Henry:
Horace's Latin sapphic stanza looks like this:
— u — — — ^^ u u — u — x
— u — — — ^^ u u — u — x
— u — — — ^^ u u — u — x
— u u — x
(Where "—" means a long syllable, "u" a short, and "x" either, and "^^" means the caesura.)
Translated directly into accents, that would be:
/ v / / / v v / v / x
/ v / / / v v / v / x
/ v / / / v v / v / x
/ v v / x
In my own sapphics that I posted above, I tried to keep to this pattern—except I started each stanza with an extra unaccented syllable, and varied the caesura, and lopped the last syllable off the third line, because all those feminine endings were driving me crazy:
if I have SEEN GEESE LOW on the EAST hoRIzon,
SEEN the LONG REEDS STRAIN in the DAWN reMAINing,
WATCHED the FIRST CLEAN ICE of the SEAson TAKE
ROOT for the WINTer
So, too, the opening line of Watts:
WHEN the FIERCE NORTH-WIND with his AIRy FORces
But Horace would often use substitutions in the feet before the caesura, and, anyway, three stresses in a row are very hard to do in English, and tend to break down in the reader’s ear to / v /. So, the accentual sapphic pattern in English came to substitute / v / for / / /:
/ v / v / ^^ v v / v / x
/ v / v / ^^ v v / v / x
/ v / v / ^^ v v / v / x
/ v v / x
I think this is the pattern you’re expecting to find. (Except perhaps without the steady break in the middle: The Greek caesura was always much more flexible than Horace’s, and English tends to treat it as entirely movable.) Thus Hardy’s line:
SET me SUN by SUN near to ONE unCHOSen
and the root rhythm of Swinburne’s sapphics:
SAW the WHITE imPLAcable APHroDIte,
SAW the HAIR unBOUND and the FEET unSANDalled
SHINE as FIRE of SUNset on WESTern WATers;
SAW the reLUCtant
But / v / is a compromise, a surrendering to the fact that English doesn’t want to do spondees. Horace would have substituted a dactyl for the spondee, not a trochee, and so classically trained poets have tried to do that as well. Indeed, they’ve made substitutions all down the line. As Peterjb pointed out about Tim Steele’s sapphics:
May I imagine being in the Inferno, /--/-/-/--/-
(Extra dactyl, in the first foot)
A madman. What Atilla did to Europe, -/-/-/-/-/-
(No dactyl)
I tend to think the dactyl in the fourth foot is the defining feature of sapphics in English, and so I don’t entirely approve of these substitution of Steele’s, but it seems to work in the general effect of substitutions he uses.
Jody
[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited July 10, 2004).]
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