eightand nine-syllabic lines (in other terms, masculine and feminine verses) have to be analysed separately (červenka 2011, pszczołowska, urbańska 1995). just like in other languages where the accent is fixed on the first syllable of the word, the most important problem of estonian (or finnish) iamb is anacrusis: metre requires stress on the second syllable, language on the first syllable. as a result, the estonian iambic verse line mostly starts with the accentual clash. thus, the initial syllable of a line can be either a monosyllabic word or a monosyllabic stem. often the estonian iambus can be recognised also visually: monosyllabic words in the anacrusis form a vertical column, see, for example, koidula’s poem tütarlapse kaebtus [a girl’s complaint], 1866: küll eile peig mo ümber hakkas, xx́xx́xx́xx́x kui ennegi suud andis ta – xx́xx̀xx́xx́ mul siiski argselt süda peksab, xx́xx́xx́xx́x nutt püüab silma veereda. xx́xx́xx́xx̀ or juhan liiv’s poem raudteel [on the railway], 1892: rong lendab tuule kiirusega xx́xx́xx́xx̀x ja silmist kaovad metsad, mäed; xx́xx́xx́xx́ mul on, kui sõidaksin ma surma, xx́xx́xx̀xx́x kui kisuksid mind surma käed. xx́xx̀xx́xx́x there are occasional exceptions to it seen both in the 19th and 20th century, but the difference between them is exemplary. in the 19th century these cases include only inversions, that is, an iambic line begins with a pseudotrochaic verse foot. see, for example, a line from lydia koidula’s poem lootus [hope] (1866): kõige maailma! – vaikselt, tasa. x́xxx́xx́xx́x 77the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter this verse seems especially strange to a modern native reader, since the second foot is also “problematic”4. friedrich kuhlbars’s poetry contains an example, where two verses of the similar character are almost side by side (õnnelik põllumees [happy farmer], 1884): mu riigi põhjaks rahu jääb, xx́xx́xx́xx́ kuni mu päike looja läeb. x́xxx́xx́xx́ ma annan, saan ta kojale, xx́xx́xx́xx̀ kuningakepi pojale. x́xxx́xx́xx̀ paradoxically, we find rhythmic moves of this kind, most often in the poetry by a rigorist jaan bergmann (there are even five instances in our material, 1% of his sample), see jaan bergmann’s õhtul [in the night] (1901): kuu paistab kõrgest tähtistaevast xx́xx́xx́xx́x maa pääle hõbekumaga, xx́xx́xx́xx̀ ta täidab saunad, täidab lossid, xx́xx́xx́xx́x ühtlasi armsa valgega. x́xxx́xx́xx̀ modernist poets have such inversions as well. compare, for example, henrik visnapuu, proloog 4, 3–4: kui viimast viha maale kallaks xx́xx́xx́xx́x issanda ingel. pole rahu. x́xxx́xx́xx́x in finnish iambic tetrameter, such accentual inversions in the beginning of verse line are much more common as compared to in estonian poetry (cf. kiparsky 2006). according to pentti leino, such rhythm is a new phenomenon in the estonian 20th century verse and probably an influence of anglo-saxon or finnish poetry: “it is obvious that he [henrik visnapuu  – mkl, ml] was looking for new opportunities to diversify rhythm and brought into estonian poetry a practice long used in german and anglo-saxon poetry. he is hardly the only estonian poet, who has attempted to domesticate the so-called iambic inversion in estonian poetry” (leino 1985: 1126). 4 in this line, not only the first, but also the second word deserves attention. following from the present-day accentual rules, there should be two trochaic units in succession: x́xx́x. but in the 19th century, most authors, especially in iambic poetry, use the word ‘maailm’ with the stronger accent on the second syllable, therefore, we are dealing with the model x́xxx́. 78 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman indeed, in finnish poetry the inversion in the beginning of iambus occurs more frequently. compare, for example, verses by julius krohn vähäinen meida kansa on, suurudet, voimat, vallat vaan (1869), kaarlo kramsu rajusti aateet iskee toisihinsa, ovatpa meille rakkahat (1883), and so on. the initial reasons of inversion are different, almost contrary in english and finnish poetry: in english, it results from the pressure of accentual verse; in finnish, where the stress is phonologically less relevant and phonetically weaker, it results from the preponderance of the syllabic principle over the accentual one. estonian is, for that matter, in the intermediary position, although closer to finnish. as we saw, verses with inversion in the beginning were even more common in the 19th century. lydia koidula’s verse, where not the first, but the third foot is inverted, is highly exceptional (koidula, õhturahu, 1867)5: sind teretab, vaikne maailm! xx́xxx́xxx́ there were no other instances of the kind in our material6. in the 20th century, on the other hand, some authors, betti alver for example, place barbarisms with a stress on the second syllable at the beginning of a verse line with the purpose to avoid columns of monosyllabic words. see, for example, betti alver’s, lugu valgest varesest [a story of a white crow]: meid pimestavad aastasajad, xx́xx́xx́xx́x egiptus, kreeta, rokokoo, xx́xx́xx́xx́ bojaarid, paatrid kepi najal, xx́xx́xx́xx́x mustlannad, kahvatud pjerrood, xx́xx́xx̀xx́ suleikad, radžad, arlekiinid, xx́xx́xx̀xx́x sandaalid, tuhvlid, mokassiinid... xx́xx́xx̀xx́x thus, to avoid monotony in the beginning of verse lines, 19th century authors preferred rhythmic inversions, while in the 20th century, barbarisms are more frequent. 5 about the accentuation of the word ‘maailm’ (x́x̀, x́x or xx́) see footnote 4. 6 jakob tamm’s translation of pushkin’s “the bronze horseman” includes a flawed line: admiraliteedi nõela kuld; the source text has a so-called rhythmical italics, not a metrical flaw: адмиралтейская игла (xxxx́xx xx́). 79the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter accordingly, estonian iambic tetrameter have the following constants: a) a verse line consists of eight (with feminine endings nine) syllables; b) the primary or secondary accent falls on the initial syllable of a line; c) a stress of a polysyllabic word can occur only in even positions. note 1: exceptionally, this rule can be violated in the beginning of line. “exceptionally” means that the proportion of such lines does not exceed 1%. note 2: monosyllabic stems of compound words can function as monosyllabic words (for example, ‘maailm’, ‘kesköö’, ‘ükskõik’, etc). for a more illustrative comparison between the statistical indices of trochee and iamb, we will use the scheme (2): (x)α1β1α2β2α3β3α4(β4). this scheme can be realised in four different versions: (i) α1β1α2β2α3β3α4 – trochaic tetrameter with a masculine ending (ii) α1β1α2β2α3β3α4β4 – trochaic tetrameter with a feminine ending (iii) xα1β1α2β2α3β3α4 – iambic tetrameter with a masculine ending (iv) xα1β1α2β2α3β3α4β4 – iambic tetrameter with a feminine ending another argument in favour of this approach is a widespread understanding, according to which estonian iamb is not an independent verse metre, but a trochee with a monosyllabic word attached to its beginning (compare, for example, lehiste 1994: 253–261). however, this understanding should not be overly emphasised, but rather regarded as a hypothesis yet to be controlled rather than an axiom to be followed. 2. material the analysis included altogether 6235 iambic tetrameters, of which 2088 have feminine endings and 4147 masculine endings. there were 19 different authors and the samples of different authors were as follows (in brackets, the proportions of feminine and masculine verses are indicated): kreutzwald 500 verses (196; 304); kuhlbars 500 (76; 424); veske 191 (29; 162); koidula 500 (186; 314); reinvald 500 (113; 387); bergmann 500 (121; 379); jakob liiv 500 (260; 240); tamm 500 (220; 280); sööt 119 (28; 91); juhan liiv 311 (49; 262); haava 500 (208; 292); enno 50 (0; 50); mölder-proletaarlane 218 (65; 153); under 68 (24; 44); suits 134 (64; 70); ridala 500 (72; 428); visnapuu 327 (233; 94); alle 12 (0; 12); heiberg 305 (144; 161). 80 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman 3. overall stressing: i4 on the first stage of analysis we will study stresses without any differentiation, revealing all the accentual signals at every given position. to illustrate the results, we have chosen four typical authors: two traditionalists and two modernists. we will compare their data with the “random” i4 sampled from prose. compare chart 1: chart 1. i4: overall stressing (without β4) chart 2. overall stressing in odd positions in i4 of traditionalist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 β1 β2 β3 β4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg chart 1. i4: overall stressing (without β 4 ) with the exclusion of the first position, the general profile of summarised stresses resembles that of the estonian trochaic tetrameter: here, as well, there are no considerable differences between authors (see also table 9 in addendum). the even positions are almost always filled with a stressed syllable (although the range of variation is a bit higher than in the case of trochee; first of all, this is due to some metrical licences in the beginning of marie under’s verse it is 1,5%). more differences are revealed in odd positions (table 1 below). 81the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter chart 1. i4: overall stressing (without β4) chart 2. overall stressing in odd positions in i4 of traditionalist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 β1 β2 β3 β4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg chart 2. overall stressing in odd positions in i4 of traditionalist authors there are no considerable differences in traditionalists’ verse: the highest proportion of stresses can be seen in position β2, the number of accentual signals decreases towards the end of the line and the lowest stressing is in the final position. chart 3. overall stressing in odd positions in i4 of modernist authors chart 4. i4: average stressing (all stresses without (x) and β4) 0 10 20 30 40 50 β1 β2 β3 β4 under suits ridala visnapuu 55 60 65 70 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va pr ol et aa rla ne u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without (x) and β4 median chart 3. overall stressing in odd positions in i4 of modernist authors 82 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman the rhythmic profile of modernists varies to a greater degree. there are authors with more pronounced rhythmic profile (for example, in suits’s i4 the rate of stressed syllables in position β2 is about 50%, but less than 10% in position β3), and there are authors whose verse shows rather even distribution of stresses, like, for example, visnapuu’s i4. we can see some decrease there only in the last position, while he is the only author whose indices do not peak in position β2. similarly to traditionalists, in the verse of the majority of modernists the most stressed position tends to be β2, while towards the end of line the stressing decreases. table 1. i4: overall stressing in odd positions %% author (x) β1 β2 β3 β4 avg stdev* kreutzwald 99.8 15.8 30 7.8 6.1 31.9 10.9 koidula 100 15.6 30.8 11 7.5 33 10.3 ridala 99.8 16.4 25.6 17 11.1 34 6 visnapuu 97.6 15.3 17.1 16.8 4.7 30.3 5.9 “random” i4 (vilde1) 99.5 15 21.5 20 10.8 33.4 4.9 “random” i4 (vilde2) 100 19 24.5 25.5 17.2 37.2 4.1 “random” i4 (tuglas) 100 15.5 21 24 21.9 36.5 3.6 * standard deviation without (x) in the fifth position (β2) the range of variation is 12%, in the seventh a range that exceeds 20% (not taking into account alle’s and enno’s data, whose samples are too small for the statistical analysis). high stress index can be seen in these positions already in 19th century authors kreutzwald and koidula (exceeding 30% in the fifth position); as for modernist authors, suits and under stand out with their higher stress indices. just like in the case of trochaic tetrameters, in i4 too, the same author can have considerable differences at varied odd positions: for example, in kreutzwald i4 the stress index of the fifth position (β2) is 22.2% higher than that of the seventh position (β3). table 2. i4: overall stressing in even positions %% author α1 α2 α3 α4 avg stdev kreutzwald 99.8 99.8 100 100 99.9 0.1 koidula 99.6 100 99.6 100 99.8 0.2 ridala 100 100 100 100 100 0 visnapuu 99.4 100 100 100 99.9 0.3 “random” i4 (vilde1) 99.5 99.5 99 99.5 99.4 0.3 “random” i4 (vilde2) 100 100 99.5 100 99.9 0.3 “random” i4 (tuglas) 100 100 100 100 100 0 83the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter the same way as in the trochaic tetrameter, α-positions in every analysed sample almost always carry at least some stressed signal, and therefore here we are also dealing with a constant or near constant (the weakest odd positions carry stress in 99,4% of the cases, which means that the range of variation is 0,6%). consequently, from the aspect of overall stressing, the even positions in estonian i4 are quite close to the ideal rhythm. the “random” i4 demonstrates the same tendencies as the actual verse. chart 3. overall stressing in odd positions in i4 of modernist authors chart 4. i4: average stressing (all stresses without (x) and β4) 0 10 20 30 40 50 β1 β2 β3 β4 under suits ridala visnapuu 55 60 65 70 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va pr ol et aa rla ne u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without (x) and β4 median chart 4. i4: average stressing (all stresses without (x) and β 4 ) the analysis of the average stressing by position (in calculating these data position (x) as the almost constant anacrusis and position β4 as a facultative ending were not taken into account) revealed the rise of average stresses in 20th century authors. the highest average is in marie under’s verse (68,3%), the lowest average is in kuhlbars’s verse (62,3%). at the same time there are authors in the 19th century too, who stand out with a rather high stress index: kreutzwald, koidula, both liivs, haava and tamm, whose stress index is almost 65,1%. visnapuu’s average is slightly lower (64,1%). 4. i4: stem, main and phrasal stresses during the next stage of analysis we will leave aside the weakest stresses and summarise morphological, lexical and phrasal stresses. these data are presented in table 10, addendum. 84 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman just like the analysis of trochaic tetrameters revealed, a tendency to dissimilative rhythm can be noticed in iambic verse as well. authors in the 19th century tended to have progressive dissimilation (β1≥ β3≥ β2≥ β4), while in the 20th century the last β-position strengthens. nevertheless, modernist iambus does not display homogeneous rhythm, but different authors show different trends. chart 5. lexical stressing in i4 (without β4) chart 7. lexical stressing in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 under suits ridala visnapuu chart 5. lexical stressing in i4 (without β 4 ) tab. 3. i4: lexical stressing in odd positions %% (x) β1 β2 β3 β4 avg avg* avg** stdev stdev*** kreutzwald 80.4 7.6 18.2 2.6 0 21.8 7.1 9.5 33.5 8 koidula 84.2 7.6 19.2 6.2 0 23.4 8.3 11 34.7 8 ridala 84.2 7 15.4 6.8 0 22.7 7.3 9.7 34.8 6.3 visnapuu 87.2 4.9 9.2 6.1 0 21.5 5.1 6.7 36.9 3.8 “random” i4 (vilde1) 75 7.5 12 12 3.9 22.1 8.9 10.5 29.8 3.9 “random” i4 (vilde2) 74 11 12.5 11 8.2 23.3 10.7 11.5 28.4 1.8 “random” i4 (tuglas) 77 10 12 14.5 10.4 24.8 11.7 12.2 29.2 2 *average without (x); **average without (x) and β4; ***standard deviation without (x) 85the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter chart 6. lexical stressing in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors chart 8. lexical stressing in odd positions in i4 of traditionalist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg 0 5 10 15 20 25 β1 β2 β3 β4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg chart 6. lexical stressing in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors here, too, traditionalists do not show any significant differences in rhythmic tendencies. the common trend is that in position α2 the proportion of stresses is lower than in α1, while it rises again in position α3. at the same time the incidence of stress in the final α-position is the smallest. chart 5. lexical stressing in i4 (without β4) chart 7. lexical stressing in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 under suits ridala visnapuu chart 7. lexical stressing in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 86 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman the profile of modernist verse resembles that of the traditionalists, although the decrease of stresses in the end of the verse is of less contrast and retains about the same level as in position α2 (which, with the exclusion of ridala’s verse, is lower as compared to the traditionalists). chart 6. lexical stressing in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors chart 8. lexical stressing in odd positions in i4 of traditionalist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg 0 5 10 15 20 25 β1 β2 β3 β4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg chart 8. lexical stressing in odd positions in i4 of traditionalist authors the data reveal a rather similar rhythmic structure in verse of different traditionalist authors. the highest incidences of stresses is on position β2, while in penultimate odd positions morphological stresses occur more rarely (for example, bergmann completely avoids such stresses there, yet in koidula’s and juhan liiv’s verse these occur more often). all analysed authors avoid morphological stresses in position β4. 87the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter chart 9. lexical stressing in odd positions in i4 of modernist authors chart 10. i4: average stressing (lexical stresses without β4) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 β1 β2 β3 β4 under suits ridala visnapuu 45 50 55 60 65 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va pr ol et aa rla ne u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without β4 median chart 9. lexical stressing in odd positions in i4 of modernist authors differences between modernist authors are more pronounced than those between traditionalists. in under’s and suits’s verses the incidence of morphological stresses in contrast with traditionalists is higher on β2, while in ridala’s iamb the occurrence of such stresses is comparable to the level of traditionalists, and in visnapuu’s iamb it is considerably lower. in visnapuu’s sample, the distribution of morphological stresses is quite uniform between the odd positions of different feet; in suits’s iamb, on the other hand, there is a notable contrast between positions β2 and β3. tab. 4. i4: lexical stressing in even positions %% author  α1 α2 α3 α4 avg stdev kreutzwald 99.4 86.2 94.8 56 84.1 19.5 koidula 99.6 84.8 96.6 57 84.5 19.4 ridala 100 91.2 77.4 91.2 90 9.3 visnapuu 98.8 82 82 85.6 87.1 8 “random” i4 (vilde1) 99.5 83.5 84.5 61 82.1 15.9 “random” i4 (vilde2) 97.5 80.5 88 67.5 83.4 12.7 “random” i4 (tuglas) 100 81.5 75 65.5 80.5 14.6 88 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman the analysis of the occurrence of morphological stresses in even positions show considerable differences between traditionalists and modernists. in ridala’s iambus the stress index is higher in positions α1 and α2, while α3 is contrastively lower and α4 again higher; ridala’s average index is also the highest of the analysed authors. visnapuu’s verse differs also from that of traditionalists’ due to the higher proportion of stresses on the last even position. while the α4 of traditionalists’ iambic tetrameter has lower index than in “random” iambs, in both modernists it is, in turn, higher. chart 9. lexical stressing in odd positions in i4 of modernist authors chart 10. i4: average stressing (lexical stresses without β4) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 β1 β2 β3 β4 under suits ridala visnapuu 45 50 55 60 65 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va pr ol et aa rla ne u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without β4 median chart 10. i4: average stressing (lexical stresses without β 4 ) just like in the case of trochaic tetrameter, in i4, too, the stressing is higher in modernist verse: in all analysed samples of modernist authors the stressing exceeds median level, especially remarkable is ridala’s stress index. on the other hand, the random iambi selected from prose are characterised with lower stressing, being comparable to traditionalists’ figures. the exclusion of the first position reveals some differences. stressing is still the highest in ridala’s, under’s and suits’s verse, but visnapuu’s figures are lower than in several traditionalists, coinciding with the median (52,6%). there is a small difference in the average stressing of vilde’s random iambi, which is also in agreement with the median figure. 89the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter 5. i4: main and phrasal stresses next, we will leave aside the morphological stresses and study the incidence of main and phrasal stresses. under this subdivision we will analyse the syllables which carry either lexical or phrasal stress (usually phrasal stress coincides with the main accent of the word, but in case of the emphasis it may also occur on a syllable marked with morphological stress). in chart 11 we can see the distribution of main stresses by position in kreutzwald’s, koidula’s, ridala’s and visnapuu’s iambic tetrameters. chart 11. i4: primary stresses (without β4) chart 12. i4: average stressing (primary stresses without β4) 0 20 40 60 80 100 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va pr ol et aa rla ne u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without β4 median chart 11. i4: primary stresses (without β 4 ) the comparison of two traditionalists and two modernists reveals that, just as in the case of morphological stresses, the difference between traditionalists and modernists is most pronounced in position α4, where the stressing of traditionalists is considerably lower than in visnapuu’s and even more so in ridala’s verse. 90 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman tab. 5. i4: main and phrasal stresses (3–4) on odd positions %% author (x) β1 β2 β3 β4 avg avg* avg** stdev stdev*** kreutzwald 12 0.4 1.2 0 0 2.7 .4 .5 5.2 .6 koidula 16.4 .6 3.4 .6 0 4.2 1.2 1.5 6.9 1.5 ridala 32.8 1.6 4.4 1.8 0 8.1 2 2.6 13.9 1.8 visnapuu 39.8 0 1.8 1.2 0 8.6 0.8 1 17.5 .9 “random” i4 (vilde1) 25.5 .5 4 4 2 7.2 2.6 2.8 10.3 1.7 “random” i4 (vilde2) 24 4.5 5.5 8 2.5 8.9 5.1 6 8.7 2.3 “random” i4 (tuglas) 33 3.5 4 8 3.1 10.3 4.7 5.2 12.8 2.3 *average without (x); **average without (x) and β4; ***standard deviation without (x) in this table, initially, the first position deserves to be noticed. as compared to the random iambi, in traditionalists’ verse the incidence of main stresses is significantly lower here, while in modernists’ iambus this index is much larger. as for the rest of the odd positions, in the iambic tetrameter sampled from poetry main stresses occur only occasionally; ridala’s slightly higher figure in β2 (4,4) is also lower than the corresponding index of random iambi. tab. 6. i4: main and phrasal stresses (3–4) on even positions %% author α1 α2 α3 α4 avg stdev kreutzwald 96.4 74.8 88.8 43.6 75.9 23.3 koidula 94.4 74.4 91.2 45.6 76.4 22.3 ridala 97.2 83.6 93.6 82.2 89.2 7.4 visnapuu 85.6 70 75.5 63.9 73.8 9.2 “random” i4 (vilde1) 93.5 79.5 77 43.5 73.4 21.2 “random” i4 (vilde2) 90.5 72 80.5 51 73.5 16.8 “random” i4 (tuglas) 93 73.5 66.5 49.5 70.6 18 91the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter the figures of even positions of the traditionalists’ verse are rather homogeneous (the differences do not exceed a few percent, the general model is α1>α3>α2>α4), while the modernists’ verse departs from these patterns. visnapuu’s indices of the first three even positions are lower than that of the traditionalists and of the random i4. the figure of the fourth position is somewhat higher, but still smaller than the proportion of main stresses in ridala’s i4. however, the general rhythmic profile of his verse is also α1>α3>α2>α4. ridala, on the other hand, stands out with the highest proportion of main stresses on these positions: it never falls below 80%, but in α1 exceeds 97%. the next chart demonstrates the average incidence of main and phrasal stresses in i4 by authors with the exclusion of the initial position. chart 11. i4: primary stresses (without β4) chart 12. i4: average stressing (primary stresses without β4) 0 20 40 60 80 100 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va pr ol et aa rla ne u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without β4 median chart 12. i4: average stressing (primary stresses without β 4 ) here again ridala stands out with considerably stronger than average stressing. yet, in general the data are rather uniform, except for the lower figures of some traditionalists (including kuhlbars, veske, but also proletaarlane). if we leave aside the first position, ridala’s stressing is still the highest, while the proportion of main stresses in kuhlbars’, veske’s and proletaarlane’s verse is lower than in the rest of the authors. 92 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman chart. 13. primary stresses in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors chart. 14. primary stresses in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 under suits ridala visnapuu chart. 13. primary stresses in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors if we discard the level of morphological stresses in the rhythmic profile, the general trend remains the same: we can still see the lowest stressing at the end of verse, while in position α3 the incidence of stress signals is higher than in position α1. chart. 13. primary stresses in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors chart. 14. primary stresses in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg 0 20 40 60 80 100 α1 α2 α3 α4 under suits ridala visnapuu chart. 14. primary stresses in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 93the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter the main difference from the traditionalists can be seen in position α4, where the incidence of stresses is higher. unlike other authors, until position α3 ridala follows the profile of traditionalist verse, but differently from the latter, the stressing also does not decrease in the last α-position, retaining about the same level as it had in α2. in regard to other modernists, their rhythmic trend is similar with that of ridala (approximately the same level of α2 and α4, somewhat stronger stressing in α3), but the incidence of stresses in all these positions is somewhat lower. 6. phrasal stresses the distribution of phrasal stresses is presented on the following chart. chart 15. i4: phrasal stresses chart. 16. i4: average stressing (phrasal stresses without β4) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 5 10 15 20 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without β4 median chart 15. i4: phrasal stresses it is on this very level where the difference between the rhythmic profiles of traditionalists and modernists becomes most apparent. in koidula’s and kreutzwald’s verse the phrasal stresses accumulate in position α3. ridala’s and visnapuu’s figures are considerably smaller here, while the almost even level of phrasal stresses of traditionalists, as well as that of modernists, deserves to be noticed. as for random iambi, the contrast in two final positions is the quality of verse and does not follow from linguistic reasons. the culmination of ridala’s and visnapuu’s verse is in position α4, where in traditionalist verse phrasal stesses occur more rarely. 94 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman the following table indicates the incidence of phrasal stresses in odd positions. tab. 7. i4: phrasal stresses in odd positions %% author (x) β1 β2 β3 β4 avg* avg** stdev stdev*** avg without (x) kreutzwald .8 0 .2 0 0 .2 .1 .1 .3 .4 koidula 1.2 .2 1.2 .6 0 .6 .5 .7 .6 .5 ridala 1 0 .4 .8 0 .4 .3 .4 .5 .4 visnapuu 1.2 0 .6 .9 0 .5 .4 .5 .5 .5 “random” i4 (vilde1) 5.5 0 1.5 1.5 0 1.7 .8 1 .3 .4 “random” i4 (vilde2) 7 2 2 2.5 0 2.7 1.6 2.2 .6 .4 “random” i4 (tuglas) 6.5 2 2.5 3 0 2.8 1.9 2.5 .4 2 * average without (x), ** average without (x) and β4, *** standard deviation without (x) as expected, phrasal stresses occur in β-positions only by exception and never in the last β-position. in table 8 data of phrasal stresses in α-positions are given. tab. 8. i4: phrasal stresses in even positions %% author α1 α2 α3 α4 avg stdev kreutzwald 11.8 17 54.2 21.4 26.1 19.1 koidula 11.6 14.6 56.2 19.8 25.6 20.7 ridala 17.6 21.4 31.2 53.4 30.9 16.1 visnapuu 11.3 12.5 33 46.2 25.8 16.9 “random” i4 (vilde1) 26.5 33 30 15.5 26.3 7.6 “random” i4 (vilde2) 25.5 24.5 22 15 21.8 4.7 “random” i4 (tuglas) 24 27.5 20 12 20.9 6.7 these data confirm the revealed tendency: in kreutzwald’s and koidula’s verse the culmination of phrasal stresses occurs in α3, in ridala’s and visnapuu’s iambus in position α4. what also deserves attention here is that in first two α-positions the figures of all studied authors are below that of the random iambi, while in the last two these are exceeded. the study of average data also does not reveal any significant differences from iambi sampled from prose; the only exception is ridala, whose average rate is slightly higher here. 95the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter chart 15. i4: phrasal stresses chart. 16. i4: average stressing (phrasal stresses without β4) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 kreutzwald koidula ridala visnapuu “random” i4 0 5 10 15 20 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without β4 median chart. 16. i4: average stressing (phrasal stresses without β 4 ) if we compare the average incidence of phrasal stresses in analysed authors after the exclusion of position β4, ridala’s highest average stands out, but the median is also exceeded by other authors: bergmann, sööt, haava and under. the figures of both analysed samples of random iambi are below the median. chart 17. i4: average stressing (phrasal stresses without (x) and β4) chart. 19. phrasal stresses in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 0 5 10 15 20 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without (x) and β4 median 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 α1 α2 α3 α4 under suits ridala visnapuu chart 17. i4: average stressing (phrasal stresses without (x) and β 4 ) 96 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman the typical pattern of phrasal stresses in 19th century authors is α3 > α4 > α2 > α1 (the same pattern characterises trochaic tetrameter of this period). however, this scheme is not followed by some poets: in reinvald’s, sööt’s and haava’s i4 α1 is somewhat stronger than α2. in the 20th century, similarly with trochees, in iambi the strongest phrasal stressing can also be seen in α4: thus, the general scheme is α4 > α3 > α2 > α1. here too, some authors digress from this pattern: in visnapuu’s verse the incidence of phrasal stresses is similar in positions α1 and α2, in ridala’s i4 it is slightly higher in the α-position of the second foot (which is a typical beginning of the 19th century iambus). accordingly, the nature of both ridala’s and visnapuu’s rhythmic profile can be characterised as regressive. just like in the case of trochee, here too marie heiberg and vassili proletaarlane are different from other authors of the 20th century, whose, like with 19th century authors, phrasal stressing is the strongest in the third foot. chart. 18. phrasal stresses in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 α1 α2 α3 α4 kreutzwald koidula bergmann juhan liiv heiberg chart. 18. phrasal stresses in even positions in i4 of traditionalist authors these observations reveal that the level of phrasal stressing shows similar tendencies in traditionalists’ i4: the peak of their verse is in position α3, while there is not much variation in other positions. the exception here is heiberg, whose index in position α4 is to some extent higher than in other authors, which seems to be consistent with her being a more recent poet, as compared to the rest of the traditionalist authors. 97the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter chart 17. i4: average stressing (phrasal stresses without (x) and β4) chart. 19. phrasal stresses in even positions in i4 of modernist authors 0 5 10 15 20 kr eu tz w al d ku hl ba rs ve sk e ko id ul a re in va ld be rg m an n ja ko b li iv ta m m sö öt ju ha n li iv h aa va u nd er su its ri da la vi sn ap uu h ei be rg vi ld e tu gl as average without (x) and β4 median 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 α1 α2 α3 α4 under suits ridala visnapuu chart. 19. phrasal stresses in even positions in i4 of modernist authors as concerns the modernists, we see a different picture. although they also tend to have a rather low incidence of phrasal stresses, and, with the exclusion of ridala’s data, rather similar indices, we can see quite remarkable differences in the second half of the verse. for instance, just like in traditionalists, the peak of gustav suits’s verse is in α3, but differently from the latter, it does not decrease as much in the final α-position. the culmination of phrasal stressing in the rest of the authors is in position α4, while in ridala’s verse the proportion of such stresses even exceeds there 50%. the same tendencies can be seen, when the initial position is not counted. here the random iambi are the most amorphous; as concerns the poets, koidula and visnapuu are more amorphous, while kreutzwald and reinvald display the contrastive rhythm. 7. summary the rhythm of estonian syllabic-accentual i4 is very stable; in contrast with random iamb, where the secondary rhythm is formed by firm preferences. furthermore, analogical tendencies were observed in the rhythm of estonian trochaic tetrameter. the results of the analysis of i4 confirm the outcomes received with the analysis of trochaic tetrameter both in regards to its secondary rhythm as well as the chronological and esthetical framework of verse rhythm. at this point 98 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman we can claim that it was not an accidental specification of a single verse metre, but a significant tendency in estonian verse culture. both traditionalists and modernists have different secondary rhythm in estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter as well. while in traditionalist verse the strongest stressing accumulates on the sixth syllable, in modernist verse the culmination of these is on the eighth syllable. in trochaic tetrameter the accentual constant is on the first syllable. in i4 the status of the first syllable (that is, anacrusis) is something in between the constant and strongly dominant, since, first, in foreign words the main stress can fall on non-inital syllables and such authors as betti alver intentionally place words carrying the main stress on the second syllable to the initial position of verse. secondly, this position is often filled with proclitics, and compounds with the main stress on the second syllable. thus, the accentual constant is shifted to the second syllable, although we can see some exceptions in both traditionalists and modernist authors, who allow the inversion of stress in the first verse foot.7 references anderson, walter 1935. studien zur wortsilbenstatistik der älteren estnischen volkslieder. acta et commentationes universitatis tartuensis b xxxiv. tartu: k. mattiesen. červenka, miroslav 2011. ritmicheskij impul’s cheshskogo stikha. in: červenka, miroslav, smysl i stikh. trudy po poetike. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury, 98–109. fortson, benjamin 2008. language and rhythm in plautus: synchronic and diachronic studies. berlin; new york: walter de gruyter. gasparov, mikhail 1989. ocherk istorii evropejskogo stikha. moskva: nauka. kiparsky, paul 2006. iambic inversion in finnish. in: suominen, mickael et al. (eds.), a man of measure: festschrift in honour of fred karlsson on his 60th birthday, turku: the linguistic association of finland, 138–148. lehiste, ilse 1994. iambic – or trochaeic with anacrusis? in: chen, matthew; tzeng, ovid (eds.), in honor of william s.-y. wang: interdisciplinary studies on language and language change. taiwan: pyramid press, 253–261. 7 this research was supported by etf grant no 9015 and iut20-1. the authors are grateful to aile tooming and igor pilshchikov for the careful reading and useful suggestions. 99the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter leino, pentti 1985. „eesti värsiõpetuse“ võimalused. looming 8, 1118–1132. levý, jiří 1974. iskusstvo perevoda. moskva: progress. lotman, mihhail; lotman, maria-kristiina 2011. toward a statistical analysis of accentual rhythm (with reference to the estonian trochaic tetrameter). in: scherr, barry p.; bailey, james; kazartsev, evgeny (eds.), formal methods of poetics. lüdenscheid: ram-verlag, 256–294. lotman, maria-kristiina; lotman, mihhail 2013. the quantitative structure of estonian syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter. trames: journal of the humanities and social sciences 17(67/62), 243–272. o’daly, gerard 2012. days linked by song: prudentius’ cathemerinon. oxford: university press. pszczołowska, lucylla; urbańska, dorota 1995. polski wiersz sylabiczny i sylabotoniczny (wspólnie z d. urbańską). in: červenka, miroslav, pszczołowska, lucylla, urbańska, dorota (eds.), słowiańska metryka porównawcza 6: europejskie wzorce metryczne w literaturach słowiańskich. warszawa: wydawnictwo ibl, 7–74. põldmäe, jaak 1975. eesti silbilis-rõhulise värsisüsteemi uurimise meetod ja betti alveri poeemide nelikjambi rütm. keele modelleerimise probleeme 5. tartu riikliku ülikooli toimetised 363, 163–233. põldmäe, jaak 1978. eesti värsiõpetus. monograafia. tallinn: eesti raamat. west, martin litchfield 1982. greek metre. oxford: clarendon. 100 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman table 9. all stresses (1–4) in i4 by position %% author (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 β4 kreutzwald 99.8 99.8 15.8 99.8 30 100 7.8 100 6.1 kuhlbars 99.8 99.4 8.6 100 21.8 100 6.2 100 5.3 veske 100 100 12.6 100 30.9 100 3.7 100 10.3 koidula 100 99.6 15.6 100 30.8 99.6 11 100 7.5 reinvald 99.6 100 13.4 99.4 22.2 100 4.2 99.2 3.5 bergmann 100 99 15.8 99.8 25.6 100 7.8 99.8 7.4 jakob liiv 100 100 14.4 100 28.4 100 12.6 100 1.5 tamm 99 99.8 16.4 99.8 27.8 99.8 12.2 99.6 1.8 sööt 100 100 6.7 100 26.1 100 9.2 100 3.6 juhan liiv 100 99.7 19.9 100 26.7 100 8.4 99 0 haava 99.8 100 13.6 99.8 31.8 100 12.2 100 3.8 enno 100 100 28 100 16 100 4 100 0 proletaarlane 100 100 20.6 100 27.1 100 7.8 100 4.6 under 98.5 98.5 14.7 100 36.8 100 27.9 100 0 suits 98.5 100 11.2 100 46.3 100 8.2 100 9.4 ridala 99.8 100 16.4 100 25.6 100 17 100 11.1 visnapuu 97.6 99.4 15.3 100 17.1 100 16.8 100 4.7 alle 100 100 0 100 50 100 0 100 0 heiberg 99.7 100 12.8 100 28.2 100 10.2 100 2.1 total 99.6 99.7 14.7 99.9 27.2 99.97 10.2 99.8 4.2 “random” i4 (vilde1) 99.5 99.5 15 99.5 21.5 99 20 99.5 10.8 “random” i4 (vilde2) 100 100 19 100 24.5 99.5 25.5 100 17.2 “random” i4 (tuglas) 100 100 15.5 100 21 100 24 100 21.9 101the accentual structure of estonian syllabic-accentual iambic tetrameter table 10. morphological stresses (2–4) in i4 by position %% author (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 β4 kreutzwald 80.4 99.4 7.6 86.2 18.2 94.8 2.6 56 0 kuhlbars 81 99.4 4.2 83.8 14.6 95.4 3 51.4 0 veske 78.5 100 8.4 80.1 22 98.4 1.6 40.3 0 koidula 84.2 99.6 7.6 84.8 19.2 96.6 6.2 57 0 reinvald 79.2 100 5.8 83.2 13 95.4 1 63 0 bergmann 80.8 98.8 8 92.2 15.6 97.2 .8 54 .8 jakob liiv 79.6 100 6 82.8 16.8 91.2 4.6 73.8 0 tamm 82.8 99.6 6.4 86.6 13 91.6 5.6 75.2 .5 sööt 81.5 100 5 79 16 90.8 5 78.2 0 juhan liiv 74.6 99.7 10.9 85.2 16.1 95.8 4.5 57.9 0 haava 76.4 100 5.2 82 14.2 95 5.6 59.2 0 enno 90 100 10 92 10 98 2 40 0 proletaarlane 75.7 100 4.1 77.1 13.3 95.9 2.8 48.6 0 under 82.4 98.5 4.4 75 23.5 86.8 7.4 94.1 0 suits 79.9 99.3 7.5 74.6 27.6 94.8 3.7 73.1 0 ridala 84.2 100 7 91.2 15.4 97.4 6.8 91.2 0 visnapuu 87.2 98.8 4.9 82 9.2 82 6.1 85.6 0 alle 75 100 0 91.7 16.7 83.3 0 91.7 0 heiberg 79.3 100 4.9 76.1 15.4 88.5 4.3 65.9 0 total 80.7 99.6 6.5 84.2 15.7 92.4 4.1 64.7 .1 “random” i4 (vilde1) 75 99.5 7.5 83.5 12 84.5 12 61 3.9 “random” i4 (vilde2) 74 97.5 11 80.5 12.5 88 11 67.5 8.2 “random” i4 (tuglas) 77 100 10 81.5 12 75 14.5 65.5 10.4 102 maria-kristiina lotman, mihhail lotman table 11. main stresses (3–4) in i4 by position %% author (x) α1 β1 α2 β2 α3 β3 α4 β4 kreutzwald 12 96.4 .4 74.8 1.2 88.8 0 43.6 0 kuhlbars 8.6 97.6 .2 72 .2 91.4 0 33.2 0 veske 2.6 97.9 .5 69.1 1 95.8 0 27.2 0 koidula 16.4 94.4 .6 74.4 3.4 91.2 .6 45.6 0 reinvald 7.4 94.8 0 73.4 .4 93 0 42.8 0 bergmann 11.4 93.4 .6 82.8 .6 92 0 39.8 0.8 jakob liiv 9 96.4 0 71.6 .6 83 .4 58.2 0 tamm 16.2 95.4 0 76.6 1.2 86.4 .4 61.4 0.5 sööt 9.2 99.2 0 64.7 2.5 89.1 0 52.1 0 juhan liiv 19 93.6 0.6 77.2 1.6 89.4 .3 43.1 0 haava 9.8 96.4 .2 71.4 .4 89 .4 46.2 0 enno 24 94 0 84 0 94 0 34 0 proletaarlane 13.3 94 .5 64.2 3.2 86.7 0 36.2 0 under 23.5 94.1 0 67.6 2.9 79.4 0 66.2 0 suits 17.9 94.8 0 65.7 .7 87.3 .7 61.2 0 ridala 32.8 97.2 1.6 83.6 4.4 93.6 1.8 82.2 0 visnapuu 39.8 85.6 0 70 1.8 75.5 1.2 63.9 0 alle 33.3 100 0 75 0 83.3 0 83.3 0 heiberg 16.1 97.7 0 66.6 2.3 83.3 .3 57.7 0 total 15.3 95.3 .4 73.9 1.5 88.6 .4 50.2 0 “random” i4 (vilde1) 25.5 93.5 .5 79.5 4 77 4 43.5 2 “random” i4 (vilde2) 24 90.5 4.5 72 5.5 80.5 8 51 2.5 “random” i4 (tuglas) 33 93 3.5 73.5 4 66.5 8 49.5 3.1 plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv* introduction plotting poetry 5 was the fifth meeting of an international group of scholars with a common interest in the machine-assisted exploration of poetry and poetics. the conference was hosted by the estonian literary museum in tartu between july 4 and 6, 2022, organized by mari sarv (estonian literary museum), maria-kristiina lotman (university of tartu), susanna mett (estonian literary museum & university of tartu), anne-sophie bories (university of basel), pablo ruiz fabo (university of strasbourg) and petr plechač (czech academy of sciences). the conference comprised 16 presentations by scholars from 11 different countries. this year’s conference theme was popular forms of poetry, such as folkloric poetry (traditional or novel), besides song lyrics (e.g. in folk, pop, or rap) and the connections between text and performance, as well as poetry delivered through new media channels like the social web.1 besides this main theme, work on other topics was also presented, including on genres other than poetry; this has been traditional for the plotting poetry conference series as long as the research is quantitatively * authors’ addresses: nils couturier, philosophisch-historische fakultät, departement sprachund literaturwissenschaften, fachbereich französische sprachund literaturwissenschaft, maiengasse 51, 4056 basel, schweiz. e-mail: nils.couturier@unibas.ch; antonina martynenko, department of slavistics, lossi 3, 51003 tartu, estonia. e-mail: antonina.martynenko@ut.ee; lara nugues, philosophisch-historische fakultät, departement sprachund literaturwissenschaften, fachbereich französische sprachund literaturwissenschaft, maiengasse 51, 4056 basel, schweiz. e-mail: lara.nugues@unibas.ch; pablo ruiz fabo, faculté des langues, 22 rue descartes, f-67084 strasbourg cedex. e-mail: ruizfabo@unistra.fr; mari sarv, eesti kirjandusmuuseum, vanemuise 42, 51003, tartu, estonia. e-mail: mari@haldjas.folklore. ee. author order is alphabetical; all authors contributed paper summaries. the report was coordinated by pablo ruiz and mari sarv. 1 the call for papers is at https://www.plottingpoetry.org/conference/2022tartu/cfp https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.05 studia metrica et poetica 9.2, 2022, 134–146 mailto:nils.couturier@unibas.ch mailto:antonina.martynenko@ut.ee mailto:antonina.martynenko@ut.ee mailto:lara.nugues@unibas.ch mailto:ruizfabo@unistra.fr mailto:mari@haldjas.folklore.ee mailto:mari@haldjas.folklore.ee https://www.plottingpoetry.org/conference/2022tartu/cfp https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.05 135plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia or computationally inspired. the present conference report is structured as follows: first, we provide an overview of the main topics covered by the conference papers. after that, individual paper summaries are presented, following the order of papers in the conference program chronologically.2 overview of paper topics the majority of the papers were related to this year’s main theme. mustazza’s keynote examined the relation between literary audio and popular voices in dialect recordings in the early 20th century. the interplay between poetry and 20th/21st-century popular song was the focus of several papers. pilshchikov’s paper illustrates the tension between musical rhythm and metrical scheme based on two late soviet songs, working with concepts “verse design”, “verse instance”, “delivery instance”, and “delivery design”, introduced by jakobson (1960). sabel et al. examined textual modifications in musical adaptations (since 1975) of poems in spanish, via an automatic collation followed by manual labeling of modifications, in order to explain repetitions, omissions, additions or other changes to adapt to the new medium. lotman & lotman compared rhyming models by two estonian rap artists with the ones found in estonian literary poetry, finding rich novel rhyming strategies in estonian rap as a result of contact with western models. still within 20th-century poetry, macaud presented her study of the online remediation of bukowski’s poetry performances based on a corpus of youtube videos by amateur readers. moving on to poetry-music relation in historical corpora, bernhart & koch presented a quantitative overview of textual, prosodic and sonic aspects in “the boy’s magic horn” (“des knaben wunderhorn”), an early 19th-century german poem collection appreciated in both folk culture and “high” culture settings, including via musicalizations by mahler or brahms. they also presented speech synthesis experiments trained on poetry corpora. couturier & nugues presented a database of tune reuse in a corpus of 19th-century vaudeville couplets and 19th–20th century songs. plecháč et al. turned to hungarian epic poems of the 16th century, examining the impact of oral performance (accompanied by music) vs. written composition in versification complexity. traditional folklore poetry was also addressed by several papers. saarlo et al. introduced their research on kalevipoeg, the estonian national epic, how its versification both uses and misuses runosong poetic structure. they also 2 https://www.plottingpoetry.org/conference/2022tartu/programme https://www.plottingpoetry.org/conference/2022tartu/programme 136 nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv presented a large-scale analysis of kalevipoeg in the context of the filter project, along with estonian and finnish runosongs and epic poetry. filter’s 275,000 poem corpus was also discussed in janicki’s keynote talk, where he presented methods for automatic similarity computation and alignment within this corpus, towards new findings about the relations among its texts. veskis presented a further paper on estonian runosong, focusing on the distribution of diminutive suffixes and how they correlate with geographic variation. helgadóttir discussed methods to find structural units and their variants in postmedieval icelandic þulur, a folk poetry genre. several papers dealt with topics beyond this year’s main theme. bories presented work on non-humorous joke-like patterns (involving different types of ambiguity or “script oppositions” using attardo & raskin’s 1991 framework) in works by apollinaire and aimé césaire. martynenko & šeļa examined semantic change in 19th-century russian iambic tetrameter, using topic modeling to represent poem content and network analysis to assess topic distribution across different meters. polilova analyzed the use of russian meter dk3 (three-ictic dolnik) in the translation of spanish romances, paying attention to how its use compares to original dolnik rhythm and dolnik used in translations of heine. finally, ruiz fabo presented work towards creating the first large electronic corpus of theatre in the alsatian dialects, besides analyses of character distribution diachronically. individual paper reports the conference opened with a keynote talk by chris mustazza (university of pennsylvania), delivered online and entitled “the voices we do: surplus inscriptions in the poetry audio archive”. his work focuses on audio recordings of poetry. he is interested in what the recording can capture that the written document cannot, and how this audio data can be measured and compared computationally. the audio data he is working on comes from the pennsound online archive, and primarily from the collection of sound recordings he has edited known as the speech lab recordings – the largest prewar collection of american poetry recordings, made in a dialect laboratory founded by william cabell greet and george w. hibbit in the 1930s. the pitch, duration, pauses and tempo of this audio data are analysed to see if it is possible to determine poets performing in relevant sonic genres such as sermons, vaudeville, political speeches and comic monologues using these parameters. in addition, special attention is paid to the voice, and how its 137plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia sound is shaped by context, the technology that records it, the influence of personal literary influences, the identity of the speaker, or the accent linked to a geographical location. in his presentation, chris mustazza examined in detail several recordings, william butler yeats – “the lake isle of innisfree” (recorded 1936), ezra pound – “sestina: altaforte” (recorded 1939), robert creeley – “i know a man” (recorded 1965), william carlos williams – “the red wheelbarrow” (recorded 1942), and concluded with a study of robert frost – “the code” (recorded 1933), which features a demotic north american regional dialect. the paper concluded that there is no singular voice in a poetry recording, but rather a heteroglossic amalgam of various influences, each of which is capable of being measured, defined, and located as it reverberates through an audio corpus and through literary history. after the first keynote, we listened to the paper “charles bukowski’s performance poetry, reperformed online”, by amélie macaud from université paris 1. bukowski’s poetry was written to be performed, and indeed his editor (lawrence ferlinghetti) organized poetry readings by bukowski in the 1960s and 70s, some of which were recorded. the paper discusses the online “remediation” (bolter and grusin 1999) of bukowski’s poetry, based on a corpus of 30 youtube videos created by amateurs, focusing on the poem “the crunch”. the paper describes not only text selection in the videos, but also how they combine voice (bukowski’s or other readers’, sometimes the video authors’ voice), music (and how its rhythm compares to poem rhythm) and image (often with different images bound to each stanza, generally moving images, sometimes still ones). besides remediation forms, the paper also discusses the comments section for the videos, carrying out both a statistical analysis of their number and temporal distribution and a textometric analysis of their content, to see salient aspects pointed out by viewers in their mostly positive comments. the overall research goal is to examine how internet users read, understand and re-perform poetry, thanks to systematically studying the videos’ text, audio and image. igor pilshchikov (ucla/tallinn university) in “jakobsonian ‘broad metrics’: a model for musical verse (exemplified by two late soviet russophone ‘bard’ songs)” proposed a model for understanding and analysing performed poetry. the problem of verse recitation influenced both by verse and recitation features was earlier outlined by roman jakobson, who formulated it as a fourpart structure: on the one hand, a text has poetic meter and rhythm (or verse design and verse instance respectively), on the other hand, it can also have a separate delivery design, i. e. recitation rules; all the three above influence a specific performance or a delivery instance. pilshchikov expanded the definition of performed poetry from recitation to singing and exemplified how the 138 nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv notion of delivery instance might be applied to “sung poetry”. in this case, the four-part scheme is supplemented with musical design (musical meter) and instance (musical rhythm), which do not always coincide with the verse features. having two examples of russian “bard” songs, pilshchikov showed how an actual performance (delivery instance) depends on verse and musical structure. the first song (“na tikhoretskuiu sostav otpravitsia...” [the train will go to tikhoretskaya...]) was an illustration of different caesura patterns in music and verse that might result in two ways of performance: while the main soviet star singer alla pugacheva embraced musical design with intraverbal enjambments, another important soviet singer and songwriter (vladimir vysotsky) avoided the enjambments and preferred verse design over the musical features. another example was bulat okudzhava’s song (“pesenka o durakakh” [a little song about fools]) that demonstrates how a very simple musical pattern influenced the complex verse design and led to reaccentuation. this theoretical framework thus allows to formally align verse and musical (or performative) structures in order to see how they differ and influence performer’s choices in verse or musical features. the paper by helena bermúdez sabel (université de neuchâtel), clara martínez cantón (uned madrid) and pablo ruiz fabo (université de strasbourg) was entitled “from poetry to song: a corpus-based approach to textual variation”. they presented results from the poemas project, carried out at universidad nacional de educación a distancia in madrid, spain. this project is collecting, in a publicly available database, a large variety of spanish lyrics (from 1975 onwards) which bear some type of relation to a poem. the project targets both specialists and a general enthusiast public. the paper’s originality lies in its being the first corpus-based approach examining textual changes within musical adaptations of poems, in spanish; the concept of adaptation is based on works like albrecht (2010), hopkins & o’leary (2005) and ingham (2013). concretely, over 800 songs which represent a similar or identical adaptation to a poem were analyzed. it is proposed that similar adaptations and identical adaptations are preferred over other strategies as a way to adapt the poem to a different medium while trying to imitate the original cultural object (badía fumaz, 2020). an automated collation was carried out to identify types of change (transposition, repetition, omission or addition). differences were manually annotated to determine the type of modified sequence (e.g. a line, a word or other fragment) and the level of analysis (phonic, semantic, structural). most text changes were found to be motivated by requirements of the new (song) medium. the most frequent text change was repetition, which can be tied to its importance in pop song, where repetition is remembered as associated with a specific melody and rhythm (abeillé 2013: 167). structural 139plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia changes to the poem text in the song, also based on repetition, include the creation of refrains and choruses. the talk by nils couturier and lara nugues (university of basel) was entitled “constructing a timbre database: handling popular tunes reuses”. they presented their work on timbres, a french word that designates wellknown tunes reused to set new texts to music. two popular corpora were analysed. first, a corpus of vaudeville with couplets, a kind of play mixed with songs, chosen between 1830 and 1832. second, a corpus of chanson sung on well-known tunes from the early 19th century (pierre-jean de béranger) and from the end of the 19th century (jules jouy). based on these two corpora, they built a database containing more than 2,000 “timbres”. the aim was to compare corpora and sub-corpora of a similar nature (popular corpora performed and sung on well-known tunes) at different times in the 19th century in order to measure the interplay of influences between the vaudeville with couplets genre and the chanson genre and to gain a better understanding of how timbres are used and reused (passing fad, importance of the composer’s reputation, life span and original genre of the tune). from the recovery of the plain text to the extraction of the data, including the tagging and standardisation phases, nils couturier and lara nugues described all the steps that enabled them to develop interoperable data sets and to draw interpretations from them that shed light on the history of the genres sung on well-known tunes. liina saarlo, mari sarv and susanna mett explored in their paper “kalevipoeg in the filter-machine: new opportunities to study the links between literary and oral poetries” the similarities and differences between archival collections of estonian runosongs and the estonian national epic kalevipoeg by fr. r. kreutzwald, which aims to use the same poetic form combining excerpts from the oral tradition with the writer’s own diction. the literary scholars and folklorists in general have agreed that kreutzwald’s aim has not been fulfilled. he has either not succeeded in imitating or following the complex poetic system of oral poetry or has decided to modify it according to his own aims and taste. the most striking difference between the poetic form of oral tradition and kalevipoeg lies in sentence structure: while in oral tradition usually there are simple sentences with a length of one line, kreutzwald uses more complex sentences that may span over several lines. kreutzwald also added a layer of his own formulaic language with a romantic tint, in addition to more traditional formulae. relying on the verse and song similarity calculations provided in the filter database, the presenters aimed to detect the source region of more traditional parts of kalevipoeg. although a region in central estonia appeared to have closest parallels to kalevipoeg, a closer observation showed that a majority of the texts available in the folklore 140 nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv collection were either direct copies from kalevipoeg or literary creations in the romantic style of kalevipoeg. elements of kalevipoeg style could be also detected in the songs by genuine folk singers. all this demonstrates that the national epic was not only relevant for scholars and learned people, but was known and esteemed widely in the society. in their paper “blowing ‘the boy’s magic horn’: plotted and synthesised romanticism”, julia koch and toni bernhart began by presenting the interdisciplinary research project “textklang – mixed-methods analysis of poetry in text and tone”, which is based at the german literary archive in marbach and the university of stuttgart. this project aims to investigate the interrelation between written lyric poetry and its sonic realization in recitation and musical performance, in a corpus centred on poetry of romanticism. julia koch and toni bernhart then illustrated this multi-perspective approach on one specific collection within the corpus, entitled “the boy’s magic horn” (“des knaben wunderhorn”), edited in 1806 and 1808 by achim von arnim and clemens brentano, in three volumes, and containing more than 700 lyric texts (versified and rhymed) and a few parts of text in prose. they shared their first outcomes by presenting on the one hand how to plot data and metadata by using the keshif app, and on the other hand how to plot sounds using text-to-speech synthesis (tts). keshif is a web-based visualization and analytical tool, that allows to explore a dataset quickly: the metadata of “the boy’s magic horn” that were imported to keshif concerns titles of the text, number of tokens per text, text genres, level of expressivity, authors of the sources and of the pretexts, publication years of the sources and of the pre-texts. the tts is trained on “the boy’s magic horn” in order to propose a better realization of poetic speech compared to synthesis models exclusively trained on prose data. julia koch and toni bernhart presented the challenges raised by the use of this tts, such as historical language and non-standard speech features, and showed how it can nevertheless capture some stylistic properties, for example speech rate and pauses. the synopsis of text, audio files and metadata finally allows us to study prosodic patterns in text and sonic realisation. antonina martynenko (university of tartu) and artjoms šeļa (institute of the polish language of the polish academy of sciences and university of tartu) in “the fall of genres that did not happen: formalising historical dynamics of russian poetic meter semantics’’ introduced a computational approach for tracing changes in poetic meter semantics. taking as an example the historical development of the “universal” russian meter, iambic tetrameter, martynenko and šeļa questioned whether there is a formal way to model the decomposition of the relationships between meter and meaning (effect known as “semantic halo”) in a widely popular meter. to formalise the semantics of poems, authors 141plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia used topic modelling, which allowed them to represent the 19th century poetic corpus as probabilities of topics (sets of co-occurring words) and then look at the chronological dynamics of topics in different meters. historical changes in topical composition per meter were explored using networks: each topic served as a node and two nodes were connected if two or more topics appeared in the same poem with high probability. networks were used to chronologically compare the behaviour of a “universal” meter with meters which were presumed to have specific genre domains. indeed, only the most popular meter was occupying most of the network’s space for a short period of its “expansion” time. however, when the ratio of shared thematic connections between meters was compared to a random baseline, it became apparent that the majority of new connections was a function of a frequency of iambic tetrameter and not its “invasiveness” into the semantic domains of other forms. this paper also shows that changes in semantics of russian meters were not rapid: most stable connections between topics (edges in the network) tended to persist across the whole period. this highlights the conservative role that poetic forms play in semantic retention. in her “3-ictic dolnik in russian translations of spanish and german verse: a comparative rhythmical analysis”, vera polilova (moscow state university) reported on the recent findings in rhythmical features of translations made in russian dolnik (accentual verse with monoand disyllabic inter-ictic intervals). although historically this meter was influenced by translations of german dolniks, in russian tradition it is routed in ternary meters and avoids binary (trochaic) cadence. however, in the case of translations, these tendencies of russian original dolnik could have been altered for the sake of reproduction of the source texts’ rhythm. the classic examples are alexander blok’s equirhythmical translations from heine, drastically different from the rhythm of blok’s original dolnik in proportion of lines with binary rhythm. polilova investigated the strategy that prevailed in translations made in dolnik during the 20th century: the equirhythmic method that presumes the usage of dolnik to reproduce the original rhythm, or the exorhythmic method that adapted the meter to its rhythmic norms in the target language. the further examination of translations from heine proved that the equirhythmic tradition started by blok in the early 20th century was quite unstable and in the second half of the century translators switched to the exorhythmic type, abandoning binary lines and showing strong preference to “pure” dolnik lines with irregular unstressed intervals. while earlier equirhythmic translations clearly show the possibility to reproduce the rhythm of german dolnik in the russian language, this switch to russian dolnik’s rhythm in the later translations provides a strong evidence for the cultural reasons to avoid lines with binary and even ternary 142 nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv rhythm in this meter in russian poetry. polilova deepened this conclusion with an example of the same trend in dolnik translations of spanish octosyllabic verse into russian (garcía lorca’s romances). though the initial idea of representing syllabic rhythm using rhythmically-free dolnik could have been pursued in early 20th century translations, later translations imbibed the rhythm of original russian dolnik (with a limited variability of rhythmic patterns). hence, both the german and spanish cases confirmed that even in the free domain of translation, russian dolnik was a stabilising force and functioned as if a new classical meter. the talk by pablo ruiz fabo (university of strasbourg) was entitled “methal: towards a macroanalysis of theatre in alsatian”. alsatian refers to germanic varieties spoken in the alsace region (eastern france) and a rich dramatic production has existed in alsatian for over two centuries, in spite of the oral nature of these language varieties. the goal of the project is to create the first large open access electronic corpus of alsatian theatre; the targeted corpus volume is above 500,000 tokens and the corpus is being encoded according to the text encoding initiative (tei) guidelines. the major traditions that have influenced alsatian theatre most are german and french drama. numerous computational projects have delivered insights into these traditions, but such analyses were so far impossible for alsatian given lack of a corpus. the corpus under construction will help to perform the first macroanalytically inspired analyses of alsatian texts and will facilitate a comparison with german and french theatre. corpus selection criteria were discussed, besides automation methods in the tei encoding workflow. the corpus annotations were also described: bibliographic metadata and a manual annotation of social variables for the corpus’ 2,386 characters (profession, social class, sex, age). based on these annotations, generalizations about the evolution of social groups in the period were presented, which complement existing knowledge of the tradition. an interface for structured navigation of the corpus based on the annotations was also presented. anne-sophie bories (university of basel), in her presentation titled “jokes without humour”, started out from the protocol developed by salvatore attardo and victor raskin to annotate jokes, and proposed extending the use of their script-opposition system to describe incongruities in contexts that are not humorous. she works mainly on poetry, a genre largely concerned with the use of incongruity and ambiguity. her study material is composed of three distinct corpora: two collections of poems by guillaume apollinaire: “le bestiaire, ou cortège d’orphée” (1911) and alcools (1913), and aimé césaire’s lengthy poem “cahier d’un retour au pays natal” (1939). through statistical analyses, she showed which script oppositions were most present in her 143plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia different corpora, using the following categorisations: [possible_impossible], [normal_abnormal], [actual_non-actual], [good_bad], [high_low-stature], [obscenity_non-obscenity], [money_no-money], [human_non-human], [life_death]. she also established which logical mechanisms (mapping, metaphor, homophony, polysemy, garden path, personification, priming) and which narrative strategies (q&a, narrative, description, address, list) were recurrently deployed in her texts, with the aim of identifying trends specific to certain corpora and authors. this led her to find an overrepresentation of the [human_non-human] opposition in aimé césaire’s non humorous incongruities, and to the surprising observation that, in a text primarily preoccupied with issues of racism and dehumanisation, this script opposition is mostly found in the depiction of things or concepts as humans, and not in the depiction of humans as objects. in their “rhyming strategies in estonian rap lyrics: a statistical view”, maria-kristiina lotman and rebekka lotman (university of tartu) demonstrated how rhyme returned to estonian poetic space thanks to modern rap artists. while in estonian literary poetry rhyming possibilities are very limited by the language itself and rather seen as exhausted by the 19th and 20th century poets, in rap culture rhyming remains an important and evolving device. using the corpus of four 19-20th century literary poets, the presenters showed that the selected estonian canonic poets almost exclusively used full rhymes. by contrast, the samples of two contemporary rappers (genka and metsakutsu) showed a dramatically low proportion of full rhymes. in case of genka’s rap verses, the full rhyme avoidance is compensated by the use of different types of imperfect rhymes, especially the ones with inexact syllableend consonants. metsakutsu’s verses showed an even more equal distribution over different types of inexact rhymes. the authors of the paper emphasised that this rich rhyming repertoire in rap verse might be caused not by the inner overcoming of rhyming limitations in estonian but by the influence of rap versification in western traditions. the keynote paper by maciej janicki, “text similarity and alignment in the study of finnic oral folk poetry”, introduced the methodology for detecting similar verse lines and song texts implemented in the exploratory research environment runoregi. the multilingual database that aggregates large text collections (275,000 song texts) in various finnic languages as well as the runoregi environment have been created in the framework of the filter project (formulaic intertextuality, thematic networks, and poetic variation across regional cultures of finnic oral poetry). this project combines the fields of computer science and folkloristics and is funded by the academy of finland. the methodology for similarity detection developed by janicki is based on two 144 nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv components. verse similarity calculation is based on the cosine similarity of verses’ bigram vectors, which enables to also detect the similarity in case of slight orthographic and dialectal variation as well as in case of variants with different word order or slightly different word selection (e. g. addition of filler words). the methodology has been tested and proved to correspond quite well with manual similarity annotations. the second component of similarity detection is based on verse similarity and aims to detect the songs where similar verse lines occur in the same sequence. a weighted edit distance calculation implemented by janicki was able to find the similarity between all the song pairs within only 64 hours, which is a short time taking into account a corpus volume of over 275,000 poems and 16 million pairs of similar poems. the results implemented in the filter database and runoregi environment enable researchers to explore the types of relationships between similar texts in terms of song types, regions, individual singers etc. they also enable scholars to detect the exchange of texts between oral and literary traditions, and to build and assess the type indexes (or folkloristic classification of the texts), among other research activities. yelena helgadóttir (árni magnússon institute for icelandic studies) presented a paper entitled “textual variation and representative selection of texts: the case of post-medieval icelandic þulur”. she discussed work towards developing a methodology for selecting representative examples of post-medieval icelandic þulur, a folk poetry genre. several challenges exist for effective text selection in this tradition in order to describe trends or for scholarly editing, e. g. high variability of the texts in spite of their short length, and unclear boundaries between poems. these factors make it difficult to select examples that are generic enough while covering genre specificities appropriately. in their paper “orality and versification in 16th century hungarian epic poems: the epic formulas”, petr plecháč, szilvia maróthy, levente seláf, margit kiss and villő vigyikán examined the correspondence between oral performance and the degree of versification elaboration in hungarian epic poems of the 16th century. based on a previous pilot study, their work aims to assess a hypothesis suggesting that the few freely, orally composed poems, which have only accidentally survived in written form, have somewhat looser versification than the poems composed with more care, on paper. the enlarged corpus used in their present paper contains circa 1,530 pieces of hungarian poetry, that are mostly strophic, sung, rhymed and syllabic. their approach takes into account the uses of melodies related to each text thanks to annotating the tune, which allows them to propose graphical visualizations of these relations. to highlight the oral patterns within their corpus, their research seeks out the “epic formulae”, by using computational means such as word and lemma frequencies. a 145plotting poetry 5: popular voices, 4–6 july 2022, tartu, estonia typology of repetition can be outlined from these results (e. g. inner formulae, shared of external formulae, or formulaic schemes). plecháč and al. also presented diachronic statistics regarding vala-rhymes (an archaic pattern of rhyming), proportion of unrhymed lines in dated and undated poems, and vocabulary richness: this latter aspect enables them to establish an evident growth of the lexical richness, a complexification of rhyming-technique, and some intertextual relationships during the first well-documented 60 years of the corpus genre. a comparison with a small corpus of hungarian folk-ballads collected in the 19th century shows that lexical variety was much stronger in most epic poems of the 16th century, and also, that a stronger connection between some of the early epic poems and orality shall be proven by examining lexical richness: the most repetition tends to indicate the oral character of the composition. in his presentation “quantitative analysis of distribution of the nominative form of the diminutive suffix -kene in estonian runosongs”, kaarel veskis introduced his research results on the spread and use of diminutives in the estonian song tradition. diminutives are widely used in various languages of the world to express smallness, endearment, intimacy etc. compared to contemporary colloquial language, runosongs include many more nouns in diminutive form; however, the same has been noted in other peoples’ oral poetry. the wide use of diminutives in runosongs is partly ascribed to the constraints of meter – it is an easy way to add additional syllables to a word. on the other hand, diminutives are systematically used when addressing someone or something – as if to contribute to a more positive acceptance by the interlocutor. there is not much statistical information on the use of diminutives within different dialectal varieties. however, it has been noted to be a more prevailing way of expression in southern-estonian dialects, possibly as a result of the contacts with speakers of russian, which is considered to use diminutives comparatively more than estonian. the statistical analysis of diminutive word forms in estonian runosongs demonstrated that the most widespread referents in diminutive word forms are girls, boys, other family members, as well as metaphoric figures denoting the same (e. g. little bird). the study also showed that nominative-case word forms with the most widespread disyllabic diminutive suffix were more frequent in the eastern part of estonia, diminishing towards the west, and that there were no significant differences between south and north. the alternative, monosyllabic ending and its variants were, however, impossible to retrieve with simple queries, thus the total spread of the use of diminutives still remains to be detected. as a whole, papers presented covered a variety of periods and geographic areas (medieval hungarian epic poetry, post-medieval icelandic 146 nils couturier, antonina martynenko, lara nugues, pablo ruiz fabo, mari sarv þulur, 19th-century poetry (estonia, finland, germany, russia) and popular drama (vaudeville, alsatian theatre), 20th or 21st-century poetry and song in english, spanish, russian and french, besides estonian rap. beyond versification theory, theoretical frameworks for humour analysis and for remediation (adaptation to new media) underlay several of the papers. methods ranged from descriptive statistics based on manual annotation to unsupervised machine learning, network analysis, speech analysis and synthesis. references abeillé, constanza 2013. las formas musicales en la era digital: la crisis del álbum como principio organizador y la nueva función social de la canción. in: signa: revista de la asociación española de semiótica 22, 185–204. https://doi.org/10.5944/signa.vol22.2013.6349 attardo, salvatore; raskin, victor 1991. script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model. in: humor: international journal of humor research 4(3/4), 293–347. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1991.4.3-4.293 albrecht, roger 2010. song of the poet: lost in translation or re-discovered in a new form? in: etc: a review of general semantics 67(2), 177–190. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42579028 badía fumaz, rocío 2020. apropiaciones poéticas. hacia un modelo de representación de la poesía en la música popular actual. https://canal.uned.es/ video/5fbf82dab6092302eb2352a4 (not accessible as of 30 december 2022). bolter, jay david; grusin, richard 1999. remediation: understanding new media. cambridge, ma: mit press. hopkins, gerald manley; o’leary, sean f. 2005. the alchemist: gerard manley hopkins poems in musical adaptations. ingham, mike 2013. “the true concord of well-tuned sounds”: musical adaptations of shakespeare’s sonnets. in: shakespeare 9(2), 220–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2012.705879 jakobson, roman 1960. linguistics and poetics. in: sebeok, thomas (ed.), style in language cambrige: mit press, 350–377. https://doi.org/10.5944/signa.vol22.2013.6349 https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1991.4.3-4.293 https://www.jstor.org/stable/42579028 https://canal.uned.es/video/5fbf82dab6092302eb2352a4 https://canal.uned.es/video/5fbf82dab6092302eb2352a4 https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2012.705879 rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris*1 abstract: elaborating on an analysis of a corpus of more than 1200 sonnets by italian, french, spanish, english and russian authors, this article describes the general rhythmic-syntactic arrangement of thirteenthand fourteenth-century italian sonnets, european petrarchist sonnets, and several experiments with this form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. it presents results obtained with the help of a computer program developed for the automated analysis of strophic syntax. the program was created using boris tomashevsky’s method based on analyzing the punctuation at the end of poetic lines (the strength of the syntactic pause is evaluated depending on the absence or presence of a punctuation sign: i.e., a comma, a dash, a semicolon, or a full stop / question mark / exclamation mark). we supplemented this with two more indices also based on punctuation. the first characterizes the length of sentences (the percentage of sentences in one line, two lines, three lines, etc.), and the second characterizes the number of sentences that end with a full stop, which comes in the middle of a line followed by the beginning of the next sentence in the same line (or, which is the same, the number of such lines). this study demonstrates that both the number of lines with a strong pause in the middle and the number of short sentences have increased over time. keywords: sonnet, rhythm, syntax, strophic syntax, stanzaic syntax, digital humanities, quantitative methods * authors’ addresses: anastasia belousova, universidad nacional de colombia, carrera 30 no. 45-03, facultad de ciencias humanas, edif. 224, of. 3048, bogotá d.c., colombia, e-mail: abelousova@unal.edu.co; juan sebastián páramo rueda, universidad nacional de colombia, carrera 30 no. 45-03, facultad de ciencias humanas, edif. 214, of. 221, bogotá d.c., colombia, email: jsparamor@unal.edu.co; paula ruiz charris, universidad nacional de colombia, carrera 30 no. 45-03, facultad de ciencias humanas, edif. 214, of. 221, bogotá d.c., colombia, email: plruizc@unal.edu.co. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.03 studia metrica et poetica 9.1, 2022, 39–65 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.03 40 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris 1. introduction strophic arrangement is closely related to the logical, linguistic, and literary aspects of poetic speech. in traditional stanzas, and especially in fixed verse forms, the connection between metrical segments and the progression of a theme (or a poetic thought) is particularly evident. as a simple sequence of verse lines with a given rhyme pattern, a strophe is governed by certain historically established rhythmic, rhythmic-syntactic, and thematic organizational principles. the study of these principles is possible through analysis of the rhythmic-syntactic structure of the strophic forms, i.e., of the relations that are established between the boundaries of verse segments (lines, quatrains, etc.) and the syntactic units of a poetic text (inter-line syntactic ties and their distribution within a stanza). such analysis makes it possible at the next stage to reveal regularities between the meter, theme, and style of a poetic work in its organic unity. while there is a considerable body of observations on the poetic syntax of individual poets, literary eras, and poetic traditions, large-scale generalized descriptions of evolutionary trends in the historical development of european stanzaic syntax are still scarce. among the successful attempts of creating such a description based on the material of a single national tradition is maksim shapir’s article “three reforms of russian poetic syntax (lomonosov – pushkin – joseph brodsky)” (2003). shapir describes three evolutionary types of syntactic organization in russian poetry between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries based on a detailed classification of syntactic links according to their strength. during that time period, shapir argues, “three types of poetic speech arrangement crystallized one after another, due to the systematic transformation of poetic language: ‘syntactic’, ‘anti-syntactic’ and, finally, ‘parasyntactic’”; these three types may also “be interpreted as ‘classical’, ‘romantic’ and ‘modernist’” (shapir 2003: 66). the first type highlighted by shapir – “syntactic” or “classical” – is characteristic of mikhail lomonosov. the end of a line in his odes usually tends to be coincident with the weakest syntactic link, ideally with the end of a sentence. of course, this coincidence is not always achievable, as a sentence may be longer than a line. in this case, the synchronization of grammatical and verse segmentation shifts from the line to the stanza as a whole. the result is a sentence in which the syntax rather closely corresponds to the stanza rhyme structure. in the odic decima with the ababccdeed rhyme pattern, there are clearly defined strophic positions with strong links and others with weaker links. a distinct syntactic rhythm is evident in the stanza. it is created by the 41rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet regular alternation of ties: strong – weak – strong – weak – medium – strong – weak – medium – strong – weak – medium – strong – weak. in the following example, the syntactic rhythm is emphasized by the anaphor: тогда от радостной полтавы победы росской звук гремел, | тогда не мог петровой славы вместить вселенныя предел, | тогда вандалы низложенны главы имели преклоненны еще при пеленах твоих; | тогда предъявлено судьбою, что с трепетом перед тобою падут полки потомков их. (mikhail lomonosov, “ode on the birthday of her majesty, the sovereign empress elisaveta petrovna, autocrat of all russia, in the year 1746”) this principle of syntactic organization has been maintained almost unchanged by russian poets after lomonosov. according to shapir, the second type of poetic speech organization, which he refers to as “anti-syntactic” or “romantic”, originated with alexander pushkin. however, the majority of pushkin’s writings remained to a large extent within the syntactic system bequeathed by lomonosov, and its imperative was not conclusively overcome until the 1830s. pushkin’s last poem, “mednyj vsadnik” (“the bronze horseman”, 1833, published in 1837), in which the grammatical coherence of lines reached unprecedented levels, played a significant part in this process. previously, weaker syntactic connections between the lines predominated, as in the case with lomonosov and other poets of the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth century, including pushkin himself. in “the bronze horseman”, however, stronger ties between the lines prevail throughout the entire poem. the coherence of lines in “the bronze horseman” is enhanced by an abundance of enjambments (run-on lines): | несчастный знакомой улицей бежит в места знакомые. | глядит, узнать не может. | вид ужасный! всё перед ним завалено; 42 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris что сброшено, | что снесено; скривились домики, | другие совсем обрушились, | иные волнами сдвинуты; | кругом, как будто в поле боевом, тела валяются. | евгений стремглав, не помня ничего, изнемогая от мучений, бежит туда, | где ждет его судьба с неведомым известьем, как с запечатанным письмом. и вот бежит уж он предместьем, и вот залив, | и близок дом... что ж это?... | он остановился. compare a similar arrangement in “lines written a few miles above tintern abbey” (1798) by william wordsworth: while here i stand, not only with the sense of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts that in this moment there is life and food for future years. | and so i dare to hope though changed, no doubt, from what i was, when first i came among these hills; | when like a roe i bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, wherever nature led; | more like a man flying from something that he dreads, than one who sought the thing he loved. | for nature then (the coarser pleasures of my boyish days, and their glad animal movements all gone by,) to me was all in all.— | i cannot paint what then i was. | the sounding cataract haunted me like a passion: | the tall rock, the mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, their colours and their forms, were then to me an appetite: | a feeling and a love, that had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest 43rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet unborrowed from the eye.— | that time is past, and all its aching joys are now no more, and all its dizzy raptures. | not for this faint i, nor mourn nor murmur; | other gifts have followed, for such loss, i would believe, abundant recompense. | and in “l’infinito” (“the infinite”, 1819) by giacomo leopardi: ma sedendo e mirando, interminati spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani silenzi, e profondissima quiete io nel pensier mi fingo; | ove per poco il cor non si spaura. | e come il vento odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello infinito silenzio a questa voce vo comparando: | e mi sovvien l’eterno, e le morte stagioni, e la presente e viva, e il suon di lei. | così tra questa immensità s’annega il pensier mio: e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare. why did shapir name this organization of poetic speech “anti-syntactic”? it is a system that emphasizes the misalignment of linguistic and metrical units by playing with their “displacement” in relation to one another, thus shattering the old, “classical” system of verse syntax. according to shapir, the most recent radical transformation of russian verse syntax is associated with the name of joseph brodsky, who succeeded in overcoming the harmonization of syntax and rhythm by creating a parasyntactic, or modernist, system. compare his “pen’e bez muzyki” (“singing without music”, 1970): когда ты вспомнишь обо мне в краю чужом — хоть эта фраза всего лишь вымысел, а не пророчество, о чем для глаза, вооруженного слезой, не может быть и речи: даты из омута такой лесой не вытащишь — итак, когда ты 44 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris за тридевять земель и за морями, в форме эпилога (хоть повторяю, что слеза, за исключением былого, все уменьшает) обо мне вспомянешь все-таки в то лето господне и вздохнешь — о не вздыхай! — обозревая это количество морей, полей, разбросанных меж нами, ты не заметишь, что толпу нулей возглавила сама. в гордыне [...] another attempt at a systematic study of the evolution of poetic syntax within a particular national tradition was made in recent decades by italian versologists. scholars associated with the journal stilistica e metrica italiana (marco praloran, arnaldo soldani, laura facini, leonardo bellomo, amelia juri, and others) have been developing a detailed description of the evolution of the metrical and rhythmic organization of traditional stanzas of italian poetry. soldani’s fundamental work on sonnet syntax (2009) and recent monographs and collections of essays on the sonnet, the ottava rima, and the terza rima have resulted from this endeavour (soldani, facini 2017; facini 2018; facini et al. 2020). poetic syntax does not develop only within the narrow confines of a national tradition. in his analysis, shapir notes (referring wachtel 1998: 59ff.) that the transition to the “anti-syntactic” system in russian verse was influenced by german poetry. thus, he looked at the evolution of poetic syntax from a comparative perspective: the transition to the anti-syntactic system of verse, which occurred in some of pushkin’s later works, is evident in the use of blank iambic pentameter. this metrical and semantic form originated in vasily zhukovsky with his translations from johann peter hebel. clusters of enjambments, impermissible in rhymed verse, were tolerated there. (shapir 2003: 70) italian verse scholars have also recently expressed some thoughts on the influence of petrarch’s syntax on european poetry. for example, in her work on juan boscán’s sonnets, laura facini demonstrates how boscán reproduces petrarchan syntactic models: 45rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet in fact, the fragmenta are taken as a model thematically and rhetorically, as well as stylistically, not only as a reservoir of new themes and motifs, images and rhetorical figures, syllabic measures, and metrical patterns, but also as an organic structure in which all levels of formal elaboration correspond: from the macrostructural plane of the canzoniere form to the relationship between metric and syntax of each individual line. (facini 2015: 72) sergio bozzola and allison steenson (2018) discussed the possible influence of petrarch’s rhythmic-syntactic experiments on spanish, french and english renaissance authors. in this paper, using the methodological perspectives of comparative poetics and distant reading,1 we analyze the rhythmic-syntactic organization of a corpus of 1239 european sonnets written from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. our aim was to establish whether the evolutionary types described by shapir are present in other national poetic systems and whether they are automatically identifiable. in addition, we wanted to see what other syntactic trends computerized analysis of strophic syntax can reveal.2 we examined sonnets in italian, spanish, english, french and russian by guido cavalcanti, dante, petrarch, pietro bembo, ronsard, du bellay, lope de vega, francisco de quevedo, shakespeare, foscolo, baudelaire, federico garcía lorca, and joseph brodsky.3 1 also compare the priorities of modern verse study in the field of poetic syntax formulated by igor pilshchikov and anatoli starostin (2009): a) studying the distribution of syntactic ties within a line, b) computerized calculation of the strength of interline ties, and c) studying the syntactic organization of stanzas and strophoids. 