Catalexis

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Not to be confused with cataleptic.For the mathematical use, see catalecticant. For the genus of moth, see Catalexis (moth).

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.

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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 in the following carol, composed by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848. The 7-syllable lines are catalectic:

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).

An example of a blunt line becoming pendant in catalexis is Goethe's poem Heidenröslein, [2] or, in the same metre, the English carol Good King Wenceslas:

Good King Wenceslas looked out, (4 beats, blunt)
   On the Feast of Stephen, (3 beats, pendant)
When the snow lay round about, (4 beats, blunt)
   Deep and crisp and even; (3 beats, pendant)

Another example [2] is the children's song Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, of which the first stanza ends as follows:

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]

| u – x | u – x – | u – x | u – u – |
| u – x | u – x – | u – u | u – – |

In Sanskrit, a comparison between the traditional śloka and the mandākrāntā metre reveals the same type of catalexis. The first line of the Bhagavad Gita scans as follows:

| – – – – | u – – – || u u – – | u – u – |

whereas the mandākrāntā metre is as follows:

| – – – – | u uu uu – || – u – – | u – – |

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):

| uu – uu – | uu – uu – || uu – uu – | uu – uu – |
| uu – uu – | uu – uu – || uu – uu – | uu – – |

In ancient Greek

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:

See also

Related Research Articles

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Latin poetry</span> Poetry of the Latin language

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.

A tribrach is a metrical foot used in formal poetry and Greek and Latin verse. In quantitative meter, it consists of three short syllables occupying a foot, replacing either an iamb or a trochee. In accentual-syllabic verse, the tribrach consists of a run of three short syllables substituted for a trochee.

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 – |

In English poetry, trochaic tetrameter is a meter featuring lines composed of four trochaic feet. The etymology of trochaic derives from the Greek trokhaios, from the verb trecho, meaning I run. In modern English poetry, a trochee is a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Thus a tetrameter contains four trochees or eight syllables.

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 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.

Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres".

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
<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trochaic septenarius</span> A poetic metre used in Greek and Latin especially in Roman comedy

In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius is a form of ancient poetic metre first used in 7th century BC Greek literature. It was one of the two most common metres of Roman comedy of the early 1st century BC and was also used for the marching songs sung by soldiers at Caesar's victory parade. After a period when it was little used, it is found again in the Pervigilium Veneris, and taken up again as a metre for Christian hymns. The same metre, with stress-rhythm replacing quantitative metre, has continued to be used, especially for hymns and anthems, right up to the present day.

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.

A lekythion or lecythion, in classical Greek and Latin poetry, is a metric pattern (colon) defined by a sequence of seven alternating long and short syllables at the end of a verse. In classical grammatical terminology it can be described as a trochaic dimeter catalectic, i.e. a combination of two groups of two trochees each, with the second of these groups lacking its final syllable; or as a trochaic hepthemimer, i.e. a trochaic sequence of seven half-feet. A lekythion can appear in several different metric contexts in different types of poetry, either alone as a verse or as the second of two cola following a caesura. A frequent type of occurrence in Greek drama is in lines of iambic trimeter, the most frequent metre used in spoken dialogue, i.e. lines of the type x — u — | x — u — | x — u —. These lines may have a metric caesura after the first five syllables, with the remaining line thus resulting in a lekythion group.

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.

References

  1. ↑ West, M.L. (1982). "Three topics in Greek metre". Classical Quarterly Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 281-297; p. 281.
  2. 1 2 3 4 L. P. E. Parker (1976). "Catalexis". The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1976), pp. 14-28; p. 15.
  3. ↑ M. L. West, "Three topics in Greek metre", The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1982), pp. 281-297; p. 287.
  4. ↑ L. P. Elwell-Sutton (1976), The Persian Metres, p. 87–88.
  5. ↑ L. P. E. Parker (1976). "Catalexis". The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1976), pp. 14-28; p. 14.
  6. ↑ W. Wright (1896), A Grammar of the Arabic Language, vol. 2, p. 364.
  7. ↑ L. P. Elwell-Sutton (1976), The Persian Metres, p. 87–88; Thiesen, Finn (1982), A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody, p. 18.
  8. 1 2 West, M.L. (1982). "Three topics in Greek metre". Classical Quarterly Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 281-297.
  9. ↑ West, M.L. (1992). Ancient Greek Music. Oxford: Oxford. pp. 209, 302–308.
  10. ↑ 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. JSTOR   20537744.
  11. ↑ Wikibooks:The Poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus/Meters Used By Catullus#
  12. ↑ Hayes, Bruce (1979). "The rhythmic structure of Persian verse." Edebiyat 4, 193–242; pp. 208–210.
  13. ↑ Norberg, D. (1988). "Le "Pange lingue" de Fortunat pour la Croix". La Maison-Dieu. 103: 71–79.
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