A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line.
A line missing two syllables is called brachycatalectic.
In English
Poems can be written entirely in catalectic lines, or entirely in acatalectic (complete) lines, or a mixture, as the following carol, composed by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848:
Once in Royal David's city (8 syllables)
Stood a lowly cattle shed, (7 syllables)
Where a mother laid her Baby (8 syllables)
In a manger for His bed: (7 syllables)
Mary was that mother mild, (7 syllables)
Jesus Christ her little Child. (7 syllables)
It has been argued that across a number of Indo-European languages, when the two types of line are mixed in this way, the shorter line tends to be used as a coda at the end of a period or stanza.[1]
Blunt and pendant catalexis
It has been argued that catalexis can be divided into two types.[2] (Here "x" stands for an anceps syllable.)
(a) When a line with a pendant ending such as trochaic (– u – x) is made catalectic, the result is a line with a blunt (or "masculine") ending (– u –).
(b) When a line with a blunt ending such as iambic (x – u –) is made catalectic, the result is a line with a pendant ending (u – x).
Here we go round the mulberry bush (4 beats, blunt)
On a cold and frosty morning (3 beats, pendant)
In all of these songs, when they are set to music, there is a lengthening of the penultimate syllable in order to equalise the two lines. However, there is not enough evidence to tell if a similar phenomenon occurred in Ancient Greek.[2]
When a poem is doubly catalectic (brachycatalectic), that is, shortened by two syllables, a blunt ending remains blunt:
Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound (4 beats)
That saved a wretch like me. (3 beats)
I once was lost, but now am found, (4 beats)
Was blind, but now I see. (3 beats)
Quantitative metres
In languages which use quantitative metres, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, the final syllable of any line is anceps, that is, indifferently long or short. According to one view dating back to ancient times, even if the final syllable is prosodically short, it counts as long because of the pause which follows it (see brevis in longo).[3][4] Thus, any line ending x – u –, when catalectic, becomes u – x.
An example in Ancient Greek is the iambic tetrameter, which in normal and catalectic form is as follows:[5]
| x – u – | x – u – | x – u – | x – u – |
| x – u – | x – u – | x – u – | u – – |
In classical Arabic, the most commonly used metre, the ṭawīl, has normal and catalectic forms as follows:[6]
A similar phenomenon is also found in classical Persian.[7] For example, the metre based on the choriamb pattern (– u u –) has a shortened form as follows:
| – u u – | – u u – | – u u – | – u u – |
| – u u – | – u u – | – u – |
In Latin and Greek, the rarely used trochaic octonarius is not catalectic, but the common trochaic septenarius is catalectic:
| – u – x | – u – x || – u – x | – u – x |
| – u – x | – u – x || – u – x | – u – |
The anapaestic octonarius and anapaestic septenarius differ as follows. When the final syllable is removed, the final element must be a long syllable, not a double short (see Metres of Roman comedy):
Catalexis was common in Greek and Latin meter, and also in ancient Sanskrit verse.[8] Catalectic endings are particularly common where the rhythm of the verse is dactylic ( – u u ), trochaic ( – u ), or anapestic ( u u – ); they tend to be associated with the end of a strophe or period, so much so that it can almost be said that acatalectic forms cannot end a period.[8] In classical verse, the final syllable of a line always counted as long, so that if a dactyl ( – u u ) is made catalectic, it becomes a spondee ( – – ).
Ancient poetry was often performed to music, and the question arises of what music accompanied a catalectic ending. A few ancient Greek poems survive with authentic musical notation. Four of these are by Mesomedes (early second century CE). Secondary sources of Mesomedes' poems To Helios and To Nemesis are in a catalectic meter known as apokrota "sonorous." In each case, in place of the missing short element of the text (i.e., missing syllable) one often finds lengthening signs. In two cases in To Helios, this appears to be a three-note melisma.[9] It is possible that ancient use of catalexis indicated some form of melody or continued singing in place of the missing syllables.