2 partial preliminary results of this research have previously been reported in belousova, paramo 2019 and belousova 2019. 3 for italian authors, we used the digitized editions available on the website la biblioteca della letteratura italiana (bli). for spanish authors, we used texts from biblioteca virtual miguel de cervantes (bvmc); for russian authors, materials came from the poetic sub-corpus of the russian national corpus (rnc). in cases where we used other sources, this is specified in a footnote. 46 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris 2. method in 1941, in his classic study “the word and verse in eugene onegin”, grigorij vinokur analyzed the internal structure of the onegin stanza in connection with the content of pushkin’s novel (vinokur 1990: 146–195). to this end, he studied the nature of the syntactic pauses on the borders between parts of the onegin stanza (after the 4th, 8th and 12th lines) (ibid.: 170–171). the data he obtained allowed vinokur to identify the main features of pushkin’s stanzaic structure (syntactic autonomy of the first quatrain, special compositional role of the closing couplet, etc.), as well as describe stylistic and poetic features of the novel. later, these findings were confirmed by other scholars. similar results were obtained by boris tomashevsky using an entirely different method. in “pushkin’s stanzaics”, he proposed to build a study of syntactic pauses on the borders of stanza lines based on punctuation (tomashevsky 1958: 116 ff.) without specifically describing the nature of the interline connection. the strength of each pause was assigned a number: 0 – no pause; 1 – pause corresponding to a comma; 2 – pause corresponding to a colon or semicolon; 3 – pause corresponding to a period (full stop). the sum of the numbers was then divided by the possible maximum amount (if all the lines ended with periods), and the result was expressed as a percentage. the percentage indicator thus showed the relative average strength of the syntactic pause after each line of the stanza or quasi-stanza. the main advantage of this method in comparison with the others proposed by boris yarkho (2006: 84–87), vinokur (1990: 170–171), mikhail gasparov and tatiana skulacheva (2004: 29–33), and shapir (2000: 164–167, with examples; 2009: 11–13) is its simplicity: all the decisions are unambiguous, and automation is simplified due to the lack of need for a functional syntax model. at the same time, punctuation, which serves as the basis of this approach, only partially reflects the actual syntactic phenomena of a text and can vary over time. our hypothesis, however, is that punctuation in modern publications adequately reflects the relative strength of the syntactic ties, especially when it comes to identifying general trends (cf. oras 1960; bruster 2015). any distant approach to literature and culture inevitably leads to simplifications. on the other hand, in order to interpret any concrete phenomenon, it is necessary to imagine the big picture. using tomashevsky’s method, we created a computer program that enables computerized rhythmical-syntactic analysis of stanzaic texts. we supplemented it with two more indices based on punctuation. the first characterizes the length of sentences (the percentage of sentences in one line, two lines, three 47rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet lines, etc.),4 and the second characterizes the number of sentences that end with a full stop, which comes in the middle of a line followed by the beginning of the next sentence in the same line (or, which is the same, the number of such lines). 3. standard rhythmic-syntactic arrangement new european lyric poetry, starting with the troubadours, is characterized by the general coherence of its syntactic, rhythmic, and semantic structure (see, for example, switten 1985: 53–63). this is probably due to its origin since the new lyrical forms of european poetry are related to music and round dance. for example, a canzone stanza is both a two-part and a three-part structure of the xx/y type, where each element consists of at least two lines. the first two elements are identical (the same rhymes in the same order, for example, aba aba) or similar in structure (for example, the same rhymes but in the inverted order: abc cba). the third part differs in the number of lines, the rhyming scheme, or both (wilkins 1915: 148–149). such three-part stanzaic structures probably originate in romance folk songs, which accompanied round dances (gasparov 1996: 149). in the round dance, the chorus moved first to one side for half a circuit, then back to the initial position to the same rhythm, and finally made a full circuit to a different rhythm. this structure is reflected in such romance strophic forms as canzone, sonnet, ballade, virelai, triolet, and others. twelfth-century troubadour poetry saw the transition of such structures from folk dances and songs to literature, where the repetitions and refrains disappeared. mikhail gasparov describes the successive estrangement from the original folk song: first, the opening burden was fully repeated after each stanza (as in the virelai). later, there was only a partial repetition of the initial lines of the song at the end of each stanza (as in the triolet, the rondel, the rondeau). later still, even this partial echoing of the beginning disappears, and only the final line recurs in every stanza (as in the ballade). finally, the repetition of the final line in every stanza also becomes effaced: the stanzas follow each other without any reduplications, and they do not have to turn around the same motif semantically 4 if a sentence finishes in the middle of the poetic line, we round up the number of lines. for example, if a sentence occupies 1.5 poetic lines, we consider it to be of two lines. if it occupies 3.5 lines, we consider it to be of four lines. for the two last indices, we considered pauses corresponding to a colon or semicolon as equivalent to the end of a sentence. 48 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris (compare the canzone). more archaic forms, with burdens and refrains, were still mostly used in the north, in france; newer forms, without them, developed mostly in the south, in italy. (gasparov 1996: 149–150) gasparov typologically correlates the strophic structure of the new european lyrics with greek choral poetry, in which the parts are also syntactically autonomous (ibid.: 62–63). this theory of the origin of european strophic forms explains their syntactic circularity, which is necessary if the text is not read but performed. in the case of the sonnet, the relation of the form with the music is a subject of intense debate (see magro, soldani 2017: 21–22). although the name directly connects the poetic form with the melody, it is certain that in tuscany the word was already used in the new metrical sense, not the melodic one. however, for the sicilian school, where the sonnet appears, the situation is unclear. modern critics following gianfranco contini’s opinion (1951: 176) have predominantly considered that it was in this historical moment that the “divorce” between poetry and music occurred. nevertheless, pietro g. beltrami (1999) once again has called this thesis into question, arguing that the canzone and perhaps even the sonnet were conceived as texts that have in their context of origin courtly representation and a musical destination. in any case, from the morphological point of view, the sonnet from its origin has been characterized by synchronization between the rhyming scheme and the syntactic arrangement. this basic principle and its gradual variation and shattering can be observed in our data. 4. data tables 1, 2, and 3 show the data obtained in this study. 49rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet ta b le 1 . s tr en g th o f t h e sy n ta ct ic ti es a ft er e ac h s on n et li n e, % № o f so nn et s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 c av al ca nt i 35 14 .2 9 30 .4 8 20 .0 70 .4 8 19 .0 5 47 .6 2 18 .1 81 .9 20 .0 23 .8 1 78 .1 20 .9 5 25 .7 1 10 0. 0 d an te 76 15 .7 9 39 .0 4 20 .1 8 80 .7 19 .7 4 45 .1 8 17 .1 1 87 .2 8 22 .8 1 26 .3 2 79 .8 2 30 .7 30 .7 10 0. 0 pe tr ar ch 32 0 14 .9 32 .8 1 18 .4 4 79 .6 9 20 .2 1 36 .3 5 23 .2 3 92 .1 9 22 .8 1 22 .8 1 79 .9 27 .1 9 28 .6 5 10 0. 0 b em bo 14 4 16 .6 7 28 .4 7 16 .4 4 69 .2 1 11 .8 1 31 .0 2 21 .0 6 84 .0 3 22 .4 5 23 .6 1 81 .4 8 20 .8 3 31 .0 2 10 0. 0 r on sa rd 54 22 .2 2 50 .0 27 .7 8 90 .1 2 27 .1 6 39 .5 1 29 .6 3 96 .3 41 .9 8 45 .0 6 67 .9 63 .5 8 39 .5 1 10 0. 0 d u b el la y 19 6 26 .0 2 32 .6 5 26 .0 2 84 .6 9 25 .8 5 39 .1 2 28 .7 4 91 .8 4 29 .2 5 34 .0 1 71 .6 34 .8 6 33 .1 6 10 0. 0 lo pe 48 20 .1 4 37 .5 25 .0 86 .8 1 26 .3 9 38 .1 9 26 .3 9 90 .2 8 27 .0 8 31 .9 4 81 .2 5 29 .8 6 34 .7 2 10 0. 0 q ue ve do 11 2 20 .5 4 40 .7 7 24 .1 1 96 .4 3 23 .2 1 41 .3 7 23 .5 1 97 .6 2 24 .7 28 .8 7 91 .6 7 37 .8 32 .1 4 10 0. 0 fo sc ol o 12 13 .8 9 19 .4 4 5. 56 72 .2 2 11 .1 1 27 .7 8 13 .8 9 83 .3 3 16 .6 7 19 .4 4 52 .7 8 38 .8 9 16 .6 7 10 0. 0 b au de la ir e 49 31 .9 7 42 .8 6 20 .4 1 82 .3 1 31 .2 9 45 .5 8 34 .0 1 91 .1 6 25 .1 7 42 .1 8 57 .1 4 36 .0 5 31 .2 9 10 0. 0 lo rc a 19 28 .0 7 63 .1 6 15 .7 9 91 .2 3 8. 77 52 .6 3 28 .0 7 96 .4 9 24 .5 6 21 .0 5 96 .4 9 29 .8 2 35 .0 9 10 0. 0 b ro ds ky 20 38 .3 3 40 .0 31 .6 7 60 .0 46 .6 7 50 .0 41 .6 7 61 .6 7 50 .0 43 .3 3 33 .3 3 58 .3 3 43 .3 3 10 0. 0 sh ak es pe ar e 15 4 19 .2 6 52 .1 6 24 .8 9 87 .0 1 21 .2 1 44 .5 9 21 .8 6 93 .5 1 22 .5 1 46 .3 2 24 .8 9 92 .6 4 31 .8 2 10 0. 0 50 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris table 2. percentage of sentences of determinate length (1 line, 2 lines, 3 lines, etc.) 1 2 3 4 5-8 9-13 14 cavalcanti 15.33 13.14 29.93 22.63 0.73 0.0 0.0 dante 8.98 24.55 31.44 25.15 2.1 0.0 0.0 petrarch 16.78 17.69 30.7 24.34 1.68 0.14 0.0 bembo 11.32 14.47 32.1 23.93 0.74 0.37 0.74 ronsard 13.99 25.1 19.75 32.51 2.06 0.0 0.0 du bellay 11.92 9.24 24.59 33.23 0.89 0.0 3.13 lope 20.65 26.32 24.7 23.89 0.4 0.0 0.0 quevedo 28.46 29.82 23.19 16.42 0.6 0.0 0.0 foscolo 24.56 24.56 17.54 21.05 3.51 0.0 0.0 baudelaire 33.46 27.57 11.76 18.01 1.84 0.37 0.0 lorca 37.29 23.73 22.88 13.56 0.0 0.0 0.0 brodsky 42.42 30.3 13.64 9.09 3.03 0.0 0.76 shakespeare 19.59 49.2 5.13 23.46 0.34 0.11 0.0 table 3. percentage of lines with a full stop in the middle of the line cavalcanti 0.61 dante 1.5 petrarch 2.66 bembo 1.69 ronsard 1.98 du bellay 1.28 lope 2.98 quevedo 3.7 foscolo 7.74 baudelaire 6.71 lorca 3.01 brodsky 13.57 shakespeare 2.5 51rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet 5. interpretation of the data 5.1. cavalcanti, dante, petrarch chronologically, the earliest sonnets in our corpus are by guido cavalcanti (from rime, before 1301), dante (from vita nova and rime, approx. 1283– 1308) and petrarch (from canzoniere, 1336–1374). 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 cavalcanti dante petrarch 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 120figure 1. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (cavalcanti, dante, petrarch), % the lines on the chart are very similar for all three poets. the sonnet is clearly divided into two parts [(4+4) + (3+3)]. the strongest pause separates the quatrains from the tercets, while other pauses are organized hierarchically. the index for the pause after line 8 exceeds 85% for dante and petrarch and 80% for cavalcanti. after lines 4 and 11, it is similar to or exceeds 75%. the indices for the weak positions are generally about 20%. the quatrains follow a basic syntactic rhythm of couplets; meanwhile, the tercets clearly do not. the basic distribution of syntactic ties is as follows: strong – medium – strong – weak – strong – medium – strong – weak – strong – strong – weak – strong – strong – weak. the index of cavalcanti for the 8th line is lower than that of dante and petrarch because sometimes cavalcanti does not respect the division in fronte and sirma, as occurs in the sonnet “s’io fosse quelli che d’amor fu degno...”: 52 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris s’io fosse quelli che d’amor fu degno, del qual non trovo sol che rimembranza, e la donna tenesse altra sembianza, assai mi piaceria siffatto legno. e tu, che se’ de l’amoroso regno là onde di merzé nasce speranza, riguarda se ’l mi’ spirito ha pesanza: ch’un prest’ arcier di lui ha fatto segno // e tragge l’arco, che li tese amore, s’ lietamente, che la sua persona par che di gioco porti signoria. or odi maraviglia ch’el disia: lo spirito fedito li perdona, vedendo che li strugge il suo valore. the rhythm of couplets in the octet is present but not distinctly pronounced. if we compare the index for the second line of the first and second quatrain with the strong even-rhythm of ottava rima (for example, in poliziano’s rime, ariosto’s orlando furioso and tasso’s gerusalemme liberata), the difference becomes clear (see belousova, páramo 2019: 26): the indices for odd and even lines of the classical octave display a much greater difference (the difference between even and odd lines is 30–50%, not 20%, as it is here). in this classically arranged octave, the basic syntactic structure is (2+2)+(2+2), and the alternation of syntactic ties is as follows: strong – weak – strong – weak – strong – weak – strong – weak. the sonnet, in comparison, presents medium ties in positions 2 and 6. this fact possibly can be explained through the medium length of the sentences. in table 2, we see that sentences that occupy 3 lines are the most common for the three italian authors, accounting for about 30% of all the sentences. sentences of 4 lines are also quite common and amount to about 23%. the percentage of interrupted lines (table 3) is different for each of the three authors, and it is the highest in petrarch: 0.61% in cavalcanti, 1.5% in dante and 2.66% in petrarch. 53rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet 5.2 petrarchism the principles of poetic organization of speech were developed within the framework of italian renaissance classicism and assimilated throughout europe along with the petrarchism movement significantly promoted by pietro bembo. the sonnets of the petrarchists – of pietro bembo himself (sonnets from rime, published in 1530), ronsard (le second livre des sonnets pour hélène,5 1578), du bellay (les regrets,6 1553–1557, published in 1558), and later, lope de vega (sonnets from rimas, published in 1602) and francisco de quevedo (parnaso español, published in 1648) – are organized in a similar way to those of the italian duecento and trecento. the trends are sometimes even stronger: for example, the index for the pause after line 8 generally exceeds 90%. 14 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 bem bo ronsard du bellay lope quevedo 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 figure 2. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (bembo, ronsard, du bellay, lope de vega, francisco de quevedo), % the most striking feature that deserves separate consideration is the behavior of ronsard’s tercets and, specifically, of the second tercet’s first line, which is often syntactically autonomous. it seems that in his sonnets, ronsard avoids sentences of 1 and 3 lines. although the lines in the chart are similar, the distribution of phrases of different lengths is quite dissimilar for each of the five authors. the most common length in bembo is 3 lines (like in cavalcanti, 5 we used the digitized edition ronsard 1921. 6 we used the digitized edition du bellay 1910. 54 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris dante and petrarch), 4 lines for ronsard and du bellay, and meanwhile, lope and especially quevedo prefer shorter phrases. lope and quevedo also demonstrate quite a large number of interrupted lines (lope 2.98%, quevedo 3.7%).7 compare a quatrain by quevedo: lloro mientras el sol alumbra, y cuando descansan en silencio los mortales torno a llorar; | renuévanse mis males, y así paso mi tiempo sollozando. it seems that the large numbers of one-line phrases and lines with a full stop in the middle of the line are symptoms of rhythmical-syntactic progress. in shakespeare’s sonnets (published in 1609),8 we can see how the syntactic structure changes as the rhyme pattern changes, continuing to follow the principles of meter-syntax coherence. shakespeare’s distribution of pauses clearly follows the rhyme structure of the english sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg): 4+4+4+2. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 shakespeare 120figure 3. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (shakespeare), % 7 compare the data on enjambments in spanish sonnets (ruiz fabo et al. 2021: i74–i75). 8 we used the digital text from the folger shakespeare library (shakespeare n. d.). 55rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet the form of the english sonnet allows the tendency toward an even syntactic rhythm and the hierarchization of the pauses to be fully realized, and the distribution of pauses is as follows: weak – medium – weak – strong – weak – medium – weak – strong – weak – medium – weak – strong – weak – strong. shakespeare prefers 2-line phrases (49.2%) and avoids the 3-line sentences (5.13%) that are characteristic for the italian authors. in our corpus, there are sonnets that do not follow the general trends. in particular, this is because the presence of a fixed rhythmic-logical structure allows one to play with the reader’s expectations (cf. bozzola 2018). the use of “rare” syntactic structures (in particular, sonnets “a fronte aperta”; that is, those in which the phrase continues between the eighth and the ninth line) in petrarch and his european followers is the subject of a recent study by sergio bozzola and allison steenson (2018). in this work, the authors link the emergence of some “non-classical” european sonnets to the direct influence of petrarch’s poetic techniques. however, it may be that it is not necessarily a question of direct influence and the more careful, unsimplifying reception that the researchers suggest (bozzola, steenson 2018: 151) but of the universal mechanisms of poetic speech built on the creation and frustration of rhythmic (as well as syntactic, semantic and other) expectations. as baudelaire writes, “le rythme et la rime répondent dans l’homme aux immortels besoins de monotonie, de symétrie et de surprise” [rhythm and rhyme meet man’s immortal needs for monotony, symmetry and surprise]. 5.3 non-classical sonnets we also looked at smaller collections of sonnets written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. figure 4 shows the variety of arrangement types. 56 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris cavalcanti dante petrarch 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 foscolo baudelaire lorca brodsky 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 figure 4. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (foscolo, baudelaire, lorca, brodsky), % if we compare sonnets by petrarch and foscolo (published in 1802–1803; see fig. 5), we see that generally, foscolo follows the normal rhythmic-syntactic logic of the sonnet. bem bo ronsard du bellay lope quevedo 1 14 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 petra rch foscolo 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 figure 5. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (petrarch and foscolo), % 57rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet at the same time, there are some important transformations. the pauses after the 11th and the 12th lines are weaker and stronger than the “classical” ones. also, the total indices for foscolo’s sonnet are significantly lower. this is a sign of a greater number of run-on lines. previously, we identified the same pattern when comparing ariosto’s and tasso’s octave: in the octave of tasso, the syntactic tendencies of ariosto’s ottava rima are developed and strengthened. [...] the more striking development is what happens with the pauses after odd lines. the highest index only reaches 12%! this phenomenon should be interpreted as the actual prohibition of strong pauses after odd lines. at the level of the actual poetic syntax, this is manifested in a large number of strong enjambments (three times as frequent as in ariosto) – breaking between a noun and its adjective, a verb and an adverbial clause of place, etc., and located at the line border. (belousova, páramo 2019: 28) in foscolo’s sonnets, the index for the third line is only 5.56% and 11.11% for the fifth line. compare: e tu ne’ carmi avrai perenne vita // sponda che arno saluta in suo cammino // partendo la città che dal latino // nome accogliea finor l’ombra fuggita. già dal tuo ponte all’onda impaurita // il papale furore e il ghibellino // mescean gran sangue, ove oggi al pellegrino // del fero vate la magion si addita. per me cara, felice, inclita riva ove sovente i pie’ leggiadri mosse // colei che vera al portamento diva // in me vologeva sue luci beate, mentr’io sentia dai crin d’oro commosse // spirar ambrosia l’aure innamorate. né più mai toccherò le sacre sponde ove il mio corpo fanciulletto giacque, zacinto mia, che te specchi nell’onde // del greco mar da cui vergine nacque // venere, e fea quelle isole feconde col suo primo sorriso, onde non tacque le tue limpide nubi e le tue fronde l’inclito verso di colui che l’acque // cantò fatali, ed il diverso esiglio // per cui bello di fama e di sventura baciò la sua petrosa itaca ulisse. tu non altro che il canto avrai del figlio, o materna mia terra; | a noi prescrisse // il fato illacrimata sepoltura. the sentences are shorter in foscolo in comparison with other italian authors (about 50% consist of phrases of 1 or 2 lines). the percentage of interrupted lines is high (7.74%). 58 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris comparing baudelaire (sonnets from les fleurs du mal, published in 1857)9 to ronsard, we can see a similar tendency: the indices of the odd lines are generally lower in baudelaire. the number of interrupted lines is high (6.71%), and the sentences are normally 1 or 2 lines (they comprise about 60% of all sentences, while in ronsard, 4-line sentences comprise 32.51% of all phrases).1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 14 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ronsard baudelaire figure 6. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (ronsard and baudelaire), % сompare: deux guerriers ont couru l’un sur l’autre; | leurs armes // ont éclaboussé l’air de lueurs et de sang. ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont les vacarmes // d’une jeunesse en proie à l’amour vagissant. les glaives sont brisés! | comme notre jeunesse, ma chère! | mais les dents, les ongles acérés, vengent bientôt l’épée et la dague traîtresse. — ô fureur des cœurs mûrs par l’amour ulcérés! 9 we used the digitized edition baudelaire 1861. 59rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet dans le ravin hanté des chats-pards et des onces // nos héros, s’étreignant méchamment, ont roulé, et leur peau fleurira l’aridité des ronces. — ce gouffre, c’est l’enfer, de nos amis peuplé! roulons-y sans remords, amazone inhumaine, afin d’éterniser l’ardeur de notre haine! 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 quevedo lorca figure 7. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (quevedo and lorca), % comparing garcía lorca’s sonnets (before 1937)10 to quevedo, we see similar tendencies mostly in the tercets, while the quatrains seem to be quite different, especially after the second and the fifth line. the most striking feature of lorca’s sonnet is his pronounced preference for one-line phrases (37.29%). compare: esta luz, este fuego que devora. este paisaje gris que me rodea. este dolor por una sola idea. esta angustia de cielo, mundo y hora. 10 sonetos del amor oscuro, “en la muerte de josé de ciña y escalante”, “a manuel de falla”, “a carmela condon”, “adán”, “soneto”, “epitafio a isaac albéniz”, “en la tumba sin nombre de herrera y reissig en el cementerio de montevideo”, “a mercedes en su vuelo”. we used the edition garcía lorca 2009. 60 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris este llanto de sangre que decora lira sin pulso ya, lúbrica tea. este peso del mar que me golpea. este alacrán que por mi pecho mora. son guirnalda de amor, cama de herido, donde sin sueño, sueño tu presencia entre las ruinas de mi pecho hundido. y aunque busco la cumbre de prudencia me da tu corazón valle tendido con cicuta y pasión de amarga ciencia. the rhythmic-syntactic arrangement of brodsky’s sonnets (twenty sonnets to mary stewart, 1974) is the most “non-classical” in our corpus. apparently, the poet is unaware of the traditional structure he uses. the pause after the 8th line is only 61.67%, by far the lowest index of our authors. the couplets practically disappear. the number of interrupted lines is the highest, and the percentage of short sentences (consisting of 1 and 2 lines) is more than 70%. brodsky systematically closes the sentence after the 9th line and situates an enjambment between the quatrains and the tercets. я вас любил. любовь еще (возможно, что просто боль) сверлит мои мозги, все разлетелось к черту, на куски. я застрелиться пробовал, но сложно // с оружием. | и далее, виски: в который вдарить? | портила не дрожь, но задумчивость. | черт! все не по-людски! я вас любил так сильно, безнадежно, // как дай вам бог другими ― ― ― но не даст! он, будучи на многое горазд, не сотворит ― по пармениду ― дважды // сей жар в груди, ширококостный хруст, чтоб пломбы в пасти плавились от жажды коснуться ― “бюст” зачеркиваю ― уст! 61rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 brodsky figure 8. strength of the syntactic ties after each sonnet line (brodsky), % 6. conclusion in this study, we hoped to learn whether the evolutionary syntactic types described by maksim shapir for russian poetry are present in other national poetic systems and whether they are automatically identifiable. in addition, we wanted to determine what other syntactic trends computerized analysis of strophic syntax can reveal. we applied boris tomashevsky’s method, which is based on analyzing the punctuation at the end of poetic lines, to a corpus of european sonnets (more than 1200 texts). then we supplemented our data with two more indices based on punctuation: the length of sentences (the percentage of sentences of 1 line, 2 lines, 3 lines, etc.), and the percentage of lines with a full stop in the middle of the line. as a result, we 1) described the general rhythmic-syntactic arrangement of italian sonnets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the european petrarchist sonnet, and some experiments with the form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; 2) demonstrated that the number of lines with a strong pause in the middle of the line and the number of short sentences have been increasing over time. we have demonstrated that the chosen method 1) illuminates general trends in the strophic syntax of different authors, languages, and 62 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris literary epochs; 2) reveals some striking features of each individual author’s style; and 3) allows us to distinguish between texts of “classical”, “romantic” and “modernist” orientations. since the indicators of sentence length and the number of strong pauses in the middle of a line do not depend on the stanza, they can and should be applied further to the non-stanzaic texts. further study is needed to determine the genesis not only of the “classical” system but also of the romantic and modernist arrangements. in what literatures and genres did they form to then spread throughout europe?11 references baudelaire, charles 1861. les fleurs du mal. 2e édition. paris: poulet-malassis et de broise. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/les_fleurs_du_mal_(1861) belousova, anastasia; páramo rueda, juan sebastián 2019. macroanalysis of the strophic syntax and the history of the italian ottava rima. in: plecháč, petr; scherr, barry p.; skulacheva, tatiana; bermúdez-sabel, helena; kolár, robert (eds.), quantitative approaches to versification. prague: the institute of czech literature of the czech academy of sciences, 23–31. https://versologie.cz/conference2019/proceedings/belousova-paramo-rueda.pdf belousova, anastasija sergeevna 2019. stroficheskij makrosintaksis: oktava, tertsina, sonet (rossija i italija). in: rhema 4, 9–20. https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2019-4-9-20 beltrami, pietro giorgio 1999. osservazioni sulla metrica dei siciliani e dei siculotoscani. in: coluccia, rosario; gualdo, riccardo (eds.), dai siciliani ai siculotoscani: lingua, metro e stile: atti del convegno (lecce, 21–23 aprile 1998). galatina: congedo, 187–216. bli = la biblioteca della letteratura italiana. http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/ bozzola, sergio 2018. definizione ed esperienza dell’attesa metrica nella forma sonetto. in: peron, gianfelice; sangiovanni, fabio (ed.), l’attesa: forme, retorica, interpretazioni: atti del xlv convegno interuniversitario (bressanone, 7–9 luglio 2017). padova: esedra, 115–130. 11 we are grateful to igor pilshchikov and vera polilova for their comments and suggestions. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/les_fleurs_du_mal_(1861)/texte_entier https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/les_fleurs_du_mal_(1861) https://versologie.cz/conference2019/proceedings/belousova-paramo-rueda.pdf https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2019-4-9-20 https://doi.org/10.31862/2500-2953-2019-4-9-20 http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/ http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/ 63rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet bozzola, sergio; steenson, allison 2018. occasioni del petrarca minore nel sonetto rinascimentale europeo: boscán e garcilaso, ronsard e il primo petrarchismo inglese. in: gregori, elisa (ed.), rinascimento fra il veneto e l’europa questioni, metodi, percorsi. padova: cleup, 149–204. bruster, douglas 2015. shakespeare’s pauses, authorship, and early chronology. in: studia metrica et poetica 2(2), 25–47. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.03 bvmc = biblioteca virtual miguel de cervantes. https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ contini, gianfranco 1951. preliminari sulla lingua del petrarca. in: paragone 2(16), 3–26. du bellay, joachim 1910. les regrets. in: œuvres complètes. t. iii: les antiquités; les regrets; les jeux rustiques. avec un commentaire historique et critique par léon séché. paris: revue de la renaissance, 26–116. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/ livre:du_bellay_-_œuvres_complètes,_édition_séché,_tome_3 facini, laura (ed.) 2018. nuove prospettive sull’ottava rima: [atti del convegno tenuto a ginevra nel 2017]. edizione a cura di laura facini. lecce; rovato: pensa multimedia. facini, laura 2015. la costruzione sintattica del sonetto di juan boscán. in: il confronto letterario 63, 49–74. facini, laura, et al. (eds.) 2020. nuove prospettive sulla terza rima: da dante al duemila. edizione a cura di laura facini, jacopo galavotti, arnaldo soldani, giovanna zoccarato. padova: libreriauniversitaria.it. garcía lorca, federico 2009. tutte le poesie e tutto il teatro. a cura di claudio rendina e elena clementelli; edizioni integrali con testo spagnolo delle poesie a fronte. roma: grandi tascabili economici newton. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1996. a history of european versification. translated by gerald stanton smith and marina tarlinskaja. edited by gerald stanton smith and leofranc holford-strevens. oxford: clarendon press. gasparov, mikhail leonovich; skulacheva, tatiana vladimirovna 2004. stat’i o lingvistike stikha. moskva: jazyki slavianskoj kul’tury. magro, fabio; soldani, arnaldo 2017. il sonetto italiano. dalle origini a oggi. roma: carocci. oras, ants 1960. pause patterns in elizabethan and jacobean drama: an experiment in prosody. gainesville: university of florida press. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2015.2.2.03 https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/livre:du_bellay_-_œuvres_complètes,_édition_séché,_tome_3 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/livre:du_bellay_-_œuvres_complètes,_édition_séché,_tome_3 64 anastasia belousova, juan sebastián páramo rueda, paula ruiz charris pilshchikov, igor’ alekseevich; starostin, anatolij sergeevich 2009. problemy avtomatizatsii bazovykh protsedur ritmiko-sintaksicheskogo analiza sillabotonicheskikh tekstov. in: plungian, vladimir aleksandrovich (ed.), natsional’nyj korpus russkogo jazyka: 2006–2008: novye rezul’taty i perspektivy. sankt-peterburg: nestor-istorija, 298–315. rnc = the poetic subcorpus of the russian national corpus. https://ruscorpora.ru/new/search-poetic.html. ronsard, pierre de 1921. sonnets pour hélène. introduction et notes de roger sorg. paris: bossard. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/livre:ronsard_-_sonnets_pour_ hélène_-_1921.djvu ruiz fabo, pablo; bermúdez sabel, helena; martínez cantón, clara; gonzález-blanco, elena 2021. the diachronic spanish sonnet corpus: tei and linked open data encoding, data distribution, and metrical findings. in: digital scholarship in the humanities 36 (supplement 1), i68–i80. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaa035 shakespeare, william (n. d.). shakespeare’s plays, sonnets and poems. in: the folger shakespeare. ed. by barbara mowat, paul werstine, michael poston, and rebecca niles. washington, dc: folger shakespeare library. https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/ shapir, maksim il’ich 2000. universum versus: jazyk – stikh – smysl v russkoj poezii xviii–xx vekov. vol. 1. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury. shapir, maksim il’ich 2003. tri reformy russkogo stikhotvornogo sintaksisa (lomonosov – pushkin – iosif brodsky). in: voprosy jazykoznanija 3, 31–78. shapir, maksim il’ich 2009. stat’i o pushkine. moskva: jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. soldani, arnaldo 2009. la sintassi del sonetto: petrarca e il trecento minore. firenze: sismel – edizioni del galluzzo. soldani, arnaldo; facini, laura (eds.) 2017. otto studi sul sonetto: dai siciliani al manierismo. padova: libreriauniversitaria.it. switten, margaret 1985. the cansos of raimon de miraval: a study of poems and melodies. cambridge, ma: medieval academy of america. tomashevsky, boris viktorovich 1958. strofika pushkina. in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), pushkin: issledovanija i materialy. vol. 2. moskva; leningrad: izdatel’stvo an sssr, 49–184. vinokur, grigorij osipovich 1990 [1941]. filologicheskie issledovanija: lingvistika i poetika. moskva: nauka. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/livre:ronsard_-_sonnets_pour_hélène_-_1921.djvu https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/livre:ronsard_-_sonnets_pour_hélène_-_1921.djvu 65rhythm, syntax, punctuation: a distant analysis of the european sonnet wachtel, michael 1998. the development of russian verse: meter and its meanings. cambridge: cambridge university press. wilkins, ernest hatch. 1915. the derivation of the “canzone”. in: modern philology 12(9), 135–166. https://doi.org/10.1086/386980 yarkho, boris isaakovich 2006. metodologija tochnogo literaturovedenija: izbrannye trudy po teorii literatury (philologica russica et speculativa 5). moskva: jazyki slavjanskikh kul’tur. metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres: a typological overview seiichi suzuki*1 abstract. this paper provides a typological account of old germanic metre by investigating its parametric variations that largely determine the metrical identities of the old english beowulf, the old saxon heliand, and old norse eddic poetry (composed in fornyrðislag, málaháttr, or ljóðaháttr). the primary parameters to be explored here are the principle of four metrical positions per verse and the differing ways in which these constituent positions are aligned to linguistic material. on the one hand, the four-position principle works with a maximal strictness in beowulf, and to a slightly lesser extent in fornyrðislag, whereas it allows for a wider range of deviations in verse size in the heliand and ljóðaháttr. in málaháttr, however, the principle in itself gives way to the five-position counterpart. on the other hand, the variation in the metrical– linguistic alignment in the three close cognate metres may be generalised by positing the common scale, heliand > beowulf > fornyrðislag, for the decreasing likelihood of resolution, the increasing likelihood of suspending resolution, and the decreasing size of the drop. keywords: old germanic metre, metrical positions, typology, beowulf, heliand, fornyrðislag, málaháttr, ljóðaháttr 1. introduction: the metrical position as a minimal constituent of a verse it was cable (1974: 84–93) among other metrists who brilliantly brought to light the primacy of metrical positions (or members) as foundational units of old english alliterative verse: he laid out the arrangement of four metrical positions as the fundamental principle of verse composition in old english. indeed, sievers (1893: 25) had earlier rightfully conceptualised this unit (glieder) as the smallest metrical constituent, but he failed to fully work out its implications to the logical conclusion (cable 1974: 32), which cable accomplished with admirable clarity. by addressing the grouping of these smallest constituents into feet, sievers obscured, rather than clarified, their primary status in the metre * author’s address: seiichi suzuki, kansai gaidai university, 16-1 nakamiyahigashino, hirakata 573-1001, japan. e-mail: ssuzuki@kansaigaidai.ac.jp. studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 9–38 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.02 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.02 10 seiichi suzuki (cable 1974: 91). thus, cable (1974) firmly laid the foundation for old english (and old germanic by implication) metrics by his articulate formulation of the principle of four positions as its ultimate basis of versification. the principle of four metrical positions, however, differs in its exact manners of execution from one metre to another in the old germanic alliterative traditions: it prescribes versification with varying strictness and flexibility. moreover, the principle is replaced in some metres by an expanded version, one of five positions. beside the number of constituent positions specified, their identities can be different: while a binary opposition between lift (/) and drop (×) prevails, a further distinction between normal (×) and heavy (\) drops may be of significant metrical value to a differing extent. the principle of four positions is accordingly involved in parametric variations along a number of attributes, thereby accounting for the variability of old germanic metres in no small measure (section 2). the metrical position is postulated as an abstract invariant unit underlying a host of linguistic realisations which vary widely along a wealth of parameters including stress, syllable length and number, and lexical properties. equipped with this underlying unit, then, we are principally concerned with the differing ways in which the metrical position is aligned to various language materials by versification. in other words, the central issues of old germanic metrics are to account for the range and likelihood of legitimate linguistic realisations of a given metrical position according to context. thus, the varying alignments of metrical positions to language materials serve as significant parameters along which individual cognate metres differ in the evolution of old germanic versification (section 3). drawing on the analytical framework outlined above, we will provide a typological survey of the organisation of old germanic metres in their structural foundations. of central concern will be the three major metrical traditions: beowulf (beo; old english; fulk et al. 2008), the heliand (hel; old saxon; behaghel, taeger 1996), and the three eddic metres (old norse; neckel, kuhn 1983) – fornyrðislag, málaháttr, and ljóðaháttr.1 the primary purpose of this paper, then, is to offer a typological overview, rather than detailed explanatory accounts. it should be noted in parenthesis that the notion of typology just 1 the following abbreviations will be used in citation for selected pieces of eddic poetry: vsp (vǫlospá; fornyrðislag), hav (hávamál; ljóðaháttr), þrk (þrymsqviða; fornyrðislag), vm (vafðrúðnismál; ljóðaháttr), skm (for scírnis; ljóðaháttr), hym (hymisqviða; fornyrðislag), ls (locasenna; ljóðaháttr), vkv (vǫlundarqviða; fornyrðislag), hh (helgaqviða hundingsbana in fyrri; fornyrðislag), hhv (helgaqviða hiǫrvarðzsonar; fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr), hh ii (helgaqviða hundingsbana ǫnnor; fornyrðislag), gðr i (guðrúnarqviða in fyrsta; fornyrðislag), sg (sigurðarqviða in scamma; fornyrðislag), am (atlamál in grœnlenzco; málaháttr), rþ (rígsþula; fornyrðislag). for details on the textual basis of the corpus, see suzuki (2014: 1–5). 11metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres mentioned concerns not so much the one of metres from a universal perspective (e.g., lotz 1960; wimsatt 1972; fabb, halle 2008; aroui, arleo 2009), as the localised one in a strictly old germanic context. in this sense, the notion corresponds to the archaeologists’ use, rather than the linguists’: for example, the typology of anglo-saxon button brooches (suzuki 2008) or that of gold bracteates in the migration period (axboe 2004; behr 2011). 2. variation on the principle of four metrical positions in old germanic metre 2.1. the verse size while the principle of four metrical positions – itself being stochastic, rather than categorical, in nature – largely serves as a foundation for verse composition in old germanic, the exact status of the principle varies from metre to metre in its binding force, namely, the extent to which it tolerates deviations from the prescription it lays out. there are two kinds of verses inherent in old germanic metre which may potentially count as larger in size than is prescribed by the principle of four metrical positions per verse: verses extended with anacrusis on the one hand (e.g., beo 758a; see [1] below), and type d* (/ × / × ×) – or its variants, types d*1 (/ × / × ×), d*2a ((/ × / \ ×), and d*2b ((/ × / × \) in beowulf (suzuki 1996: 103–112; e.g., beo 1749a; see [1] below) – on the other, which is expanded with an additional drop standing between the otherwise consecutive lifts in type d (/ / × ×) – or its variants, types d1 (/ / × ×), d2a (/ / \ ×), and d2b (/ / × \) in beowulf (suzuki 1996: 95–103). in addition, these two expansions can be conjoined, resulting in still longer verses that could be regarded as consisting of six positions (e.g., beo 2936a; see [1] below): (1) beo 758a gemunde þā se gōda ‘then the good man remembered’ [xpxxxpx]2 (type a1 with anacrusis) beo 1749a gȳtsað gromhȳdig ‘he covets angry-minded’ [pxpsx] (type d*2a) beo 2936a besæt ðā sinherge ‘he then besieged with a huge army’ [xpxpsx] (type d*2a with anacrusis) 2 p = primary-stressed long syllable; p = primary-stressed short syllable; s = secondarystressed long syllable; s = secondary-stressed short syllable; x = unstressed syllable, long or short; # = word boundary (specifically marked in limited contexts). 12 seiichi suzuki given this range of variability, we have three parameters at hand by means of which we can differentiate the varying strictness of the principle of four metrical positions: (i) the incidence of anacrusis; (ii) the occurrence of type d* relative to type d; (iii) a combination of (i) and (ii), namely, the expansion of type d* with anacrusis.3 since the realisation of anacrusis by prefixes does not constitute an autonomous metrical position in beowulf (suzuki 1996: 337–340), and since prefixes are lost for the most part in old norse (noreen 1970: 135; russom 1998: 14, 209; suzuki 2014: 174), prefixes cannot serve as a proper indication of the extent to which the principle of four positions per verse tolerates composition of overlong verses in terms of the number of constituent verses. accordingly, anacrusis as realised by nonprefixal material, that is, independent words – as exemplified in (2) below – is the key to understanding these apparently overlong verses. as it turns out, anacrusis is more likely to occur in fornyrðislag than in beowulf, insofar as it is realised by an independent word (p = 0.002 by fisher’s exact test;4 suzuki 2014: 175–176; on the remaining, less archaic metres, see below). this significant difference demonstrates that the four-position principle is more tolerant and hence less strict in its organising power in fornyrðislag. (2) beo 1987a hū lomp ēow on lāde [xpxxpx] ‘how did it turn out to you on the journey’ (type a1 with nonprefixal anacrusis) gðr i 3.5 hver sagði þeira ‘each said of their’ [xpxpx] (type a1 with non prefixal anacrusis) fornyrðislag’s greater susceptibility to anacrusis in overall terms is also substantiated by the analogous property of type a1, by far the most frequent verse type that yields to anacrusis. as indicated in table 1, type a1 receives anacrusis 3 catalexis, that is, the composition of apparently three-position verses on the surface (e.g., sg 30.7 giallan grát ‘loud weeping’ [pxp]), keeps the verse-final drop intact in underlying representation (suzuki 2014: 185–201); accordingly, type a1(px…p), the catalectic variant of type a1, should be represented in underlying terms as / × / ×, exactly the same representation as that of type a1 (px…px). on account of the unchanged status in metrical structure, this characteristically old norse mode of composition strictly follows the principle of four positions per verse. constituting simply a marked realisation at the surface level, catalexis may accordingly be defined in terms of metrical–linguistic mapping, namely, the alignment of a verse-final drop to null language material, as will be treated in section 3.2 below. despite the formal reducibility to the full configurations, however, the catalectic variants will be excluded from consideration in the following examination, as catalexis is unknown to the west germanic metres. 4 on the use of this statistical test, see suzuki (2014: 15–17). 13metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres with a higher incidence in fornyrðislag than in beowulf, with a p-value of 0.037 insofar as the expansion is instantiated by independent words. with respect to the composition of type d* (type d*1 in beowulf; see [3] below), however, the two metres hardly differ in the persistence with which the four-position principle controls verse size: no statistical difference can be ascertained between beowulf and fornyrðislag in the incidence of the expanded configuration / × / × × relative to the basic one / / × × (p = 1; table 2). at issue here are the minimal variants px…pxx (/ × / × ×) and ppxx (/ / × ×) in which the last two positions lack a lexical stress. the heavier forms with a lexical stress, / / \ × and / / × \ – distinguished as types d2a and d2b, respectively, from the lighter one, type d1 (/ / × ×), in the metrical system of beowulf – are categorically qualified on prosodic grounds for being expanded to types d*2a and d*2b in beowulf, as will be discussed shortly. the corresponding configurations in fornyrðislag, however, cannot be categorised as analogously distinct from the lighter one. this structural disparity accordingly leaves us with the minimal forms px…pxx and ppxx that may yield to a direct comparison between the two metres on a commensurate basis. (3) beo 1840b him on andsware ‘to him in answer’ [pxpxx] (type d*1) vkv 23.1 snemma kallaði ‘early (he) called’ [pxpxx] (type d*) furthermore, beowulf and fornyrðislag are indistinguishable on statistical grounds when it comes to the implementation of anacrusis on type d*, namely, the occurrence of the minimal variant of type d* with anacrusis in which neither the penultimate nor the final drop is stressed (× / × / × ×; table 3). while beowulf attests a single instance of type d*1 with anacrusis (beo 2093a tō lang ys tō reccenne ‘it is too long to tell’) among the population of twentythree type d*1 verses, fornyrðislag gives no occurrences of the corresponding configuration in the forty-seven examples of type d* (p = 0.329). overall, then, beowulf maximally adheres to the principle of four metrical positions per verse owing to the rigorous rule-governedness to which anacrusis and type d* are subject in phonological and morphological terms. while fornyrðislag is nearly as faithful, beowulf may be characterised as slightly more conforming to the principle of four positions, as evidenced by the lesser tolerance of nonprefixal anacrusis, which must constitute a separate position even in beowulf in defiance of the principle and in contrast to the parasitic prefixal anacrusis. when all variants of type d* are taken into account, however, a radically different picture apparently emerges (table 4): beowulf is more likely to be affected by anacrusis than fornyrðislag, with a p-value of 0.002. at first glance, type d*’s higher likelihood of undergoing anacrusis in beowulf might seem 14 seiichi suzuki hardly compatible with the above conclusion that this metre maximally adheres to the four-position principle. implementing anacrusis on type d* would result in a maximal deviation from the principle by creating a six-position, rather than a five-position, verse. on closer consideration, however, this apparent contradiction proves to be far from genuine. corresponding to the organisation of type d*, the configurations subsumed under type d in fornyrðislag actually fall into three variants in beowulf, types d1 (/ / × ×; beo 345b mīn ǣrende ‘my errand’), d2a (/ / \ ×; e.g., beo 2582a wearp wælfȳre ‘he threw deadly fire’), and d2b (/ / × \; e.g., beo 1155a eal ingesteald ‘all house-property’). the latter two types are distinguished from the former by the presence of a heavy drop (\) as opposed to a normal one (×), either in penultimate or verse-final position. by virtue of this extra prominence involved, the first lift of types d2a and d2b is eligible to be expanded by encliticisation, which results in its extended alignment to a syllable sequence of a primary-stressed syllable and the following unstressed material (px…; suzuki 1996: 24–35). put another way, the first lift of types d2a and d2b is matched with the domain of the phonological phrase (suzuki 1996: 27–30; compare anderson 2011: 2008; revithiadou 2011: 1205) or of the clitic group (compare nespor, vogel 1986: 145–163; hayes 1989: 207–211), with the result that the following unstressed syllables subordinate to the preceding host do not count as autonomous positions. furthermore, as noted above, the anacrusis realised by prefixes or the negative adverb ne does not constitute a separate metrical position in beowulf on account of procliticisation (compare oe nis ‘is not’ < ne ‘not’ + is ‘is’). in fact, a total of seventeen instances of anacrustic types d*2a and d*2b are all involved in prefixal anacrusis.5 excluding the prefixal anacrusis from the count, then, we encounter the lack of significant difference between beowulf and fornyrðislag in regard to the probability with which anacrusis operates on type d* in general (p = 1; table 4). brought together, since neither of the two modes of expansion at issue incurs an addition of an autonomous metrical position in beowulf, their clustering does not lead to an expansion of a verse in terms of constituent positions. therefore, we must concentrate on the occurrence of type d*1 with anacrusis – the type without a heavy drop (× / / × ×) – in determining the vulnerability of the fourposition principle in beowulf. in this respect, beowulf is no more susceptible to the combined implementation of anacrusis and type d* 1 formation than to either of the operations implemented separately. specifically, there is no significant difference in evidence between anacrusis on type d*1 and nonprefixal anacrusis on type a1 (p = 0.140; tables 1 and 3), and between anacrusis on 5 beo 94a, 723a, 772a, 1027a, 1274a, 1451a, 1453a, 1460a, 1543a, 1610a, 1837a, 2044a, 2252a, 2367a, 2738a, 2756a, 2936a. 15metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres type d*1 and derivation of type d*1 from type d1 (p = 0.336; tables 1 and 2). accordingly, we can sustain the conclusion arrived at earlier that beowulf obeys the four-position principle with a slightly greater fidelity than fornyrðislag. table 1. occurrences of type aa1 (× / × / ×) relative to type a1 (/ × / ×) × / × / × / × / × total beowulf 44 (2.04%) 2111 (97.96%) 2155 (100%) beowulf (nonprefixal) 13 (0.61%) 2111 (99.39%) 2124 (100%) fornyrðislag 26 (1.23%) 2092 (98.77%) 2118 (100%) heliand 1105 (26.91%) 3001 (73.09%) 4106 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 84 (21.37%) 309 (78.63%) 393 (100%) málaháttr 79 (76.70%) 24 (23.30%) 103 (100%) table 2. occurrences of px…pxx (/ × / × ×) relative to ppxx (/ / × ×) / × / × × / / × × total beowulf 52 (13.20%) 342 (86.80%) 394 (100%) fornyrðislag 26 (13.00%) 174 (87.00%) 200 (100%) heliand (minimal variant) 76 (35.68%) 137 (64.32%) 213 (100%) heliand (all variants) 465 (61.18%) 295 (38.82%) 760 (100%) ljóðaháttr (minimal variant; a-/b-verse) 26 (86.67%) 4 (13.33%) 30 (100%) ljóðaháttr (all variants; a-/b-verse) 143 (92.86%) 11 (7.14%) 154 (100%) málaháttr 23 (82.14%) 5 (17.86%) 28 (100%) table 3. occurrences of type ad* relative to type d* with a focus on their minimal variants × / × / × × and / × / × × × / × / × × / × / × × total beowulf 1 (4.35%) 22 (95.65%) 23 (100%) fornyrðislag 0 (0%) 47 (100%) 47 (100%) heliand 36 (32.14%) 76 (67.86%) 112 (100%) ljóðaháttr 2 (7.14%) 26 (92.86%) 28 (100%) málaháttr 0 (0%) 23 (100%) 23 (100%) table 4. occurrences of type ad* relative to type d* (all variants) metre type ad* type d* total beowulf 18 (11.25%) 142 (88.75%) 160 (100%) beowulf (nonprefixal) 1 (0.70%) 142 (99.30%) 143 (100%) fornyrðislag 0 (0%) 67 (100%) 67 (100%) heliand 212 (31.31%) 465 (68.69%) 677 (100%) ljóðaháttr 16 (10.06%) 143 (89.94%) 159 (100%) málaháttr 11 (6.01%) 172 (93.99%) 183 (100%) 16 seiichi suzuki while beowulf and fornyrðislag are only minimally differentiated in the extent to which the principle of four positions per verse is compromised, the heliand and ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) make a conspicuous difference in this respect from the former two metres.6 first, anacrusis is more likely to occur in the heliand and ljóðaháttr than in beowulf and fornyrðislag: each of the first group differs significantly from each of the other with a p-value of less than 0.001 (table 1). the heliand in turn is distinguished from ljóðaháttr by the greater propensity for anacrusis (p = 0.017). second, as with the incidence of anacrusis, the proportion of type d* to type d is significantly higher in the heliand and ljóðaháttr than in beowulf and fornyrðislag (p < 0.001; table 2). furthermore, contrary to the likelihood of anacrusis, ljóðaháttr displays a greater preference for type d* than the heliand (p < 0.001). given that the privileged association between anacrusis and prefixes is unique to beowulf, and that the opposition between normal and heavy drops in type d is no less an exclusive privilege of beowulf, the greater susceptibility to anacrusis on the one hand and to the composition of type d* on the other justifies our characterising the fourposition principle as less compelling in the heliand and ljóðaháttr. in summary, the heliand verse is more likely than the ljóðaháttr to be expanded by anacrusis; by contrast, the ljóðaháttr is more likely to be expanded by the extra syllable of type d*. we are thus confronted with the apparently conflicting pattern, whereby the two metres are organised divergently along the two parameters – anacrusis and type d*. in this light, we need a closer inspection of ljóðaháttr, because unlike other metres, ljóðaháttr makes a categorical distinction between the a-verse and the b-verse in terms of the verse types that they are capable of accommodating (suzuki 2014: 646). specifically, the a-verse is largely limited to the configurations that begin with a lift, namely, classes a, d, and e. by contrast, the b-verse displays a marked preference precisely for those forms that tend to be excluded by the a-verse, that is, the configurations that begin with a drop, namely, classes b, c, and anacrustic verses of classes a, d, and e.7 this complementary distribution of verse types predicated on the distinction between the a-verse and the b-verse would have significant consequences on 6 we will exclude the ljóðaháttr c-verse from consideration (except in connection with the contrast with the a-/b-verse in the way marked verse types are accommodated; see section 2.2 below), as it is categorically longer than is prescribed by the four-position principle, and organised on a different formal basis (suzuki 2014: 665–760). 7 admittedly, however, the small sample of class d attested in the corpus – six nonanacrustic a-verses vs. five nonanacrustic b-verses; one anacrustic a-verse vs. four anacrustic b-verses – lacks a statistical significance (p = 0.308), despite the distribution pattern that is apparently comparable to those of classes a and e. 17metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres operation of anacrusis in ljóðaháttr: anacrusis tends to be avoided in the a-verse, and conversely to be promoted in the b-verse. the overall consequence of this trade-off is that anacrusis is as unlikely to be maximally implemented as to be fully suppressed in ljóðaháttr. more specifically, anacrusis is bound to fall short of its maximal operation, since the major source for anacrusis, type a1, occurs with by far the highest incidence in the a-verse, which is largely incompatible with the occurrence of a drop in verse-initial position. such a unique complementary organisation of verse types on the basis of the dichotomy into the a-verse and the b-verse may provide an explanatory account of why anacrusis occurs less frequently in ljóðaháttr than in the heliand, in which favorable conditions for anacrusis may apply pervasively to the whole set of verses without demonstrable distinction between the a-verse and the b-verse. also subject to the same account is the markedly lower frequency in ljóðaháttr of type ad* relative to type d* than in the heliand, with a p-value of less than 0.001: the failure to implement anacrusis pervasively in ljóðaháttr renders the composition of type ad* less likely than in the heliand. having identified the specific factor – the opposition between the verseinitial lift and the verse-initial drop – that subverts maximal implementation of anacrusis in ljóðaháttr, we might also be required to reexamine the occurrence of type d* relative to type d by contextualising it in relation to the opposition between the a-verse and the b-verse. since types d and d* are indistinguishable from each other in verse-initial position in contrast to the structural opposition between the basic and anacrustic variants in this respect, however, the factor in question has no immediate bearing on the relation between the two types. therefore, we can maintain the above observation on the larger presence of type d* in ljóðaháttr than in the heliand as a significant generalisation: the minimal variant of the expanded type is more likely to occur in ljóðaháttr than in the heliand with a p-value of less than 0.001; no less remarkably, type d* in all its manifestations appears with a significantly greater incidence in ljóðaháttr (p < 0.001). we may accordingly be justified in inferring with confidence that ljóðaháttr’s greater preference for type d*, rather than its lower incidence of anacrusis, reflects more transparently the relative prescriptive force of the four-position principle in verse composition. therefore, we may conclude that the four-position principle is less demanding and more flexible in ljóðaháttr than in the heliand. to recapitulate the varying degrees of rigour with which the four-position principle determines versification, we may posit the following scale in order of decreasing control over verse size: (4) beowulf > fornyrðislag > heliand > ljóðaháttr 18 seiichi suzuki finally, the four-position principle gave way to an alternative generalisation in málaháttr: it was replaced by the principle of five metrical positions (suzuki 2014: 467–469).8 in other words, the verse was expanded in málaháttr through an addition of a drop: the verse comprises two lifts and three drops. concomitantly, anacrusis was reconstituted as a virtually mandatory means of supplying a required fifth position, particularly for the minimal variant of type a1 (px#px; e.g., am 53.3 ótto alla ‘all dawn’; suzuki 2014: 441–445). as a consequence, type aa1 (e.g., am 5.2 oc elda kyndo ‘and kindled fire’) figures centrally at the expense of type a1 contrary to the other metres, in which the anacrustic variant stands on the margin (table 1). by the same token, type d* (e.g., am 94.2 manna tíginna ‘of noble men’) overwhelmingly occurs to the detriment of type d (e.g., am 102.3 hluti hvárigra ‘the fate of each of two’) because of its full conformity to the five-position principle (table 2). of further importance is the proportion of type d* with anacrusis to the nonanacrustic counterpart (all variants; table 4). given the difference in the canonical number of metrical positions in a verse, it seems only natural that type d* with anacrusis should be used more frequently in málaháttr than in any other metre: consisting of six positions, the anacrustic variant of type d* counts as less removed in size from the five-position canon than from the four-position one; therefore, it should be most likely to appear in málaháttr among all of the metres under consideration.9 as it turns out, however, type d* is much more amenable to anacrusis in the heliand than in málaháttr (p < 0.001; table 4). the latter in turn ranks higher than beowulf (nonprefixal; p = 0.015) and fornyrðislag (p = 0.040) in the probability of type d* being expanded with anacrusis, fully in accordance with the prediction. this unexpected relative ranking between the heliand and málaháttr seems all the more striking when we observe that type a1, by far the most productive source for anacrusis, displays an outstandingly greater preference for anacrusis in málaháttr than in the heliand (p < 0.001; table 1). such a discrepancy in implementation of anacrusis between types a1 and d* may yield to a credible account by assuming that the five-position principle functions with greater vigour in málaháttr than does the four-position counterpart in the heliand. inasmuch as implementing anacrusis on type d* results in a six-position verse, type d* with anacrusis will violate the five-position 8 on other consequences of the introduction of the five-position principle, see suzuki (2014: 429–434, 452–457, 467–469). 9 ljóðaháttr may well be disregarded here: in it, implementation of anacrusis is determined in a unique way by the complementarity of the a-verse and the b-verse, as remarked above. 19metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres principle in the same way as does the minimal variant of type a1 without anacrusis (i.e., px#px); while the latter configuration is strongly avoided in málaháttr in favour of the expansion with anacrusis in conformity with the five-position principle as pointed out above, the same verse type receives anacrusis extensively in the heliand in violation of the four-position canon (table 1); in parallel fashion, type d* is more strictly deterred from anacrusis in málaháttr than in the heliand. the contrast with the heliand thus confirms our characterising málaháttr as conforming to the verse-making principle with a greater fidelity than the heliand. since type ad* comprises six positions, the relatively tight control over this oversized configuration would mean that the five-position principle regulates verse composition more vigorously in málaháttr than does the four-position one in the heliand. 2.2. the opposition between normal and heavy drops apart from the differing degrees of deviations allowed in terms of the number of constituent positions, the principle may vary in regard to the kind of the positions it licenses in versification. more specifically, the positions are divided into two classes, strong positions or lifts (/) on the one hand, and weak ones or drops on the other. the latter in turn fall into two variants, normal (×) and heavy (\). usually, the four-position verse consists of two lifts and two normal drops; these prototypical configurations are characterised as basic types. occasionally, however, heavy drops may occur in place of the normal ones, as in types a2a (/ \ / ×; e.g., beo 626a wīsfæst wordum ‘wise in words’), a2b (/ × / \; e.g., beo 1522a grǣdig gūðlēoð ‘greedy war-song’), d2a (/ / \ ×; see above), and d2b (/ / × \; see above), which are referred to as increased types by virtue of the greater prominence concomitant with the promotion from the normal to the heavy drop. while beowulf has thus these four increased types at its disposal, the heliand has access to only one, namely, the configuration corresponding to type a2b in beowulf (e.g., hel 1032a man an mênuuerk ‘men on sin’), which should be categorised as type a2 in the absence of its mirror-image opposite, type a2a (suzuki 2004: 29–30, 66–73, 125–136). in regard to the norse metres, fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr maintain the opposition between types a2a (e.g., vsp 48.7 veggbergs vísir ‘the princes of the wall-mountain’; hav 29.4 hraðmælt tunga ‘a quick tongue’) and a2b (e.g., sg 4.3 mæki málfán ‘an inlaid sword’; skm 23.2 mióvan, málfán ‘slender, inlaid’; suzuki 2014: 43–56, 587–590), whereas the one involving types d1, d2a, and d2b is completely lost to be leveled as type d (suzuki 2014: 110–114, 624–627, 634). málaháttr is similar to the heliand in that it has access to only a single increased type, type a2 (e.g., am 20 seiichi suzuki 72.5 gœddi ocr grímildr ‘grimhild enriched us’; suzuki 2014: 448–450), corresponding to type a2b in the other two norse metres.10 furthermore, there is the reduced type (type a3; [× × / × ]; e.g., beo 1782a gā nū tō setle [xxxpx] ‘go now to the seat’), which emerges in west germanic through a demotion of the otherwise expected verse-initial lift (as manifested in type a1 [/ × / ×]) to a normal drop (suzuki 1996: 47–59). inasmuch as both the increased and reduced types are derived through an extra mechanism of transforming the default composition comprising the maximally differentiated positions, two lifts and two normal drops, they must be counted as marked configurations. these marked verse types – increased or reduced – are distributed differentially between the a-verse and the b-verse, as most eloquently testified in beowulf (suzuki 1996: 65–68, 95–110), and somewhat less conspicuously in the heliand (suzuki 2004: 66–68, 125–136) and fornyrðislag (suzuki 2014: 43–56, 110–114). regardless of the extent of differentiation, it holds generally true that the a-verse is more accommodating: the marked types are more likely to occur in it than in the b-verse on statistical grounds. of further interest, ljóðaháttr, which is organised on a radically different basis as pointed out above, displays an analogous contrast between the a-/b-verse and the main body of the c-verse, that is, the whole constituent that precedes the cadence / (suzuki 2014: 725–739): the a-/b-verse allows a wider range of verse types to appear, whereas the c-verse accommodates only the unmarked configurations. specifically, while largely displaying the same distribution pattern of verse types as evinced by the a-verse, the c-verse conspicuously diverges from it by the avoidance of types a2a, a2b, d*, and e. these four types have exclusively in common the property of being more prominent than the basic types: a heavy drop occurs (types a2a, a2b, and e); or five, rather than four, positions are involved (type d*). we are accordingly led to hold the presence of such an extra amount of prominence to be responsible for the c-verse’s avoidance of the four types in question: these four constitute precisely the whole set of verse types that are loaded more heavily than the minimal ones with two lifts and two normal drops.11 we may then conclude that the c-verse accommodates only verse configurations that comprise normal drops. 10 in addition, the heavy drop occurs as the first drop of type e (/ \ × /). in the absence of the minimally distinct configuration / × × /, however, type e cannot be identified as an increased type (suzuki 1996: 121, 135–136). 11 it should be recalled that, represented as / / × ×, type d does not contain a heavy drop in the norse metres, in distinction from beowulf, in which the three configurations – / / × × (type d1), / / \ × (type d2a), and / / × \ (type d2b) – are structurally opposed. 21metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres in summary, the four-position principle imposes a stricter constraint on the b-verse than on the a-verse in beowulf and its immediate cognate metres including fornyrðislag. similarly, it imposes a stricter constraint on the ljóðaháttr c-verse than on the a-/b-verse. normal drops are the most privileged to appear, and heavy ones are avoided, in these verses, which may accordingly be characterised as unmarked.12 3. variation in the alignment of metrical positions to language material 3.1. the lift 3.1.1. resolution prototypically, the lift is aligned to a long primary-stressed syllable (p). less typically, however, it is mapped either to a disyllabic sequence of a short primary-stressed syllable and an unstressed syllable (px) by resolution (auflösung) or to a short primary-stressed syllable (p) on its own by suspension of resolution. these two marked modes of alignment are implemented differently in individual metres. beginning with resolution, as exemplified in (5), we provide an overview of the varying incidence of resolution with reference to the first and the second lift separately (suzuki 2014: 472–473, 745–751); the first lift is more amenable to the process in general and less susceptible to syntagmatic conditioning than the second. (5) resolution on the first lift: type a1 beo 153a fyrene ond fǣhðe ‘pain and feud’ [pxxxpx] hel 2091a gumon imu tegegnes ‘of men in front of him’[pxxxxpx] vsp 47.8 sefi of gleypir ‘the kin swallows up’ (fornyrðislag) [pxxpx] am 26.3 þyti af þiósti ‘it roared out of fury’ (málaháttr) [pxxpx] hav 106.4 yfir oc undir ‘over and under’ (ljóðaháttr) [pxxpx] 12 the markedness relation between the a-/b-verse (marked) and the c-verse (unmarked; excluding the cadence /) in ljóðaháttr that is characterised in terms of their relative prominence profile thus proves to be analogous to that between the a-verse (marked) and the b-verse (unmarked) in the other metres. noteworthy further is the identical linear order involved, marked–unmarked. 22 seiichi suzuki type c beo 1188b þǣr hyre byre wǣron ‘where her sons were’ [xxxpxpx] hel 3655b te themu godes barne ‘to the son of god’ [xxxpxpx] hh 1.2 þat er arar gullo ‘the eagles screeched’ (fornyrðislag) [xxpxpx] am 71.4 er vóro sacar minni ‘that were lesser causes’ (málaháttr) [xxxpxpx] grm 35.5 enn á hliðo fúnar ‘it decays at the side’ (ljóðaháttr) [xxpxpx] resolution on the second lift: type a1 beo 2192a golde gegyrede ‘with gold prepared’ [pxxpxx] hel 4476a frêson is ferahes ‘entrap his life’ [pxxpxx] hym 34.5 hóf sér á hǫfuð up ‘lifted up on his head’ (fornyrðislag) [pxxpxx] am 35.1 hǫgni svaraði ‘hogni answered’ (málaháttr) [pxpxx] type b beo 267a wē þurh holdne hige ‘we through loyal mind’ [xxpxpx] hel 5817b endi thero uuîƀo hugi ‘and these women’s mind’ [xxxxpxpx] vm 8.2 nú emc af gǫngo kominn ‘now i have come on journey’ (ljóðaháttr) [xxxpxpx] as shown in table 5, resolution on the first lift is more likely to occur in the heliand than in beowulf in the west germanic tradition (p < 0.001). as far as the three norse metres are concerned, fornyrðislag and málaháttr, while indistinguishable from each other (p = 0.306), are more amenable to the process than ljóðaháttr (p < 0.001 between fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr; p   0.011 between málaháttr and ljóðaháttr). furthermore, beowulf as well as the heliand is subject to resolution with a greater incidence than fornyrðislag (p < 0.001). we may accordingly postulate the following scale for the decreasing likelihood of resolution on the first lift: (6) heliand > beowulf > fornyrðislag/málaháttr > ljóðaháttr table 5. resolution on the first lift metre long resolved total beowulf 5243 (72.79%) 1090 (17.21%) 6333 (100%) heliand 8836 (79.37%) 2296 (20.63%) 11132 (100%) fornyrðislag 5269 (88.30%) 698 (11.70%) 5967 (100%) málaháttr 681 (89.61%) 79 (10.39%) 760 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 1975 (92.59%) 158 (7.41%) 2133 (100%) 23metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres in regard to the second lift (table 6), too, the four-way division obtains, as illustrated by the following scale, whereby the four groups are differentiated with a p-value of less than 0.001, and fornyrðislag and málaháttr alone are indistinguishable from each other (p = 0.514): (7) heliand > ljóðaháttr > beowulf > fornyrðislag/málaháttr table 6. resolution on the second lift metre long resolved total beowulf 5016 (91.35%) 475 (8.65%) 5491 (100%) heliand 8452 (81.78%) 1883 (18.22%) 10335 (100%) fornyrðislag 5163 (99.65%) 18 (0.35%) 5181 (100%) málaháttr 749 (99.47%) 4 (0.53%) 753 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 1536 (85.19%) 267 (14.81%) 1803 (100%) a notable difference from the first lift is the relatively high frequency of resolution on the second lift in ljóðaháttr, which ranks next to the heliand. moreover, only in ljóðaháttr is the second lift more likely to be resolved than the first. this reverse proportion that is unique to ljóðaháttr is contrary to the general pattern predicated on the relative prominence of the two lifts. according to the linearity-based prominence scale, given two positions of the same kind (lifts in this case), the one standing closer to the beginning of a verse counts as more prominent (suzuki 1996: 167; 2004: 10; 2014: 11); therefore, in overall terms the first lift is loaded with greater prominence than the second one. since resolution increases prominence by alignment to a disyllable rather than a monosyllable, the inherently more prominent position is more amenable to the process; hence, it may follow that the first lift is resolved with a higher probability than the second one. in this light, ljóðaháttr defies this structurallymotivated, privileged operation of resolution on the first lift. on closer inspection, the greater incidence of resolution on the second lift in ljóðaháttr turns out to be a local property of the verse-final lift, rather than the second lift in general. as substantiated in table 7, an overwhelming majority of the resolved second lift in ljóðaháttr is instantiated by the verse-final lift, which occurs exclusively in types b and e. confronted with the more numerous occurrences of resolution in verse-final position than elsewhere, then, we may generalise that the verse-final lift – the least prominent lift in a verse – constitutes an optimal location for implementation of resolution in ljóðaháttr. accordingly, ljóðaháttr maximally diverges from the other two norse metres, which are in turn differentiated from the west germanic 24 seiichi suzuki cognates by a radically diminished operation of resolution. in other words, the traditional practice of resolution would largely have been disrupted on scandinavian soil. given that the virtual loss of resolution in fornyrðislag and málaháttr is phonologically motivated (russom 1998: 105, 117, 210; suzuki 2014: 274, 774–775, 793–794), and since ljóðaháttr must have been founded on the same linguistic basis, it may follow that the alignment of the verse-final lift to the disyllable px in the latter metre cannot properly be attributed to the inheritance of the traditional resolution in diachronic terms: this unique mapping would have arisen as an innovation at a relative late stage of the norse metrical development (for details, see suzuki 2014: 745–751, 793–794). the above account receives confirmation when we compare the incidence of resolution on the second lift excluding the verse-final one (table 8). the three norse metres are all minimally affected by resolution without a significant distinction: p = 0.539 between fornyrðislag and málaháttr; p = 1 between fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr; p  = 0.492 between málaháttr and ljóðaháttr. we may be led to conclude with added confidence that the inherited resolution would have been weakened in the norse tradition in general and all but moribund for the second lift in particular. accordingly, once we have removed the disyllabic realisation of the verse-final lift in ljóðaháttr, we may postulate essentially the same scalar distinction in implementation of resolution for both lifts in the form specified in (6) above: heliand > beowulf > fornyrðislag/ málaháttr/ljóðaháttr. table 7. resolution on the second lift depending on verse-finality metre verse-final others total beowulf 111 (23.37%) 364 (76.63%) 475 (100%) heliand 1097 (58.26%) 786 (41.74%) 1883 (100%) fornyrðislag 0 (0%) 18 (100%) 18 (100%) málaháttr 0 (0%) 4 (100%) 4 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 263 (98.50%) 4 (1.50%) 267 (100%) table 8. resolution on the second lift excluding the verse-final one metre long resolved total beowulf 3670 (90.98%) 364 (9.02%) 4034 (100%) heliand 5844 (88.14%) 786 (11.86%) 6630 (100%) fornyrðislag 4569 (99.61%) 18 (0.39%) 4587 (100%) málaháttr 747 (99.47%) 4 (0.53%) 751 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 1202 (99.67%) 4 (0.33%) 1206 (100%) 25metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres 3.1.2. suspension of resolution the polar opposite of resolution is constituted by suspension of resolution, whereby the lift is aligned to a short stressed syllable. much as resolution embodies a strengthening of the lift through an expansion in linguistic alignment, its suspension may be characterised as a weakening of the same position through a reduced alignment in prosodic terms. suspension of resolution affects primarily the following two locations: the second lift of subtype a1s (ps#px; [8]; a short variant of type a1 – hence, the label a1s – with the short second lift) and the second lift of type c (x…p#px; [10]) – where p = a primary-stressed long syllable, s = a secondary-stressed long syllable, p = a primary-stressed short syllable, x = an unstressed syllable, long or short, and # = a word boundary (as in note 2 above). (8) beo 1731b hlēoburh wera ‘stronghold of men’ [pspx] hel 792a mancraft mikil ‘a great crowd of men’ [pspx] hh ii 44.8 valdǫgg sleginn ‘with corpse-dew covered’ [pspx] (fornyrðislag) skm 24.1 ánauð þola ‘coercion endure’ [pspx] (ljóðaháttr) the configuration ps#px, the prototypical realisation of subtype a1s, occurs in individual metres with a varying incidence relative to its structural opposites, ps#pxx (type a2a with the resolved second lift), ps#px (type a2a), and px#px (the minimal and prototypical variant of type a1), as represented in table 9 (compare suzuki 2014: 246), in which anacrustic realisations are not included. compared with beowulf, subtype a1s is marginalised in the heliand, as substantiated by its much reduced frequency relative to the configurations ps#px (p < 0.001) and px#px (p = 0.016). by contrast, subtype a1s figures more prominently in fornyrðislag than in beowulf, according to the same two parameters (p < 0.001 in either case). concomitantly, type a2a becomes less vigorous in the norse metre, much as in the heliand. in other words, the proportion of the configuration ps#px to ps#px is reversed in the heliand and fornyrðislag, whereby the second lift is more likely to be realised by a short stressed syllable than by a long one contrary to the pattern in beowulf: the two metres are hardly distinguishable with respect to the relative occurrence of the two configurations (p = 0.698). what differentiates sharply between the heliand and fornyrðislag, however, is that while both ps#px and ps#px are relegated to the periphery in the heliand, only the latter loses in its relative presence; the conspicuous ascendance of the verse form ps#px may accordingly be regarded as part of fornyrðislag’s identity. as far as the composition of subtype a1s is concerned, the prototypicality of the form ps#px is largely weakened in fornyrðislag and completely subverted in ljóðaháttr. specifically, the proportion of the originally representative configuration ps#px to the marginal one px…px differs between beowulf and 26 seiichi suzuki fornyrðislag on the one hand (p < 0.001), and between beowulf and ljóðaháttr on the other (p < 0.001). moreover, the two norse metres are no less sharply distinguished on the same parameter (p < 0.001). thus, ljóðaháttr stands out by the disruption of the inherited markedness relation whereby the earlier marginal configuration is reorganised as a central variant of subtype a1s and conversely the previous prototypical variant is deprived of its representative status. in light of this reorganisation, the proportion of the configuration ps#px to type a2a (ps#px) in ljóðaháttr seems to be inherited apparently unchanged from beowulf (p = 0.344). in actuality, however, the large presence of subtype a1s as a whole relative to type a2a makes no difference between the two norse metres (p = 0.183): subtype a1s prevails in both. the invigoration of subtype a1s may therefore be characterised as a general property of the norse metrical tradition.13 the four metres are accordingly involved in the following scale in order of decreasing probability of subtype a1s’s occurrence: (9) fornyrðislag/ljóðaháttr > beowulf > heliand as it turns out, the above scale is largely the converse of the one for the likelihood of resolution (6). this complementarity is only natural, given that operation and suspension of resolution are an increase and a decrease, respectively, of prominence on the lift. table 9. occurrences of ps#px, pxpx, px…px, ps#pxx, ps#px, and px#px metre ps#px ps#pxx ps#px px#px pxpx px…px beowulf 59 29 115 877 7 0 heliand 38 3 9 949 0 0 fornyrðislag 158 0 47 1075 64 18 málaháttr 0 0 0 3 0 0 ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 5 0 18 84 26 29 turning to the variant of type c with the short second lift (x…p#px; see [10] below), we are concerned with its likelihood of occurrence relative to the longer 13 the complete absence of subtype a1s as well as of type a2a in málaháttr has independent motivations. first, neither of the types is compatible with the novel principle of five positions per verse. it may be interesting to point out that málaháttr offers a single instance of subtype a1s, which is expanded with anacrusis, however, in accordance with the new principle (am 73.3 í kné gengr hnefi ‘the trunk collapses’; suzuki 2014: 444). second, málaháttr is strictly and pervasively controlled by the canonical cadence px. since subtype a1s (and the variant of type c, x…ppx, to be treated below) ends in px, this configuration counts as less than optimal and accordingly tends to be avoided. 27metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres variant (x…p#px). the distribution of these two minimally distinct variants is represented in table 10 (compare suzuki 2014: 254). the variant with the resolved first lift (x…px#px; see [5] above), which overwhelmingly favors the long second one (p) over the short counterpart (p), is excluded from consideration. (10) beo 3014b þā sceall brond fretan ‘then fire shall devour’ [xxppx] hel 1724b sulic sint hîr folc manag ‘such people are many here’ [xxxxppx] þrk 3.7 ef ec minn hamar ‘if i my hammer’ [xxppx] (fornyrðislag) am 54.5 várom þrír tigir ‘there were thirty’ [xxppx] (málaháttr) ls 55.2 hygg ec á for vera ‘i think (thor) being on his way’ [xxxppx] (ljóðaháttr) table 10. occurrences of x…ppx and x…ppx metre x…ppx x…ppx total beowulf 261 (69.41%) 115 (30.59%) 376 (100%) heliand 455 (70.98%) 186 (29.02%) 641 (100%) fornyrðislag 279 (70.81%) 115 (29.19%) 394 (100%) málaháttr 5 (4.24%) 113 (95.76%) 118 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 146 (73.00%) 54 (27.00%) 200 (100%) as should be clear from the above table, there can be found no significant difference in the incidence of suspending resolution on the second lift of type c (x…ppx) in four of the five metres: p = 0.619 between beowulf and the heliand; p = 0.694 between beowulf and fornyrðislag; p = 0.388 between beowulf and ljóðaháttr; p = 1 between the heliand and fornyrðislag; p = 0.654 between the heliand and ljóðaháttr; p = 0.631 between fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr. the sole exception is málaháttr, which has the proportion of the short to the long second lift reversed in favour of the latter. this unique exceptionality readily yields to a principled explanation: it is due to the ubiquity of the optimal cadence px in this metre, as pointed out in note 13 above. thus, the two primary sources of suspending resolution give partially conflicting pictures. on the one hand, the probability of composing subtype a1s differs significantly: it is maximal in fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr, and minimal in the heliand, with beowulf standing in between. on the other hand, the second lift of type c is aligned to a short stressed syllable with indistinguishable probabilities in all of the four metres concerned. in other words, while there is no room for variation across individual metres in the likelihood of type c being suspended from resolution on the second lift, subtype a1s is subject to a significant range of variation in the probability of its occurrence. 28 seiichi suzuki we then encounter the following question: why are the two configurations differentiated in terms of their variability in occurrence among the four cognate metres? more specifically, why is it that the configuration x…p#px is used with a constant rate of incidence whereas subtype a1s varies conspicuously across the individual traditions, rather than vice versa? a most plausible answer may be sought in the varying extent to which the suspension of resolution in the two cases is motivated on general prosodic grounds: type c seems to be founded on invariant surface phonetic motivations. at issue is the clashing of lifts in type c, whereby the second one is eclipsed by the immediately preceding, more prominent position, which renders the following like entity less perceptible in relative terms (compare sievers 1893: 195, 199; cable 1974: 65–74; 1991: 29–30; suzuki 1996: 187–189; 2004: 208–209; 2014: 253–254). these overshadowing effects, then, reduce the viability of implementing the optimal alignment of the second lift to a long stressed syllable. the weakened perceptibility involved accordingly demotes the affected position to be realised by a less salient prosodic unit, namely, a short, rather than a long, stressed syllable. elaborating on cable’s (1991: 150) insightful observation, the metrical demotion at issue may be viewed as analogous to a variety of downstep in a tone language whereby the second of the two succeeding high tones is lowered (compare odden 1986: 363–364; gussenhoven 2004: 104; connell 2011: 833).14 since the clashing lifts as a substantive motivation for metrical readjustment should equally arise as a surface prosodic phenomenon irrespective of the underlying organisation of individual metres, suspension of resolution is naturally practiced for type c without a notable dialectal distinction. by contrast, the motivation for the composition of subtype a1s is of a different nature: it is deeply embedded into the inner metrical organisation, rather than being prompted as a natural reaction to the phonetic given of clashing lifts. subtype a1s constitutes a marked variant of type a1 which is produced by a special mechanism of derivation (for details, see suzuki 1996: 81–89). instead of aligning the second lift to a long (i.e., bimoraic) stressed syllable as is normally executed, it is secondarily associated with the second mora of the preceding drop, in addition to its immediate alignment to a short (i.e., monomoraic) stressed syllable (p). by such a double alignment to the 14 alternatively, where the second of the two clashing lifts is realised by a long stressed syllable (p), as opposed to a short one (p) through suspension of resolution, the first counterpart is promoted in prominence through alignment to a disyllable (px) by resolution, resulting in the configuration x…pxpx. this option may be compared to upstep or a high tone raising, that is, a tonal mechanism whereby one of the two succeeding high tones, or a high tone preceding a low one, is raised as a result of contrast enhancement (gussenhoven 2004: 108–110; connell 2011: 834–836). 29metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres two consecutive segments, the second lift is counted properly as bimoraic in accordance with the bimoraicity requirement otherwise breached. the motivation for this marked derivation is highly structure-dependent, and hence may readily be susceptible to reorganisation from metre to metre, depending in no small measure on the linguistic environment. as evidenced by the reduced distinguishability between increased and basic verse types, such as between types a2a (/ \ / ×) and a1 (/ × / ×), the traditional distinction between secondary-stressed and unstressed syllables would largely have been obliterated in old norse. given that syllable length is hardly of crucial importance for unstressed syllables, the privileged status of the preceding drop being long or at least bimoraic in earlier metre for the composition of subtype a1s would no longer have been respected in full in scandinavia. this weakening of the traditional convention in turn would have prompted an analogical extension of the configuration at issue, resulting in the more frequent use of the originally exceptional variant pxpx and even the creation of the maximally deviant configuration px…px (see suzuki 2014: 39–40, 274–275, 775).15 in light of the quasi universality of clashing lifts in type c, we should focus on the varied treatment of subtype a1s for determining the evolutionary trajectory of suspension of resolution in the cognate metres. in the heliand, resolution is suspended less frequently, obviously in inverse proportion to the increased operation of resolution: a disyllabic sequence of a short stressed and an unstressed syllable is treated as a single metrical unit by default. in fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr, suspension of resolution becomes widespread at the expense of implementation of resolution: no longer conditioned by the preceding drop that is occupied by a stressed syllable, resolution may freely be suspended after unstressed syllables as well. the disyllable in question is therefore normally measured as a succession of a lift and a drop. 3.2. the normal drop while the normal drop may be aligned to a varying number of unstressed syllables,16 its relative size is controlled by the linearity-based prominence scale of metrical positions (suzuki 1996: 167; 2004: 10; 2014: 11): the closer a given 15 as may be recalled (see table 9 above), only the minimal configuration pxpx is attested in beowulf. hence, it may be inferred that the longer configuration px…px would have constituted a further deviation from the prototype ps#px. 16 as argued at great length in suzuki (2014: 210–213), the drop is ineligible for resolution as a matter of principle. 30 seiichi suzuki drop is to the end of a verse, the less prominent it is. accordingly, the verseinitial drop is maximal, and the verse-final one minimal, in prominence, as is measured in stochastic terms by the differing numbers of syllables realised in each position. the overall graded distinction of drops is commonly observed within all of the individual metres under consideration. in cross-dialectal terms, however, the size of corresponding drops varies substantially. for ease of comparison, we may focus on the linguistic alignment of the verse-initial drop (types b [× / × /] and c [× / / ×], exemplified in [5] and [10] above; table 11) and the verse-final one (type a1 [/ × / ×], exemplified in [5] above; table 12), and determine their relative prominence in the five cognate metres.17 as should be obvious at first glance, the five metres seem to be divided into three groups in regard to the probability with which the minimal material (i.e., the monosyllabic drop) occupies the verse-initial drop. in fact, this observation turns out to be statistically provable. comparing the proportion of monosyllables to polysyllables in the verse-initial drop shows that beowulf and ljóðaháttr do not differ significantly (p = 0.260), nor do the heliand and málaháttr (p = 0.583); otherwise, any two of the five metres involved are distinguished with a p-value of less than 0.001. we may accordingly posit the following scale for the relative size of the verse-initial lift: heliand/málaháttr > beowulf/ljóðaháttr > fornyrðislag. the two pairs of similar metres in turn can be differentiated on the basis of the varying incidence of the two minimal realisations put together, that is, the proportion of the monosyllabic and disyllabic verse-initial drop to the longer one. specifically, the heliand and ljóðaháttr are more likely to have the position in question realised in larger size than málaháttr and beowulf, respectively, with a p-value of less than 0.001. by combining the two complementary criteria, then, we may be allowed to postulate the following scale in order of decreasing size of the verse-initial drop: (11) heliand > málaháttr > ljóðaháttr > beowulf > fornyrðislag turning to the differing ways in which the verse-final drop is realised in prosodic terms, we are struck by the null manifestation (catalexis) in fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr on the one hand (12), and the disyllabic instantiation in the heliand on the other (13). 17 since anacrusis differs widely from metre to metre in its metrical status – underlying versus derived – and frequency of usage, it cannot serve as a representative marker of the verse-initial drop. 31metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres ta b le 1 1. s iz e of th e ve rs ein iti al d ro p in te rm s of s yl la b le n um b er s re al is ed sy lla bl es b eo w ul f h el ia nd fo rn yr ði sl ag m ál ah át tr lj óð ah át tr (a -/ bve rs e) c ou nt s % c ou nt s % c ou nt s % c ou nt s % c ou nt s % 1 36 9 17 .0 2 32 6 6. 61 10 35 57 .6 9 6 4. 72 17 7 18 .6 9 2 12 53 57 .8 0 10 59 21 .4 7 67 4 37 .5 7 72 56 .6 9 43 8 46 .2 5 3 44 5 20 .5 3 11 84 24 .0 1 81 4. 52 43 33 .8 6 23 4 24 .7 1 4 90 4. 15 96 4 19 .5 5 4 0. 22 6 4. 72 88 9. 29 5 11 0. 51 68 5 13 .8 9 0 0 0 0 10 1. 06 6 or m or e 0 0 71 4 14 .4 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 to ta l 21 68 10 0 49 32 10 0 17 94 10 0 12 7 10 0 94 7 10 0 ta b le 1 2. s iz e of th e ve rs efin al d ro p o f t yp e a 1 in te rm s of s yl la b le n um b er s re al is ed sy lla bl es b eo w ul f h el ia nd fo rn yr ði sl ag m ál ah át tr lj óð ah át tr (a -/ bve rs e) c ou nt s % c ou nt s % c ou nt s % c ou nt s % c ou nt s % 0 0 0 0 0 26 8 11 .3 6 0 0 12 8 29 .2 9 1 21 11 10 0 11 54 97 .4 7 20 92 88 .6 4 30 2 10 0 30 9 70 .7 1 2 0 0 30 2. 53 0 0 0 0 0 0 to ta l 44 5 20 .5 3 11 84 24 .0 1 23 60 10 0 30 2 10 0 43 7 10 0 32 seiichi suzuki (12) rþ 11.8 þrungin dœgr ‘a full day’ [pxp] (type a1-; fornyrðislag) hh ii 8.1 þat vann næst nýs ‘that fought most recently’ [xxpp] (type c-; fornyrðislag) hav 152.4 brennrat svá breitt ‘it does not burn so widely’ [pxxp] (type a1-; ljóðaháttr) ls 11.4 nema sá einn áss ‘except for that one god’ [xxxpp] (type c-; ljóðaháttr) (13) hel 319a thiornun thînaro ‘your young wife’ [pxpxx] (type a1) hel 4741a that he im thero costondero ‘that he of the tempters’ xxxxxpxxx] (type c) the zero and the disyllabic realisation, respectively, are north germanic and old saxon metrical innovations which are linguistically motivated. of paramount importance, these deviations are matters of metrical alignment on the surface, rather than of underlying arrangement of differing numbers of metrical positions, as argued at length in suzuki (2004: 73–75, 123–124) and suzuki (2014: 185–201). the occurrences of the smaller or longer variants make a significant difference on statistical grounds: p < 0.001 between the heliand and beowulf; p = 0.002 between the heliand and málaháttr; p < 0.001 between each of beowulf/málaháttr on the one hand and each of fornyrðislag/ljóðaháttr on the other. by contrast, beowulf and málaháttr strictly conform to the absolute limitation in alignment to monosyllables (p = 1). moreover, fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr differ in the likelihood of catalexis: ljóðaháttr is more likely to be affected by the process (p < 0.001). overall, then, we are led to posit the scaled distinction in order of decreasing size of the verse-final drop, as follows: (14) heliand > beowulf/málaháttr > fornyrðislag > ljóðaháttr this scalar distinction proves to be essentially the same as that for resolvability (6): the heliand is maximally prominent, and ljóðaháttr minimally so, in the verse-final drop as in the lift. what deserves particular notice is the apparent discrepancy between the two scales, the one for the verse-initial drop (11), the other for the verse-final one (14). given that the relative prominence of metrical positions is coordinated by the linearity-based scale on the whole, we would expect them to be analogously organised: the expansion or reduction in the range of alignment would be implemented in harmony throughout the verse. the deviation from the predicted parallelism in scalar arrangement is embodied by two metres, málaháttr and ljóðaháttr. excluding these deviant metres from the scales 33metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres would result in their perfect match: heliand > beowulf > fornyrðislag. we are required then to provide explanations of why málaháttr and ljóðaháttr, rather than the other metres, apparently fail to display well-patterned behaviour. málaháttr emerges through the replacement of the four-position principle by the five-position counterpart, as treated in section 2.1 above. as a consequence of this reorganisation, the verse-initial drop is redoubled, so that types b and c are restructured as types b* (× × / × /) and c* (× × / / ×; suzuki 2014: 453–458). in this light, the larger size of the verse-initial drop must be ascribed to the doubling of an underlying metrical position, rather than the alignment of a single position to a longer stretch of unstressed syllables as in the heliand. therefore, málaháttr should be removed from the scale (11), which must be revised as follows: (15) heliand > ljóðaháttr > beowulf > fornyrðislag. the scale for the verse-final drop is no less affected by the establishment of the five-position principle. catalexis is found to be no longer compatible with the novel principle. in the earlier metre (fornyrðislag), the zero realisation of the verse-final drop requires expansion in alignment of the first one as a compensation for the reduced prominence due to catalexis (suzuki 2014: 77–80, 108). given this inherited practice, the hypothetical catalectic variant of type a1* (/ × × / ×, the five-position counterpart of type a1) would hardly be distinguished from type a1(/ × / [×]; [×] = unrealised verse-final drop) with the enlarged first drop in terms of surface realisations. moreover, it would scarcely be practical to differentiate the new configuration (type a1*-) from type a1* by a further expansion of the available drop. accordingly, málaháttr is determined as ineligible for catalexis on structural grounds, which explains why this metre is distinguished from the other two norse cognates on this parameter, as represented in the scale (14). as far as ljóðaháttr is concerned, the a-verse and the b-verse are polarised in their organisation (as mentioned in section 2.1 above; for details, see suzuki 2014: 645–652). the two verses are structured divergently by the binary-opposed verse-initial and verse-final positions, / for the a-verse and × for the b-verse in initial position, and conversely × for the a-verse and / for the b-verse in final position. furthermore, the a-verse tends to be composed in shorter size than the b-verse: two-position verses – double catalectic verses (suzuki 2014: 643) – are limited to the a-verse. in contrast, five-position verses are more strongly represented in the b-verse: anacrustic variants are more likely to occur in the b-verse, as is type d* relative to type d (suzuki 2014: 648–649). in this light, it is no wonder that catalectic verses appear in the 34 seiichi suzuki a-verse with a significantly greater frequency than in the b-verse. by opposition, the b-verse tends to be extended, particularly in the verse-initial drop, the privileged position that is maximal in its potential range of alignment. accordingly, on the one side the scale for the verse-final drop largely concerns the a-verse, and on the other the one for the verse-initial drop primarily controls the b-verse. the two scales thus relate to the two divergently composed verses, rather than the integrated pair of the a-verse and the b-verse as in the other metres, in which the two constituent verses of a line are organised in parallel fashion. the mismatch of the two scales in ljóðaháttr is therefore derived as a matter of course from the polar opposition between the two verses in metrical organisation. having provided principled accounts of the unique ways in which málaháttr and ljóðaháttr organise verse composition, we can maintain the three-way graded distinction in linguistic alignment of the drop in most general terms, as follows: (16) heliand > beowulf > fornyrðislag in this way, the drop is consistently realised in order of decreasing size in heliand, beowulf, and fornyrðislag. 3.3. the heavy drop where the heavy drop is constitutive of an increased verse type through a direct opposition to the normal counterpart (see section 2.2 above), it is typically occupied by a secondary-stressed syllable, long (s) or short (s), and occasionally by a primary-stressed one, long (p) or short (p). the second position of type e (/ \ × /), however, is unique in that it is exclusively aligned to a heavy drop: there is no legitimate configuration / × × / that would be characterised as a derivational basis for the extant type e. in the absence of the otherwise basic configuration, the second position of type e may also be filled by a syllable lacking a lexical stress, preferably a long medial syllable -x due to its closer proximity to lexically stressed syllables in terms of inherent prominence. because of such a structurally unique status, the second position of type e – with or without anacrusis – is loaded with a maximal potential for variation in linguistic alignment. given this maximal variability and also the ubiquitous presence of this type in all of the cognate metres under examination here, we may concentrate on type e in illustrating the varying ways in which the heavy drop is aligned to linguistic material (table 13). 35metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres first, resolution occurs only in the west germanic metres (beowulf and the heliand), as exemplified below: (17) beo 2661b wīgheafolan bær ‘helmet carried’ [psxxp] hel 3399a uuârsaguno uuord ‘the prophets’ words’ [psxxp] the two metres differ, however, in the incidence of resolution: in comparison with the default alignment to a long syllable, the heliand is more likely to undergo resolution than beowulf, with a p-value of 0.005. second, the heavy drop of type e may be occupied by a short syllable in beowulf, the heliand, and ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse), as follows: (18) beo 623b bēaghroden cwēn ‘ring-adorned queen’ [psxp] hel 1742a uuînberi uuesan ‘wine-grapes be’ [psxpx] hhv 25.5 hraunbúa verstr ‘the worst of rock-dwellers’18 [psxp] while the proportion of short to long syllables does not differ definitely between the two west germanic metres (p = 0.090), either is significantly distinguished from ljóðaháttr (p = 0.010 between beowulf and ljóðaháttr; p < 0.001 between the heliand and ljóðaháttr). ljóðaháttr is thus most likely to realise a short syllable as the second position of type e among the three metres involved. furthermore, the complete absence in fornyrðislag of a short syllable as a realisation of the first drop of type e lacks statistical significance, in light of p-values of 0.224 as against beowulf and of 1 as against the heliand (compare suzuki 2014: 138). rather, given a significant difference between fornyrðislag and ljóðaháttr in this respect (p = 0.002), ljóðaháttr can exclusively be distinguished by the higher likelihood of the position in question being filled by a short syllable. third, only beowulf and the heliand may align the position at issue to a syllable without a lexical stress – a long medial one (-x-) for the most part, as represented below: (19) beo 50a murnende mōd ‘morning mind’ [pxxp] hel 2259a uualdandes uuord ‘the ruler’s word’ [pxxp] by contrast, the same configuration pxx…p is scanned as type a1-, the catalectic variant of type a1, in the norse metres (suzuki 2014: 145–148). 18 it should be noted that a long vowel is shortened when immediately preceding another vowel (bugge, sievers 1891; sievers 1893: 58). 36 seiichi suzuki table 13. linguistic realisations of the heavy drop of type e according to syllable shape syllable long resolved short total beowulf 398 (95.90%) 7 (1.69%) 10 (2.41%) 415 (100%) heliand 402 (93.93%) 23 (5.37%) 3 (0.70%) 428 (100%) fornyrðislag 103 (100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 103 (100%) ljóðaháttr (a-/b-verse) 54 (90.00%) 0 (0%) 6 (10.00%) 60 (100%) 4. conclusion the principle of four metrical positions per verse regulates verse composition in beowulf, the heliand, fornyrðislag, and ljóðaháttr, while málaháttr is predicated on the five-position one. the four-position principle works with a maximal strictness in beowulf, and to a slightly lesser extent in fornyrðislag, whereas it allows for a wider range of deviations in verse size in the heliand and ljóðaháttr. in regard to metrical–linguistic alignment, and with exclusive reference to the three metres that are organised largely on the analogous basis, namely, beowulf, the heliand, and fornyrðislag, we may postulate the following scale for the decreasing likelihood of resolution, the increasing likelihood of suspending resolution, and the decreasing size of the drop: (20) heliand > beowulf > fornyrðislag in other words, given metrical positions are more likely to be aligned to more prominent linguistic material in the heliand; and conversely, they are most likely to be realised in the least salient form in fornyrðislag.19 references anderson, stephen r. 2011. clitics. in: oostendorp, marc van; ewen, colin j.; hume, elizabeth; rice, keren (eds.) 2011. the blackwell companion to phonology, vol. iv: phonological interfaces. malden, mass.: wiley-blackwell, 2002–2018. aroui, jean-louis; arleo, andy 2009. towards a typology of poetic forms: from language to metrics and beyond. amsterdam: benjamins. 19 thanks are due to two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. 37metrical positions and their linguistic realisations in old germanic metres axboe, morten 2004. die goldbrakteaten der völkerwanderungszeit: herstellungsprobleme und chronologie (ergänzungsbände zum reallexikon der germanischen altertumskunde 38). berlin: de gruyter. behaghel, otto; taeger, burkhard (eds.) 1996. heliand und genesis. 10th edn. tübingen: niemeyer. behr, charlotte 2011. forschungsgeschichte. in: heizmann, wilhelm; axboe, morten (eds.), die goldbrakteaten der völkerwanderungszeit: auswertung und neufunde (ergänzungsbände zum reallexikon der germanischen altertumskunde 40). berlin: de gruyter, 153–229. bugge, sophus; sievers, eduard 1891. vocalverkürzung im altnordischen. in: beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 15, 391–411. cable, thomas 1974. the meter and melody of beowulf. urbana: university of illinois press. cable, thomas 1991. the english alliterative tradition. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. connell, bruce 2011. downstep. in: oostendorp et al., 824–847. fabb, nigel; halle, morris 2008. meter in poetry: a new theory. new york: cambridge university press. fulk, r. d.; bjork, robert e.; niles, john d. (eds.) 2008. klaeber’s beowulf and the fight at finnsburg, 4th edn. based on the third edition of beowulf and the fight at finnsburg, ed. by fr. klaeber (1950). toronto: university of toronto press. gussenhoven, carlos 2004. the phonology of tone and intonation. cambridge: cambridge university press. hayes, bruce 1989. the prosodic hierarchy in meter. in: kiparsky, paul; youmans, gilbert (eds.), rhythm and meter. san diego: academic press, 201–260. lotz, john. 1960. metric typology. in: sebeok, thomas a. (ed.), style in language. cambridge, mass.: mit press, 135–148. neckel, gustav; kuhn, hans 1983. edda: die lieder des codex regius nebst verwandten denkmälern. 5th edn. heidelberg: winter. nespor, marina; vogel, irene 1986. prosodic phonology. dordrecht: foris. noreen, adolf 1970. altnordische grammatik i. 5th edn. tübingen: niemeyer. odden, david 1986. on the role of the obligatory contour principle in phonological theory. in: language 62, 353–383. 38 seiichi suzuki oostendorp, marc van; ewen, colin j.; hume, elizabeth; rice, keren (eds.) 2011. the blackwell companion to phonology, vol. ii, suprasegmental and prosodic phonology. malden, mass.: wiley-blackwell. revithiadou, anthi 2011. the phonological word. in: oostendorp et al., 1204–1227. russom, geoffrey 1998. beowulf and old germanic metre. cambridge: cambridge university press. sievers, eduard 1893. altgermanische metrik. halle: niemeyer. suzuki, seiichi 1996. the metrical organization of beowulf: prototype and isomorphism (trends in linguistics. studies and monographs 95). berlin: de gruyter; repr., 2011. suzuki, seiichi 2004. the metre of old saxon poetry: the remaking of alliterative tradition. cambridge: brewer. suzuki, seiichi 2008. anglo-saxon button brooches: typology, genealogy, chronology (anglo-saxon studies 10). woodbridge: boydell. suzuki, seiichi 2014. the meters of old norse eddic poetry: common germanic inheritance and north germanic innovation (ergänzungsbände zum reallexikon der germanischen altertumskunde 86). berlin: de gruyter. wimsatt, william k. (ed.) 1972. versification: major language types. new york: modern language association. ad fontes: borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse ad fontes: borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse andrei ustinov, galina babak* abstract. the essay describes an arduous process of formation of verse studies in ukraine in the early 1920s. borys jakubs’kyj’s book nauka virshuvannia [the science of versification] published in kyiv in 1922 served as the first harbinger of a new ukrainian theory of verse. in developing his science of versification jakubs’kyj relied on the instrumentarium of the proponents of the formalist method in literary studies who belonged to the petrograd society for the study of the poetic language, known as opojaz, and primarily on the concepts developed by boris tomashevskij who pretty much singlehandedly established the opojaz approach to verse theory. after the publication of jakubs’kyj’s book tomashevskij also wrote a succinct review in which he expressed the wish to see it translated into russian (which never happened). keywords: verse theory, science of versification, ukrainian poetry, literary criticism in ukraine, east slavic formalism, borys jakubs’kyj, boris tomashevskij (tomashevshky) turning and turning in the widening gyre... william butler yeats ad fontes! тобто йдімо до перших джерел, доходьмо кореня. микола зеров1 the book of the ukrainian literary scholar and critic borys jakubs’kyj (1889‒1944) nauka virshuvannia [science of versification] was released in 1922 by the kyiv publishing house “slovo”.2 with dignified modesty, the * authors’ addresses: andrei ustinov, 1363 24th avenue, san francisco, ca 94122, usa, email: abooks@gmail.com; galina babak, exc 2020 “temporal communities”, freie universität berlin, kaiserswerther str. 16–18, berlin 14195, germany, email: babakgalin@gmail.com. 1 mykola zerov: “that is, let’s go to the first sources, get to the root...” all translations from the ukrainian and russian languages are ours. 2 the book was sent to printers in december 1921. compare the announcement in the kharkiv art magazine: “the ‘slovo’ publishing house commenced printing of jakubs’kyj’s book nauka virshuvannia of about 8 author sheets in size” (shliakhy mystetstva [ways of art]. misiashnyk khudozhn’oho sektora holovpolitosvity. 2 (december 1921): 145). https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.05 studia metrica et poetica 9.1, 2022, 90–109 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.1.05 91borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse author called his work “an elementary textbook on versification”,3 however, the nauka virshuvannia turned out to be the first groundbreaking example of a consistent presentation of the theory of verse in ukrainian literary science. as the author stated in his introduction, “this little book is the first ukrainian attempt to provide, albeit a limited overview of the science of versification, and present at least the first horizons of poetic art” (4).4 the phenomenon of jakubs’kyj’s book was justified by the context of the establishing of literary scholarship in ukraine as a complex science. in the first half of the 1920s, the study of versification, invariably relegated to the theoretical category, occupied a secondary position in relation to literary criticism, which had a strictly pragmatic character, and to literary history, which appeared to be of a more applied nature (see sinchenko 2014). so, from the point of view of the latter, the publication of the nauka virshuvannia coincided with the resurgence of artistic life in kyiv after several years of war, tragedy and darkness. surprisingly, such juxtaposition of theory and practice further expanded on the literary confrontation between two cultural capitals of ukraine. the fact that jakubs’kyj’s book was published in kyiv became a point of illustration: “the same goes for theorizing in the field of poetics. kharkiv is a practitioner, kyiv is a theorist. in opposition to a small but meaningful book ‘nauka virshuvannia’ by jakubs’kyj kharkiv can only offer practical advice on how to write poetry. the critics from kyiv badly or well represent ‘scientific criticism,’ while ours are engaged in popularization. where kyiv is an organized group, it feels itself, but where its artists have to do something at their own risk, it feels confused” (dolenho 1923: 157). however, even against the background of other scholarly editions presented in the announcements of the reopening publishing houses, a monograph on the theory of verse looked a tad strange, the “slovo” publishing house has developed a lively activity in kyiv. the following things are being printed now: 1) zbirnyk na koryst’ holodaiuchykh [collection in benefit of those starving]. 3 jakubs’kyj addressed his book to “ukrainian lovers of poetry”, but at the same time saw as the task of his work, “in combining the popularity of the book with answers to the most difficult problems of modern theory of versification” (jakubs’kyj 1922: v; further on in reference to the nauka virshuvannia, we only mark the page numbers in that edition of jakubs’kyj’s book. 4 on jakubs’kyj see natalija kostenko’s introduction to the re-edition of the nauka virshuvannia: (kostenko 2007). 92 andrei ustinov, galina babak 2) b. jakubs’kyj. – nauka virshuvannia. 3) prof. a. loboda. ukrains’ka narodna slovesnist’ [ukrainian folk literature]. 4) acad. s. iefremov. kotsiubyn’skyj, krytychno-biogr. nacherk [kotsiubynskyj: a critical and biographical sketch]. 5) periodychni vydannia shevchenko ta ioho doba [shevchenko and his times: periodicals].5 in search of proper scientific instruments for his book, jakubs’kyj turned to the works of his russian counterparts, specifically adherents of the so called “formal (i. e. formalist) method”, the members of the petrograd “opojaz”, or the “society for the study of poetic language».6 first place among the formalists’ publications belonged to the works of boris tomashevskij. we cannot help noticing jakubs’kyj’s deep knowledge of tomashevskij’s concepts and theoretical ramifications, which were set out in his articles, and even in the journalists’ reports of the scholar’s public presentations.7 we can also assume that tomashevskij himself noticed a deep trail of his studies of versification in jakubs’kyj’s monograph, as he responded to its publication with his own review in the petrograd magazine kniga i revoliutsiia / book and revolution, where at that time he was a regular author: in our meager literature on the theory of russian versification, jakubs’kyj’s book is an event. written in ukrainian and addressed to ukrainian poets, it 5 shliakhy mystetstva [ways of art]. misiashnyk khudozhn’oho sektora holovpolitosvity. 2 (december 1921): 144. 6 compare an explication of jakubs’kyj’s relationship with the formalists made by one of the authors of the present article in babak, dmitriev 2021: 180–181. 7 compare the appearance of three of tomashevskij’s works on prosody in the jakubs’kyj’s “bibliografija” that supplements the nauka virshuvannia (120). moreover, it turns out in the course of the book, that jakubs’kyj was well aware of tomashevskij’s public presentations from “on the verse of the songs of the western slavs”, “given in the society of zealots of artistic literature [in fact, the ‘society of zealots of the artistic word’ ‒ a. u., g. b.] on 28 january 1916. [the report was] published in the magazine apollo 1916, no. 2;” to the “rhythm of prose”, which “was presented in the moscow ling[uistic] circle in early 1920 and in a more complete form at a meeting of the society of artistic literature at the rus[sian] inst[itute] of art hist[ory] on 26 june 1921. [...] excerpts from this talk were published in the journals zhizn’ iskisstva [life of art; then actually a daily. ‒ a. u., g. b.] in 1920, nos. 454, 458 and 459 (controversy with andrei belyj) and kniga i revolitsija [book and revolution] in 1921, no. 10–11 (controversy with valerij briusov)”. we quote the author’s descriptions after tomashevskij 1929: 327. 93borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse interprets, in fact, the theory of russian verse. the author devotes [only] about 10 pages to the special issue of ukrainian verse. according to the author’s intentions, the book should be an elementary textbook of versification. there are no such textbooks, in any way satisfactory, in russian literature. the illiterate products of brazovskij8 and shebuev do not count. shul’govskij’s chubby volume (theory and practice of poetic creativity) – the only book that teaches versification – is far from satisfactory and very chaotic. meanwhile, it is precisely the absence of a brief, elementary exposition of the principles of versification that makes researchers of russian verse wander in the jungle of indistinct concepts and unformulated problems. jakubs’kyj’s book, in spite of its elementary nature, combines the conclusions of the latest research on russian verse. the author found considerable erudition in the special russian literature on versification and tried to note all the most important modern statements in the field of metrics. true, one can reproach the author for some compiling eclecticism of presentation: not everything that modern writers write about verse deserves attention, and some things are better to be ignored, but as the first independent experience, this book is very valuable. it should be wished that the author republishes it in russian. the book is accompanied by a very valuable bibliography of russian literature on versification, which includes about 200 titles. unfortunately, the author arranged it in alphabetical order. a subject or chronological classification would be more convenient. (tomashevskij 1923a: 52). it goes without saying that before anything else, tomashevskij was attracted by jakubs’kyj’s unbiased interest in the “technical” side of the subject of his research, as well as a rather confident handling of formalist terminology. within the framework of the opojaz, the development of theoretical propositions on versification as a scientific discipline belongs almost exclusively to tomashevskij. other factors that he found intriguing were the novelty of ukrainian material, the closeness of the author’s approach to the scientific concepts of the proponents of the “formal method”, and, most importantly, the thoroughness of the study of the previously published literature on verse theory, which even caused the snide remark from the reviewer, “not everything that modern writers write about verse deserves attention, and some things are better to be ignored” (tomashevskij 1923a: 52). 8 a misprint, should be “brodovskij”. mark brodovskij (1861–1919), a journalist, compiler of popular literary manuals and reference books rukovodstvo k stikhoslozheniju so slovarem rifm dlia prepodavanija i samoobuchenija (st. petersburg, 1887, 1895, 1907) and prakticheskoe rukovodstvo k tekhnike sochinenija (st. petersburg, 1888). 94 andrei ustinov, galina babak the leading ukrainian literary-critical magazine chervonyj shliakh [red path] immediately reacted to tomashevskij’s review, “the petersburg journal kniga i revoliutsija [book and revolution] published the review of the famous specialist in rhythmics and metrics in poetry and music tomashevskij of jakubs’kyj’s book the science of versification. that review is very favorable, and expresses the wish for this book to be translated into russian”.9 respect for tomashevskij’s expertise was also manifested in the fact that the publication of his fundamental theory of literature in 1925 was almost immediately met with a thorough and yet polemical review by literary scholar borys navrots’kyj (1894‒1943) that had an intentionally long title: “formalism or subjective aestheticism. (on the book ‘tomashevskij. teorija literatury. gosizdat. leningrad. 1925’, as an attempt to sum up the achievements of lit[erary] ‘formalism’)”.10 navrots’kyj stated that “the appearance of tomashevskij’s book is not accidental” and that theory of literature “should be considered the first attempt to summarize the achievements of previous researchers, former and current participants of the opojaz – shklovskij, zhirmunskij, tynianov and others” (navrots’kyj 1925b: 205). in his subsequent monograph navrots’kyj went even further, as he defined tomashevskij’s book as a sort of “crown” of the petrograd “formal school”, in his words, theory of literature is “the result of everything that we had in the previous studies of zhirmunskij, shklovskij [and] tynianov” (navrots’kyj 1925a: 122). assessing the release of nauka virshuvannia as a significant event in philology, tomashevskij paid special attention to the practical orientation of jakubs’kyj’s monograph, “written in ukrainian and addressed to ukrainian poets, it interprets, in fact, the theory of russian verse. the author devotes [only] about 10 pages to the special issue of ukrainian verse (tomashevskij 1923a: 52).11 jakubs’kyj himself noted that within the ukrainian tradition, versification as a scientific discipline had no previous precedents: “... the 9 chervonyj shliakh 3 (june 1923), 276. the monthly started being published in kharkiv in april 1923 in place of the closed shliakhy mystetstva. the editors clearly outlined the “path” of chervonyj shliakh, presenting it as “a kind of ukrainian krasnaja nov’ [red virgin soil]”, meaning a well known moscow magazine edited by aleksandr vorovskij (chervonyj shliakh 11/12 (1924), 265). 10 chervonyj shliakh 5 (1925), 205–209. see, also the translation of navrots’kyj’s essay into russian (babak, dmitriev 2021: 542‒554). 11 all the more inappropriate is the annotation in the recent compilation of mykhajl’ semenko’s works in russian, that describes jakubs’kyj, as the “author of a number of works, including the study nauka ukrainskogo stikhoslozhenija [the science of ukrainian versification] [sic!]” (semenko 2016: 367). 95borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse ukrainian reader will have to turn to russian literature, as the most accessible and closest in terms of the principles of versification” (2). therefore, the nauka virshuvannia was a book that discussed both russian and ukrainian verse. and the “10 pages” which tomashevskij had specifically mentioned, appeared to be a crucial moment for the foundation of ukrainian science of versification. although nauka virshuvannia was set by jakubs’kyj as a propaedeutic tool along with some other books on how to write poetry,12 it was the first of its kind to introduce and establish the theory of verse as a scientific discipline in ukraine. the embarrassment of local literary criticism in matters of versification, which preceded nauka virshuvannia, was illustrative in the example of andrij nikovs’kyj’s response to the book review section of the first issue of muzahet, a “monthly of literature and art” (kyiv, 1919). noting that jurij mezhenko’s review of pavlo tychyna’s poetic debut of 1918 soniashnі clarnety [the clarinets of the sun] “already reads like a new word in ukrainian [literary] criticism, with a fresh tone, with a high level of appreciation of a critic-reader, which is actually necessary to approach the works of the new day”, when it came to the “technical” aspects of reading poetry, nikovs’kyj experienced vicissitude and cried for help: however, ivanov-mezhenko’s mathematics, when he tries to do a chemical analysis of one poem with the moving, visual, olfactory, etc. images, does not yet speak to the heart. and even less (in mezhenko, i can miss it) ulrich stuttner’s article, i believe with the revolutionary drawings of the meter by dmytro zahul.13 oh, well – pictures, but what do they mean and what do they say? to 12 compare an observation made by one of the authors of the present article: “in the first half of the 1920s, there appeared a number of theoretical articles and textbooks on the study of poetry. among them (we are talking only about individual editions) are stepan haevs’kyj’s textbook theory of poetry (1921), maik johansen’s studybook elementary laws of versification (1921), valerjan polishchuk’s practical aid how to write poetry (1921) [...]. the first thing to notice is the genre of these books. almost all of them are called either ‘studybooks’ or ‘practical aids’, which emphasizes their applied nature. their main goal is to teach young ukrainian authors ‘how to write poetry’ and thus raise the level of national literature, thereby ‘modernizing’ it” (babak, dmitriev 2019: 161–162). 13 it should be noted that soon enough the poet dmytro zahul published his own “textbook” with a preface by no one but jakubs’kyj: poetyka. pidruchnik po teorii poezii (kyiv: knyhospilka, 1923). compare mykola zerov’s observation about the state of ukrainian literary criticism in his letter to ieremija ajzenshtok on september 30, 1926: “and the fact that it is more pleasant for me to read shklovskij than koriak, and ejkhenbaum is twenty times more pleasant for me than zahul. this is because shklovskij, ejkhenbaum excite thinking, stimulate it, sharpen my 96 andrei ustinov, galina babak tell the truth, i do not understand. to be honest, i will copy this wisdom for my readers. this is what is drawn: ∪‒‒∪‒‒∪‒‒∪‒‒∪∪ ∪‒‒∪‒‒∪‒‒ ∪‒‒∪∪∪‒‒∪∪∪‒‒∪∪ ∪‒‒∪‒‒∪∪ ∪‒‒∪‒‒∪‒‒ and this is what is added: “the first line begins with iambs, preserving dactyl in the rhyme. the second line is identical to the second line of the first stanza. but the third line has a completely new pattern. it deviates from iamb”... et cetera. no text. what is it about? and if all this was written not for such ignoramuses as for example me, the sinner, so why the gallant ulrich stuttner ended his article with a stenciled statement that d. zahul’s “undoubtedly has an honorable place among our poets of current times”. honorably. there should be no more honorable places... it is the old father-in-law who loves honor, but it is the young son-in-law who loves to take it. let him take it. (nikovs’kyj 1919: 1592)14 unlike contemporary literary criticism, which regarded the verse peculiarities of poetic production solely as a manifestation of creative preferences, jakubs’kyj approached versification as a science with a real scholarly determination. his ideas on the theory of verse come unbidden, even, as he noticed in his autobiography, “from the very first years of my student life, i focused on questions of methodology and theory of literature” (sami pro sebe 2015: 476). thus he became one of the first proponents of formalism in ukraine and one of the first to apply the “formal method” in practice, consistently using taras shevchenko’s poetic heritage as primary material for formal analysis, starting with the 1921 article “the form of shevchenko’s poetry” (jakubs’kyj 1921).15 perception of literary fact” (zerov 2015: 659). see zahul’s article on the same topic: “pro nashu krytyku” (pluzhanyn 6/7 (1926), 5–9). 14 compare jurij mezhenko-(ivanov)’s review of zahul’s book of symbolist poetry na hrani (kyiv, 1919) in: knyhar’ 22 (june 1919), 1494–1497. 15 see, also jakubs’kyj’s short review of duma pro tarasa shevchenko (odesa, 1917) in knyhar’ 21 (may 1919), 1420; and, more importantly, his subsequent articles where he looks at the formal aspects of shevchenko’s poems: “iz studij nad shevchenkovym stylem” (shevchenkivs’kyj zbirnyk. t. 1. edited by p. fylypovych. kyiv: sorabkop, 1924, 58–77); “do problemy rytmu 97borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse the very title of jakubs’kyj’s book nauka virshuvannia, which appealed simultaneously to horace’ de arte poetica [science/art of poetry] and valerij briusov’s nauka o stikhe [science of verse], was intended to present versification as a combination of the art of the word as well as the poetic technique, that is, as a subject the study of which deserved special attention. “versification, like every art”, cautiously stated jakubs’kyj, “has its own technique that is quite complex... the magic of poems lies not only in their good content, but rather in a special form, which actually makes them poetry and distinguishes them from prose” (2). he found justification for such a scientific attitude in the evolution of poetic means, in the “brilliant development of our poetry”, which is reflected in the appearance in ukrainian poetry of “new approaches, sophisticated technical means, luxurious and masterful formal achievements” (4).16 according to jakubs’kyj himself, the main principles of the nauka virshuvannia were developed throughout the preceding 12 years of his studies, as he explained in the autobiography, “my first student work was a report back in 1911 on the topic, ‘the latest methods of studying poetic works based on andrej belyj’s book symbolism.’ i defended my thesis on ‘nikitin’s verse’ in 1913. my [gold] medal work was to be on ‘the evolution of verse in new russian literature’, but it was not completed due to military conscription. in shevchenkovoji poeziji” (shevchenko ta joho doba. zbirnyk 2. kyiv: knyhospilka, 1926: 70–83). 16 at that time ukrainian literary critics paid close attention to the achievements of the autochthonous russian-language poetry. for example, “benedikt livshits’ two books of poetry were released in kyiv: iz topi blat and bolotnaja meduza. the books are interesting in content and well published” (chervonyj shliakh 2 (1923), 269). however, bolotnaja meduza [the marsh medusa], which was supposed to be released, was never published unlike iz topi blat: stikhi o petrograde [from the swampy marshlands: poems about petrograd], with the cover art by mark kirnarskij (kyiv, 1922). a different issue of the same magazine reported on grigorij petnikov’s new book of poetry bajun and his editorials work on the anthology molodaja germanija [young germany] (chervonyj shliakh 8 (1923), 281). a very important announcement appeared in yet another issue: “russian poet aleksandr gatov prepared for publication his second book of poems pojushchie derev’ja and together with ‘pluzhanyn’ [the leader of the literary group ‘pluh’ [plow]. – a. u., g. b] serhij pylypenko – antologija ukrainskikh poetov v russkikh perevodakh” (chervonyj shliakh 4/5 (1923), 251). in his review of this edition, ahapij shamraj criticized the editors for their disorderly presentation of contemporary ukrainian poetry, which deprived readers of the opportunity to appreciate the formal lyrical achievements of recent years: “however, modern poems will not make the impression that the editors hope for, mixing the works of representatives of various schools, scattering the works of old poets everywhere – thus they neutralized the brightest achievements, both in form and content of the strongest representatives of the contemporary poetry. [...] that material had to be arranged chronologically, with a concentration on certain schools and movements” (chervonyj shliakh 4/5 (1924), 295–296). for more on the history of this anthology, which opened with a preface by the famous literary critic oleksandr bilets’kyj / aleksandr beletskij (see pashko 2016). 98 andrei ustinov, galina babak 1919 i became a full member of the ukrainian scientific society in kyiv, then of the historical and literary society at the academy of sciences, where i presented my papers ‘the evolution of rhythm in poetry’ and ‘the sociological method in the history of literature’” (sami pro sebe 2015: 476). jakubs’kyj’s book is structured around five main parts, which are: “theory of verse rhythm”, “classical (metric) versification”, “new (tonic) versification”, “poetic euphony”, and “strophics”. each of these parts contain several individual sections that are properly marked with the paragraph sign and numbered. the structure of the nauka virshuvannia splendidly reflects the widening gyre of the theory of versification being established in ukraine as a scientific discipline. in the début chapter “the theory of poetic rhythm” the author turns to the study of the controversial provisions in the contemporary theory of versification. the first of them is the ratio of the musical rhythm and the poetic rhythm. jakubs’kyj rightly notes that the “auditory nature of poetry” is exactly the feature that makes verses related to music, however, as he states, “until now, many researchers of rhythm believe that there is no difference between the laws of musical rhythm and poetic rhythm, that there is only one rhythmic principle” (9). jakubs’kyj confirms this thesis by referring to the works of rudolf westphal, piotr sokal’sky, nikolaj shul’govskij and andrej belyj (10). the latter indeed paid attention to this problem but lingered on the statement that it appeared to be, “a matter so complex that we do not have enough experimental data to have a complete picture of this relationship” (belyj 1910: 555). in his own verisimilitude, jakubs’kyj wrote that musical rhythm is based on the concept of tact, “a unit of time, which, sometimes combining several sounds, remains unchanged and constant all the time (at least for a certain interval of a piece)” (11). in his opinion, classical versification, based on vowel length, is an example of the exact following of the laws of musical rhythm (the division of time into equal measures). however, the modern system of versification does not provide such an opportunity, since, firstly, it is based on the alternation of stresses in the verse line. secondly, caesura and logical pauses break the uniformity of the beat. finally, a syllable can consist of both vowels and a vowel and several consonants, and that distinctly affects the length of time required to pronounce it. jakubs’kyj also distinguished three degrees of rhythmization: the simplest is the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables (“arses and theses”), the more complex is the alternation of lines of the same length (with approximately the same number of feet), and, finally, the highest is the alternation 99borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse of stanzas in a poem. thus, a foot,17 a verse line and a stanza act together in serendipity as rhythmical elements of any poetic text. jakubs’kyj assigned a separate place in the system of rhythmization to grammar, which “helps to feel a verse line as a separate rhythmic member: most often a verse line is a complete grammatical sentence”, and “a stanza [usually] provides a completion to a complex sentence, to a thought” (23). as is known from the roman jakobson and piotr bogatyriov’s survey slavianskaia filologija za gody vojny i revoliutsii [slavic philology in russia during the years of the war and revolution] (berlin, 1923),18 the issue of the 17 jakubs’kyj draws attention to the fact that some modern scholars of verse reject the concept of the foot, e. g. valerjan chudovskij or evgenij perlin: “from our point of view, this is a temporary fuse, as a reaction to the ‘school routine’. the foot exists in versification as a conditional, abstract concept” (21–22). perlin’s lectures on versification in the kyiv “workshop of the artistic word” was mentioned by the poet-constructivist nikolaj ushakov in his memoirs “kiev i ego okrestnosti”: “the whites took kharkov. behind kiev, the territory of gangs began. one of the regiments revolted in the city. kiev was under martial law. ehrenburg was repeatedly arrested for walking the streets late and was invariably released as a poet. he founded a workshop of the artistic word, where he lectured, mainly himself, about whatever he had to, about children’s poems, about assonances, about piety and robbery of françois villon, about the good love of the archpriest from ita, about spells for a toothache, about the fact that bal’mont reminds of a parrot, and that it is impossible to read gumiliov, since briusov alone is quite enough. e. i. perlin taught versification. makkavejskij read his work on pseudo-classicism from a huge folio. mandel’shtam also wanted to teach the students, but was terrorized by apukhtin’s aficionados. the temperature of kiev’s poetic life invariably rose. in 1919, the almanac hermes was published, in which aseev, petnikov and shklovskij took part” (ushakov 1929: 122‒123). 18 it should be noted that despite periodic book announcements about émigré book publishing activities, for example: “the writer b. pasternak prepared a volume of poetry and prose, which is published in berlin (‘helicon’ publishing house). the same publishing house releases the book by f. sologub, ‘baryshnia liza’ and v. shklovsky’s ‘khod konia’” (chervonyj shliakh 1 (1923), 271); or: “the ladyzhnikov publishing house (in berlin) is releasing maksim gor’kij’s memoirs in german translation” (chervonyj shliakh 5 (1925), 189), – getting such publications to ukraine was sporadic and clearly problematic. probably it is for this reason that the berlin editions of the “opojazovtsy” (shklovskij’s khod konia, jakobson’s noveishaja russkaja poezija, as well as jakobson and bogatyriov’s slavianskaja filologija v rossii za gody vojny i revoliutsii, an offprint from the journal slavia) remained out of the scope of ukrainian critics and reviewers. a different picture was observed in relation to the publications originating in czechoslovakia; for example, “no. 3/4 of the magazine new russia (das neue russland), which is being edited in prague, published a very interesting article about two of our ukrainian artists – babis and glushchenko” (chervonyj shliakh 7 (1924), 246); and a corresponding review of the same issue of the new russia magazine (chervonyj shliakh 8/9 (1924), 337). compare also: “a short anthology of contemporary ukrainian poetry is being prepared for publication in prague. participating in translations are: najman, gora, gozhejshi, bibl, bednash and others. edited by bila-krynytsia and najman” (chervonyj shliakh 8/9 (1924), 328); etc. 100 andrei ustinov, galina babak interdependence of metrics and syntax was raised a few times at the moscow linguistic circle (mlk), where two separate meetings were entirely dedicated to this scientific problem. at the meeting of june 1, 1919, osip brik presented his paper “on poetic rhythm”, and three weeks later, on june 28 sergei bobrov spoke at the mlk on the “establishment of ‘influences’.”19 in addition, in 1920, at one of the gatherings of the opojaz in petrograd, brik read another paper, “on rhythmic-syntactic figures” (jakobson, bogatyriov 1923: 24–25), which was highly praised by boris ejkhenbaum in his essay “theory of the ‘formal method’”, first published in ukraine in ukrainian translation,20 as one of the distinctive works of formalism that served as a beginning for the “development of the ‘problem of verse’ as such”, and was supposed to lead, if published, “to new theoretical views on verbal art [and] on the nature of poetic speech” (ejkhenbaum 1987: 394).21 the next topic that jakubs’kyj approached in the nauka virshuvannia was the relationship between rhythm and meter, or to be precise, the peculiarities of this relationship. noting that, “in the last 10‒12 years, the terms ‘rhythm’, ‘rhythmics’ have begun to be used in an unusual and perhaps inappropriate way” (29), which, in turn, had caused terminological confusion, he pointed out the following: “this confusion concerns the relationship between the terms ‘rhythm’, ‘rhythmics’, and ‘meter’, ‘metrics.’ the guilty party are the new russian scholars of versification” (29). according to his assumption, by having adopted greek terminology (where meter means “measured, rhythmic poetic language”), the traditional school of versification studies reduced the rather complicated concept of poetry to the “simple counting of feet”, while “not paying attention to the fact that the complex variety of our verses does not allow itself to be squeezed into the harsh schemes of these meters” (29). 19 for more details on the mlk meeting on june 1, 1919, see pilshchikov, ustinov 2020: 392‒395. the minutes were first in pilshchikov 2017: 161‒175. for more details on the mlk meeting on june 28, 1919, see pilshchikov, ustinov 2020: 400. 20 that essay was published in ukrainian in chervonyj shliakh in 1926. a year later ejkhenbaum included “theory of the ‘formal method’”, this time in original russian, in his collection literatura: teorija. kritika. polemika (leningrad: priboj, 1927). 21 despite ejkhenbaum’s comment that brik’s work remained “not only unpublished, but, as it seems, even unwritten», in “on rhythmic-syntactic figures” he, “demonstrated the presence in verse of stable syntactic formations inextricably linked with rhythm. thus, the concept of rhythm lost its abstract character and entered into connection with the very linguistic fabric of the verse—with the phrase. metrics receded into the background, retaining the importance of literacy, the alphabet” (ejkhenbaum 1987: 394). 101borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse jakubs’kyj emphasized that this problem was pointed out by andrej belyj, who defined rhythm as, “symmetry in meter violations, i. e., some complex uniformity of digressions”.22 such understanding of rhythm was adopted by almost everyone who researched russian versification, in particular valerij briusov and nikolaj nedobrovo, both of whom defined meter as the main concept, and rhythm as a secondary one. jakubs’kyj disagreed with this approach on two points. first, he noted that this is an erroneous perspective, since “metrical verses” are also rhythmical: “rhythm is the main necessary concept in verses. [...] by ‘meter’ they [greeks] understood the regularity of the poetic text, the rhythm of words, while by ‘rhythm’ – the order of the musical melody within a timeframe. [...] therefore, it would be possible in versification not to use the term rhythmics at all. metrics is the [veritable] science of poetic rhythm” (31‒32). then jakubs’kyj rightly pointed out the methodological fallacy of both belyj and briusov, for whom meter was a generic concept, and rhythm was a specific one. following his plausible supposition about this mistake which he expressed in the essay “form of shevchenko’s poetry” (jakubs’kyj 1921: 58), he then stated in the nauka virshuvannia that everything is quite the opposite: “rhythm is a division into parts, orderliness, regularity; meter is a division into regular, equal parts, which is not always the case in verses. rhythm is a generic concept, and in relation to it a meter is a specific one” (32).23 this statement established that the meter should be considered as some ideal scheme for the alternation of stresses in a verse line (exactly like it was viewed by belyj or a “recovered formalist” viktor zhirmunskij.) therefore, jakubs’kyj resolutely suggested, “to use the words ‘rhythmics’, ‘rhythm’, ‘rhythmic’ wherever talking about the regularity of verses, while the terms ‘meter’, ‘metrical’ should be used to designate correct [meaning, regular. – a. u., g. b.] rhythms” (32). despite the correct definition of the relationship of rhythm and meter (as generic / specific), the author of the nauka virshuvannia made a mistake, insisting on their equivalence: “you may use the terms ‘meter’ and ‘rhythm’ as comparable concepts” (32).24 22 andrej belyj defined meter as follows: “under the meter of a poem, we mean the connection of feet, verse lines and stanzas with each other” (belyj 1910: 396). 23 jakubs’kyj reinforces his thesis by making a reference to the prominent philologist faddej zelinskij (tadeusz zieliński) in apollon 2 (1916), 55. 24 compare his arguments in the article “novyj perevod ‘buch der lieder’ gejne”, which was written for the publication of the translation of heine’s book into ukrainian: hajnrykh hajne. knyha pisen’. pershe povne vydannia v perekladi d. zahula i v. kobylians’koho. kyiv, 1919 (knyhar’ 19 (march 1919), 1171–1178). 102 andrei ustinov, galina babak having adopted such a terminological attitude, jakubs’kyj extrapolated this inaccuracy to the next part of his book. thus, describing the system of classical versification, he replaced the concept of meter with the meaning of rhythm: “... the categories of rhythms we have are the same as those of the greeks: disyllabic [binary], trisyllabic [ternary], tetrasyllabic, with different alternations of arses and theses. we took the names for these rhythms (= meters) from the greeks, replacing everywhere in our concepts the principle of length with the principle of stress” (44). after jakubs’kyj described the main classical meters and stanzas, he emphasized the practical significance of the theory of metrical versification for modern studies, to which he devoted a special section, entitled “the significance of classical versification for our versification”. here, due to the foregone conclusions, the author’s intentions may not seem entirely clear, however, they can be explained by taking into account that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the need to focus on the classical system of versification served as a cause of justified doubt. for example, the poet bozhidar (bogdan gordeev, 1894‒1914), a follower of velimir khlebnikov, wrote in his literary manifesto raspevochnoe edinstvo vsekh razmerov [chanting unity of all meters]: “the oldfashined-new idea of the co-orderliness of russian and greek meters seems to me a deeply-fallacious undertaking, even by omitting the rooted difference between the pronouncing of the vowels in these speeches, because the abundance of greek names for feet are the remains of a folk, local or playful birth of verse, crushed and sifted into long lists of meters by numerous idle scribes” (bozhidar 1916: 14).25 in the next part of his book, “new (tonic) versification”, jakubs’kyj proposed to distinguish between two prosodic principles, or principles of rhythmization: the metric principle (the alternation of long and short syllables) and the tonic principle (the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables). ukrainian verse is tonic, and within it, two systems of versification predominate: the syllabic system and what he refers to as the metro-tonic (i. e. syllabic-accentual) system. both of them realize “the general tonic way of rhythmization of the word, part of the new tonic versification of contemporary times” (52). at the same time, metric (i. e. classical) versification provided an inventory of meters and a classification of feet. jakubs’kyj believed that “under the influence of the metric and metro-tonic systems, syllabic versification began to assimilate the principles of rhythmization through alternation of stresses” (78). 25 here we retain bozhidar’s “futuristic” orthography and punctuation. 103borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse by indicating that the rhythm of a tonic poem is based on stress, jakubs’kyj noted that it created “more and more new rhythms” (61). he explained this phenomenon referring not only to such elements of rhythm as the number of syllables in a verse line, alternation of stresses, and catalexis, but also the number of words in a verse line, their lengths, and “small caesurae” (i. e. wordboundaries; georgij shengeli’s term). following tomashevskij, the author of the nauka virshuvannia succinctly pointed to the role played by enclitics and proclitics , “words that are combined in the language with the word that stands next to it and have a common stress with it” (64). it is not a coincidence then that, for jakubs’kyj, “the best and most recent view of the caesura” (61) was offered in tomashevskij’s “the rhythm of iambic tetrameter based on observations of the verse of evgenij onegin” (first published in 1917), in which tomashevskij simultaneously examined “the following rhythmic phenomena: 1) the distribution of stresses in a verse line and 2) the arrangement of word-boundaries” (tomashevskij 1929: 94). in his paper “on the verse of the songs of the western slavs” (1916), tomashevskij, citing the works of valerian chudovskij, spoke of a new trend in versification studies, calling for the subordination of the concept of rhythm to declamation, and the concept of “foot” to be replaced by “skaz” [recitation]: “i will note a different trend in modern literature on rhythm, this is a trend that builds verse on ‘skaz’. they say that a verse line breaks up not into feet, but into words, verse lives as ‘skaz’. this makes the science of rhythm dependent on the study of the sound forms of living speech. only a reciter can know anything about rhythm” (tomashevskij 1929: 74–75). however, tomashevskij refuted this trend for the reason that “until now it was considered unclear how poetry should be read”, whereas jakubs’kyj saw a pragmatic component in it: “the real rhythm of a poem will depend on the words that make it up” (67). he cites an example: an iambic line may sound as a line with a “trochaic rhythm” if all its words except the first monosyllable are disyllabic paroxytons (66; compare tomashevskij 1923b: 45–46). jakubs’kyj paid special attention to ukrainian versification. he took the classification proposed by stepan smal’-stotskyj and fedir (theodor) gartner (smal’-stotskyj, gartner 1914: 171‒191) as the basis for his theoretical constructions and identified three types of rhythm that are characteristic of ukrainian poetry. the first type is based on the rhythm of folk songs, mainly that of kolomyjkas; the second type is syllabic verse, which developed under the influence of polish versification; and the third type is metro-tonic verse, which developed under the influence of russian versification. to these three types jakubs’kyj added vers libre or “free verse”, which he considered to be the result of a struggle “with all sorts of metrical bonds” (79). 104 andrei ustinov, galina babak using vladimir perets’ essay “on the history of ‘little russian’ [ukrainian] literary verse” as a foundation for his theoretical constructs, jakubs’kyj wrote that ukrainian versification altogether came from poland. therefore, the first ukrainian poems were of a syllabic nature, but fell under the influence of folk poetry. in turn, “such elements of artificial verse as the number of syllables, which is the same in the adjacent lines, caesura, systematic rhyming could not but influence folk poetry” (77), and this led to both the “tonicization” of syllabic poetry and the “syllabization” of folk songs. “the result of all these processes”, explained jakubs’kyj, “was that classical ukrainian verse, shevchenko’s verse, can be considered both folkloric and syllabic” (77). the author of the nauka virshuvannia defines kolomyjka verse as follows: “every verse line contains four tacts, each tact contains four syllables of equal length, only the last tact of each verse line contains two double-length syllables, and they are rhymed” (73), according to the scheme: õõõõ õõõõ õõõõ àà õõõõ õõõõ õõõõ àà then he cites the polish-ukrainian folklorist czesław nejman’s definition of kolomyjka as having a [(8+6) + (8+6)]-syllable formula (73). these definitions are similar to the ones accepted later. kiril taranovski defined it as a 8+6-syllable verse with a tendency toward a trochaic distribution of stresses (taranovski 1953/1954: 178). modern ukrainian folklorist marko plisest’kyj defined kolomyjka as “a rhymed couplet, in which the verse lines are divided by two caesurae into three cola: of four, four and six syllables” (plisestkij 1966: 665). jakubs’kyj observed that the kolomyjka verse is the “basic, dominant rhythm” that shevchenko used in “58% of all the poems” included in kobzar (73). later taranovski confirmed this figure but added an important caveat: “...this 2:1 ratio in favor of kolomyjka verse is not valid for all periods of shevchenko’s work. ...in the first period of shevchenko’s oeuvre [1838–1845], kolomyjka verse is ten times as frequent than iambic verse; in the second period [1846–1850], shevchenko uses both types of verse almost equally, whereas in the third period [1857–1861], iambic tetrameter is three times as frequent than kolomyjka verse” (taranovski 1953/1954: 179). the most interesting episode in this chapter of the nauka virshuvannia appears to be the conclusion that jakubs’kyj came up with when answering the question, “which of these systems is the most natural for ukrainian versification, which can be considered the essence of ukrainian versification?” 105borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse (79). as a possible solution, he proposed “the latest theory of ‘rhythmic unity” of all systems of versification” (79), which turned out to be the bozhidar’s concept of raspevochnoe edinstvo [chanting unity]. a native of kharkiv and a futurist, bozhidar set forth this concept in his eponymous book issued posthumously by sergei bobrov through his publishing house “tsentrifuga” [centrifuge] in 1916. however, jakubs’kyj made a certain reservation, observing that “chanting unity” is most certainly, “an incredibly valuable book, but full of methodological and terminological above-mentioned mix-up” (79). bozhidar’s concept was based on the notion that all meters tend to unite in a common rhythm (“chant”): “a foot, a verse line, an -aine [‘stishie’, a group of lines], a poem – by their likeness are transformed into growing engines of a single spiritual moveme [‘dvig’] of the creator. all feet (meters), and therefore verse lines, -aines, poems are thrown into the unity of the creative moveme: the entire moveme task of creativity rushes into the search for a certain single meter – the charter of that wondrous decorum of being that is the perfect universe...” (bozhidar 1916: 56). jakubs’kyj found unexpected confirmation of this assumption in the phenomenon of taras shevchenko, who “as early as the middle of the 19th century, with extraordinary, unheard-of ease, in the same poem, moved from one system of versification to the second, from the second to the third, while maintaining that brilliant ‘rhythmic unity’ which is inherent in any integral work of art” (81). he explained that ukrainian verse is tonic verse based on the coexistence of these versification systems and “now that we have in front of us, in the latest theory [of bozhidar. ‒ a. u., g. b.], the newest principle of ‘rhythmic unity’, we can only be proud of the fact that we have never closed ourselves within the framework of one, always and invariably narrow system” (81). in the fourth part of the nauka virshuvannia, dedicated to “poetic euphony”, jakubs’kyj drew attention to the melodiousness of the ukrainian language, defined the concepts of alliteration, assonance and dissonance, and gave a classification of rhymes following valerij briusov’s nauka o stikhe [science of verse], which he considered “the most detailed” (93). he also wrote that “ukrainian poets have so far done extremely little work on rhyme”, and “only in recent years have our symbolist poets paid attention to rhymes, just like the symbolist poets in both west and russia” (94). jakubs’kyj linked the appeal of the “representatives of new directions” to assonance and dissonance rhymes to “foggy”, “obscure” and “fleeting” moods in modern poetry, which could hardly “correspond to the clear accuracy demanded by the rhymes” (96). in the last part of the book, “strophics”, the author considers various types of stanzaic (strophic) patterns, and then focuses on the so-called “canonized 106 andrei ustinov, galina babak stranzaic forms” (i. e. fixed forms): stances, terza rima, sestina, octtava rima, triolet, lai, virelai, ritornello, canzone, rondel, rondeau, sonnet, and sonnet corona. the less widespread fixed forms, such as decima, glosa, ottava siciliana, ghazal, tanka, and a few others, are simply listed at the end of that chapter because they are not yet found in ukrainian poetry (108). the nauka virshuvannia concludes with a “bibliography”, that lists works on verse theory in both ukrainian (one and a half pages) and russian languages (a larger number on pp. 112–122). in his review, boris tomashevskij remarked about the bibliography, that “the author arranged it in alphabetical order”, and suggested that, either “subject or chronological classification would be more convenient” (tomashevskij 1923a: 52), as he obviously hoped to see a russian edition of the jakubs’kyj’s book. he also mentioned jakubs’kyj’s bibliography in his treatise russian versification: metrics (tomashevskij 1923b: 144). tomashevskij’s other comment was even more prized, as he stated in his review that “as the first independent experience”, nauka virshuvannia “is very valuable” for the formation of the ukrainian science of verse (tomashevskij 1923a: 52). indeed, in the context of the actual interest of literary critics to the formal and “technical” aspects of poetry in 1920s ukraine,26 jakubs’kyj’s “textbook on versification” came as a completely revolutionary study. and all despite the fact that with all the important discoveries in nauka virshuvannia, such as separation of the musical rhythm and the poetic rhythm; establishing the relationship between meter and rhythm; the importance of syntax and grammar in the theory of verse, etc., the author remained largely captive to ideas of his time. 26 cf. in this context, the approach of bozhidar’s classmate at the kharkiv 3rd male gymnasium, poet and philologist maik johansen which he derived from the “formal method”, especially in his critical assessment of the first two books by heorhyj (jurij) shkurupij: korol’ futuroprerij geo shkurupij, psikhetozy. vitryna tretia (kyiv, 1922), and geo shkurupij, baraban. vitryna druga (kyiv, 1923). in his review johansen, among other things, compares the “destructiveness” of the ukrainian futurists with the aleksei kruchionykh’s corresponding avant-garde methods: “we have already noted that the destruction of the panfuturists, their ruining of art are not as terrible as they paint them to be. in this case they are lagging behind when compared with the moscow futurists”. further johansen writes about the panfuturists’ zvukotvorchestvo [soundcreation], which in turn is hardly comparable with vladimir majakovskij’s zvukopis’ [soundwriting]: “it would be a sin to equate this soundcreation with the ingenious inventions of the soundwriting moscow futurists—it is enough to mention at least majakovskij’s “our march” (chervonyj shliakh 2 (1923), 303–304). on critics’ reaction to geo shkurupij see: oleh s. ilnytzkyj. ukrainian futurism, 1914‒1930: a historical and critical study. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1997, 262–263 et passim. for more examples of majakovskij’s influence on the ukrainian futurists, see: javorskaja, ustinov 2021: 285–291. 107borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse although jakubs’kyj’s book was not enough lauded when published, it reached dizzying heights in terms of bibliometrics. in 1924, aleksandr bagrij (1891–1941) included nauka virshuvannia in his pioneering bibliography, dedicated in its entirety to the “formal method” in literature (bagrij 1924: 268).27 a year later, the book appeared in the steadfast “bibliography of poetics” appended to tomashevskij’s theory of literature (tomashevskij 1925: 221). sergei balukhatyj, the compiler of that bibliography, explained in a special note that he had included “only those works on poetics that are of actual importance, either theoretically or methodologically” (tomashevskij 1925: 211 fn. 1). or “both”, we can add in the case of jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia.28 references babak, galina; dmitriev, aleksandr 2021. atlantida sovetskogo natsmodernizma: formal’nyj metod v ukraine (1920-e – nachalo 1930-kh). moskva: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. bagrij, aleksandr 1924. formal’nyj metod v literature (bibliografija). [vyp. 1-i]. vladikavkaz, 1924. belyj, andrej 1910. simvolizm: sbornik statei. moskva: musaget. bozhidar [gordeev, bogdan] 1916. raspevochnoe edinstvo. redaktsija, predislovie, kommentarii sergeja bobrova. moskva: tsentrifuga. dolenho, mykhajlo 1923. kyiv ta kharkiv – literaturni vzajemovidnoshennia. nacherk pershyj. in: chervonyj shliakh 6/7, 151‒157. ejkhenbaum, boris 1987. teorija “formal’nogo metoda”. in: ejkhenbaum, boris; toddes, evgenii (eds.), o literature: raboty raznykh let. moskva: sovetskij pisatel’, 375‒408. 27 in this edition “bibliography” from the nauka virshuvannia has a separate entry in the special section “indexes and articles, which contain lists of the historical and literary works of the formal school”. 28 we dedicate our essay in loving memory of seriozha shkarupo (1973‒2021), a poet and a dear friend. galina babak’s contribution to this paper was funded by the german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft: dfg) under germany’s excellence strategy in the framework of the cluster of excellence “temporal communities – doing literature in a global perspective” (exc 2020, project id 390608380). 108 andrei ustinov, galina babak ilnytzkyj, oleh s. 1997. ukrainian futurism, 1914‒1930: a historical and critical study. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. jakubs’kyj, borys 1921. forma poezij shevchenka. in: hryhoruk, ievhen; fylypovych, pavlo (eds.), taras shevchenko. zbirnyk. kyiv: dvu, 49–73. jakubs’kyj, borys 1922. nauka virshuvannia. kyiv: slovo. javorskaja, aliona; ustinov, andrej 2021. dva anatolija i odna “anzhelika”: k istorii “jugo-zapadnoj literaturnoj shkoly”. in: literaturnyj fact 20, 280–313. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2021-20-280-313 jakobson, roman; bogatyriov, piotr 1923. slavianskaja filologija v rossii za gody vojny i revoliutsii. berlin: opojaz. kostenko, natalija 2007. borys jakubs’kyj – teoretyk ukrains’koho virsha. in: borys jakubs’kyj, nauka virshuvannia. kyiv: vpts “kyivs’kyj universitet”, 3–18. navrots’kyj, borys 1925a. mova ta poezija. narys z teorii poezii. kharkiv: knyhospilka. navrots’kyj, borys 1925b. formalizm chy sub’ektyvnyj estetyzm. (z pryvodu knyhy “tomashevkij. teoriia literatury. gosizdat. leningrad. 1925 g.”, jak sproby pidsumku dosiahnen’ lit[eraturnoho] “formalizmu”. in: chervonyj shliakh (kharkiv) 5, 205– 209. nikovs’kyj, an[drij] 1919. “muzahet”. misiachnyk literatury i mystetstva. sichen’ ‒ liutyj ‒ berezen’. 1919. in: knyhar’: litopys ukrains’koho pys’menstva (kyiv) 23/24, 1587‒1595. pashko, oksana 2016. k istorii sozdaniia “antologii ukrainskoi poezii v russkikh perevodakh” (1924). in: toronto slavic quarterly 58. http://sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/58/pashko58.pdf pilshchikov, igor 2017. zasedanie moskovskogo lingvisticheskogo kruzhka 1 ijunia 1919 g. i zarozhdenie stikhovedcheskikh kontseptsij o. brika, b. tomashevskogo i r. jakobsona. in: revue des études slaves 88 (1‒2), 150‒175. https://doi.org/10.4000/res.956 pilshchikov, igor; ustinov, andrei 2020. moskovskij lingvisticheskij kruzhok i stanovlenie russkogo stikhovedenija (1919–1920). in: fleishman, lazar; bethea, david m.; vinitsky, ilya (eds.), unacknowledged legislators. studies in russian literary history and poetics in honor of michael wachtel. (stanford slavic studies 50). berlin: peter lang, 389–413. plisestkij, marko moiseevich 1966. kolomyjka. in: kratkaja literaturnaja entsiklopedija. t. 3. moskva: sovetskaja entsiklopedija, 665–666. 109borys jakubs’kyj’s nauka virshuvannia and formation of the ukrainian science of verse sami pro sebe 2015. movchan, raisa (ed.), sami pro sebe: avtobiografii ukrains’kykh myttsiv 1920-kh rokiv. kyiv: klio. semenko, mikhajl’ 2016. mikhajl’ semenko i ukrainskij panfuturizm: manifesty. mistifikatsii. stat’i. lirika. viziopoeziia. edited by anna belaja and andrej rossomakhin. (avant-garde 9). sankt-peterburg: izdatel’stvo evropejskogo universiteta v sankt-peterburge. sinchenko, oleksij 2014. metodolohichna rekonstruktsija teoretyko-literaturnykh pohliadiv borysa jakubs’koho. in: literaturoznavchi obrii: pratsi molodykh uchenykh 21, 24–31. smal’-stots’kyj, stepan; gartner, fedir 1914 hramatyka rus’koj movy. 3-je pereroblene vydanje. dodatok ii: vkrains’ke virshovann’e. viden’ [wien]. taranovsky, kiril 1953. četvorostopni jamb t. ševčenka. in: južnoslovenski filolog 20, 143–190. tomashevskij, boris 1923a. [review of ] b. jakubs’kyj. nauka virshuvannia. vydavnytstvo “slovo”. str. vi + 124. kyiv, 1922. in: kniga i revoliutsija 1(25), 52. tomashevskij, boris 1923b. russkoe stikhoslozhenie: metrika (voprosy poetiki 2). petrograd: academia. tomashevskij, boris 1929. o stikhe. leningrad: priboj. u[shakov], n[ikolaj] 1929. kiev i ego okrestnosti. in: veter ukrainy. al’manakh assotsiatsii revoliutsionnykh russkikh pisatelej “arp”. kniga pervaja. kiev: arp, 120‒133. zerov, mykola 2015. vybrani tvory. edited by v. e. panchenko. kyiv: smoloskyp. alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella alejandro augusto prieto mendoza*1 abstract: this paper studies alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella logía, one of the most important kakataibo sabios of the present era. for alliteration and rhyme, consonants which are able to be in coda position according to kakataibo syllable structure play a central role. alliteration is sporadic and based on the repetition of fricative consonants in passages of indeterminate length. it occurs in syllable onset and freely within a line and across lines, the latter by adjacency. kakataibo rhyme is also sporadic, its domain is the final syllable of the line and the nucleus of it; only the nasal consonant /n/ can occupy coda in end-line syllables. kakataibo true rhyme, as opposed to rhyme in lists created by repetition or semantic parallelism, is by adjacency and within vowel passages of indeterminate length. keywords: alliteration, rhyme, kakataibo, amazonia, verbal art we are at an early stage regarding the understanding of the verbal art of amazonian indigenous chants and music, despite its crucial importance for current anthropological theory (brabec de mori, seeger 2013; déléage 2020; severi 2008), contemporary basic linguistic theory and language documentation (epps, michael 2017). nonetheless, we have a relatively incipient image of what is happening: the amazon is a discursive area in which forms and processes of great diffusion converge in particular discursive genres (beier et al. 2002). thus, we know that poetic forms such as semantic parallelism, repetition, nonsense syllables, and others, are used among many languages of different linguistic families and in, for example, shamanic discourse, ritual salutation or chants. little is known about many other poetic forms, whether meter, rhyme, alliteration, etc., which are discussed in the present document. perhaps the most studied and confirmed poetic form in the amazon is parallelism (fox 2014; franchetto, stenzel 2017; prieto mendoza 2019). likewise, as i have emphasized in previous works (prieto mendoza 2019, 2021), it has been claimed that amerindian verbal art lacks rhyme or meter (hymes 1977; * author’s address: alejandro augusto prieto mendoza, universidad nacional de colombia, sede amazonia, kilometro 2 via tarapacá, leticia, amazonas, colombia; email: alprietom@unal.edu.co. studia metrica et poetica 9.2, 2022, 92–116 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.03 mailto:alprietom@unal.edu.co https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.03 93alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella edmonson 1971; tedlock 1977, 1983, 1987, 2010). however, this is too preliminary a claim, considering the under-researched situation of verbal art in the americas, and recent works have argued against this (michael 2019; prieto mendoza, 2021; skilton 2017). with all this in mind, i present in this article perhaps the first case of alliteration and rhyme for a traditional chant of an indigenous or native amazonian group. in addition, apart from the novelty of a new case with all its particularities, i discuss in the present paper the singing style and compositional individuality of a specific person: emilio estrella logía (1925/1935? – 2020), sabio of the yamino native community, who, judging by the years i have dedicated to traditional kakataibo chant, was the most dedicated person to the kakataibo word and its aesthetics. i hope this article serves as a tribute to his life and work, as well as the recognition of his lyrical capacity within peruvian verbal tradition. this paper is organized as follows: i present in § 1 some important aspects of kakataibo phonology relative to my analysis. in § 2, i detail the origin of my data and its limitations. i offer in § 3 a brief account of kakataibo traditional chant and i present a biographical resumé of emilio estrella emphasizing his work in the linguistic documentation of the kakataibo language. § 4 is a theoretical section on alliteration and rhyme based on typological-comparative studies. i analyze in § 5 alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chant of emilio estrella based on cases from no bana ‘iti and ño xakwati chants, and i discuss his use of both poetic forms in relation to the typological parameters discussed in § 4. i conclude this paper in § 6 by summarizing the main aspects of the employing and linguistic mastery of alliteration and rhyme in emilio estrella’s composition, and offering some reflections on the presence of both poetic forms in amazonian verbal art. 1. some notes on kakataibo phonology in order to understand kakataibo alliteration and rhyme, it is necessary to know three aspects of the phonology of the language: syllable structure and consonants in coda positions, fricative and affricate consonants, and mid vowels. i show in tables 1 and 2 the inventory of kakataibo consonants and vowels, respectively – < > angle brackets indicate orthographical conventions. 94 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza table 1. inventory of kakataibo consonants labial dentoalveolar palatoalveolar palatal retroflex velar glottal stop p <p> t <t> k <k> ʔ <’> kʷ <kw> nasal m <m> n <n> ɲ <ñ> flap ɾ <r> affricate t͡ s <ts> t͡ ʃ <ch> fricative s <s> ʃ <sh> ʂ <x> approximant β̞ <b> table 2. inventory of kakataibo vowels front central back high i <i> ɨ <ë> ɯ <u> mid e <e> ɤ <o> low a <a> syllables in kakataibo are based on the shape (c)v(c), resulting in four possibilities: v, cv, vc, and cvc. all these syllables can appear in any position. only /n/, /s/, /ʃ/, /ʂ/, and /ʔ/ in some restricted cases, can fill the coda (zariquiey 2011, 2018). as i show in §5, /n/ and these sibilant fricatives play a central role in kakataibo rhyme and alliteration. as regards fricatives, these appear in syllable-final, word-final, and initial positions. of these three, /ʃ/ is the most restricted in the lexicon and usually appears next to the vowel /i/ (zariquiey 2018: 72–77). nonetheless, /ʃ/ does appear next to other vowels, in a few cases. the affricates /t͡ s/ and /t͡ ʃ/ can only appear in syllable-initial position, even after a closed syllable. the phoneme /t͡ s/ might be realized as [t͡ ʃ]; however, this latter form is unpredictable. finally, vowels <e> and <o> are of very low productivity in the language and are recent innovations in kakataibo. according to zariquiey (2018), shell’s (1987) account gives only nine words with <e>; while words with <o> are relatively more numerous. shell (1975; in zariquiey 2018: 84) reconstructs <e> and <o> as *aya and *awa, respectively; however, there are also words that cannot be explained by such origin and have no cognates in other panoan languages. 95alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella 2. my data and its limitations my data comes from two sources: the pucp archive of indigenous peruvian languages (zariquiey 2014) and my own fieldwork during 2013–2017. all the songs of emilio estrella that i analyzed were recorded during 2010 to 2017 in the native community of yamino (aguaytía district, padre abad province, ucayali region). i have analysed approximately two hours of traditional kakataibo chants (2500 lines approximately) from four men and four women, and of the two most divergent varieties of the kakataibo language. i highlight this relatively small corpus in order to emphasize that rhyme and alliteration, specifically alliteration, are sporadically used in emilio estrella’s composition and, although other kakataibos might use them, i have not documented any examples like the ones shown in this article on the composition of a different kakataibo. in fact, my analysis of emilio estrella’s alliteration is based on four passages of a total of 14 lines. i accept that such a situation might create a problem of limitation in my analysis; however, with the years i have dedicated to kakataibo verbal art, i can affirm that alliteration and rhyme are sporadic for kakataibo singing composition in general. alliteration was part of the singing style of emilio estrella and he was one of kakataibo sabios most dedicated to traditional singing. finally, my examples come from no bana ‘iti and no xakwati chants, and in order to fill gaps in my analysis of emilio’s alliteration and rhyme, i also present examples from two other kakataibos: irma odicio and roberto angulo. 3. traditional kakataibo chants and emilio estrella in previous works (2019, 2021), i have discussed different topics on traditional kakataibo chants, such as their learning, the available recordings and databases, the number of types of chants, the principal differences across them, among other themes. therefore, i choose only to present relevant topics to understand alliteration and rhyme in emilio estrella’s composition. traditional kakataibo chants are always improvised in each different act of enunciation (déléage 2020), which positions them along with areal trends of amazonian singing composition (beier et al. 2002). as erwin frank said, kakataibos never “sing a song in the same manner as on other occasions [...] however, singers believe that their different versions of a song are “absolutely always the same”” (frank 1994: 227). thus, although the content is improvised and varies in each performance, the discursive technique remains stable across kakataibos. 96 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza in relation to the linguistic character of the discursive technique, traditional kakataibo chants carry a high metaphorical content, manifest reduced syntax, restricted/specialized vocabulary and formulaic expressions. they are composed using the poetic forms of semantic parallelism, enjambment, and repetition. it is of particular interest that a group of chants, in which no bana ‘iti and ño xakwati are found, must follow a meter specific to each of them (prieto 2021). i present in (1) the no bana ‘iti and ño xakwati meters. (1) a. ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | (∪) –– no bana ‘iti b. ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – ño xakwati following prieto (2021), these meters indicate that a line or verse in a no bana ‘iti chant, for example, is made up of three metrical subgroups and a total of eight moras. the first two subgroups can be realized in two ways: with two short vowel syllables (∪ ∪) or one long vowel syllable (–), while the third subgroup is realized with one short vowel syllable plus one extra-long (three mora) vowel syllable (∪ ––) or only with this last extra-long vowel syllable and omitting the short one (––). in this way, the number of syllables can vary from line to line and, in principle, a line can be composed of at least three syllables and maximum of six, although, in general, five or six syllable lines are usual. lastly, if the number of eight moras is not completed, vowels are lengthened following the prosody of the language (prieto 2021). as regards the song no bana ‘iti, this male song is characterized by an exaltation of the singer through the figure of an ‘inu ‘jaguar’ that cannot be deceived, fooled or advised.1 in addition, the singer highlights his physical abilities, his mastery with shotguns and his hunting expertise. there are autobiographical episodes that have marked the life of the singer, such as military service, travels, etc., which resembles no bana ‘iti to the caqui caqui yaminawa or yama yama sharanahua, both panoan (déléage 2007, 2008). the mythical figure of the ‘inka plays an important role in the imagery of a no bana ‘iti. the ‘inka is associated with metal tools, boats, planes; precious objects considered foreign and brought by mestizos (brabec de mori 2019; frank 1990). this chant is usually sung at sunset or very early in the morning. it begins with 1 the ‘ësëti ‘to advise’ is one the most important cultural practices of kakataibos, although its highly endangered. traditionally, parents used to wake up their children at the middle of the night to teach them for hours the kakataibo way of life (frank 1994). 97alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella the formulaic phrase chira bakë xanu ‘sister’. i illustrate these points in the following excerpt (2). (2) chira bakë xanu sister chira bakë xanu sister ‘ësëtima ‘inu i am a jaguar that cannot be advised ‘ësëtima ‘inu i am a jaguar that cannot be advised parantima ‘inu i am a jaguar that cannot be fooled [...] ëxira kana i... nirakëakën i have gotten up bashi ‘inu bakë son of the jaguar of the mount chira ‘inu bakë son of the jaguar of the mount ëxira kana i... nirakëakën i have gotten up nirakëakën i have gotten up as regards the song ño xakwati, this male song is sung before hunting in order to attract the ño ‘peccary’ and to guarantee a good hunt. kakataibos, as other panoan groups, raise peccaries and when these peccaries are sufficiently grown to eat, families or neighboring groups gather to kill it. during this festivity, no longer practiced, men also sing ño xakwati (montalvo vidal, 2010). in addition, the singer refers to himself through the metaphor of the runu ‘snake’, which is chasing the peccary and its brood across the rivers while sharpening the tips of his spears and arrows in (11), i offer a full but short ño xakwati. finally, i introduce emilio estrella logía (1925/1935? – 2020), a kakataibo sabio of the native community of yamino, who actively worked in the documentation, maintenance, and resistance of the kakataibo language and culture. with the advice of emilio estrella, the first grammar of the kakataibo language was written, as well as dictionaries, academic articles, theses, among other works. a generation of students, linguists, and anthropologists learned from him several aspects of kakataibo culture. in 2019, the ministry of culture of peru awarded him with the recognition of meritorious person of culture, due to his important contribution to the linguistic documentation of the kakataibo language. emilio estrella was indeed a kakataibo sabio, he knew his culture like no other kakataibo and, as far as i am concerned, his chants exhibit the greatest complexity and imagery if we judge them in relation to the aesthetics of kakataibo verbal art. given this, i hope the present article serves as a tribute to his work and helps to recognize his voice within peruvian verbal and literary 98 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza tradition. emilio estrella passed away on july 27, 2020 during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, which tragically hit the peruvian amazon, the ucayali region and the indigenous communities who live there.2 4. typology of rhyme and alliteration following fabb (1999, 2003), alliteration and rhyme are forms of sound parallelism where certain parts of the syllable are repeated according to what count as “same” in a given poetic tradition: “alliteration is repetition of a coherent sequence of segments which begins with an onset; rhyme is repetition of a coherent sequence of segments which begins with a nucleus (fabb 1999: 227). peust (2014) described the identity or sameness as ‘rhyme phonology’, considering that “the partitioning of the sound space implied by rhyme identity may differ from the partitioning of the sound space as normally practiced by phonologist (“ordinary phonology”) [...] in other words, [rhyme phonology] is an underdifferentiated version of ordinary phonology”. for example, in swiss german, plosives and affricates sharing the same manner of articulation are treated as equal (peust 2014: 366–367). then, the identity of the segments seems to be language specific, even to the extreme of being dictated individually. in addition, fabb (2003) summarizes various proposal about what counts as “the same”: (i) sameness can only be captured at the level of underlying phonological representations; (ii) sameness as the sharing of features, maybe involving underspecified underlying phonemes; (iii) and sameness as a way to confirm or reveal an underlying form. another important parameter is the size of the “identical” section, which is language specific too. in any case, it is relative to the phonology of the language in question that the identity and the size of the rhymed or alliterated segments is established or broken. besides that, rhyme can be classified in three types according to the location of the “identical segments”: initial rhyme, internal rhyme and end rhyme. all these three types are attested across world languages. prototypical rhyme involves the nucleus plus the coda, while variants concern only the nucleus and very rarely just the coda (fabb 1999). peust (2014) treats alliteration as a subtype of initial rhyme; however, as fabb (fabb 1999, 2003, 2022) proposes, rhyme and alliteration have important differences and can be defined as two separate poetic forms. alliteration is attested in germanic (goering 2016, 2 the ministry of culture of peru officially notified the death of emilio estrella on july 27, 2020. sebastián castañeda (2021) documented the burial of emilio for mongabay latam. 99alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella 2020; jakobson 1963) finnic (frog, stepanova 2011), and somali verbal arts (andrzejewski 2011; banti, giannattasio 1996; musse jama 2021; orwin 2011), as in other traditions (fabb 1999; roper 2011). in some somali song meters, the initial sound of at least one word is alliterated in each line and the alliterated sound must be the same throughout the entire poem. however, there are some rules such as a poet should not use grammatical words like pronouns or particles and must avoid repeating the same word in nearby lines (banti, giannattasio 1996: 84). rhyme and alliteration can be sporadic or systematic. sporadic rhyme can be found in the situation in which “rhymed verses occur more frequently than could be expected by chance but still belong to the inventory of optional stylistics effects, whereas “systematic rhyme” means that the rhyme has become a mandatory feature of poetry” (peust 2014: 348). alliteration, systematic or sporadic, is much rarer than rhyme cross-linguistically (fabb 1999: 227), maybe because rhyme is easily borrowed across verbal traditions and endrhyme is the most common type of rhyme, conditioned by the frequency of inflectional suffixes over prefixes (dryer 2005; peust 2014: 358). finally, alliteration should not be understood as a subtype of internal rhyme, or rhyme in itself, because both poetic forms differ in three important aspects, following fabb (2022): (i) rhyme location tends to be fixed, but alliteration is almost always free; (ii) the rhyme pattern can intersect, but an alliteration pattern requires adjacency; (iii) and rhyme is more capable of permitting loose similarity between sounds than is alliteration. to conclude, i use the following typological parameters to study alliteration and rhyme in emilio estrella’s chants: productivity (sporadic vs. systematic), location and identity of the parallel segments, and adjacency vs. intersection between lines. 5. alliteration and rhyme in emilio estrella’s traditional singing 5.1. alliteration following what was proposed in the previous section, alliteration is a poetic form that emilio estrella used as a stylistic resource, sporadically; a resource that, despite not being systematic, was available to him. it is important to emphasize that other kakataibo sabios i have worked with also use alliteration in the way i show in this part; however, their use is limited to one or two lines in a whole composition, unlike emilio estrella’s alliteration. 100 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza 5.1.1. identity of the segments following peust (2014) and fabb (1999, 2022), the “identity” or “sameness” of the segments may differ from ordinary phonology (peust 2014); and sameness can be sharing of features, maybe involving underspecified underlying phonemes (fabb 1999). i consider this is the situation in emilio estrella’s alliteration. to support this assertion, let us look at the following passage (3). i do not gloss each line due to edition criteria.3 (3) [...] 73. ‘ën xabun ‘ë /x/ ‘my sister’ 74. ushin chaxu xaka /sh/ /ch/ /x/ /x/ ‘red deer skin’ 75. uxu chaxu xaka /x/ /ch/ /x/ ‘white deer skin’ 76. ‘ë xuka xuan /x/ /x/ ‘peel it for me’ 77. ‘ë minan chaxu /x/ ‘to my purple deer’ 78. ‘ë ushin chaxu /sh/ /ch/ /x/ ‘to my red deer’ 79. ushin chaxu xaka /sh/ /ch/ /x/ /x/ ‘red deer skin’ 80. ‘ë xuka xuan /x/ /x/ ‘peel it for me’ [...] first of all, each line within this passage has at least one fricative consonant, the retroflex palatal <x>, /ʂ/, which is the only fricative segment appearing in every line at least once. taking this into account, alliteration in this passage occurs interlineally, since all the lines in the example are related by the presence of the retroflex palatal fricative <x>, /ʂ/, and intralinearly in lines 74–76, and 78–80. secondly, alliteration in this passage (3) also is connected to semantic parallelism and enjambment through lexical-phonological selection by similar identity. let us now turn our attention to lines 74–75, which are composed by 3 i use the orthographic conventions of table 1, section 1, to identify the alliterated consonants, instead of ipa conventions. [...] implies that there is a previous or a next line. i only mark lengthened vowels in examples (9) and (10) to illustrate the free order of alliteration. 101alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella semantic parallelism. this poetic form implies that two elements, prototypical names in kakataibo verbal art have a semantic relationship, in this case, type of colors (prieto mendoza 2019). what is interesting here is that the element followed in line 75, and semantically related to ushin ‘red’ in line 74, also shows a fricative consonant, as is the case for uxu ‘white’. we can interpret this relationship not only semantically, but establishing the identity of what an alliterated consonant might be in emilio estrella’s singing. thus, identity or sameness in emilio estrella’s alliteration is established by sharing of fricative features. this same situation happens between lines 78–79, which are composed by enjambment, having the added element xaka ‘skin’ in line 79 which also includes the fricative <x>, /ʂ/. thirdly, alliteration not only contributes to lexical selection, but is also a product of poetic forms. i say this due to the repeated lines 74–79, 76–80 and the repeated word xaka ‘skin’ in 74–75, 79; repetitions that create a greater alliterative sonority in (3). note that this pair of repeated lines (74–79, 76–80) are also the ones that show a higher number of alliterative consonants in the passage. finally, other segments show a lower degree of alliteration, as /k/ in lines 74–76, 79–80. i will explain this control of saturation in brief. see the next example (4). (4) [...] 27. rëchitë bëxin /ch/ /x/ ‘peeling reed’ 28. bëxin bëxin okin ka /x/ /x/ /k/ /k/ ‘peeling, peeling’ 29. paka xëta bëxin /k/ /x/ /x/ ‘peeling the tip of the bamboo’ 30. bëxin bëxin okin ka /x/ /x/ /k/ /k/ ‘peeling, peeling’ [...] similar to the previous example, (4) begins with a line with the retroflex <x>, which begins the chain of fricative repetitions. however, one might wonder if the affricate <ch> really participates in the alliteration as it is not properly a fricative. in this case, lines 27 and 29 of [rëchite] and [paka xëta] respectively are composed by semantic parallelism. in theory, any other word related to rëchitë ‘reed’ may have been used. my proposal is that alliteration conditions the selection of [paka xëta] as it has to continue with the “fricative identity” already established by <x> in the first and second lines, but also it must create 102 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza a fricative sonority between the slots of the semantic parallel lines – as in lines 74–75 of example (3) –, thus treating the affricate <ch> as a “fricative” in an expanded sense. at the same time, the selection of [paka xëta] also contributes to the control of alliteration by including the consonant <k>, thus avoiding a saturated sonority of fricatives, and creating what i propose to call “minor alliteration” as opposed to the central alliteration of “fricatives”. as in the previous example (3), other segments, apart from the obvious repetitions, might be alliterated in a passage, but with a lower degree in relation to “fricatives”. then, the final line repeats line 28 closing the passage in a constant of sound parallelism. now, see the next example (5). (5) [...] 36. xón pacha ‘ëo /x/ /ch/ ‘big red pomfret’ 37. xón ruti ‘ëo /x/ ‘big red pacu’ 38. uxu ruti ‘ëo /x/ ‘big white pacu’ 39. chirimipabian /ch/ ‘making them jump’ 40. xón ruti ‘ëo /x/ ‘big red pacu’ 41. chirimipabian /ch/ ‘making them jump’ 42. uxu sanin chiri /x/ /s/ /ch/ ‘white anchovy...’ 43. chirimipabian /ch/ ‘making them jump’ [...] this third example (5) exemplifies what has been proposed up to this point. the fricatives repeated across lines and within a line create a passage of alliteration. the first line in the passage has the palatal retroflex /x/. and semantic parallelism participates in alliteration as a result of the lexical selection so producing “fricative” identity, as in lines 36–37–38. what is important in this new case is the employing of the third kakataibo fricative <s>, which closes the set of central “fricative” consonants used by emilio estrella. let us look the following fourth example in (6): 103alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella (6) [...] 45. parantima baëxun /x/ ‘you cannot fool me, i am brave’ 46. ’ësëtima baëxun /x/ ‘you cannot advise me, i am brave’ 47. ‘axunima ‘ikinma /x/ ‘i will not do it to you, you cannot be with me’ 48. ‘axunira ‘axunwë ‘doing it right, do it’ /x/ /x/ apart from what has already discussed so far, i include this last case in the present article because with it my examples are ended. as i said in previous sections, alliteration was of very low productivity in emilio estrella’s compositions; a few lines if we compare it with the three main poetic forms of kakataibo verbal art, and unique to him in that only he used it as in the four cases discussed so far. to summarize, emilio estrella’s alliteration follows these characteristics: (i) alliteration occurs in passages of indeterminate length. (ii) every line must have at least one retroflex fricative <x>, /ʂ/. (iii) alliteration treats fricative consonants <s, sh, x> and the affricate <ch> as the same. (iv) alliteration can occur within a line and interlineally; the latter by adjacency. (v) alliteration participates with semantic parallelism and enjambment by phonological-lexical selection. (vi) in order to avoid a saturated sonority of fricatives, other segments might be used in the alliterated periphery as opposed of central alliteration of “fricatives”. lastly, (vii) it is striking that the dento-alveolar affricate consonant <ts> did not appear in any of the documented cases; nonetheless, this situation can be due to database limitations. 5.1.2. domain of alliteration as for the position of the alliterated fricative consonant within the word, the segment occurs in syllable onset as can be seen in each example discussed in the present article. an important fact to take into account is that the fricative consonants <s, sh, x>, /s, ʃ, ʂ /, can appear in coda position according to kakataibo phonology. however, they do not appear in this latter position in emilio estrella’s alliteration. i formalize this in (7): (7) c1v(c) c1= /ʂ, s, ʃ/, t ͡ ʃ/ 104 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza emilio estrella’s alliteration seems to be restricted only to the onset of syllables with natural or non-lengthened vowels. the only apparent “contradiction” are monosyllables with alliteration, as in <xón>, example (5). however, monosyllables in kakataibo must be phonologically analyzed as disyllabic for stress assignment criteria (zariquiey 2018: 127–128). this seems to confirm that every monosyllable should be represented as (∪ ∪) for metrical purposes (prieto mendoza 2021). secondly, regarding the order of the alliteration relative to the line, we need to remember the metric pattern of no bana ‘iti and ño xakwati in (1, a–b). considering this, alliteration in the no bana ‘iti examples (3–5) appears freely in any metric subgroup and in any syllable, as shown in (8) – (*) represents an alliterated syllable: (8) * a. chirimipabiaaan ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ––– ‘making them jump’ * * * b. uxu sanin chiriii ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ––– ‘white anchovy...’ * * * c.‘ë ushin chaxuuu ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ––– ‘to my red deer’ it is the same situation for the ño xakwati examples (4–6), where alliteration appears in every metric subgroup and almost every syllable as shown in (9). however, there is no case of alliteration in the first syllable of the first metric subgroup or the fifth syllable of the third subgroup. this apparent restriction might be caused by database limitation considering that alliterations appears freely in no bana ‘iti meter. (9) * * * * a. bëxin bëxin okin kaa ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | –– ‘peeling, peeling’ * * * b. paka xëta bëxiin ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | –– | –– ‘peeling the tip of the bamboo’ 105alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella 5.2. rhyme as we saw in the previous section, alliteration is a sporadic poetic form used almost exclusively by emilio estrella in his singing composition. on the contrary, rhyme is also sporadic in his chanting but with some levels of systematicity as i show in this section. in other words, emilio estrella was not the only kakataibo that used rhyme and the principles of emilio estrella’s rhyme can be found in every other kakataibo performer. in this section, i explain kakataibo rhyme with examples from emilio estrella and in order to fill gaps in my analysis i also discuss examples from two other kakataibos: irma odicio and roberto angulo. let’s see the following example (10), which is a complete ño xakwati. (10) 1. nukën papa mia my father. 2. tama ruru piminun ...is going to invite you peeled peanut 3. nukën tita mia my mother... 4. tama chankë piminun ... is going to invite crushed peanut 5. mi ini rëkwënan come with your daughter 6. mi bakë rëkwënan come with your son 7. shinkun runu pibëtsin the snake is coming to eat you 8. basi runu pibëtsin the snake is coming to eat you 9. uantia kwëchinkin come snouting along the banks of uantia river 10. banaoka kwëchinkin come snouting along the banks of banaoka river 11. kwëchinkin kwëchinkin snouting, snouting 12. naneoka kwëchinkin come snouting along the banks of naneoka river 13. rëchinkin rëchinkin sniffing, sniffing 14. naneoka kwëchinkin come snouting along the banks of naneoka river 15. kwëchinkin kwëchinkin snouting, snouting 16. basi ño rëkwënan come with your mount peccary 17. ‘inu ño rëkwënan come with your big peccary 18. shinkun runu pibëtsin the snake is coming to eat you 19. basi runu pibëtsin the snake is coming to eat you 20. mi ini rëkwënan come with your daughter 21. uxu ño rëkwënan come with your white peccary 22. bunpa ño rëkwënan come with your dark peccary 23. mi ini rëkwënan come with your daughter 24. mi bakë rëkwënan come with your son 25. ñon pirui the peccary is coming 26. ñon pirui the peccary is coming 27. ñon piruikiri the peccary is coming 106 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza the first aspect to highlight is that this ño xakwati in (10) is obviously and very productively composed according to a principle of semantic parallelism and repetition. then, one possibility is that the end of each line might be conditioned by the use of these two poetic forms, a very common fact among amerindian verbal art that probably has led to proposal of the absence of rhyme (fabb 2017; hymes 1977; edmonson 1971). nonetheless, if we focus our attention from line 4 to 24, we can see that the final syllable of each line has a nasal coda <n>. what is crucial is that this nasal coda <n> is not conditioned by any poetic form, apart from the obvious repetitions, because it belongs, for example, to -nun ‘ds/a/p: poe’ or -bëtsin ‘coming.trans’. in other words, the presence of this nasal coda <n> is not a product of repetition, neither of morphology, but an example of rhyme itself. taking this into account, the first principle of kakataibo rhyme is that only the nasal segment <n> can occupy coda at the last syllable of the line. this restriction is important considering that, in principle, <s, x, sh> can occupy this position according to the kakataibo syllable structure, but they cannot be in coda of end-line syllables for kakataibo rhyme purposes. furthermore, the last syllable of each line not only rhymes by that nasal coda, but also in other ways and parts of the syllable. for example, lines 4–5 share the same onset and coda, but not the nucleus, in a (nvn) rhyme. similar situation between lines 8–9, which share the nucleus, <i>, plus the coda <n> in a (cin) rhyme. i show these two cases in (11a) and (11b), respectively. (11) a. 4. tama chankë piminun ... is going to invite crushed peanut 5. mi ini rëkwënan come with your daughter b. 8. basi runu pibëtsin the snake is coming to eat you 9. uantia kwëchinkin come snouting along the banks of uantia river another point to note about (11a) and (11b) is that they both occur in contiguous lines in (11) and, as fabb (1999) proposes, rhyme allows intersection or abab patterns, while adjacency is mandatory for alliteration. in the kakataibo case, true rhyme, as opposed of rhyme in lists created by repetition or semantic parallelism, seems to be only by adjacency as in lines 4–5 and within vowel passages, as in lines 7–15. in other words, kakataibo rhyme needs adjacency – perhaps because it is unpredictable in whether it will occur. thus, two lines with different vowels in end-line syllables can rhyme as in (11a) and lines can rhyme over vowel passages of indeterminate length, as in 7–15 of example (10). though there are apparent rhyme intersections these arise only as a side effect of semantic parallelism, repetition or enjambment. in any case, intersection in kakataibo rhyme needs further investigation. 107alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella in summary, kakataibo rhyme is of the end rhyme type. the domain of rhyme is the last syllable of the line and is centred on the nucleus of it. only the nasal consonant <n> can occupy coda position in end-line syllables. kakataibo rhyme needs adjacency and rhyme is possible in coda, nucleus + coda, and onset + coda. there are other rhyme possibilities, such as onset + nucleus and onset + nucleus + coda, which i present later. now consider the next example (12) from a no bana ‘iti. (12) 1. chira bakë xanu sister 2. chira bakë xanu sister 3. ‘ësëtima ‘inu i am a jaguar that cannot be advised 4. ‘ësëtima ‘inu i am a jaguar that cannot be advised 5. parantima ‘inu i am a jaguar that cannot be fooled [...] 60. xanun tuama ka not the son of another woman 61. ëxira kana i... 62. nirakëakën ...have gotten up 63. bashi ‘inu bakë son of the jaguar of the mount 64. chira ‘inu bakë son of the jaguar of the mount 65. ëxira kana i... 66. nirakëakën ...have gotten up 67. nirakëakën ...have gotten up as in the previously discussed song ño xakwati, in this song no bana ‘iti, the coda position is reserved for the nasal consonant <n> in end-line syllables and, apart from identical end-line syllables by repetition, rhymes occur within vowel passages as in lines 1–5, 60–61, and 62–64. for example, the u-vowel passage in lines 1–5 shows identical rhyme between xanu e ‘inu in lines 1–2 and 3–5, being of the type onset + nucleus. the same situation holds for lines 60–61 and 62–64, whose end line syllables rhyme in onset + nucleus. it is important to note these three group of lines rhyme without being conditioned by repetition, as in example (10), confirming that end line syllables rhyme independently of other kinds of parallelism. see the next example (13) from a no bana ‘iti. 108 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza (13) [...] 79. ushin chaxu xaka red deer skin 80. ‘ë xuka xuan to me red deer 81. bëtsi baka uka to another river 82. bëtsi me uka to another land 83. suñuanën ‘apa the strong wind... 84. ‘apaakexa took him 85. puna puna buan the strong wind 86. buankëxa brought him 87. bakëxunbi ka being a child 88. tuaxunbi ka being baby 89. buankëxa brought him 90. bëtsi me uka to another land 91. buankëxa brought him 92. suñuanën nua the strong wind 93. nuamiakëxa made him flight [...] kakataibo true rhyme within vowel passages can involve more than a few lines as shown in example (13). apart from the repetitions and semantic parallelisms in (13), end-line syllables rhyme in the nucleus. thus, apart from the minimum rhyme of vowel passages and nasal codas, i have presented the following rhyme types: (i) onset + nucleus, (12); onset + coda, (11a); and nucleus + coda, (11b). as we have seen, kakataibo rhyme demands full identity of whichever segments are involved. it is important to note that there is no case of onset + nucleus + coda rhyme type that does not involve repetition in the chants of emilio estrella at my disposition, but this may be due to a database limitation. in order to conclude this section, i summarize in the following table 3 the principal characteristics of kakataibo rhyme and alliteration according to the typological parameters discussed in section 4. table 3. emilio estrella’s rhyme and alliteration according to typology rhyme alliteration line domain end-line syllable free syllable domain nucleus (+ n) onset identity identical segments fricatives and <ch> pattern adjacency adjacency 109alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella 5.2.1. mid vowels and possible counterexamples as i discussed in § 1, kakataibo mid vowels <e, o> are of very low productivity, perhaps only a few cases in the entire lexicon. this situation also happens in kakataibo traditional chats. in all my data from emilio estrella or any other kakataibo, there is not a single case of an end-line syllable with an <e> nucleus – there are a few cases with <o>and there is no case of a vowel passage of <e> or <o>. nonetheless, both vowels do appear normally in other positions. cases with end-line syllable with <o> are ‘ó ‘tapir’, no ‘foreigner, enemy’, ‘ëo ‘big’, tsoo(t)‘to.live’, kon‘to.get.used’, pënpëro ‘butterfly’, and ‘ió ‘new’. of these, the first two are innovations produced by the contraction of *aw(a)>o (shell, 1975). the third one is reconstructed by olivera (2014) as ʔɨwa. words tsoo(t)‘to.live’ and kon‘to.get.used’ are cases of enjambment, so their use is conditioned by meter as the line needs to be broken. lastly, there is no reconstruction for pënpëro or ‘ió and i do not know if they have cognates in another panoan language. considering this, the only productive vowels for kakataibo end rhyme are <a, i, ë, u>, making it like the protopanoan vowel inventory (shell 1975). is it possible that <o> behaves like <a> in end-line syllables? in any case, kakataibo mid vowels need more research. regarding the restriction of nasal <n> coda, i have only identified in my entire database four lines with a different coda, <x>, in a bana tuputi by irma odicio, as shown in (14). i do not interpret this case as a counterexample but as a case of stylistic deviation that endows the composition with originality. (14) 7. ura bakanuax ura baka-nu-ax far river-loc-pa:s ‘along that distant river’ 8. ura menuax ura me-nu-ax far land-loc-pa:s ‘along that distant land’ [...] 18. ënë bakanuax ënë baka-nu-ax this river-loc-pa:s ‘along this river’ 110 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza 19. ënë menuax ënë me-nu-ax this land-loc-pa:s ‘along this land’ 5.3. mid rhyme and emilio estrella to end this article, i would like to discuss one last example of a ño xakwati chant by emilio estrella, a unique example that illustrates his linguistic mastery. (15) 47. ‘axunima ‘ikima ‘a-xun-i-n=ma ‘i-kin=ma to.do-ben-impf-1/2p=neg to.be-asso=neg ‘i will not do it to you, you cannot be with me’ 48. ‘axunira ‘axunwë ‘a-xun=ira ‘a-xun-wë to.do-ben=intf to.do-ben-imp ‘doing it right, do it’ let us recap what this example offers us. lines 47–48 are part of the alliterative passage analyzed in (6), in which the retroflex palatal fricative <x> is repeated intralinearly (as in the case of line 48) and interlineally. now, considering only line 47, this line shows two similar segments [nima] – /ninma/ and [kima] – /kinma/, which are only distinguished by the initial consonant /n/ or /k/ and whose similarity is not given by repetition of suffixes (except for the suffix =ma ‘neg’). then, lines 47–48 repeat a similar segment now through [nima] – /ninma/ and /nira/, which in their phonetic realization end up being [nima] – [nira] and so more alike; these latter two segments do not resemble each other by repetition either. this is a fact that illustrates a game of rhymes both phonologically and phonetically. likewise, if we look at the position of such segments in lines 47–48, the similarities continue since the segments in question are in exactly the same position. i formalize this in (16) – i have underlined the parts of the similar segments. http://to.do http://to.do http://to.do 111alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella (16) ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – ‘axu/nima / ‘iki/maaa ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | ∪ ∪ | – ‘axu/nira /‘axun/wëë lastly, in order to avoid a saturated sonority, since all the words end in a similar way, emilio estrella breaks the repetition in the last part of line 48 by using the shipibo-konibo suffix –wë ‘imp’.4 thus, this final example shows that emilio estrella can rhyme a segment in the middle of a single line and continue to rhyme that segment in the next line and in the same mid position; this opens up the creative possibilities of kakataibo rhyme. 6. final remarks as far as i am concerned, this is the first documented case of alliteration and rhyme for an indigenous amazonian group, despite its previously postulated absence (hymes 1977; edmonson 1971). apart from the novelty, amazonian verbal art is still an under-researched area in modern linguistics, so we do not know how common or uncommon are alliteration and rhyme in amazonia, or more generally in the americas. i hope this article opens up new horizons in verbal art typology and amazonian linguistics. my principal findings are as follows. for both poetic forms, kakataibo consonants that can appear in coda position according to the syllable structure of the language play a central role in emilio estrella’s alliteration and kakataibo rhyme. on one hand, alliteration is sporadic and emilio estrella is mainly the only kakataibo that employs it in his composition. furthermore, it is based on the repetition of an expanded notion of “fricative” consonants in a passage; the fricative consonants <s, sh, x> and the affricate <ch> count as the same. in this passage of alliteration, every line must have at least one retroflex fricative <x>. alliteration occurs in syllable onset and freely within a line and across lines, the latter by adjacency. however, it seems to be restricted only to the onset of syllables with natural or non-lengthened vowels. in order to avoid a saturated sonority of “fricatives”, other consonants or vowels are used in what i call minor alliteration 4 kakataibo traditional chants shows an important lexical and morphological shipibo-konibo imprint (prieto mendoza, zariquiey 2018). 112 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza as opposed to the central alliteration of “fricatives”. finally, the dento-alveolar affricate consonant <ts> did not appear in any of the documented cases; nonetheless, this situation can be due to data base limitations. on the other hand, kakataibo rhyme is also sporadic, but other kakataibos tend to use it. its domain is the final syllable of the line and the nucleus of it; only the nasal segment <n> can occupy the coda in a rhyme, and there is a unique case of mid-line rhyme. kakataibo true rhyme, as opposed to rhyme in lists created by repetition or semantic parallelism, seems to be by adjacency and within vowel passages of indeterminate length. i have identified the following rhyme types: coda, nucleus + coda, and onset + coda. intersection and the role of mid vowels in kakataibo rhyme needs further investigation. to conclude, i hope the present article serves as a tribute to emilio estrella logía as to roberto angulo and irma odicio, and to recognize their verbal art within peruvian lyrical tradition.5 glosses 1 ‘first person’ 2 ‘second person’ asso ‘associative’ ben ‘benefactive’ ds/a/p ‘different subjects and objects’ loc ‘locative’ impf ‘imperfective’ ints ‘intensifier’ neg ‘negative’ pa:s ‘participant agreement oriented to s’ poe ‘posterior dependent event’ trans ‘transitive’ 5 i would like to thank prof. nigel fabb for his useful comments and grammatical checking of this article, as well to the anonymous readers. 113alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella references andrzejewski, bogumił w. 2011. alliteration and scansion in somali oral poetry and their cultural correlates. in: journal of african cultural studies 23(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2011.581456 banti, giorgio; giannattasio, francesco 1996. music and metre in somali poetry. in: hayward, richard j.; lewis, ioan m. (eds.), voice and power: essays in honour of b. w. andrzejewski (african languages and cultures. supplement 3). london: school of oriental and african studies, 83–127. beier, christine; michael, lev; sherzer, joel 2002. discourse forms and processes in indigenous lowland south-america: an areal-typological perspective. in: annual review of anthropology 31, 121–145. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.032902.105935 brabec de mori, bernd 2019. the inkas still exist in the ucayali valley – what we can learn from songs. in: rivera andia, juan javier (ed.), non-humans in indigenous south america – ethnographies of indigenous cosmologies, rituals and songs. new york, oxford: berghahn books, 167–196. brabec de mori, bernd; seeger, anthony 2013. introduction: considering music, humans, and non-humans. in: ethnomusicology forum 22(3), 269–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2013.844527 castañeda, sebastián 2021. dolor y rituales ancestrales: retratos de la pandemia en la amazonía peruana. in: mongabay latam, august 18. https://es.mongabay. com/2021/08/retratos-pandemia-amazonia-peruana-reportaje-fotografico/ déléage, pierre 2007. a yaminahua autobiographical song: caqui caqui. in: tipití: journal of the society for the anthropology of lowland south america 5(1), 79–95. https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol5/iss1/5 déléage, pierre (2008). la tradition des autobiographies chantées chez les sharanahua (amazonie occidentale) / traditional autobiographical songs among the sharanahua (amazonie occidentale). in: bulletin de l’institut français d’etudes andines 37(3), 535–551. https://doi.org/10.4000/bifea.3011 déléage, pierre 2020. toward an epidemiology of ritual chants. in: social analysis 64(3), 113–144. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2020.640307 dryer, matthew s. 2005. prefixing versus suffixing in inflectional morphology. in: haspelmath, martin; dryer, matthew; gild, david; comrie, bernard (eds.), the world atlas of language structures. oxford: oxford university press, 110–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2011.581456 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.032902.105935 https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2013.844527 https://es.mongabay.com/2021/08/retratos-pandemia-amazonia-peruana-reportaje-fotografico/ https://es.mongabay.com/2021/08/retratos-pandemia-amazonia-peruana-reportaje-fotografico/ https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol5/iss1/5 https://doi.org/10.4000/bifea.3011 https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2020.640307 114 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza edmonson, munro s. 1971. lore: an introduction to the science of folklore and literature. new york: holt. epps, patience; michael, lev 2017. the areal linguistics of amazonia. in: hickey, raymond (ed.), the cambridge handbook of areal linguistics. cambridge: university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107279872 fabb, nigel 1999. verse constituency and the locality of alliteration. in: lingua 108(4), 223–245. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0024-3841(98)00054-0 fabb, nigel 2003. linguistics and literature. in: aronoff, mark; rees-miller, janie (eds.), the handbook of linguistics. oxford: blackwell, 446–465. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756409.ch18 fabb, nigel 2017. poetic parallelism and working memory. in: oral tradition 31(2), 355–372. https://doi.org/10.1353/ort.2017.0014 fabb, nigel 2022. rhyme and alliteration are significantly different as types of sound patterning. in: fabb, nigel; sykäri, venla (eds.), rhyme and rhyming in verbal art, song and language. (studia fennica folkloristica 25). helsinki: finnish literature society (sks), 155–171. https://doi.org/10.21435/sff.25 fox, james 2014. explorations on semantic parallelism. canberra: anu press. https://doi.org/10.22459/esp.07.2014 franchetto, bruna; stenzel, kristine 2017. amazonian narrative verbal arts and typological gems. in: stenzel, kristine; franchetto, bruna (eds.), on this and other worlds. voices from amazonia. berlin: language science press, 1–19. frank, erwin h. 1990. mitos de los uni de santa marta. enex ca santa martanu ice unin bana icen. cayambe, ecuador: abya-yala. frank, erwin h. 1994. los uni. in: granero, fernando santos; barclay, frederica (eds.), guía etnográfica de la alta amazonía. quito: flacso, 129–237. frog; stepanova, eila 2011. alliteration in (balto-)finnic languages. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 195–218. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_13 goering, nelson 2016. the linguistic elements of old germanic metre: phonology, metrical theory, and the development of alliterative verse. in: transactions of the philological society 114(2), 171–197. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12079 goering, nelson 2020. (proto-)germanic alliterative verse: linguistic limits on a cultural phenomenon. in: friedrich, matthias; harland, james m. (eds.), interrogating the “germanic”. berlin: de gruyter, 241–250. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110701623-013 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107279872 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0024-3841(98)00054-0 https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756409.ch18 https://doi.org/10.1353/ort.2017.0014 https://doi.org/10.21435/sff.25 https://doi.org/10.22459/esp.07.2014 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_13 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12079 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110701623-013 115alliteration and rhyme in the traditional kakataibo chants of emilio estrella hymes, dell 1977. discovering oral performance and measured verse in american indian narrative. in: new literary history 8(3), 431–457. https://doi.org/10.2307/468294 jakobson, roman 1963. on the so-called vowel alliteration in germanic verse. in: stuf – language typology and universals 16(1/4), 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1524/stuf.1963.16.14.85 michael, lev 2019. lines in nanti karintaa chants: an areal poetic typological perspective (an essay in honor of joel sherzer). in: cadernos de etnolinguistica 7, 56–62. montalvo vidal, abner 2010. los kakatai. etnia amazónica del perú. lima: instituto del bien común. musse jama, jama 2021. tidcan: multiple alliteration of somali songs – new insights. in: international journal of literature and arts 9(3), 124–142. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.13 oliveira, sanderson castro soares 2014. contribuições para a reconstrução do protopáno. phd thesis, universidade de brasília. https://repositorio.unb.br/ bitstream/10482/17129/1/2014_sandersoncastrosoaresdeoliveira.pdf orwin, martin 2011. alliteration in somali poetry. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 219–230. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_14 peust, carsten 2014. towards a typology of poetic rhyme. in: grossman, eitan; haspelmath, martin; richter, tonio sebastian (eds.), egyptian-coptic linguistics in typological perspective. berlin, boston: de gruyter/mouton, 341–385. prieto mendoza, alejandro augusto 2019. semantic parallelism in traditional kakataibo chants. in: open linguistics 5(1), 383–404. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2019-0021 prieto mendoza, alejandro augusto 2021. meter in traditional kakataibo chants. in: studia metrica et poetica 8(1), 117–138. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.04 prieto mendoza, alejandro augusto; zariquiey, roberto 2018. shipibo loans in traditional kakataibo songs: lexicon, morphosyntax and compositional strategies. paper presented at amazonicas vii, baños, ecuador. https://www.academia.edu/37247913 roper, jonathan 2011. introduction: key topics in the study of alliteration. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_1 https://doi.org/10.2307/468294 https://doi.org/10.1524/stuf.1963.16.14.85 https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.13 https://repositorio.unb.br/bitstream/10482/17129/1/2014_sandersoncastrosoaresdeoliveira.pdf https://repositorio.unb.br/bitstream/10482/17129/1/2014_sandersoncastrosoaresdeoliveira.pdf https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_14 https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2019-0021 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.1.04 https://www.academia.edu/37247913 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305878_1 116 alejandro augusto prieto mendoza severi, carlos 2008. el yo-memoria. una nueva aproximación a los cantos chamánicos amerindios. in: cuicuilco 15(42), 11–28. https://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/cuicui/v15n42/v15n42a2.pdf shell, olive a. 1975. estudios pano iii: las lenguas pano y su reconstrucción. yarinacocha: instituto lingüístico de verano. shell, olive a. 1987. vocabulario cashibo-cacataibo. (serie lingüística peruana 23.) lima: instituto lingüístico de verano. skilton, amalia 2017. esoteric morphology: vocable affixes in máíhɨk̃i shamanic song. in: memorias del congreso de idiomas indígenas de latinoamérica vii. austin: university of texas, 29–31. tedlock, dennis 1977. towards an oral poetics. in: new literary history 8(3), 507–519. https://doi.org/10.2307/468297 tedlock, dennis 1983. the spoken word and the work of interpretation. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. tedlock, dennis 1987. hearing a voice in an ancient text: quiché maya poetics in performance. in: sherzer, joel; woodbury, anthony c. (eds), native north american discourse. cambridge: cambridge university press, 140–175. tedlock, dennis 2010. 2000 years of mayan literature. berkeley, los angeles, and london: university of california press. zariquiey, roberto 2011a. a grammar of kashibo-kakataibo (issue abril). phd thesis. la trobe university. zariquiey, roberto 2014. canciones tradicionales (kakataibo). in: archivo digital de lenguas peruanas. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/35164 zariquiey, roberto 2018. a grammar of kakataibo. (mouton grammar library 75). berlin: de gruyter mouton. https://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/cuicui/v15n42/v15n42a2.pdf https://doi.org/10.2307/468297 http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/35164 the semiotics of phonetic translation igor pilshchikov* abstract: this article is devoted to translations of poetry that are not equivalent to the original on the lexical level, but attempt to reproduce the sound, rhythm and syntax of the source text. the russian formalist yuri tynianov was presumably the first scholar to discover this phenomenon, which was later referred to as “phonetic facsimile” (george steiner) and “homophonic translation” (lawrence venuti). the present discussion of the linguistic, semiotic and cultural aspects of (homo)phonetic translation is exemplified by translations made by russian poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. keywords: phonetic (homophonic, homophonetic) translation, equivalence in translation, sound in poetry, russian poetic translations of the 19th and 20th centuries 1. the problem of phonetic translation the prominent russian scholar mikhail gasparov observed: “if a translation normally preserves the meaning, leaving no trace of the original sound, then why not allow a translation that preserves the sound but changes the original meaning?” (gasparov 2006: 15).1 gasparov cites as an example a poem by the “junior” futurist semen kirsanov titled “osen’” (“autumn”, 1925), which is, in fact, a “phonetic translation” (ibid.) of paul verlaine’s celebrated “chanson d’automne” (“autumn song”, 1866): * author’s address: igor pilshchikov, tallinn university, school of humanities, uus-sadama 5, 10120 tallinn, estonia, email: pilshch@tlu.ee. 1 translations from languages other than english are mine unless otherwise stated. all emphasis in quotations is that of the original author. studia metrica et poetica 3.1, 2016, 53–104 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.03 http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2016.3.1.03 54 igor pilshchikov osen’ les sanglots longs... paul verlaine lés okrylö́n, véerom – klö́n.      délo v tóm, chto nósitsä stón v lesú gustóm      zolotóm... éto – sentä́br’, víkhri vzvintä́,      brósilsä v débr’, to zlóben, to dóbr lístvennykh dómr      osénnij témbr. [...]2 chanson d’automne les sanglots longs des violons      de l’automne blessent mon cœur d’une langueur      monotone. tout suffocant et blême, quand      sonne l’heure, je me souviens des jours anciens      et je pleure. [...] 2 the contemporary russian poet, translator and historian of poetic translation evgeny vitkovsky writes of kirsanov that, with perhaps a few exceptions, russian poetry did not know such a virtuoso of wordplay or, to put it even better, of “word-games”. sometimes he even played in translation, rendering not the meaning of verlaine’s verses but rather their sound [...] a very interesting translator could have developed from such a poet, because the world is full of poems in whose translation the sound is more important than the meaning. but the epoch theorized otherwise and demanded either “an informative translation” or “a reproduction of a substitute for thought”. (vitkovsky 2004) “chanson d’automne” was indeed one of such poems “in whose translation the sound is more important than the meaning”. this is testified by the russian symbolist poet and verse theorist valery briusov, who was himself a translator of verlaine. according to briusov, much of the impression produced by such poems as “chanson d’automne” 2 the transliterations of poems used in this paper distinguish between the vowels ё, ю and я at the beginning of a word, after other vowels or after the soft sign (ё = jo, ю = ju, я = ja) and the same vowels after a consonant (ё = ö, ю = ü, я = ä). 55the semiotics of phonetic translation should be ascribed to verbal music [muzyka slov], which can be imitated, but cannot be reproduced. [...] in these poems verlaine remained faithful to the principle he had proclaimed: “de la musique avant toute chose”. these are songs in which verbal music is brought to the foreground. in these short poems the verbal content is moved to the background, and we are first and foremost captivated by the sound of the words themselves, the combinations of the vowels, consonants, and nasals. (briusov 1911: 9–11) when we translate such poems, briusov argued, we “should sacrifice fidelity to the image rather than the melodiousness of verse [pevuchest’ stikha]” (ibid.: 11). kirsanov seems to have followed this advice. an obvious example of phonetic translation is found in the work of another russian symbolist poet, novelist and verse theorist, andrei belyi – namely, in his novel maski (masks, 1932): “[...] two years ago the widely known dwarf, yasha, who was insane, settled in a corner of selisvitsyn’s apartment. he was always standing on sennaya square with his hand outstretched. in the evenings he sang german songs. people would have killed for such songs, but nobody held him responsible, a holy fool. frol murshilov, a mimic, modified the songs in his own particular way. in sünde und in den genuss gehn wir ab zum sinken, zum finden den traurigen grab. and murshilov, at once: izümu da sin’ki za uzen’kij drap – u zinki, ufimki, tatarchenko: grab’! – “sing, murshilov!” (belyi 1932: 32–33; discussed in lotman 2009) the full text of this german song is found in moskva pod udarom (moscow in jeopardy, 1926), the preceding novel in belyi’s so-called “moscow cycle”. belyi provides the german text with a literal translation into russian: “в грехе и в наслаждениях идем мы ко дну, чтобы найти печальную могилу” [‘in sin and pleasures we are sinking to find the sad grave’] (belyi 1926: 97 ftn.). murshilov’s parody, if translated literally, reads grotesquely differently: 56 igor pilshchikov “raisins and blueing / for thick woolen cloth – / from zinka,3 a native of ufa, / tatarchenko,4 steal!” in the preface to masks, andrei belyi describes the acoustic and rhythmic structure of his “moscow” novels: “[...] i do not write for reading with the eyes, but rather for the reader who pronounces my text inwardly, so i deliberately saturate the semantic abstraction not only with colours [...], but also with sounds [...], i. e. [...] i deliberately impose my voice by all means: with the sound of words and through the arrangement of the parts of the sentence. (belyi 1932: 9–10) this paper is therefore devoted to translations of poetry that are not equivalent to the source text on the lexical level, but attempt to reproduce the sound, rhythm and syntax of the original. according to j. c. catford’s linguistic theory of translation, these levels are characterized by a certain “autonomy” and “detachability” or “separability for translation purposes” (catford 1965: 11–13, 23). george steiner called this phenomenon “phonetic facsimile” (steiner 1998 [1975]: 427). j. c. catford noted that, in translations of poetry, we find “rare cases of deliberate attempts at partial replacement by equivalent tl [target language] phonology” (catford 1965: 22 ftn., emphasis in the original). however, phonological theory teaches us that “there is no absolute correspondence (either materially acoustic or phonological) between the sounds of two different languages” (fedorov 1928: 58). therefore, it is impossible “to render the source text ‘sound for sound’,” and, in the case of phonetic translation, the “target text is merely an approximation to the sound of the source text as filtered through the ‘phonemic grid’ of the target language” (lefevere 1975: 20). such an approximation, however, “works”. although two “similar” phonemes which belong to two different language systems cannot be “the same” element, their “physical resemblance”, as uriel weinreich pointed out, tempts the bilingual to identify the two phonemes astride the limits of the languages. even syllables and whole words in two languages are occasionally equated by dint of their ‘identical’ or ‘similar’ phonemic shapes. (weinreich 1953: 7, cf. 14–28) 3 a diminutive of zinaida. 4 a surname. 57the semiotics of phonetic translation these words from weinreich’s classic study, languages in contact, helps us to understand the phenomenon of phonetic translation. when we speak of a similarity between phonemes, we sometimes do not assume any coincidence or similarity of their descriptions at the phonological level, but rather at the level of distinctive features (cf. taranovsky 1965). sometimes it is not an individual phoneme that is reproduced, but a particular distinctive feature or a cluster of features (cf. pszczołowska 1977: 22–23; 1982: 390–391). this is the reason why the phenomenon under discussion should be defined as “phonetic” rather than “phonological” translation, contrary to catford’s definition (1965: 56–61). the search for proper terminology has not been confined to the opposition of “phonetic” versus “phonological” or “phonemic” (lefevere 1975: 4–5, 19–26, 95–99). lawrence venuti, a leading contemporary historian and theorist of translation, has suggested the term “homophonic translation” (venuti 2008 [1995]: 185–188; more on homophony and homonymy below, section 7). eugene eoyang (2003: 154) named this phenomenon “translatophony”. on the other hand, the difference between phonological systems “can be ignored in cases where the compared phonemes are different in terms of their distinctive features, but there is no interfering element. for example, in the german language /t/ and /d/ are opposed as tense versus lax, while in french they are opposed as voiceless versus voiced, but, since there are no ‘other’ types of t and d in either language, these phonemes can be considered equivalent in these two systems” (segal 1972: 59). as another member of opoyaz, the linguist evgeny polivanov noted, “for interphonemic associations (which must be taken into consideration specifically with regard to the correspondences of non-identical sounds in poetic technique), only the acoustic side of the sounds compared may sometimes be essential – without correspondence in basic physiological aspects (in the position of the active organ of the given sound production)” (polivanov 1974 [1930]: 356). it should be added that, in addition to phonetic equivalence, we are sometimes faced with graphophonetical or grapho-phonological equivalence (pilshchikov 1991: 20). from this point of view, intertextual sound repetition is similar to intratextual forms of sound repetition, such as alliteration, which can also be partly based on graphic equivalence (see lotman 1976: 63–64; grigor’ev 1979: 264–265, 291– 294; vekshin 2006: 40–50). a correlation between graphic forms is possible if some of the distinctive features are ignored and the difference between two phonemes is perceived as irrelevant (brik 1917: 26–28; skirmantas 1984: 8, 19). czech verse theorist miroslav červenka even speaks of a “competition” between phonemes and graphemes (červenka 2002: 14–16). the same issue can be reformulated as the problem of interlinguistic interference in the situation of poetic bilingualism and its influence on the poet’s 58 igor pilshchikov individual criteria for translation accuracy (cf. levinton 1979). in the russian tradition of translation studies, a discussion of this type of correspondence between the source text (st) and the target text (tt) was exemplified by translations made by the early romantic poet vasily zhukovsky (1783–1852), the late romantic poet fedor tiutchev (1803–1873), and the acmeist (post-symbolist) poet osip mandelshtam (1891–1938). the unusual nature of tiutchev’s translations was first revealed by the russian formalist yuri tynianov, a member of the celebrated opoyaz “triumvirate” (along with shklovsky and eikhenbaum) who may possibly be considered one of the first to discover “phonetic translation”. his unfinished book on tiutchev and heinrich heine was written between 1917 and 1922 but remained unpublished until 1977. andrei fedorov, a disciple of tynianov and later a founder of soviet translation studies, added more examples from tiutchev and other russian poet-translators in his article, “the acoustic form of poetic translations (the problems of metrics and phonetics)” (fedorov 1928). examples from mandelshtam were discovered by irina semenko (1970). the zhukovsky examples were analyzed by the author of the present article (pilshchikov 1991). it is interesting to note that in many other aspects of poetics, zhukovsky was a predecessor of tiutchev, and tiutchev – a forerunner of mandelshtam.5 2. russian poets and critics on sound in verse many russian poets and critics – the romantics in the nineteenth century, the modernists and avant-gardists in the twentieth – insisted on the priority of sound in verse in relation to meaning. in his article “slovo i kul’tura” (“the word and culture”, 1922) osip mandelshtam wrote: the poem lives through an inner image, that ringing mold of form that anticipates the written poem. there is not yet a single word, but the poem can already be heard. this is the sound of an inner image; this is the poet’s ear touching it. (1979: 116) 5 ironically, the surname of the author of the “phonemic translations” of catullus analyzed by lefevere (1975), the american poet louis zukofsky (1904–1978), the son of immigrant russian jews, is nearly homophonic with the surname of the originator of this type of translation in russian literature, vasily zhukovsky (1783–1852). on louis zukofsky’s catullus as an example of “modernist experimentalism in translation” (venuti 2008 [1995]: 186) see also raffel 1988: 23–28; hooley 1988: 55–69. 59the semiotics of phonetic translation the symbolist viacheslav ivanov, mandelshtam’s first mentor in poetry, discussed the same problem in his essay “k probleme zvukoobraza u pushkina” (“on the problem of the sound-image in pushkin”, 1925). he emphasized the attention that romantics and early symbolists paid to this stage in the genesis of the poetic text: musical-rhythmic excitation [...]; the auditory captivation [...] that attracts the sound-composer to obscure glossolalia [...]; and, finally, the dream-like experience of the dynamic rhythm-image [ritmoobraz] and of a more stable sound-image [zvukoobraz], an experience which gravitates toward the arrangement and comprehension of the object of contemplation [...] – these are the easily distinguishable and coequally powerful elements of that living unity of forces which come to life sequentially and which work in concert that we typically experience in the act of poetic creation. homing in on this act at its inception would provide snapshots of pure glossolalia [...]. this articulate, but wordless sound-speech [zvukorech’], is connected to a particular language by a common phonetic structure. it struggles to give birth in the sphere of language to a word as a symbol of a “transrational” image – a first, completely murky representation which seeks to crystallize from emotional agitation. the fact that poetic creation commences from the formation of these blurry spots, is evidence that poetry is truly a “function of language” and a manifestation of its organic life [...]. if a poet cannot or purposefully avoids bringing the poetic act to its full conclusion, his work preserves the imprint of one of these steps in the process, where elements of the initial sound-composition are incompletely illuminated through image and sense, where the direct mutual attraction of homonyms turns out to be stronger than the configurative instruments of artistic imagination and apprehension. the romantics and the early symbolists had a great fondness for this stage of fluid and flexible images glimmering vaguely in the surge of sounds because it retains something of the original uncontrolled impulse, in which they saw proof of true “inspiration”. (ivanov 1930 [1925]: 95–96) although his essay contains a polemical message that argues against the ideas of the russian formalists (etkind 1994: 148–151), ivanov nevertheless agreed with his opponents in their interpretation of the role of “trans-sense” in the genesis of poetic texts. 60 igor pilshchikov viktor shklovsky and lev yakubinsky, contributors to the first collection of formalist essays published in 1916 (devoted in its entirety to the role of sounds in poetic language), declared: [...] very often [...] verses emerge in the poet’s soul in the form of acoustic spots, which are not yet cast in words. the stain now approaches, now moves away, but eventually brightens and coincides with an assonant word. [...] one may perhaps similarly interpret the confessions of poets in which they say that verses emerge (schiller) or ripen in their soul in the form of music. i think these poets fell victim to a lack of precise terminology. there is no word for inner sound-speech [zvukorech’], and when they want to say something about it, the term “music” turns up as a description of certain sounds which are not words. in this particular case they are not yet words because they eventually take a verbal shape. [...] perceptions of the poem are usually also reduced to a perception of its acoustic prototype [pra-obraz]. (shklovsky 1916: 10, “on poetry and transrational language”) in [the mind of ] poets with auditory imagination, perception of the movements of the speech organs can evoke corresponding auditory (or acoustic) representations, and then the selection of sounds for the poem takes place on the basis of these auditory representations. in this case, the series of movements of the speech organs or the series of auditory representations constitutes the starting point for poetic linguistic thought. it is in this sense that we should interpret an avowal made by many poets concerning sounds as the initial point of poetic creativity. (yakubinsky 1916: 29, “on the sounds of poetic language”; emphasis in the original) later, in his unfinished book rhythm and syntax, osip brik claimed that “according to recent observations, poetic work develops” as follows: in the beginning, the poet gets a vague representation of a certain lyric complex, of a certain acoustic and rhythmic structure, and only then is this transrational structure filled with meaningful words. andrei belyi wrote about this, blok spoke about this, and the futurists also spoke of this. (brik 1927, 6: 35) blok’s experience was corroborated by shklovsky: very often a line of a poem emerges in the artist’s mind in the form of a certain acoustic spot, which is not yet clarified into words. the words come as a motivation for sounds. a. a. blok told me about such a phenomenon on the basis of introspection. (shklovsky 1923: 10) 61the semiotics of phonetic translation the futurist who “also spoke” of this phenomenon was vladimir mayakovsky, a leading poet of the russian avant-garde, who wrote about the fundamental “rumble-rhythm” or “rhythm-din” [gul-ritm] in his article “kak delat’ stikhi?” (“how to make verse”, 1926).6 this basic rumble / din / rhythm comes first, when “there are almost no words yet”, and only “gradually is one able to make out single words in this din” (cf. timofeev 1958: 83–84). having quoted this evidence, krystyna pomorska concludes that for blok and mayakovsky, who were “otherwise so different”, “rhythm was primordial and the word secondary” (jakobson, pomorska 1985: 22). not only rhythm, we might add, but also sound. the main difference here is not between modernist and avant-gardist practices or between symbolist and formalist theories, but between a psychological (causal) and a functional (teleological) interpretation of the phenomenon under discussion. in this frame of reference, there is one formalist critic who dissents from all other formalists and the symbolist ivanov. this critic is boris eikhenbaum. initially he also supported a generative psychological explanation of the priority of sound in poetry: it is possible to imagine that a poet may have an articulatory design [proiznositel’nyj zamysel] (the inner mimics of the speech organs) that is not connected with ready-made words. then, the process of fighting with the word should take place, and the poem can be considered a kind of compromise between a pure design and the nature of the material. (eikhenbaum 1987 [1918]: 335, “on the artistic word”) however, eikhenbaum later offered an anti-psychological interpretation of the same phenomenon: the organizing principle of lyric poetry is not the ready-made word, but an intricate complex of rhythm and verbal acoustics, often with the predominance of some elements over the others. this complex is, in the logical sense, the first stage in the realization of abstract artistic concepts. in this sense, the sounds of verse (their speech representations, both acoustic and articulatory) are self-valuable and self-signifying. (eikhenbaum 1924 [1920]: 206, “on sounds in poetry”; emphasis in the original) 6 for the english translation see mayakovsky 1975 [1926]. 62 igor pilshchikov for eikhenbaum, sound in poetry plays a constructive role, “whatever the real psychological genesis” of the poem may have been (eikhenbaum 1924 [1921]: 206). to describe this constructive factor, a new term was invented: “the sum total of all of the means of acoustic organization of verse is commonly called instrumentation” (shtokmar 1939: 803). the terms ‘verbal instrumentation’ (slovesnaia instrumentovka) and ‘phon(et)ic instrumentation’ (zvukovaia instrumentovka) or simply ‘instrumenta tion’ (instrumentovka; also translated as ‘orchestration’) derives from rené ghil’s instrumentation verbale (see wellek, warren 1963: 294–295, note 2; kviatkovsky 1966: 122). they were introduced into russian literary theory by the symbolists valery briusov (1904: 26–29)7 and andrei belyi (1910),8 and then reinterpreted by the formalists, first and foremost by brik in his article “sound repetitions” (1917: 26) and eikhenbaum in his articles of 1921 and 1922.9 tynianov spoke of “verse instrumentation” and “acoustic instrumentation” in a series of articles written from 1920 to 1922 but published later (in two cases, considerably later) than eikhenbaum’s.10 as distinct from andrei belyi, the formalists and their disciples developed a functional interpretation of instrumentovka. to summarize their position in a few quotations, we can “speak of ‘instrumentation’, of acoustic organization, of the value of sound itself […] only if there is an orientation [ustanovka] toward an acoustic factor, if the organization of the acoustic qualities within certain units and entities is designed and perceived as a structural fact” (fedorov 1928: 57), i. e. if “the qualitative aspect of sounds in speech” acquires “the significance of the constructive factor of the literary whole” (bernshtein 1929: 184). an entry in eikhenbaum’s diary dated 18 june 1921 describes his conversation with tynianov about “preparing a collection of essays on instrumentation” (such a collection was never published). eikhenbaum writes: “i have been thinking about this recently. it is necessary to distinguish between the articulatory and acoustic phenomena. in contrast to linguistics, in both cases it is 7 briusov interpreted ghil’s theory of “instrumentation verbale” as an empirical justification of verlaine’s slogan, “de la musique avant toute chose”. see roman doubrovkine’s comment on briusov’s letter to ghil of 13/26 april 1904 (doubrovkine 2005: 89–91). 8 on verbal instrumentation as an “arrangement and combination of words” see belyi 1910: 232–233; on acoustic instrumentation see belyi 1910: 251, 283–284, 391, 410–417 et al. 9 see eikhenbaum 1924a [1921]: 201; 1924b [1921]: 213; 1922: 9–10; cf. mandelker 1983: 328, 330. 10 see tynianov 1977 [1922]: 385–387, 393; 1977 [1921–22]: 54 ftn., 55, 77 ftn.; 1929 [1922]: 72. see also tynianov 1924: 100–108, cf. 35, 128–129, note 37. 63the semiotics of phonetic translation necessary to consider the moments of artistic significance”.11 thus, the concept of ‘instrumentation’ / ‘orchestration’ is broader than the traditional notion of ‘euphony’ because it signifies any functional organization of sound and not only pleasant, agreeable sound implied by the prefix eu(cf. wellek, warren 1963: 159). in the case of phonetic translation, instrumentation in the tt may have two different functions: either to create an acoustic effect which is the same as (or similar to) the phonetic structure of the st (dynamic or functional equivalence) or to reproduce the phonetic structure of the st (formal equivalence).12 why should the poet-translator imitate the phonetic structure of the original if it cannot be interpreted as onomatopoeia, alliteration or any other type of semanticized or purely formal euphony? a possible answer is that sound, which is directly linked to the deep layer of signification, is often more important to the poet than the literal meanings of words. more than eighty years before the symbolists and futurists, the russian romantic critic nikolai polevoy claimed the same, referring to zhukovsky: that which made him unique among all other poets – a harmonious language – so to speak, the music of the language, is imprinted in zhukovsky’s poems [...] he polishes every note of his song carefully and accurately, he cherishes the sound as well as the word [...] zhukovsky plays the harp: enduring modulations of sounds precede his words, which are sung by the poet only to explain what he wants to express with sounds. (polevoy 1839: 115, 123; quoted by eikhenbaum [1922: 29–30] and tynianov [1924: 82–83]) this definition (“modulations of sounds precede his words”) describes zhukovsky’s translation techniques surprisingly well. 3. zhukovsky’s translation techniques for contemporary as well as later critics, vasily zhukovsky was one the founders of a new school in russian poetry (which we tend to define as pre-romantic or early romantic) and an immediate predecessor of russia’s greatest poet, 11 quoted in http://nikita-spv.livejournal.com/11168.html (accessed 30.04.2016). the manuscript is kept at the russian state archive of literature and art (rgali), fond 1527, opis’ 1, ed. khr. 244. see also wellek, warren 1963: 146–147; kolarov 1983: 20–22. 12 on dynamic equivalence as opposed to formal equivalence see nida 1964: 166–177. 64 igor pilshchikov aleksandr pushkin. an essential characteristic of zhukovsky’s poetry is the abundance of translations in his oeuvre. more than half of his poems are translations or imitations of french, english and, most importantly, german poetry. in the history of russian literature, zhukovsky is considered the first poet-translator and a poet-translator par excellence. the critics’ judgments concerning zhukovsky’s translation practices are not unanimous. on the one hand, we observe the poet-translator’s careless attitude to the originals, which for him, in the words of leading russian comparatist yuri d. levin, “were sometimes only a pretext to express his own emotions” (levin 1972: 231; see also levin 1985: 15; ďurišin 1979: 165; shveitser 1988: 173–176). on the other hand, in the opinion of another authoritative russian scholar, sergei averintsev, we find not only “semantic and artistic fidelity, but also very simple, literal and ‘literalist’ fidelity at different levels” of zhukovsky’s translations (averintsev 1988: 256). in a normal situation the translator, in search of equivalents, is constantly shifting from one level to another (catford 1965: 24–25, 73–82). the high frequency of such inter-level transitions within the same text is fundamental to zhukovsky’s art of translation. an adequate assessment of zhukovsky’s translation techniques requires an examination of the segments of the tt that do not set up formal equivalence to the st on the lexical level.13 given that translation in the romantic era did not have a purely informative function, the translator retained the right of subjective arbitrariness in choosing text equivalents (see levin 1963: 19–23; 1972: 222–240; 1985: 8–21). let us begin with onomastics. “zhukovsky’s refined sensitivity to the acoustic substance of foreign names”, noted by averintsev (1988: 263), manifests itself in the poet-translator’s specific attitude toward anthroponyms, place names and other proper nouns. the clausula (ending) of a verse line is a segment that is rhymed metrically and, in rhymed verse, phonetically. an eloquent detail: if a proper name that occupies the clausula in the original is not replaced with a different name in zhukovsky’s translation, it almost always also occupies the clausula (cf. fedorov 1928: 63–64). in some cases the motivation is clearly phonetic, as in his translation (1809) of schiller’s “kassandra” (1802): l sélig préis’ ich polyxénen 2 in des hérzens trúnknem wáhn, 3 dénn den bésten der hellénen 4 hófft sie brä́utlich zu umfáhn. l′ sládkij zhrébij poliksény! 2′ s zhenikhóm ruká s rukój, 3′ vzór, lübóv’ju raspalénnyj, 4′ i gordä́s’ samá sobój [...] 13 on formal equivalence see nida 1964: 159–160, 165–166; catford 1965: 32–34. 65the semiotics of phonetic translation the third and the fourth lines of the st quatrain have no lexical equivalents in the tt,14 but at the same time the interlinguistic (i. e. intertextual) rhyme “st-3 : tt-3′” proves to be richer than the intratextual rhyme “tt-1′ : tt-3′”: in st line 3 and tt line 3′, the rhymed ictus contains the onset consonant [l] ([-ˈle:nən] in 3 → [-ˈlʲen:əi̯] in 3′).15 moreover, the penultimate foot in both lines 3 and 3′ contains a rhotic consonant (der and ras-). although these sounds have different articulation in german and russian (and may even have different variations in german), both versions of /r/ can be categorized as a sonorant trill. the odd lines in the st (1 & 3) and the tt (1′ & 3′) are rhythmically identical: the trochaic tetrameters with feminine endings are split into two equal hemistichs (2 feet + 2 feet = 4 syllables + 4 syllables). it is noteworthy that the onset consonants of the second feet in the st lines (p[ʁ]eis’ich in line 1 and den [b]esten in line 3) are also reproduced in the tt (zh[r]ebij in line 1′ and lü[b]ov’ju in line 3′). the correspondence between the initial words of both quatrains (selig and sladkij) may be qualified as grapho-phonological. moreover, the st repetition [-ɪç ... -ɪç] (in selig preis’ich) is echoed as sladkij zhrebij in the tt. thus, two disyllabic words in the first hemistichs of both the st and tt are visually and acoustically “similar”, and precede the name of polyxena, which occupies the second hemistich. in zhukovsky’s translation (1812) of friedrich von matthisson’s “elysium” (1787), the key name anadyomene occupies three feet of the trochaic tetrameter with a masculine ending, that is, the entire line except for the monosyllabic clausula. zhukovsky reproduced not only the name itself (and the sound of the name!), but also the sound of the clausula: l só in héil’ger stílle rúhten 2 lúft und wógen, álso 16 schwíeg 3 die natúr, da 17 aus den flúten 4 anadyoméne stíeg. l′ ták molchálo vsö́ tvorén’je – 2′ móre, vózdukh, béreg dík, – 3′ zrä́ penístykh vód rozhdén’je, 4′ anadiomény lík. 16 17 the last line in the st means ‘anadyomene stood (up)’; the corresponding line in the tt means ‘anadyomene’s face’. however, the monosyllabic verb stíeg [ʃti:k] (‘stood’) sounds very similar to the monosyllabic noun lík [lʲik] 14 the literal meaning of the german text (‘...because to the best of the hellenes / she hopes to give a bride’s embrace’) has nothing to do with the russian translation (‘her eyes [are] inflamed by love / and, proud of herself...’). the vocabulary and phraseology of zhukovsky’s line 3′ (vzor ljubov’ju raspalennyj) derive from gavriil derzhavin’s anacreontic poem, “k pervomu sosedu” (“to my first neighbour”, 1780): ...ljubov’ju raspalennyj strastnoj... (‘inflamed by ardent love’). 15 in russian the vowels of the stressed syllables are normally longer than the unstressed vowels, but this difference has no phonological significance. 16 matthisson 1789: 108. a variant in later editions: so nur. 17 for the comparison of two adaptations see ďurišin 1976: 496–498. 66 igor pilshchikov (‘face’): the syllabic core of both monosyllables (the nucleus vowel and the final consonant, or coda) fully coincide. the same applies to the monosyllables [ʃvi:k] (‘kept silence’) in “álso schwíeg” and [dʲik] (‘wild, savage’) in “béreg dík” (‘the wild shore’). the st rhyme “[-i:k] : [-i:k]” (st-2 : st-4) is thus faithfully copied in “tt-2′ : tt-4′”, but the phonetic correspondences are not limited to the sounds in the clausulae. the phonetic structure of the st is reproduced not only in the fourth line, but also in the second line of the tt, in which the stressed syllable of the second foot [vo(:)-] is preserved. the st hemistich lúft und wógen means ‘air and waves’, whereas the corresponding hemistich in the tt (móre, vózdukh) means ‘sea [and] air’. the noun vózdukh (‘air’) correlates both metrically and phonetically with the noun wógen (‘waves’) and corresponds semantically to the noun luft (‘air’). what is said above about proper names can be also applied to international vocabulary. for example, zhukovsky’s translation of schiller’s “berglied” (“song of the mountain”, 1804), published in 1818 as “gornaja pesn’” (“song of the mountain”) and then renamed as “gornaja doroga” (“the mountain road”), features the rhyme “trone : korone” which corresponds to the rhyme “throne : krone” in the german original. an interesting example is found in zhukovsky’s translation of gottfried august bürger’s “lenore” (1773), published in 1831 under the eponymous title “lenora”. in this version, zhukovsky attempted to convey the text of bürger’s celebrated ballad more precisely than he did in his earlier imitation of the same poem, titled “ljudmila” (1808).18 the german noun chor and the russian noun khor, both meaning ‘choir’, are both placed in the clausula: kómm, kǘster, híer! kómm mit dem chór und gúrgle mit des bráutlìed vòr!19 za mnój, pevtsý, za mnój, pastór; propój nam mnogolét’je, khór [...] 19 this is not sheer coincidence. a comparable example is found in the first stanza of zhukovsky’s “prizvanie” (“calling”), an adaptation of a. h. von weyrauch’s song “der jünger” (“the disciple”, 1809).20 here the rhyme 18 for the comparison of two adaptations see ďurišin 1976: 496–498. 19 here et passim, grave accents denote secondary stresses. 20 the russian version remained unpublished during the translator’s lifetime. august heinrich von weyrauch (or weirauch, 1788–1865) was a locally-known baltic german composer and songwriter, zhukovsky’s acquaintance in dorpat (tartu). on weyrauch see gottzmann, hörner 2007: 1402–1404. 67the semiotics of phonetic translation “chor (‘choir’) : tor (‘gate’)” is rendered as “<snät’ il’ net s dverej> zatvór (‘<to undo or not to undo> the bolt <of the door>’) : khor (‘choir’)”.21 the words in the tt that form an intertextual rhyme and thus establish a phonetic equivalence with the st may be not at all correlated at the morphemic or lexical levels. more examples from “lenora”: rásch auf ein éisern gíttertòr [...] mit schwánker gért ein schlág davór [...] was hálf, was hálf mèin béten? nún íst’s nicht méhr vonnö́ten. k vorótam kón’ vo vés’ opór [...] ezdók bichóm stegnúl zatvór [...]22 pred ním mòj krík bỳl tshchéten... òn glúkh i bezotvéten. 22 this type of interlinguistic / intertextual rhyme in zhukovsky was first identified by andrei fedorov. the rhyme “[-ax] : [-ax]” in mignon’s song from goethe’s novel wilhelm meisters lehrjahre (1795): kénnst du das háus? auf sä́ulen rúht sein dách, es glä́nzt der sáal, es schímmert das gemách – is reproduced in zhukovsky’s translation (1817): tám svétlyj dóm! na mrámornykh stolbákh postávlen svód; chertóg gorít v luchákh. tiutchev later copied the same rhyme in his translation of mignon’s song (1851), following zhukovsky (see fedorov 1928: 62–63): ty znáesh’ dóm na mrámornykh stolpákh? sijáet zál i kúpol vés’ v luchákh. in zhukovsky’s translation of goethe’s “an den mond” (second version, 1789), titled accordingly “k mesjatsu” (“to the moon”, 18171, 18242), the phonetic echoes of the original in stanzas 4 and 6 are clearly of an onomatopoeic nature: 21 this example was reported to me by andrei dobritsyn. it is not, however, analyzed by eichstädt (1970: 43–46), who examined the phonetic structure of “prizvanie”. 22 here, just as in “prizvanie”, zatvor (‘bolt’) corresponds phonetically to the german <glitter>tor (‘<lattice->gate’), while the latter also finds a formal lexical equivalent in the tt: vorota (‘gate’). 68 igor pilshchikov (4) léjsä, mój ruchéj, stremís’!         zhízn’ uzh ottsvelá;     ták nadézhdy proneslís’;        ták lübóv’ ushlá. [...] (6) léjsä, léjsä, mój ruchéj,         i zhurchán’je strúj [...] (4) flíeße, flíeße, líeber flúß!         nímmer wírd’ ich fróh [...] (6) ráusche, flúß, das tál entláng,         ohne rást und rúh [...] the initial version of the first line of stanza 4 in the tt reads: léjsä, mój ruchéj, nesís’! (zhukovsky 1818: 31). apparently, the translator substituted the imperative nesís’ (‘rush’) with its synonym, stremís’ (‘rush’), for purely stylistic reasons: it rhymed with another word of the same root (proneslís’). at the same time both redactions of the tt preserve the interlinguistic consonance “proneslís’ – flúß”. stanza 6 in the tt combines the motifs of the st stanzas 6 and 4. this fact remained unnoticed by influential paraformalist critic viktor zhirmunsky, who wrote about the “modified acoustic instrumentation” [izmenennaja zvukovaja instrumentovka] in stanza 6 of the tt as compared to the st (zhirmunsky 1932: 544; 1937: 108).23 the instrumentation of zhukovsky’s translation of goethe’s “der fischer” (1778), made a few months after the translation of “an den mond”, has also attracted the attention of the scholars. the second stanza describes a mermaid coming out of the water: 1 sie sáng zu íhm, sie sprách zu íhm: 2      “was lóckst du méine brút 3 mit ménschenwìtz und ménschenlìst 4      hináuf in tódesglùt?” 1′ glädít onà, pojót onà: 2′      “zachém ty mój naród 3′ manísh’, vlechö́sh’ s rodnógo dná 4′      v kipúchij zhár iz vód?” “the musical pattern of goethe’s poem is more modest, more obtuse”, as one respectable historian of russian poetic translation maintains (etkind 1973: 84). however, a significant part of the st pattern is reproduced quite faithfully in the tt. in the second line, the phrase “<was lockst> [d]u [m][ai̯][n]e b[ʁ]ú[t] (‘<why do you lure> my brood’)” is semantically, rhythmically and phonetically copied as “<zachem> [t]y [m][oi̯] [n]a[r]ó[t] / <manísh’> (‘<why do you lure> my people’)”, with rounded vowels /u/ and /o/ in the clausula. 23 kahlenborn (1985: 152) repeated zhirmunsky’s opinion without any reference to zhirmunsky. for the analysis of the imagery in zhukovsky’s translation in comparison with goethe’s original, see semenko 1975: 89–90; 1976: 49–50. 69the semiotics of phonetic translation the verb manísh’ in the third line of the tt corresponds semantically to lockst the second line of the st, and phonetically to menshin the third line of the st. at the same time, the onomatopoeic consonant pattern in the third line of the st (“[m]it [m]é[nʃ]en-[v]ìtz und [m]é[nʃ]en-[l]ìst”) is partly imitated in the tt as “[m]a[n]í[ʃ], [v][lʲ]e[ʧ]ö́[ʃ] s ro[dn]ógo [dn]á”, with no semantic correspondence between tt and st.24 another example of onomatopoeia in both tt and st is zhukovsky’s translation of schiller’s “der taucher” (“the diver”, 1797), titled “kubok” (“the goblet”, 1831). i refer to the first line of the sixth and twelfth stanzas, which goethe praised in his letter to schiller on 25 september 1797: i had almost forgotten to tell you that the verse, “it bubbles, it hisses, and rushes and roars” [es wallet und siedet und brauset und zischt], &c., is perfectly justified at the falls of schaffhausen [bei dem rheinfall]; it was to me remarkable how it embraces the chief moments of the prodigious scene. (schiller, goethe 1845: 339; 1870: 372) “in the centre of schiller’s poem is a raging sea painted with the intensive use of verbal sounds”, efim etkind explains. “this is probably one of the best images of sea waters in world literature” (etkind 1973: 87–88). according to this scholar, schiller’s “sound painting” in “der taucher” has a “consistently iconic character”, especially when it comes to the [v]/[f ] and [ʃ] alliterations (ibid.: 88), but zhukovsky’s “musical imagery is even more intense and profound” (ibid.: 89). on the other hand, there are segments in zhukovsky’s translation that can be described as a “phonetic facsimile” of the german original. such is zhukovsky’s rendition of schiller’s line so admired by goethe: und es wállet und síedet und bráuset und zíscht i vójet, i svíshchet, i bjót, i shipít all four verbs in the st and tt are in the 3rd person singular, ending in [-t]. this parallelism is supported by the similarity between the onset consonants in the stressed syllables of the first three verbs ([v]–[z]–[b] in st, [v]–[sʲ]–[bʲ] in tt), the stressed [i(:)] in the second and fourth ictuses (i. e. at the end of 24 ‘with [your] human wit and human cunning’ (st) vs. ‘[you] lure [and] tempt [us] from [our] native seabed’ (tt). 70 igor pilshchikov the first and second hemistichs), and the onomatopoeic [ʃ] in the last verbs in the st and tt.25 last but not least, formal phonetic equivalence between the tt and st may have no onomatopoeic motivation – in this case, it becomes a neat example of “phonetic facsimile”. in this regard, one may note the phonetic translation of forms of address in zhukovsky’s “lenora”. a century ago the critic vasily kaplinsky was surprised that “lenora always addresses her mother as ‘friend’ [drug]” (kaplinsky 1915: 19). it is strange indeed if we ignore the fact that it is not semantics, but the instrumentation of forms of address in the st (o mútter, mútter) and the tt (o drúg moj, drúg moj) that are similar: 4 3 1 2 4 3 1 2 o m ú tt e r, m ú tt e r o d r ú g m o j, d r ú g m o j 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 l – dental/alveolar stops [t] ~ [d] 2 – sonorant trills [ʁ] ~ [r] 3 – close back rounded vowels [u] 4 – bilabial nasals [m] moreover, the russian and the german lines have the same rhythmic-accentual and word-boundary structure (more on this below). characteristically, in zhukovsky’s “lenora” the german mutter (‘mother’) in the narrator’s speech is always conveyed as mat’ (‘mother’). the appellative drug (‘friend’) appears in a few other fragments of the tt without being the lexical-semantic equivalent of any word in the st. in one instance, however, the phonetic allusions to the st are recognizable: [...] und frúg nach allen námen ~ [...] i drúga vyzyváet.26 25 compare a pre-zhukovskian translation of this line, in which the onomatopoeic effect is absent: “i more bushujet, klubitsä, stekajet” (pokrovsky 1820: 84, 85). it is known that in december 1819 ivan pokrovsky (1800–1863) read his translation aloud in the presence of zhukovsky (kotomin 2007: 25). interestingly enough, zhukovsky started working on his own version of “der taucher” much earlier, in april 1818, but stopped after the fifth stanza, and returned to this translation as late as 1831 (lebedeva 2008: 395–397). 26 ‘and [she] asks for all names’ (st); ‘and [she] calls for a friend’ (tt). 71the semiotics of phonetic translation 4. tiutchev’s translation techniques fedor tiutchev was considered a second-rate poet by his contemporaries, but the critics of the modernist era drastically re-evaluated his legacy so that he is now commonly assessed as one of the three greatest russian poets of the nineteenth century along with pushkin and lermontov. tiutchev was deeply immersed in german culture, and his translations from german are of special interest. examples of phonetic translation in tiutchev, as already stated above, were analyzed by yuri tynianov and andrei fedorov. tynianov, in particular, studied the phonetics of tiutchev’s translation (1827–1829) of heinrich heine’s poem, “wie der mond sich leuchtend dränget...” (1824). tynianov was stunned by the fact that, in tiutchev’s poem, the instrumentation is evidently preserved [...] intentionally and consciously: the first line of the fourth stanza in heine’s poem: lauten klangen, buben sangen is translated by tiutchev as: deti peli, v bubny bili. here we have a reproduction of the internal rhyme, “klangen – sangen” [...] as “peli – bili”; a particular word, “buben” [‘boys’], is reproduced with evident harm to the transmission of meaning, as the [phonetically] identical “bubny” [‘tambourines’]. (tynianov 1977 [1922]: 385)27 andrei fedorov arrived at the same conclusions as tynianov (see fedorov 1928: 62). however, he added a special note to his analysis of the line “deti peli, v bubny bili”: “i owe my gratitude to s[ergei] i[gnat’evich] bernshtein for providing me with this example” (ibid.: 68, note 17). a few questions arise here that will have to remain unanswered for the time being. was bernshtein acquainted with tynianov’s then-unpublished study? why did fedorov not learn this cornerstone example from tynianov, who supervised fedorov’s graduate thesis “heine in russian” (fedorov 1929 [1927]) at the faculty of letters of the higher state courses in art criticism at the state institute of the history of arts? (cf. fedorov 1983 [1974]: 85–91, 100–101). in his memoirs, 27 nikolai sharov, who studied tiutchev’s translations from heine at the same time as tynianov and found in them “more than thirty textual deviations from the original” (sharov 1922, 2/3: 98–99), also analyzed the lines in question, but noticed only the lexical and stylistic inadequacy of the translation (ibid.: 109). 72 igor pilshchikov fedorov remarked that he (to quote) had “used the advice of yuri nikolaevich [tynianov] and my other mentor, sergei ignat’evich bernshtein, – with precise notes acknowledging their help – as early as 1927–29, in my first published works” (ibid.: 91). is it not possible that the observation which proved to be crucial for the topic under discussion actually belonged to bernshtein, while tynianov simply did not have time to add a citation crediting his colleague in his unfinished monograph? finally, the same classic example (without any mention of fedorov’s article) is cited in the articles on tiutchev and heine published a few decades later by alfred kerndl (1956: 296) and igor’ vakhros (1966/1967: 434). it is worth noting that the word búbny (‘tambourines’) corresponds, both metrically and phonetically, to the word búben (‘boys’), and correlates semantically with the word lauten (‘lutes’). this example of double correlation (“split reference”) can thus be compared with the analogous examples from zhukovsky, when one word in the tt corresponds at different levels to two words in the st (vozdukh = luft & vozdukh ~ wogen; manish’ = lockst & manish’ ~ mensh-). similarly to zhukovsky, tiutchev often preserved international lexemes in his translations and, whenever possible, kept them in the same metrical position as they were in the original. tynianov (1977 [1922]: 386) found the following example in tiutchev’s translation (1829) of heine’s “liebste, sollst mir heute sagen…” (1822): basilísken und vampíre [...] vasilíski i vampíry [...] in tiutchev’s translation (1827–1830) of goethe’s “hegire” (from west-östlicher divan, 1814–1819), not only are the words nord (russian nord) and throne (russian trony) preserved, but the instrumentation of the second hemistich of the first line and the entire second line is also copied quite faithfully: nórd und wést und sǘd zersplíttern, thróne bérsten, réiche zíttern [...] západ, júg i nórd v krushén’je,28 tróny, tsárstva v razrushén’je [...] 