Meters and dimensions of the verse
Dactyl- a three-syllable foot with stress on the first syllable (dactyl foot pattern: ! - -), and in the verse as a whole - on the first, fourth, seventh, tenth, thirteenth, etc.
How good you are, O night sea, - Here it is radiant, there it is bluish-dark... In the moonlight, as if alive, It walks and breathes, and it shines. ! - - ! - - ! - - ! - ! - - ! - - ! - - ! ! - - ! - - ! - - ! - ! - - ! - - ! - - ! Early summer dews We will go out into the field for a walk. Let's ringing braids Cut juicy grass! ! - - ! - - ! - - ! - - ! - - ! ! - - ! - - ! - - ! - - ! - - !
Dactyl- (Greek daktylos, lit. finger), a poetic meter formed by 3-complex feet with a strong place on the 1st syllable of the foot ("A deep hole dug with a spade", I.S. Nikitin). The most commonly used sizes of the Russian syllabic-tonic dactyl are: dactyl 2-foot (in the 18th century), 4- and 3-foot (in the 19th-20th centuries).
The daily audience of the Potihi.ru portal is about 200 thousand visitors, who in total view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.
Here they are - the whales of poetry.) Although many writers believe that they are far from being the main ones. Whatever it was - definitely very important for the poet!
RHYTHM - the sound structure of a particular poetic line; the general ordering of the sound structure of poetic speech. Meter is a special case of rhythm.
METER (Greek metron - measure, size) - an ordered alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in a verse, a general scheme of sound rhythm. See also antique meters
SIZE - a way of sound organization of the verse; special case meters. So, the iambic meter can include sizes from 1-foot to 12-foot (and more) iambic, as well as free iambic. In syllabic versification, meter is determined by the number of syllables; in tonic - by the number of stresses; in metric and syllabo-tonic - by the meter and the number of feet. The length of the size is determined by the number of feet: two-foot, three-foot, four-foot, five-foot, etc. The shortest sizes are the most common. Examples:
Play, / Adele,
Do not know sadness;
Charity, Lel
You were married.
(A.S. Pushkin)
Oh pa / mint heart / dtsa! You / stronger /
Reason of sad memory
And often with its sweetness
You captivate me in a distant country.
(K.N. Batyushkov
Storm / mist / sky / covers,
Whirlwinds of snow twisting;
Like a beast, she will howl
It will cry like a child.
(A.S. Pushkin)
Let the pines / and firs
All winter stick out
In the snow and blizzard
They sleep wrapped up.
(F.I. Tyutchev)
In the midst of a noisy / ball / randomly,
In the turmoil of the world,
I saw you, but the mystery
Your features are covered.
(A.K. Tolstoy)
What are you staring / at the bottom / on the road / gu
Away / from fun / lyh girlfriends?
To know, the heart beat alarm -
Your whole face suddenly lit up.
(N.A. Nekrasov)
Morning that / semolina, / this morning / before,
Fields are sad, / covered with snow,
Reluctantly remember the time of the past,
Remember faces long forgotten.
(I.S. Turgenev)
Spring is coming.
She sings,
Buzzing, buzzing,
Spinning, pulling.
Spring is coming. She is
Sings, murmurs, buzzes,
Spinning, pulling. Spring.
iambic tetrameter
Spring is coming. She sings,
Murmurs, buzzes, circles, attracts.
Spring is coming. She sings, murmurs,
Buzzing, circling, attracting. Spring is coming.
An example of an extra long size (12-foot iambic):
Near the honey / casting / Nile / where / the lake / ro Me / rida, / in the kingdom / fiery / RA,
You loved me for a long time, like Osiris Isis, friend, queen and sister!
(V.Ya. Bryusov)
ICT (Latin ictus - strike) - a stressed syllable in a verse. The second name is arsis. The inter-ict interval (the second name is the thesis) is an unstressed syllable in a verse.
STOP - unit of length of a verse; repeated combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. Graphically, the foot is depicted using a diagram, where “-” is a stressed syllable, and “È” is an unstressed one.
Two-syllable feet: iambic and trochaic (two-syllable).
Trisyllabic feet: dactyl, amphibrach, anapaest (trisyllabic).
Four-syllable feet: peon (four-syllables).
About ancient feet
YaMB - two-syllable poetic foot with stress on the second syllable. The most common stop of Russian verse.
Scheme "È -". Basic sizes: 4-foot (lyric, epic), 6-foot (poems and dramas of the 18th century), 5-foot (lyrics and dramas of the 19th-20th centuries), free multi-footed (fable of the 18th-19th centuries, comedy of the 19th century .).
My uncle of the most honest rules,
When I fell ill in earnest,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of a better one.
(A.S. Pushkin)
CHOREIUS (Greek choreios - dancing) or TROCHEI (Greek trochaios - running) - a two-syllable poetic foot with an emphasis on the first syllable. Scheme "- È".
