One cannot understand the language of poetry without knowing what a stanza is

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Interestingly, Nika Turbina knew what a stanza or syllabo-tonic was, when poems poured from her childish lips - adult, sad, filled with not at all childish experiences? Hardly. Yes, she did not need to, like Pushkin at the beginning of poetic experiments. As well as other outstanding poets. But they were geniuses, their gift was born with them, but even they studied the technique of versification and its laws. Moreover, we need it, "not geniuses." In order for poetry to reach the consciousness and heart, one must learn to read, perceive, understand a lyrical work. From lyrics we expect upheavals caused by the clutch of sounds, words, images, rhythms, meanings that create a lyrical experience, for the sake of which we open collections of poems. And those who truly love poetry cannot but be interested in how a poetic miracle is created. What is a stanza if such ordinary words, collected in harmonious lines and couplets, are able to touch the innermost strings of the soul? And the language of poetry is perhaps the most complex form of language existence, and one must learn to understand it. But how?

How do poems "make"?

Modern psychology is the mostin an effective way recognizes an activity that is adequate to that which is invested in the object under study. If this is so, then from the recipient (the one who perceives), poems require the same creative work of the imagination and the active inclusion of emotions, as well as from their creator. It turns out that if you want to understand poetry, you must try to write poetry yourself. But first you need to find out from what and how "verses are made", what a stanza, rhyme, rhythm and other subtleties of "poetry" are. By the way, some types of stanzas, like the poems themselves, have authors, that is, they were specially created by poets. In the literature, the Spencer stanza, the Byron octave, the Onegin stanza, and the tercet are known. In all titles, except for the last one, the name of the author is guessed. But Dante, who invented the tercet for the Divine Comedy in the form we know it today, deserves to be named. Dante's invention is a stanza of three verses (verse - line), which rhyme according to the scheme: lines 1 and 3 rhyme with each other, the second - from the first and third of the next stanza, then everything repeats. Look at the example from the poem:

It should be noted that not all three-line stanzas are called terts (that's another name for a tercet). There is haiku in Japanese poetry. It also has three lines, but no rhyme. A fixed number of lines is also inherent in the octave (8), quatrain (4), distich (2) and monostiche (1).

You can take up the pen

Having found out what a stanza is, what varieties of a stanza are, we continue our poeticeducation, mastering the rhythm, sizes, types of rhymes. Now you can take up the pen. Let's call a pen, a felt-tip pen, a computer mouse a modern pen. It should work! Hardly anything ingenious, but at least slim and sonorous. True, after so much effort, you begin to perceive poetry in a different way, to understand how much work the lightness and simplicity of the masterpieces of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Fet cost … And also, probably, you want to find a listener for your first, and therefore your favorite poems? Nothing is impossible! Why not have a poetry contest? The most eminent poets of antiquity, ancient China and medieval Japan did not consider it shameful to compete in the poetic ring. In such competitions, skills are honed, poets gain fame and the opportunity to convey their feelings and thoughts.

Don't say "praise"!

Finishing our short lesson, let us once again emphasize its main idea: it is impossible to discover the meaning of a poetic work without identifying the features of the artistic form in which this meaning is embodied - a poetic composition (stanza). Yu. Lotman is right in arguing that even a simplified "schematic description of general structural patterns" reveals more to us the originality and beauty of lyrical lines than the repeated repetition of laudatory phrases about their genius. After all, no matter how much you say "halva" (here "praise" is more appropriate), it will not be sweet.