28 28 this is the text of the initial version of the translation; tiutchev soon changed the order of the cardinal points: západ, nórd i júg v krushén’je [...] (see tiutchev 1966: 67, 285). the german süd (‘south’) is translated as jug (‘south’), and has the same consonant in the coda as nord (‘north’). the standard russian word for ‘north’ is sever, but the poet chose to use a loanword to keep closer to (the sound of ) the german original. 73the semiotics of phonetic translation tiutchev’s translation (1830) of heine’s “das herz ist mir bedrückt, und sehnlich...” (1824) begins with a perfect rhythmical-syntactic rendition of the first line (“zakrálas’ v sérdtse grúst’ – i smútno...”) and continues with accurate phonetic touches at the end of the second and fourth lines and at the beginning of the third line of the second stanza: 1 dóch jétzt ist álles wie verschóben, 2 dàs íst ein drä́ngen! eine nóth! 3 gestórben ìst der hérrgòtt óben, 4 und únten ìst der téufel tódt. 1′ a nýnche mír vès’ kak raspálsä: 2′ vsö̀ kvérchu dnóm, vsè sbílis’ s nóg, – 3′ gospód’-bòg ná nebe skonchálsä, 4′ i v áde sataná izdókh. the monosyllable no[x] (‘legs’)29 in the clausula of line tt-2′ reflects the monosyllable no[t] (‘a mishap’), which forms the clausula of line st-2, whereas the semantics of the rhyming word is preserved in the translation: izdókh (‘died’) in line 4′ corresonds to todt (‘dead’) in line 4. tiutchev’s imitation of the fisher-boy’s song from schiller’s drama wilhelm tell (1804) has the incipit “s ozera veet prokhlada i nega...”, the epigraph “es lächelt der see...”, and the title “iz shillera” (“from schiller”, 1851). the russian text begins with a phonetic quotation from the original: es lä́chelt der sée, | er ládet zum báde ~ s ózera véet | prochláda i néga. andrei fedorov observed: in this translation, besides a reproduction, probably accidental, of the individual sounds of the original (der see – s ozera, where the consonants coincide; der see – veet, where the vowels coincide: [namely], the slender e), we find a coincidence with the original in the group ‘prokhlada’ – ‘er ladet’. [the russian and the german segments are similar] in terms of the composition of sounds, their arrangement and their metrical position. (fedorov 1928: 61)30 in each of the two strophes of schiller’s original, six lines are linked by two rhymes and one consonance. each consonance is supported by the coincidence of post-tonic vowels (“klíngen : éngel” in the first strophe; tíefen : schlä́fer in the first strophe). in the first strophe of the tt a consonance, “zvuki : liki” (with coincident [i]-sounds in the post-tonic syllables), appears in the same metrical / strophic position as in the st: 29 part of the idiom, sbit’sia s nog (‘be off one’s legs’). 30 compare also the initial consonants of each hemistich: es (lä́chelt) ~ s ó(zera); er ládet ~ prochláda. 74 igor pilshchikov 1 es lächelt der sée, | er ladet zum báde 2 der knabe schlief ein am grünen gestáde, 3 da hört er ein klíngen, 4 wie flöten so sǘß, 5 wie stimmen der éngel 6 im paradíes. 1′ s ozera véet | prochlada i néga 2′ otrok zasnul, ubajukan u bréga. 3′ blazhennye zvúki 4′ on slyshit vo sné 5′ to angelov líki 6′ pojut v vyshiné. among other things, the vowel hiatus, which is copied in the tt (graphically and, to a certain extent, phonetically: see [ˈze:] ~ veet [ˈvʲee̠t] or [ˈvʲeɪt]), finds a telling parallel in the grapho-phonetical structure of one of the clausulae in tiutchev’s translation (1826) of heine’s most celebrated poem, “ein fichtenbaum steht einsam...” (“a spruce-tree stands all alone...”, 1823): “... umhüllen ihn eis und schnee“ ~ “...i son ego burä leléet”. another dazzling hiatus that may be recalled here is an allusion to goethe’s “willkommen und abschied” (“welcome and farewell”, 1775) in tiutchev’s original poem, “pesok sypuchij po koleni...” (“the crumbling sand is knee-high...”, 1830): nóch’ khmúraja, | kàk zvér’ stoókij, glädít iz kázhdogo kustá! [...] wò fínsternìß | aus dem gesträ́uche mit húndert schwárzen áugen sáh. not only the image of “darkness (finsterniß) / night (noch’)” as a creature “with a hundred eyes” (mit hundert augen = stookij)31 (see briusov 1900: 410), but the metre, syntax and the acoustic structure of the clausulae coincide in both poems. judging by this context, the correspondence between the hiatus in stookij and the diphthongs in the german text does not appear incidental. fedorov (1928: 62) found an example of a precise imitation of sounds in the clausula in tiutchev’s translation of the harp-player’s second song from goethe’s wilhelm meisters lehrjahre (“wer sich der einsamkeit ergibt...”): mìch éinsamen die quál ~ [...] krugòm menä́ pechál’!.. (the russian text is dated 1827–1830 and begins “kto khochet miru chuzhdym byt’...”). this example is even more interesting as the structure of the rhymes in both st and tt is not identical. a reproduction of the [-ax] rhyme from mignon’s song, in both zhukovsky’s and tiutchev’s translations (also noticed by fedorov), was already discussed above. similar phenomena occur (albeit less frequently) in the translations from german made by tiutchev’s younger contemporaries, such as mikhail l. mikhailov (1829–1865) and afansy fet (1820–1892). 31 presumably, argos panoptes in goethe’s poem. in tiutchev, it is called ‘a beast’ (zver’). 75the semiotics of phonetic translation thus, yuri d. levin noticed that the concluding line of the penultimate stanza from heine’s “die grenadiere” (“the two grenadiers”, 1822) in the definitive redaction of mikhailov’s translation (18461, 18582), which reads “...und wiehernder rosse getrabe”, is rendered “in a clattering line: ‘i pushechnyj grom i trubu’. (it is illustrative that mikhailov introduced ‘the trumpet’ [truba], which is absent in the original, in order to reproduce the acoustic ending of the stanza, getrabe [‘the hoofbeat’], as close as possible)” (levin 1985: 210, cf. 208–209). it should be added that getrabe rhymes with “im grabe” (‘in the grave’), which is conveyed in the tt both phonetically and semantically as “v grobu” (‘in the grave’): 1 so will ich liegen und horchen still, 2 wie eine schildwach, im grábe, 3 bis einst ich höre kanonengebrüll 4 und wiehernder rosse getrábe. 32 1′ i smirno i chutko ja budu 2′ lezhat’, kak na strazhe, v grobú. 3′ zaslyshu ja konskoe rzhan’je 4′ i pushechnyj grom, i trubú. 33 32 33 fedorov discovered “abundant examples of acoustic coincidences determined by the phonetics of proper names” in the translations from german made by the late romantic poet afanasy fet (fedorov 1928: 63). just like zhukovsky and tiutchev, fet liked to preserve proper names in the clausula. such is, for instance, the rhyme “admét : filoktét” (‘admetus : philoctetes’)34 in his version (1878) of schiller’s “götter griechenlandes” (“the gods of greece”, 17881, 18002). in this translation, which fet himself characterized as “made in the metre of the original and almost literal” (fet 1971: 686), the phonetic structure of the rhyme is also preserved when only one of the rhyming words is a proper name, such as “mänáden : <ein>láden” (st) – it is copied as “menády : vzglä́dy” (tt). 35 finally, the rhyme “<demeters> [t͡ s]ä́[ʁ]e : [t͡ s]y[t]é[ʁ]e” is copied as “[t͡ s]eré[r]a : [t͡ s]i[t]é[r]a” (st):36 32 ‘so shall i lie and listen silently / like a sentry in my grave, / till one day i hear the cannon’s roar / and the hoofbeat of neighing horses’. 33 ‘and i shall quietly and keenly / lie like a sentry in my grave. / i shall hear the neigh of horses / and cannon’s roar, and the trumpet’. 34 resp. “admét : philoktét” in the st. 35 ‘menades : invite’ (st); ‘menades : <his> looks’ (tt). 36 ‘<demeter’s> tear : cythera’ (st); ‘ceres : cythera’ (tt). 76 igor pilshchikov 1 jener bach empfing demeters zä́hre, 2 die sie um perséphone geweint, 3 und von diesem hügel rief cythére, 4 ach, umsonst! dem schönen freund. 1′ v tot potok kak mnogo slöz, tseréra, 2′ ty o persefóne prolila, 3′ a s togo kholma votshche tsitéra 4′ druga nezhnogo zvala. the correspondence is both phonetic and semantic because, as fedorov put it, “tserera [‘ceres’] translates the word demeter, its equivalent.37 this is especially interesting in view of the proximity of its sounds to the word zähre” (fedorov 1928: 64). 5. mandelshtam’s translation techniques a successor of the poetics of zhukovsky and tiutchev was osip mandelshtam, who is sometimes credited with being the best russian-language poet of the twentieth century. his words about verses living through the “ringing mold of form that anticipates the written poem” were quoted above. such an attitude manifests itself in his translations as well as original poetry. in the winter of 1933–1934 mandelshtam translated four sonnets from petrarch’s canzoniere. in these translations he attempted to re-create not only the rhythmic structure of the original,38 but also its acoustic instrumentation. in many examples the translator’s rejection of lexical and phraseological faithfulness is compensated by a close imitation of the phonetic structure of the st, first and foremost in the rhymes (see semenko 1970: 169; mureddu 1980: 66, 73–74, 77; pilshchikov 2010: 112–113). irina semenko (1970: 169) compared the concatenation of rhymes in petrarch’s sonnet ccci with that in mandelshtam’s translation (mandelshtam 1990: 204): 37 the roman goddess ceres was seen as the counterpart of the greek goddess demeter. 38 for the discussion see semenko 1970: 168–169; iliushin 1990: 374–376; 2004: 216–217; venclova 1991: 197; pilshchikov 2010: 109–110. 77the semiotics of phonetic translation piéna crésci pésci affréna seréna rïésci rincrésci ména fórme víta dóglia órme gíta spóglia solö́nykh moglí by rýby zelö́nykh kalö́nykh izgíby glíby sklónakh méste graníta vesélij chésti mýta postéli one rhyme is precisely reproduced in terms of its phonetic structure (“víta : gíta” ~ “graníta : mýta”), in two other rhymes the onset consonant of the post-tonic syllable of the clausula in the tt and st are similar ([lʲ] ~ [ʎ]) or coincide ([n] ~ [n]). in his translation of sonnet cccxi, mandelshtam (1990: 205) preserves the sonorant trill [r] in the clausulae of the tercets: s’assecúra : oscúra : ventúra : dúra; chiári : impári strákha : prákha : prä́kha : vzmákha; efíra : míra tomas venclova (1991: 197) also noticed that the italian rhymes ending in -ári (chiári : impári) find a “palindromic” correspondence in the russian rhymes ending in -íra (efíra : míra). in the beginning of the fifth line of this sonnet, semenko (1970: 169) discovered an example of lexical and semantic accuracy reinforced by phonetic precision: “et tútta nótte...” ~ “i vsǘ-to nóch’...” (both the italian and the russian phrase mean ‘and all night long’). mandelshtam’s version of sonnet clxiv (mandelshtam 1990: 205) also features a striking interlinguistic facsimile: the russian poet copied petrarch’s rhyme “víva : a ríva” as “raznorechíva : na dívo39” (semenko 1970: 169). less 39 due to vowel reduction in russian, the unstressed /a/ and /o/ merge in [ə] in the post-tonic syllables. this sound is perceived as an allophone of /a/ (so-called ákanye). 78 igor pilshchikov strikingly, “petrarch’s táce, giáce, sfáce, páce40 are rendered with phonetically similar lebä́zhij, prä́zhej, tá zhe, strázhe41” (ibid.). the latter correlation may of course be incidental, but all verses in mandelshtam’s text, and not only its rhymes, are permeated with hushing sibilants [ʃ], [ʧ] and [ʐ] (mureddu 1980: 77–78). it seems most likely that mandelshtam emphasized the presence of similar sounds in the italian original because the abundance of sibilants and affricates formed part of his own acoustic image of the italian language, which opposed the established romantic concept of the extraordinary “melodiousness” of italian (see venclova 1991: 197–198; pilshchikov 2012; 2015: 141–149, 155–156). another example of phonetic facsimile in the clausulae is found in mandelshtam’s translation of sonnet cccxix (mandelshtam 1990: 206), where he reproduced one of the rhymes in the quatrains (semenko 1970: 169): béne : seréne : spéne : téne olénej : naslazhdénij : obol’shchénij : spleténij42 the second redaction of the translation has “olénej : v péne : koléni : razvetvlénij”; the third redaction –“olénej : v péne : javlénij : v tléne” (mandelshtam 1990: 403–405). the rhyming words change, but the rhyme remains the same (see gasparov 2002: 325–329 for the discussion). the rhymes in the tercets of the same sonnet contain a sequence of onset sonorant consonants in the post-tonic syllables, “[r]–[l]–[r] [l]–[r]–[l]”, which is mirrored as the inverted sequence “[l]–[r]–[l] [r]–[l]–[r]” in the translation: anchóra ciélo m’innamóra pélo dimóra vélo sushchestvoválo lazúri byválo khmúrä pristála búrä 40 all rhyming in [-ˈaʧe]. 41 all rhyming in [-ˈaʐɨ]. 42 unstressed /e/ and /i/ merge in the post-tonic syllables. 79the semiotics of phonetic translation the italian text of sonnet cccxix begins: “i dì miei più leggier, che nessun cervo, / fuggir com’ ombra e non vider più bene...” (“my days, more swiftly than any deer, / have fled like a shadow and have seen lesser good...”). mandelshtam’s translation begins: “promchalis’ dni moi – kak by olenej...” (“my days have swiftly passed, as if of the deer.. ”). gasparov, who analyzed the relationship between these texts, noticed that “the word cervo [‘a deer’] is placed at the end of the [first] line, the word olenej [‘of the deer’, plural] is also placed at the end of the first line, whereas the sound of olenej repeats the rhyme of the second italian line, ‘più bene’” (gasparov 2002: 331). this example of double correlation is of the same nature as the analogous examples from zhukovsky and tiutchev discussed in some detail above. one word in the tt refers to two different words in the st; one of these references is based on lexical semantics, the other on phonetics. viacheslav ivanov, mandelshtam’s mentor in poetry and himself a prominent translator of petrarch, proclaimed his adherence to zhukovsky’s principles of translation. for ivanov, “the supreme goal” of translation was “to create the musical equivalent of the original”. he was confident that “the letter [i. e. literal translation] kills” and proposed to “sacrifice the literal proximity of lineby-line transposition” in the name of “a faithful interpretation” of the poetic original (quoted in venclova 1991: 193–194). unlike ivanov, mandelshtam took up the zhukovskian tradition not only in theory, but also in practice, and prioritized the acoustic aspect of translation over the strict reproduction of the literal meaning. it is no surprise then that in terms of versification, mandelshtam’s free improvisations on petrarchan sonnets are closer to the prosody of the canzoniere than all earlier translations into russian except those of mikhail kuzmin, another acmeist poet (see pilshchikov 2015: 152– 154).43 mandelshtam, who was irritated by the russian tradition of translating petrarch “in boring iambic pentameters or theatrical alexandrines”,44 broke with this tradition and undermined the syllabic-accentual iambic inertia. the prosody of his imitations of petrarch, with their continuous feminine rhymes (unusual for russian classical catalexis) and numerous instances of trochaic 43 kuzmin’s translations from petrarch, made in 1928, remained unpublished until recently (see dmitriev 1996). 44 reported in the memoirs of the poet semen lipkin (1991: 21) quoted by venclova (1991: 196). 80 igor pilshchikov “trans-accentuation” (which imitate the cadence of syllabic verse),45 becomes a signifier of the italian poetic tradition.46 6. sound, rhythm, and syntax many phonetically translated fragments can be described as the result of a multi-layered reinterpretation of the st intonation, the st system of word boundaries, and the metrical-rhythmical structure of st words in the tt. in this context, ‘intonation’ is understood as the relationship between the metrical and rhythmical organization of the poetic text, on the one hand, and its syntactic structure, on the other. in his innovative study of the relationship between rhythm and syntax, the melodics of russian lyric verse (1922), boris eikhenbaum wrote: poetic syntax is constructed in close connection with rhythm – with verse and strophe. it is a conventional, deformed syntax. it changes from a simple grammatical form into a formant. the poetic phrase is not a general syntactic phenomenon, but a rhythmic-syntactic phenomenon. moreover, poetic syntax is not only a phenomenon of phraseology, but also a phonetic phenomenon: the intonation actualized in syntax plays no less important a role in the verse line than rhythm and instrumentation and sometimes plays an even more important role. in a verse line, the syntax, which actualizes intonation, is not articulated in semantic segments, but in rhythmic segments: sometimes it coincides with a rhythmic segment (a line = a phrase), and sometimes it surmounts it (enjambment). thus, it is in syntax regarded as a construction of phrasal intonation that we observe the factor which connects language with rhythm. (eikhenbaum 1922: 5–6; cf. 1924 [1921]: 211–214) 45 for the discussion and varying views see iliushin 1990: 374–376; 2004: 216–217; plungian 2013; pilshchikov 2010: 109–110; 2015: 143–145, 153–154. 46 it is known that mandelshtam did not like the style of mikhail lozinsky’s translation of the divine comedy, of which mandelshtam knew only the first fragments and which was to become the standard translation of dante for many generations of russian readers (see mandelshtam 1997: 183). incidentally, in this translation “lozinsky, with great skill and often very successfully, repeats the dominant sounds of the italian original, sometimes at the expense of a partial loss of the semantic content of a particular word” (bazzarelli 1976: 321). similar features have been found in lozinsky’s translation of shakespeare’s hamlet (semenenko 2007: 92). 81the semiotics of phonetic translation eikhenbaum primarily discussed interlinear syntax, but his theory can also be applied to intralinear syntax, which has an impact on the distribution of word boundaries in the verse line. the analysis of the system of word boundaries is important for a comparison of the versification parameters of the st and tt because the rhythm of a verse line is determined not only by the distribution of accents in the line, but also by the “metrical structure of the words in it” (kiparsky 1977: 224), that is, by the “distribution of word boundaries in verse and its interrelation with the network of accentual oppositions” (jakobson 1979: 586).47 without a syntactic and intonational similarity between the st and tt, their phonetic resemblance may be insufficient to produce a similar acoustic impression. we have already discussed the fact that the russian symbolist poet valery briusov was sensitive to “verbal music” and became one of the first theorists of “acoustic instrumentation” in russian poetry. however, briusov’s attempt at phonetic translation was once criticized precisely because of its infidelity to the syntactic and intonational peculiarity of the original. andrei fedorov (1928: 62) analyzed the first quatrain from briusov’s translation (1909) of théophile gautier’s “carmen” (1852) as an example of what i referred to as an interlinguistic/intertextual rhyme (“2 : 4 = 2′ : 4′” ): l carmen est maigre – un trait de bistre 2 cerne son œil de gitana. 3 ses cheveux sont d’un noir sinistre; 4 sa peau, le diable la tanna. 48 l′ onà khudá. glazá kak slívy; 2′ v nìkh úgol’ sprä́tala onà; 49 3′ zlovéshchi kós ejö̀ otlívy; 4′ dubíl ej kózhu sataná .50 48 49 50 the verse theorist leonid timofeev objected to this: 47 metre is realized in the poetic line both as an individual rhythmic variation and as a wordboundary variation (to use the terminology established in gasparov 1974: 14–15). georgy shengeli, who called the rhythmical variation of a metre the rhythmic “form” of a metre, invented a special term to denote a word-boundary variation: a “modulation” (shengeli 1923: 38, 57 et passim, 138 et passim). “word boundary” is jakobson’s translation of osip brik’s term slovorazdel. 48 ‘carmen is lean – a trait of bistre / circles her gipsy eyes. / her hair is a sinister black; / her skin – it is tanned by the devil’. 49 pronounced as [ɐˈna]. 50 ‘she is lean. her eyes are like plums; / she hid coal in them. / the tints of her plait is sinister; / the satan tanned her skin’. 82 igor pilshchikov the common opinion that a translation is accurate if it preserves the rhythm and rhymes of the original leads to a situation where the translator forgets about the intonational and syntactic organization of the verse, which is key to its expressiveness. the following line from v. briusov’s translation of t. gautier’s “carmen” may seem a model of the high accuracy of the translation, which preserved even the acoustic colouration of the original: “sa peau, le diable la tanna” is translated as “dubil ej kozhu satana”. “sataná” and “tanná” are very close indeed, but the peculiarity of this line consists in something very different: it consists in a bipartite intonational structure, an exclamation in the middle of the line and a sui generis answer to this exclamation in the second part of this line. briusov’s translation completely eliminates this individual intonational peculiarity of the line under consideration, and thus ignores its inner content. (timofeev 1958: 129–130) as if answering to timofeev’s criticism, ariadna efron, daughter of the outstanding poet marina tsvetaeva and a poet herself, attempted to reproduce gautier’s syntax in her translation (1971) and even emphasized the syntactic pauses by dashes, using her mother’s favourite poetic device: ejö kosa – chernej mogily, ej kozhu – satana dubil. 51 a description of the system of word boundaries would be incomplete if it did not take into account the fact that different word boundaries have different depths (this was demonstrated by lucien tesnière in his elements of structural syntax): the hierarchy of the breaks between the words “corresponds to the hierarchy of syntactic relations” (tesnière 1965: 26–27). tesnière demonstrated that the depth of the breaks can be determined only relatively, that is in relation to other breaks in the same phrase (ibid.: 27).52 however, a fixation of such relative depths is sufficient for our analysis. the weaker the syntactic relation between the words, the weaker the phonetic fluency and, therefore, the deeper the word boundaries.53 51 ‘her plait – is darker than the grave; / her skin – the devil tanned it’. 52 to describe what is referred to here as word boundaries or breaks, tesnière uses the term coupures: “[...] les coupures n’ont pas de valeur absolue, mais seulement une valeur relative, c’est-à-dire que l’on ne saurait mesurer la profondeur d’une coupure en soi, mais seulement par rapport à d’autres coupures” (tesnière 1965: 26). 53 for a discussion of the correlation between syntactic coherence and phonetic fluency see testelets 2001: 77–79. 83the semiotics of phonetic translation in many of the following examples, the metric structure of words and the distribution of word boundaries in the tt and st coincide despite the fact that the linear realizations of syntactic structures differ in terms of surface syntax due to the differences between the sets of the syntactic links in the st and tt. nevertheless, these links create similar configurations, whose resemblance determines a similar intonation of word boundaries, that is, the commensurability of their “depth” in the original line and the translated line. a characteristic detail here is the phonetic parallelism between words that have the same metrical position in the st and tt. thus, in the example from zhukovsky’s “lenora” that was already discussed above: was | hálf || was | hálf || mèin | béten pred | ním || mòj | krík || bỳl | tshchéten – the syntactic link between the first and the second word in the line is stronger than the link between the second and the third word; the link between the third and the fourth word is stronger than the link between the fourth and the fifth word; the link between the fifth and the sixth word is stronger than the link between the fifth and the fourth word.54 the same type of correlation between sound and syntax is found in other examples from zhukovsky’s translations discussed above: lúft und wógen || álso | schwíeg móre || vózduch || béreg | dík sélig | préis’ich || polyxénen sládkij | zhrébij || poliksény! dénn || den bésten | der hellénen vzór || lübóv’ju | raspalénnyj evidently, the strength of the syntactic links can be better described not in terms of dependency syntax, the forerunner of which was tesnière’s “structural syntax”, but in terms of constituency syntax (or phrase structure grammar) (cf. 54 compare shengeli’s insightful observation that the difference between various spondaic “modulations” in iambic and trochaic lines depends on the presence or absence of “a pause between the phrases” (shengeli 1923: 35). 84 igor pilshchikov testelets 2001: 113 et passim).55 the closer two adjacent words in a verse line are on a constituency tree, the stronger the link between them. the measure of this proximity is the length of the path (i. e. distance) between two words along the branches of a constituency tree. in the linear representation of a constituency structure, the depth of the breaks between two words will be measured by the number of brackets which denote the boundaries of phrase groups: [pred [nim]] [ [moj [krik]] [byl [tshcheten]] ] [more] [vozduch] [bereg [dik]] [ [sladkij [zhrebij]] [polikseny] ] [ [vzor] [lübov’ju [raspalennyj]] ] a fascinating example is the opening stanza of “lenora”: l lenóre fúhr ums mórgenròt 2 empór aus schwéren trä́umen: 3 “bìst úntreu, wílhelm, òder tót? 4 wie lánge wìllst du sä́umen? l′ lenóre snílsja stráshnyj són, 2′ prosnúlasä v ispúge 3′ “gdè mílyj? chtó s nim? zhív li òn? 4′ i véren li podrúge?” in the initial line of the tt, the position of the first word of the st and its phonetics (the name of the ballad’s heroine) is preserved,56 as well as the tonic vowel of the rhyme: lenóre | fúhr || ums mórgen ¦ -ròt lenóre | sníl -sja || stráshnyj | són however, in the third line of the translation the name of lenore’s beloved is missing. this fact gave kaplinsky cause to argue that, in zhukovsky’s ballad, “proper nouns are regularly omitted” (kaplinsky 1915: 18). michael r. katz analyzed the manuscript of zhukovsky’s translation and came to the conclusion that it “demonstrates how difficult it was for the poet to get any closer to the german original” (katz 1976: 50). the scholar cited the heroine’s apostrophe to his bridegroom, wilhelm, as an example (ibid.). indeed, the name of wilhelm is absent from zhukovsky’s version, but it faithfully reproduces the 55 as chomsky pointed out: “the phrase structure [of the sentence] [...] is closely related to its phonetic shape – specifically, it determines the intonation contour of the utterance represented” (chomsky 2006: 26). 56 the russian dative form of this name (nom. lenóra; dat. lenóre) has the same ending as the german nominative form (nom. lenóre). 85the semiotics of phonetic translation rhythm of the german text and the original structure of the word boundaries (including their relative depth): bìst | úntreu, || wíl -helm, || òder | tót? gdè | mílyj? || chtó s nim? || zhív li | òn? the st monosyllable tot (‘dead’) has two correlates in the tt: one of them, the monosyllable zhiv (‘alive’), is lexical and semantic;57 the other, the monosyllable on (‘he’), is metrical and phonetic. thus, the vocabulary and phraseology of the translation can be significantly different from those of the original. but then the translation can sound like the original. a similar resemblance between the intonations in the original and translated text (with numerous instances of lexical and semantic divergence from the original) can also be found in passages whose length exceeds one line of verse. in other words, the same effect can be produced by means of interlinear syntax. for example, the first stanza of zhukovsky’s version of “elysium” establishes equivalence with the st at the level of a complex sentence. the syntactic and intonational segmentation, that is the distribution of the subordinate clauses in the metric schema, is almost identical in the st and tt.58 the types of subordinate clauses in the st and tt is different, but all of them are introduced by monosyllabic words, which occupy identical positions in the metric and stanzaic schema. zhukovsky reproduces here what tynianov, following brik, referred to as “rhythmic-syntactic figures” (tynianov 1977 [1922]: 394), and eikhenbaum – as “melodic-syntactic figures” (eikhenbaum 1922: 17).59 the boundaries of the subordinate clauses coincide with four masculine clausulae, and this intonational construction is cemented with a structure of masculine rhymes which resembles the original: 57 the questions, “is he dead?” (st) and “is he alive?” (tt) may be considered semantically equal in this context. 58 compare semenko’s observations concerning the role of intonation and syntax in zhukovsky’s poetics (semenko 1975: 111–113). 59 brik’s unpublished paper “on rhythmic-syntactic figures” was delivered to opoyaz in 1920 (see eikhenbaum 1927 [1925]: 135) and then cited in the first footnote to eikhenbaum’s the melodics of russian lyric verse (eikhenbaum 1922: 5 ftn.). brik’s paper laid basis for his unfinished monograph rhythm and syntax, extracts from which were published in 1927 (see brik 1927, 4: 28–29; 5: 33 et passim; cf. erlich 1965: 89, 220–222; jakobson 1979: 570, 584). 86 igor pilshchikov hein! der von der götter frieden,     wie von thau die rose, träuft, wo die frucht der hesperiden     zwischen silberblüten reift; den ein rosenfarbner aether     ewig unbewölkt umfleußt, der den klageton verschmähter     zärtlichkeit verstummen heißt [...] (matthisson 1789: 106) roshcha, gde podatel’ mira,     dobryj genij smerti, spit; gde rumänyj blesk efira     s ten’ju zybkikh senej slit; gde istochnika zhurchan’je     kak dalekij otzyv lir; gde pechal’, zabyv roptan’je,     obretaet sladkij mir. (zhukovsky 1813: 201)60 60 all the words in the masculine clausulae (with the exception of umfleußt) are monosyllabic. all the rhymes are closed syllables. in both german rhymes the nucleus vowel is a diphthong, and in both russian rhymes the nucleus vowel is [i]. therefore, the concatenated vowels of the rhyme bind the entire stanza into a whole. the first rhyme in the st and tt is formed by a monosyllabic verb ending in [-t] (3rd person singular). the rhymes are rich: the same onset consonant [ʁ] is found in both german words, and the same initial consonant of the onset cluster [s] is found in both russian verbs.61 it is an eloquent fact that, when in september 1827 in stuttgart aleksandr turgenev recited zhukovsky’s version in the presence of matthisson, the german poet, who did not know russian, recognized his own poem in translation and “admired the harmony of its language” (turgenev 1872: 146–147; gugnin 1985: 590; vatsuro 1994: 130). much like zhukovsky, tiutchev paid close attention to both the phonetics of verse as well as poetic syntax. tynianov found in the latter’s translations from heine “tiutchev’s usual concern for acoustic instrumentation and the syntactic construction of verse” (tynianov 1977 [1922]: 393). “thus, in his translations, tiutchev is mindful, first, of instrumentation, second, of syntax, and third, of the vocabulary of heine’s poems, creating their rhythmical analogue” (ibid.: 387). in the same study tynianov makes a more general statement based on his observations of tiutchev’s translation techniques and his analysis of heine’s influence on tiutchev: 60 tellingly enough, the punctuation in the first print of zhukovsky’s translation is closer to the german original than in later republications (esp. line 2; cf. zhukovsky 1815: 236; and later editions). 61 in the system of rhyming established in russian classical verse, the coincidence of the onset consonants in closed rhymes is not obligatory. 87the semiotics of phonetic translation both influence and borrowing can be manifested in poetry 1) in the field of rhythm and syntax, 2) in the field of instrumentation, 3) in the field of themes and images; and they can be carried out in all of these three fields [at the same time]. (ibid.: 388) mandelshtam’s poetic syntax deserves special study, but, on the whole, he conveys petrarch’s syntax with more precision than, for example, viacheslav ivanov (see venclova 1991: 195, 197; cf. nelson 1986: 172–180; gasparov 2001: 657). in particular, in mandelshtam’s translations we do not find excessive enjambments and numerous syntactic pauses within the verse, which are formed by short simple sentences. such obvious elements of “modernist” syntax, typical of ivanov’s translations from petrarch, strike the eye (and the ear) and did not escape the notice of critical contemporaries (see fisher 1915: 274).62 it may be thus concluded that phonetic translation usually goes hand in hand with the re-creation of the intonational structure of the st, which is formed not only by the rhythm of verbal accents, but also by the interrelationship of syntactic constructions with verse lines and stanzaic structures. 7. phonetic translation from the standpoints of poetics, semiotics, and psycholinguistics language contact in the act of translation leads to language interference. interference occurs at different levels but primarily affects syntax and phonetics, i. e. linguistic levels, which are, apparently, least of all susceptible to self-reflection and self-censorship (cf. vekshin 2006: 20–21). on the other hand, the accurate transposition of sound, intonation and verse form at the expense and even to the detriment of imagery and ideas is a clear manifestation of the “law of compensation” in the poetics of literary translation (cf. harvey 1998). the problem of phonetic translation is related to some psycholinguistic issues. experiments on the associations between acoustic sequences and named objects, which were performed by the georgian psychologists of the uznadze school in the 1960s and 1970s, revealed that the examinees “are not indifferent to which acoustic complex is used as the name of a certain content”. during these experiments, “an acoustic complex was experienced as having 62 for the contrary view, see: mureddu 1980: 66, 73–75; balašov 1988: 31–36; gasparov 2002: 335. 88 igor pilshchikov a differentiated structure in which certain sounds are centered, while other sounds form a background” (baindurashvili 1978: 189; cf. 1968).63 each of these complexes is a quasi-syllabic “rhythmic and consonant-vocalic unity”, or a “phonosyllabeme” (vekshin 2006: 118 et passim). when we speak of alliteration, such quasi-syllables and their elements are singled out on the basis of what brik (1917) termed “sound repetitions”, i. e. reiterations of certain sounds and groups of sounds within a poetic text. characteristically, sound repetitions are often associated with particular metrical positions and/or rhythmic groups (brik 1917: 44). when we speak of “borrowings and influences”, their elements are singled out on the basis of the repetition of certain phonetic and rhythmic groups of one text in another text (bobrov 1922; ronen 1997). the difference between these two types of repetition is the difference between intratextual and intertextual parallelism. when we speak of phonetic translation, the rhythmic and phonetic repetitions are not only intertextual, but also interlinguistic. in his aforementioned article, “on the sounds of poetic language”, yakubinsky argued: in poetic linguistic thinking the sounds emerge into the bright field of consciousness. in connection to this, an emotional attitude toward [these sounds] arises, which in turn brings about the establishment of a certain relationship between the “content” of a poem and its sounds. the latter is reinforced also by means of the expressive movements of the speech organs. (yakubinsky 1916: 30, emphasis in the original)64 in the case of phonetic translation the acoustic and articulatory complexes of the st are transposed into the tt. the translator apparently associates them with the “content” of the st, and these associations may prove more durable than the intertextual relations generated by lexical substitution (when each particular word or phrase of the tt is substituted for a particular word or phrase in the st). if a text or its fragment is translated phonetically, the correlation between sound and meaning is transferred from one language to the other.65 typically, the original phonosyllabic complex is not reproduced in its entirety, but substituted with a few support components. these components may be described as “consonant-vocalic configurations” (vekshin 2006: 112): 63 similarly, pets identify their name or a command on the basis of a few central sounds. 64 the translation is taken from pomorska (1968: 30) and slightly modified. 65 a similar, but in many respects different phenomenon is the translation of anagrammatic texts (see baevsky 1976; cf. taranovsky 1966). 89the semiotics of phonetic translation they consist of several “central” sounds which normally occupy a metrically and/or rhythmically marked segment (for example: the clausula; the clausula and the caesura; the clausula and the second foot of the trochaic or iambic tetrameter; and so on). the rhythmical basis of acoustic instrumentation was emphasized in the works of the russian formalist osip brik (1917: 44) and, later, the czech structuralist jan mukařovský, who confirmed that “euphony usually requires additional support in the rhythmic, syntactic, or semantic articulation of the context” (mukařovský 1976 [1940]: 27). here, perhaps, a broader regularity manifests itself, which was described by the renowned russian linguist lev shcherba: it seems to me [...] that a poet’s acoustic image should be extremely heterogeneous in terms of its brightness: some elements appear before him with great force [...], others are in the shadows, and some are almost inaudible [...] such a concept would correspond to what we generally observe in language, where we can always distinguish between the important, the essential, [on the one hand], and, so to say, “packaging material” [on the other]. (shcherba 1923: 28 ftn.) another fundamentally important question is this: what kind of semiotic mechanisms come into play when the phonetic aspects of a translation are brought to the foreground? georgy levinton considered the phenomena under discussion as phenomena on the border between translation proper and citation – as phonetic (but also rhythmical etc.) allusions to the original, or rather “quotations from the original” (levinton 1986: 17). language interference activates the workings of citation, in which the reference to extralinguistic reality is complemented with an intertextual (linguistic) reference (the reference from one signifier to another). according to jakobson, “split reference” is characteristic of any poetic text: “the supremacy of the poetic function over the referential function does not obliterate the reference but makes it ambiguous” (jakobson 1960: 371). psycholinguists agree: “when we deliberately attend to specific words, for example in the subtle matter of reading poetry”, we pay special attention to sounds, which “do not so much contribute to a literal interpretation as establish a different – a complimentary or alternative – kind of mood or meaning” (smith 1978: 162). phonetic translations attempt to convey this “complimentary or alternative” meaning. mihhail lotman compared the semiotic “split” or “shift” in phonetic translation with the concept of text as a “palimpsest” in the writings of jacques derrida and his followers (lotman 2009). as an alternative to the concepts of “palimpsest” and “intertext”, the concept of “subtext” can be used to describe 90 igor pilshchikov phonetic translation. it was introduced by kiril taranovsky and his school, who focused on the role of allusion and quotation in the poetics of mandelshtam, and, independently, by the soviet linguist tamara silman. the latter defined “subtext” as “nothing else but a dispersed and distanced repetition” (silman 1969: 85). omry ronen, a student of taranovsky who contributed greatly to the theory and practice of subtextual analysis, agreed with this definition, but with one qualification: “[...] we call a subtext not the repetition itself, but what serves as an object of repetition or a source of the reiterated element” (ronen 1973: 376 ftn.; cf. tammi 1991: 316–327; ronen 2012). not only a foreign text, but a foreign language can serve “as a subtext” (levinton 1979). from this point of view, it would be interesting to compare a “split” of intertextual/interlinguistic reference that manifests itself in phonetic translation with bilingual puns, such as mandelshtam’s “feta zhirnyj karandash” (‘fet’s fat pencil’, cf. german fett ‘fat’). in this kind of interlinguistic game, which mandelshtam seems to have enjoyed, “one word, which substitutes for a foreign word, is its paronym, and another is its synonym (or, rather, heteronym)” (levinton 1979: 32–33). similarly, phonetic translation can equally be called paronymic, homophonic or homonymic translation. its genesis is common with the genesis of poetry itself. when viacheslav ivanov described it as an “immediate mutual attraction of homonyms” (1930: 96), he was, in fact, quoting shklovsky who claimed that: in poetry, words are selected as follows: a homonym substitutes for a homonym to express the inner, earlier given sound-speech [zvukorech’], and not a synonym for a synonym to express the nuances of a concept. (shklovsky 1916: 10) viktor grigor’ev, a scholar of russian futurism, called this phenomenon “paronymic attraction” (grigor’ev 1979: 251 et passim). this term was proposed by the french linguist albert dauzat who, however, described another linguistic mechanism: popular, or folk etymology (volksetymologie). dauzat initially called it “homonymic attraction” (dauzat 1922: 72 et passim), but later put forward another term, “paronymic attraction” (dauzat 1927: 109). in this process, the word of a foreign language is reanalyzed and replaced by its paronym, which, in fact, has a different inner form (such as sparrow-grass for asparagus).66 a direct analogue of volksetymologie in poetry is what leonard forster (1970: 92) called “surface translation”. in this situation the translator 66 on the relationship between phonetic translation and folk etymology see, in particular, àlàbá (1981) and toury (1990). 91the semiotics of phonetic translation deliberately changes the meaning of a well-known text while delicately preserving its sound (forster 1970: 91–93). an often quoted example is luis van rooten’s celebrated french version (1967) of “humpty dumpty”: un petit d’un petit s’etonne aux halles un petit d’un petit ah! degrés te fallent, etc. if spoken aloud, it sounds like the original english poem recited with a french accent: “humpty dumpty sat on a wall, / humpty dumpty had a great fall” etc. gérard genette, however, prefers to categorize such a transphonation as an “interlinguistic homophonic transformation”: “the procedure generates utterances that are presumably devoid of meaning”, he argues, and “the term ‘translation’ is therefore misused here” (genette 1997 [1982]: 40–41). but do we always need “meaning” in translation (and in poetry)? “a poem should not mean / but be”. the “separability” of phonetics and graphics “for translation purposes” described by j. c. catford is made possible thanks to the relative autonomy of instrumentation and prosody in a poetic text. such autonomy is in turn conditioned by the efficacy of the poetic/aesthetic function – the orientation of enunciation “toward the message as such” (jakobson 1960: 356). according to červenka, who developed the ideas of jakobson and mukařovský, the poetic function “focuses attention on the message itself, foregrounding its acoustic level (which is independently active from the point of view of meaning)” (červenka 1993: 118), so that the acoustic elements, whose distribution in ordinary texts is determined only by the expression of a previously given content [...], create, in artistic texts, the autonomous formations, which emerge simultaneously with higher semantic units and interact with these units [...] as well as with each other [...], i. e. in the sphere of the artifact. (červenka 1993: 129)67 the word in poetic speech “is located at the intersection of two series”, a semantic series and a relatively autonomous (eu)phonic series. as a result, there emerges “a space, which enables the creation of configurations that are 67 in mukařovský’s semiotics of art, an artistic text as a sign is composed of an artifact (or a “work-thing”), an “aesthetic object”, and “a relation to the thing signified” (mukařovský 1978 [1934]: 88). 92 igor pilshchikov independent from the needs of reference” (červenka 2002: 28–29). the existence of such a space is made possible by speech flexibility which is in turn secured by language redundancy (ibid.). in everyday speech, redundancy plays a subsidiary role: it increases the predictability of a text and thus suppresses information noise. in poetic speech, these linguistic tools are used to create an autonomous semiotic system. in his paper delivered at the jakobson centennial congress, the moscow linguist and semiotician aleksandr barulin described the phonetic structure of one of zhukovsky’s poems. he argued that the instrumentation of a poetic text can acquire “symbolic, structural and semantic functions, and step forth in a poem [...] as an ad-hoc non-verbal semiotic system, i. e. a semiotic system, which is constructed for a specific purpose for a given portion of a text” (barulin 1999: 697). according to barulin’s definition, “ad-hoc semiotic systems” are such semiotic systems (including onomatopoeic semiotic systems), which are “produced in the process of communication and usually disappear after they are no longer necessary” (barulin 2007: 26, cf. 2007: 27, 34; 2002: 275–277). a new “ad-hoc system” is created with each new translation of a text. juri lotman once noticed that “each artistic text is created as a unique sign with a particular content, constructed ad hoc” (lotman 1977: 22). however, cultural texts do not usually “disappear” after use, but continue to exist: the original continues to exist even after the appearance of its translation; the translation often continues to be enjoyed even after the emergence of a new translation of the same text. moreover, the consumer of culture is able to perceive both the original and the translation; the translation against the background of the original; and new translations against the background of the older translations and the original. as a result, the “source text” (i. e. the original) starts to function as a “subtext”, so that each translation – and phonetic translations in particular – can manifest a certain non-verbal content.68 references àlàbá, olúgbóyèga 1981. natural versus artificial translation: a case for folk etymology. in: babel 27(1), 17–20. averintsev, sergei segeevich 1988. razmyshlenija nad perevodami zhukovskogo. in: troitsky, vsevolod yur’evich (ed.), zhukovskij i literatura kontsa xviii – nachala xix v. moskva: nauka, 251–275. 68 i would like to express my gratitude to michael lavery who helped with editing this article. 93the semiotics of phonetic translation baevsky, vadim solomonovich 1976. fonika stikhotvornogo perevoda: anagrammy. in: nikol’skaya, liudmila il’inichna (ed.), problemy stilistiki i perevoda. smolensk: smolenskij gosudarstvennyj pedagogicheskij institut imeni karla marksa, 41–50. baindurashvili, akaky georgievich 1968. problema naimenovanija v eksperimental’noj psikhologii (avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoj stepeni doktora psikhologicheskikh nauk). tbilisi: izdatel’stvo tbilisskogo universiteta. baindurashvili, akaky georgievich 1978. nekotorye charakternye osobennosti rechevogo znaka v aspekte problemy real’nosti bessoznatel’nogo psichicheskogo. in prangishvili, aleksandr sever’ianovich; sheroziya, apollon epifanovich; bassin, filipp veniaminovich (eds.), bessoznatel’noe: priroda. funktsii. metody issledovanija. tbilisi: metsniereba, 187–198. balašov, nikolaj ivanovič 1988. la taxinomie des sonnets de pétrarque et leur syntaxe dans les traductions de vjačeslav ivanov. in: malcovati, fausto (ed.), cultura e memoria: atti del terzo simposio internazionale dedicato a vjačeslav ivanov (pubblicazioni della facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell’università di pavia 45). i: testi in italiano, francese, inglese. firenze: la nuova italia, 21–36. barulin, aleksandr nikolaevich 1999. funktsii alliteratsii v elegii v. a. zhukovskogo “more”. in: baran, henryk; gindin, sergei iosifovich (eds.), roman jakobson: teksty, dokumenty, issledovanija. moskva: rggu, 696–714. barulin, aleksandr nikolaevich 2002. osnovanija semiotiki. znaki, znakovye sistemy, kommunikatsija. t. 1: bazovye ponjatija. evoljutsionnaja teorija proiskhozhdenija jazyka. moskva: “sport i kul’tura-2000”. barulin, aleksandr nikolaevich 2007. k postroeniju teorii glottogeneza. in: kochergina, vera aleksandrovna (eds.), lingvisticheskaja komparativistika v kul’turnom i istoricheskom aspektakh: materialy v mezhdunarodnoj konferentsii po sravnitel’no-istoricheskomu jazykoznaniju (moskva, 31 janvarja – 2 fevralja 2006 g.). moskva: izdatel’stvo moskovskogo universiteta, 9–44. bazzarelli, eridano 1976. o perevode “bozhestvennoj komedii” lozinskim: sistema ehkvivalentov. tr. by s. ja. somovaja. in bushmin, aleksei sergeevich (ed.), sravnitel’noe izuchenie literatur: sbornik statej k 80-letiju akademika m. p. alekseeva. leningrad: nauka, 315–323. belyi, andrei 1910. simvolizm: kniga statej. moskva: musaget. belyi, andrei 1926. moskva pod udarom: vtoraja chast’ romana “moskva”. moskva: krug. belyi, andrei 1932. maski. moskva: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoj literatury. 94 igor pilshchikov bernshtein, sergei ignat’evich 1929. opyt analiza “slovesnoj instrumentovki” (i-aja strofa stikhotvorenija tjutcheva “sumerki”). in: poetika: vremennik otdela slovesnykh iskusstv gosudarstvennogo instituta istorii iskusstv 5. leningrad: academia, 156–192. bobrov, sergei pavlovich. 1922. zaimstvovanija i vlijanija. in: pechat’ i revoljutsija 8, 72–92. brik, osip maksimovich 1917. zvukovye povtory (analiz zvukovoj struktury sticha). in: sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo jazyka 2. petrograd: tipografija z. sokolinskogo, 24–62. brik, osip maksimovich 1927. ritm i sintaksis. in: novyj lef 3, 15–20; 4, 23–29; 5, 32–37; 6, 33–39. briusov, valery yakovlevich 1900. po povodu novogo izdanija sochinenij f. i. tjutcheva. in: russkij arkhiv 3, 405–420. briusov, valery yakovlevich 1904. rené ghil. in: vesy 12, 12–31. briusov, valery yakovlevich 1911. ot perevodchika. in: verlaine, paul. sobranie stikhov. v perevode valerija briusova. moskva: skorpion, 7–13. catford, john cunnison 1965. a linguistic theory of translation: an essay in applied linguistics (languages and language learning 8). oxford: oxford university press. chomsky, noam 2006. language and mind. third edition. new york: cambridge university press. červenka, miroslav 1993. literární artefakt. in: kubínová, marie (ed.), kapitoly z teorie literárního díla. praha: karolinum, 98–137. červenka, miroslav 2002. hlásková instrumentace. in: červenka, miroslav; jankovič, milan; kubínová, marie; langerová, marie. pohledy zblízka: zvuk, význam, obraz. poetika literárního díla 20. století. praha: torst, 9–54. dauzat, albert 1922. la géographie linguistique. paris: flammarion. dauzat, albert 1927. les patois: évolution – classification: étude avec 7 cartes. paris: delagrave. dmitriev, pavel viacheslavovich 1996. dva soneta petrarki v perevode m. kuzmina. in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 18, 222–224. doubrovkine, roman (ed.) 2005. ghil, rené; briusov, valery yakovlevich. perepiska / correspondance, 1904–1915. sankt-peterburg: akademivheskij proekt. 95the semiotics of phonetic translation ďurišin, dionýz 1976. perevod kak osobaja forma mezhliteraturnoj retseptsii. in: bushmin, alexey s. (ed.), sravnitel’noe izuchenie literatur: sbornik statej k 80-letiju akademika m. p. alekseeva. leningrad: nauka, 493–498. ďurišin, dionýz 1979. teorija sravnitel’nogo izuchenija literatury. avtorizovannyj perevod so slovatskogo i. a. bogdanovoj. moskva: progress. eichstädt, hildegard 1970. žukovskij als übersetzer: drei studien zu übersetzungen v. a. žukovskijs aus dem deutschen und französischen (forum slavicum 29). münchen: wilhelm fink. eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich 1922. melodika russkogo liricheskogo stikha. peterburg: opojaz. eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich 1924 [1920]. o zvukakh v stikhe. in: eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich. skvoz’ literaturu: sbornik statej (voprosy poetiki 4). leningrad: academia, 201–208. eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich 1924 [1921]. melodika stikha. in: eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich. skvoz’ literaturu: sbornik statej (voprosy poetiki 4). leningrad: academia, 209–214. eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich 1927 [1925]. teorija “formal’nogo metoda” in: eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich. literatura: teorija. kritika. polemika. leningrad: priboj, 116–148. eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich 1987 [1918]. o khudozhestvennom slove. in: eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich. o literature: raboty raznykh let. ed. by chudakov, aleksandr pavlovich; chudakova, marietta omarovna; eikhenbaum, ol’ga borisovna; toddes, evgeny abramovich. moskva: sovetskij pisatel’, 331–343. etkind, efim grigor’evich 1973. russkie poety-perevodchiki ot trediakovskogo do pushkina. leningrad: nauka. etkind, efim grigor’evich 1994. vjacheslav ivanov i voprosy poetiki: 1920-e gody. in: cahiers du monde russe 35(1/2), 141–154. eoyang, eugene chen 2003. “borrowed plumage”: polemical essays on translation. amsterdam; new york: rodopi. erlich, victor 1965. russian formalism: history – doctrine (slavistic printings and reprintings 4). second revised edition. the hague: mouton & co. fedorov, andrei venediktovich 1928. zvukovaja forma stikhotvornogo perevoda (voprosy metriki i fonetiki). in: poetika: vremennik otdela slovesnykh iskusstv gosudarstvennogo instituta istorii iskusstv 4. leningrad: academia, 45–69. 96 igor pilshchikov fedorov, andrei venediktovich 1929. russkij gejne (40-ye – 60-ye gody) [1927]. eikhenbaum, boris mikhailovich; tynianov, yuri nikolaevich (ed., with introduction), russkaja poezija xix veka: sbornik statej (voprosy poetiki 13). leningrad: academia, 248–298. fedorov, andrei venediktovich 1983 [1974]. fragmenty vospominanij. in: kaverin, veniamin aleksandrovich (ed.), vospominanija o ju. tynjanove: portrety i vstrechi. moskva: sovetskij pisatel’, 85–108. fet, afanasy afanas’evich 1971. vechernie ogni. ed. by blagoy, dmitry dmitrievich; sokolova, marija aleksandrovna. moskva: nauka. fisher, vladimir mikhailov ich 1915. [review of ]: petrarka. “avtobiografija. ispoved’. sonety”. (tr. by m. gershenzon and viach. ivanov.) moskva: m. i s. sabashnikovy, 1915. in: golos minuvshego 15, 270–274. forster, leonard 1970. the poet’s tongues: multilingualism in literature. cambridge: cambridge university press. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 1974. sovremennyj russkij stikh: metrika i ritmika. moskva: nauka. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2001. kommentarii. in: mandel’shtam, osip emil’evich. stikhotvorenija. proza. moskva: ast; khar’kov, folio, 604–710. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2002. 319 sonet petrarki v perevode o. mandel’shtama: istorija teksta i kriterii stilja. in: andreev, mikhail leonidovich; gurevich, aron yakovlevich; shumilova, elena petrovna (eds.), chelovek – kul’tura – istorija: v chest’ semidesjatiletija l. m. batkina. moskva: rggu, 323–337. gasparov, mikhail leonovich 2006. semen kirsanov, znamenosets sovetskogo formalizma. in: kirsanov, semen. stikhotvorenija i poemy. sankt-peterburg: akademicheskij proekt, 5–18. genette, gérard 1997 [1982]. palimpsests: literature in the second degree. tr. by channa newman and claude doubinsky. (stages 8). lincoln; london: university of nebraska press. gottzmann, carola l.; hörner petra 2007. lexikon der deutschsprachigen literatur des baltikums und st. petersburgs: vom mittelalter bis zur gegenwart. bd. 1. berlin; new york: walter de gruyter. grigor’ev, viktor petrovich 1979. poetika slova: na materiale russkoj sovetskoj poezii. moskva: nauka. 97the semiotics of phonetic translation gugnin, aleksandr aleksandrovich 1985. [kommentarii k perevodam v. a. zhukovskogo] iz nemetskoj poezii. in gugnin, aleksandr aleksandrovich (ed.), zarubezhnaja poezija v perevodakh v. a. zhukovskogo v 2 tomakh. t. 2. moskva: raduga, 576–596. harvey, keith 1998. compensation. in: baker, mona (ed.), routledge encyclopedia of translation studies. london; new york: routledge, 37–40. hooley, daniel m. 1988. the classics in paraphrase: ezra pound and modern translators of latin poetry. selinsgrove, pa: susquehanna university press; london and toronto: associated university press. iliushin, aleksandr anatol’evich 1990. dante i petrarka v interpretatsii mandel’shtama. in: lasunsky, oleg grigor’evich (ed.), zhizn’ i tvorchestvo o. e. mandel’shtama: vospominanija. materialy k biografii. “novye stikhi”. kommentarii. issledovanija. voronezh: izdatel’stvo voronezhskogo universiteta, 367–382. iliushin, aleksandr anatol’evich 2004. russkoe stichoslozhenie. second revised edition. moskva: vysshaja shkola. ivanov, viacheslav ivanovich 1930 [1925]. k probleme zvukoobraza u pushkina. in: tsjavlovsky, mstislav aliksandrovich (ed.), moskovskij pushkinist 2. moskva: federatsija, 94–105. jakobson, roman 1979. retrospect. in: jakobson, roman. selected writings. vol. 5: on verse, its masters and explorers. the hague; paris: mouton, 569–601. jakobson, roman; pomorska, krystyna 1985. dialogue on time in language and literature. in: jakobson, roman. verbal art, verbal sign, verbal time. ed. by pomorska, krystyna; rudy, stephen. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 11–24. kahlenborn, ulrike 1985. goethes lyrik in russischer übersetzung: v. a. žukovskij und f. i. tjutčev als bedeutendste goethe-übersetzer der russischen romantik (slavistische beiträge 185). münchen: otto sagner. kaplinsky, vasily yakovlevich 1915. zhukovskij, kak perevodchik ballad. in: zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshchenija. novaja serija 55(1), otdelenie nauk, 1–25. katz, michael r. 1976. the literary ballad in early nineteenth-century russian literature. oxford: oxford university press. kerndl, alfred 1956. studien über heine in rußland. in: zeitschrift für slavische philologie 24(1), 91–155; 24(2), 284–337. kiparsky, paul 1977. the rhythmic structure of english verse. in: linguistic inquiry 8(2), 189–247. 98 igor pilshchikov kolarov, radosvet 1983. zvuk i smisăl: nabljudenija nad fonichnata organizatsija na chudozhestvenata proza. sofija: izdatelstvo na bălgarskata akademija na naukite. kotomin, mikhail anatol’evich 2007. pokrovsky ivan gavrilovich. in: russkie pisateli: biograficheskij slovar’. t. 5. moskva: nauchnoe izdatel’stvo “bol’shaia rossijskaja entsiklopedija”, 25–26. kviatkovsky, aleksandr pavlovich 1966. poeticheskij slovar’. moskva: sovetskaja entsiklopedija. lebedeva, ol’ga borisovna 2008. kubok: [a commentary]. in: zhukovsky, vasily andreevich. polnoe sobranie sochinenij i pisem v 20 tomakh. t. 5: ballady. moskva: jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 394–400. lefevere, andré 1975. translating poetry: seven strategies and a blueprint (approaches to translation studies 3). assen; amsterdam: van gorcum. levin, yuri davidovich 1963. ob istoricheskoj evoljutsii printsipov perevoda (k istorii perevodcheskoj mysli v rossii). in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), meždunarodnye svjazi russkoj literatury. moskva; leningrad: izdatel’stvo akademii nauk sssr, 5–63. levin, yuri davidovich 1972. o russkom poeticheskom perevode v epokhu romantizma. in: alekseev, mikhail pavlovich (ed.), rannie romanticheskie vejanija: iz istorii mezhdunarodnykh svjazej russkoj literatury. leningrad: nauka, 222–284. levin, yuri davidovich 1985. russkie perevodchiki xix veka i razvitie khudozhestvennogo perevoda. leningrad: nauka. levinton, georgy akhillovich 1979. poeticheskij bilingvizm i mezh”jazykovye vlijanija (jazyk kak podtekst). in: vtorichnye modelirujushchie sistemy. tartu: tartuskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 30–33. levinton, georgy akhillovich 1986. zametki k perevodcheskoj tekhnike lomonosova. in: m. v. lomonosov i russkaja kul’tura: tezisy dokladov konferentsii, posvjashchennoj 275-letiju so dnja rozhdenija m. v. lomonosova (28–29 nojabrja 1986 g.). tartu: tartuskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 17–21. lipkin, semen 1991. ugl’, pylajushchij ognem: zarisovki i soobrazhenija (biblioteka “ogonek” 4), moskva: zhurnal “ogonek”. lotman, juri [jurij, yuri mikhailovich] 1976. analysis of the poetic text. tr. by d. barton johnson. ann arbor, mich.: ardis. lotman, juri [jurij, yuri mikhailovich] 1977. the structure of the artistic text. tr. by gail lenhoff and ronald vroon. (michigan slavic contributions 7). ann arbor, mich.: the university of michigan. department of slavic languages and literatures. 99the semiotics of phonetic translation lotman, mihhail 2009. “izjumu da sin’ki...” (perevod i sdvig: iz marginalij k obshchej teorii perevoda). paper presented at the international conference “the borderline phenomena in culture” held in the framework of the first annual juri lotman days at tallinn university (5–7 june 2009). mandelker, amy 1983. russian formalism and the objective analysis of sound. in: the slavic and east european journal 27(3), 327–338. mandelshtam [mandelstam], osip 1979. the complete critical prose and letters. tr. by jane gary harris and constance link. ann arbor: ardis. mandelshtam [mandel’shtam], osip emil’evich 1990. sochinenija. t. 1. moskva: khudozhestvennaja literatura. mandelstam, nadezha yakovlevna 1997. zametki n. ja. mandel’shtam na poljakh amerikanskogo “sobranija sochinenij” mandel’sgtama. ed. by levina, tatiana mikhailovna; nikitaev, aleksandr tikhonovich. in: philologica 4(8/10), 169–199. matthisson, [friedrich von] 1789. elysium. in: voß, i. h. [johann heinrich] (ed.), musen almanach für 1789. hamburg: bey carl ernst bohn, 106–108. mayakovsky, vladimir 1975 [1926]. how to make verse. tr. by valentina coe. in: proffer, carl (ed.) modern russian poets on poetry. ann arbor, mich.: ardis, 103–145. mukařovský, jan 1976 [1940]. on poetic language. tr. and ed. by john burbank and peter steiner. lisse: the peter de ridder press. mukařovský, jan 1978 [1934]. art as a semiotic fact. in: mukařovský, jan. structure sign and function: selected essays. tr. and ed. by john burbank and peter steiner. new haven, ct: yale university press, 82–88. mureddu, donata 1980. mandel’štam and petrarch. in: scando-slavica 26, 53–84. nelson jr., lowry 1986. translatio lauri: ivanov’s translation of petrarch. in: jackson, robert louis; nelson jr., lowry (eds.), vyacheslav ivanov: poet, critic and philosopher (yale russian and east european publications 8). new haven: yale center for international and area studies, 162–189. nida, eugene albert 1964. toward a science of translating: with special reference to principles and procedures involved in bible translating. leiden: e. j. brill. pilshchikov, igor alekseevich 1991. problemy fonologii i prosodii perevodnogo teksta: k kharakteristike perevodcheskoj tekhniki v. a. zhukovskogo. in: altshuller, mark (ed.), graduate essays on slavic languages and literatures 4. pittsburgh, pa: the university of pittsburgh. department of slavic languages and literatures, 19–29. 100 igor pilshchikov pilshchikov, igor alekseevich 2010. petrarca nelle traduzioni dei poeti russi dell’età d’oro e dell’età d’argento. tr. by bianca sulpasso. in: russica romana 17, 89–114. pilshchikov, igor alekseevich 2012. “zvuki ital’janskie!”: o fonostilistike russkikh perevodov iz petrarki. in: carpi, guido; fleishman, lazar; sulpasso, bianca (eds.), venok: studia slavica stefano garzonio sexagenario oblata. in honor of stefano garzonio (stanford slavic studies 40), stanford: stanford university. the department of slavic languages and literatures. part i, 141–154. pilshchikov, igor alekseevich 2015. traditsii “russkogo petrarkizma” i sonety petrarki v perevode m. kuzmina. in: dmitriev, pavel vjacheslavovich; lavrov, aleksandr vasil’evich (eds.), mikhail kuzmin: literaturnaja sud’ba i khudozhestvennaja sreda. sankt-peterburg: renome, 139–157. plungian, vladimir aleksandrovich 2013. k metrike mandel’shtamovskikh perelozhenij petrarki. in: fateeva, natalia aleksandrovna (ed.), dialog kul’tur: “ital’janskij tekst” v russkoj literature i “russkij tekst” v ital’janskoj literature: materialy mezhdunarodnoj nauchnoj konferencii (institut russkogo jazyka im. v. v. vinogradova ran, 9–11 ijunja 2011 g.). moskva: infotekh, 34–44. pokrovsky, ivan gavrilovich 1820. vodolaz: ballada (iz schillera). in: syn otechestva 62(21), 83–89. polevoy, nikolai alekseevich 1839. ocherki russkoj literatury. chast’ 1. sanktpeterburg: tipografija sakharova. polivanov, evgeny dmitrievich 1974 [1930]. the general phonetic principle of any poetic technique. in: polivanov, evgeny dmitrievich. selected works: articles on general linguistics (janua linguarum. series major 72). tr. by daniel armstrong from the russian edition: “nauka”, 1968. the hague; paris: mouton, 350–368. pomorska, krystyna 1968. russian formalist theory and its poetic ambiance (slavistic printings and reprintings 82). the hague; paris: mouton. pszczołowska, lucylla 1977. instrumentacja dźwiękowa (poetyka: zarys encyklopedyczny, section 3, vol. 2, part 2, issue 2). wrocław; warszawa; kraków; gdańsk: zakład narodowy im. ossolińskich, wydawnictwo polskiej akademii nauk. pszczołowska, lucylla 1982. sound texture: general problems. in: steiner, peter; červenka, miroslav; vroon, ronald (eds.), the structure of the literary process: studies dedicated to the memory of felix vodička (linguistic and literary studies in eastern europe 8). amsterdam; philadelphia, pa: john benjamins, 385–395. raffel, burton 1988. the art of translating poetry. university park: pennsylvania state university press. 101the semiotics of phonetic translation ronen, omry 1973. leksicheskij povtor, podtekst i smysl v poetike osipa mandel’shtama. in: jakobson, roman; van schooneveld, cornelis h.; worth, dean s. (eds.), slavic poetics: essays in honor of kiril taranovsky. the hague; paris: mouton, 367–387. ronen, omry 1997. leksicheskie i ritmiko-sintaksicheskie povtorenija i “nekontroliruemyj podtekst”. in: izvestija rossijskoj akademii nauk. serija literatury i jazyka 56(3), 40–44. ronen, omry 2012. podtekst. in: zvezda 3, 230–238. schiller, friedrich; goethe, johann wolfgang 1845. correspondence between schiller and goethe, 1794 to 1805. vol. 1. translated by george h. calvert. new york; london: wiley and putnam. schiller, friedrich; goethe, johann wolfgang 1870. briefwechsel zwischen schiller und goethe in den jahren 1794 bis 1805. 3. ausgabe. bd. 1. stuttgart: j. g. cotta. segal, dmitry mikhailovich 1972. osnovy fonologicheskoj statistiki (na materiale pol’skogo jazyka). moskva: nauka. semenko, irina mikhailovna 1970. mandel’shtam – perevodchik petrarki. in: voprosy literatury 10, 153–169. semenenko, aleksei 2007. hamlet the sign: russian translations of hamlet and literary canon formation (acta universitatis stockholmiensis. stockholm studies in russian literature 39). stockholm: stockholms universitet. semenko, irina mikhailovna 1975. zhizn’ i poezija zhukovskogo. moskva: khudozhestvennaja literatura. semenko, irina mikhailovna 1976. vasily zhukovsky (twas 271). new york: twayne. sharov, nikolai v. 1922. stikhotvorenija g. gejne [h. heine] v perevode f. i. tjutcheva. in: trudy belorusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta v minske 1, 139–147; 2/3, 97–113. shcherba, lev vladimirovich 1923. opyty lingvisticheskogo tolkovanija stikhotvorenij: i. “vospominanie” pushkina. in: shcherba, lev vladimirovich (ed.), russkaja rech’ 1. petrograd: izdanie foneticheskogo instituta prakticheskogo izuchenija jazykov, 13–56. shengeli, georgy arkad’evich 1923. traktat o russkom stikhe. t. 1: organičeskaja metrika. izdanie 2-e, pererabotannoe. moskva; petrograd: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. shklovsky, viktor borisovich 1916. o poezii i “zaumnom” jazyke. in: sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo jazyka 1. petrograd: tipografija z. sokolinskogo, 1–15. 102 igor pilshchikov shklovsky, viktor borisovich 1923. literatura i kinematograf. berlin: russkoe universitetskoe izdatel’stvo. shtokmar, mikhail petrovich 1939. fonika. in literaturnaja entsiklopedija. t. 11. moskva: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo “khudozhestvennaja literatura”, col. 802–804. signed: m. sh. shveitser, aleksandr davidovich 1988. teorija perevoda: status, problemy, aspekty. moskva: nauka. silman [sil’man], tamara isaakovna 1969. podtekst kak lingvisticheskoe javlenie. in: nauchnye doklady vysshej shkoly. filologicheskie nauki 1/49, 84–90. skirmantas, petras p. 1984. fonika stikhotvorenij s. nėris (rannij period): avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoj stepeni kandidata filologicheskikh nauk. vilnius: vil’njusskij gosudarstvennyj universitet im. v. kapsukasa. smith, frank 1978. understanding reading: a psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning to read. second edition. new york; chicago; san francisco [etc.]: holt, rinehart and winston. steiner, george 1998 [1975]. after babel: aspects of language and translation. third edition. oxford: oxford university press. tammi, pekka 1991. text, subtext, intertext: on applying taranovsky’s analytic method (with examples from finnish poetry). in: semiotica 87(3/4), 315–347. taranovsky, kiril [kirill fedorovich] 1965. the sound texture of russian verse in the light of phonemic distinctive features. in: international journal of slavic linguistic and poetics 9, 114–124. taranovsky, kirill fedorovich 1966. zvukopis’ v “severovostoke” m. voloshina. in: gerhardt, dietrich; weintraub, wiktor; zum winkel, hans-jürgen (eds.), orbis scriptus: dmitrij tschiževskij zum 70. geburtstag. münchen: wilhelm fink, 835–840. tesnière, lucien 1965. éléments de syntaxe structurale. deuxième édition revue et corrigé. paris: klincksieck. testelets, jakov georgievich 2001. vvedenie v obshchij sintaksis. moskva: rggu. timofeev, leonid ivanovich 1958. ocherki teorii i istorii russkogo stikha. moskva: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoj literatury. tiutchev, fedor ivanovich 1966. lirika. t. 2. ed. by pigarev, kirill vasil’evich. moskva: nauka. 103the semiotics of phonetic translation toury, gideon 1990. from one signifier to another: modified phonetic transposition in word-formation and translation. in: arntz, reiner; thome, gisela (eds.), übersetzungswissenschaft: ergebnisse und perspektiven: festschrift für wolfram wilss zum 65. geburtstag. tübingen: g. narr, 191–198. turgenev, aleksandr ivanovich 1872. pis’ma aleksandra ivanovicha turgeneva k nikolaju ivanovichu turgenevu. leipzig: f. a. brockhaus. tynianov, yuri nikolaevich 1924. problema stikhotvornogo jazyka (voprosy poetiki 5). leningrad: academia. tynianov, yuri nikolaevich 1929 [1922]. oda kak oratorskij zhanr. in: tynianov, yuri nikolaevich. arkhaisty i novatory. leningrad: priboj, 48–86. tynianov, yuri nikolaevich 1977 [1921–1922]. o kompozitsii “evgenija onegina”. in: tynianov, yuri nikolaevich. poetika. istorija literatury. kino. ed. by chudakov, aleksandr pavlovich; chudakova, marietta omarovna; toddes, evgeny abramovich. moskva: nauka, 52–77. tynianov, yuri nikolaevich 1977 [1922]. tjutchev i gejne [tiutchev and heine]. in: tynianov, yuri nikolaevich. poetika. istorija literatury. kino. moskva: nauka, 385–393. vakhros, igor’ 1966/1967. o perevodakh tjutcheva iz gejne. in: annuaire de l’institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves. t. 17. bruxelles: université libre de bruxelles, 427–442. vatsuro, vadim erazmovich 1994. lirika pushkinskoj pory: “elegicheskaja shkola”. sankt-peterburg: nauka. vekshin, georgy viktorovich 2006. ocherk fonostilistiki teksta: zvukovoj povtor v perspektive smysloobrazovanija. moskva: mgup. venclova, tomas 1991. vjacheslav ivanov i osip mandel’shtam – perevodchiki petrarki (na primere soneta cccxi. in: russkaja literatura 4, 192–200. venuti, lawrence: 2008 [1995], the translator’s invisibility: a history of translation. second edition. london; new york: routledge. vitkovsky, evgeny vladimirovich 2004. semen kirsanov. in: vek perevoda: russkij poeticheskij perevod xx–xxi vekov. published online 07.10.2004. url: http://www. vekperevoda.com/1900/skirsanov.htm (accessed 30.04.2016). weinreich, uriel 1953. languages in contact: findings and problems. with a preface by andré martinet (publications of the linguistic circle of new york 1). new york: linguistic circle of new york. http://www.vekperevoda.com/1900/skirsanov.htm http://www.vekperevoda.com/1900/skirsanov.htm 104 igor pilshchikov wellek, rené; warren, austin 1963. theory of literature. third revised edition. harmondsworth: peregrine books. yakubinsky, lev petrovich 1916. o zvukach stikhotvornogo jazyka. in: sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo jazyka 1. petrograd: tipografija z. sokolinskogo, 16–30. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1932. gete [goethe] v russkoj poezii. in: literaturnoe nasledstvo 4/6. moskva: zhurnal’no-gazetnoe ob”edinenie, 505–650. zhirmunsky, viktor maksimovich 1937. gete [goethe] v russkoj literature. leningrad: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoj literatury. zhukovsky, vasily andreevich 1813. elizium. in: vestnik evropy 68(7/8), 201–203. unsigned. zhukovsky, vasily andreevich 1815. stikhotvorenija. chast’ 1. sankt-peterburg: v meditsinskoj tipografii. zhukovsky, vasily andreevich 1818. goethe. an den mond; [zhukovsky]. k mesjatsu: [parallel texts]. in: für wenige. dlja nemnogikh 2, 28–33. unsigned. a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem ekaterina dikova*1 abstract. the paper measures the extent to which the most characteristic features related to the so-called byzantine dodecasyllable are applied in one of the earliest old-bulgarian poems – azbuchna molitva (‘alphabetic prayer’) noted to be written in dodecasyllabic verses. this alphabetic acrostic is dated back to the very end of the ninth century and is attributed to constantine of preslav. in this article its text is given after its earliest copy, ms syn. 262, as it is the only representative of the version closest to the glagolitic archetype, now lost. the piece is studied in comparison with st gregory the theologian’s alphabetic acrostic (as published in pg 37) which constantine of preslav quotes just after the end of his poem and which is considered its rhythmical model. the main conclusions are that the alphabetic prayer is an early replica of the byzantine dodecasyllable, follows its rhythmical peculiarities to an extent similar to st gregory’s alphabetic acrostic, all the previously supposed deviations are motivated by genre peculiarities and rhetorical requirements, which reveals byzantine schooling of the old-bulgarian writer. nevertheless, the content and intention of the poem indubitably target the neophyte slavonic audience. keywords: metrical analysis, medieval christian poetry, byzantine iambic trimeter, alphabetic acrostic, old bulgarian versification, cultural influence in spiritual literature * author’s address: ekaterina dikova, institute of balkan studies and centre of thracology – bulgarian academy of sciences, 45 moskovska street, sofia 1000, bulgaria. email: e.dikova@ balkanstudies.bg. studia metrica et poetica 9.2, 2022, 63–91 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.02 mailto:e.dikova@balkanstudies.bg mailto:e.dikova@balkanstudies.bg https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.02 64 ekaterina dikova � херовьскоу�м•�мꙑсль��оумъ�даждь�⁘ ѡ�ьстьнаꙗ•�прѣсвѧтаꙗ�троце�⁘ cherubic reasoning and mind provide me with, o, venerable you, most holy trinity.1 (constantine of preslav) in the late ninth century, constantine of preslav, one of the most prominent earliest old-bulgarian writers, translated a set of catenae (in combination with homilies2) related to the liturgical sunday gospel readings, added his own introductions and conclusions to each of the orations as well as a whole oration of his own, to form the codex know as didactic gospel (uchitel’noe evangelie)3. in his introduction to the whole book, he also inserted a prayer to the holy trinity which he wrote in dodecasyllabic verses forming an alphabetic acrostic (thirty-six verses after each glagolitic letter except for the jers4 plus a final doxology5). he named it ‘a measured prologue about christ’ (прологъ� о�хѣ҃�оумѣренъ). the peculiarities of the original byzantine dodecasyllable – known to its contemporaries as iambs (ἴαμβοι6) – according to the scholars who dedicated studies to it, are the exact number of the syllables, caesura after the fifth or the 1 translation is mine and i tried to keep twelve syllables per verse. in orthodox christianity cherubs are awe-inspiring formidable creatures while on the west they usually have gentle and innocent child-like representations. constantine of preslav had certainly the first in mind. for an english translation of the whole poem see for example butler 1999–2022. 2 see for instance gorskij, nevostruev 1859: 423–424. kotova (2022) and petrov (2022) find the previously unknown greek parallels of parts of orations nineteenth and twentieth, respectively, in st john christostom’s homilies. see also mitov (2022). 3 the monument is dated usually to 889–893 (cf. arhim. antonij 1885: 7; gallucci 2001: 3–4; spasova 2005; tihova 2012: xii; slavova 2017: 3) and the literature cited there. 4 these are ъ�and�ь�(glagolitic�ⱏ�and ⱐ respectively). they were pronounced in the ninth century, but later some of them were not, others transformed into other vocals. (in later times, according to the rules of the church slavonic grammar, the jers just marked the softness or hardness of the consonant before them). 5 on the acrostich in this poem see for instance the recent studies of macrobert (2019) and kojčeva (2019) and the literature cited there. 6 for the labels of poems given in their headings in byzantine manuscripts see rhoby 2015. paul maas (1903: 278), in the very first sentence of his famous study, states that the type of verse in his focus is known as byzantine iambic trimeter. 65a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem seventh syllable, particular stress patterns before the clausula and at the end of the verse as well as specific visual prosody. the purpose of the present article is to check to what extent the metrical principles of the so-called byzantine dodecasyllable are followed in constantine of preslav’s alphabetic prayer. it begins with a brief review of the previous studies. then the poem is analysed in juxtaposition to st gregory the theologian’s alphabetic acrostic which has been considered to be its rhythmical model (even though the latter is much shorter and quite different in its content and intention). previous studies on the meter of azbuchna molitva the meter of azbuchna molitva has interested scholars since the very first study dedicated to the poem in 1900, even though the main focus has been on the acrostich and, initially, also on the authorship of the work. aleksej ivanovich sobolevskij (1900: 314) determined it to be a twelve-syllable “political” verse with caesurae only after the fifth syllable and paroxytone clausulae. ivan franko (1914: 162, 163) counted various syllables per verse (from 8 to 12, which is definitely due to the fact he did not count the jers, as required by the rules of his contemporaneous church slavonic), and defined the meter as ten-syllable trochaic structuring of epic slavic folk songs. emil georgiev (1938: 114–123), in his profound study of the prayer, saw a twelve-syllable meter with specific caesuring but underlined that it did not follow the greek rhythmical system, that there were no paroxytone verse endings and no iamb in it.7 rajko nahtigal (1942: 51–52) was definite that the work was written in the byzantine iambic trimeter in twelve-syllable verses with caesura after the fifth or the seventh syllable, but considered its prosody slavonic.8 kujo kuev (1974: 119, 7 he rised the question of prosody but quickly passed it away since, as, he argued, byzantine greek had lost the difference between long and short vowels and there had been no such differences in slavonic. (and yet, czech and serbian languages do keep such differences up to nowadays.) 8 nahtigal’s main contribution is the reconstruction of the acrostich; he also corrected the length of some verses and some places of the caesurae. the precise quotation about prosody is, “vendar starocerkvenoslovanski verzifikator ni ne mene dolžin in kratčin v kvantitativen oziru, ne mesta naglasa v ritmičnem metrično izrabil, to je ustvaril svojo slovansko prozodijo.” ‘however, the old church slavonic poet did not use metrically neither the alternation of length and shortness in quantitative terms, nor the position of accents in rhythmical terms – he created his slavonic prosody.’ 66 ekaterina dikova 128, 132), who dedicated a whole monograph to the alphabetic prayer, noted its twelve-syllable verses with caesura after the fifth, sixth9 or seventh syllable, underlined that its structure is related to the byzantine dodecasyllable and had as its model st gregory the theologian’s alphabetic acrostic. it is worth mentioning here that all these scholars proposed their own reconstruction of the text to approximate it to their understanding of its meter. ivan bogdanov (1980: 60), as it seems, held rather sobolevskij’s view in his short description of the rhythmical peculiarities of the alphabetic prayer as he stated twelve syllables per verse caesured only after the fifth syllable and saw all the deviations as exceptions caused by semantic reasons or copyists. ivan dobrev (1993: 239–257) analysed the place of the caesura to demonstrate that this type of dodecasyllable with asymmetric alternation (5+7 or 7+5) differed significantly from the dodecasyllable of the bulgarian folk songs (6+6); he added to the analysis of his predecessors the count of accents per verse.10 the most recent scholar – and probably the most profound – of early old bulgarian non-liturgical poetry, krasimir stanchev (1986: 646, 652), summarised the view accepted in scholarship that the work was composed of twelve-syllable verses with a caesura after the fifth and rarely after the seventh syllable. he emphasised that this rhythmic peculiarity was adopted from byzantine poetry as “a medieval modification of the ancient iambic trimeter” which meant a twelve-syllable line with a caesura after the fifth, sixth or seventh syllable (with the clarification that neither a different caesuring nor a syllable count of more than twelve syllables was a deviation from it). metrical analysis i have decided to analyse the raw text of the earliest preserved copy (ms syn. 262, ff. 1–3) in order to avoid the situation of drawing conclusions over a text that does not exist except as a reconstruction. besides, this manuscript, according to text-critical studies, is the only one closest to the glagolitic archetype, 9 the structure 6+6 is in the twelfth verse only, according to ms syn. 262, if one does not accept r. nahtigal suggestion that instead of летть... (‘is flying’) the line began, as he logically suggested, with ꙉ.�лѣтъ (‘thirty years’). 10 he does not comment on the number of accents per line, but it is clearly visible there that various isocollic patterns alternate together with the alternations of meaning as is the case in rhetorical prose as well. 67a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem while the rest of the copies11 (about fifty in total) have no direct relation to it.12 i juxtapose this early bulgarian text to st gregory the theologian’s alphabetic acrostic (poem i.2.30 after pg 37 col. 908–910)13 which has been assumed to be the rhythmical model of constantine’s alphabetic prayer by the majority of the scholars, who dealt with its poetic meter, probably because it is cited14 straight after the end of the prayer. i have been wondering whether to include at least some of the reconstructions but have decided not to, as they, even if convincing, remain in the sphere of hypotheses. it is also a matter of personal choice which of the several reconstructions of a verse to accept. one thing is sure – if any of those is indeed true to the archetype, the percentage of the dodecasyllabic peculiarities, given below, would be even greater. 1. number of syllables the term zwölfsilber coined by maas is certainly related to the most obvious peculiarity of this most popular byzantine meter. and the same peculiarity – prevailing twelve-syllable verses – was noted by almost all the scholars who analysed azbuchna molitva. here, i count, again after earlier scholars, the number of syllables per verse in constantine’s prayer (according to its text in ms syn. 262) and compare it with the number of syllables per verse in st gregory’s parenetical alphabet (according to its edition in patrologia graeca). 11 only cyrillic transcriptions came down to us. 12 see kuev’s (1974: 168) graphic representation of the text-critical relations between the manuscripts; for the textual evidence which emerged since then and their grouping see veder (2000: 78–80) whose edition of the poem includes variant readings of the lines according to the respective groups of manuscripts, his reconstruction in glagolitic and his translation in english (veder 1999: 61–88). 13 there is another alphabetic acrostic, again a paraenetic one, by st gregroy (though ascribed to ignatios the deacon in various manuscripts), and it, together with 32 poetic and 2 more prosaic ascetic-paraenetic alphabets of various times, is proven to be genealogically related to the same st gregory’s acrostic which constantine quotes. for the similarities in both form and meaning of all those byzantine acrostics see anastasijević (1905: 4) who also mentions other byzantine acrostic prayers (ibid.: 3). 14 the exact quotation after ms syn 262, f. 3r is: добро�сть�отъ�б҃а�нанат•��до�б҃а� коньават•�ꙗкоже�рее�етеръ�б҃ословьць��гргоръ•�‘it is good from god to begin and to god to end as that theologian and gregory said’ (translation is mine; the ‘and’ in the old bulgarian text points at a literary understanding of the name – ‘watchful’). 68 ekaterina dikova the only intervention in the manuscript text i have allowed myself, which is related to the number of syllables, is the addition of ь in square brackets in the places it was occasionally dropped out – three times in the pronoun вьсь (in lines 2, 39, 40), which otherwise is written with the jer (it is kept in the root вьсin lines 6, 13, 22, and 34), and once in the adjective ьстьнъ15 (compared to ьсть in line 38). table 1. number of syllables in the old bulgarian and in the byzantine acrostic прологъ�о�х҃ѣ�оумѣренъ� съкаꙁанꙗ�с҃тго�еваньгелꙗ•� сътворенъ�костѧнтнъмь�мже� �прѣложен�бꙑсть•�тогожде� съкаꙁанꙗ•�вангельскааго⁘�(syn.� 262,�f.�2r–3r) no. of syll. γρηγόριος ο θεολόγος, στίχων ἡ ἀκροστιχὶς τῶν πάντων στοιχείων ἑκάστου ἰάμβου τέλος παραινέσεως ἔχοντος (pg 37.908-910) no. of syll. 1 аꙁъ словомь смъ // молю сѧ б҃оу ⁘ 12 1 ἀρχὴν ἁπάντων / καὶ τέλος ποιοῦ θεόν. 12 2 б҃е в[ь]сеꙗ твар //  ꙁждтелю ⁘ 12 2 βίου τὸ κέρδος, / ἐκβιοῦν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν. 12 3 вдмꙑмъ /  невдмꙑмъ ⁘ 12 3 γίνωσκε πάντα / τῶν καλῶν τὰ δράματα. 12 4 г҃а д҃ха / посъл жвоущааго ⁘ 13 4 δεινὸν πένεσθαι, / χεῖρον δ᾿ εὐπορεῖν κακῶς. 12 5 да въдъхнеть / въ срьдьце м слово ⁘ 12 5 εὐεργετῶν νόμιζε // μιμεῖσθαι θεόν. 12 6 ѥже боудеть / на оуспѣхъ вьсѣмъ ⁘ 12 6 ζήτει θεοῦ σοι / χρηστότητα χρηστὸς ὤν. 12 7 жвоущмъ / въ ꙁаповѣдьхъ т ⁘ 12 7 ἡ σὰρξ κρατείσθω / καὶ δαμαζέσθω καλῶς. 12 15 i also inserted in square brackets the proper letters at the beginning of the lines, without which letter repetitions are senseless – i did this according to their sequence in the alphabetic acrostich as nahtigal proposed – and added in square brackets the most reasonable reconstruction of the twelfth verse which is supposed to begin with ꙉ, the letter with number value ‘30’. these insertions do not affect the syllable count but are made just for clarity and in accordance with the accepted hypothesis that the earliest glagolitic system reflected only noniotated nasal vowels (stankovska 2018: 411-414 and the literature cited there). the same applies to е – it was first not iotated – but i promised no other interventions in the manuscript. 69a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem 8 ꙃѣло бо сть / свѣтльнкъ жꙁн ⁘ 12 8 θυμὸν χαλίνου, / μὴ φρενῶν ἔξω πέσῃς. 12 9 ꙁаконъ тво•/  свѣтъ стьꙁамъ⁘ 11 9 ἵστη μὲν ὄμμα, / γλῶσσα δὲ στάθμην ἔχοι. 12 10 [ј]же щеть / ев҃нгельска слова ⁘ 12 10 κλεὶς ὠσὶ κείσθω, / μηδὲ πορνεύοι γέλως. 12 11  прость / дарꙑ твоꙗ прꙗт ⁘ 11 11 λύχνος βίου σοι / παντὸς ἡγείσθω λόγος. 12 12 летть бо нꙑнѣ• /  словѣньско племѧ ⁘ [ꙉ. лѣтъ нꙑнѣ /  словѣньско племѧ] 12 12 μή σοι τὸ εἶναι / τῷ δοκεῖν ὑπορρέοι. 12 13 къ крьщеню•/ обратша сѧ вьс ⁘ 12 13 νόει τὰ πάντα, / πρᾶσσε δ᾿ ἃ πράσσειν θέμις. 12 14 люд тво•/ нарещ сѧ хотѧще ⁘ 12 14 ξένον σεαυτὸν ἴσθι, // καὶ τίμα ξένους. 12 15 млост твоꙗ•/ б҃е просѧть ꙁѣло ⁘ 13 15 ὅτ᾿ εὐπλοεῖς, / μάλιστα μέμνησο ζάλης. 12 16 нъ мънѣ нꙑнѣ•/ пространо слово даждь ⁘ 12 16 πάντ᾿ εὐχαρίστως / δεῖ δέχεσθαι τἀκ θεοῦ. 12 17 о҃е с҃не•/  прѣс҃тꙑ д҃ше ⁘ 12 17 ῥάβδος δικαίου / πλεῖον ἢ τιμὴ κακοῦ. 