Clouds roll, clouds roll
Invisible moon
Illuminates the flying snow;
The sky is cloudy, the night is cloudy.
(A.S. Pushkin)
DACTYLE (Greek daktylos - finger) - a three-syllable poetic foot with an emphasis on the first syllable.
Scheme "- ÈÈ".
Saved in slavery
The heart of the people
Gold, gold
The heart of the people!
(N.A. Nekrasov)
AMPHIBRACHY (Greek amphibrachys - short on both sides) - a three-syllable poetic foot with an emphasis on the second syllable. Scheme "È - È".
Stands alone in the wild north
On the bare top of a pine
And dozing, swaying, and loose snow
Dressed like a robe. she is.
(M.Yu. Lermontov)
ANAPEST (Greek anapaistos - reflected, i.e. reverse to dactyl) - a three-syllable poetic foot with an emphasis on the last syllable. Scheme "ÈÈ -".
Is in the melodies of your innermost
Fatal news of death.
There is a curse of sacred covenants,
There is a desecration of happiness.
(A. Blok)
PEON is a four-syllable poetic foot with 1 stressed and 3 unstressed syllables. Depending on which syllable of the foot is stressed, peons are distinguished on the 1st (- È ÈÈ), 2nd (È- ÈÈ), 3rd (ÈÈ-È) and 4th syllable of the foot (È ÈÈ -). Peony is often a special case of iambic and trochaic.
Sleep half-dead wilted flowers
And who did not recognize the flowering of beauty,
Near the hackneyed paths raised by the creator,
Crumpled by the unseen heavy wheel
(K.D. Balmont)
Don't think too much about seconds.
There will come a time, you will understand, probably -
They whistle like bullets at the temple,
Moments, moments, moments.
(R. Rozhdestvensky)
PENTON (five-syllable) - a poetic size of five syllables with an emphasis on 3 syllables. Penton designed by A.V. Koltsov and is used only in folk songs. Rhyme is usually absent. Scheme "ÈÈ - ÈÈ"
Do not make noise, rye,
Ripe ear!
Don't sing, mower
About the wide steppe!
(A.V. Koltsov)
PIRRICHIUS - a foot of two short (in ancient versification) or two unstressed (in syllabic-tonic) syllables. Pyrrhic is conventionally called the omission of stress on a rhythmically strong place in trochee and iambic.
Three maidens by the window
Dropped in late at night...
(A.S. Pushkin)
TRIBRACHIUS - the omission of stress in a three-syllable size on the first syllable (“Unique grace of days ...”).
ANAKRUZA (Greek anakrusis - repulsion) is a metrically weak spot at the beginning of a verse before the first ikt (stressed syllable), usually of constant volume. Anacrusis is often overscheme stressed. Anakruza is also called unstressed syllables at the beginning of a verse.
The mermaid floated on the blue river,
Illuminated full moon;
And she tried to splash to the moon
Silvery foam waves.
(M.Yu. Lermontov)
SUPREMATIC STRESS - emphasis on the weak point of the poetic meter (“The spirit of denial, the spirit of doubt” - M. Yu. Lermontov).
When I wait for her arrival at night,
Life seems to hang by a thread.
What honors, what youth, what freedom
In front of a nice guest with a pipe in her hand.
(A. Akhmatova)
SPONDEUS - an iambic or chorea foot with a superscheme accent. As a result, the foot can have two strokes in a row.
Swede, Russian - stabs, cuts, cuts.
Drum beat, clicks, rattle,
The thunder of cannons, the clatter, the neighing, the groan,
And death, and hell from all sides.
(A.S. Pushkin)
TRUNCATION - an incomplete foot at the end of a verse or half-line. Truncation is typically present in interleaving
in verses of rhymes from words with stress on different syllables from the end (for example, feminine and masculine rhymes).
Mountain peaks
Sleep in the darkness of the night;
quiet valleys
Full of fresh haze. u
(M.Yu. Lermontov)
ALEXANDRIAN VERSE (from the old French poem about Alexander the Great) - French 12-complex or Russian 6-foot iambic with a caesura after the 6th syllable and paired rhyming; the main size of large genres in the literature of classicism.
An arrogant temporary worker, and vile and treacherous,
The monarch is a cunning flatterer and an ungrateful friend,
Furious tyrant of his native country,
A villain elevated to an important rank by slyness!
(K.F. Ryleev)
HEXAMETER (Greek hexametros - six-dimensional) - the meter of ancient epic poetry: six-foot dactyl,
in which the first four feet can be replaced by spondei (in syllabic-tonic imitations - by chorea). Hexameter - the most popular and prestigious ancient size, the invention of which was attributed to Apollo himself - the god who patronizes poetry. Among the Hellenes, this size was associated with the noise of a wave running ashore. The greatest poems of Homer "Iliad" and "Odyssey" (7th century BC), Virgil's "Aeneid", as well as hymns, poems, idylls and satires of many ancient poets were written with hexameter. Up to 32 rhythmic variations of the hexameter are possible. Scheme examples:
-ÈÈ-ÈÈ-//ÈÈ-ÈÈ-ÈÈ-È ; -ÈÈ-ÈÈ-È//È-ÈÈ-ÈÈ-È ("È" - unstressed part, "-" - stressed part, "//" - inflection)
Hexameter was introduced into Russian poetry by V.K. Trediakovsky, and fixed N. I. Gnedich (translation of the Iliad), V. A. Zhukovsky (translation of the Odyssey), A. Delvig.
