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07-18-2001, 03:32 AM
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Location: Grimstad, home of Ibsen and Hamsun
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I decided to check through some Norwegian poetry I had lying around, too see what meters were predominant. What struck me was how rare IP was. Sure, some poems followed it, but most of the meters had anapests. The most common meter from in random sample was
x/xx/xx/x/
often alternating with another meter, most often
x/xx/xx/x/
/xx/xx/
or
x/xx/xx/x/
x/xx/x/
= =
My question is: Is the predominance of IP is mostly an English phenomenon? Steele said in his book that the French and Italians have different ideas about regularity in poetry. Does this hold for Germanic languages as well? Are meters with a mixture of anapest and iamb better suited for German, Danish, Norwegian and similar languages?
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Svein Olav
http://nonserviam.com/solan/
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07-18-2001, 06:36 PM
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Honorary Poet Lariat
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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I wish I could be of more help with your question. I know neither Danish nor Norwegian, and my German is pretty primitive. But in German, iambic is a common meter--not so prevalent as in English (trochaic is more a staple of German verse than of English). A fine scholar from the University of Virginia named Beth Bjorkland has an article on German versification (in METER AND RHYHTHM, edited by Karl Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans) entitled "Iambic and Trochaic Verse--Major and Minor Keys?" If you can lay your hands on that, that might be of interest and assistance to you.
Iambic is also of course a feature of Slavic prosody, and Vladimir Nabokov wrote an interesting comparative study of iambic tetrameter in Russian and iambic tetrameter in English. (Interesting, though the iambic pentameter is the standard dramatic--that is, stage-play--meter in Russian, the iambic tetrameter is more common for narrative. As Byronic as Pushkin was, he wrote his Eugene Onegin not in pentameter, à la Don Juan, but in tetrameter.)
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07-18-2001, 07:01 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
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Svein, Alan and I have just finished our alliterative verse translation of the Beowulf, which Longman will foist upon unsuspecting students everywhere in their British Literature Anthology, so I'm much immersed in the Germanic forebear to modern English. Fools rush in where Angles fear to tread, but let me observe that the triumph of accentual/syllabic verse isn't nearly so great in the Germanic tongues as it is in English, afflicted as we are with every imaginable Romance disease. I read Goethe with a crib, but I think the frequent anapests in that tongue may be attributable to this difference between these two great families of languages. Lord knows the Wulf is entirely accentual, and it delights me to know that for the people of Iceland it is no more difficult to read than is Chaucer for Americans.
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07-19-2001, 06:01 AM
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Join Date: Dec 1999
Location: Oslo, Norway
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Yer national anthem's trochaic, alternating tetra- and trimeter. I think there's a certain amount of inflexibility in Norwegian, because of the way stress (although Norwegians always insist that it's pitch) acts as a morpheme with words like beans and farmers. I have to admit that I've not thought much about this, before seeing your question. This may be odd . . .
Peter
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07-19-2001, 09:32 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Grimstad, home of Ibsen and Hamsun
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Timothy, Tim, Peter: Thank you for your replies.
Timothy: I will try and lay my hands on Bjorkland's article. I assume METER AND RHYTHM is a journal; is it an academic one? The university library would probably be able to get me a copy. Bjorkland sounds like a Norwegian name. Is he a first generation Norwegian?
Tim: Good work. I wonder if a Norwegian would be able to understand the original Beowulf without preparation.
Peter: The infamous "bønner om at bønder ikke bare teller bønner" (prayers that farmers don't just count beans) type of joke. Iambic seems more common in our nursery rhymes. Have you read "barske børnerim" ("rough nursery rhymes")? There's a poem there about this little boy who has done something wrong. Now he's holding the ladder for dad, while dad is cutting small branches off a tree to make a whip. But the boy is smart, and the last two lines are
"Stigen høi, bakken hård" (the ladder tall, the ground hard)
"Far ble syv og tyve år" (dad got to twenty-seven years of age)
Say the first line, and I'd think anyone of my generation will be able to return the next one to you. Aside from telling you a lot about the soul of the Norwegian(*), it is a good example of how meter&rhyme helps you remember.
(*) The national poems have something similar about what to do with the Swedes, who we were once bound to in union.
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Svein Olav
http://nonserviam.com/solan/
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07-20-2001, 04:27 PM
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Honorary Poet Lariat
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Svein,
Beth Bjorkland is a she. Though I've admired her work for some time, I don't know her personally, and don't know her background. As I may have mentioned, I believe she teaches at the University of Virginia.
METER AND RHYTHM is a book anthology that was published in 1989 by Academic Press--a division of Harcourt Brace. You could probably obtain iy via an inter-library loan program.
Good luck!
Tim Steele
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07-20-2001, 04:27 PM
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Honorary Poet Lariat
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 17
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Svein,
Beth Bjorkland is a she. Though I've admired her work for some time, I don't know her personally, and don't know her background. As I may have mentioned, I believe she teaches at the University of Virginia.
METER AND RHYTHM is a book anthology that was published in 1989 by Academic Press--a division of Harcourt Brace. You could probably obtain iy via an inter-library loan program.
Good luck!
Tim Steele
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07-20-2001, 11:35 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Grimstad, home of Ibsen and Hamsun
Posts: 833
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Timothy,
it was good to hear METER AND RHYTHM is a book. Then it will be obtainable for sure. As for Beth ... this is a good example of how easy it is to read what one believes rather than what is there. I read "Bent", since I had an old teacher named Bent Birkeland. Anyway: I look forward to reading the article.
Svein Olav
PS: I enjoy your book All the Fun's ...
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