Syllabic verse: Difference between revisions

'''Syllabic verse''' is a [[poetic form]] having a fixed or constrained number of [[syllable]]s per [[Line (poetry)|line]], while stress, quantity, or tone play a distinctly secondary role — orrole—or no role at all — inall—in the verse structure. It is common in [[language]]s that are [[syllable-timed language|syllable-timed]], such as [[French language|French]] or [[Finnish language|Finnish]] —, as opposed to [[stress-timed language]]s such as [[English language|English]], in which [[accentual verse]] and [[accentual-syllabic verse]] are more common.

Many European languages have significant syllabic verse traditions, notably Italian, Spanish, French, and the [[Baltic languages|Baltic]] and [[Slavic languages]]. These traditions often permeate both folk and literary verse, and have evolved gradually over hundreds or thousands of years;. inIn a sense, the metrical tradition is older than the languages themselves, since it (like the languages) descended from [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]].<ref>Gasparov 1996, chapters 1, 2, 7, and 9; which also serves as the primary source for the following discussion.</ref>

It is often implied,<ref>e.g. Saintsbury, George: ''Historical Manual of English Prosody'', 1910, rpt New York: Schocken Books, 1966, p 14; Fussell, Paul: ''Poetic Meter and Poetic Form'', New York: Random House, 1965, p 7; Turco, Lewis: ''The New Book of Forms'', Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986, p 12.</ref> — but it is not true —incorrectly, that [[stress (linguistics)|word stress]] plays no part in the syllabic prosody of these languages. While Indeedword stress in most of these languages word stress is much less prominent than it is in, say, English or German; nonetheless, it is present both in the language and in the meter. Very broadly speaking, syllabic meters in these languages follow the same pattern:

Linguistically, the most significant exceptions to this pattern are in [[Latvian language|Latvian]], [[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]], and [[Serbian language|Serbian]] verse. which,These instead of stress,verses retain the older quantitative markers; that is, they useusing long and short syllables at the ends of hemistichs, ratherinstead thanof stressed and unstressed.

BecauseDue allto ofvariations these variables —in line length, number and length of hemistichs, obligatory stress positions, etc.and —other differ in detailfactors among various verse traditions;, and because theeach individuallanguage languages supplyprovides words with different rhythmic characteristics;, this basic metrical template is realized with great variety. by the languages that use it, and aA sequence of syllables that is metrical in one verse tradition will typically not fit in another.

Humans can perceive the number of members in a small set without actually counting them or mentally breaking them into subsets;, with the upper limit of this ability is estimated at between 5 and 9 units,. and thisThis seems to hold true in sequences of audible stimuli (e.g. syllables in a line of verse);.<ref>Scott 1993; Gasparov 1996, p 8.</ref> soTherefore, it is no surprise that syllabic hemistichs tend to be very short (typically 4 to 8 syllables), and to be grouped — and therefore separated from their neighbors — by markers such aslike stress, word boundaryboundaries, and rhyme.

'''Historically''', English syllabics have not evolved over time from native practice, but rather are the inventions of literate poets, primarily in the 20th century. '''Structurally''', syllable counts are not bound by tradition,. evenEven very long lines are not divided into hemistichs, and the verse exhibits none of the markers usually found in other syllabic meters (with the occasional exception of end-rhyme), relying for their measure solely on total count of syllables in the line. '''Perceptually''', "it is very doubtful that verse lines regulated by nothing more than identity of numbers of syllables would be perceived by auditors as verse . . . Further, absent the whole notion of meter as ''pattern'', one may question whether syllabic verse is 'metrical' at all."<ref name=brog1993>Brogan 1993.</ref> In English, the difficulty of perceiving even brief isosyllabic lines as rhythmically equivalent is aggravated by the inordinate power of stressed syllables.

In English, unstressed syllables are much weaker and shorter than stressed syllables, and their vowels are often phonetically [[Vowel reduction|reduced]] (pronounced as the rather indistinct [[schwa]] — "uh" — rather—rather than fully sounded). Moreover, auditors tend to perceive word stresses to fall at equal intervals in time, making English a ''perceptually'' "stress-timed" language; it ''seems'' that the same amount of time occurs between stresses.<ref>Chatman 1965, p 21-22.</ref> So the conventional patterns of [[accentual verse|accentual]] and [[accentual-syllabic verse|accentual-syllabic]] English verse are perceived as regularly rhythmic, whereas to the listener, syllabic verse generally is not distinguishable from free verse.

Thus, in English, syllabic technique does not — in English — convey a metrical rhythm;. ratherInstead, it is a compositional device: primarily of importance to the author, perhaps noticed by the alert reader, and imperceptible to the hearer.

A number of English-language poets in the [[Modernist poetry|Modernist]] tradition experimented with syllabic verse. These include [[Marianne Moore]], [[Dylan Thomas]], [[Louis Zukofsky]], [[Kenneth Rexroth]] and [[Thom Gunn]]. Some more traditional poets have also used syllabics, including [[Elizabeth Daryush]] and [[Robert Bridges]]. whoseBridges's ''Testament of Beauty'' is the longest syllabic poem in English.<ref name=brog1993/>

Dylan Thomas's "[[In my Craftcraft or Sullensullen Artart]]" is an example of syllabic verse in English: it has seven syllables in each line (except the last), but no consistent stress pattern.

flowers — atflowers—at ease and tall. The king is dead.

[[Elizabeth Daryush]], known for her use of syllabic verse, used the [[Quaternion (poetry)|quaternion]] form for her celebrated syllabic verse poem '"Accentedal'".<ref>'Biography of Elizabeth Daryush' MyPoeticSide.com </ref>

The modern French language does not have a significant stress accent (as English does). This means that the French metric line is generally determined by the number of syllables. The most common metric lengths are the ten-syllable line ({{lang|fr|décasyllabe}}), the eight-syllable line ({{lang|fr|octosyllabe}}) and the twelve-syllable line ({{lang|fr|[[Alexandrin]]}}).

Special syllable counting rules apply to French poetry. A silent or mute '"e'" counts as a syllable before a consonant, but not before a vowel (where {{lang|fr|[[h aspiré]]}} counts as a consonant). When it falls at the end of a line, the mute "e" is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables).

Polish syllabic verse is similar to French. The most common lengths are the thirteen-syllable line ("{{lang|pl|trzynastozgłoskowiec"}} or "[[Polish alexandrine]]"), the eleven-syllable line ("{{lang|pl|jedenastozgłoskowiec"}}) and eight-syllable line ("{{lang|pl|ośmiozgłoskowiec"}}). The rules of Polish verse were established in the 16th century. Polish metrics were strongly influenced by Latin, Italian, and French poetry. To this day originally Italian forms (like {{lang|it|[[ottava rima]]}}) are written in Poland in 11-syllable lines. Accentual verse was introduced into Polish literature at the end of 18th century but it never replaced traditional syllabic metres. Today 9-syllable lines are extremely popular. They are iambic or choriambic.<ref>For further descriptions of Polish verse see works by Maria Dłuska, Lucylla Pszczołowska, Adam Kulawik (Wersologia), and Wiktor Jarosław Darasz (Mały przewodnik po wierszu polskim).</ref>