Anger, goddess, sing to Achilles, the son of Peleus,
Terrible, who did thousands of disasters to the Achaeans:
Many mighty souls of glorious heroes cast down
In gloomy Hades and spread them themselves for the benefit of carnivorous
To the surrounding birds and dogs (Zeus's will was performed), -
From that day on, as those who raised a dispute, flared up with enmity
The shepherd of the peoples Atrids and the noble hero Achilles.
(Homer "Iliad". Per. N. Gnedich)
PENTAMETER - an auxiliary meter of ancient versification; an integral part of an elegiac distich, in which the first verse is a hexameter, the second is a pentameter. In fact, the pentameter is a hexameter with truncations in the middle and at the end of the verse.
Scheme: -ÈÈ-ÈÈ-//-ÈÈ-ÈÈ-. In its pure form, the pentameter was not used.
LOGAED (Greek logaoidikos - prosaic-poetic) - a poetic meter formed by a combination of unequal stops (for example, anapaests and choreas), the sequence of which is correctly repeated from stanza to stanza. Logaeds are the main form of ancient song lyrics, as well as choral parts in tragedies. Often, logaedic meters were named after their creators and propagandists: alcaeus verse, sapphic verse, phelecius, adonius, etc.
We will live and love, my friend,
Grumble of the old men fierce
We will put in broken pennies with you ...
(Gaius Catullus)
Many Russian poets also wrote in Logaeds. As an example, a logaed with alternating 3-foot dactyl and 2-foot iambic.
Lips can / and approach / press
To your / lips,
The mysteries are happening again
And the world is like a temple.
(V.Ya. Bryusov)
BRAHIKOLON - a genre of experimental poetry; monosyllabic size (one-syllable), in which all syllables are stressed.
The main characteristics of the syllabic-tonic system
The basis of the syllabic-tonic system is foot - a repeating element of a verse, usually consisting of stressed and the same number of unstressed syllables. The foot is not at all an invention of Russian scientists, it was already known in the ancient metric system, from which the names were borrowed. However, in antiquity, the foot consisted of long and short sounds, and in Russia it consisted of percussion and unstressed sounds. This not only decisively changed the sound of the verse, but also drastically reduced the number of stops. The fact is that in the ancient system the foot was not necessarily determined one long sound, there could be three, and even four. Duration (mora, share) was decisive. Recall that a long sound was taken as two beats, and a short one for one. Therefore, let's say, an eight-beat foot of four long sounds was allowed disponday: – – – –; on the other hand, another octagon was possible dohmiy: U – – U – .
Let's pay attention: in the theory of verse long or percussive sound it is customary to designate – (long dash), and short (unstressed) U(dimple). AT recent times, however, other designations of stress / unstress are allowed, but this design dominates. If we count the shares, it is easy to see that there are 8 of them in dispond (4 x 2 = 8) and 8 in dohmi (1+2+2+1+2 = 8).
But such stops are possible only in metric system , in the case of accents, this is fundamental impossible. Imagine what kind of foot it will be if it has four shocks in a row. And if after it there are four more drums, then everything will become completely frivolous. Therefore, European and, above all, Russian versification, which interests us, chose from a huge number of ancient feet only those in which there was one long(his position was taken by shock) and the rest brief(their positions were taken unstressed).
In reality, the following feet take part in the classical meters of the verse:
- · Disyllabic(repeat every two syllable):
Chorey (shock + unstressed):
– U
The sound of chorea is easiest to feel if you take a choreic word (for example, mother or dad) and repeat it many times. In poetry, choreas are very common - from children's poetry to classics:
Our Tanya is crying loudly:
Dropped a ball into the river.
- Hush, Tanechka, don't cry:
The ball will not sink in the river ... (A. Barto)
The blizzard is angry, the blizzard is crying;
Sensitive horses snore;
Here he is galloping far away;
Only eyes burn in the darkness ... (A. S. Pushkin)
Yamb (unstressed + percussion):
U –
Repeat iambic words several times ( window, winter, moon etc.) - and you will feel the sound of iambic. Yambs are the favorite footsteps of Russian classics:
My uncle of the most honest rules,
When I fell ill in earnest,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of a better one. (A. S. Pushkin)
- · Trisyllabic(repeatability through three syllable). In Russian poetry, where there is one percussion in the foot, three options are possible, respectively:
Dactyl (shock + two unstressed):
– U U
If we take the dactylic word ( gold, cold, fair etc.) and repeat it, we will hear a dactyl. Dactyl is quite popular in Russian poetry, although it is less common in two-syllables:
Storm in the evening sky
An angry sea noise
Storm on the sea and thoughts
Lots of painful thoughts. (A. A. Fet)
Heavenly clouds, eternal wanderers!