12 18 просѧщоуоумоу•/ помощ ѿ тебе ⁘ 12 18 σοφῶν θύρας ἔκτριβε, // πλουσίων δὲ μή. 12 19 роуцѣ бо сво / горѣ въꙁдѣю прсно ⁘ 12 19 τὸ μικρὸν οὐ μικρόν, / ὅταν ἐκφέρῃ μέγα. 13 20 слоу прꙗт•/  моудрость оу тебе ⁘ 12 20 ὕβριν χαλίνου, / καὶ μέγας ἔσῃ σοφός 12 21 тꙑ бо даш•/ достономъ слоу ⁘ 12 21 φύλασσε σαυτόν, / πτῶμα δ᾿ ἄλλου μὴ γέλα. 12 22 упостась же•/ вьсѧкоую цѣлш ⁘ 12 22 χάρις φθονεῖσθαι, / τὸ φθονεῖν δ᾿ αἶσχος μέγα. 12 23 фараоша мѧ•/ ꙁълобꙑ ꙁбав ⁘ 11 23 ψυχὴ θύοιτο / μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ πᾶν θεῷ. 12 70 ekaterina dikova 24 херовьскоу м•/ мꙑсль  оумъ даждь ⁘ 12 24 ὢ τίς φυλάξει ταῦτα // καὶ σωθήσεται. 12 25 [ѡ]о ьст[ь]наꙗ•/ прѣст҃аꙗ троце ⁘ 12 26 пеаль мою / на радость прѣлож ⁘ 12 27 цѣломоудрьно•/ да наьноу пьсат ⁘ 12 28 юдеса твоꙗ•/ прѣдвьнаꙗ ꙁѣло ⁘ 12 29 шестькрлатъ•/ слоу въспрмъ ⁘ 11 30 шьствоую нꙑнѣ•/ по слѣдоу оутелю ⁘ 12 31 мен ю•/  дѣлоу послѣдоуꙗ ⁘ 12 32 [ѣ]ꙗвѣ сътворю•/ еваньгельско слово ⁘ 12 33 хвалоу въꙁдаꙗ•/ тр҃ц въ б҃жьтвѣ ⁘ 12 34 [ѫ]юже поть / вьсѧкъ въꙁдрастъ ⁘ 12 35 юнъ  старъ•/ свомь раꙁоумомь ⁘ 12 36 [ѧ]ꙗꙁꙑкъ новъ•/ хвалоу въꙁдаꙗ прсно ⁘ 12 37 о҃цоу с҃ноу /  прѣс҃тоуоумѹ дх҃оу ⁘ 13 38 ѥмоуже ьсть /  дрьжава  слава ⁘ 12 39 отъ в[ь]сеꙗ // твар  дꙑханꙗ ⁘ 12 40 въ в[ь]сѧ вѣкꙑ•/  на вѣкꙑ амнъ ⁘ 12 total: 33 × 12 syll. = 82.5% 4 × 11 syll. = 10% 3 × 13 syll. = 7.5% 23 × 12 syll. = 95.8% 1 × 13 syll. = 4.16% 71a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem the numbers speak for themselves. in this non-reconstructed manuscript text, the number of twelve-syllable verses is over 82%. the percentage of thirteensyllable verses is higher than in the byzantine poem observed here, but all three such verses would easily become dodecasyllabic if uncontracted forms in them were contracted (жвоущааго, твоꙗ, прѣс҃тоуоумоѹ).16 yet the shorter verses – the four which count just eleven syllables – do not have any counterparts in the greek poem and are not particularly discussed by maas. this is, probably, why various scholars make various attempts to add “reconstructed” syllables to them. but both – the shorter and the longer verses in the bulgarian poem – have counterparts in byzantine poetry. the deviations from the constant number of twelve syllables in it – between 10–11 and 13–14 – are explained as specific combinations of hemistichs of, respectively, 5/6+5/6 and 7/6+7/6.17 here, it should be noted, however, that while verse 9 has two more completely different readings (of fourteen and fifteen syllables) in the other copies of the prayer, verse 11 has just one different reading with  ‘and’ preceding прꙗт ‘to accept’ which certainly makes the twelve syllables. verse 29 is also highly variable, besides in regard to two words – шестькрлатъ�/�шестокрлъ� /�шестькрлатъ�/�шестькрлатꙑхъ�‘six-winged’�and�въспрмъ�/�прмъ ‘having accepted’ – but in all the variants it counts eleven or even ten syllables and the same numbers apply also to verse 26, i. e. it counts always less than twelve syllables. even though there is no way for us to be sure whether the eleven-syllable lines are due to text corruption or were intended by their author, i propose to hypothetically accept the latter and to closely look at the immediate context of the respective lines. to begin with, verses 9 and 11 are part of a tetracolon in which all four cola bear four accents each and the variation in the number of syllables of the two subordinate cola is a way to diversify the otherwise complete symmetry of the cola in this isocolon18 (the symmetry remains yet 16 moreover, жвоущааго and твоꙗ�appear contracted – as жвѧщаго/жвꙋщаго and твоѧ respectively – in the other copies of the prayer. in relation to verse 37 (the one containing прѣс҃тоуоумѹ), all the variants except for the one in ms syn. 262 read ѡ҃цꙋ��с҃нꙋ��с҃тмꙋ�д҃хꙋ which also counts twelve syllables (for the variant readings see veder 1999: 64, 68, 78). 17 see, for example, bernard 2018: 36. 18 almost all the characteristic features of the byzantine dodecasyllable, actually, lead to the construction of isocolon, which builds up the rhetorical (and not the metrical) rhythm: not only the semantic completeness of the separate verses/cola but also their equal length (the number of syllables), clausulae, ceasuring and a variety of features characteristic for particular types of writings or authors. on the notion that the isocolic structure relates this meter to the rhetorical 72 ekaterina dikova slightly modified by the alternation of cola with the same number of accents but different number of syllables, which could be visualised in the following way: 12 (4), 11 (4), 12 (4), 11 (4)). next, the other pair of verses counting eleven syllables, namely 23 and 29, are part of parallel isocolic periods (divided by another tricolon) with a similar scheme – 11 (3), 12 (4), 12 (3) […] 11 (3), 12 (4), 12 (3) – so, here, the subtle change in rhythm is intended rather to pair, not to diversify. nevertheless, it should be emphasised, that, on the one hand, the archetype of this poetic prayer was most probably closer to the byzantine dodecasyllable than the text which came down to us in ms syn. 262, and, on the other, the author did not label it iamboi (as the majority of the byzantine alphabetic acrostics (cf. the numerous examples given in anastasijević 1905), but just measured prologue. 2. internal verse breaks (caesurae) maas postulated verse structures of the type 5+7 and 7+5 as most typical for the byzantine dodecasyllable.19 and these are the prevailing types in the two alphabetic acrostics in focus. to clearly reveal this in the table below, i followed nahtigal’s manner to mark the pauses after the seventh syllable with a double slash (//) while the ones which come after the fifth syllable – with a single slash (/). all other positions of the caesura i mark with backslash (\). table 2. presents the same two texts given this time with the number of syllables per hemistich. it is also clearly visible, that in ms syn. 262, the caesurae are marked by dots in more than half of the verses. prose, including in the byzantine theory, and for specific examples revealing that the byzantines ignored the difference between poetry and prose see lauxtermann 1998: 21–22. the short cola and the regular alternation of consonants brings about the energetic style of the dodecasyllable (bernard 2018: 22) and they both, according to three byzantine rhetors, are inseparable part of its versification system (lauxtermann 1998: 28). the structuring in cola – according to the complete thoughts they convey – is characteristic also for the rhetorical prose (ibid.: 21). 19 cf. the exact statistics in bernard 2018: 27 and concerning other variants of hemistichs, see note 16. 73a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem table 2. the internal verse breaks in the two poems прологъ о х҃ѣ оумѣренъ... cae sura στίχων ἡ ἀκροστιχὶς... cae sura 1 аꙁъ словомь смъ // молю сѧ б҃оу ⁘ 7+5 1 ἀρχὴν ἁπάντων / καὶ τέλος ποιοῦ θεόν. 5+7 2 б҃е в[ь]сеꙗ твар //  ꙁждтелю ⁘ 7+5 2 βίου τὸ κέρδος, / ἐκβιοῦν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν. 5+7 3 вдмꙑмъ /  невдмꙑмъ ⁘ 5+7 3 γίνωσκε πάντα / τῶν καλῶν τὰ δράματα. 5+7 4 г҃а д҃ха \ посъл жвоущааго ⁘ 5+8 4 δεινὸν πένεσθαι, / χεῖρον δ᾿ εὐπορεῖν κακῶς. 5+7 5 да въдъхнеть / въ срьдьце м слово ⁘ 5+7 5 εὐεργετῶν νόμιζε // μιμεῖσθαι θεόν. 7+5 6 ѥже боудеть / на оуспѣхъ вьсѣмъ ⁘ 5+7 6 ζήτει θεοῦ σοι / χρηστότητα χρηστὸς ὤν. 5+7 7 жвоущмъ / въ ꙁаповѣдьхъ т ⁘ 5+7 7 ἡ σὰρξ κρατείσθω / καὶ δαμαζέσθω καλῶς. 5+7 8 ꙃѣло бо сть / свѣтльнкъ жꙁн ⁘ 5+7 8 θυμὸν χαλίνου, / μὴ φρενῶν ἔξω πέσῃς. 5+7 9 ꙁаконъ тво•/  свѣтъ стьꙁамъ⁘ 5+6 9 ἵστη μὲν ὄμμα, / γλῶσσα δὲ στάθμην ἔχοι. 5+7 10 [ј]же щеть / ев҃нгельска слова ⁘ 5+7 10 κλεὶς ὠσὶ κείσθω, / μηδὲ πορνεύοι γέλως. 5+7 11  прость \ дарꙑ твоꙗ прꙗт ⁘ 4+7 11 λύχνος βίου σοι / παντὸς ἡγείσθω λόγος. 5+7 12 летть бо нꙑнѣ• \  словѣньско племѧ ⁘ [ꙉ. лѣтъ нꙑнѣ /  словѣньско племѧ] 6+6/ [5+7] 12 μή σοι τὸ εἶναι / τῷ δοκεῖν ὑπορρέοι. 5+7 13 къ крьщеню•/ обратша сѧ вьс ⁘ 5+7 13 νόει τὰ πάντα, / πρᾶσσε δ᾿ ἃ πράσσειν θέμις. 5+7 14 люд тво•/ нарещ сѧ хотѧще ⁘ 5+7 14 ξένον σεαυτὸν ἴσθι, // καὶ τίμα ξένους. 7+5 15 млост твоꙗ•\ б҃е просѧть ꙁѣло ⁘ 6+7 15 ὅτ᾿ εὐπλοεῖς, \ μάλιστα μέμνησο ζάλης. 4+8 74 ekaterina dikova 16 нъ мънѣ нꙑнѣ•/ пространо слово даждь ⁘ 5+7 16 πάντ᾿ εὐχαρίστως / δεῖ δέχεσθαι τἀκ θεοῦ. 5+7 17 о҃е с҃не•/  прѣс҃тꙑ д҃ше ⁘ 5+7 17 ῥάβδος δικαίου / πλεῖον ἢ τιμὴ κακοῦ. 5+7 18 просѧщоуоумоу•/ помощ ѿ тебе ⁘ 5+7 18 σοφῶν θύρας ἔκτριβε, // πλουσίων δὲ μή. 7+5 19 роуцѣ бо сво / горѣ въꙁдѣю прсно ⁘ 5+7 19 τὸ μικρὸν οὐ μικρόν, / ὅταν ἐκφέρῃ μέγα. 6+7 20 слоу прꙗт•/  моудрость оу тебе ⁘ 5+7 20 ὕβριν χαλίνου, / καὶ μέγας ἔσῃ σοφός 5+7 21 тꙑ бо даш•/ достономъ слоу ⁘ 5+7 21 φύλασσε σαυτόν, / πτῶμα δ᾿ ἄλλου μὴ γέλα. 5+7 22 упостась же•/ вьсѧкоую цѣлш ⁘ 5+7 22 χάρις φθονεῖσθαι, / τὸ φθονεῖν δ᾿ αἶσχος μέγα. 5+7 23 фараоша мѧ•\ ꙁълобꙑ ꙁбав ⁘ 5+6 23 ψυχὴ θύοιτο / μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ πᾶν θεῷ. 5+7 24 херовьскоу м•/ мꙑсль  оумъ даждь ⁘ 5+7 24 ὢ τίς φυλάξει ταῦτα // καὶ σωθήσεται. 7+5 25 [ѡ]о ьст[ь]наꙗ•/ прѣст҃аꙗ троце ⁘ 5+7 26 пеаль мою / на радость прѣлож ⁘ 5+7 27 цѣломоудрьно•/ да наьноу пьсат ⁘ 5+7 28 юдеса твоꙗ•/ прѣдвьнаꙗ ꙁѣло ⁘ 5+7 29 шестькрлатъ•\ слоу въспрмъ ⁘ 5+6 30 шьствоую нꙑнѣ•/ по слѣдоу оутелю ⁘ 5+7 31 мен ю•/  дѣлоу послѣдоуꙗ ⁘ 5+7 32 [ѣ]ꙗвѣ сътворю•/ еваньгельско слово ⁘ 5+7 75a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem 33 хвалоу въꙁдаꙗ•/ тр҃ц въ б҃жьтвѣ ⁘ 5+7 34 [ѫ]юже поть / вьсѧкъ въꙁдрастъ ⁘ 5+7 35 юнъ  старъ•/ свомь раꙁоумомь ⁘ 5+7 36 [ѧ]ꙗꙁꙑкъ новъ•/ хвалоу въꙁдаꙗ прсно ⁘ 5+7 37 о҃цоу с҃ноу \  прѣс҃тоуоумѹ дх҃оу ⁘ 5+7 38 ѥмоуже ьсть /  дрьжава  слава ⁘ 5+7 39 отъ в[ь]сеꙗ // твар  дꙑханꙗ ⁘ 7+5 40 въ в[ь]сѧ вѣкꙑ•/  на вѣкꙑ амнъ ⁘ 5+7 total: 30 × (5+7) = 75% 3 × (7+5) = 7.5% others × 5 = 12.5% = 82.5%(5+7/7+5) (5+7) × 18 = 75% (7+5) × 4 = 16.7% others × 2 = 8.3% = 91.6%(5+7/7+5) statistics shows that, in terms of the internal verse breaks, the two poetic works are a bit closer to one another than in relation to the first metrical feature observed, and that the total percentage of the structuring, which is characteristic for the byzantine dodecasyllable (that is either 5+7 or 7+5) is 82.5% in the bulgarian and 91.6% in the greek acrostic. the deviations account to 12.5% and 8.3% respectively, so they might be related to the specific genre of the alphabetic acrostics, since the significance of the sequence of letters prevails over the importance of adhering to other poetic principles. once again, the glagolitic archetype of the bulgarian work would have probably shown slightly different percentages. a noticeable peculiarity here is, however, the fact that constantine of preslav used the caesuring 7+5, this subtle alternation of rhythm, to mark both the opening (the first two verses) and the conclusion of his poem (its penultimate verse), which reveals his profound knowledge – and wellcrafted skill – not only in the most used byzantine poetic measure but also in byzantine rhetoric. 76 ekaterina dikova 3. clausulae specialists in byzantine poetry accept the prevailing paroxytone clausulae – that is an accent on the penultimate syllable at the end of the verse 20 – as one of the characteristic features of the meter.21 but when it comes to accentuation in old slavonic texts, extreme attentiveness is needed, first, because accents are systematically reflected in the graphics only after the fourteenth century (often with variations within the same manuscripts), second, because of its instability – it moves to various syllables in the forms of the same words and takes different positions in different dialects including within the same language. it is not by chance that accentuation theories related to old slavonic are far from being unshakable.22 i have nevertheless decided, as a kind of experiment, to underline only those last words which seem irrefutably paroxytone. these are mainly twosyllable words like бо҃у, слово, племѧ, даждь even the vocative дш҃е, and certain three-syllable words like вьсѣмъ, хотѧще. i take the risk of making some mistakes in order to get at least some approximate idea of the extent to which this peculiarity accords with the respective characteristic feature of the byzantine dodecasyllable. below, i mark paroxytone words not only at the verse ends, as sobolevskij and georgiev did, but also the words at the ends of hemistichs because the latter are not less important than the first for the specialists in byzantine poetry. 20 bernard, for instance, turns our attention to the fact that a particular poem belonging to the genre of iambs on iambs quotes only paroxytone examples as final verse words (bernard 2018: 18). 21 the actual scheme that maas (1903: 290) derives is that the paroxytone verse endings are the rule, proparoxytone – rareness and the oxytone ones – exception. a later byzantine rhetor (joseph rhacendytes) points out that for the iambic verses it is best to end with a penultimate accent as noted by hörandner (1995: 288), and bernard (2018: 22) comments that this same recommendation for a paroxytone on the sixth feet is a uniquely clear and explicit medieval recognition of this crucial feature of the most used meter. the rule is known even before maas (cf. bouvy 1886: 155–157). 22 in fact, there is only one hypothetic reconstruction particularly related to the old bulgarian accent. it tackles it in relation to a later period, to the fourteenth century, besides on the basis of even later monuments and does not exactly determine the distribution of accents (see the profound studies by the best specialist in comparative historical accentology related to slavonic – dybo 1971: 194; 1977: 93–114). (my personal opinion is that accents are not marked in the earlier manuscripts namely because of the different slavonic accentuation and with the view to providing freedom for any local pronunciations related to word stress.) 77a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem table 3. words bearing penultimate accents before internal and final pauses of verses. прологъ о х҃ѣ оумѣренъ... στίχων ἡ ἀκροστιχὶς... 1 аꙁъ словомь смъ23 // молю сѧ б҃оуб҃оу ⁘ 1 ἀρχὴν ἁπάντων / καὶ τέλος ποιοῦ θεόν. 2 б҃е в[ь]сеꙗ твартвар //  ꙁждтелю ⁘ 2 βίου τὸ κέρδος, / ἐκβιοῦν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν. 3 вдмꙑмъ /  невдмꙑмъ ⁘ 3 γίνωσκε πάντα / τῶν καλῶν τὰ δράματα. 4 г҃а д҃хад҃ха / посъл жвоущааго ⁘ 4 δεινὸν πένεσθαι, / χεῖρον δ᾿ εὐπορεῖν κακῶς. 5 да въдъхнеть / въ срьдьце м словослово ⁘ 5 εὐεργετῶν νόμιζε // μιμεῖσθαι θεόν. 6 ѥже боудеть / на оуспѣхъ вьсѣмъвьсѣмъ ⁘ 6 ζήτει θεοῦ σοι / χρηστότητα χρηστὸς ὤν. 7 жвоущмъ / въ ꙁаповѣдьхъ т ⁘ 7 ἡ σὰρξ κρατείσθω / καὶ δαμαζέσθω καλῶς. 8 ꙃѣло бо стьсть / свѣтльнкъ жꙁнжꙁн ⁘ 8 θυμὸν χαλίνου, / μὴ φρενῶν ἔξω πέσῃς. 9 ꙁаконъ твотво•/  свѣтъ стьꙁамъ ⁘ 9 ἵστη μὲν ὄμμα, / γλῶσσα δὲ στάθμην ἔχοι. 10 [ј]же щеть / ев҃нгельска словаслова ⁘ 10 κλεὶς ὠσὶ κείσθω, / μηδὲ πορνεύοι γέλως. 11  прость / дарꙑ твоꙗ прꙗтпрꙗт ⁘ 11 λύχνος βίου σοι / παντὸς ἡγείσθω λόγος. 12 ꙉ. лѣтъ нꙑнѣнꙑнѣ /  словѣньско племѧплемѧ ⁘ 12 μή σοι τὸ εἶναι / τῷ δοκεῖν ὑπορρέοι. 13 къ крьщеню•/ обратша сѧ вьс ⁘ 13 νόει τὰ πάντα, / πρᾶσσε δ᾿ ἃ πράσσειν θέμις. 14 люд тво•/ нарещ сѧ хотѧщехотѧще ⁘ 14 ξένον σεαυτὸν ἴσθι, // καὶ τίμα ξένους. 23 it is quite tempting to enlist смъ among the paroxytone words, but here it is more likely an enclitic as suggested also by the count of accents in dobrev (1993: 241). 78 ekaterina dikova 15 млост твоꙗ•/ б҃е просѧть ꙁѣло ⁘ 15 ὅτ᾿ εὐπλοεῖς, / μάλιστα μέμνησο ζάλης. 16 нъ мънѣ нꙑнѣнꙑнѣ•/ пространо слово даждьдаждь ⁘ 16 πάντ᾿ εὐχαρίστως / δεῖ δέχεσθαι τἀκ θεοῦ. 17 о҃е с҃нес҃не•/  прѣс҃тꙑ д҃шед҃ше ⁘ 17 ῥάβδος δικαίου / πλεῖον ἢ τιμὴ κακοῦ. 18 просѧщоуоумоу•/ помощ ѿ тебе ⁘ 18 σοφῶν θύρας ἔκτριβε, // πλουσίων δὲ μή. 19 роуцѣ бо сво / горѣ въꙁдѣю прснопрсно ⁘ 19 τὸ μικρὸν οὐ μικρόν, / ὅταν ἐκφέρῃ μέγα. 20 слоу прꙗтпрꙗт•/  моудрость оу тебе ⁘ 20 ὕβριν χαλίνου, / καὶ μέγας ἔσῃ σοφός 21 тꙑ бо дашдаш•/ достономъ слоуслоу ⁘ 21 φύλασσε σαυτόν, / πτῶμα δ᾿ ἄλλου μὴ γέλα. 22 упостась же•/ вьсѧкоую цѣлш ⁘ 22 χάρις φθονεῖσθαι, / τὸ φθονεῖν δ᾿ αἶσχος μέγα. 23 фараоша мѧ•/ ꙁълобꙑ ꙁбав⁘ 23 ψυχὴ θύοιτο / μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ πᾶν θεῷ. 24 херовьскоу м•/ мꙑсль  оумъ даждьдаждь ⁘ 24 ὢ τίς φυλάξει ταῦτα // καὶ σωθήσεται. 25 [ѡ]о ьст[ь]наꙗ•/ прѣст҃аꙗ троце ⁘ 26 пеаль мою / на радость прѣлож ⁘ 27 цѣломоудрьно•/ да наьноу пьсатпьсат ⁘ 28 юдеса твоꙗ•/ прѣдвьнаꙗ ꙁѣло ⁘ 29 шестькрлатъ•/ слоу въспрмъ ⁘ 30 шьствоую нꙑнѣнꙑнѣ•/ по слѣдоу оутелю ⁘ 79a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem 31 мен ю•/  дѣлоу послѣдоуꙗ ⁘ 32 [ѣ]ꙗвѣ сътворю•/ еваньгельско словослово ⁘ 33 хвалоу въꙁдаꙗ•/ тр҃ц въ б҃жьтвѣ ⁘ 34 [ѫ]юже поть / вьсѧкъ въꙁдрастъ ⁘ 35 юнъ  старъстаръ•/ свомь раꙁоумомь ⁘ 36 [ѧ]ꙗꙁꙑкъ новъновъ•/ хвалоу въꙁдаꙗ прснопрсно ⁘ 37 о҃цоу с҃ноус҃ноу /  прѣс҃тоуоумѹ дх҃оудх҃оу ⁘ 38 ѥмоуже ьстььсть /  дрьжава  славаслава ⁘ 39 отъ вв[ь][ь]сеꙗсеꙗ // твар  дꙑханꙗ ⁘ 40 въ в[ь]сѧ вѣкꙑвѣкꙑ•/  на вѣкꙑ амнъ ⁘ ...× ˊ ˘/  – 17 = 42.5% / ...× ˊ ˘  – 18 = 45% ...× ˊ ˘/  – 13 = 54% / ...× ˊ ˘  – 13 = 54% the statistical results of the analysis reveal, before all, that sobolevskij and georgiev were both right and not right  – there are female clausulae in azbuchna molitva, but their percentage is neither 100, nor 0, but rather around 50, which is also the case in the greek acrostic. besides, even though not entirely sure, the supposed lexemes in the bulgarian poem are probably not the only paroxytone ones and the actual situation in the archetype might have been different. quite similar is the distribution of paroxytone words just before the clausalae in the two writings. if we turn to maas postulates, we might suppose some diachronic conditioning, because he calculated that the most serious deviation of the rule was in earlier works and authors, and because some recent investigations in early dodecasyllables – of the third to fourth 80 ekaterina dikova century – prove that paroxytone endings are even the exception in them.24 so, is this just an imitation of the earlier tradition? the data in the byzantine paraenetic alphabets reveal that the peculiarity is rather characteristic for their whole genre, no matter the time of origin (anastasijević 1905: 20, 24, 34, 38–39, 41, 47, 48, 56, 58). it seems that constantine of preslav was not only fluent in iambic trends but much aware of the subtle peculiarities of the subgenre of alphabetic acrostics or, at least, attentive enough to be able to apply all his knowledge for high poetic purposes in his own language. 4. prosody simply put, prosody is kept on the strong positions of the iambic trimeter (that is, on the even syllables) – the even syllables seem to be graphically long even in the latest poems labeled as ἰάμβοι. specialists in byzantine poetry underline the visuality of this feature and call it augenpoesie (rhoby 2011: 137) and sheinprosodie (bernard 2010: 16).25 the presence of visual prosody is accepted axiomatically by all the experts in the field26 but lauxtermann is most specific in determining it: the iambic trimeter is a dodecasyllabic verse without resolution27 with anceps on the odd positions (their length does not matter), long even syllables and brevis in longo at the end of the verse (which 24 another point in this respect is considered by rhoby (2011: 140, note 134) who quotes the scholarly opinion that about 48% of the lexemes in the late greek thesaurus were paroxytone by default. in addition, a linguistic factor that should be taken into consideration when observing the development of paroxytone verse endings is that in the late greek language, the enclitics transfer their accent on the last syllable of their preceding word (bernard 2018: 33). 25 see also maas (1903: 301–303) who names it “historische ortographie der versification”. lauxtermann (1998: 24, 33) emphasises that even though prosody might have been understood by the byzantines, the ancient metrics remains abstract for them. how much more this must be true for the old bulgarian men of letters. 26 special attention is paid to “mistakes in prosody” in certain works by george of pisidia by romano (1985: 4–6). 27 probably because resolutions would break isosillabicity. and yet, some of the verses of 13 and 14 syllables may well be explained by the substitution of a visually long syllable with two short ones. the exceptional verse 19 of st gregory’s poem observed here is most probably of this kind. moreover, st gregory the theologian is one of the most cited earlier authors when it comes to verses with resolutions (see for example zagklas (2019: 4 and the literature given in note 13 there)). 81a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem means that even a short final syllable counts like a long one).28 one last necessary clarification is that the dichrona – α, ι, υ – are counted long or short depending on the syllable they belong to.29 so, how do the two alphabetic acrostics accord with these principles? st gregory’s poem shows that 94 (83%) of its even syllables counted30 are visually long (marked in bold below) and 19 (16.9%) of them (underlined below) are not. table 4. visual prosody in st gregory’s poem γρηγόριος ο θεολόγος, στίχων ἡ ἀκροστιχὶς... 1 ἀρχὴν ἁπάντων / καὶ τέλος ποιοῦ θεόν. 2 βίου τὸ κέρδος, / ἐκβιοῦν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν. 3 γίνωσκε πάντα / τῶν καλῶν τὰ δράματα. 4 δεινὸν πένεσθαι, / χεῖρον δ᾿ εὐπορεῖν κακῶς. 5 εὐεργετῶν νόμιζε // μιμεῖσθαι θεόν. 6 ζήτει θεοῦ σοι / χρηστότητα χρηστὸς ὤν. 7 ἡ σὰρξ κρατείσθω / καὶ δαμαζέσθω καλῶς. 8 θυμὸν χαλίνου, / μὴ φρενῶν ἔξω πέσῃς. 9 ἵστη μὲν ὄμμα, / γλῶσσα δὲ στάθμην ἔχοι. 10 κλεὶς ὠσὶ κείσθω, / μηδὲ πορνεύοι γέλως. 28 here follows the exact quotation: “the pure form, so we are told, consists of iambs in the second and the fourth positions, iambs or spondaics in the first, the third and the fifth positions, and iambs or pyrrhics in the sixth position. in other words, the pure form is the iambic verse of twelve syllables with anceps in the uneven positions and brevis in longo at the verse end” (lauxtermann 1998: 17). to be even more precise, the compulsory short positions are just the third, the seventh and the eleventh, since, from the prosodical aspect, the iamb consists of a short and a long syllable, the spondee – of two long ones and the pyrrhic of two shorts but in this case, its second could be also long (because the sixth position could be also iamb), so such a verse has the following schematic representation: u̅ – u – u̅/ – u// – u̅ – u –. the same excerpt from the poem on iambs, attributed most often to michael psellos, is referred to also in hörandner (1995: 286 including note 28) and bernard (2018: 17). 29 lauxtermann convincingly proves that the pure iambs (ϰαθαροὶ στιχοὶ) in byzantine metrics is a term referring to verses without resolution and that the byzantines used it to designate their dodecasyllable in order to distinguish it, on the one hand, from the ancient iambic trimeter, and, on the other, to emphasise the genetic connection between the two (lauxtermann 1998: 7–19). 30 i excluded from counting the last syllables of each verse as they are long by position as well as the second hemistich of verse 19 (the only one of thirteen syllables) since i am not sure how to count syllables if indeed a resolution is applied. 82 ekaterina dikova 11 λύχνος βίου σοι / παντὸς ἡγείσθω λόγος. 12 μή σοι τὸ εἶναι / τῷ δοκεῖν ὑπορρέοι. 13 νόει τὰ πάντα, / πρᾶσσε δ᾿ ἃ πράσσειν θέμις. 14 ξένον σεαυτὸν ἴσθι, // καὶ τίμα ξένους. 15 ὅτ᾿ εὐπλοεῖς, /μάλιστα μέμνησο ζάλης. 16 πάντ᾿ εὐχαρίστως / δεῖ δέχεσθαι τἀκ θεοῦ. 17 ῥάβδος δικαίου / πλεῖον ἢ τιμὴ κακοῦ. 18 σοφῶν θύρας ἔκτριβε, // πλουσίων δὲ μή. 19 τὸ μικρὸν οὐ μικρόν, / ὅταν ἐκφέρῃ μέγα. 20 ὕβριν χαλίνου, / καὶ μέγας ἔσῃ σοφός 21 φύλασσε σαυτόν, / πτῶμα δ᾿ ἄλλου μὴ γέλα. 22 χάρις φθονεῖσθαι, / τὸ φθονεῖν δ᾿ αἶσχος μέγα. 23 ψυχὴ θύοιτο / μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ πᾶν θεῷ. 24 ὢ τίς φυλάξει ταῦτα // καὶ σωθήσεται. the analysis of the slavonic piece runs into two obstacles. first, the manuscript text has only one of the letters for o and i – the pairs о/ѡ and /і (and the respective glagolitic ⱁ/ⱉ and ⰻ/ⰹ) are not preserved in it.31 second, the old bulgarian language just emerged as a literary one in the ninth century and did not have the long tradition of the greek including in poetry. could those obstacles be possibly overcome? i have checked a later and shorter translated poetic text first – a random synaxarion verse unit32 – with the hope that it would suggest what to look for in the alphabetic prayer. here, the jers should not be counted as they no longer sounded in the fourteenth century. 31 even if they were present in the original, the manuscript copying procedure, especially if combined with dictation, would quickly erase the difference between the members of the opposition. 32 the synaxarion verses are in fact christopher of mytilene’s dodecasyllabic calendar (of the eleventh century) which is a model for all the peculiarities of the byzantine dodecasyllable (cf. eftymiadis 2014: 163–165). they have two south slavonic translations dated to the fourteenth century (cf. taseva 2006: 170–171). 83a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem table 5. visual prosody in synaxar verses christopher of mytilene’s dodeca syllabic calendar (eleventh century) eustratiades 154 bulgarian translation, ms zogr 80, f. 2v (fourteenth century) ὁ χρηστὸς ἡμῖν εὐτρόπιος τοὺς τρόπους, хоⷭ ҇вашїїмъ нравомъ бл҃гы нравъ• 4–5, 9–10 ἐφεῦρε χριστὸν καὶ τέλους διὰ ξίφους. брѣте х҃а ̇ менѫѫѫѫ коннѫ• 8–9 καὶ κλεόνικος εὐκλεᾶ νίκην ἔχει,  клеоео̀нкъ бл҃гославнѫѫѫѫ побѣдѫ ма•ⷮ 2–3, 8–9 σταυρῷ κρεμασθείς, ὡς χριστός μου πάλαι. (11 syll.) на кртⷭ҇ѣ повѣшенъ ꙗко же х҃с моо древле• 12–13 εἱρκτὴν τὸ σῶμα καὶ πρὸ τῆς εἱρκτῆς ἔχων, тъмнцѫ тѣлѡ ͗ прѣжⷣе тъмнцѫ ̀мѣѫ• εἱρκτῶν λυτροῦται βασιλίσκος ἐκ δύο. тъмнцѧ ͗ꙁбав сѧ васлскъ обоохъ• 12–13 the greek source text shows a slightly lower percentage of deviations (the underlined vowels in κλεόνικος, χριστός, βασιλίσκος ἐκ) – just four visually short syllables on even positions, besides, three of them in personal names. the bulgarian text, again, does not show the desired pairs о/ѡ and /і, but what stands out even at first glance is that all, but one (бл҃гы),33 adjacent vowels appear on the borders between even and odd syllables. could this peculiarity – the exclusive use of adjacent vowels on the borders between even and odd syllables – be some graphic imitation of the byzantine visual prosody? the analysis of azbuchna molitva does not give a definite answer in this respect, as the percentage of the adjacent vowels beginning with an even syllable there is 57.1% (20 uses out of 35) while the ones with initial odd syllable account to 42.8%. in addition, the positions of the first, fifth and nineth syllables is considered anceps for the byzantine dodecasyllable (see note 28 above), so it is more accurate to count 20 out of 29 uses on even positions (68.9%) and 9 appearances starting on the odd positions which definitely need to be short (31%). 33 the exceptional one falls on an anceps position (see note 28). 84 ekaterina dikova table 6. visual prosody in constantine’s poem 1� аꙁъ�словомь�смъ�//�молю�сѧ�б҃оу�⁘ 2� б҃е�в[ь]сеꙗеꙗ�твар�//��ꙁждтелю�⁘�����������������4–5 3� вдмꙑмъ�/��невдмꙑꙑмъ�⁘������������������3–4, 10–11 4� г҃а�д҃ха�/�посъл�жвоущаго�⁘ 5� да�въдъхнеть�/�въ�срьдьце�м�слово�⁘ 6� ѥже�боудеть�/�на�оуспѣхъ�вьсѣмъ�⁘ 7� жвоущмъ�/�въ�ꙁаповѣдьхъ�т�⁘���������������3–4 8� ꙃѣло�бо�сть�/�свѣтльнкъ�жꙁн�⁘ 9� ꙁаконъ�тво•/��свѣтъ�стьꙁамъ�⁘ 10 [ј]же�щеть�/�ев҃нгельска�слова�⁘ 11� �прость�/ дарꙑ�твоꙗ�прꙗт�⁘����� 7–8, 9–10 (11 syll.) 12 [ꙉ.�лѣтъ�нꙑнѣ�/ �словѣньско�племѧ] 13� къ�крьщенюю•/�обратша�сѧ�вьс�⁘����������������4–5 14� люд�твоо•/�нарещ�сѧ�хотѧще�⁘����������������2–3, 4–5 15� млост�твоꙗоꙗ•/�б҃е�просѧть�ꙁѣло�⁘� 4–5 16� нъ�мънѣ�нꙑнѣ•/�пространо�слово�даждь�⁘ 17� о҃е�с҃не•/��прѣс҃тꙑꙑ�д҃ше�⁘���������������������������8–9 18� просѧщоуоумоу•/�помощ�ѿ�тебе�⁘����������������3–4 19� роуцѣ�бо�своо�/�горѣ�въꙁдѣю�прсно�⁘������������4–5, 9–10 20� слоу�прꙗт•/��моудрость�оу�тебе�⁘�����������3–4 21� тꙑ�бо�даш•/�достономъ�слоу�⁘ 3–4 22� упостась�же•/�вьсѧкоуюоую�цѣлш�⁘ 8–9 23� фараоша мѧ•/�ꙁълобꙑ ꙁбав �⁘ 24� херовьскоу�м•/�мꙑсль��оумъ�даждь�⁘ 25 [ѡ]о�ьст[ь]наꙗаꙗ•/�прѣст҃аꙗаꙗ�трооце�⁘ 4–5, 8–9, 10–11 26� пеаль�моюою�/�на�радость�прѣлож�⁘ 4–5 27� цѣломоудрьно•/�да�наьноу�пьсат�⁘ 28� юдеса�твоꙗоꙗ•/�прѣдвьнаꙗ ꙁѣло�⁘ 4–5, 9–10 29� шестькрлатъ•/�слоу�въспрмъ�⁘ 9–10 (11 syll.) 85a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem 30� шьствоуюоую�нꙑнѣ•/�по�слѣдоу�оутелю�⁘��������2–3 31� мен�юю•/��дѣлоу�послѣдоуꙗ�⁘�����������������4–5, 11–12 32 [ѣ]ꙗвѣ�сътворю•/�еваньгельско�слово�⁘ 33� хвалоу�въꙁдаꙗаꙗ•/�тр҃ц�въ�б҃жьтвѣ�⁘ 4–5, 6–7 34 [ѫ]юже�поть�/�вьсѧкъъ�въꙁдрастъ�⁘ 3–4, 8–9 35� юнъ��старъ•/�свомь�раꙁоумомь�⁘ 5–6 36 [ѧ]ꙗꙁꙑкъ�новъ•/�хвалоу�въꙁдаꙗ�прсно�⁘ 9–10 37� о҃цоу�с҃ноу�/��прѣс҃тоумѹ�дх҃оу�⁘ 38� ѥмоуже�ьсть�/��дрьжава��слава�⁘ 39� отъ�в[ь]сеꙗеꙗ�//�твар �дꙑханꙗ�⁘ 4–5, 11–12 40� въ�в[ь]сѧ�вѣкꙑ•/��на�вѣкꙑ�амнъ�⁘ in addition, 6 of the odd-syllable positions (further 20% of the whole) are between syllables 3–4, while there is none positioned between syllables 2–3. are the cases 3–4 compensating for the lack of cases 2–3? indubitably, it is difficult to compose such a combination from the very second syllable when the poet’s main concern is to select a word beginning with a particular letter to convey particular thought in the coherent text of a prayer. as already demonstrated above, the importance of the acrostich prevails over the iambic peculiarities. the modern translations of azbuchna molitva further exemplify that either meter or acrostich are easily lost in translation in the attempt to convey the message of the source text.34 we should also bear in mind that the proper prosodic versification was considered the most difficult part for the poets in byzantium and they (at least the better-educated ones) strived at keeping it according to their knowledge 34 there are three translations in modern bulgarian. the earlier one, by kyril hristov of 1922 alternates ten-syllable and eleven-syllable rhymed verses with caesura after the fourth syllable from the beginning, or before the fourth from the end, has no acrostich but is the best in conveying the emotion of the original poem. the second one, of emanuil popdimitrov of 1933, offers isosyllabic ten-syllable verses without attention to caesuring but with acrostich, and the last one of 1997, by stojan shishkov, is pretty much the same. and all this is for translations to the same language yet of different time. in the english translation mentioned at the beginning, both isosyllabicity and ceasuring are lost together with the very acrostich of the poem for the sake of conveying the message of the source text. 86 ekaterina dikova and skills.35 how much more difficult would it be to imitate prosody in a young literary language which knows nothing of poetic alternation between long and short vowels? and if we could only hypothesise on the possibility that constantine of preslav was searching for a way to imitate the visual prosody of the byzantine iamb – and perhaps that some of this imitation, like the alternation of о/ѡ and /і, were lost in the transliteration and manuscript copying process – his other achievements are out of doubt. first and foremost, his prayer accords with the principles of both byzantine poetry and rhetoric, besides to a degree that not only makes him able to preserve their requirements in his target language, but also allows him to invent new ways to respect them – even by exceeding models and breaking rules. i mean that constantine allowed adjacent vowels in his poem which are otherwise prohibited by the rhetorical principles, all the rest of which he strictly follows, particularly the principles related to the rhythm of the dodecasyllable – apart from the hiatus, these are: compact structuring of verses/cola, avoidance of pleonasm, of tautology, and of enjambment as well as an isocolic arrangement.36 conclusions the results from the statistic study presented in this article prove that all the byzantine metrical requirements are met, as far as possible, which is visible even in the transliterated text of ms syn. 262, which has most probably lost many of the features of its archetype (not only because of the transliteration from glagolitic to cyrillic script, but also in the process of multiple manuscript 35 see bernard (2010: 108) as well as hilberg (1900) who distinguish among byzantine iambographers classic representatives (as george of pisidia), epigones (as theodore prodromos), and amateurs (as the author of χριστὸς πάσχων) – this division is mentioned numerous times by many modern scholars. 36 these rhetorical principles, contributing to the specific rhythm of the byzantine dodecasyllable, are related to the ideas of εὐρυθμία and γοργότης. they are not characteristic just for this type of poetry (and are applied also in non-poetic genres) but are part of the complex of peculiar triggers of rhythm in it according to the byzantine rhetors – mainly, yet not exclusively, in the synopsis of joseph racendytes in the chapter dedicated to iambic verses (walz 1832: 559–562). this specific peculiarity – rhetorical principles related to εὐρυθμία and γοργότης in the byzantine dodecasyllable – is studied in detail by hörandner (1995: 287–290) and lauxtermann (1998: 19–33). 87a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem copying, besides in a foreign slavonic land where local language features have indubitably left traces). azbuchna molitva convincingly fits the tradition of the byzantine dodecasyllable and more precisely in its branch of paraenetic alphabets. what has been previously seen as deviation in this poem actually accords with its genre. the conclusion to be drawn here is that maas’s postulates should be better not taken as a fixed system for all the byzantine iambographers (and their nonbyzantine followers37) but rather as a stable basis requiring further elaborations in relation to material explored after him. systematisation of specific features needs to continue, besides, not just from the chronological aspect (not just seen in their development) but also from the perspective of the genre (some specifics might be peculiar for a genre, apart from personal styles). the bulgarian poem, like the byzantine paraenetic dodecasyllabic alphabets, aims at presenting the sequence of the letters in an attractive memorisable way. but it is also a kind of micro catechesis as it teaches neophytes to the basic notions of the christian faith, besides, to the extent of subtle philological details like, for instance, in verse 22, the proper pronunciation of the realia упостась (hypostasis)38 and its literal meaning (which would ensure a better understanding of the notion by the neophytes at a later stage). the most specific feature of the byzantine dodecasyllable – its visual prosody – is probably impossible to fully reproduce in a bulgarian versification. and, perhaps, for this reason, or just with the idea that it would uselessly burden his perceivers, constantine of preslav named his poem not iambs, but just measured prologue. there is certainly much more about this ninethcentury masterpiece that we could not possibly notice or understand. it should, however, never fall in oblivion – because of its mastery and because of its deep meaning.39 37 on “iambico” in the earlier georgian poetry see lomidze 2021: 46 and the literature quoted there. 38 on the reconstruction of a mid-eleventh-century pronunciation of hypsilon in byzantium see lauritzen (2009). 39 the article is written within the frame of the project the vocabulary of constantine of preslav’s uchitel’noe evangelie (“didactic gospel”): old bulgarian-greek and greek-old bulgarian word indices financed by the bulgarian national science fund (contract кп-06-н50/2 of 30.11.2020). 88 ekaterina dikova references anastasijević, dragutin 1905. paränetischen alphabete in der griechischen literatur. münchen: c. wolf & sohn. arhim. antonij (vadkovskij) 1885. iz istorii drevnebolgarskoj tserkovnoj propovedi. konstantin, episkop bolgarskij i ego uchitel’noe evangelie. kazan’: tipografija imperatorskogo universiteta. bernard, floris 2010. the beats of the pen: social contexts of reading and writing poetry in 11th-century constantinople. ghent: ghent university. bernard, floris 2018. rhythm in the byzantine dodecasyllable: practices and perceptions. in: rhoby, andreas; zagklas, nikos (eds.), middle and late byzantine poetry: texts and contexts. turnhout, belgium: brepols, 13–41. bogdanov, ivan 1980. bezsm”rtni slova: komentirani literaturni pametnici. sofija: otechestven front. bouvy, edmond 1886. poètes et mélodies: étude sur les origines du rythme tonique dans l’hymnographie de l’église grecque. nimes: lafare frères. butler, thomas 1999–2022. alphabet prayer [by] constantine preslavsky translated by thomas butler. in: slovoto. https://www.slovo.bg/showwork.php3?auid=48&workid=671&level=1 dobrev, ivan 1993. za starob”lgarskata merena rech i za razmerenostta na b”lgarskata narodna pesen. in: sbornik ot nauchni trudove, posveten na sedemdesetgodishninata na profesor miroslav janakiev. sofija: jur. ivanova, 239–257. dybo, vladimir 1971. zakon vasil’eva-dolobko i aktsentuatsija form glagola v drevnerusskom i srednebolgarskom. in: voprosy jazykoznanija 2, 93–114. dybo, vladimir 1977. imennoe udarenie v srednebolgarskom i zakon vasil’evadolobko. in: slavjanskoe i balkanskoe jazykoznanie. antichnaja balkanistika i sravnitel’naja grammatika. moscow: nauka, 189–272. eustratiadis, sofronios 1961. agiologion tis orthodoxou ekklisias. [athens]: apostoliki diakonia tis ekklisias tis ellados. eftymiadis, stephanos 2014. greek byzantine hagiography in verse. in: the ashgate research companion to byzantine hagiography, vol. ii: genres and contexts. farnham & burlington: ashgate, 161–179. franko, ivan 1914. kleine beiträge zur geschichte der kirchenslavischen literatur [i. konstantins “alphabetisches gebet”]. in: archiv für slavische philologie 35, 150–179. https://www.slovo.bg/showwork.php3?auid=48&workid=671&level=1 89a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem gallucci, eleonora 2001. uchitel’noe evangelie konstantina preslavskogo i posledovatel’nost voskresnykh evangel’skikh chtenij tserkovnogo goda. in: palaeobulgarica 25(1), 3–20. georgiev, emil 1938. dve proizvedenija na sv. kirila. k”m v”prosa za knizhovnata dejnost na slavjanskija p”rvouchitel. (= studia historico-philologica serdicensia. supplementi 2). sofija: kultura. gorskij, aleksandr; nevostruev, kapiton 1859. opisanie slavjanskikh rukopisej moskovskoj sinodal’noj biblioteki. otdel 2. pisanija svjatykh ottsev 2. pisanija dogmaticheskija i dukhovno-nravstvennyja. moskva: sinodalʹnaja tipografijа. hilberg, isidor 1900. über die accentuation der versausgänge in den jambischen trimetern des georgios pisides. in: festschrift johannes vahlen. berlin: g. reimer, 149–172. hörandner, wolfram 1995. beobachtungen zur literarästhetik der byzantiner. einige byzantinische zeugnisse zu metrik und rhythmik. in: byzantinoslavica 56(2), 279–290. kojčeva, regina 2019. naučnye vozzrenija rajko nahtigala v svete paleoslavističeskoj gimnologii. in: stankovska, petra; derganc, aleksandra; šivic-dular, alenka (eds.), rajko nahtigal in 100 let slavistike na universi v ljubljani, ljubljana: znanstvena založba filozofske fakultete univerze v ljubljani, 101–110. kotova, dobriela 2022. slovo 19 ot uchitelnoto evangelie i negovite gr”cki iztochnici. in: palaeobulgarica 46(1), 3–28. kuev, kujo 1974. azbuchnata molitva v slavjanskite literaturi. sofija: izdatelstvo na b”lgarskata akademija na naukite. lauxtermann, marc 1998. the velocity of pure jambs: byzantine observations on the metre and rhythm of the dodecasyllable. in: jahrbuch der österreichischen byzantinistik 48, 9–33. lauritzen, frederick 2009. michael the grammarian's irony about hypsilon. a step towards recostructing byzantine pronunciation. in: byzantinoslavica 67, 161–168. lomidze, tamar 2021. on the character of georgian verse. in: studia metrica et poetica 8(2), 45–57. https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.03 maas, paul 1903. der byzantinische zwölfsilber. in: byzantinische zeitschrift 12, 278–323. https://doi.org/10.1515/byzs.1903.12.1.278 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.03 https://doi.org/10.1515/byzs.1903.12.1.278 90 ekaterina dikova macrobert, catherine mary 2019. methodological implications of nahtigalʼs remarks on the acrostic prayer. in: stankovska, petra; derganc, aleksandra; šivic-dular, alenka (eds.), rajko nahtigal in 100 let slavistike na universi v ljubljani. ljubljana: znanstvena založba filozofske fakultete univerze v ljubljani, 111–123. mitov, georgi 2022. vizantijskite novozavetni kateni i uchitelnoto evangelie na konstantin preslavski: ot katenata k”m homilijata (predvaritelni nabljudenija). in: palaeobulgarica 46(2), 81–93. ms syn. 262 / evangelie uchitel’noe konstantina bolgarskogo. 1-ja chetvert’ xii v. [moskva]: gosudarstvennyj istoricheskij muzej. https://catalog.shm.ru/entity/ object/164766 ms zogr. 80. verse prolog for march – august, 1345–1360. monastery of zogrpaf, holy mount athos. nahtigal, rajko 1942. rekonstrukcija treh starocerkvenoslovanskih izvirnih pesnitev. i. azbučna pesnitev. in: razprave akademije znanosti in umetnosti v ljubljani, filoz.-filol.-hist. razred 1, 43–72. petrov, ivan p. 2022. the greek sources of učitel’noe evangelie revisited: sermon 20. in: palaeobulgarica 46(2), 3–29. pg 37 1857. patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca. t. 37: s. gregorius theologus, archiepiscopus constantinopolitanius. migne, jacques-paul (ed.). paris: garnier. rhoby, andreas 2011. vom jambischen trimeter zum byzantinischen zwölfsilber. beobachtung zur metrik des spätantiken und byzantinischen epigramms. in: wiener studien 124, 117–142. https://doi.org/10.1553/wst124s117 rhoby, andreas 2015. labeling poetry in the middle and late byzantine period. in: byzantion 85, 259–283. romano, roberto 1985. teoria e prassi della versificazione: il dodecasillabo nei panegirici epici di giorgio di pisidia. in: byzantinische zeitschrift 78, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1515/byzs.1985.78.1.1 slavova, tatjana 2017. za ezika na uchitelnoto evangelie na prezviter konstantin (lichni i nelichni glagolni formi). in: palaeobulgarica 41(2), 3–21. sobolevskij, aleksej 1900. cherkovno-slavjanskite stihotvorenija ot ix–x v. i tjahnoto znachenie za izuchavaneto na cherkovnoslavjanskija ezik. in: sbornik narodni umotvorenija 16/17, 314–320. https://catalog.shm.ru/entity/object/164766 https://catalog.shm.ru/entity/object/164766 https://doi.org/10.1553/wst124s117 https://doi.org/10.1515/byzs.1985.78.1.1 91a byzantine poetic form in a ninth-century bulgarian poem spasova, marija 2005. istoricheski i kvaziistoricheski podhod pri t”lkuvaneto na svedenijata za prevodacheskata dejnost na slavjanskite p”rvouchiteli po vreme na moravsko-panonskata im misija. in: totomanova, anna-maria; slavova, tatiana (eds.), nest” uchenik” nad” uchitelem’ svoim’. sbornik v chest na prof. dfn ivan dobrev, chlen-korespondent na ban i uchitel. sofija: universitetsko izdatelstvo „sv. kliment ohridski“, 106–144. stanchev, krasimir 1986. ritmichnata struktura na kirilovija “proglas k”m evangelieto” i na proizvedenijata ot preslavskija stihotvoren cik”l (starob”lgarskijat izosilabiz”m). in: studia slavica medievalia et humanistica riccardo picchio dicata 2. roma: edizioni dell’ateneo, 647–652. stankovska, petra 2018. predpolagaemaja reforma klimenta ohridskogo i dal’nejšee razvitie glagolicy: grafemy dlja napisanija nosovogo perednego rjada i ery. in: sv. kliment ohridski v kulturata na evropa. sofija: kirilo-metodievski naučen cent’’r, 402-421. taseva, lora 2006. parallel’nye juzhnoslavjanskie perevody stishnogo prologa i triodnykh sinaksarej. in: byzantinoslavica 64, 169–185. tihova, marija 2012. starob”lgarskoto uchitelno evangelie na konstantin preslavski po naj-starija prepis (gim, sin. 262). (monumenta linguae slavicae dialecti veteris 58). freiburg i. br. veder, william 1999. utrum in alterum abiturum erat? a study of the beginnings of text transmission in church slavic. bloomington, in: slavica. veder, william 2000. das glagolitische alphabet der azbučna molitva. in: miklas, heinz; richter, sylvia; sadovski, velizar (eds.), glagolitica. zum ursprung der slavischen schriftkultur. wien: verlag der österreichischen akademie der wissenschaften, 77–87. walz, christian 1832. rhetores graeci, band 3. stuttgart: stuttgartiae sumtibus j. g. cottae. zagklas, nikos 2019. byzantine poetry: an introduction. in: hörandner, wolfram; rhoby, andreas; zagklas, nikos (eds.) a companion to byzantine poetry. (brill’s companions to the byzantine world 4). leiden, boston: brill, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004392885_002 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004392885_002 mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii: base-word-determinant indexing frog*1 abstract: this article explores patterns of language use in oral poetry within a variety of semantic formula. such a formula may vary its surface texture in relation to phonic demands of the metrical environment in which it is realised. this is the second part of a four-part series based on metrically entangled kennings in old norse dróttkvætt poetry as primary material. old norse kennings present a semantic formula of a particular type which is valuable as an example owing to the extremes of textural variation that it enables. the first part in this series introduced the approach to kennings as semantic formulae and included an illustrative case study on kennings meaning ‘battle’ realising the last three metrical positions of a dróttkvætt line. this demonstrated that lexical variation in realising these formulae varied according to functional equivalence across semantic categories. the present case study advances this discussion through the examination of the metrical entanglement of the lexicon in realising the semantic formula. on the one hand, it presents evidence of the associative indexing of lexical items realising a battle-kenning of this particular metric-structural type: certain kenning base-words exhibit a preferred semantic category of determinant. on the other hand, it also presents evidence of the associative indexing of lexical items that are used for realising the metrically required rhyme in a position in the line that is outside of the semantic formula: certain kenning base-words exhibit co-occurrence with a particular rhyme-word. keywords: oral poetry, variation, formula, skaldic poetry, dróttkvætt, kenning this is the second part of a four-part discussion that addresses a phenomenon that i describe as the ‘metrical entanglement’ of language in an oral-poetic tradition, looking particularly at verbal variation in semantic formulae. this phenomenon is addressed through semantic formulae of a particular type called a kenning in old norse skaldic poetry. the article builds on a pilot study of 340 examples of kennings meaning ‘battle’ in the metre known as dróttkvætt (frog forthcoming). the four-part discussion explores phenomena revealed by * author’s address: frog, folklore studies / department of philosophy, history, culture and art studies, university of helsinki, p.o. box 59 (unioninkatu 38 a), 00014 university of helsinki, finland. e-mail: mr.frog@helsinki.fi. studia metrica et poetica 1.2, 2014, 39–70 doi: dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.03 dx.doi.org/10.12697/smp.2014.1.2.03 40 frog the pilot study in greater detail through a series of three case studies of different metric-structural basic types, which will be followed by a final synthesis and discussion. the data-set for each case study has been considerably expanded from that of the pilot study, although it should not be considered exhaustive. particular attention is given to variation between the use of nouns referring to weapons and armour (implements of battle) versus names of valkyries and of the god odin (mythological agents of battle) in realising the metrically entangled battle-kenning formulae. this attention is both owing to the unambiguous difference between these as semantic categories as well as a concern for the degree to which the vocabulary of proper names was fully integrated into the poetic register and into the strategies for poetic composition. the first article in this series (frog 2014a) presented the register-based approach to oral poetry employed here as well as the framework for approaching kennings as semantic formulae. it also introduced the metrical entanglement of semantic formulae in the case of kennings through basic type 12(p)xyy and provided an initial demonstration of the integration of personal names into the registral lexicon of dróttkvætt poetry. the present case study turns to the more frequently attested basic type 1(p)yyxx discussed in a dataset of 80 examples. focus in this case study is on evidence that certain words used in realising a metrically entangled formula may exhibit a) preferred categories of equivalent lexical items for completing the formula as well as b) conventionally associated verbal material for completing the metrical line. in order to improve the general accessibility of this article, the case study is prefaced with a brief review of the background, terms and approach employed so that it is possible to follow the argument and discussion without referring back to the first article in this series. background and terms metrical entanglement is here used to describe the phenomenon by which the language of an oral-poetic system becomes bound up with metrical positions or other metrical parameters. metrical entanglement occurs along a continuum, on which degrees of fixity are described in terms of crystallisation,1 at the extreme of which is ‘metrical boundedness’ with the potential for the ‘fossilisation’ of lexical material. metrical boundedness was a qualifying feature of milman parry’s early definition of the formula in oral poetry as “an expression which is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express 1 following siikala 1990 [1984]; on the choice of this term, see also frog 2014a: 103n.6. 41mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii a particular essential idea” (parry 1928: 16, emphasis added), a definition later propagated by his student albert lord (1960: 4). such prefabricated formulaic expressions have thus received tremendous attention with the rise of oral-formulaic theory.2 the metrical boundedness of such formulae has sometimes been exaggerated, and parry’s advocation of metrical fixity in defining a formula (circularly derived from his statistical method for identifying formulaic language) proved too narrow for general use (e.g. hainsworth 1968). a formulaic expression is approached here as a general linguistic phenomenon that may also take shape in the metrical environment of oral poetry. following alison wray (2009: 28–34), a linguistic formula is here defined in terms of morpheme-equivalence: it is characterised by a coherent unit of meaning with an exclusive entry in the mental lexicon of language users, even if it can be analysed and appropriately interpreted according to rules of the grammar (cf. parry’s “particular essential idea”; cf. also the discussion of emic conceptions of a ‘word’ in an oral-poetic register in foley 1999: 67–69 and the definition of an oral-poetic formula “as an integer of traditional meaning” in foley & ramey 2012: 80). this will provide a frame for considering metrically entangled kennings as semantic formulae exhibiting variation at the lexical surface of the text. the present investigation is developed on a usage-based approach to language and variation, according to which individuals internalise language and the strategies and associations of conventional language usages through exposure to and participation in cultural practices. this approach is developed through register theory (e.g. halliday 1978; foley 1995; agha 2007). following register theory, language does not function in social practice as a monolithic ideal abstraction – la langue of saussure (1967 [1916]) – but instead is constituted of and internalised through multitudinous varieties and sub-varieties 2 on oral-formulaic theory and the formula, see e.g. the reviews in foley 1988 and foley & ramey 2011; cf. also its relation to other approaches to oral and performative expression in foley 1995. scholars of skaldic poetry who are less familiar with oral-formulaic theory or think of it solely in terms of albert lord’s singer of tales (1960) may find this frame of reference incongruous. however, oral-formulaic theory has developed considerably across the past half-century. ‘composition in performance’ and ‘memorisation’ have not been regarded as mutually exclusive opposites for a long time. questions of how the resources of a tradition relate to the entextualisation of e.g. a narrative or communication are complementary to questions of how the same resources may function as mnemonics for producing similar expressions (e.g. ‘themes’) or for reproducing socially recognisable texts. within this frame, resources of the skaldic register are used for the entextualisation of utterances (whether that process is slow and reflective or in the situation of performance, as in insult exchanges) that become socially circulating texts, and fluency in the resources of the idiom must have reciprocally provided the mental equipment necessary to remember and reproduce those socially circulating texts. 42 frog linked with situations, contexts, users and uses. the term register is a flexible tool used to designate such varieties. this term can be calibrated in relation to the research object. when applied to an oral poetry tradition, the linguistic register is the historically developed and metrically conditioned language as used in that poetry, ranging from its lexicon and semantics to grammar, phonology and patterns of use. thus, whereas modern poetry can and does draw on the full spectrum of linguistic resources available and can produce meanings in relation to them (cf. hasan 1989: 90–106) – i.e. all registers are potentially open to it – an oral-poetic tradition will be characterised by its own register and meanings are produced in relation to that framework of linguistic behaviour (cf. foley 1995; 1999: 65–88). novelty that significantly deviates from that framework therefore becomes unlikely insofar as it may threaten the success and effectiveness of communication (abrahams 1969: 194; cf. foley 1991). within the register of old norse skaldic (and related) poetry, the present discussion will be particularly concerned with the register (or sub-register) of dróttkvætt poetry. in this tradition, calibrating register in relation to a metre is relevant because the broader register of skaldic (and related) poetry was conventionally applied across a number of metres. this broader register was thus metrically entangled with each of those metres, especially in relation to their relevant metrical requirements. in other words, within the register, formulae and similar resources also took shape in relation to individual metres and their particular conventions. insofar as the metres were different, dróttkvætt had, for example, a distinctive and extensive lexicon of formulae interfaced with the metre and that functioned as resources for composition in that metre but not necessarily in others (see further frog 2014a: 107–109). thus, addressing a ‘register’ of dróttkvætt calibrates focus onto linguistic resources that are metrically entangled with that particular metre. here, focus will be more specifically on the metrical entanglement of battle-kennings as semantic formulae in dróttkvætt expression. the dróttkvætt metre was essentially syllabic (with rule-governed flexibility) composed in couplets, with two couplets forming a half-stanza called a helmingr. rules of syntax allowed a remarkable scrambling of language through a helmingr, and two (rarely more) clauses or independent statements could be interwoven across those four lines. the main conventional constraints relevant to the present discussion are rhyme and alliteration; syllable weight, relevant to the first and third case studies in this series, need not be discussed here. two lexically stressed syllables in odd lines should alliterate with the first stressed syllable in the following even line of a couplet. rhyme was more variable in practice, but normally the penultimate syllable (but not the following inflectional ending) of each line should rhyme with a preceding syllable; in odd lines, this should be skothending rhyme, not including the vowel (e.g. 43mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii 1b.i below: gunnr um geira sennu); in even lines, this should be aðalhending rhyme, including the vowel (e.g. 1a.i below: menn at vápna sennu).3 a kenning is a rhetorical figure that forms a noun phrase (np). in most registers (poetic or otherwise), kennings are for the most part crystallised formulaic expressions or have become wholly lexicalised, fossilised and idiomatic. this rhetorical figure is formed of a noun called a base-word (np1) complemented by a second noun called a determinant (np2) in the genitive case or by forming a compound, and these together signify a third, nominal referent (thus: np2-gen np1 or np2-np1 = np3 when np3 ≠ np1 or np2). for example, the base-word hríð = ‘storm’ can be complimented by the determinant sverð = ‘sword’ to form a battle-kenning in the following ways: hríð sverðs = ‘storm of the sword’, hríð sverða = ‘storm of swords’ or sverðhríð = ‘swordstorm’. kennings in skaldic poetry are exceptional because they functioned generatively: the register was characterised by a rich lexicon of semantically equivalent terms called heiti (sg. also heiti) which could be interchangeable in realising a particular kenning as a semantic unit according to “paradigmatic substitution” (clunies ross et al. 2012: lxxi). thus in the above example, hríð is a weather-heiti interchangeable with él = ‘squall’, drífa = ‘snowstorm’, hregg = ‘rainstorm’, regn = ‘rain’, skúr = ‘shower’, veðr = ‘weather; wind’, etc. at the same time, sverð can vary with other sword-heiti, and also within a broader equivalence class with other weapon-heiti, and still more generally with heiti for implements of battle. this potential for substitution between individual heiti is only within a two-element kenning, which can be called a basic kenning or a simple kenning. to complicate matters, especially the np of the determinant could be realised through another kenning, and the determinant np of that kenning could be realised through yet another kenning, and so on, turning the basic kenning into a complex kenning (i.e. [[npn-gen np3]-gen np2]-gen np1 = np4, etc.). this generative system for kennings and rich vocabulary of heiti has enormous potential for lexical variation. there is a tremendous body of research on kennings, but almost no attention has been given to the relationship between their metrical placement and lexical choice in realising them. the lack of attention to this topic owes in part to the methodological problem of addressing the question (cf. marold 1983: 43). the identification of metrically entangled kennings as established integers of the register allows these conventional units of composition to provide a frame for assessing lexical choices, which is the focus here. the pilot study (frog 3 on the dróttkvætt metre, syntax and structuring of stanzas, see further kuhn 1983: 33–214; árnason 1991: 81–148; gade 1995: 1–72; on complexity in skaldic composition, see wills 2009. 44 frog forthcoming) was developed on the hypothesis that kennings could become entangled with the metre beneath a surface of variation enabled by heiti. in other words, the pilot study set out to test whether a kenning could be “regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea” although, unlike parry’s formulae, the lexical realisation of that kenning could vary according to the phonic/lexical context of the verse in which it was used. lord (1960: 48–53) observed that a formula could maintain “the same essential meaning and metrical value” although lexical choices for one element of the formula varied according to the “acoustical context” (1960: 53; cf. foley 1996: 19n.17). he illustrated this with a formula ‘to mount a horse’, in which a variety of three-syllable poetic terms was used for the component ‘horse’ (lord 1960: 48–53). rather than one element being fixed and the other being in pragmatic variation according to the phonic/lexical environment, the pilot study tested whether both elements of a kenning could exhibit this type of variation. a test-corpus of battle-kennings was developed and the metrical positions of the words constituting each kenning were mapped within a line or across lines of a half-stanza. mapping is done by representing each six-position line as a numerical sequence 123456. positions filled with a kenning’s base-word are replaced with an ‘x’ and those of the determinant with a ‘y’ (as well as ‘z’ used to represent the determinant in the determinant kenning) and ‘p’ indicating a preposition (placed in parentheses if optional). uppercase characters represent the stressed onset syllable and lowercase characters represent unstressed positions. thus, the line menn at vápna sennu = ‘men at a flyting (argument) of weapons’ can be mapped 1-at-vápna-sennu, 1p-vápna-xx, 1(p)yyxx, 12yyxx, etc. mapping the kennings in this way distinguishes them according to individual metric-structural types described by these codes. this process revealed that more than 70% of the 340 examples in the test corpus were accounted for by only 10 ‘basic types’.4 rather surprisingly, the majority of battle-kennings in the pilot study seemed potentially based on conventional models. the first article of the present series discussed examples of the metric-structural basic type 12(p)xyy as a foundation for considering metrically entangled semantic formulae. this metric-structural type was illustrative because the majority of examples exhibited only two base-words which belonged to the same semantic class of heiti (dynr = ‘din’ and gnýr = ‘roar’ as terms for ‘noise’).5 4 whereas ‘complex types’ accounted for all elements in complex kennings, these were observed to generally reflect basic types in combination that could be viewed as systematic expansions varying a ‘basic type’. 5 e.g. eiríkr í dyn geira = ‘...in the din of spears’ (hst rst 22i.6); lands folk í gný branda = ‘... in the roar of brands (swords)’ (ótt hfl 9i.6). 45mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii examples with each of these base-words were directly comparable to the formulae discussed by lord: two elements realised a consistent unit of meaning; one element was stable while the other element varied with a clear connection to realising certain sounds rather than others in the line (especially for rhyme). unlike the formula described by lord, the variable element was not limited to a single semantic field. in other words, variation did not remain within a single semantic equivalence class of heiti; the varying element only needed to be a term which could realise the kenning as a unit meaning ‘battle’. dominant models for approaching kennings focus on the semantic categories of kenning constituents and their relationship to one another (e.g. meissner 1921; marold 1983: 24–36). this had led to the expectation that semantic categories would provide the basis for formulaic use of kennings in dróttkvætt (frog, forthcoming). however, as james fox (1977: 72) has emphasised, formal categorisation and typology based on grouping outcomes of oral-poetic expression do not necessarily render an accurate picture of how language functions and varies in practice (cf. foley 1999: 66–83). the data supports viewing metrically entangled kennings as established semantic integers of the register – as a variety of formula. on the other hand, variation could not be reduced to synonymsubstitution within a semantic equivalence class. this yields information about paradigmatic substitution in kenning production. when this is observed in the semantic integers of the tradition, it has implications for how language is functioning within that integer in the production of verses. generally speaking, the primary determinant on lexical choice appears to be pragmatic, based on metrical viability and the phonic/lexical context of the specific verse; the semantic category of the heiti needed only to be viable for forming the battle-kenning. this observation in determinants was paralleled by observing corresponding variation in base-words when additional examples of the basic type were considered.6 in other words, the kenning was not formed in a hierarchical process of determining a semantic combination like noise of implements of battle → battle and selecting appropriate heiti; the semantic integer battle was the basis and the specific semantic combination forming the kenning was an outcome of pragmatic variation according to the context. in the generative production of kennings, this suggests that lexical choice did not necessarily require reflection on the specific semantic category of heiti. a poet fluent in the idiom could complete this unit on the basis of phonic needs (e.g. rhyme or alliteration) without having to reflect on whether the determinant 6 in basic type 12(p)xyy battle-kennings, this was particularly apparent because base-words other than dynr and gnýr were found almost exclusively where the base-word was required to carry alliteration. 46 frog was a valkyrie-heiti or a spear-heiti.7 in other words, this unit battle could be used in composition “without recourse to any form-meaning matching of any sub-parts it may have” (wray 2008: 12). poetic equivalence vocabulary, as in an equivalence class of heiti, may be compared to synonymy in aesthetically unmarked discourse. a crucial difference is that this equivalence vocabulary develops to enable pragmatic variation according to the phonetic and lexical environment of poetic expression. as a historical process, oral-poetic registers develop a lexicon to ‘say the same thing’ within different verse contexts (e.g. meeting h-alliteration, a particular syllabic structure or avoiding lexical repetition in parallelism). in some cases, this may be constituted of alternative historical or dialectal forms that have produced phonological allomorphs,8 as well as parallel inflections as allomorphs.9 in other cases, words from other dialects or other languages are assimilated as poetic equivalents (foley 1996: 27–37; fox 2014: 374–383) and words from other contexts may have their semantics ‘bent’ or ‘stretched’ to conform to the needs of the poetic register (roper 2012).10 within poetic discourse, many of these exhibit the potential to function as suppletive allomorphs (cf. english go / went; good / better). whereas allomorph variation in aesthetically unmarked discourse tends to be conditioned by adjacent sounds (especially phonological allomorphs) and grammatical contexts, allomorphy in poetic discourse is further conditioned by broader phonological, lexical and metrical environments. where variation can be observed between lexical items within conventionalised poetic structures, this offers information about categories and degrees of equivalence (cf. jakobson 1987 [1956]: 111). from this perspective, the different three-syllable words for horse in the formula ‘to mount a horse’ described by lord can be viewed as allomorphs in variation insofar as alternation between terms is dependent on contextual factors. although it cannot be assumed that all heiti of a semantic equivalence class functioned as allomorphs or that they did so in all contexts, metrically entangled kennings suggest that, within these formulae, appropriate heiti were employed 7 competent users of a poetic register can be expected to work within a metre to some degree unconsciously as a function of internalising the register with its strategies and solutions for producing metrically well-formed expressions. it is common that skilled performers cannot articulate such processes better than, for example, simply saying “that the words draw one another up that way” (lönnrot 1845: 36). 8 cf. latin egŏ / egō = ‘i’ etc. based on historical change (coleman 1999: 37–38); south slavic dēte / dijete = ‘child’ etc. as alternative dialectal forms (foley 1996: 28). 9 cf. latin variants of the third person plural perfect -ēre, -ĕrunt and -ērunt (coleman 1999: 44); old norse parallel genitive forms in ygg-s and ygg-jar = ‘odin-gen’. 10 cf. middle english tolk = lit. ‘translator’, poetic ‘man’ for t-alliteration (roper 2012: 89). 47mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii as suppletive allomorphs that were characterised by semantic function within the rhetorical figure rather than by their individual semantic value (i.e. np1 = [battle-kenning base-word]; np2 = [battle-kenning determinant]). such a kenning can be described as a semantic formula: a morpheme-equivalent integer of the register in which both elements can be functional allomorphs. as formulae, such kennings had potential to be produced and interpreted without reflection and analysis by individuals fluent in the idiom: the use/recognition of appropriate elements (heiti) in appropriate metrical positions could itself enable the apprehension of the referent without necessarily requiring the literal interpretation of elements and parsing their relation.11 from this model of a semantic formula, basic type 1(p)yyxx can be addressed to look at the entanglement of the lexicon in realising a semantic formula of this type. basic type 1(p)yyxx battle kennings of basic type 1(p)yyxx are presented here in 80 examples (noting that the complexity of skaldic verses inevitably leaves some examples open to alternative interpretations). examples listed below exclude cases of extended battle-kennings in variations on the basic type. examples in which an adjective complemented the kenning without otherwise impacting its semantics or the metrical distribution of the determinant and the base-word are included without special indication.12 in this basic type, the base-words are in most 11 this model is not intended to uniformly reduce such kennings to a purely mechanical process. the intention here is to draw attention certain ways that kennings appear to have functioned in the poetic tradition. the intuitive aspect of processing the poetry could also have provided a resource for poets. for example, the line ósvífr kraka drífu (grani har 1ii.2) ‘...snowstorm of kraki (legendary king)’ would appear initially as a battle-kenning (cf. 2a–b below). this becomes the determinant for a valkyrie-name in the following line (hlǫkk í harða þjokkum), leading it to be reinterpreted as a silver/gold kenning (cf. meissner 1921: 224, 228) to form a woman-kenning (valkyrie of gold). in this case, the semantic play with a battlekenning is likely strategic: the verse states that this woman will not stop weeping owing to the aggressive deeds of the king being praised. 12 e.g. anon liðs 4i.7–8, svert lv 2iv.3–4 and edáð banddr 5i.5–6 – n.b. that the use of adjectives may nevertheless be syntactically important, e.g. for forming a prepositional phrase in which the preposition is in a different line, as in esk ingdr 4ii.3–4 and hólmgb lv 2v.3–4. citations of verses are by sigla and stanza numbering of the skaldic database. citations are with reference to the published editions of the associated skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages edition where these were available and with reference to finnur jónsson’s critical edition (1967) where they were not. 48 frog cases equivalent to the determinants in terms of syllabic quantity, yet the inversion of word order to 1(p)xxyy – the word order conventional to type 12(p) xyy – is almost never found.13 the base-word of a 1(p)yyxx kenning is in the position to carry rhyme in the line, and the examples foreground evidence of conventionalised rhyme-pairs in realisations of this basic type. evidence of rhyme-pairs can then be looked at in relation to evidence of variation in determinants with special attention to uses of proper names. of the 80 examples, 25 or 31% employ a proper name as a determinant. this proportion is notably higher than in 12(p)xyy, which exhibited approximately one in six or a bit more than 16%, and this relative frequency dropped to one in eleven or about 9% if the crystallised expression gnýr gunnar = ‘roar of gunnr’ is counted only once. as with 12(p)xyy, metrical entanglement of the lexicon is also evident in this case. for example, 12 of these 80 examples (15%) present vápna = ‘of weapons’ as the determinant (9 of 12 preceded by a preposition). this frequency is more striking in light of the pilot study, where vápn appeared as a high-frequency determinant in the general statistics, yet its use appeared connected to only two metric-structural types. this makes it reasonable to consider use of vápn in 1(p)yyxx to be conventionalised. however, the present case study focuses on the possibility that whole semantic categories of heiti may become metrically entangled as preferred word-choices for co-occurrence with certain base-words. it presents evidence that, when realising basic type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings, the selection of base-word-determinant combinations does not appear free in all cases. certain base-words predominantly (but not necessarily exclusively) co-occur with determinants from a particular equivalence class. this is interpreted as reflecting an indexical association 13 the marked exception is uses of the base-word lexical set þrima/þryma/þruma = ‘thunder, noise’ that in the pilot study was found exclusively in 12xx56 constructions, suggesting general metrical entanglement of the lexical item(s). this base-word accounted for all but one example of generative constructions in basic types 12xxyy and yyxx56 (8 examples total), with the implication that these were related to the metrical entanglement of þrima/þruma/þryma rather than being freely generative. the only other example that i have presently identified of the inverted word-order 1(p)xxyy is allprútt, éla þróttar (hst rst 2i.7). it is also possible to approach varat of-byrjar ǫrva (eskál vell 7i.1) and norðr – glym-hríðar borða (þjóða lv 3ii.6) as variations on a 12xxyy construction by regarding the element in position 2 as prefixed to the base-word for the metrical completion of the line. this element is unnecessary for the battle-kenning (ofis an intensifier whereas glymr = ‘crash’ can function as an independent base-word in battle-kennings – i.e. 12xx56 → 1xxx56 and 1x2x1x56). however, this sort of compounding is particularly difficult to analyse on the basis of two examples when it can otherwise appear possible to view these as variations on a basic type 1xxxyy or 1x34yy. nevertheless, the examples appear so unusual in the dataset of the pilot-study that it is not clear that they should be regarded as reflecting a variation on a basic type as a semantic formula per se. 49mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii or link between these base-words and a broad semantic equivalence class of heiti as determinants. this indexical linkage of categories of language in use of the register would constitute a historically structured “synchronic stylistic habit” (foley 1993 [1990]: 192–194) that was internalised by individuals with the poetic system.14 the indexical association of a whole class of lexical items for completing a formula would be directly comparable to the conventional completion of a particular south-slavic epic formula with ‘turkicisms’, as discussed by john miles foley.15 the different metrical environments of odd lines and even lines condition variation in the realisations of type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings. in odd lines, the kenning determinant always carries alliteration, which can be considered an integrated feature of the formula. there seems to be a general tendency for alliteration to be carried by the determinant and the word at the onset of the line. however, this remains a tendency and does not appear to be a prescriptive feature of formula use – in contrast to the regularity of baseword-determinant alliteration in odd-line use of 12(p)xyy battle-kennings (frog 2014a: 126–129). rhyme is much more regular (although not found in 14 in other words, the process of becoming competent in the poetic idiom did not simply involve internalising individual words and formulae as abstract constituents of the register. these elements were internalised in relation to situated uses, and the patterns of how and where these were used became (unconsciously) internalised with them. the limited range of uses of a word like vápn in battle-kennings is not related to metrical constraints: poets simply did not use it in other contexts, whether because they simply ‘did not think of it’ when forming other basic types of kennings or this heiti ‘just did not sound right’ in other contexts. however, when poets formed a np2-gen np1 battle-kenning of basic type 1(p)yyxx or a np2-np1 battle-kenning of type yx3456, vápn ‘came to mind’. this is an indicator that the internalisation of the formulae associated with these basic types involved the internalisation of an indexical association with vápn as a determinant – it became a ‘natural’ word-choice. the discussion below will focus on similar indices that develop between a base-word used in the basic type and the words with which it co-occurs. 15 following foley, the verb učiniti = ‘to do, make’ is a turkish loan used within the formula [x] učin-ijo/-ili/-ila/-iti/etc., where the [x] is a two-syllable object of the verb and the formula forms the second colon of an epic line. of the 164 examples of this formula surveyed by foley, 145 were completed by turkish loans while only 19 were completed by a vernacular term. this provides evidence that the formula was internalised with an indexical association with ‘turkicisms’ as a category for completing the formulaic unit. (foley 1993 [1990]: 192–194.) it may be pointed out that this does not mean that singers were conscious of učiniti as a turkish loan (which may be contested) or even of the elements completing the line as turkish loans (any more than an english speaker would be conscious of a latinate versus a germanic etymology in the background of preferred lexical choices in certain registers). instead ‒ and indeed however its background might be historically reconstructed ‒ this is an illustration of the conventionalisation of completing a formula within a broad category of lexical items. 50 frog every line):16 rhyme is almost always carried by the base-word and a syllable in one of the first two positions in the line. two of the exceptions may be attributed to metrical variation in which the first and third positions of the line carry rhyme and the fifth does not (4a.iv, 6.iii). the latter of these is from snorri sturluson’s (1178–1241) illustration of what he describes as a distinct verse form called fleins háttr = ‘fleinn’s verse-form’ in his ars poetica known as edda (háttatal 57, faulkes 1999: 25).17 rhyme between the base-word and determinant only occurs in four instances, in which both elements also carry alliteration: viðris veðr = ‘weather of viðrir (odin)’ (3b.iii), ilmar jalmr = ‘yammer of ilmr (valkyrie)’ (5b.ix) and two examples of ala él = ‘squall of áli (hero)’ (8.ii–iii). it is striking that all four have proper names as determinants. it is also striking that 10 (77%) of the 13 examples of this basic type in which alliteration is carried by both parts of the kenning have a proper name as a determinant (3b.3–4, 4b.ii–iii, 5b.vii, 5b.ix, 8.ii–v; cf. 1b.ii, 7.vi, 8.vi). however, the number of examples remains too limited to draw any conclusions. this observation will be therefore be left aside and returned to in the third part of this series, where attention will turn to patterns of preferred semantic categories associated generally with a metric-structural type. in even lines, the first (stressed) syllable in the line carries alliteration with the preceding line while neither element in the kenning can alliterate with this syllable or with each other. in these lines, rhyme is invariably distributed between the base-word at the end of the line and one of the first two metrical positions (otherwise it is absent). this means that the determinant in 16 rhyme may be imperfect in 3a.iii (-eðrhymed with -eðr-). some of the examples which might be described as lacking a rhyme exhibit a subtle rhyme between the onset syllable and following preposition or other light part of speech (3b.1, 3b.v, and possibly also 4b.i–ii, 8.iv). although equivocal, this could potentially be an alternative strategy to conventional rhyme for integrating lines into the preferred acoustic texture of the poem (cf. frog & stepanova 2011: 201; frog 2014b: 19–20). 17 snorri formally differentiates this and certain other metrical variations as verse forms distinct from the dróttkvætt metre proper. these metres are treated here as dróttkvætt because they are unambiguously variations of the basic dróttkvætt metre. it should be noted that, on the one hand, snorri’s distinction of ‘verse forms’ was not grounded strictly in terms of metrics in the modern sense, and on the other, he was systematising and formalising skaldic poetics. his tour de force of illustrating and explicating more than 90 verse forms was in many cases built on systematising a variation for composing a couplet as a basis for a complete, eight-line stanza. in addition, snorri’s differentiation between what he views as acceptable and what ‘old poets’ viewed as acceptable suggests that snorri’s differentiation of certain metrical and stylistic variations as ‘not dróttkvætt’ cannot be assumed to represent a uniformly conventional view held by all poets in all periods, or even to represent all poets in 13th century iceland. (see faulkes 1999.) 51mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings never carries rhyme or alliteration in even lines. lexical choice in this position is therefore conditioned by syllabic but not by phonic constraints. this was also observed in even-line 12(p)xyy battlekennings. in that case, heiti filling the position in the middle of the line were not prompted to vary in relation to the surrounding phonic environment (except insofar as extra alliteration or rhyme in the line should be avoided). this allowed lexical items to crystallise as preferred elements for realising battle-kennings of this metric-structural type, and enabled the emergence of dynr = ‘din’ and gnýr = ‘roar’ in lexically crystallised formulae within the 12(p)xyy basic type battle-kennings (frog 2014a: esp. 122–124). the corresponding conditions in basic type 1(p)yyxx make it is less surprising that vápn is found as the determinant in 9 of the 30 even-line examples, or in approximately one in every three. inclinations to crystallisation in 1(p)yyxx example set (1a–b) presents realisations of 1(p)yyxx with the base-word senna = ‘flyting, insult exchange’. these offer a pronounced illustration of how the formula is realised in the differing metrical environments of even and odd lines. the even-line variants exhibit marked crystallisation, with 4 cases of the collocation of the base-word and the determinant (vápn), and 4 overlapping cases of the collocation of the base-word and the rhyme-word (maðr = ‘man’) plus a preposition. together, these realise the same full line in three of the cases. in contrast, uses of the same base-word in odd lines appear to be in free variation. (1a) 1pyy-sennu in even lines18 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source menn at vápna sennu ‘...at the flyting of weapons’ hfr erfól 3i.2 menn at vápna sennu ‘...at the flyting of weapons’ þjóða magnfl 9ii.6 menn at vápna sennu ‘...at the flyting of weapons’ grett lv 36v.4 enn til vápna sennu ‘...to the flyting of weapons’ skarp lv 9v.2 menn at18 odda sennu ‘...at the flyting of points’ anon krm 17viii.4 18 the manuscript variation mann í = ‘man in’ changes the plural to a singular with skothending rhyme rather than the aðalhending rhyme. 52 frog (1b) 1pyy-sennu in odd lines 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source gunnr um geira sennu ‘...during the flyting of spears1’ skarp lv 11 v.3 linnr kná sverða sennu ‘...the flyting of swords1’ snst ht 6 iii.5 enn at eggja sennu ‘...at the flyting of blades’ tindr lv 1v.5 enn mun ǫrva sennu ‘...the flyting of arrows’ þtréf lv 1iv.5 mins at malma sennu ‘...at the flyting of metals’ hfr lv 23v.3 a corresponding but more flexibly realised pattern can be seen in examples with the base-word drífa = ‘snowstorm’ (2a–b). in these, drífa rhymes with líf in 4 of 5 odd-line examples. a dash indicates a syntactic break – i.e. that different parts of the line belong to separate syntactic statements. this must be stressed because a syntactic break indicates that the collocation líf–drífa is not associated with realising a single, coherent semantic unit. it therefore does not qualify as a formula according to the approach used here. (2a) 12yy-drífu in even lines19 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source gjǫfrífr – háars drífu ‘...the snowstorm of hárr (odin)’ refr frag 1iii.2 lífkǫld háars19 drífu ‘...the snowstorm of hárr (odin)’ eskál vell 10i.8 mitt líf – heðins drífu ‘...the snowstorm of heðinn (king)’ vgl lv 11v.4 ǫrt líf sigars drífu ‘...the snowstorm of sigarr (king)’ gunnhám lv 6v.8 líf sitt – boga drífu ‘...the snowstorm of bows’ esk ingdr 4ii.3–4 (2b) 12yy-drífu in odd lines 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source hæfr at hlakkar drífu ‘...the snowstorm of hlǫkk (valkyrie)’ hólmgb lv 6v.3 áðr í ǫrva drífu ‘...the snowstorm of arrows’ bjbp jóms 30i.5 the líf–drífa rhyme collocation should be seen as a compositional resource that is complementary to the battle-kenning as a metrically entangled semantic formula (cf. frog 2009: 233–239). this rhyme collocation itself appears to be metrically entangled with the 1(p)yyxx formula, so that when the formula is realised with drífa it is already equipped with a rhyme-word for realising a metrically well-formed line (noting also that líf is not found independent of 19 manuscripts also have haralds in this position, which is metrically acceptable although odd as a determinant in kennings. 53mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii drífa in any identified lines with 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings).20 uses of dynr and gnýr in basic type 12(p)xyy similarly combine with the almr–hjalmr–malmr conventional rhyme-set (cf. frog 2014a: examples 1a.xi–xiv and 2a.x–xi) to form a verbal compositional system that i have elsewhere discussed as a ‘multiform’ for realising metrically well-formed lines (see frog 2009: 239–243).21 the pilot study on the metric-structural types of battle-kennings revealed that the metrical entanglement of rhyme-pairs in this way was not exceptional, and that rhyme-pairs can exhibit collocations exclusively in relation to a metricstructural type (frog forthcoming). in contrast to examples with senna (1a–b), 5 of the 7 examples with drífa employ a personal name as a determinant: twice the odin-name hárr = ‘high one’, once the valkyrie-name hlǫkk and the names of two mytho-heroic kings, heðinn and sigarr. in even lines, the pattern of distribution between the 4 examples of the rhyme collocation (líf–drífa) and the 4 uses of a personal name determinant across 5 examples parallels the distribution of recurrent lexical material in examples with senna (menn–senna and vápna–senna). the predominance of personal names here is more striking because word-choice of the determinant in even lines is not conditioned by meeting alliteration or rhyme. in other words, when these lines present the same conditions that can enable lexical stability in the role of vápn above, the predominance of 80% of determinants as personal names is a striking anomaly. in accordance with 20 within the pilot study, the líf–drífa collocation was found in two of the three examples of drífa in this basic type and in two of the three examples of drífa’s use in compounds of basic type yxx456. this collocation accounted for 4 of the 5 cases in which drífa carried rhyme in these two basic types. within the pilot study, drífa was attested in 10 examples across 5 basic types and carried rhyme in 9 of these instances. 21 ‘multiform’ was coined as a formally defined technical term by lauri and anneli honko (1995; 1998; see also honko 1995; 1998: 100–116; 2003: 113–122) in order to describe systems of formulaic expressions and words that are associated in the memory of an individual singer and that provide a flexible framework for producing expression. the multiform is considered to function as a system at the level of verbalisation or texture rather than necessarily realising a specific unit of content or meaning. this initial approach to multiforms was concerned with particular questions about flexibility in epic reproduction that had not yet been sufficiently explained through oral-formulaic theory. the honkos were not concerned with the phenomenon of multiforms per se. in several articles on different oral poetries, i have significantly developed and refined the approach to multiforms, introducing the concept of equivalence classes, metrical and semantic conditioning in lexical variation, syntax and also typologies, as well as situating multiforms systematically in relation to linguistic formulae defined in terms of morpheme-equivalent units (frog 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012; cf. also drout 2011). the dynamics of multiforms in skaldic dróttkvætt composition may be exceptional in their complexity in proportion to the size of the unit they are conditioned to realise. 