I'm going to move on to the Tennyson, which, as Jody says, is in pure quantity, like the elegiacs of Propertius. If you already understand Classical meters, ignore the following; but I think the idea of quantity, & consequently the scansion of those lines, may be obscure to some people, so I'll try to explain a little, at the risk of being dull & pedantic.
Tennyson's lines scan as follows:
THESE LAME / HEXame / TERS THE / STRONG-WING'D / MUSic of / HOMer!
NO—but a / MOST BUR / LESQUE // BARbarous EXperiMENT.
WHEN was a / HARSHER / SOUND ever / HEARD, YE / MUSes, in / ENGLAND?
WHEN did a / FROG COAR / SER // CROAK upon OUR Helicon?
HEXame / TERS NO / WORSE THAN / DARING / GERmany / GAVE us,
BARbarous / EXperi / MENT, // BARbarous HEXameTERS.
Before people shriek that this is not a natural English scansion, that the beat in a word like "hexameters" or "experiment" is on the second syllable, not the first and the last, I would like to point out that that is exactly what Tennyson is saying, that this sort of meter is not at all suited for our barbarian English. Still, to explain.
The metrical principle at work here is quantitative; that is, it's measured by how long it takes to say the syllables; syllables are long either by nature, as in "these", in which the long vowel demands to be drawn out; or by position, as the first & last syllable of "hexameters" in the first line. "Hex" is a long syllable because the consonant which follows the short vowel is compound, really a combination of two consonants; & "ters," being followed by "the", presents a battery of three different consonant sounds, "rsth", that the mouth has to break through to say the syllable. That "the" is long for the same reason, being followed by "str". At any rate, that's quantity. It's not in conflict with stress accent--this poem can be read in a way that honors both the quantity & quality of the syllables--but the fundamental principle is quantitative.
To speak briefly of quality, both Latin & Greek have it, just as English words have quantity; in Latin as in English, there is stress accent; in Greek, there is pitch, which I think is another reason for that language's comparative lightness. Anyway, as speech rhythm often interacts & conflicts with the meter in English (quantity being a not insignificant factor in speech rhythm), so stress & pitch in Latin & Greek respectively interact with the quantitative meters, creating an interesting music.
Having said all of that, I agree 100%, Janet, that a purely quantitative meter has no business in English; in fact, I'm not sure it had any business in Latin either, though it was adopted early & quickly became conventional. Yet that has not happened in English, & Poe is right that it won't; we're too fond of our accentual meters ever to allow some pedantic classicist to decree that henceforth All Poesy Written Shall Be Quantitative In Strict Imitation Of The Greek. But attempts to reproduce quantitative meters accentually I have no problem with. The difficulty is that the mental template of the Sapphic or the Alcaic is not one that many English readers have readily available, while everybody knows what to expect from an iambic pentameter. The problem, therefore, is that in metrically ambiguous passages, if you're writing in Alcaics, say, you have no assurance that your reader will know the meter & thus be able to hear the lines as you intend them. There is therefore very little room for ambiguity in the translation of quantitative meter to accentual, and hence no leeway to fool around with "substitutions" beyond those that Horace & Sappho & Alcaeus allowed themselves.
Well, let's say Enough! or Too Much. I'll be counting down the minutes until Prof. Mezey skewers me & tells me everything I've said is completely wrong. Hope this is of mild interest to someone.
Chris
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