Steppe azure, pearl chain
You rush as if like me, exiles
From the sweet north to the south. (M. Yu. Lermontov)
Amphibrachius (unstressed + shock + unstressed):
U – U
Repeated amphibrachic word ( cow, road, listen etc.) will give us the sound of this time signature. There are a lot of amphibrachs in Russian poetry:
The last cloud of the scattered storm!
Alone you rush through the clear azure,
You alone cast a sad shadow,
You alone grieve the jubilant day. (A. S. Pushkin)
Today, I see your eyes are especially sad
And the arms are especially thin, hugging their knees.
Listen: far, far, on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams. (N. S. Gumilyov)
Anapaest ( unstressed + unstressed + percussion):
U U –
To hear an anapaest, you need to repeat anapaest words (head, cold, far, etc.). Anapaest is very popular:
Oh, spring without end and without edge -
Endless and endless dream!
I recognize you, life! I accept!
And I greet with the sound of the shield! (A. A. Blok)
In the cold, in the cold
From familiar places
Others call us cities, -
Whether it's Minsk, whether it's Brest, -
In the cold, in the cold ... (V. S. Vysotsky)
This is the so-called "classic five" of Russian feet. Most of the verses of Russian classics use precisely these feet. Students, as a rule, memorize the names of the feet well, but get confused with the placement of stresses.
choir ohshiy pits box d leave amphibian June in Anapa at .
This phrase is easy to remember and matches the stress ( choir her, pits b, d aktil, amphibian rachia, anap eating). Two-syllables first with first and second stresses (trochee, iambic), then three-syllables with first, second and third stresses (dactyl, amphibrach, anapaest).
In addition to the "classic five", Russian poetry also knows more complex feet. Less popular but found four-syllable feet. They bear the name peonies (sometimes they write "peons", less often "peans"). It's a foot of four syllables . Each peon does not have a special name, they are determined by the position of the shock: peon I, peon II, peon III, peon IV. These feet are quite rare, more often than other peons I I and II I . Formally, they are similar to choreas and iambs, but the rhythm is different, the four-syllable articulation is clearly felt. Compare iambic tetrameter:
For the shores of the distant homeland
You left a foreign land;
In an unforgettable hour, in a sad hour
I cried for a long time before you. (A. S. Pushkin)
and the two-foot peon II formally close to it:
Flashlights, sudariki,
Tell me
What they saw, what they heard
Are you in the silence of the night?
So decorously you are placed
On the streets we have:
night guards,
Your keen eye is true! (I.P. Myatlev)
You don't have to be a versifier to feel different rhythms. Myatlev clearly feels four-syllable repeatability: U – U U U – U U .
The third peonies are the most common, they have been known since the 18th century and were initially used to stylize folk poetry:
Do not be sad, my light! I'm sad myself
I haven't seen you for a long time,
A jealous husband won't let you go anywhere;
I just turn around, and so he goes there.
Forces me to always be with him;
He says: “Why are you sad?”
I sigh for you, my light, always
You never get out of your mind. (A.P. Sumarokov)
The metric scheme of this verse is: U U – U U U – U U U – .
Later, the range of use of peon III expanded. He became quite popular both in classical poetry and in poems for children, for example, by Korney Chukovsky.
In many cases, the distinction between peons and two-syllables (iamba and trochaic) is a problem, but for the time being we can not delve into these subtleties of versification, now our task is to understand the very principle of organizing syllabic-tonic verse.
Possible and quite common five-syllable feet (according to the terminology of A.P. Kvyatkovsky - five-dollar). They are usually used for pastiches of folk poetry. The most common five-syllable III: U U – U U U U – U U . It is associated with the name of A. Koltsov and the poems of other poets who stylize folk verse:
How to bind, how to stick
To the mind-mind, an idle thought,
A thought that is boring will cling to your brain
And pecks him, unrelenting. (V. G. Benediktov)
These are the main steps of Russian versification. Inside a real poem, there may be elements that are formally similar to other ancient feet, which allowed some theorists (for example, V. Ya. Bryusov) to significantly expand the list of possible feet in Russian poetry. However, this is hardly reasonable, we are not confronted with a foot, but with some super-scheme phenomenon that complicates the metric scheme, for example, amphibrach. It makes sense to talk about the foot only when it underlies poetic rhythm. In other words, we can talk about iambic, if there are verses written in iambic. And it is hardly correct to call particular cases of complication of the metric scheme “stops”. There can be many of these complications, some of them will be described below, but here we cannot talk about feet in the strict sense of this term.