54 frog conventions of this basic type of battle-kenning, the personal name carries alliteration in the odd-line example, but the frequency of personal names still appears high.22 the lack of use of personal names as a determinant for senna may be connected to a broader pattern of use of this term as a base-word in the register: according to rudolf meissner’s (1921: 198) fairly comprehensive survey of kennings in the skaldic corpus (including all metres), personal names are not attested as a determinant for senna-based battle-kennings. meissner’s (1921: 178) examples for drífa present a different picture: of 14 simple or basic battle kennings (i.e. with not more than two elements), 6 or just under half have a proper name as a determinant. however, half of meissner’s examples are 12yy-drífu battle-kennings, without which only 1 of the 7 remaining examples have a proper name as a determinant. against the background of meissner’s survey, the use of proper names in 12yy-drífu battle-kennings appears quite prominent, as does the proportionate number of drífa-based battle kennings of the metric-structural type. this could be a statistical anomaly, yet a corresponding pattern emerges in uses with veðr = ‘weather’ as a base-word: (3a) 1(p)yy-veðri in even lines 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source jóans feðr hnikars veðri ‘...the weather of hnikarr (odin)’ svert lv 2iv.3–4 hleðr í gunnar veðri ‘...in the weather of gunnr (valkyrie)’ þfagr sveinn 5ii.4 heðan í róstu veðri ‘...in the weather of a riot’ svb lv 3v.2 (3b) 1(p)yy-veðr-infl in odd lines 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source hvar er í hildar veðri ‘...in the weather of hildr (valkyrie)’ grett lv 14v.3 heiðr at hildar veðri ‘...at the weather of hildr (valkyrie)’ gdrop lv 4v.7 22 it may also be worth observing the line vífs gørninga drífu (bbreiðv lv 6v.8) = ‘sleet of the wife of sorcery’, where the rhyme with drífa in the line is accomplished with the base-word of a valkyrie-kenning (i.e. equivalent to hlǫkk), which is itself the determinant for line-final drífa in the formation of the battle-kenning. this is a complex kenning that is not a variation on basic type 1(p)yyxx. although analysable as basic type y234xx + xyyy56 = yzzzxx, neither basic type would be a conventional basic type for battle-kennings, and the occurrence of the baseword in positions 5–6 appears generally exceptional for battle-kennings. future studies of the different basic types of a semantic formula will make it possible to assess the degree to which the sort of indexical associations addressed here are specific to a metric-structural type or may be shared across types in which e.g. the base-word occurs in particular metrical positions (e.g. when xx = positions 5–6). 55mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii dreif at viðris veðri ‘...at the weather of viðrir (odin)’ tindr hákdr 3i.1 naðr í virfils veðri ‘...in the weather of virfill (mythic king)’ grett hallfl 2v.3 skýtr at skǫglar veðri ‘...at the weather of skǫgul (valkyrie)’ snst ht 54iii.1 glaðr – í gǫndlar veðrum ‘...in the weather of gǫndul (valkyrie)’ eskál vell 6i. 3 teðr – í tognings veðri ‘...in the weather of the sword3’ balti sigdr 3 ii.3 here, 8 of 10 examples employ proper names: five with valkyrie-names (hildr twice, gunnr, gǫndul, skǫgul), two with odin-heiti (hnikarr, viðrir), and one with the name of a mytho-heroic king (virfill). the odin-heiti also appears in a variation in the couplet þryngr at viðris veðri / vandar, góðr fyr hǫndum (vígf lv 1i.3–4), where the complex kenning viðris vandar veðr = ‘the storm of the rod of viðrir’ = ‘storm of the sword/spear’ = battle] can be seen as an extension of viðris veðr (3b.iii) without compromising the form or semantics of the basic type. this type of variation was also observed in basic type 12(p)xyy where the verbally crystallised formula gunnar gnýr = ‘roar of gunnr (valkyrie)’ was extended to gunnar gagls gnýr = ‘roar of the bird of gunnr’ = ‘roar of the raven’ = battle] (123-gný-gunnar/gagls-23456) (frog 2014a: 124–125). according to meissner’s survey, the use of proper names with veðr is much more common: 19 of the 38 basic kennings, or 50%. this drops to 11 of 28 without examples of 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings, and thus the 80% of proper name determinants in the type can be contrasted with 39% in all other types and metres. the use of proper names with veðr can therefore be considered exceptionally pronounced in basic type 1(p)yyxx. nevertheless, the proper names extend across semantic categories of heiti – they are not exclusively valkyrie-names or odin-heiti. infrequent base-words in 1(p)yyxx this prominence in the use of proper names with drífa and veðr not only contrasts with their absence in use with senna (1a–b), but also with the use of proper names accompanying low-frequency base-words in identified 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings. for the present discussion, base-words will be considered lowfrequency in a type if they are found only in five examples or less. although 7 examples of 1(p)yyxx are found with the base-word leikr = ‘play, sport, game’, 4 of these are found in a single poem, which may skew the image of 56 frog its frequency. examples with leikr are therefore listed here as potentially lowfrequency (4a–b): (4a) 1pyy-leiki in even lines23 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source ǫrn at sverða leiki ‘...at the play of swords1’ anon krm 22v iii.8 gaukr at sverða leiki23 ‘...at the play of swords1’ anon krm 16v iii.4 bleikr frá sverða leiki ‘...from the play of swords1’ anon (tgt) 30 iii.2 hǫgg at eggja leiki ‘...at the play of blades’ þjóð lv 1i.2 (4b) 1pyy-leiki in odd lines 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source hversu at lǫgðis leiki ‘...at the play of the stabber (sword)’ anon krm 21viii.7 hǫtt at hildar leiki ‘...at the play of hildr (valkyrie)’ anon krm 13viii.3 margr var at laufa leiki ‘...at the play of laufi (sword)’ bjbp jóms 18i.7 proper names are found in 2 of the 7 examples with the base-word leikr = ‘play, sport, game’ (4b.ii–iii) (cf. also meissner 1921: 199). one is the valkyrie-name hildr (4b.ii) and the other is the name of a mytho-heroic sword laufi (4b.iii). l-alliteration is not frequent (cf. hollmérus 1936). word choice in the combination of laufi and leiki has undoubtedly been conditioned to some degree by phonic demands of alliteration. although alliteration could be considered a determinant in word-choice, laufi seems always to alliterate when used as a heiti in dróttkvætt poetry more generally while the sword-heiti lǫgðir = ‘stabber’ (4b.i) shows that equivalent terms capable of l-alliteration were also available. it seems worth observing that 5 of the 7 examples of this basic type are quite specifically sword-heiti while a sixth can be interpreted that way as well (cf. english blade as a synonym for ‘sword’). it is at least possible that semantics of an entangled equivalence class could have been involved here. additional examples of low-frequency base-words that are found three times or less in this data present 25 examples (5a–b).24 this presents one case of full-line correspondence between two poems (5a.iii–iv; n.b. the syntactic break in the line of one but not the other), a second case of variation only in the preposition (5a.i–ii), and a total of 7 examples employing the determinant vápn (5a.iii–vii, 5b.ii, 5b.xiv), discussed above. 23 a variant of this line reads: “geto vid soknar lęte” (getu við sóknar læti). 24 3 x þing, snerra; 2 x galdr, glygg, gnaustan, hagl, mót, jalmr; 1 x brestr, byrr, flaumr, glamm, kveðja, rǫdd, teiti. 57mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii (5a) 1(p)yyxx in with low-frequency base-words in even lines 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source gagls fyr strengjar hagli ‘...before the hail of the string’ esk ingdr 3ii.6 gagls við strengjar hagli ‘...at the hail of the string’ hfr hákdr 3iii.2 hjaldrs at vápna galdri ‘...at the chant of weapons’ esk geisl 43vii.2 hjaldrs – at vápna galdri ‘...at the chant of weapons’ þmáhl máv 10v.6 framm í vápna glammi ‘...at the clatter of weapons’ þjóða magn 7ii.8 geystir – vápna brestu ‘...the crash of weapons’ bjbp jóms 25i.8 hringr á vápna þingi ‘...at the assembly of weapons’ egill lv 13v.8 yrþjóð – heðins byrjar ‘...the wind of heðinn (king)’ eskál vell 21i.8 draum í sverða flaumi ‘...in the torrent of swords1’ bragi rdr 3 iii.4 austr ór malma gnaustan ‘...out of the gnash of metals’ hfr erfól 22i.2 hjalm at geira jalmi ‘...at the yammer of spears1’ arn þorfdr 10 ii.2 veitk sǫnn – hugins teiti ‘...the joy of huginn (raven)’ esk geisl 41vii.6 ritr – at hjalma móti ‘...at the meeting of helmets1’ anon krm 7 viii.8 (5b) 1(p)yyxx in low-frequency base-words in odd lines25 26 27 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source mér lízt malma snerru ‘...the onslaught of metals’ hǫrðg lv 10v.1 verr hafa vápna snerru ‘...the onslaught of weapons’ gsúrs lv 19v.5 ǫrr í odda snerru25 ‘...in the onslaught of points’ þfagr sveinn 2ii.3 sǫng at sverða þingi ‘...at the assembly of swords1’ tindr hákdr 2 i.7 geng ek geira þingi ‘...the assembly of spears1’ hólmgb lv 2 v.3 sleit at sverða móti ‘...at the meeting of swords1’ edáð banddr 5 i.5 þiggr at gǫndlar glyggvi ‘...at the gale of gǫndul (valkyrie)’ snst ht 59iii.7 viggs, í vápna glyggvi ‘...at the gale of weapons’ arn hardr 12ii.7 búumk við ilmar26 jalmi ‘...at the yammer of ilmr (valkyrie)’ hróm lv 2iv.3 hræddr fór hjǫrva27 raddar ‘...the voice of swords2’ gsind hákdr 8 i.1 mest, í malma gnaustan ‘...in the gnash of metals’ hfr erfól 4i.7 mjǫð, fyr malma kveðju ‘...before the greeting of metals’ sigv nesv 7i.7 25 manuscript variants also present ǫrt and snertu in this line, forming a different but correct rhyme. 26 the manuscript variant almir = ‘elms’ is metrically viable but dissolves the kenning and changes the sense. 27 manuscript variants with hjarta = ‘of hearts’ are metrically acceptable but semantically peculiar. 58 frog proper names are found in only 4 of 25 examples that have base-words occurring three times or less (5a–b): the valkyrie-names gǫndul (5b.iv) and ilmr (5b.ii), the name of a mytho-heroic king heðinn (5a.vi), and the name of odin’s raven huginn (5a.xi), which is otherwise exceptional for battle-kennings (cf. meissner 1921: 201). the valkyrie-name or goddess-name (?) ilmr is both infrequent and obscure (hopkins 2014). although vocalic alliteration is the most frequent type of alliteration in germanic verse, mythic female names capable of functioning as a valkyrie-heiti with this alliteration seem to have been limited to only two (price 2002: 338–340). the use of these particular names in battle-kennings seems to have been exceptional (cf. egilsson & jónsson 1931: 104 s.v. ‘1. eir’, 319 s.v. ‘2. ilmr’, and cf. 661 s.v. ‘ǫlrún’). the appearance of ilmr in this case rather than the odin-heiti yggr (13.iv–v) or the hero-heiti áli (13.ii–iii) may be directly related to its function of carrying both alliteration and rhyme, in which case the lexical choice would be determined by phonic requirements. among examples with infrequent referents, the variation gríms í gǫndlar flaumi / gefnar mák of hefna (vgl lv 11v.7–8) can also be mentioned. this has been interpreted not as a variation of gǫndlar flaumr = ‘rush/eddy of gǫndul’, which would be semantically sufficient: as an extended kenning, gǫndul shifts to function as a common noun in a complex kenning with the freyja-heiti gefn in the kenning gǫndlar gefnar flaumr = ‘rush/eddy of the gefn of (battle?)28’ = ‘rush/eddy of the valkyrie’. in this case, complementing the kenning with gefn simultaneously accomplished alliteration with the preceding line and accomplished the rhyme in the line in which it appeared. this is directly comparable to the cases of viðris (vandar) 28 the valkyrie-name gǫndul has the appearance of a feminine form of the obscure term gǫndull (listed with two attestations in the dictionary of old norse prose). gǫndull is thought to be a term for a staff used in controlling gandr-spirits in magical practices. the valkyrie-name, however, has been thought to derive independently from gandr; to stem from a poetic meaning ‘wolf ’ and thus refer to beasts of battle (tolley 1995: 69–71; price 2002: 341). gǫndull = ‘staff, wand’ would be appropriate as a sword-heiti and could provide a base of interpretation here (cf. price 2002: 338). however, according to the database of eysteinn björnsson (–2001), this would be exceptional for a valkyrie-kenning because goddess of implement(s) of battle appears almost exclusively in the form of complex kennings. moreover, the form of the word here is the feminine gǫndul. one of the anonymous reviewers of this article made the insightful suggestion that gǫndul functions here as a battle-heiti. this would conform to the most common pattern of using a goddess-heiti as a base-word in a valkyrie-kenning (björnsson –2001). this interpretation is viable irrespective of the etymology of gǫndul: almost all valkyrie-names can be interpreted as battle-heiti or battle-kennings (cf. price 2002: 338–340), and therefore the potentially opaque gǫndul could be inferred by poets to function in the same way. on the other hand, a variation of this type may have been formulaic (and equally so with viðrir and gunnr) without requiring consideration of possible shifts in semantics of these names (cf. frog 2014a: 125n.44). 59mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii veðr and gunnar (gagls) gnýr mentioned above. thus, the doubling of viable terms for mythological beings appears directly associated with meeting metrical demands and potentially for aesthetic effect. such examples are illustrative of poets playing with conventionalised resources of tradition in composition. the frequency of personal names with the low-frequency base-words is slightly more than 16% – directly comparable to basic type 12(p)xyy battlekennings when the 5 examples of the conventionalised expression gnýr gunnar are included in the tally. this does not reveal a concentration that is strikingly anomalous. the personal names are also not bound up with a specific category of being, which contrasts with examples of 12(p)xyy battle-kennings. however, the diversity of proper names here might be compared with the semantic fluidity between different heiti for weapons and armour as ‘implements of battle’ – i.e. ‘odin’, ‘valkyrie’ and ‘mythic hero/king’ may all be seen as mythic ‘agents of battle’. the use of proper names in the examples with drífa (2a–b) and veðr (3a–b) remains striking. these are both weather-heiti, as are glygg = ‘wind, gale’ (5b.viii–ix) and more loosely byrr = ‘fair wind, good wind for sailing’ (5a.viii).29 if weather-heiti are separated from the lowest-frequency terms above (5a–b), 2 of 4 of these are collocated with personal names while only 2 in 20 are found with other semantic categories of base-words. of the latter two, the kenning hugins teiti is generally exceptional: the base-word teiti = ‘joy’ in ‘joy of the raven’ would normally refer to corpses on which they feed (cf. meissner 1921: 203).30 although half of the personal-name determinants appear in two of the five examples of weather-heiti, there are so few examples of the individual base-words that this could simply be accidental. base-words entangled with odd-line 1(p)yyxx this brings us to the final three groups of examples of metric-structural type 1(p)yyxx: those with the base-words skúr = ‘shower’, hríð = ‘storm’ and él = ‘squall’, all of which are weather-heiti. with a total of 21 examples, these three groups together comprise more than one quarter of the examples of this type. whereas examples with drífa (2a–b) and veðr (3a–b) as well as 29 meissner (1921: 181–182) made more sensitive distinctions of semantic categories of basewords than is done here and addresses byrr more specifically as a wind-heiti. 30 use of teiti can be considered to function here as a metonym for battle (i.e. as the supplier of the corpses which bring the raven joy). the use of the proper name of odin’s raven does not meet demands of either alliteration or rhyme and may therefore remain striking in this construction. 60 frog other terms exhibit use across odd and even lines, these last three examples appear particular to odd lines. this suggests that these base-words are metrically entangled with this metric-structural type of battle-kenning in a way that conditions their use to certain types of lines (or rhythms). they may potentially reflect lexically conventionalised formulae. however, the patterns of use could perhaps also reflect a type of preferred lexical choice within a concentrated lexical equivalence set (cf. also the predominance of veðr in odd lines). use in odd lines presents the metrical requirement that two stressed syllables in the line should carry alliteration. in identified examples, skúr never participates in alliteration, which might be expected as this was perceived in old norse poetry as requiring an sk-alliteration (distinguished from s-alliteration). more surprising is that hríð only carries alliteration in 1 of 6 examples when h-alliteration (undistinguished from hr-alliteration) was the most common alliteration pattern after vocalic alliteration in old norse poetry (cf. hollmérus 1936: 64, table 3). together, the 15 examples of these two terms present only one proper name as a determinant. use of proper names with skúr in the survey of meissner (1921: 181) show only 1 among 19 examples of basic kennings (not the same as the one below), and 6 of 67 for hríð (meissner 1921: 180), so low frequency here is not surprising in that respect. in contrast, the final term él carries alliteration in 5 of 6 examples and also appears with a proper name as the determinant in 5 of 6 examples, which is markedly higher than the 28 of 57 or ca. 50% of examples of basic battle-kennings listed by meissner (1921: 178–179). (6) 1(p)yy-skúr-infl (odd lines only) 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source hárs við hǫgna skúrir ‘...at the showers of hǫgni (hero)’ eskál vell 34i.3 hverr gerir hjalma skúrar ‘...the shower of helmets1’ rvhbreiðm hl 46 ii.3 hilmir hjalma skúrir ‘...the showers of helmets1’ snst ht 57 iii.1 mér stóð málma skúrar ‘...the shower of metals’ grett lv 22v.1 stendr af stála skúrar ‘...from the shower of steels’ snst ht 55iii.5 ár til eggja skúrar ‘...to the shower of edges’ sjórs lv 3ii.3 jarl lætr odda skúrar ‘...the shower of points’ þjóða frag 2ii.1 vér hlutum vápna skúrir ‘...the showers of weapons’ anon liðs 4i.7 fár má fleina skúrar ‘...the shower of shafts’ ingj brandfl 4iv.5 61mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii (7) 12yy-hríð-infl (odd lines only)31 32 33 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source glaðr varð geira hríðar31 ‘...the storm of spears1’ anon krm 16 viii.3 grǫðr þvarr geira hríðar ‘...the storm of spears1’ hfr óldr 5 i.7 boðit hafa brodda32 hríðar ‘...the storm of spikes’ hólmgb lv 4v.1 bíðum brodda hríðar ‘...the storm of spikes’ gsúrs lv 32v.7 áðr réð ek odda hríðar33 ‘...the storm of points’ þorm lv 13iv.3 njǫrðr nam hjálma hríðar ‘...the storm of helmets1’ þormól lv 1 v.5 (8) 1(p)yy-él-infl (odd lines only) 1(p) yy xx translation of (p)yyxx source sól rauð svǫlnis éla ‘...in the squall of svǫlnir (odin)’ hst rst 16i.3 verum í ála éli ‘...in the squall of áli (hero)’ gizsv lv 1i.7 varat í ála éli ‘...in the squall of áli (hero)’ eþver lv 2v.3 þar er í yggjar éli ‘...in the squall of yggr (odin)’ bjbp jóms 29i.5 bál rauðk yggjar éla ‘...the squall of yggr (odin)’ hfr lv 14v.7 at hann í odda éli ‘...in the squall of points’ anon krm 22viii.3 the name of the mythic hero hǫgni appears in one example with skúr (6.i), which is interesting for not being used in alliteration with hríð. at the same time, use of hríð in the place of skúr in examples (6.i–iii) or (6.viii) would produce over-alliteration in the line – a factor that might be related to the fact that examples with skúr are more strongly represented in the data-set than examples with hríð or él. in contrast, él is found with the alliterating mytho-heroic name áli (with near-full-line correspondence) (8.ii–iii) and the odin-heiti yggr (8.iv–v).34 it is also found with the odin-heiti svǫlnir (8.i) in the one example where él does not carry alliteration. there is a pronounced difference found across these three terms both in the participation in alliteration and in the use of proper names as a determinant. this suggests conventional differences in how these three base-words were deployed in this battle-kenning construction. 31 the manuscript variant reading “gera broder” (probably gera bróðir = ‘make the brother’) appears to lack the kenning entirely. 32 the manuscript variant brynju = ‘of the armour’ has no metrical or semantic consequences for the line. 33 the manuscript variant skúrar results in an absence of rhyme in the line. 34 both of these can be considered relatively common combinations according to meissner’s survey (1921: 183). 62 frog the limitation of evidence to odd lines should not be over-interpreted as meaning these base-words could never appear in even-line variations of this metric-structural type. a variation of this formula with skúr fills an even line with a complex battle-kenning in one case. this is in the line fúrs í þróttar skúrum (eskál vell 11i.6) = ‘the showers of the fire of þróttr’ where the determinant is also an odin-heiti þróttr.35 in this case, the additional element produces the kenning þróttar fúrr = ‘flame of odin’ = sword’ without impacting the form or semantics of the 1(p)yyxx basic type. this example should be considered in relation to those examples above in which an added element to the kenning accomplishes metrical requirements without semantic impact. the difference here is that the additional element occurs at the onset of the same line rather than at the onset of the following line. here, as in cases already addressed, the mediating element carries both alliteration and aðalhending rhyme – a rhyme also dependent here on the choice of the base-word skúr. although this example remains outside of the data-set as a complex kenning, it nevertheless shows that these base-words could appear in even lines, at least in variations on the basic type. the complete lack of even-line examples outside of this variation could then simply be a natural statistical outcome of their patterns of use, much as dynr is observed in only one odd-line example of battle-kenning type 12(p)xyy (frog 2014a: examples 1a–b). it is equally possible that the base-word veðr also functioned similarly: the appearance of 3 even-line examples out of the 10 examples (3a–b) may be an outcome of the larger number of examples (almost twice those of hríð or él) combined with a few statistically infrequent cases showing up in the data. overview of proper names in 1(p)yyxx the number of examples for each base-word of battle-kenning type 1(p)yyxx is relatively few. if the kennings realised with a certain base-word are addressed independently, then the concentration of personal names in a particular case might seem a bit peculiar but could be dismissed as probably little more than a statistical anomaly. when co-occurrence is surveyed across all base-words and these are considered together, the use of personal names as a determinant is unambiguously concentrated around certain base-words in battle-kennings of this metric-structural type. overall, 25 – more than 30% – of the identified examples of type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings have a proper name as a determinant. 35 the variation þundr, also an odin-heiti, is found in some manuscripts. 63mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii however, 18 of these 25 appear in conjunction with only 3 base-words: drífa (2a–b), veðr (3a–b) and él (8). co-occurrence with these three terms accounts for 75% of the uses of proper names in battle-kennings of this basic type. the remaining 7 proper name determinants are distributed across 18 other basewords, accounting for slightly more than 12% of the 57 examples using these base-words. this is between the ca. 16% found with basic type 12(p)xyy, and that type’s adjusted calculation of 9% when the 5 uses of the conventionalised gunnar gnýr kenning are counted only once. although drífa, veðr and él all belong to a common equivalence class of weather-heiti, corresponding use of proper names is not associated with the base-words skúr and hríð, which belong to the same equivalence class. the pattern of metrical entanglement associated with base-words must therefore be considered to be at the level of lexical items on an individual basis rather than at the abstract level of semantic equivalence class. personal names used as determinants in realising type 1(p)yyxx battlekennings do not appear to be bound to a particular category of heiti such as ‘odin’ or ‘valkyrie’, as was the case in type 12(p)xyy battle-kennings. instead, personal names seem to function as a more fluid but distinct category which includes both terms from the heroic sphere and terms for beings associated with mythology – i.e. all proper names that can be used as simple determinants in battle-kennings with these base-words. identifying that category as ‘grammatical’ (proper nouns) as opposed to ‘semantic’ (nameable identities) may underestimate the degree to which heiti of this broad group was most probably an intuitively internalised category within the register that might not necessarily fully correspond to ontologies or grammatical categories current outside of the register.36 the distribution of proper names as determinants in examples of type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings nevertheless appears to reflect the metrical entanglement of a category of preferred determinants for a particular set of lexical items as base-words. the metrical entanglement of a particular category of determinants with three base-words can be further contextualised among other patterns in the data. the general prominence of the determinant vápn = ‘weapons’ suggests that this determinant was metrically entangled with this battle-kenning basic 36 this observation carries the implication that additional lexical items may have been functionally identified with this group within the register but presently remain unrecognised by scholarship owing to modern presumptions about categories to which terms in the register should be assigned. it may be possible to confirm or refute this possibility through future studies of patterns in language use, which will, however, most likely require the gradual development of infrastructures in the form of research on different aspects of metrically contextualised language use in dróttkvætt as a necessary foundation and context for discussion. 64 frog type. the use of vápn seems simultaneously to be a metrically entangled lexical preference at the general level (5b.ii, 5b.ix, 6.viii) of a potentially distinct socially circulating formula (1a.i–iv, 5a.ii–vii) similar to dynr (frog 2014a: example set 1a–b) and gnýr (ibid.: example set 2a–b) – i.e. 1(p)-vápna-xx. the potential conventionalised formula vápna senna (1a.i–iv) may be a still more crystallised realisation of this formula, a variation of it paralleling the expression gnýr gunnar, discussed in the first part of this study (frog 2014a: 124–125). the apparently conventionalised use with senna in even lines highlights the metrical entanglement of the lexicon with the battle-kenning basic type. the near-exclusive use of the base-words skúr (6), hríð (7) and él (8) in odd lines (cf. also veðr) indicates that the use of these words is not freely generative in the realisation of type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings. this implies that these lexical items should be considered metrically entangled and potentially formulaic in their use – odd-line formulae of the broader semantic battlekenning formula of type 1(p)yyxx. such a possibility is highlighted by the use of proper names as determinants used with él and also by the role of él in alliteration as contrasted with uses of skúr and hríð in the same basic type. in addition, conventionalised rhyme-collocations were clearly evident in evenline uses with senna (1a) and drífa (2a) as base-words. as with the indexical association between a south-slavic epic formula and “turkicisms” discussed by foley (1993 [1990]: 192–194), these sorts of indices are indications that metrical entanglement of the lexicon within the basic type has developed a further degree of formulaicity. thus even the small sets of examples for each base-word offer indications of conventionalised patterns of language use. this, however, returns us to fox’s (1977: 72) concern over viewing language through the lens of typology. on the basis of the preceding discussion, it is possible to extrapolate each distinctive case of patterned use as a conventional formula with variations that might be described as, for example: (9) examples of hypothetical abstract formulae from example sets of 1(p)yyxx above 1(p) yy xx (1a–b) → 1(p) (‘weapons’)-gen sennu (2a–b) → (líf-2/1-líf) (‘agent of battle’) drífu (3a–b) → 1(p) (‘agent of battle’)-gen veðr-infl (6) → 12 (‘implements of battle’) skúr-infl (odd lines only) (7) → 12 (‘implements of battle’) hríð-infl (odd lines only) (8) → 1(p) (‘agent of battle’) él-infl (odd lines only) 65mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii the image that this produces may present a more or less accurate descriptive abstraction of examples from the data. at the same time, this sort of description separates these ‘formulae’ from one another leading to an inclination to isolate them – i.e. as formula 1, formula 2, formula 3, etc. this may be misleading with regard to generative use of the oral-poetic register in the production of metrically well-formed verses. this is highlighted by the potential for 1(p)-vápna-xx to also be regarded as a distinct formula that intersects with the models of formulae described in (9) according to grouping items by base-words. the crystallisation of verbal elements into distinct formulae in basic type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings is quite possible and even probable, but this would be only one quite narrow phenomenon in language practice. if the examples of verbally identical and near-identical lines above are not considered accidental (1a.i–5, 5a.i–ii, 5a.iii–iv, 8.ii–iii), then it appears that lines of socially circulating poetry could be adapted directly as a verbal template in composition. if this is the case, then more of these examples may reflect this same strategy although verbal variation in the adaptation – e.g. between equivalent heiti – is less directly observable (cf. especially 3b.i–ii, 7.i–ii). ‘paradigmatic substitution’ in such an adaptation would break down the formal criteria according to which comparisons have been made above, potentially leaving the adaptation more or less undetectable according to these methods (cf. frog 2009: 240–243). however, fluency in a register is characterised by an ability to move beyond exemplar models (of whatever sort) toward internalised patterns of language use abstracted from the patterned conventions of social practice (cf. harvilahti 2000; bybee 2006; goldberg 2006). rather than basic type 1(p)yyxx battlekennings being divided into a skúr-formula, a drífa-formula, a vápn-formula and so forth, the relationships between these could potentially be extremely fluid, metrically entangled verbal systems. in other words, by engaging the metrically entangled basic type 1(p)yyxx as a semantic formula, a competent user of the register would also be engaging a metrically entangled verbal system conventional for appropriately realising that formula. realising that formula through language would involve lexical choices. at that point, lexical choices such as whether to use drífa, senna or hríð as a base-word, or to use vápn, hildr or yggr as a determinant would index co-occurring lexical material and patterns of use (e.g. alliteration) with which these are associated in realising the particular formula. those same patterns may equally involve closer and more distant relations between alternative lexical choices among which variation may be more natural (i.e. more likely to be intuitive and automatic). on the one hand, this would explain variation within a semantic equivalence class of determinant linked to certain base-words. on the other hand, it can also be looked at with regard to personal name determinants in terms of closeness of patterns 66 frog of use of skúr (6) and hríð (7) as opposed to él (8), as well as él and veðr (3) as similar to drífa (2), and drífa and veðr in contrast to senna (1). at the same time, senna and drífa can be looked at in relation to veðr, él, skúr and hríð with regard to use in even and odd lines. to put it succinctly: internalised patterns of language use lead to associated patterns in generative language production within the register. the potential complexity of these processes should not be underestimated. it should also not be underestimated that, in practice, multiple strategies and resources related to the single basic type could all function in tandem. in other words, the sort of bottom-up generation of verses from an abstract 1(p)yyxx semantic formula can be seen as one potential resource. the top-down generation of verses from lexically crystallised formulae (e.g. 12yy-hríð-infl) could provide a distinct resource. socially circulating lines of poetry in which a kenning of this type was used could provide a third resource. rather than being independent of one another, exclusive and used in isolation from one another, all of these could be complementary and in interaction. type 1(p)yyxx battle-kennings seem in general to exhibit patterns of the metrical entanglement of the lexicon. the concentrated use of proper names as determinants – even as a broad category – with certain base-words as opposed to others appears to be only one aspect of that phenomenon in the production of battle-kennings of this metric-structural basic type. this pattern suggests that personal names had a functional role as integrated resources in composition rather than being primarily or exclusively referential when appearing in conventional metric-structural kenning types. this supports the hypothesis that proper names associated with mythology would be a fully integrated part of the lexicon of the dróttkvætt register, although this does not exclude the possibility that these names could be used strategically for producing meanings and associations in particular cases.37 references abrahams, roger d. 1969 [1976]. the complex relations of simple forms. in: benamos, dan (ed.), folklore genres. austin: university of texas press, 193–214. agha, asif 2007. language and social relations. cambridge: cambridge university press. 37 research presented here has been accomplished within the framework of the academy of finland project “oral poetry, mythic knowledge and vernacular imagination” of folklore studies, university of helsinki. 67mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii árnason, kristján 1991. the rhythms of dróttkvætt and other old icelandic metres. reykjavík: university of iceland, institute of linguistics. bybee, joan 2006. from usage to grammar: the mind’s response to repetition. in: language 82(4), 711–733. björnsson, eysteinn –2001. lexicon of kennings and similar poetic circumlocutions: the domain of battle. url: https://notendur.hi.is//~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/ kennings.html clunies ross, margaret (ed.) 2007. poetry on christian subjects (2 vols.). skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 7. turnhout: brepols. clunies ross, margaret; gade, kari ellen; marold, edith; nordal, guðrún; whaley, diana; wills, tarrin 2012. general introduction. in: whaley, diana (ed.) 2012. poetry from the kings’ sagas i: from mythical times to c. 1035 (2 vols.). turnhout: brepols, xiii–xciii. coleman, r. g. g. 1999. poetic diction, poetic discourse and the poetic register. in: adams, james noel; mayer, roland (eds.), aspects of the language of latin poetry. new york: oxford university press, 21–93. drout, michael d. 2011. variation within limits: an evolutionary approach to the structure and dynamics of the multiform. in: oral tradition 26(2), 447–474. egilsson, sveinbjörn; jónsson, finnur 1931. lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog. 2nd edn. københavn: s. i. møllers. faulkes, anthony (ed.) 1999. snorri sturluson, edda: háttatal. london: viking society for northern research. foley, john miles 1988. the theory of oral composition: history and methodology. bloomington: indiana university press. foley, john miles 1991. immanent art: from structure to meaning in traditional oral epic. bloomington: indiana university press. foley, john miles 1993 [1990]. traditional oral epic: the odyssey, beowulf, and the serbo-croatian return song. berkeley, los angeles and oxford: university of california press. foley, john miles 1995. the singer of tales in performance. bloomington: indiana university press. foley, john miles 1996. guslar and aoidos: traditional register in south slavic and homeric epic. in: transactions of the american philological association 126, 11–41. https://notendur.hi.is//~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/kennings.html https://notendur.hi.is//~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/kennings.html 68 frog foley, john miles 1999. homer’s traditional art. university park: pennsylvania university press. foley, john miles; ramey, peter 2011. oral theory and medieval studies. in: reichl, karl (ed.), medieval oral literature. berlin: de gruyter, 71–102. fox, james j. 1977. roman jakobson and the comparative study of parallelism. in: armstrong, daniel; van schooneveld, c. h., roman jakobson: echoes of his scholarship. lisse: peter de ridder press, 59−90. frog 2009. speech-acts in skaldic verse: genre, formula and improvisation. in: dewey, tonya kim; frog (eds.), versatility in versification: multidisciplinary approaches to metrics. berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics 74. new york: peter lang, 223–246. frog 2010. multiformit kalevalamittaisessa epiikassa. in: knuuttila, seppo; piela, ulla; tarkka, lotte (eds.), kalevalamittaisen runon tulkintoja. helsinki: suomen kirjallisuuden seura, 91–113. frog 2011. multiforms and meaning: playing with referentiality in kalevalaic epic. in: huttu-hiltunen, pekka, et al. (eds.), laulu kulttuurisena kommunikaationa. kuhmo: juminkeko, 49–63. frog 2012. on the case of vambarljóð i: comments on formulaicity in the sagnakvæði. in: rmn newsletter 5, 22–38. frog 2014a. mythological names in dróttkvætt formulae i: when is a valkyrie like a spear? in: studia metrica et poetica 1(1), 100–139. frog 2014b. a preface to parallelism. in frog (ed.), parallelism in verbal art and performance: pre-print papers of pre-print papers of the seminar-workshop, 26th–27th may 2014. folkloristiikan toimite 21. helsinki: folklore studies, university of helsinki, 7–28. frog forthcoming. metrical entanglement and dróttkvætt composition: a pilot study on battle-kennings. in: árnason, kristján; aðalsteinsson, ragnar ingi; eyþórsson, þórhallur; carey, stephen mark (eds.), approaches to germanic metre [working title]. reykjavík: university of iceland press. frog; stepanova, eila 2011. alliteration in (balto-)finnic languages. in: roper, jonathan (ed.), alliteration in culture. houndmills: palgrave macmillan, 195–218. gade, kari ellen 1995. the structure of old norse dróttkvætt poetry. ithaca: cornell university press. gade, kari ellen (ed.) 2009. poetry from the kings’ sagas ii: from c.1035 to c.1300 (2 vols.). skaldic poetry of the scandinavian middle ages 2. turnhout: brepols. 69mythological names and dróttkvætt formulae ii goldberg, adele 2006. constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language. oxford: oxford university press. hainsworth, john bryan 1968. the flexibility of the homeric formula. oxford: clarendon press. halliday, michael a. k. 1978. language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. london: edward arnold. harvilahti, lauri 2000. variation and memory. in: honko, lauri, thick corpus, organic variation and textuality in oral tradition. studia fennica folkloristica 7. helsinki: finnish literature society, 57–75. hasan, ruqaiya 1989. linguistics, language, and verbal art. oxford: oxford university press. hollmérus, ragnar 1992. studier över allitterationen i eddan. helsinki: svenska litteratursällskapet i finland. honko, lauri; honko, anneli 1995. multiforms in epic composition. in: xith congress of the international society for folk-narrative research (isfnr), january 6–12, 1995, mysore, india. papers. mysore: central institute of indian languages, ii, 207–240. honko, lauri; honko, anneli 1998. multiforms in epic composition. in: honko, lauri; handoo, jawaharlal; foley, john miles, the epic: oral and written. mysore: central institute of indian languages, 31–79. honko, lauri 1995. multiformit ja pitkän eepoksen arvoitus. in: sananjalka 37, 117–145. honko, lauri 1998. textualizing the siri epic. ff communications 264. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. honko, lauri 2003. the maiden’s death song and the great wedding: anne vabarna’s oral twin epic written down by a.o. väisnen. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. hopkins, joseph 2014. goddesses unknown ii: ilmr. in: rmn newsletter 8, 32-38. jakobson, roman 1987 [1956]. two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances. in: jakobson, roman, language in literature, pomorska, krystyna; rudy, stephen (eds.). cambridge: harvard university press, 95–114. jónsson, finnur (ed.) 1967. den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning a–b. københavn: rosenkilde & bagger. kuhn, hans 1983. das dróttkvætt. heidelberg: carl winter. 70 frog lord, albert bates 1960. the singer of tales. harvard studies in comparative literature 24. cambridge: harvard university press. marold, edith 1983. kenningkunst: ein beitrag zu einer poetik der skaldendichtung. quellen und forschungen zur sprachund kulturgeschichte der germanischen völker, neue folge 80. berlin: de gruyter. meissner, rudolf 1921. die kenningar der skalden: ein beitrag zur skaldischen poetik. bonn: schroeder parry, milman 1928. l’épithète traditionnelle dans homère. paris: société d’éditions les belles lettres. price, neil s. 2002. the viking way: religion and war in late iron age scandinavia. uppsala: department of archaeology and ancient history. roper, jonathan 2012. synonymy and rank in alliterative poetry. in: sign systems studies 40(1/2), 82–93. saussure, ferdinand de 1967 [1916]. cours de linguistique générale. paris: éditions payot & rivages. siikala, anna-leena 1990 [1984]. interpreting oral narrative. ff communications 245. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica. skaldic database. url: http://abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php tolley, clive 1996. vǫrðr and gandr: helping spirits in norse magic. in: arkiv för nordisk filologi 110, 57–75. wills, tarrin 2009. the development of skaldic language. in: ney, agneta; williams, henrik; ljungqvist, fredrik charpentier (eds.), á austrvega: saga and east scandinavia. preprint papers of the 14th international saga conference, uppsala, 9th–15th august 2009. gävle: university of gävle, 1032–1038. wray, alison 2008. formulaic language: pushing the boundaries. oxford: oxford university press. wray, alison 2009. identifying formulaic language: persistent challenges and new opportunities. in: corrigan, roberta, et al. (eds.), formulaic language i–ii. typological studies in language 82–83. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing, i, 27–51. philip larkin and the stanza philip larkin and the stanza barry p. scherr*1 abstract. philip larkin, one of england’s finest poets among the generation that came of age during world war ii, maintained a strong interests in the formal features of verse throughout his career. this article marks the first comprehensive overview of his highly varied and frequently original use of one such feature, the stanza. a set of tables provides overall data about the relative frequency of different stanza lengths – in his four published poetry collections, in poems that he either published or planned to publish but did not appear in one of those collections, and in the unpublished verse. he turns out to have been a strikingly innovative master of stanza form. if many poets rely heavily on the quatrain as their favored stanza, larkin makes that only one of several stanza lengths that he turns to regularly. more importantly, he composes stanzas in innovative and imaginative ways. his forty sonnets – only eight of which appeared in his four collections – reveal a variety of rhyme schemes and, occasionally, unusual placement of the breaks between portions of the sonnet. in other poems, the rhyme schemes are often irregular, making the rhyme scheme difficult to detect, particularly in those cases when he employs highly approximate rhyme. much of his verse is also marked by frequent enjambement, even between stanzas. he occasionally links his stanzas and sometimes creates a rhyme scheme that has a different number of lines than the actual stanza length, resulting in markedly complex compositions. in all, larkin regularly uses his stanzas to highlights key aspects of a poem’s meaning, while the intricacy of many stanza structures forces his readers to consider poems more intently. keywords: philip larkin, english poetry, stanza, sonnet, rhyme, enjambement i. introduction and some statistics although philip larkin (1922–1985) published only a modest amount of verse during his lifetime, many in england came to regard him as one of the finest poets – if not the finest – of his generation. robert evans, after reviewing the response to larkin from the mid-1950s through the next decade, concluded that “as the 1960s ended, larkin had become england’s favourite living poet” * author’s address: barry p. scherr, dartmouth college, russian department, 6085 reed hall room 201, hanover, new hampshire 03755-3562, usa. e-mail address: barry.scherr@ dartmouth.edu. studia metrica et poetica 9.2, 2022, 7–62 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.01 mailto:barry.scherr@dartmouth.edu mailto:barry.scherr@dartmouth.edu https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2022.9.2.01 8 barry p. scherr (2017: 27). if anything, his renown only grew during the following decade. alan bennett said that when what turned out to be larkin’s last long poem, “aubade”, was published at the end of 1977 “i remember it being something of an event: you asked friends if they’d seen it. it was what it must have been like in the nineteenth century when poetry was news” (2015: 200). larkin became a rather controversial figure during the decade following his death, when the publication of his letters (larkin 1992) and then a biography by one of his literary executors (motion 1993) brought to light unattractive sentiments and behavior on his part. yet the poetry itself has remained highly regarded. james booth begins his study of larkin’s life and work by stating outright that “larkin is, by common consent, the best-loved british poet of the last century” (2014: 1). the poems, while frequently dark, have attracted wide admiration for larkin’s power of observation and his ability to address lofty matters through a probing exploration of everyday detail and happenings. while such aspects of his verse as meter, rhyme and stanza form may not make as immediate an impression as his subject matter, they are an intrinsic part of his poetic craft. in a 1964 interview, larkin (2001: 21), along with noting that some of his poems lacked meter and rhyme, stated “i think one would have to be very sure of oneself to dispense with the help that metre and rhyme give and i doubt i really could operate without them”. nearly a decade later, in a letter to barbara pym, he was more specific about the reasons for writing traditional verse: “rhyme & metre are such helps in concentrating one’s effects and also in evoking an emotional atmosphere” (larkin 1992: 490). more broadly, he has said, “at any level that matters, form and content are indivisible” (larkin 1983: 69). as these remarks indicate, larkin placed a high value on the formal qualities of verse, and the great majority of his poems reflect that concern. his interest in rhyme extended beyond the qualities of the rhymes themselves to the recurrent patterns of rhyme that appear in stanzas, which, as we shall see, reflect as high a level of artistry as other formal features of his verse. granted, few people return to his poems because they fondly recall the structure of a particular stanza. however, for larkin, as for many a poet, a poem is a complex construct of many elements, with a full appreciation of the work requiring awareness of not just the content but also the means of expression. to date, larkin’s use of stanzas has received only sporadic attention. some studies (e.g., timms 1973, booth 2014) include perceptive observations about larkin’s stanzas when discussing individual poems, and there have also been at least a couple of articles (gill 2019, miyauchi 2002) devoted to subsets of the stanzas that larkin employed.1 the 1 although miyauchi (2002) refers to “rhyme style” in his title, the article focuses as much if not more on the stanzas in a selection of larkin’s poems. to date that piece has offered the 9philip larkin and the stanza purpose of this essay is to offer a more comprehensive overview of larkin’s use of stanzas, with special attention to their variety and, in many cases, originality. an obstacle when approaching this topic is the lack of research devoted to the repertoire of formal features in other english poets, and in particular those poets – such as auden, yeats, and hardy – who were among those influencing larkin at various stages of his career.2 it is thus difficult to draw definite conclusions as to how much larkin followed his own path and how much he might have relied on his predecessors. as we shall see, at least one of his stanza forms directly imitated auden, and others may well have been inspired by hardy. however, the absence of detailed studies devoted to most english poets allows for only sporadic observations about his practice in comparison to that of others. the focus here, therefore, will be primarily on the breadth of stanza types found in larkin’s own poetry and their contribution to its excellence, with only very occasional reference to other poets. first, a few definitions. central to the very notion of stanza are the features of division and repetition. that is, for a poem to be stanzaic it should contain one or more divisions into groups of lines, and these groupings are repeated, with the number of lines regulated. the description and categorization of poems by stanza type – say, quatrain or octet – may at first seem to be an easy task. however, length is not the only significant feature of a stanza. a given stanza may be written in one or another meter, the number of possible rhyme schemes increases exponentially along with the length of the stanza, and partially rhymed as well as unrhymed stanzas are hardly uncommon. in some languages, such as russian, poets pay careful attention to the clausula – the number of syllables at the end of the line, beginning with the rhyme vowel. thus, a quatrain with lines rhyming abab (with a feminine or two-syllable clausula in the odd lines and a masculine or one-syllable clausula in the even lines) is perceived as different from a quatrain rhyming abab.3 a poem may be most wide-ranging discussion of larkin’s technique in constructing his stanzas. in addition to gill’s article, comments on larkin’s sonnets are to be found in regan (2019: 330–337). 2 the impact that these three poets had on larkin has long been noted. he himself has stated that auden’s verse informed his earliest writing, then for a period of three years in the mid-1940s he was under the sway of yeats, and finally, from 1946 on, the the most important figure for him became hardy (larkin 1983: 28–29). he said of becoming acquainted with hardy’s poems: “i was struck by their tunefulness and their feeling, and the sense that here was somebody writing about things i was beginning to feel myself ” (larkin 1983: 175). 3 for the most part i will use lower case letters to indicate rhyme schemes, but in those few cases when larkin throughout a poem distinguishes the various kinds of clausula, “a” is used for masculine rhyme, “a” for feminine, and “aʹ” for dactylic rhyme (that with a three-syllable clausula). i designate unrhymed lines by “x”. 10 barry p. scherr monostanzaic (with each of the four features repeated exactly from one stanza to the next) or heterostanzaic (where one or more features vary). then there are traditional stanza types, such as the sonnet, terza rima and triolet. of these, the tables below distinguish only the sonnet, which is by far the most frequent such stanza that larkin employed. the very few poems in other traditional forms are grouped with the rest possessing the same stanza length (e.g., terza rima is counted along with other three-line stanzas). differentiating between stanzaic and nonstanzaic poetry can present its own set of problems. for categorizing larkin’s poems, i have followed the conventions set forth in an article devoted to russian verse (scherr 1999). brief poems (those with no more than eight lines) that are not divided into stanzas appear in a distinct category: “short verse”. as a result, an eight-line undivided poem rhyming ababcdcd falls under “short verse”, while another eight-line poem consisting of two quatrains, each rhyming abab is stanzaic. although the difference may only seem to be typographical – whether or not there is a space dividing lines four and five – i follow the poet’s preference in determining if a work employs stanzas. similarly, longer poems that do not have spaces to demarcate stanzas are listed as “nonstanzaic” even if the same rhyme pattern (say, abba) is repeated throughout. poems divided into irregularly-sized sets of lines are also considered to be nonstanzaic. certain poems, which may border on nonstanzaic, contain groups of lines differing in length, but – typically because of similarities in the rhyme scheme – these groups exhibit a regularity that suggests a stanzaic impulse in their organization. these are termed “quasistanzaic”. while those appear as a separate category in the tables below, the emphasis in this article is on those works that are clearly stanzaic. just four slim volumes of larkin’s poetry were issued by publishers during his lifetime. his first book, the north ship, came out in 1945 and contained poems primarily written during 1943–1944, though a 1966 edition of that book added a poem, “waiting for breakfast”, from 1947. the collection that first brought him wide recognition, the less deceived, appeared in 1955; except for two poems from 1946, all its contents date from the early 1950s. his other two books were similarly delimited in terms of chronology. everything in the whitsun weddings (1964) was written between 1953 (represented by a single poem) and 1963, while high windows (1974) contains poems from the period 1964–1973. when works grouped under a single title reveal different stanza structures, i have regarded them as separate poems. thus, the five items appearing under the title “the north ship” in the volume of that name are counted as five poems, not one. even so, these four books contain a total of just 123 works. larkin also put together two collections that were not formally published. in the grip of light was compiled by 1948 but then rejected by several publishers. 11philip larkin and the stanza of its 25 poems – mostly from 1945–1946 (that is, after those found in the north ship) – seventeen did not appear in any of the four published volumes. in 1951 he privately printed xx poems, which included five that did not appear in his books. then there are some 34 additional poems that he published only in journals. adding in these works results in a total of 179 poems that he published or at least felt were worthy of appearing in a collection.4 finally, there is the unpublished poetry, which exceeds that which did appear in print by some margin. his complete verse (larkin 2012) includes nearly 200 additional works just from his early writing (1938–1945), poems from subsequent years that he either did not complete or chose not to publish, and various occasional verse, much of which comes from his correspondence.5 i have somewhat arbitrarily included only a portion of the items that were in his letters, since they are typically brief and not stanzaic. had i incorporated all such work in my tables, the amount of “short verse” among his unpublished poetry would be greater for the period 1946–1984 in table iii, but there would not be a significant effect on the relative number of different stanza lengths. anthony thwaite has claimed “that the earliest poems which strike his [larkin’s] characteristic note and carry his own voice were written in 1946” (larkin 1989: xv). he goes on to present poems written between 1946 and 1983 first, with the pre-1946 poems (including almost all those from the north ship) in a later section. while some of the earlier poems seem worthy of the later larkin, the great number of works from 1938 through 1945 that he chose not to publish served as a poetic apprenticeship and add little to his reputation. for that matter, on more than one occasion he also expressed strong doubts about the quality of his first book, the north ship, with its reliance on poems from the early 1940s.6 following thwaite’s example, i have placed the unpublished poetry dating from after 1945 in its own category, with table iii showing a further divide between the very earliest verse, written when larkin was just 16–18 years old, and that between 1941 and 1945, which includes the years when all the poems in the first edition of the north ship were created. while an argument can certainly be made for considering only those items that larkin himself felt 4 for the information in the preceding paragraphs, i am largely indebted to andrew thwaite’s introduction in larkin 1989: xv–xxiii. 5 i have made frequent use of the extensive commentary that archie burnett has supplied for the poems in this volume. 6 for instance, in 1965 he remarks to an editor at faber and faber, which eventually published the second edition of the north ship, that the poems in that book “are such compete rubbish, for the most part, that i am just twice as unwilling to have two editions in print as i am to have one” (larkin 1992: 374). 12 barry p. scherr worthy of appearing in print, surveying the full range of his verse reveals more about his development as a poet and also incorporates some fine works that for whatever reason he either decided not to publish or left unfinished. table i. stanza types in the four published volumes7 stanza form: the north ship the less deceived the whitsun weddings high windows totals: 2-line – – – – – 3-line – 3 (48) 4 (48) 3 (61) 10 (157) 4-line 4 (32) 4 (84) 5 (116) 6 (92) 19 (324) 5-line 3 (35) 6 (141) 3 (45) 2 (50) 14 (271) 6-line 3 (42) 3 (72) 5 (126) 5 (156) 16 (396) 7-line 2 (28) 1 (21) 1 (14) 2 (85) 6 (148) 8-line 6 (156) 2 (56) 9 (256) 4 (136) 21 (604) 9-line 1 (18) 1 (63) – 1 (36) 3 (117) 10+-line 1 [11] (33) – 3 [10, 10, 16] (30, 80, 32) 1 [12] (48) 5 (223) sonnets 5 (70) 1 (14) – 2 (28) 8 (112) all stanzaic 25 (414) 21 (499) 30 (747) 26 (692) 102 (2352) short verse 4 (26) 1 (8) – – 5 (34) quasistanzaic 3 (62) 2 (42) 1 (22) – 6 (126) nonstanzaic 4 (62) 5 (87) 1 (10) – 10 (159) total 36 (564) 29 (636) 32 (779) 26 (692) 123 (2671) the raw data for the four published volumes reveal a striking diversity in larkin’s choice of stanza types (see table i). in addition, from one book to the next a consistently growing portion of the poems are written in stanzas, until by high windows all of them are. as ernst häublein (1978: 23) has noted, the quatrain is the favored stanza of poets writing in any of the european traditions. for example, a survey of stanza forms employed by representative 7 the first number in each box shows the number of poems; the number in parentheses gives the number of lines. larkin occasionally has one of more extra lines at the end of a poem, so that the number of lines is not always evenly divisible by the stanza length. for instance, “i remember, i remember” in the less deceived contains 36 lines: seven five-line stanzas, along with an extra line at the end. the numbers in square brackets for the “10+-line” stanzas represent the actual lengths of the stanzas in the poems being referenced. 13philip larkin and the stanza russian poets over two centuries has shown that nearly two-thirds of the stanzaic verse employed quatrains (scherr 2014: 34, appendix). in larkin’s case, though, quatrains only account for less than 1/5 of the stanzaic poems (19 of 102) and even appear in slightly fewer poems than do eight-line stanzas. sixline, five-line and three-line stanzas are also well represented (with some of the three-line stanza poems written in or based on terza rima). if the frequency of seven-line stanzas is not particularly high in absolute terms, larkin nonetheless employs this relatively uncommon form more often than most poets and furthermore, as we shall see, creates some unique combinations with stanzas of that length. stanzas of more than eight lines are rare in modern verse. granted, the nine-line spenserian stanza (ababbcbcc) has continued to find favor with some poets, but larkin’s three poems with nine-line stanzas in the four volumes instead employ rhyme schemes of his own invention. of the poems from these volumes written in still longer stanzas, two contain ten lines and one each have 11, 12 and 16 (!) lines. examining the number of lines (rather than the number of poems) in each stanza length reveals that, on average, poems with shorter stanzas have fewer lines and those with longer stanzas have more. for instance, the nineteen poems in four-line stanzas average about seventeen lines, those in six-line stanzas just under 25 lines, and the works in eight-line stanzas nearly 29. the eight sonnets suggest an interest in that form, but it is worth noting that five of them come from the north ship, suggesting that his interest in sonnets dates primarily from his earlier period. one form absent from the collections is the couplet, a stanza that larkin did not use in any of his published verse.8 since the quantity of poems in each volume is small, it is necessary to be cautious in generalizing about the differences between them. nonetheless, a few features stand out. the north ship, the one book with poems from what anthony thwaite has termed the time before larkin found his voice as a poet, differs from the others in several respects. not only does it contain a relative abundance of sonnets, but it also lacks any three-line stanzas, is the only 8 as mentioned above, to the best of my knowledge similar studies for the poets whom larkin most admired do not exist. however, even a glance at the works of yeats, auden and hardy reveals that all three, like larkin, used a wide variety of stanza forms and did not rely heavily on quatrains. an examination of one book by hardy (satires of circumstance, lyrics and reveries, with miscellaneous pieces, 1914, as published in hardy 2001: 301–423) shows that fewer than a third of the 106 poems are in quatrains, along with sixteen poems in six-line stanzas, twelve each in five-line and eight-line stanzas, and ten in three-line. the collection even has seven poems in the relatively uncommon seven-line stanzas and three in nine-line. only a half-dozen of the poems appear to be nonstanzaic or quasi-stanzaic. larkin’s broad range of stanza lengths can thus also be found in english poets he admired, but the complexity and variety of forms within each length employed by him are distinctive. 14 barry p. scherr collection with a significant number of short poems, has more nonstanzaic verse than the other collections, and its stanzaic poems are somewhat shorter (averaging 16.8 lines, as opposed to the mid 20s in the three later volumes). at certain periods, perhaps not surprisingly, larkin tends to favor a particular stanza length. nearly one-third of all his stanzaic verse in the whitsun weddings employs eight-line stanzas, while the less deceived has more poems in five-line stanzas than any other length, even though they are overall only his fourth most widely used stanza in his books of verse. table ii. unpublished poems from planned collections and journal publications9 stanza form: itgol; xx poems journals 1938–1945 journals 1946–1984 subtotal four volumes totals: 2-line – – – – – – 3-line – 1 (75) 1 (11) 2 (86) 10 (157) 12 (243) 4-line 4 (60) 2 (40) 4 (80) 10 (180) 19 (324) 29 (504) 5-line 4 (50) – 1 (25) 5 (75) 14 (271) 19 (346) 6-line 3 (48) 2 (36) 1 (18) 6 (102) 16 (396) 22 (498) 7-line – – – – 6 (148) 6 (148) 8-line 3 (152) – 3 (64) 6 (216) 21 (604) 27 (820) 9-line – 2 (45) – 2 (45) 3 (117) 5 (162) 10+-line – – 1 [10] (50) 1 (50) 5 (223) 6 (273) sonnets 6 (84) – 6 (84) 8 (112) 14 (196) all stanzaic 14 (310) 13 (280) 11 (248) 38 (838) 102 (2352) 140 (3190) short verse – – 5 (26) 5 (26) 5 (34) 10 (60) quasistanzaic 2 (58) – 1 (10) 3 (68) 6 (126) 9 (194) nonstanzaic 6 (118) 2 (30) 2 (62) 10 (210) 10 (159) 20 (369) total 22 (486) 15 (310) 19 (346) 56 (1142) 123 (2671) 179 (3813) 9 the first column represents the seventeen poems from in the grip of light and the five from xx poems that were not published in any of larkin’s four books. two of the seventeen and one of the five did appear in journals, but they are counted in this column rather than with the journal publications. 15philip larkin and the stanza the remainder of his poetry that was either published in journals or intended for the collections in the grip of light and xx poems (and not subsequently published elsewhere) does not markedly change the picture (see table ii). considering that there are just 56 such poems, the range of stanzas remains impressively broad, especially given that only 38 of them – a significantly smaller percentage than in the four published volumes – are clearly written in stanzas. once again, no one type clearly stands out: nine of the poems are quatrains, six-line stanzas appear in seven of the poems, and eight-line stanzas in six, while five employ five-line stanzas. a further six poems are sonnets, but all are from the pre-1946 journal publications, again emphasizing that the bulk of his interest in that form came early. perhaps the most notable feature is the increased percentage of nonstanzaic poems: if only 10 of the 123 poems in the four collections are nonstanzaic, here they appear with more than twice the frequency (10 of the 56). similarly, short poems (5 of 56) occur at twice the rate as in the four books (5 of 123), and, unlike the sonnets, these all come from his later period (in fact, three of the five were written after high windows, his last collection, was published), indicative of an increased tendency to write short works toward the end of his career. the first three columns of table iii provide figures for the works during each period that were neither published nor intended for publication in either in the grip of light or xx poems. the fourth column gives totals for each stanza length within these poems, the fifth column reproduces the last column in table ii, while the final column in table iii shows the totals for each stanza type in all the poems by larkin examined for this survey. tables iv and iva, to allow for a greater focus on the four published books of verse, compare just the works that appeared in those volumes with the works that were neither published nor intended for publication. as table iv makes clear, his four volumes contain a higher percentage of stanzaic verse than does his unpublished poetry, with table iii revealing that the specifically nonstanzaic poems were most frequent during the early years of his career (1938–1945). the unpublished poems from his post-1945 writing, like those published only in journals during that time, reflect his proclivity for writing poems with fewer lines, despite a handful of long works. not only does he come to write much short verse (especially among the occasional works that appeared in his letters), but even the stanzaic poems that remained in his notebooks are relatively brief: the 24 poems in quatrains average a little over 15 lines, the seven in fiveline stanzas just over twelve (!) lines, and even the eight in eight-line stanzas average only 23 lines table iii, third column). contrast these numbers with the three volumes that he published from 1945 on: there the total of fifteen quatrains averaged 19.5 lines, the eleven poems in five-line stanzas 21.5 lines, 16 barry p. scherr and the fifteen with eight-line stanzas 29.9 lines. overall, the works that larkin did not publish were more likely to be composed in quatrains: nearly a third of the stanzaic poems, as compared to less than a fifth in his books of poetry. a correspondingly lower percentage of eight-line stanzas appears in the unpublished verse. while the absolute numbers are small, the unpublished verse also displays a tendency to employ stanzas with an odd number of lines less frequently. interestingly, while larkin wrote sonnets throughout his career, he became ever more selective in publishing them. of the 28 sonnets that he composed before 1946, he published eleven (six in periodicals, five in the north ship), or just under 40%. from the late 1940s on, he wrote another twelve sonnets but published just three (or one-fourth) of them (one in the less deceived and two in high windows. table iii. unpublished poems versus published in collection or journals stanza form: 1938– 1940 1941– 1945 1946– 1984 subtotal collection/ or journal publication totals: 2-line 2 (14) – 1 (12) 3 (26) – 3 (26) 3-line 3 (48) 5 (66) 6 (81) 14 (195) 12 (243) 26 (438) 4-line 22 (500) 16 (360) 24 (370) 62 (1230) 29 (504) 91 (1734) 5-line 8 (170) 5 (101) 7 (85) 20 (356) 19 (346) 39 (702) 6-line 12 (354) 13 (258) 11 (246) 36 (858) 22 (498) 58 (1356) 7-line 3 (91) 2 (63) 1 (28) 6 (182) 6 (148) 12 (330) 8-line 6 (253) 8 (304) 8 (184) 22 (741) 27 (820) 49 (1561) 9-line – – 1 (29) 1 (29) 5 (162) 6 (191) 10+-line 5 [3:10, 2:12] (108) 1 [20] (40) 3 [10, 11, 13] (212) 9 (360) 6 (273) 15 (633) sonnets 11 (154) 6 (84) 9 (126) 26 (364) 14 (196) 40 (560) all stanzaic 72 (1692) 56 (1276) 71 (1373) 199 (4341) 140 (3190) 339 (7531) short verse 3 (17) 14 (88) 31 (185) 48 (290) 10 (60) 58 (350) quasistanzaic 4 (93) 4 (79) 5 (73) 13 (245) 9 (194) 22 (439) nonstanzaic 14 (253) 25 (475) 10 (122) 49 (850) 20 (369) 69 (1219) total 93 (2055) 99 (1978) 117 (1753) 309 (5726) 179 (3813) 488 (9539) 17philip larkin and the stanza table iv. frequency of verse types in four volumes versus unpublished poems stanza form: four volumes percentage of total unpublished percentage of total all stanzaic 102 (2352) 82.9% (88.1%) 199 (4341) 64.4% (75.8%) short verse 5 (34) 4.1 (1.2) 48 (290) 15.5 (5.1) quasi-stanzaic 6 (126) 4.9 (4.7) 13 (245) 4.2 (4.3) nonstanzaic 10 (159) 8.1 (6.0) 49 (850) 15.9 (14.8) total 123 (2671) 100.0 (100.0) 309 (5726) 100.0 (100.0) table iva. relative frequency of stanza lengths in four volumes versus unpublished poems stanza form: four volumes percentage of total unpublished percentage of total 2-line – – 3 (26) 1.5% (0.6%) 3-line 10 (157) 9.8% (6.7%) 14 (195) 7.0 (4.5) 4-line 19 (324) 18.6 (13.8) 62 (1230) 31.2 (28.3) 5-line 14 (271) 13.7 (11.5) 20 (356) 10.1 (8.2) 6-line 16 (396) 15.7 (16.8) 36 (858) 18.1 (19.8) 7-line 6 (148) 5.9 (6.3) 6 (182) 3.0 (4.2) 8-line 21 (604) 20.6 (25.7) 22 (741) 11.1 (17.1) 9-line 3 (117) 2.9 (5.0) 1 (29) 0.5 (0.7) 10+-line 5 (223) 4.9 (9.5) 9 (360) 4.5 (8.3) sonnets 8 (112) 7.8 (4.8) 26 (364) 13.1 (8.4) all stanzaic 102 (2352) 100 (100.1) 199 (4341) 100.0 (100.1) what might all this mean? during his early period, his poetic apprenticeship, he falls back with greater frequency on nonstanzaic verse. that early period in general and the unpublished poetry throughout his career show him relying relatively heavily on the quatrain, that most common of stanza lengths, as well as on the familiar form of the sonnet. however, those poems that he regarded as suitable for publication, especially during the mature portion of his career, reveal a definite proclivity for less typical stanza forms, such as those with an odd number of lines – and for rhyme patterns that are highly unusual as well as sometimes unique. the distinction between the published and unpublished verse is far from absolute. even among the early poems that never found their 18 barry p. scherr way into print during his lifetime, larkin sometimes makes the structure of his stanzas a prominent feature, occasionally borrowing complicated rhyme schemes from other poets or experimenting with unusual combinations of his own devising. in his later verse, he more regularly made his stanza forms a key component in many of his best poems, as a result becoming ever more rigorous in their selection and construction. the following examination of larkin’s stanzas begins with the one traditional form that he used often: the sonnet. even though he published just three sonnets after 1945, he wrote a sufficient number of them throughout his career to provide a window into both his early and subsequent use of stanza forms. this section is followed by an examination of his shorter stanzas, containing from three to six lines, where the space for innovation is somewhat limited but larkin nonetheless comes up with some impressive innovations. the latter part of this article contains analyses of his sevenand eight-line stanzas and then, as a group, those containing more than eight lines. along the way i note a few of larkin’s metrical predilections and comment on his rhyming practice, including the approximate rhymes that at times make it difficult to distinguish the structure of his stanzas. in choosing illustrative poems, i favor his last three volumes of published verse, which contain the vast bulk of the poems on which his reputation rests. however, to provide a more complete picture of how he utilized stanzas, reference is made as well to some of his earlier poetry, as well as to unpublished works from the latter part of his career. ii. the sonnets in the only article to date devoted totally to larkin’s sonnets, patrick gill (2019) suggests that his engagement with that form had a determining effect on his poetry. the poet found it necessary to “strain against not only the sonnet’s most prominent structural features but also against the readerly expectations they engender in order to thwart the sonnet’s drive towards resolution” (2019: 94). to an extent, this comment could apply as well to what larkin does with other stanza forms, where he frequently tends to subvert norms. in gill’s reckoning (2019: 86) there is a total of thirty-two sonnets, whereas i have counted forty – though one or two of my instances deviate far enough from the classical form that their inclusion can be considered dubious. in any case, larkin composed an impressively large number of sonnets, mostly written during the earlier years of his career. while gill is especially concerned with thematic matters and the ways in which larkin develops his arguments, he also makes 19philip larkin and the stanza important observations regarding the sonnets’ formal features. in particular, he notes that larkin not infrequently experimented with the form of the sonnet from the start, and that those experiments account for a large percentage of the sonnets from the early period that he deemed worthy of publication. thus, from the beginning larkin was interested not just in form but also in manipulating form, whether to defy the existing norms or simply for the sake of invention. one of his first two published poems is a largely conventional shakespearean (or english) sonnet: “winter nocturne” (1938; larkin 2012: 99), with the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg. while he also has other poems from the late 1930s or early 1940s based on the shakespearean model, the majority of his sonnets consist of variations on the petrarchan (italian) sonnet, which has the classic form abbaabba in the octet and a sestet with some pattern of cde rhymes. poets writing in english, owing to its paucity of ready rhymes, have often used four rhyme pairs in the octet (e.g., ababcdcd or abbacddc) followed by the sestet.10 although “winter nocturne” adheres precisely to the shakespearean pattern and larkin’s petrarchan sonnets often employ its archetypal 8+6 structure, he quickly became more adventurous in his approach, frequently deviating from either model. at the same time, except for a few aberrant lines, he essentially maintains a traditional feature of the sonnet: the use of iambic pentameter. his playing with the form of the shakespearean sonnet appears in “so through that unripe day you bore your head...” (1943–1944; larkin 2012: 20), one of the five sonnets included in the north ship. a space divides the poem into groups of ten and four lines, so that a break occurs in the middle of the third quatrain: ababcdcdef / efgg. rather than set off the final couplet, larkin has a strong enjambement connecting lines 12 and 13 (“[...] and can be faced / indoors”). also evident is larkin’s early experimentation with approximate rhyme. it requires a moment’s study to realize that the end words of the last six lines (belief, past, safe, faced, hour, winter) rhyme in the sequence efefgg. the unpublished “schoolmaster” (1940; larkin 2012: 162) is divided into groups of seven, three, and four lines. the exactly rhymed final couplet, set off both syntactically and semantically, suggests that the work is meant to be shakespearean. however, the first two quatrains exhibit enclosed rhyme – abbacddc – rather than the alternating rhyme typical of the shakespearean sonnet. furthermore, lines 9–12 end with the following words: “desperate / silenced it / favourite / intimate”. following on the example of the first two 10 for a brief survey of the sonnet’s early history and forms, see regan (2019: 5–11). see the appendix to this article for a listing of larkin’s sonnets and their rhyme schemes. 20 barry p. scherr quatrains, the intended scheme is probably effe (more precisely, eʹfʹfʹeʹ, given that all the rhymes are dactylic), but, in light of larkin’s penchant for approximate rhyme, the four lines could be said to rhyme eeee or efef. such ambiguity, which can occur with modern rhyme practice when it is not always obvious what is meant to rhyme with what, has been analyzed by the russian scholar vadim baevsky (1972) and termed “shadow rhyme”, where alternate readings of a rhyme scheme are possible. in addition, this poem also contains lines (including one with as many as seventeen syllables) that fall outside the norm for iambic pentameter. the also unpublished “flesh to flesh was loving from the start...” (1942; larkin 2012: 208) has a division of lines that would be typical for a shakespearian sonnet – 4+4+4+2 – but the rhyme scheme is highly unusual, while the rhymes themselves are approximate. below are the first two quatrains: flesh to flesh was loving from the start, a but only to itself, and could not calm b my skeleton of glass that sits and starves, c nor my marsh hand that sets my music out: d [a] it is not kissing at the acid root a where my bald spirit found a crying home, b nor my starved blood that your excitement loves, c and wears all brilliant badged upon your coat: d [a] the first lines of all three quatrains rhyme, as do the second, third and fourth lines, so the scheme for the entire poem seems to be abcd abcd abcd ee. however, since the “a” and “d” rhymes are both based on the consonant “t” – and since “start” in line 1 forms an exact rhyme with “heart” in the fourth line of stanza 3, it is just as – if not more – likely that the rhyme scheme should be described as abca abca abca dd. again, we have in instance of shadow rhyme. the scheme is sufficiently unique that there may be some hesitancy in classifying the poem as a sonnet, though the fourteen lines, the 4+4+4+2 division, and the iambic pentameter all suggest the sonnet form. sometimes it is difficult to ascertain whether larkin was following either model, the more so because he tended to use an ababcdcd rhyme scheme over the first eight lines in either case. “ultimatum” (larkin 2012: 103), a poem that was written and published in 1940 (but not in any of larkin’s collections), is notable not only for the 7+3+4 grouping of the lines (as in “schoolmaster”), but also for concluding with three rhyme couplets – eeffgg – which is unusual 21philip larkin and the stanza for both main sonnet types. “the conscript” (1940; larkin 2012: 157 [not to be confused with the sonnet “conscript”, 1941; larkin 2012: 7]) has the conventional 8+6 layout of the petrarchan sonnet, but the same rhyme scheme as “ultimatum”, a similarity noted by regan (2019: 330–331). a significant feature of “the conscript” is the presence of enjambement after each of the poem’s first five lines. larkin in general employs enjambement quite frequently – at times even at the boundary between stanzas – and, as we shall see, long series of lines without syntactic breaks at the end can be found throughout his career. “there is no language of destruction for...” (1940; larkin 2012: 185) has the three concluding couplets of the previous two poems, but the rhymes in the first eight lines are enclosed, rather than alternating, as shown below. larkin further complicates matters by repeating the “a” rhyme in lines five and eight: there is no language of destruction for a the use of the chaotic; silence the only b path for those hysterical and lonely. b that upright beauty cannot banish fear, a or wishing help the weak to gain the fair a is reason for it: that the skilled event, c gaining applause, cannot a death prevent, c short-circuits impotent who travel far. a as in some other instances, larkin bases the “a” rhyme on consonants (here, “f ’” and “r”), while the vowels differ. had he repeated the “b” rhyme as well, he would have had a classical petrarchan octet. even when poems essentially follow the petrarchan rhyme scheme for both the octet and the sestet, the grouping of lines may be irregular. in “story” (1941; larkin 2012: 104) he divides the lines into 8+5+1, with that lone final line providing an effective thematic closure (“but he forgot all this as he grew older.”). “rupert brooke” (1940; larkin 2012: 168), despite the division of lines into a conventional 8+6 grouping, defies expectations in a different way. most of larkin’s rhymes are monosyllabic (masculine); those rhymes with two or three syllables generally appear occasionally and with no clear ordering. but in this poem, surely not by accident, he begins with two sets of dactylic rhymes followed by two sets of feminine: “poetry / happily”, “influence / eloquence”, “garden / taken”, “tahiti / quickly”. the actual rhyme pattern is aʹb ʹb ʹa ʹcddcefgfʹeg. in a somewhat later poem, “neurotics” (1949; larkin 2012: 266) larkin links the two halves of the octet by employing interlocking rhyme: 22 barry p. scherr no one gives you a thought, as day by day a you drag your feet, clay-thick with misery. b none think how stalemate in you grinds away, a holding your spinning wheels an inch too high c to bite on earth. the mind, it’s said, is free: b but not your minds. they, rusted stiff, admit d only what will accuse or horrify, c like slot machines only bent pennies fit. d the irregular pattern of the rhymes underscores the content. as we shall see, such linkage also appears, often in quite imaginative ways, in some of the works that employ other stanza forms. “neurotics” remained unpublished, as did all but three of the other sonnets that larkin wrote from 1949 on. while the twelve sonnets of his mature period do not seem like many, his overall productivity had also decreased. in fact, among the unpublished writings the frequency of sonnets declines only slightly. his unpublished stanzaic poetry from 1946 on consisted of 71 poems (table iii). the nine unpublished sonnets over those years accounts for 12.7% of those works, as opposed to sonnets comprising 13.1% of the unpublished stanzaic poetry over his entire career (table iva). rather, the reduction in his use of the form appears primarily within his published poetry. if six of the thirteen stanzaic poems he published in journals from 1938 to 1945 were sonnets as were five of the 25 stanzaic poems in the north ship, they account for none of the eleven poems he published in journals after 1945 and for only three of the 77 stanzaic poems in the three mature collections. the only post-1945 sonnet that displays a clear break with the usual rhyme schemes is “neurotics”, though larkin does exhibit variety in his composition of the sestet: the twelve poems from this period contain eight different rhyme schemes in that portion of the poem. all but one of the seven sonnets that he wrote between 1949 and 1953 divide into clusters of 8+6. the sole exception, “spring” (1950; larkin 2012: 40), turns out to be the only sonnet from those years that he published. it divides 8+3+3 and has a rhyme scheme in the sestet (eff / geg) that does not appear in any of his 39 other sonnets. for the next eight years larkin does not write sonnets at all. gill (2019: 92) observes that the next three sonnets, all composed between december 1961 and january 1962, do not break new ground in terms of either form or content. true enough, but in each larkin deviates at least in minor ways from his usual practice. although “hotter shorter days arrive, like happiness...” (1961; larkin 2012: 301) contains unusual rhyming in the sestet (efgfge), which he used only one other time in his sonnets, it is more notable for its rhythm. trochaic lines 23philip larkin and the stanza appear at the beginning of both the octet and the sestet, while others start with choriambs. the result is a heavy emphasis on the opening syllable of the line throughout the poem as well as an unusual degree of departure from the iambic rhythm preferred in his sonnets. while “january” (1962; larkin 2012: 302) has a rhyme scheme befitting a sonnet, larkin places the typographical break after line 6, creating a 6+8 structure. the third of these, “and now the leaves suddenly lose strength...” (1961; larkin 2012: 301), has its break occur not after but in the middle of line 8.11 the two final sonnets that larkin published again show him tinkering with its conventional form. as with his earlier sonnets (cf. gill 2019: 87), larkin was more inclined to publish those sonnets that deviated from the standard presentation. “friday night in the royal station hotel” (1966; larkin 2012: 80–81) has a very typical sonnet rhyme scheme but with a space after line 9 instead of line 8. light spreads darkly downwards from the high a clusters of lights over empty chairs b that face each other, coloured differently. a through open doors, the dining-room declares b a larger loneliness of knives and glass c and silence laid like carpet. a porter reads d an unsold evening paper. hours pass, c and all the salesmen have gone back to leeds, d leaving full ashtrays in the conference room. e in shoeless corridors, the lights burn. how f isolated, like a fort, it is – g the headed paper, made for writing home e (if home existed) letters of exile: now f night comes on. waves fold behind villages. g while a mood of emptiness and isolation persists throughout the poem, the break between sections is heightened by having the first part end with a line whose rhyme partner does not appear until after the gap. regan (2019: 336) 11 “and now the leaves suddenly lose strength...” was first published in larkin 1989: 139, with several errors in transcribing the workbook draft, of which the most serious is the placement of two words from line 9 at the end of line 8, leaving the word at the end of line 6 without its rhyme partner and significantly altering the overall rhyme scheme of the poem. see bullock’s commentary in larkin 2012: 630. 24 barry p. scherr further suggests that this 9+5 layout “subtly intimates the poem’s preoccupation with duration”. of note is the rhythm at the start of the poem, about which larkin himself remarked: “‘facing’ should be ‘that face’, i think, to get it into rhythm (syllable missing in both lines 1 and 2)” (larkin 2012: 452). the change from “facing” in the version that was originally published in a newspaper shows larkin concerned with firmly establishing the iambic rhythm not too far into the poem. line 1 is in fact trochaic, while line 2 begins with a choriamb and would need a monosyllabic word between “lights” and “over” to become a regular iambic pentameter (hence larkin’s remark that each of those lines is missing a syllable). however, he was willing to forgo metrical perfection in favor of the immediacy conveyed by the sharpness of the wording. the other of these late works, “the card-players” (1970; larkin 2012: 84), is the first sonnet since the earliest years of larkin’s poetic career to begin with enclosed rhyme (abbacddc), and the sestet similarly employs a scheme (efeggf ) that he also had not used in many years. (he had, though, once used the same rhyme scheme for an entire sonnet: “observation” [1941; larkin 2012: 105]). the most unorthodox feature of “the card-players” is the separation of just the final line of the poem from the rest, so that the lines divide 13+1. miyauchi (2002: 71) points out that the isolated last line – “rain, wind and fire! the secret, bestial peace!” – functions something like the concluding couplet of a shakespearean sonnet. gill (2019: 92–93) further notes that the line’s set of exclamations, rather than complete sentences, help isolate it from the rest in terms of syntax, style, and prosody. there is also a subtle difference in terms of rhyme. all the other rhymes in the poem are exact and separated by no more than two lines. however, “trees”, the word rhyming with “peace”, is separated from it by three lines, and the final consonants in these words are not identical but instead comprise a voiced/voiceless pair.12 this unconventional and extreme isolation of the poem’s final line serves as yet another example of larkin’s finding creative ways to refresh a well-established genre. many of the unusual features that appear in larkin’s sonnets – and in the other types of stanzas discussed below – are evident only upon reading a poem, not hearing it. larkin, in fact, felt that the way to become acquainted with a poem was to read it. “hearing a poem, as opposed to reading it on the page, you miss so much – the shape, the punctuation, the italics, even knowing how far you are from the end” (larkin 1983: 61). he saw recitation as only of limited value: “i suppose that an actual reading of a poem by its author can 12 booth (2014: 361) remarks that the difference in sound between these words leaves the last line “effectively unrhymed”. 