In ancient Greek drama, catalectic meters may have been associated with a male aulete or had some other special use. For example, of Menander's surviving plays, almost all are in iambic trimeters. He changed the meter in one long scene in Misanthrope to a 15-syllable catalectic iambic tetrameter recited to an aulos accompaniment.[10]
In Latin poetry
Poem 25 by Catullus is in iambic tetrameter catalectic. Of Catullus' extant 114 or so poems and fragments, this meter appears only in this poem.[11]
In classical Persian
About 115 different metres are used in Persian poetry, but many of them are rare. The common ones are about 30 in number. Almost all Persian metres are made up of repeated patterns of three, four, or eight syllables, and this makes it easy to see that some metres are catalectic, since the last foot will be one syllable shorter than the others. For example:
| u – – | u – – | u – – | u –
| u – – – | u – – – | u – –
| – u – – | – u – – | – u –
| x u – – | u – u – | u u –
| – u – – | – u – – | – u – – | – u –
| u – u – | u u – – || u – u – | u u –
| x u – – | u u – – | u u – – | u u –
The first four metres above, which have 11 syllables each, are commonly used for long masnavi poems, written in rhyming couplets, such as Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, while the longer metres are used for lyric poems. There is one masnavi metre, however, which has only 10 syllables:
| – – u u | – u – u | – –
Bruce Hayes suggests a rule to explain this, namely that where a pattern ending in u u is made catalectic, both of the short syllables are omitted at the end of the line.[12]
Catalexis in music
Venantius Fortunatus' hymn Pange lingua is in trochaic tetrameter catalectic—the meter of the marching chants of the Roman armies.[13] The hymn is one of the oldest with surviving musical notation.
As Greek meter is often used to describe musical phrasing, some famous themes include:
The slow movement to Haydn's Surprise Symphony (spondaicdimeter catalectic)
The theme of Weber's Rondo brillante in E-flat (anapestictetrameter brachycatalectic)
The slow movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony (alternating acatalectic and catalectic dactylic tetrameter)
The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.
In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.
Choliambic verse, also known as limping iambs or scazons or halting iambic, is a form of meter in poetry. It is found in both Greek and Latin poetry in the classical period. Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon, or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats. It was originally pioneered by the Greek lyric poet Hipponax, who wrote "lame trochaics" as well as "lame iambics".
The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205-184 BC.
An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot. When talking about poetry written in English the term is arguably of limited significance or utility, at least by comparison to its antonym, catalectic, for the simple reason that acatalexis is considered to be the "usual case" in the large majority of metrical contexts and therefore explicit reference to it proves almost universally superfluous.
Glyconic is a form of meter in classical Greek and Latin poetry. The glyconic line is the most basic and most commonly used form of Aeolic verse, and it is often combined with others.
Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of a rhythm, iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form | x – u – |, consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:
| x – u – | x – u – || x – u – || x – u – |
This is a glossary of poetry.
In Greek and Latin metre, brevis in longo is a short syllable at the end of a line that is counted as long. The term is short for (syllaba) brevis in (elemento) longo, meaning "a short [syllable] in place of a long [element]." Although the phenomenon itself has been known since ancient times, the phrase is said to have been invented by the classical scholar Paul Maas.
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot can be resolved, or sometimes both.
Versus Galliambicus (Latin), or the Galliambic Verse (English), is a verse built from two anacreontic cola, the second one catalectic. The metre typically has resolution in the last metron, and often elsewhere, leading to a run of short syllables at the end. An example is the first line of Catullus's poem 63:
u u - u | - u - - || u u - u u | u u u sŭpĕr āltă vēctŭs Āttĭs || cĕlĕrī rătĕ mărĭă
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets.
In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius or trochaic tetrameter catalectic is one of two major forms of poetic metre based on the trochee as its dominant rhythmic unit, the other being much rarer trochaic octonarius. It is used in drama and less often in poetry. Together with the iambic senarius, it is one of the two most commonly used metres of Latin comedy. It has a long history dating back to the 7th century BC.
The ionic is a four-syllable metrical unit (metron) of light-light-heavy-heavy that occurs in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. According to Hephaestion it was known as the Ionicos because it was used by the Ionians of Asia Minor; and it was also known as the Persicos and was associated with Persian poetry. Like the choriamb, in Greek quantitative verse the ionic never appears in passages meant to be spoken rather than sung. "Ionics" may refer inclusively to poetry composed of the various metrical units of the same total quantitative length that may be used in combination with ionics proper: ionics, choriambs, and anaclasis. Equivalent forms exist in English poetry and in classical Persian poetry.
Latin prosody is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.
Prosody is the theory and practice of versification.
Roman comedy is mainly represented by two playwrights, Plautus and Terence. The works of other Latin playwrights such as Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and Caecilius Statius are now lost except for a few lines quoted in other authors. 20 plays of Plautus survive complete, and 6 of Terence.
Anaclasis is a feature of poetic metre, in which a long and a short syllable exchange places in a metrical pattern.
A metron, , plural metra, is a repeating section, 3 to 6 syllables long, of a poetic metre. The word is particularly used in reference to ancient Greek. According to a definition by Paul Maas, usually a metron consists of two long elements and up to two other elements which can be short, anceps or biceps.
↑ Comotti, G. (1975). "L'aulo ghingras in una scena menandrea del mosaico di Discuride". Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica. xx (20): 215–23. doi:10.2307/20537744. JSTOR20537744.
↑ Norberg, D. (1988). "Le "Pange lingue" de Fortunat pour la Croix". La Maison-Dieu. 103: 71–79.
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