Foot underlies poetic dimensions. Here it is necessary to make a reservation. In everyday life, we often speak inaccurately. Even teachers who ask students "What size is this?" expect to hear "iamb" or "trochee." However foot and the size- concepts are different. After all, the word "size" always implies "the size of something." In our case, the size verse. unit measurements is an foot, but the size determined number of stops. Therefore, “size” is not iambic, but “iambic four-foot” or “iambic five-foot”. Roughly speaking, we can say that to answer the question about the size of "iamb" or "trochee" is about the same as answering the question about the size meter rooms. But it's important for us to know how many meters. The same is with the verse: it is important for us to know how many stop in verse and what is the foot.
Number of stops fixed in verse on the last stressed syllable, the presence or absence of unstressed at the end does not determine the size. Let's clarify this with an example:
In what year - count
In what land - guess
On the pillar path
Seven men got together. (N. A. Nekrasov)
What is the size of the verse of the famous prologue to the poem "Who in Russia should live well"? If we formally count the syllables, we get (excluding stressed and unstressed) that the first three lines have eight syllables, and the last has six. We can define a foot. This is iambic. Does this mean that the first lines are written in iambic tetrameter, and the last - in trimeter? No, because the last stress is everywhere on the sixth syllable, the metric scheme would be:
U - U - U - U U
U - U - U - U U
U - U - U - U U
U-U-U-
Therefore, the size here is the same - iambic trimeter, and the lines differ not in size, but in the nature of the endings (clauses). Clauses and other rhythmic determinants will be discussed below.
The same is true in the opposite case, when the last foot is not filled with unstressed ones. It is the last shock that is important to us, the size is fixed according to it:
There is no other way
As through your hand -
How else can you find
My dear land (O. E. Mandelstam)
Before us is a dactyl, but how many stops are there? The complete dactyl scheme would be:
– U U – U U – U U
Mandelstam has a slightly different pattern:
– U U – U U –
However, from the point of view of size, this does not change anything, it is still a three-foot dactyl, since the last stress is always on the seventh syllable, which means that the third foot is indicated. It's just that there is a male clause here (that is, the absence of unstressed ones at the end of the line).
Stops set metric scheme verse, that is, some ideal principle of its construction. However, the real sound of the verse, as a rule, does not coincide with the metric scheme, the metric scheme can be emphasized only when chant, that is, an artificial reading of poetry, emphasizing their metrical structure. Reading will be funny and unnatural. Very often, chanting is typical for children reading poetry from the stage; it is easier for children to emphasize the meter than semantic accents. For example, an adult would read:
With e la m y ha on var e nah, that's it yo poet e nee.
(Highlights of reading highlighted.)
The child will read differently:
With e la m y ha n a var e nah, in about t and sun yo verse about creation e nee.
The metric scheme underlies any syllabo-tonic verse, but the real rhythm does not coincide with it. There are many factors that create real rhythm. Let's take a closer look at some of them.
Rhythmic determinants of syllabo-tonic
Supra-scheme accents or omission of scheme stress
Living speech is always "uncomfortable" in a strict metric scheme. Experts have calculated that the average syllable length of a word for most European languages is about 2.4 - 2.5 syllables. That is, if we break all the words into syllables, add the syllables together and divide by the number of words, we will get approximately the same numbers. This is, of course, an abstraction, but it explains some things. It becomes clear that in two-syllable sizes (trochaic and iambic) this abstract word will be too crowded, since 0.4 - 0.5 of an "unstressed" syllable will go beyond the scheme. And in trisyllabics, on the contrary: the word will be too “spacious”, there will be a shortage of stresses. This explains the fact that in iambic and chorea there are many passes metric accents. Positions that are strong according to the metric scheme (the so-called ikty) in real text are filled with unstressed ones. Such a phenomenon is called pyrrhic. For the reasons already indicated, there are a lot of pyrrhic verses in iambic and choreic verses:
Clouds are rushing, clouds are winding;
Invisible moon
Illuminates the flying snow;
The sky is cloudy, the night is cloudy. (A. S. Pushkin)
Before us is a four-foot trochee, the metric scheme of which is always the same:
– U – U – U – U
In the four-foot trochee, the first, third, fifth, and seventh syllables are iktami. But in reality, in Pushkin's text, we see something else:
– U – U – U – U
U U– U U U –
U U– U – U – U
– U – U – U –
The first and fourth lines are written according to the metric scheme, but the second and third skip some accents. This is the pyrrhic. In such cases, it is customary to say that before us pyrrhic tetrameter trochaic.
In trisyllabics, the omission of scheme stress is much less common, but sometimes it is possible. Then we get a three-syllable foot with a missed accent, often by analogy with the ancient foot in three short it is called tribrachium, but you can just talk about the omission of the scheme stress:
After the calmed down blizzard
There is peace in the area.