25philip larkin and the stanza be helpful: you can hear where he puts the stresses, whether he sounds ironic or flippant or serious. you go back to the text with a firmer grasp on what he meant”. while sound is certainly important, “any adult reader ought to be able to imagine [the sound of a poem] as he reads with the eye” (larkin 2001: 37). the placement of typographical breaks, the discernment of unusual rhyme schemes, the recognition of a rhyme word placed far from its partner, the conflict between enjambement and line endings – all these are matters that would be difficult or impossible to perceive upon just hearing a poem, but larkin was writing for readers. iii. three-, four-, fiveand six-line stanzas most of the poems in three-line stanzas that larkin wrote early in his career had a basic aaa rhyme pattern, but by the 1950s he was regularly finding other possibilities for stanzas of this length. two exceptions among the earlier poems are “midsummer night, 1940” (larkin 2012: 156–157) and “this triumph ended in the curtained head” (1942, larkin 2012: 204). the former is a poem in ten 3-line stanzas that rhyme abc cba bde edb def fed ..., creating a complex chain of rhymes: in each pair of stanzas, the two middle lines rhyme, as do the first line of the first stanza with the last line of the second and the last line of the first with the first line of the second. in addition, the middle rhyme of one pair then appears at the beginning and end of the next pair. i“this triumph ended...” starts with two unrhymed lines before initiating a rhyme chain that links all the stanzas. xxa bab cbc dbd bx. in his later verse larkin looks to terza rima, the one traditional form besides the sonnet in which he showed more than a passing interest. it provided the direct model for a couple of poems and seems to have inspired the structure of others. “whatever happened” (1953; larkin 2012: 34), from the less deceived, is a terza rima sonnet, combining features of both traditional forms. this type of poem employs the interlocking rhymes of terza rima, but instead of an indeterminate length it consists of precisely four tercets followed by a concluding couplet (rather than the single final line of the traditional terza rima). the rhyme scheme for the poem, written in the iambic pentameter traditional for this form, is aba / bcb / cdc / ded / ee.13 his unpublished poetry from the 1950s includes “behind time” (1956; 13 on the terza rima sonnet see turco 2012:364. while such works straddle both forms, the interlocking rhyme suggests classifying them with other terza rima poems rather than with sonnets. regan (2019: 334–335), though, discusses the poem along with larkin’s other sonnets. 26 barry p. scherr larkin 2012: 295), a 10-line parody in terza rima, and the unfinished “a sense of shape” (1955; larkin 2012: 290), which rhymes aba / cbc / dbd..., with the same “b” rhyme extending throughout the five completed stanzas and suggesting the influence of the villanelle (which, however, would also maintain the same “a” rhyme throughout). two poems in the whitsun weddings would appear to have been influenced by the interlocking stanzas of terza rima. the twelve lines of “talking in bed” (1960; larkin 2012: 61), which rhyme axa / bab / cbc / ddd, bear more than a passing resemblance to the terza rima pattern, which would be aba / bcb / cdc / ded. larkin possibly came up with the rhyme pattern by applying the typical terza rima formula backwards over the first three stanzas: the middle line of stanza 3 provides the rhyme for the first and last line in stanza 2, and the middle line stanza 2 does the same for stanza 1. as miyauchi (2002: 63–65) has pointed out, the odd, “unstable” structure of the stanzas in a way reflects the thorny relationship of the lovers in the poem. “for sidney bechet” (1954; larkin 2012: 54), dedicated to a jazz musician much admired by larkin, seemingly resembles terza rima for its first five lines, but turns out to go in a different direction. below is the poem in its entirety: that note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes a like new orleans reflected on the water, b and in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes, a building for some a legendary quarter b of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles, c everyone making love and going shares – d oh, play that thing! mute glorious storyvilles c others may license, grouping around their chairs d sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced e far above rubies) to pretend their fads, f while scholars manqués nod around unnoticed e wrapped up in personnels like old plaids. f on me your voice falls as they say love should, g like an enormous yes. my crescent city h is where your speech alone is understood, g and greeted as the natural noise of good, g scattering long-haired grief and scored pity. h 27philip larkin and the stanza the logic behind the rhyme scheme may not at first be obvious, but it is based on a principle that larkin was to employ to startling effect with longer stanzas as well: applying a rhyme scheme that does not coincide with the length of the stanza. the rhyme scheme repeats every four lines, not three, over the first twelve lines: aba b/cd cd/e fef, where “/” delineates the borders of the rhyme units. the usage of a five-line unit (ghggh) at the end was possibly meant to serve as a sign of closure.14 not all the later poems in three-line stanzas show the influence of terza rima. “if, my darling” (1951; larkin 2012: 43–44) consists of eight stanzas where the pattern is axa, with the middle line unrhymed, and the rhymes are often approximate in various ways: “decide / head” with the consonants carrying the rhyme; “betrayal / all”, where the final syllable in the first word of the rhyme pair is not stressed; and both types of approximation in “light / coagulate”. sometimes larkin eschews rhyme entirely, as in “the explosion” (1970; larkin 2012: 95), the final poem in high windows, where he has a single line at the end, as though in imitation of terza rima.15 more often, though, in his mature poetry he tests various possibilities of rhyme. another poem in high windows, “sad steps” (1968; larkin 2012: 89), extends its rhyming over each pair of the poem’s six stanzas: aba / bba. the stanzas may have three lines, but the rhyme sequence contains six. in all, then, larkin was able to find a rich variety even within the confines of this very brief stanza form. as already noted, four-line stanzas account for a little less than one-third of the stanzaic poems that larkin never published or collected (table iva) but are much less prevalent in his four published volumes, reflecting what appears to have been a tendency toward greater variety and originality among those works that he regarded as his most successful. his poems written in four-line stanzas, whether published or not, reveal only occasional attempts at going beyond familiar stanza structures. as with most poets, he prefers alternating rhyme in his four-line stanzas (abab) but also occasionally uses both abba and aabb. a few of these works are unrhymed, and others rhyme only the even lines. some of his more interesting effects with these stanzas involve his use of meters, rather than rhyme. while he regarded the iambic pentameter as 14 larkin labored over this final portion. the workbooks suggest the poem initially lacked the final two lines and that he spent some time working on the fifth stanza – the ghg sequence – as well as on additional lines (larkin 2012: 404; cf. tolley 1997: 174, who surmises that the poem was only finally completed in typescript). 15 larkin partly compensates for the lack of rhyme by his effective use of meter. the sudden appearance of iambic tetrameter at line 13 of a heretofore trochaic tetrameter poem signals the instant of the explosion. brownjohn (1975: 25–26) has remarked on the effectiveness of this rhythmical change in foregrounding that event. 28 barry p. scherr canonical for the sonnet and often turned to that meter in his stanzas with eight or more lines, his four-line stanzas are composed in a wide range of meters and generally in shorter lines than the pentameter. for instance, “within a voice said: cry!...” (1939; larkin 2012: 140–141), which rhymes abba, is in iambic trimeter throughout, while “modesties” (1949; larkin 2012: 111) alternates trochaic tetrameter and dimeter lines within an abab rhyme scheme. larkin’s use of meter, however, is often quite free, and a thorough study of it would require a separate article. among other things, he at times varies line lengths without a discernible pattern but at others operates according to a definite design. in “cut grass” (1971; larkin 2012: 94), the penultimate poem in high windows, he has the meter metamorphose from iambic dimeter to iambic trimeter. all four lines of stanza 1 are in dimeter, stanza 2 has dimeter in lines 2 and 3 surrounded by trimeter in 1 and 4, while the third stanza has dimeter only in line 1 and then trimeter in the poem’s final three lines. as for uncommon rhyme schemes, his post-1945 poetry includes a striking example in “wires” (1950; larkin 2012: 35): the widest prairies have electric fences, a for though old cattle know they must not stray b young steers are always scenting purer water c not here but anywhere. beyond the wires d leads them to blunder up against the wires d whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter. c young steers become old cattle from that day, b electric limits to their widest senses. a brownjohn (1975: 24) is one of many who have pointed out that the opening stanza, when first seen, does not appear to contain any rhyme at all; only upon reading the second stanza does the rhyme partner for each end word appear in reverse order. interestingly, and reflective of larkin’s early interest in creating unusual rhyme schemes, he had used precisely the same technique, albeit more elaborately, in “the dead city: a vision” (1941; larkin 2012: 193). each pair of that poem’s six stanzas rhymes abcd / dcba, with the same, sometimes approximate, rhymes used in all six stanzas (so that the poem’s “d” rhymes, for instance, are “dark / talk”, “stalk / work”, “park / lurk”).16 16 i have not found an instance of hardy’s reversing the order of the rhymes in the way that larkin does, but hardy’s device of having each line in a stanza rhyme with a line in another might have been an inspiration for larkin. in “a new year’s eve in war time” hardy maintains 29philip larkin and the stanza another experiment with linked stanzas (sometimes also called interlocking stanzas or rhyme chains) from that early period appears in “the wind at creep of dawn...” (1941; larkin 2012: 194): the wind at creep of dawn a through arches and spires b swells, and on the lawn a manoeuvres, alone; a who kept planes likes desires b back in alien shires b last night, this daybreak pass c where misery has signed d every unhappy face, c and, wind, in meetingplace c of wish and fear, be kind d in dreams to each unconsummated mind. d the poem is in iambic trimeter, with an expanded final line perhaps meant as a device of closure. each rhyme appears three times in the poem, arranged in a sequence that is more regular than it might seem. the first “a” and “b” lines are followed by two “a” lines and then two “b” lines; similarly, the initial “c” and “d” lines precede two “c” and then two “d” lines. thus, we have a sixline rhyme scheme (abaabb) appearing in a poem with four-line stanzas. as in “for sidney bechet”, the rhyme scheme and stanza length do not match. apparently close in time to “wires” is “the spirit wooed” (1950 [?]; larkin 2012: 273–274), which features a particularly odd stanza structure: the first line in each of its five stanzas is unrhymed, the next two lines rhyme, and then the last line of stanza 1 rhymes with the last lines of stanzas 3 and 5, while the last line of stanza 2 rhymes with that of stanza 4: xaab xccd xeeb xffd xggb. the same rhyme sets over all seven stanzas, with six-line stanzas at the beginning and end surrounding five-line stanzas. the rhyme scheme for the entire poem is abcdee / abcde / abcde / abcde / abcde / abcde / abcdee. the first three stanzas are as follow: phantasmal fears, / and the flap of the flame, / and the throb of the clock, / and a loosened slate, / and the blind night’s drone, / which tiredly the spectral pines intone!! // and the blood in my ears / strumming always the same, / and the gabble-cock / with its fitful grate, / and myself, alone. // the twelfth hour nears / hand-hid as in shame; / i undo the lock, / and listen, and wait / for the young unknown (hardy 2001: 548). 30 barry p. scherr except for “wires” and “the spirit wooed,” his later four-line stanzas exhibit less virtuosic contrivances, though “high windows” (1967; larkin 2012: 80) displays a subtle but meticulously worked out design. the first stanza contains rhyme only in the even lines, with the odd lines, which end in “kids” and “diaphragm”, clearly unrhymed. stanza 2 has the odd lines rhyming very approximately (“lives / harvester”), so that many would perceive them as unrhymed, particularly after seeing the pattern established in the first stanza. in stanza 3 the rhyme in the odd lines becomes more evident (“if / life”) and by stanza 4 it is exact (“hide / slide”) – completing an uncommon evolution over the course of a poem from partially rhymed to fully rhymed stanzas. although five-line stanzas are less common in larkin’s oeuvre than those of several other lengths, he nonetheless turns to them regularly over the course of his career, reaching a peak in the volume the less deceived, where six of the 21 stanzaic poems employ that form. his early attempts with these stanzas tend to be straightforward, though at times marked by a fixed ordering of different meters in each stanza, as in this excerpt from “when the night puts twenty veils...” (1939; larkin 2012: 177–178): this summertime must be forgot a – it will be, if we would or not – a who lost or won? b oblivious run: b and sunlight, if it could, would coldly rot. a in all three stanzas of the poem, larkin uses iambic tetrameter in the first two lines, iambic dimeter in the next two, and iambic pentameter in the fifth. the rhyme scheme is perhaps atypical for larkin in that it begins with a rhyme pair, whereas an opening “ab” scheme appears in most of his five-line stanzas. a less strictly regulated use of different meters can be observed in “past days of gales...” (1945; larkin 2012: 250), where the lines grow longer from beginning to end. the first stanza is basically in iambic dimeter; the second, after beginning with a dimeter line, has lines ranging from three to five feet; and the final stanza has three lines in pentameter along with one each in trimeter and tetrameter. among his later poems, “the view” (1972; larkin 2012: 321), written in the year of larkin’s fiftieth birthday, is notable for its observance of the clausula, as seen in its last stanza: where has it gone, the lifetime? a search me. what’s left is drear. b unchilded and unwifed, i’m a 31philip larkin and the stanza able to view that clear: b so final. and so near. b throughout the poem the first and third lines end in feminine rhyme, while the others are both indented and masculine. the exact rhymes and the indentation not only make the rhyme scheme more obvious than in many of larkin’s poems but contribute to the light tone of this iambic trimeter poem, even as this stanza assumes a serious tone. note the remarkable compound rhyme “lifetime / unwifed, i’m”, which stands out both for the involvement of two words in the second part of the rhyme pair as well as for the use of the extremely rare word “unwifed”. the less deceived not only contains larkin’s greatest concentration of five-line stanzas but also some of his more original examples of this form. for instance, in “wants” (1950; larkin 2012: 32) the first and last lines of each stanza are identical and the middle three are unrhymed, while “triple time” (1953; larkin 2012: 40) leaves the second line of each stanza unrhymed, so that the pattern is axbab. larkin also draws attention to the fourth line in each stanza by making it shorter than the rest. in “arrivals, departures” (1953; larkin 2012: 45) he links the stanzas by creating a rhyme pattern – four lines of enclosed rhyme – that is shorter than the stanza length. after repeating that pattern over the first 12 lines he then wraps up with a closing triple rhyme. marking the end of each occurrence of the pattern with “/” reveals the following overall rhyme scheme: abba/c ddc/ef fe/ggg.17 he does something even more elaborate in “i remember, i remember” (1954; larkin 2012: 41–42), which, like a few of his other poems, takes as its starting point an actual moment during a train ride. a nine-line rhyme scheme overlaps the five-line stanzas, making the organizational principle less than obvious, at least initially, as the opening portion of the poem demonstrates:18 17 the triple rhyme serves as an element of closure and also comprises the three lines where the poem shifts at the end to a darker and broader vision: “and we are nudged from comfort, never knowing / how safely we may disregard their blowing, / or if, this night, happiness too is going”. foley (2015: 26) mentions this poem specifically in his article that elucidates how many of larkin’s poems conclude with an abrupt alteration of the poem’s meaning that is signaled by a shift in tone. as this poem and several of the others discussed in this article demonstrate, that change is often indicated as well by an alteration in the poem’s stanza structure. 18 in a letter, perhaps suggesting that he was not expecting most of his readers to focus unduly on the complexity of what he had created, larkin (2012: 383) remarked “the rhyme scheme is just a piece of cleverness, but like all good rhyme schemes is not meant to be intrusive”. in an earlier interview, though, larkin stated he was pleased that auden both noticed and liked the rhyme scheme (larkin 2001: 31). 32 barry p. scherr coming up england by a different line a for once, early in the cold new year, b we stopped, and, watching men with number plates c sprint down the platform to familiar gates, c “why, coventry!” i exclaimed. “i was born here”. b i leant far out, and squinnied for a sign a that this was still the town that had been “mine” a so long, but found i wasn’t even clear b which side was which. from where those cycle-crates c were standing, had we annually departed d for all those family hols? ... a whistle went: e things moved. i sat back, staring at my boots. f “was that”, my friend smiled, “where you ‘have your roots’?” f no, only where my childhood was unspent, e i wanted to retort, just where i started: d the first three lines of the following stanza rhyme def, completing the second sequence of the pattern. every sequence is repeated twice (abc cba abc), reversing the order twice in mirror-like fashion (miyauchi 2002: 63). in all, there are four sequences over seven stanzas plus a final isolated line to complete the fourth nine-line sequence, with the visual separation of that one line (“nothing, like something, happens anywhere”) giving it special import. the exact rhymes make it easy for readers to perceive that the work is fully rhymed, but the odd intervals between the rhymes creates a disjointed sound rhythm. the first rhyme word in each sequence seems forgotten for four lines before it reemerges in a couplet; the third rhyme initially appears as a couplet and then goes away for four lines before it echoes once again, while the middle rhyme reappears at steady two-line intervals. whether these shifting intervals between rhymes were part of larkin’s intent or whether they simply emerged from the pattern he devised is impossible to know. in either case, for its structure as well as for the content, this is one of larkin’s most noteworthy five-line poems. the more common forms of the six-line stanza in english poetry include that with a concluding couplet (ababcc) and that in which an opening couplet is followed by an enclosed rhyme (aabccb). during the twentieth century a stanza in abcabc also gained currency among certain poets (häublein 1978: 25–27). all these forms, along with variants such as abbacc, appear among larkin’s numerous poems in six-line stanzas, but he appears to have been 33philip larkin and the stanza particularly attracted to beginning his stanzas with an abc sequence and then exhibiting a different order over the last three lines. one example appears in his longest completed poem, “after-dinner remarks” (1940; larkin 2012: 179–183), which he chose not to publish.19 its 22 stanzas rhyme abcacb; the lines containing the “a” and “c” rhymes are in iambic tetrameter and those with the “b” rhyme are in iambic trimeter. another early instance of his explorations with six-line stanzas appears in “disintegration” (1942; larkin 2012: 106), where the middle of three stanzas is as follows: time that scatters hair upon a head a spreads the ice sheet on the shaven lawn; b signing an annual permit for the frost c ploughs the stubble in the land at last c to introduce the unknown to the known b and only by politeness make them breed; a the stanza illustrates larkin’s free-wheeling use of meter. while the first and last stanzas of the poem are undoubtedly in iambic pentameter, here – possibly to emphasize the image at the heart of this stanza – he shifts to a patently trochaic rhythm in lines 1, 2 and 4, before switching back to iambic over the final two lines. the “a” rhymes in these stanzas serve as an example of larkin’s penchant for widely separating elements in his rhyme pairs. as well, the inversion of a rhyme scheme is a technique to which he turned with some frequency: he used it to pair the four-line stanzas of “wires” and “the dead city: a vision”; the efggfe pattern appears in the sestet of two sonnets, “to my wife” (1951; larkin 2012: 274) and “january”; and it lies at the basis of the rhyme pattern in “i remember, i remember”. his last two collections both have five poems in six-line stanzas, and all demonstrate his attention to formal detail. in the whitsun weddings, “nothing to be said” (1961; larkin 2012: 50–51), which is unrhymed, is basically written in iambic trimeter, with several iambic dimeter lines at key moments in the poem. the four poems that are rhymed all employ different (and unusual) schemes. “broadcast” (1961; larkin 2012: 52–53) serves as another instance in which larkin carefully observes the clausula. the rhyme scheme is basically abaccb (though dactylic rhyme in the second stanza results in abʹaccbʹ). in “a study of reading habits” (1960; larkin 2012: 62), the stanzas rhyme abcbac, 19 “the dance” (1963–1964; larkin 2012: 306–309), with twelve completed eleven-line stanzas along with several additional lines would have been even longer, but it remained incomplete. see below for a discussion of that poem. 34 barry p. scherr in “ambulances” (1961; larkin 2012: 63–64) they rhyme abcbca, and in “an arundel tomb” (1956; larkin 2012: 71–72) the pattern is abbcac. among the poems employing six-line stanzas in high windows, two are atypical in different ways. “vers de société” (1971; larkin 2012: 91) employs five different rhyme schemes over its six stanzas. the first and last stanzas are simply in rhymed couplets (aabbcc), and these enclose stanzas in abbcca, abccba, abbcac, and abaccb. booth (2014: 366) points out that just as the rhyming – which in booth’s schema contains eight lines rather than six –of the last stanza returns to that of the first, so too does the subject matter, for in the final stanza the narrator accepts the invitation with which the poem begins. “homage to a government” (1969; larkin 2012: 87) is a departure for larkin in being a political poem. it is also a departure in that he uses the same word in both members of the rhyme pairs: next year we are to bring the soldiers home a for lack of money, and it is all right. b places they guarded, or kept orderly, c must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly. c we want the money for ourselves at home a instead of working. and this is all right. b the second of the three stanzas in this poem offers slight variations to the repetition, in that the middle rhyme is “here / hear” and the rhyme word “minds” is used once as a verb and once as a noun. the entire poem is also conspicuous for the purposeful use of other repetitions: for instance, the phrase “is all right”, used twice in this stanza, reappears in stanza 2 and “for lack of money” shows up again in stanza 3, while the last line of stanza 2 and the first line of stanza 3 both begin “next year we shall be”. the repetitions both of rhyme words and of individual phrases underline the mocking commentary on the government’s ineffectuality. finally, “love again” (1979; larkin 2012: 320), which was completed five years after high windows appeared and remained unpublished in larkin’s lifetime, reveals him using six-line stanzas in yet another way: by connecting them in a quite unorthodox fashion. for the entire poem the rhyme scheme is ababca / dedecd /afafca. while it may not be immediately obvious, all three stanzas have essentially the same pattern. the “c” rhyme (“afterwards / words / rewards”) links the three stanzas with its appearance in the fifth line, and each stanza has one rhyme set for lines 1, 3 and 6 and another for lines 2 and 4. in addition the “a” rhyme of stanza 1 reappears in stanza 3. “love again” serves as evidence that even when larkin’s poetic output had slowed drastically during the late 1970s, he did not cease to be inventive in the stanza structure of his verse. 35philip larkin and the stanza iv. sevenand eight-line stanzas if larkin did not write many seven-line stanzas, he nonetheless made interesting use of this relatively rare stanza length. four of his twelve poems employing that form were written early in his career, in 1940 and 1941, and two of these, each with seven stanzas, are among his longer poems from that period: “out in the lane i pause: the night...” (1940; larkin 2012: 185–186) and “the house on the edge of the serious wood...” (1941; larkin 2012: 191–192). both have a regular pattern of longer and shorter lines. in “the house...” the rhyme scheme is primarily abbccaa, with the “b” rhyme pair coinciding with the shorter lines. however, if the rhyming of the “aa” couplet at the end of each stanza tends to be exact, the first “a” line is sometimes only very approximately rhymed with the others – if at all. in one instance the rhyme scheme is clearly xaabbcc, and a couple of other stanzas could also be described that way. the shorter lines also rhyme in “out in the lane...”, but describing the rhymes presents a similar conundrum: from the steep road that travels down a towards the shops, i hear the feet b of lonely walkers in the night b or lingering pairs; c girls and their soldiers from the town a who in the shape of future years [c] have equal shares; c the iambic dimeter lines end with an exact “c” rhyme in all the stanzas. the “a” rhymes are also exact, while the “b” rhymes are approximate. the middle “c” word only rhymes approximately with the two others, but “years” is at least as close in sound to “pairs / shares” as “feet” is to “night”, so for this stanza the abbcacc description seems justified. four of the remaining stanzas in the poem are also constructed in just this way, with line 6 seeming to contain an approximate rhyme with the two other “c” endings, which rhyme exactly. but in the fifth and sixth stanzas that is not the case: the sixth stanza, for instance, has lines 4 and 7 ending with “tree / me”, while the last word in line 6 is “joy”, so that the scheme turns out to be abbcaxc, with the one unrhymed line. of the last eight poems that larkin wrote using this form, no fewer than five employ linked stanzas. the two stanzas of “if hands could free you, heart...” (1943–1944 [?]; larkin 2012: 17) contain one of his early attempts at such a linkage: 36 barry p. scherr if hands could free you, heart, a where would you fly? b far, beyond every part a of earth this running sky b makes desolate? would you cross c city and hill and sea, d if hands could set you free? d i would not lift the latch; e for i could run f through fields, pit-valleys, catch e all beauty under the sun – f still end in loss: c i should find no bent arm, no bed g to rest my head. g usually, the rhymes connecting stanzas are found near their borders. by burying the “c” rhyme in the fifth line of each – the same technique he later used in the six-line stanzas of “love again” – larkin impedes perception of the linkage.20 the technique is analogous to his occasional lengthy separation between the words comprising rhyme pairs in some of his longer stanzas – he makes the reader work to discover the rhyme. “harvest of flowers, the head...” (1943–1944 [?]; larkin 2012: 19), the other seven-line stanza in the north ship, has the rhyme connecting the two stanzas appear at the very end: aabbccd / eeffggd. the four-stanza “hospital visits” (1953; larkin 2012: 285–286), which larkin did not publish, does something similar. the scheme for the first stanza is abacbcd, with the “d” rhyme recurring at the end of each stanza (“day / naturally / decay / away”). a different way of linking stanzas appears in “first sight” (1956; larkin 2012: 65), the one poem from the whitsun weddings written in seven-line stanzas. its two trochaic tetrameter stanzas rhyme ababacc / dededaa. the pattern of rhymes in the stanzas is identical, but instead of connecting the ends as in the previous poems cited, larkin links the poem’s first rhyme with the last, a feature made all the more prominent by his using the same word to conclude the first and last lines of the poem. 20 larkin may well have come up with this format on his own, but hardy has at least one poem, “before marching and after” (hardy 2001: 544–545), with the same rhyme scheme as “if hands could free you, heart...” and the “c” rhyme in line 5 serving to link all three stanzas in his poem. 37philip larkin and the stanza for all that this article contains descriptions of some highly unusual and at times convoluted rhyme schemes, that in “the building” (1972; larkin 2012: 84–86) may well be the most intricate of all. the poem contains nine sevenline stanzas and a not-quite orphan line at the end, for a total of 64 lines. as timms (1973: 130) has pointed out, the poem’s eight-line rhyme scheme does not coincide with the number of lines in the stanzas – as in some other poems we have seen. furthermore, that rhyme scheme itself is quite complex (abcbdcad), further hindering easy perception of the poem’s structure. thus stanza 2 begins with the “d” rhyme needed to complete the first occurrence of the rhyme scheme, stanza 3 begins with the “ad” needed to complete its second occurrence, and so forth. as usual and as particularly necessary in this case, larkin worked out his rhyme scheme early in the process of composition (tolley 1997: 131). in addition, he appears to have intended from the start to write a rather long poem: since the first number divisible by both seven and eight is 56, he would have needed to write precisely eight stanzas to have a complete repetition of the rhyme scheme conclude with the final stanza. since he chose to write a ninth stanza, he followed the last stanza with one more line, which both allowed him to round off the final occurrence of the rhyme scheme and happened to provide “the building” with a powerful conclusion. the last portion of the poem is given below, starting within stanza 7 to provide the beginning of a sentence and with subscripts to indicate the number of the rhyme scheme: [...] in it, conceits a6 and self-protecting ignorance congeal d6 to carry life, collapsing only when a7 called to these corridors (for now once more b7 the nurse beckons –). each gets up and goes c7 at last. some will be out by lunch, or four; b7 others, not knowing it, have come to join d7 the unseen congregations whose white rows c7 lie set apart above – women, men; a7 old, young; crude facets of the only coin d7 this place accepts. all know they are going to die. a8 not yet, perhaps not here, but in the end, b8 and somewhere like this. that is what it means, c8 this clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend b8 the thought of dying, for unless its powers d8 38 barry p. scherr outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes c8 the coming dark, though crowds each evening try a8 with wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers. d8 as can be seen, the last line of stanza seven and all of stanza eight combine for the seventh appearance of the rhyme scheme. the final use of the entire scheme then requires that extra line. certain aspects of larkin’s technique in this poem are recognizable from many of his mature works with even longer stanzas: the iambic pentameter (albeit here without any of the short lines that are sometimes a feature of those long stanzas), the exact rhyme, and the abundance of enjambement both within and between stanzas (only the first stanza concludes with a period). the disjunction of rhyme scheme and stanza length, in contrast, occurs elsewhere only rarely and for the most part in stanzas of shorter length. the sheer complexity – and difficulty of fully perceiving – the rhyme scheme results in a sense of imbalance that not only makes “the building” disruptive in a formal sense but also serves to enhance the quality of unease arising from its concern with frailty and looming death. these themes suggest a connection to the twodecade earlier “hospital visits”, another poem in linked seven-line stanzas. larkin’s poems in eight-line stanzas reveal a growing confidence and variety in his utilization of that form. the sheer quantity of these poems and the variety of ways in which eight-line stanzas are constructed require some discussion. between 1938 and 1945, he created some 20 works in these stanzas, of which six appeared in the north ship while the others were not published in his lifetime. seven of the works that pre-date 1946 utilize the simplest form of eight-line stanza, ababcdcd, which is often favored by poets in general. three employ a minor alteration of that form (ababcddc), a further four are unrhymed, and one consists of paired rhymes (aabbccdd). the very early “coventria” (1938) – which consistently rhymes only the even lines and has occasional rhymes elsewhere – may seem less typical, but it turns out to follow exactly the rhyme scheme of the school song that it parodies (larkin 2012: 125, 510). yet a few signs of experimentation appear among his youthful compositions. “address to life, by a young man seeking a career” (larkin 2012: 231–234) contains eleven eight-line stanzas from 1940 along with a ninth: “postscript 1943”. the first four stanzas rhyme ababcdcd, with the alternating rhymes matched to alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines – mostly anapests or amphibrachs, but with a few scattered dactylic lines as well. beginning with the fifth stanza, however, larkin only rhymes the even lines consistently, while 39philip larkin and the stanza the ends of the odd lines only very occasionally contain approximate rhyme. instead, internal rhyme appears in all the odd lines from that point on, enhancing the poem’s already jaunty tone. here is the poem’s eighth stanza, with the internal rhymes marked in bold: therefore i am not a don or a swot or a dandy who grinds down the poor; i’m not such a blighter to think i’m a writer when others so obviously are. do you think, perhaps, i am one of the chaps who is either a bull or a bear? although it is funny, when it comes to money i’m really no earthly good there. the switch from end rhymes to internal rhymes in the odd lines does not appear to be motivated by the poem’s content but serves mainly as an exercise in technique, with part of that technique involving preparation for the change. stanza 3 already contains a hint of internal rhyme in lines 3 (“do you want me to study philosophy”) and 5 (“do you want me to be the authority”). the fourth stanza further prepares for the transition: while the ends of all the lines continue to rhyme in that stanza, there is also clear internal rhyme in lines 1 and 5, and a less obvious example in line 7 (“and if you chose this, the facts interpose”), where the placement of “chose” somewhat blurs the effect. once the internal rhymes take hold, the poem suggests the rapid, comic rhyming that occurs at times in gilbert and sullivan’s comic operas or in the american musical theater. larkin’s feat here is diverting but not one that was to have an impact on his later writing. “the earliest machine was simple...” (1940; larkin 2012: 169) offers more direct evidence of early attempts at the techniques larkin would use regularly as a mature poet. the first of the poem’s four stanzas is as follows: the earliest machine was simple: a could clock the blue revolving days, b their single rain and sun c that fell uncensored to their grass; d easy then with facile grace d an unintentional symbol a that quickly and unnoticed dies, b its power done, c 40 barry p. scherr the metrical ordering of each stanza is the same: iambic tetrameter in lines 1–2, 4–5 and 7, trimeter in lines 3 and 6, and dimeter in line 8. larkin concocts an unusual rhyme scheme for these eight-line stanzas, with the abc pattern at the beginning and end, interrupted by a rhyme couplet in the middle. besides its unusualness, the rhyme scheme is striking for the wide divisions between all but the “d” rhyme pair. the first three rhyme pairs are all separated by four lines belonging to three different rhyme sets. his rhyming throughout the poem is sometimes exact and sometimes depends on the identity of consonants rather than vowels (“days / dies”). the “c” rhymes, though, are exact in each stanza, perhaps to help bring out the point being made in the last line, which is further emphasized by its brevity. larkin’s most intensive work with eight-line stanzas during his mature period occurred from 1961 through 1963, with nine poems employing that stanza length. eight of these appeared in the whitsun weddings, while the ninth, “breadfruit” (1961; larkin 2012: 111–112), was published in a journal. larkin regretted publishing the sixteen–line “breadfruit” at all (2012: 489), and it is admittedly not a very good poem. however, it does reveal a great deal of attention to the structure of the stanzas. lines 1, 3–6 and 8 are in iambic pentameter, while lines 2 and 7 are in iambic dimeter. atypically for his stanzas of this length, larkin links the poem’s two stanzas by repeating two of the rhymes, so that the rhyme scheme becomes abacdcdb / ebefafab, with the “b” rhyme occupying the iambic dimeter lines in both stanzas. the eight-line stanza poems within the whitsun weddings are extremely varied, signaling that he did not turn to that length simply for the sake of applying a readily available form. notably, only one of these poems employs the common ababcdcd stanza throughout, though it also appears in the first stanza of “dockery and son” (1963; larkin 2012: 65–67), where the rhyme schemes then vary. at first the changes from one stanza to the next in “dockery and son” are slight: ababcddc in stanza 2, followed by abbacdcd in stanza 3. over the last three stanzas, though, larkin shifts to more unusual rhyme schemes: abcadcbd in the fourth stanza and then abbcaddc in the last two stanzas. larkin (2001: 90) stated that he had “a particular affection” for “dockery and son”, which is one of his finest poems – motion (1993: 334) calls it a “compressed autobiography” –and so it is worth looking a little more closely at the role of its stanzas. the sheer variety of stanza forms is no accident: early in his work on the poem larkin wrote down the rhyme schemes for all the stanzas, and his original intention was to make them all different (tolley 1997: 103). in a relatively early version, the first four lines of the fifth stanza, rhyme abac (to / see / two / begin), signifying that at one stage of larkin’s work he was on his way to having its rhyme scheme differ from that in stanza 6, even though 41philip larkin and the stanza in the end the scheme turned out to be the same (tolley 1997: 105). the poem starts with the most regular scheme, where the subject is simply the narrator’s visit to his old college and the mention of dockery by the dean. the next two stanzas, only slightly less typical in form, stay with memories of that time, but shift to his efforts to recall dockery as he rides the train back from his visit. in the fourth stanza the poem pivots to the broader topics at its core – the unnoticed passage of time, the unknowable reasons for the path a life takes, the past choices that come to determine the irrevocable present – and the rhyme scheme becomes more complex, as if mirroring the narrator’s struggle with more vexatious concerns. notably, none of the stanzas are closed: it is as though the entire poem is one long connected burst: the mention of dockery’s son inspires the narrator’s thoughts about dockery that then lead directly into his broader ruminations. not only does enjambement occur between stanzas, but it is found between more than half the poem’s lines, to the point that the very absence of enjambement becomes a device for closure. here is the poem’s final stanza: and how we got it; looked back on, they rear a like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying b for dockery a son, for me nothing, b nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. c life is first boredom, then fear. a whether or not we use it, it goes, d and leaves what something hidden from us chose, d and age, and then the only end of age. c only the first two lines – fewer than in any other of the poem’s stanzas – display enjambement. over the final six lines there are seven commas and three periods, a denser accumulation of punctuation than at any other point in the work. the pace slows in lines 3 and 4 of the stanza, thanks to the syntactic parallelism in line 3, the repetition of “nothing” in lines 3 and 4, and the period at the end of line 4. then the metrical irregularity of the stanza’s fifth line – more of a dactylic trimeter than the iambic pentameter that is otherwise the poem’s norm – serves as a marker of the significance that larkin attaches to this line and those that follow.21 21 larkin himself has stated that he purposefully changed the meter at this point to draw his readers’ attention to the final four lines: “i’m very proud of those lines. they’re true. i remember when i was writing it, i thought this is how it’s got to end. there’s a break in the metre; it’s meant as a jolt” (larkin 2001: 50). 42 barry p. scherr for the most part larkin, like most poets writing in english, strongly favors masculine (monosyllabic) rhyme: the rhymes in the first stanza of “dockery and son” are “you / do, now / how, tight / night, and give / live”. in the last stanza of that poem, quoted above, there are a couple of irregularities, both of which occur elsewhere in his oeuvre – and in english verse in general – but seem in keeping with his effort to distinguish this stanza from the rest of the poem. in lines 4 and 8 the iambic pentameter meter places the final ictus (strong position) on the last syllable, which works for “age” in line 8, but “patronage” has its stress on the fourth ictus, so in that case the rhyming syllable is unstressed – creating heterotonic rhyme, where the rhyme vowel is stressed in one word but not the other. in lines two and three the final ictus corresponds with “-ing” but the rhyme vowel appears on the preceding syllable in “nothing” and two syllables earlier in “embodying”: hence, the rhyme vowels appear on different syllables in the line and neither syllable corresponds with the final ictus. while larkin does not usually make the clausula an integral part of his stanza structures, he does so in both the four-stanza “here” (1961; larkin 2012: 49) and the three-stanza “naturally the foundation will bear your expenses” (1961; larkin 2012: 52), where the feminine and masculine rhymes appear at fixed places in the stanzas. the latter is the only eight-line stanza poem of this period employing conventional alternate rhyming in both halves of the stanza (ababcdcd). the one exception appears in the second stanza, where a dactylic rhyme (“minister/sinister”) replaces one of the feminine rhymes, resulting in ababc’dc’d. that poem also makes use of a device we have seen before, in which a rhyme involves more than one word (“comet / from it, throw up / grow up”). in “here” larkin alternates his rhyme structures from one stanza to the next: stanzas 1 and 3 rhyme ababcddc, 2 and 4 rhyme abbacdcd,. as in other poems, some of the rhymes rely on the consonants rather than the vowels for their similarity in sound: “solitude/mud, cluster/water, come/ museum”, and so forth. the examples of eight-line stanzas in the whitsun weddings include the unrhymed “afternoons” (written in 1959, thus before the period of larkin’s most intensive work with this form) along with the partially rhymed “mcmxiv” (where just the fourth and eighth lines of each stanza rhyme throughout) and “send no money” (only the last four lines rhyme, abab).22 the three other instances of eight-line stanzas in this collection all employ 22 however, the powerful first two lines in the last stanza of “mcmxiv” do rhyme (“never such innocence, / never before or since”), and the opening line is then embodied in the stanza’s conclusion: “never such innocence again”. 43philip larkin and the stanza unconventional structures. both “sunny prestatyn” (1962; larkin 2012: 64–65), with the rhyme scheme abcabdcd, and “love songs in age” (1961; larkin 2012: 51–2), where it is abacbcdd, contain essentially exact rhymes throughout, making the patterns easy to detect. the poems primarily employ masculine rhyme, but “sunny prestatyn”, has a striking feminine rhyme in the first stanza: “poster / coast, a” where the word “a” goes with “hotel” in the next line, creating a strong enjambement that deflects attention from the rhyme. for its part, “love songs in age” maintains a precise metrical structure for each stanza: iambic pentameter in lines 1, 3–5 and 7–8; dimeter in line 2 and trimeter in line 6. this is one of the more salient instances in which larkin inserts one or two shorter lines within a mostly iambic pentameter stanza form, effectively calling attention to those lines and thus helping highlight certain themes within the poem. as here, he frequently places his short lines within the stanza rather than employing the more typical device of placing them at the end as an element of closure. “wild oats” (1962; larkin 2012: 68) presents an illustrative example of how it can require some effort to discern the rhyme scheme, or for that matter whether some of the lines are rhymed at all. below is the second stanza, presented without the rhyme scheme: and in seven years after that wrote over four hundred letters, gave a ten-guinea ring i got back in the end, and met at numerous cathedral cities unknown to the clergy. i believe i met beautiful twice. she was trying both times (so i thought) not to laugh. discovering the pattern requires looking closely at the line endings and perhaps comparing this stanza to the two others in the poems, where at least the rhyme of lines 6 and 8 is more immediately obvious than “believe / laugh”. the other rhyme pairs in this stanza are “ring / trying” (where unstressed and stressed syllables are rhymed and the pair is widely separated), “that / met” (only the final “t” suggests a rhyme”) and “letters / cities” (two seemingly very different words, but with some consonants in common). the rhyme scheme thus turns out to be the same as in “sunny prestatyn”: abcabdcd. the predominance of enjambement, the irregularity of the rhythm and the masking of the rhyme (a result of both the unusual scheme and the lack of exact rhymes) all make the stanza read almost as prose. yet for larkin the structure imposed by 44 barry p. scherr the rhyme scheme was clearly important. his first draft of the poem already has all the final words of each line in place for the first stanza and most of the final words for the second (tolley 1997: 146). the repeated patterning in each stanza of the ways in which words echo imparts a subtle symmetry and organization that serves as a counterpoint to the absence of a clear metrical framework. several of these poems in eight-line stanzas are among larkin’s major achievements, and that goes as well for some of the works discussed below in stanzas of still greater length. alan brownjohn (1975: 25) has gone so far as to claim that works in stanzas containing eight or more lines “are the vehicle of larkin’s major statements in poetry”. thus the devising of intricate and uncommon stanzas often went hand in hand with the attention and effort placed into what would turn out to be among larkin’s most significant poems. iv. long stanzas if the absolute number of poems that larkin writes in stanzas longer than eight lines is relatively limited – 21 of the 339 stanzaic poems surveyed for this article – he nonetheless works with such forms more frequently than most poets and in some cases comes up with intricate rhyme schemes, particularly during the mature years of his career. in all, he has six poems with nine-line stanzas, seven with ten-line, two with eleven-line, three with twelve-line, and one each with stanzas containing thirteen, sixteen and twenty lines. as with the other stanza types discussed, he begins trying out these long forms near the start of his career, albeit not always with ideal results in terms of either form or content. such is the case with the first of two poems grouped under the title “dances in doggerel” (1941; larkin 2012: 197–198), which consists of two twenty-line stanzas written in rhymed couplets: aabbcc... more accomplished is “spring warning” (1940; larkin 2012: 100–101), first published in the year when it was written. it contains two nine-line stanzas, rhyming abbacddcc. if one or two lines in the poem seem somewhat forced, the portrayal of emerging spring (“and the walker sees the sunlit battlefield / where winter was fought: the broken sticks in the sun”) makes a strong impression. the pattern of rhymes is relatively unoriginal for larkin: it resembles an eight-line stanza in enclosed rhyme (abbacddc) with an extra “c” rhyme tacked on at the end. the actual rhymes are more original than the scheme. such combinations as “battlefield/scaffold” and “joy/jeer” are examples of larkin’s early attempts at approximate rhyme. in both stanzas the three “c” rhyme words – “flag / jig 45philip larkin and the stanza / gag”, “forge / badge / gorge” – exhibit a tension between the exact first and third instances of the rhyme set and the approximate second. larkin’s apprenticeship with both approximate rhyme and stanza structure is evident in “to a friend” (1939; larkin 2012: 142), with two ten-line stanzas, of which this is the second: in the nightmare of the years, a and the torment of the hours, b may the summer rest on you c with a trace of former flowers, b as the evening breeze repairs a rakings of a year repass; d and the kiss that stays as true c bring to you instinctive peace, e something of the careless grace e that rests upon the summer grass. d as adam kirsch (2005: 9) has pointed out, auden’s “lullaby” (“lay your sleeping head, my love...”) “spawns” this poem by larkin, who at this stage of his career “practices auden’s half-rhymes.” indeed, in auden’s first stanza alone, along with an instance of exact rhyme (“away / day”) he rhymes “love / grave”, “arm / from” and even “lie / me” (auden 1991: 157), providing the inspiration for rhymes like “years / repairs” and “peace / grace” in larkin. what is more, larkin not only employs the same trochaic tetrameter as in “lullaby”, but also precisely reproduces auden’s unusual rhyme scheme, which can be seen as a precursor of larkin’s later formulations of intricate stanza structures. as can happen when the rhyming is very approximate, it is not always immediately obvious as to what rhymes with what. once again, we have “shadow rhyme”, the term coined by vadim baevsky (1972), where more than one reading of the rhyme scheme becomes possible because words in different rhyme pairs are roughly as close to each other in terms of sound as those that are meant to rhyme. consider the final three lines in larkin’s stanza, concluding with the words “peace”, “grace”, and “grass”. at first glance, it could appear that all three words are meant to rhyme, or that “grace” and “grass” are the more likely rhyme pair than “peace” and “grace”. only by looking back at the full stanza (and perhaps comparing it to the other stanza) does the rhyme scheme become evident. something similar occurs in the first stanza, where line 1 ends with “delight”. is that meant to rhyme with “lie” “mortality”, or “fate”, words that conclude three of the next four lines? (in fact, the scheme dictates that the rhyme is with “fate”.) with these shadow rhymes larkin makes the 46 barry p. scherr perception of the rhyme scheme even more challenging than in the auden poem. at about the same time that he composed “to a friend”, larkin created two additional poems that are remarkably similar to it: “watch, my dear, the darkness now...” (1939; larkin 2012: 138) and “falling of these early flowers...” (1939; larkin 2012: 149). besides the resemblances in tone and to an extent subject matter, both again consist of two ten-line stanzas with precisely the same rhyme scheme as “to a friend”. additionally, both – except for a couple of lines in the latter –are in trochaic tetrameter (not the most common meter in larkin’s verse as a whole), and both once more contain some very approximate rhymes. whatever he may have felt about the stanza structure and rhymes, larkin eventually concluded, as he did with so much of his early work, that all three poems were unsatisfactory – though he used stronger language – in terms of content (larkin 2012: 520, 522, 525–526). less than a year later, larkin composed two poems in twelve-line stanzas, “through darkness of sowing...” and “poem” (1940; larkin 2012: 148, 155). once again, both works employ the same unusual stanza structure (it is aababbccdcdd, with the pattern of the stanza’s first half repeated in the second half ), contain some very approximate rhyming, and utilize quite short lines. it would appear larkin was still under auden’s formal, as well as thematic, influence. the prevalence of approximate rhyming appears as well in both works from the north ship with long stanzas. “winter” (1943–1944 [?]; larkin 2012: 8–9) seems strained in much of its imagery but is of interest for its rare use of an eleven-line stanza: in the field, two horses, a two swans on the river, b while a wind blows over b a waste of thistles a crowded like men; c and now again c my thoughts are children c with uneasy faces d that awake and rise e beneath running skies e from buried places. d essentially the stanza consists of two quatrains separated by a triplet of “c” rhymes. the poem is notable for the way in which some of the rhyme words are repeated over its three stanzas: “faces” occurs in the next stanza (where it 47philip larkin and the stanza rhymes with “unlooses”), while both “face” and “place” appear in stanza three, which again has “thistles” (this time rhymed with “whistles”). each stanza consists of a single sentence, with the first part of the sentence describing a scene in nature and the second the notion to which that scene gives rise. a rhyme triplet also figures prominently in the two nine-line stanzas of “like the train’s beat...” (1943–1944 [?]; larkin 2012: 11): like the train’s beat a swift language flutters the lips b of the polish airgirl in the corner seat. a the swinging and narrowing sun c lights her eyelashes, shapes b her sharp vivacity of bone. c hair, wild and controlled, runs back: d and gestures like these english oaks d flash past the windows of her foreign talk. d in this stanza – but not so regularly in the second – the syntax combines with the rhyme scheme to delineate sets of lines: aba / cbc / ddd. larkin further orders the stanza by placing the shortest line at the start, giving the stanza an abrupt beginning. the first line is followed by varying rhythms over the next several, then lines in iambic tetrameter, and finally a concluding pentameter line. much of the second stanza is then in regular iambs, mostly tetrameters, before two shorter lines at the end impart an abruptness that mirrors the start. this is not yet the mature larkin at work, but the poem reveals a growing care for structuring his stanzas in ways that coordinate with and emphasize aspects of the content. “church going” (1954; larkin 2012: 35–37), with its seven nine-line stanzas, is the longest poem in the less deceived and one of larkin’s most celebrated works.23 it concludes as follows: a serious house on serious earth it is, a in whose blent air all our compulsions meet, b are recognised, and robed as destinies. a and that much never can be obsolete, b since someone will forever be surprising c 23 one of larkin’s other poems in nine-line stanzas also deals with a church, the less accomplished “a stone church damaged by a bomb” (1943; larkin 2012: 107). 48 barry p. scherr a hunger in himself to be more serious, a and gravitating with it to this ground, d which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, c if only that so many dead lie around. d the formal effects here are more subtle than in many of the earlier poems employing long stanzas. larkin keeps the stanza tightly unified by placing the third “a” rhyme after the first “c” rhyme; had the two been reversed, the stanza would have read like a five-line and four-line unit grouped together. the rhymes throughout the poem are mostly exact. in this stanza the most distinctive rhymes are “surprising / wise in”, where one of the rhymes is spread over two words, and “is / destinies / serious”, with different vowel sounds in each rhyme word and a varying number of syllables. most stanzas in “church going” have frequent enjambement, and in four instances there is enjambement between stanzas as well. the widely varying lengths of clauses and sentences that occur result in a more natural flow of the utterances. at the same time, as in other works by larkin, the sheer frequency of enjambement creates a tension between the syntax and the boundaries suggested by the rhyme. in contrast, this final stanza has only a single line that does not end with punctuation; as timms (1973: 82) has pointed out, this is the most significant of several devices that “emphasize the seriousness” of the poem’s concluding passage – one more instance of larkin using the form of a stanza to impart a sense of closure.24 another fine poem, “to the sea” (1969; larkin 2012: 75), which opens the collection high windows, is composed in four linked nine-line stanzas. it begins as follows: to step over the low wall that divides a road from concrete walk above the shore b brings sharply back something known long before – b the miniature gaiety of seasides. a everything crowds under the low horizon: c steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps, d 24 note that “dockery and son” also creates closure in its last stanza by sharply reducing the amount of enjambement. larkin’s own reading of “church going” emphasizes the line endings with pronounced pauses after all the lines with punctuation and even includes a slight pause after “surprising” in line 5, almost as though it ended with a comma rather than being connected to the next line through enjambement. url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjc5xqiortg (accessed 7 june 2022). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjc5xqiortg 49philip larkin and the stanza the small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapse d up the warm yellow sand, and further off e a white steamer stuck in the afternoon – c   still going on, all of it, still going on! f to lie, eat, sleep in hearing of the surf e (ears to transistors, that sound tame enough e under the sky), or gently up and down f lead the uncertain children, frilled in white g and grasping at enormous air, or wheel h the rigid old along for them to feel h a final summer, plainly still occurs i as half an annual pleasure, half a rite, g the stanza starts off as though it is quite regular, with the enclosed abba rhyme and then the beginning of what would appear to be another enclosed rhyme: cdd. however, the other part of the “c” rhyme appears only in line 9, and line 8 at first seems unrhymed. it turns out, though, that larkin rhymes the eighth line in each of the first three stanzas of this four-stanza poem with the second and third lines of the next stanza (in the last stanza the eighth line rhymes with the fifth and ninth), a link that is partly obscured by the approximate nature of the rhyme. for that matter, the rhymes words in lines 5 and 9 of the first stanza are sufficiently similar to those in lines 1 and 4 of stanza 2 that they could be seen as belonging to the same rhyme set. however, this is essentially a case of shadow rhyme: the third stanza clarifies that larkin only intends to link the eighth line of each stanza with rhyme words of the next.25 just as the whitsun weddings contains some of larkin’s most skillful examples of eight-line stanzas, so too does it include three of his more significant works in stanza forms of still greater length. the collection’s title poem (1958; larkin 2012: 56–58), with its eight ten-line stanzas, is the longest that larkin himself published (although he wrote several longer works that remained in manuscript form). as in “dockery and son” and “like the train’s beat”, a journey by rail is at the heart of “the whitsun weddings”, which concludes: 25 though miyauchi (2002: 61) points out that what i am calling an instance of shadow rhyme also extends to the first and fourth rhyme words of stanza 3, with similar sounds to the “f ” rhyme in stanza 2 and the “c” rhyme in stanza 1. given the care with which larkin worked out his rhyme schemes, i am more inclined to see this as a chance similarity, whereas the links between line 8 of one stanza and lines 2 and 3 of the next are consistent throughout the poem. 50 barry p. scherr there we were aimed. and as we raced across a bright knots of rail b past standing pullmans, walls of blackened moss a came close, and it was nearly done, this frail b travelling coincidence; and what it held c stood ready to be loosed with all the power d that being changed can give. we slowed again, e and as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled c a sense of falling, like an arrow-shower d sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain. e the form here is almost classic. the rhymes are exact, while their pattern recalls that found frequently in the odes of keats – albeit, in contrast to keats, larkin makes much more frequent use of enjambement between lines and also employs enjambement between most of his stanzas.26 keats not only keeps his stanzas and the great majority of his lines self-contained, but he also usually (though not always) has a break in the syntax and theme after the fourth line and sometimes after the seventh, creating a structure that works in harmony with the rhyme scheme. larkin on the other hand makes the structure implied by the rhyme serve virtually as a counterpoint to the thematic and syntactic boundaries within the poem. the meter is the familiar iambic pentameter in all but the second line of each stanza, where the abrupt appearance of iambic dimeter seizes the reader’s attention and serves as a focal point. formally resembling “the whitsun weddings” is “aubade” (1977; larkin 2012: 115–116), which appeared in the times literary supplement three years after larkin’s last book of poetry was published. one difference is that in “aubade” larkin does not allow enjambement between stanzas but closes them with a period. the rhyme scheme differs but is again relatively straightforward: ababccdeed. the pattern, like that of “the whitsun weddings”, recalls the ode, and he may have borrowed it from one or more of its frequent occurrences in eighteenth-century english poetry, such as in thomas gray’s “ode on a distant prospect of eton college” and “ode on the spring”, john langhorne’s “ode to the river eden”, or mark akenside’s “ode to the country gentlemen of england”. larkin also could have noticed the rhyme scheme in a poem closer to his own time, such as hardy’s ode “compassion” (hardy 2001: 822–823). 26 john reibetanz (1976: 532) has compared the autonomous stanzas used by keats in “ode on a grecian urn” to the relatively unbroken movement in “the whitsun weddings”, where all the stanzas have the exact same rhyme scheme and are frequently not syntactically independent. keats does use the rhyme scheme ababcdecde consistently in his “ode to a nightingale”. 51philip larkin and the stanza in terms of meter, “aubade” has the same iambic pentameter in nine of the ten lines in each of its five stanzas, with the penultimate line, rather than the second, being shorter than the rest. if larkin makes effective use of short lines elsewhere (including, as we have just seen, in “the whitsun weddings”) here they carry special weight. those lines on their own – “of dying, and being dead,” / “not to be anywhere,” / “nothing to love or link with,” / “let no one off the grave.” / “work has to be done.” – convey a chillingly vivid precis of the entire poem. the whitsun weddings contains a second poem in ten-line stanzas, “faith healing” (1961; larkin 2012: 53–54), where the rhyme scheme is far more typical of larkin than keats: abcabdabcd. that said, the very use of a ten-line stanza suggests the odic tradition, and booth (2014: 247) has detected the possible echo of a notion from one of thomas gray’s odes in larkin’s concluding lines. the rhymes could suggest a roughly tripartite structure to each stanza – abc / abd / abcd – but once again the syntax has little relationship to the ordering of the rhymes or for that matter to line endings in general: there is no punctuation at the end of the first nine lines in the second stanza, and then only a dash rather than a full stop after line 10. for that matter, it might take a moment for the reader even to realize that the poem, once again written in iambic pentameter, is rhymed: the paucity of stops at line endings along with the separation of each rhyme pair by at least two lines has the effect of obscuring the links between the rhyming words, even though the rhymes are exact. even greater difficulty for perceiving the underlying scheme is posed by “essential beauty” (1961; larkin 2012: 69), which contains two sixteen-line stanzas – the longest stanza in the whitsun weddings and the longest to be found in any of larkin’s published poetry. he again avoids the temptation to build a long stanza out of easily replicable constituents, such as repeated quatrains, with the result that many readers are likely to see the rhyming as more or less random and not realize that it adheres to a carefully worked-out pattern. the first stanza displays an original and elaborate sequence – abacbddecfegfhhg – that is repeated exactly in the second stanza. note that some of the rhyme pairs are widely separated: four lines intervene before the first “c” rhyme becomes joined by its companion, while three lines separate the two “g” rhymes. larkin makes the second half of the stanza almost a repetition of the first, and indeed the scheme would break down into two identical eight-line schemas if the “e” and “c” rhymes in lines 8 and 9 switched places: abacbddc + efegfhhg. quite possibly, larkin purposely placed those rhymes as he did in lines 8 and 9 to avoid such an exact duplication and instead ensure that the 52 barry p. scherr entire stanza would form a single entity.27 fourteen of the sixteen lines in the stanzas are in iambic pentameter, with iambic tetrameter in the ninth line of each perhaps marking the transition into the second half and, as in “aubade”, iambic trimeter in the penultimate line. the last poem that larkin composed for the whitsun weddings was “dockery and son”, which he completed in march 1963. that june he set to work on “the dance” (larkin 2012: 306–309), which, had he finished the poem, would have been the longest he wrote. as it is, he wrote twelve elevenline stanzas before setting the work aside in may 1964.28 below is the poem’s fourth stanza, with the lines immediately preceding and following that stanza included to provide context for its opening and end: professional colleagues do assemble socially, and are entertained by sitting dressed like this, in rooms like these, a saying i can’t guess what – just fancy, when b they could be really drinking, or in bed, c or listening to records – so, instead c of waiting till you look my way, and then b grinning my hopes, i stalk your chair d beside the deafening band, where raised faces e sag into silence at my standing there, d and your eyes greet me over commonplaces, e and your arms are bare, d and i wish desperately for qualities a moments like this demand, and which i lack. 27 note that larkin similarly unifies his stanzas in, for instance, “church going” and “to the sea”. had “church going” rhymed ababacdcd, the rhymes would have suggested a 5+4 structure, but instead the ababcadcd pattern, with the first “c” rhyme placed before the last “a”, causes the sequence to appear as a single entity. similarly, in “to the sea” he places the orphan line that serves to link the stanzas in the penultimate line instead of at the end, so we have abbacddec in the first stanza instead of consecutive sequences of enclosed rhyme. 28 the twelve full stanzas were first published in larkin 1989: 154–158. bullock (larkin 2012: 309) adds a half dozen lines from a late draft that would have been part of a thirteenth stanza; however, he does so without leaving a space between those lines and the end of the twelfth. a couple of additional lines appeared in a previous draft (larkin 2012: 637), but only those first twelve stanzas were ever completed. 53philip larkin and the stanza the formal qualities of “the dance” are largely familiar from other poems written during larkin’s mature period that employ long stanzas. the rhyme is exact, and frequent enjambement at times obscures the line endings. the predominant meter is yet again iambic pentameter, but with some effectively placed shorter iambic lines: the penultimate line, as in two of the poems just discussed, is iambic trimeter, and, perhaps less obviously, the sixth line is a tetrameter. thus, the deded sequence both begins and ends with the two shorter lines. nearly all the stanzas have clear enjambement after that shorter sixth line (the exception is the eighth, with a dash at that point) – as though signaling a rush into the last five lines. the penultimate lines often call attention to themselves by both their brevity and, as in “aubade”, their content: “the impact, open, raw,” / “the tense elation turned” / “unfolds some crazy scheme”. they also serve as compelling leads into an eleventh line that frequently contains a particularly forceful statement, even as enjambement forces the reader not to linger but to continue on to the next stanza. the most distinctive aspect, though, is the stanza form itself: larkin’s oeuvre contains only one other stanza of that length, in “winter”. there the structure (ababcccdeed) resembles two quatrains surrounding a rhyme triplet. here the patterning (abccbdededa) lacks such regularity, with its most unusual feature the extreme distance between the two “a” rhyme words, which are separated by the other nine lines (and four rhyme sets) in the stanza. thanks to that feature, this stanza stands out among all larkin’s unusual constructions. “the old fools” (1973; larkin 2012: 81–82), from high windows, represents one of larkin’s last attempts at a long stanza. the second of its four twelve-line stanzas reads as follows: at death, you break up: the bits that were you a start speeding away from each other for ever b with no one to see. it’s only oblivion, true: a we had it before, but then it was going to end, c and was all the time merging with a unique endeavor b to bring to bloom the million-petalled flower d of being here. next time you can’t pretend c there’ll be anything else. and these are the first signs: e not knowing how, not hearing who, the power d of choosing gone. their looks show that they’re for it: f ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines – e how can they ignore it? f 54 barry p. scherr typically, larkin had worked out the rhyme scheme near the very start of composing the poem. that ordering of the rhymes was retained even as he abandoned the original version of his opening stanza (tolley 1997: 134). what he had come up with was yet another original sequence seemingly so random that some may not discern the rhymes immediately, even though they are exact. indeed, as richard murphy (1975: 33) commented, “you have to look back over what you have just finished reading [...] before you can say for certain, ‘yes, it rhymes’.” further examination reveals an underlying elegant pattern. the first and last rhyme pairs are separated by a single line (aba / fef ), but then two lines come between each of the other rhyme pairs (bacb / cbdc / dced / edfe). such a symmetrical structure would hardly have come about by accident. in this poem too larkin inserts a short line – this time at the end rather than internally – into what is otherwise a basically iambic pentameter stanza. typically, these short lines call attention to themselves as much for their content as for the change in meter. the concluding line of the entire poem is the very shortest – “we shall find out” – but also possibly the most impactful, for reminding readers that they too face the frailties of old age. notably, the poem’s rhythm does not just vary at the points where these short lines are inserted. larkin can be somewhat free in his use of meter, taking full advantage of the variations permitted in english iambs to add a syllable here and there or to shift stress onto a normally weak syllable (timms 1973: 107). in “the old fools” he has an unusually high percentage of lines with more than the usual ten or eleven syllables for the iambic pentameter – to the point that a strict metrical interpretation of the poem would likely label it as resembling the russian dolnik, where either one or two weak syllables can separate each strong syllable in the line. in the above stanza, line 2 has 12 syllables and reads like regular amphibrachic tetrameter. lines 3 and 4 have thirteen syllables with a break after the fifth: the first part of the line resembles amphibrachic dimeter (xxxxx), with the section after the break having the form of amphibrachic trimeter (xxxxxxxx). line 5 then has fourteen syllables with a rhythm that differs from the preceding two lines. only with line 6 does the iambic pentameter reemerge. these variations, appearing at different points in each of the stanzas, unsettle the flow, in keeping with the discomfiting mood of the entire poem. 55philip larkin and the stanza v. conclusion to be sure, not every poem exhibits the virtuosity in stanza construction that has been the chief focus of this article. larkin composed works that lack rhyme, some that are at most “quasi-stanzaic,” and still others that lack any organized division into stanzas. he also has his share of poems that employ quite conventional stanza forms, including some of his best-known works. he uses quatrains that rhyme abab in “toads” from the less deceived, while “toads revisited” in the whitsun weddings has aabb quatrains.29 the abab quatrain appears as well in “mr. bleaney,” one of larkin’s best-liked poems (not least by the author himself ) and in the relatively late “cut grass”, referred to by booth (2104: 366) as an “exquisite lyric”. however, even in those poems that seemingly lack strict stanzas or that employ the most familiar forms, it is often possible to detect a scrupulous concern with the poem’s structure. recall the progression from iambic dimeter to iambic trimeter that takes place over the stanzas in “cut grass”. or take “absences” (1950; larkin 2012: 42), a poem from the less deceived that could hardly be defined as stanzaic, with its ten lines divided by spaces into groups of six, three and one. rhyme links the second group to the first, but the final line (“such attics cleared of me! such absences!”) is both unrhymed and stands on its own typographically. this singling out of a last line occurs in the poem just before it in that collection (“i remember, i remember”) and, for instance, in “the card-players,” where the last line similarly consists of two exclamations, forming a compelling closure to the poem. the concern with structure in general, and with stanza form in particular, began virtually at the start of larkin’s career. even as a teenager he was testing various possibilities, whether inventing his own stanzas or, on occasion, imitating those of others. most of the characteristic features of his stanzas already emerge during these early years: complex rhyme schemes, frequent enjambement between lines and even between stanzas, the use of approximate rhyme, the occurrence of palindromic patterns (abccba), and linked stanzas. however, by the time of his three most important collections of poetry his use of stanzas has evolved. in his sonnets he abandons the shakespearean model, which he had used sparingly in any case, and instead turns toward variations on the petrarchan model in both his unpublished and published sonnets. he finds a wealth of variations in the concluding sextet and, at times, as in the two 29 in a letter larkin (2012: 407) noted this change, calling it a “different metre” rather than a different stanza and in his description of the rhyme pattern referring specifically to the prevalence in both poems of approximate rhyme, which appears to have been a considered choice. 56 barry p. scherr sonnets from high windows, deviates from the 8+6 typographical division. the iambic pentameter remains intrinsic to his sonnets, and that meter comes to be associated with many of his most significant poems, particularly when they are written in the longer stanza forms: it appears in “i remember, i remember” with its five-line stanzas, in the seven-line stanzas of “the building”, in the eight-line stanzas of “dockery and son” and “here”, in the nine-line stanzas of “church going” and “to the sea”, in the 10-line stanzas of “faith healing”, “the whitsun weddings”, and “aubade”, as well as in the twelve-line stanzas of “the old fools”. an associated development is the inclusion of short lines within stanzas of at least eight lines that basically employ iambic pentameter, as in “love songs in age”, “the whitsun weddings”, “aubade”, “the old fools”, “essential beauty”, and the unpublished “the dance”. larkin’s stanzas of whatever length come to be generally more complex. thus, in his later poetry, even his three-line stanzas contain novel combinations, seemingly inspired by terza rima. the five-line stanzas in the less deceived are more unconventional and often more painstakingly constructed than those that appear in his earlier poetry, while the six-line stanzas of the final two collections display an impressive variety. his seven-line stanzas in the later poems are generally interlocking, sometimes in intricate ways. and perhaps larkin’s most unusual creations are those rhyme schemes that do not coincide with stanza length, yet another technique that achieves full refinement only at the time of the three final collections. these striking and highly varied linked stanzas in larkin’s oeuvre deserve special mention. while larkin experimented with such forms early in his career – as in “midsummer night, 1940” and “the wind at creep of dawn” 1941 – from the 1950s on they assume a greater significance in his oeuvre. the following list – arranged by stanza length, and within each stanza length by date – illustrates their variety: “midsummer night, 1940”: abc cba bde edb def fed ... “this triumph ended...”: xxa bab cbc dbd bd “for sidney bechet”: aba bcd cde fef (3-line stanzas, 4-line rhyme scheme) “a sense of shape”: aba cbc dbd... (each stanza contains the b rhyme) “behind time” aba bcb... (terza rima) “whatever happened”: aba bcb cde ded ee (terza rima sonnet) “sad steps”: aba bba... (3-line stanzas, 6-line rhyme scheme) “talking in bed”: axa bab cbc cdd “the dead city”: abcd dcba... (same rhymes used for all six stanzas) “the wind at creep of dawn”: abaa bbcd ccdd (4-line stanzas, 6-line rhyme scheme) “the spirit wooed”: xaab xccd xeeb xffd xggb 57philip larkin and the stanza “wires”: abcd dcba “arrivals, departures”: abbac ddcef feggg (5-line stanzas, 4-line rhyme scheme) “i remember, i remember”: abccb aabcd effed... (5-line stanzas, 9-line rhyme scheme) “love again”: ababca dedecd afafca “harvest of flowers...”: aabbccd eeffggd “if hands could free you...”: ababcdd efefcgg “hospital visits” abacbcd efegfgd... (d rhyme concludes all four stanzas) “first sight”: ababacc dededaa “the building”: abcbdca dabcbdc adabcbd... (7-line stanzas, 8-line rhyme scheme) “breadfruit” abacdcdb ebefafab “to the sea” abbacddec feefghhij... as is evident, larkin strove for originality each time he turned to linked stanzas. what is more, in a half-dozen cases he employs rhyme schemes that do not coincide with stanza length, thereby impeding perception of the underlying pattern. while stanzas with an odd number of lines are less common than those with an even number, this list makes evident that they account for the majority of larkin’s linked stanzas, and in particular of those in which the stanza length and rhyme scheme do not match. among the poems in his published collections, only “wires” contains linked stanzas with an even number of lines, and that poem offers a less extensive version of a scheme that larkin had already used in “the dead city”. as for the numerous examples of stanzas with an odd number of lines, the several ways in which he manages to link three-line stanzas show an impressive inventiveness, even if he may have owed part of his inspiration to terza rima. both his five-line linked stanzas contain rhyme schemes that do not match the stanza length, while a high percentage of his poems in seven-line stanzas are linked, with the complexity of such forms reaching a peak in “the building”, where the frequent enjambement further hinders perception of the poem’s structure. granted, larkin also composed poems in stanzas with an even number of lines that have highly unusual and imaginative rhyme schemes as well as numerous instances of enjambement (e.g., “faith healing”). however, he appears to have taken a special interest in exploring the possibilities of odd stanzas, which feature many of his most inventive constructions. 58 barry p. scherr tolley (1997: 177) has remarked that larkin “seems to have relished difficult stanza patterns largely for the challenge they bring”. similarly, larkin’s own comment that “i remember, i remember” has a rhyme scheme that “is just a piece of cleverness” no doubt has an element of truth to it. certainly, something less labyrinthine than what appears in that poem or in “the building” could still have resulted in a successful poem. however, his structures always serve a purpose beyond mere cleverness or enjoyment of a challenge. they may organize an arrangement of different meters, which in turn can highlight individual lines within stanzas. a shift in the rhyme pattern from one stanza to the next can signal a change in the poem’s theme or focus. very often he constructs his stanzas in such a way as to create an effective means of closure, whether by isolating a final line or introducing a different rhyme pattern. quite possibly the most important effect, though, is to gain the attention of the reader for the entire poem. when words that rhyme are widely separated or when rhyme pairs appear at varying intervals in the stanza, when rhyming words are only partially related by sound, when enjambement that blurs boundaries appears to be working at cross purposes with the rhyme that marks line endings, when readers sense the existence of a pattern that is not immediately obvious, it becomes necessary to consider the poem more intently. larkin, it will be recalled, felt that a poem must be read, not just heard. his readers, and readers they should be rather than just listeners, need to be attentive to catch all that he is doing with form, and in doing so they become more profoundly engaged with the content as well. in his review of high windows, richard murphy (1975: 33) concludes that the volume displays how “meter and rhyme, when skillfully handled by an artist who knows how to conceal his art, can still have useful and noble functions to perform in poetry”. and the same, as this article has tried to demonstrate, can be said about the stanza.30 30 i wish to thank g. s. smith and the anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions that have informed the final version of this article. 59philip larkin and the stanza references auden, w. h. 1991. collected poems. edited by edward mendelson. new york: vintage international. baevsky, vadim 1972. tenevaja rifma. in: baevsky, vadim, stikh russkoj sovetskoj poezii. smolensk: smolenskij pedagogicheskij insitut, 92–101. bennett, alan 2015. six poets: hardy to larkin: an anthology. new haven: yale university press. booth, james 2014: philip larkin: life, art and love. new york: bloomsbury press. brownjohn, alan 1975. philip larkin. harlow, essex: the longman group. evans, robert c. 2017. philip larkin. basingstoke, hampshire: palgrave macmillan. foley, andrew 2015. poetry of departures: the endings of philip larkin’s poems. in: english academy review 32(1), 23–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2015.1034943 gill, patrick 2019. “now it’s failed”: the sonnet form in the poetry of philip larkin. in: kerler, david; müller, timo (eds.), poem unlimited: new perspectives on poetry and genre. berlin, boston: walter de gruyter, 83–96. hardy, thomas 2001. the complete poems. edited by james gibson. new york: palgrave. häublein, ernst 1978. the stanza. london: methuen. kirsch, adam 2005. green self-conscious spurts. in: the times literary supplement, 13 may, 9–10. larkin, philip 1983. required writing: miscellaneous pieces, 1955–1982. london: faber and faber. larkin, philip 1989. collected poems. edited by anthony thwaite. new york: farrar, straus and giroux; london: marvell press. larkin, philip 1992. selected letters of philip larkin. edited by anthony thwaite. london: faber and faber. larkin, philip 2001. further requirements: interviews, broadcasts, statements and book reviews. edited by anthony thwaite. london: faber and faber. larkin, philip 2012. the complete poems. edited by archie burnett. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2015.1034943 60 barry p. scherr miyauchi, hiromu 2002. rhyme style: with examples from larkin, yeats and heaney. in: poetica 58, 55–75. motion, andrew 1993. philip larkin: a writer’s life. london: faber and faber. murphy, richard 1975. the art of debunkery [review of high windows]. the new york review of books, 15 may, 30–33. regan, stephen 2019. the sonnet. oxford: oxford university press. reibetanz, john 1976. “the whitsun weddings”: larkin’s reinterpretation of time and form in keats. in: contemporary literature 17(4), 529–540. https://doi.org/10.2307/1207623 scherr, barry p. 1999. the russian stanza: regular, nonand quasi-. in: vigasin, aleksej; vroon, ronald; gasparov, mikhail et al. (eds.), poetika. istorija literatury. lingvistika: sbornik k 70-letiju vjacheslava vsevolodovicha ivanova. moscow: ogi, 80–92. scherr, barry p. 2014. odd stanzas. in: studia metrica et poetica 1(1), 28–54 (+ appendix). https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.03 timms, david 1973. philip larkin. new york: barnes & noble. tolley, arnold t. 1997. larkin at work: a study of larkin’s mode of composition as seen in his workbooks. hull: the university of hull press. turco, lewis putnam 2012. the book of forms, revised and expanded edition. hanover and london: university press of new england. https://doi.org/10.2307/1207623 https://doi.org/10.12697/smp.2013.1.1.03 61philip larkin and the stanza appendix: larkin’s sonnets title scheme date page p winter nocturne ababcdcdefefgg 1938 99 u alvis victrix ababcdcd / efgefg 1939 128 p street lamps ababcdcdefefgg 1939 100 u “having grown up in shade of church and state...” abbacddc / efgefg 1939 177 u the conscript ababcdcd / eeffgg 1940 157 u the conscientious objector abbacddc / efegfg 1940 157 u schoolmaster abbacdd / cef / efgg 1940 162 u “the question of poetry, of course...” ababcdcd / efeggf 1940 167 u rupert brooke a’b’b’a’cddc / efgf’eg 1940 168 u “nothing significant was really said...” abbacddc / efgfge 1940 178 u “at once he realized that the thrilling night...” ababcdcd / efegfg 1940 179 p ultimatum ababcdc /dee/ ffgg 1940 103 u “unexpectedly the scene attained... ababcdcd / efegfg 1940 183 u “there is no language of destruction for...” abbaacca / ddeeff 1940 185 tns conscript abab / cdcd / efef / gg 1941 7 tns “this was your place of birth...” ababcdc / d / efg / efg 1942 6 tns “climbing the hill within the deafening wind...” ababcddc / efgfeg 1944 9 tns “love, we must part now; do not let it be...” ababcacad / edfef 1943– 44? 18 tns “so through that unripe day you bore...” ababcdcdef / efgg 1943– 44 20 p story ababcdcd / efegf / g 1941 104 p a writer ababcdcd / efegfg 1941 104 p observation abba / cddc / efe / ggf 1941 105 u “the world in its flowing is various; as tides...” ababcdcdefe / gfg 1941 190 62 barry p. scherr u “time and space were only their disguises...” abba / cddc / efe / gfg 1941 190 u “sailors brought back strange stories...” ababcdcd / eefgfg 1941 197 u “flesh to flesh was loving from the start...” abca / abca / abca / dd 1942 208 u now aabbccdd / eeffgg 1942 211 u “the dead are lost, unravelled, but if a voice...” ababcddc / efgefg 1945 249 u neurotics abacbdcd / efe gfg 1949 266 u to failure ababcdcd / efgfeg 1949 269 tld spring ababcdcd / eff / geg 1950 40 u to my wife ababcdcd / efggfe 1951 274 u “when she came on, you couldn’t keep...” ababcdcd / efeffe 1953 280 u autobiography at an air-station ababcdcd / efgefg 1953 286 u “hotter shorter days arrive, like happiness...” ababcdcd / efgfge 1961 301 u “and now the leaves suddenly lose strength...” ababcdc/d/efgfeg 1961 301 u january ababcd / cdefggfe 1962 302 hw “friday night in the royal station hotel...” ababcdcde / fgefg 1966 80 hw the card-players abbacddcefegg / f 1970 84 u dear jake ababcdcdefg / efg 1976 315 column 1: u = unpublished; p = published only in journal; tns = the north ship; tld = the less deceived; hw = high windows column 5: page number in larkin 2012 “and now the leaves...” has a typographical break in the middle of line 8.