I listen at my leisure
This is a three-foot anapaest with a metric scheme
U U – U U – U U – U
U U – U U – U U –
The second and fourth lines correspond to this pattern, but the first and third do not. The first line should have been " y hubbub and left”, and in the third - “attached y shiva Yu ss". But in reality, of course, we don’t pronounce it like that, skipping schematic stresses.
The opposite phenomenon overscheme accent. Overscheme stress is natural for three-syllables, which is clear from the previous explanations. In Pasternak's lines just cited, we see him at the beginning of the first and third lines. Usually, when reading poetry aloud, we slightly muffle these stresses, following the logic of size. We don't read Í I listen at my leisure", and we pronounce phonetically together "I have y I'm messing around."
In two-syllables, the superscheme stress is striking and, as a rule, carries a semantic load. This is understandable: the word is already “cramped” in a two-syllable scheme, and we saturate the text even more with stresses. Such a phenomenon is called spondee. Spondeas explode the rhythm, the verse sounds more tense. As a rule, spondei emphasize excitement or drama. A classic example is the description of the battle in "Poltava" by A. S. Pushkin. Here is iambic tetrameter, and at first the metric scheme is observed more or less strictly:
And with them the royal squads
Converged in the smoke among the plains:
And the battle broke out, the Poltava battle!
But then the tension intensifies, and this is emphasized by the many spondees and other rhythmic complications:
Cast iron balls everywhere
Between them they jump, smash,
Dust dig and hiss in blood.
Swede, Russian - stabs, cuts, cuts.
The battle drum, clicks, rattle,
Thunder guns, stomping, neighing, groaning,
And death and hell on all sides ...
Four lines in a row begin with percussion, which should not be in the iambic metric scheme. The spondeic breaks in rhythm are amplified by alliteration (note how big number"r" and hissing sounds in the passage) and emphasize the sense of the bloody chaos of the battle.
Number of stops per line
The actual rhythm depends on the size of the verse (line), that is, on how many stops are in the verse. Short verses tend to be more energetic, longer ones sound more fluid. There are many pyrrhichi in the many-foot iambs and trochees. Let's compare the sound of iambs by Pushkin:
Oh Delvig! drew
The Muses are my lot;
But you are my sorrows
Want to multiply?
This is iambic trimeter. And here is the six-foot one:
In full squares, silent from fear,
On Fridays, executions went to be played out,
And the people began to scratch their ears
And say: “Hey! this one is not the same."
It is easy to feel that simply adding up the lines of the first poem will not reproduce the rhythm of the second passage. Six-foot iambic sounds different in principle. In real poetry, two-syllables of three to six feet and three-syllables of three to five feet were most often used. Although some poets (for example, K. Balmont) we will also find multimeter sizes. And vice versa, in poetic experiments, even one-foot choreas with masculine rhyme are possible (that is, there is a one-syllable word in a line). Such, for example, is the "Sonnet" by I. Selvinsky:
Dol
Sed.
Shel
Grandfather.
Track
Vel -
Brel
Following…
Naturally, this is only possible in experiments, it is impossible to write like this all the time.
Line ending (clause)
Clausula - in poetry, the phenomenon of the end of a line. Somewhat coarsening, we can say that rhythmically the clause is the last shock and everything that comes after it. Naturally, the rhythm will noticeably change if, say, the line ends with a stressed line or if after it there are a few more syllables. We have already said that the number of stops in a line is determined by the last stress. The clausal stress is stable and cannot fall out - this is the law of the verse. If, say, we have iambic tetrameter, then any foot can have pyrrhic, but the eighth syllable will always be stressed. There are the following types of clauses:
Men's (the line ends with a shock). The male clause gives the verse clarity and completeness. For example, only masculine clauses are used by M.Yu. Lermontov in the poem "Mtsyri":
Once a Russian general
I drove from the mountains to Tiflis;
He was carrying a prisoner child.
He fell ill, could not bear
Proceedings of a long way;
He seemed to be six years old...
Women's (after the last shock one unstressed). For Russian poetry, the combination of male and female clauses is classic. Suffice it to recall the novel by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin":
Not thinking proud light to amuse, (female)
Loving the attention of friendship, (male)
I would like to introduce you (female)
The bail is worthy of you. (male)
Dactylic (after the last shock two unstressed). This clause has nothing to do with the foot of the dactyl, the name is metaphorical. Just formally, such a clause looks like a dactyl foot - U U . But she can meet both in iambic and in chorea:
Without a mind, without a mind
I was given in marriage;
golden age girlish
Shortened by force.
Is it for youth
Observed, unlived;
Behind the glass, from the sun,
Beauty was cherished
So that I am married for my life
Crying, crying
Without love, without joy
Broke down, tormented. (A.V. Koltsov)
The rhythm of this poem by Koltsov is determined by the meter (three-foot trochaic), the abundance of pyrrhic on the first foot and the dactylic clause.
Hyperdactylic (more than two unstressed after the last shock). This clause is quite rare, but still it is not something "exotic" for Russian poetry:
Cold, the body is secretly binding,
Cold, soul enchanting...
From the moon the rays are stretched,
They touch the heart with needles. (V. Ya. Bryusov)
This is a four-foot trochee with a hyperdactylic clause. Notice how the clause changes the sound of the chorea. Compare with Pushkin's four-foot chorea:
Demons rush swarm after swarm
In the boundless height
Screeching plaintively and howling
Breaking my heart...
It is no coincidence that the clause is considered an important rhythmic determinant, that is, the real sound of the verse largely depends on it.
Pause system
Pauses also have a noticeable effect on the rhythm of the verse. We have already said that a verse is not possible at all without long pauses between verses (in writing - a breakdown by lines). But intra-verse pauses are also very important, often they noticeably change the rhythmic pattern. Let's, for example, look at the famous poem by M. Yu. Lermontov:
I go out alone on the road;
Through the mist the flinty path gleams;
The night is quiet. The desert listens to God
And the star speaks to the star.
It will not be easy for a not very experienced philologist to hear the sound of a trochaic here. Why? The fact is that the metric scheme is greatly complicated by pyrrhic and pauses. The scheme of the pentameter trochaic is as follows:
– U – U – U – U – U
But the real rhythm of Lermontov's masterpiece is different:
U U - / U - U - U - U
Pyrrhic on the first foot and a pause in the middle of the second changed the chorea beyond recognition.
The so-called caesura(do not confuse with the paronym "censorship"!) - constant long pauses, dissecting multi-foot verses into related parts. Most often, caesuras are located approximately in the middle of the verse (however, latest poetry knows caesura shifts to the beginning or to the end of the verse). For an inexperienced philologist, caesura is insidious in that it can knock down the graphic harmony of size, superscheme unstressed ( caesura buildup) or, conversely, syllables can "disappear" ( caesura truncation). If you “draw” the scheme of such a verse, in the middle there will be a failure that was not felt during pronunciation:
Sisters of heaviness and tenderness, your signs are the same.
Lungworts and wasps suck heavy roses.
The person is dying. The sand cools warm
And yesterday's sun is carried on a black stretcher.
If we formally draw the metric scheme of this poem (we now abstract from super-scheme stresses), then we get:
U U – U U – U U U - U UU - U U - U
U U – U U – UU- U U – U U –
It turns out that in the first line there is an extra syllable in the third foot. Why don't we feel interruption? Try, for example, to insert an extra syllable in the middle of the line "Eugene Onegin" - a rhythm failure will be felt immediately. And Mandelstam's anapaest does not suffer at all. The point is precisely that in the middle of the line, the caesura, which hides this interruption, “evens out the rhythm”.
Thus, the sound of a verse is determined not only by the size, not only by the feet, but also by a whole system of other rhythmic means.
In Greek poetry, one of the lyrical genres was called the same term, but for Russian poetry only the meaning of the name of the foot is relevant.
Any poetic work can be distinguished by the size in which it is written. The dactyl examples of which are given in this article are just one of them. There are also amphibrachs, anapaest, trochaic and iambic. It is worth noting that these are only the main poetic meters, in reality there are even more of them, some of them are already outdated at the moment. Individual poets in their works adhere to only one pre-selected poetic size, it can be dactyl, amphibrach, anapaest. You can find examples in this article. Others use different techniques and styles when writing their poetry.
Poetic dimensions
Examples of dactyl will allow you to visualize what kind of poetic size it is. In Russian versification, the length of the line of a poetic work most often varies. Thus, each poetic size is divided into several components. So, an iambic can be, for example, one-foot, two-foot or three-foot.
A distinctive characteristic of almost any poetic meter is the presence or absence of caesura (this is a rhythmic pause) and catalectics (cutting and shortening of the foot).
What are the meter sizes?
All poetic meters, which are widely used in Russian versification, can be conditionally divided into only three groups.
The first includes monosyllabic dimensions. A classic example of this size is the brachycolon. This is a monolithic meter, when each foot contains a word consisting of strictly one syllable. At the same time, there can be several stops in one line of the work, this is quite allowed by the rules of versification.
The second group includes two-syllable sizes. These are perhaps the most common sizes in Russian poetry, which include iambic and trochee. We will talk about them in more detail.
In poems written in trochee, the stress always falls on the first syllable in the foot. In works created with iambic, the stress necessarily falls on the last syllable in the foot.
And finally the third group is called logaed. Its fundamental difference is that if all the examples of poetic meters given earlier were based on a sequence of any number of feet of the same type, then logaed is a size at which several feet can alternate in one line at once.
Yamb
Examples of iambic, chorea, dactyl will help you easily distinguish one poetic size from another. In Russian versification, iambic is a poetic meter in which an unstressed syllable constantly alternates with a stressed one.
It is still not possible to establish the exact etymology of this term. It is only known that the so-called iambic chants were well known during the ancient holidays in honor of the goddess of fertility Demeter. That is why many now associate the birth of this term with the name of the servant of King Keley, whose name was Yamba. If you recall the myth, only she managed to cheer up Demeter, who remained inconsolable for a long time due to the fact that she could not find her daughter Persephone. It is noteworthy that Yamba managed to do this with the help of obscene poems.
According to another version, the name Yamba is an echo of an ancient word that has a slang meaning. It turns out that one way or another, the term is rooted in profanity. True, there is another version, according to which the word came from a consonant musical instrument that accompanied the performance of iambic songs.
Examples of using iambic
Yamb has been well known since ancient poetry. The main difference between iambic and other poetic meters is its lightness, similarity to ordinary speech. Therefore, it was most often used by poets who wrote dramatic or lyrical works. For example, tragicomedies or fables. But iambic was not suitable for epic genres.
Yamb was actively used and is used in Russian poetry. For example, it was often used by Alexander Pushkin. Yamb wrote the beginning of his famous "Eugene Onegin" ("My uncle has the most honest rules ..."). By the way, this is an example of iambic tetrameter.
In Russian poetry, the iambic tetrameter was used in epic and lyric poetry, the pentameter was used in lyrics and dramas of the 19th-20th centuries, and the six-meter one was used in dramas and poems of the 18th century. There is also a free-sized iambic, which was loved by the author of fables of the 18th-19th centuries and comedies of the 19th century.
Chorey
Examples of dactyl and chorea will help you distinguish one meter from another. So, a trochee is a two-syllable poetic size. In this case, the foot contains first a long and then a short syllable, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Like iambic, it is widely used in Russian versification.
Most often, poets used a four-foot or six-foot trochee. From the middle of the 19th century, the pentameter polecat became popular and received significant development.
Khorei was often used by the main Russian poet of the 19th century Alexander Pushkin, alternating it with iambic. So good example chorea is best cited from his work. For a sample, you can take the poem "Winter Evening", which begins with the line "A storm covers the sky with darkness ...".
We will find an example of a pentameter trochaic in Mikhail Lermontov's poem "I go out alone on the road ...". This line, which is also the title of the work, clearly demonstrates the features of the pentameter trochaic.
Dactyl
Dactyl examples will allow you to remember this meter once and for all, so that you no longer confuse it with any other.
This is a tripartite size, which originates in ancient metrics. In Russian versification, this meter corresponds to a foot consisting of one stressed syllable and two unstressed syllables following it.
Examples of dactyl in poems can be found in Mikhail Lermontov - "Heavenly clouds, eternal wanderers ...". Interestingly, there is even a mnemonic rule for remembering the features of a dactyl. Not to be confused with other sizes, the phrase "Dug a deep hole with a dactyl" helps.
In Russian versification, examples of dactyl are most often found in the four-foot version. Two-foot was popular in the 18th century, and three-foot in the 19th century.
The name of this meter comes from the Greek word for "finger". The point is that the finger consists of three phalanges, while one of them is longer than the others. So the dactyl foot consists of three syllables, one of which is stressed, and the rest are unstressed.
Interestingly, in the 1920s there was a theory of the origin of rhythm in poetry, which compared examples of poetry with dactyls with metrical hammer blows.
Amphibrachius
The five main poetic sizes of Russian poetry are trochaic, iambic, dactyl, amphibrach, anapaest. Examples of poems written with their help help you quickly figure out how to distinguish one size from another, without getting confused.
Amphibrachium is a special size that is formed by three-syllable feet. Moreover, a strong place, that is, a stressed syllable, is the second in this case. Thus, the following alternation is formed: unstressed syllable - stressed syllable - unstressed syllable.
AT early XIX century, the four-foot amphibrach was very popular, and from the middle of the 19th century, the three-foot amphibrach came into fashion.
Examples of such poems can be found, in particular, in Nikolai Nekrasov. In the poem "Frost the Voivode" there are the following lines: "It is not the wind that rages over the forest, \ The streams did not run from the mountains, \ The Frost Governor patrols his possessions."
Anapaest
Anapaest is also a three-syllable meter. It is often compared to the dactyl in that it is its opposite.
In ancient tradition, this was a poetic meter, consisting of two short syllables and one long syllable.
In Russian versification, an anapaest is such a meter when the foot consists of two unstressed syllables and one stressed one.
This poetic size became popular in the 20th century. Therefore, we can find examples in Alexander Blok - "Oh, spring without end and without edge! \ Endless and without edge is a dream."
Hexameter
There are poetic meters that were actively used in ancient poetry, and now they are practically not used. This also applies to the hexameter. This was the most common meter in ancient poetry.
This is a rather complicated meter, since in a broad sense it is any verse consisting of six meters. If you go into details, then a verse of five dactyls or spondees, as well as one spondee or trochee present in the last foot, was called a hexameter.
Hexameter was used by Homer when writing the Iliad and the Odyssey. There is also the concept of "modern hexameter", which was common in European poetry of the XIV-XVIII centuries.
