Hexameter - what is it? Hexameter in Russian poetry

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

Poetry can be called a whole science, which has its own laws and rules, developed over the millennia of the existence of poetry. And in this article we will talk about one of the oldest poetic sizes - hexameter.

What is a hexameter in literature?

Hexameter is the oldest form of verse known since antiquity. It is a 6-foot dactylic meter with a caesura after the 7th syllable and an abbreviated ending by one syllable. The hexameter was the most common meter in ancient poetry, it was he who wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad. That is why the hexameter is also called epic and heroic verse.

History

Hexameter is a metrical verse that originated around the 8th century BC. e. in Ancient Greece. Scientists do not fully know how this size arose. There is an assumption about the borrowed nature of the hexameter. According to the most common opinion, this meter arose under the influence of Hittite and Hurrian poems. Initially, verses composed according to the laws of hexameter were not written down, but passed from mouth to mouth.

According to the myths, this form of verse was created by the ancient Greek godApollo, and the daughter of the god Femonoy, the Delphic Pythia, spread it over the earth. Therefore, it is not surprising that at first the hexameter was used only in sacred tests, for example, when compiling oracle speeches and religious hymns. Often such verses were recited to the accompaniment of musical instruments.

Much later, hexameter moved into heroic poetry and other types of verse. And his first written sample was the most famous works of Homer - "Odyssey" and "Iliad", the writing of which dates back to about 9-8 centuries BC. e. In these texts, the hexameter appears in its classical form. Therefore, scientists do not have the opportunity to trace the formation of this form of versification, the first written monument is an example of a finished and fully developed meter.

As for Roman poetry, there the hexameter was first introduced by Quintus Ennius. In general, by its nature, this poetic form is suitable for languages such as Latin and ancient Greek, where vowel lengths had phonological significance. To date, this size is not used in its classical form, it is only imitated and artificially recreated.

Hexameter: examples of verses and their structure

The ancient heroic hexameter is a 6-foot verse with two options for filling the feet. A strong place is called arsis, it can only be a long syllable. The weak point is called the thesis - it can be either a long or a short syllable. The main thing is that the principle of quantitativeity is observed, that is,equal quantity. In this case, the last syllable can be any and is a sign of the end of the poem. The hexameter scheme looks like this: _UU|_UU|_UU|_UU|_UU|_X

Given that each foot can be replaced by a sponde, it can be concluded that there are 32 possibilities in total to realize such a verse. The classic 17-syllable would sound like this: Quadrupedānte putrēm sonitū quatit ūngula cāmpūm…

We are forced to give examples in Latin, since the Russian language simply does not have the ability to write poetry in classical hexameter due to the lack of long and short vowels.

Cesura

So, if you ever come across the task “explain the terms "hexameter" and "caesura" in a test, then you know how to answer the first part of it, but what about the second?

A caesura is a word division (a kind of pause), which is uniformly repeated throughout the entire poem. The parts that are obtained after dividing them with a caesura are called half lines.

The role of such pauses in hexameter is great because of the symmetry of the rhythmic time signature. And, for example, for the syllabic, caesuras do not play an important role in the perception of the verse. In metric (recitative, with a fixed rhythm) time signatures, pauses are necessary, because without them it is impossible to hear a monorhythmic long line.

Nevertheless, the hexameter is initially pronounced without pauses. Examples of verses of the sacred type are proof of this. And later, with the developmentindividual creativity, the poetic system has evolved. Only a native speaker of the original language in which the ancient works were written can fully understand the meaning of the caesura.

Thus, a hexameter is a poetic meter consisting of sequentially arranged tripartite parts, the beginning and end of which are marked by pauses. Usually such poems are divided into 2-3 fragments.

What is used for

As you know, poetic meters have their own semantic feature, according to which they are used. First of all, the hexameter is an excellent tool for creating an image and its further disclosure.

Experienced poets, alternating pauses, could achieve a very high artistic effect in terms of figurativeness. This effect can be further enhanced by replacing the usual stanza with a sponde.

As a result, the classical meter was used to describe a lively action, something that had a fast character. And the sponde was inserted when there was a need for solemnity, slowdown and significance.

Hexameter in tonic

However, there are languages in which vowel length does not have any phonological value, such as German, Russian, etc. In such languages, the hexameter was artificially recreated in order to convey the size of the Latin classics and ancient Greek works.

Such an artificial hexameter is usually a poem with 6 stressed consonants and 2, and sometimes even one, unstressed. Thus, in the syllaboIn the tonic system of versification, this looks like a 6-foot dactyl, which can be replaced by a trochaic. This scheme is also called the 6-foot dactylo-choreic dolnik. The caesura remains in the middle of the stanza.

Russian hexameter

As mentioned above, in Russian this size is artificially recreated. It has 18 beats, while the original antique has 24 beats.

Hexameter in Russian obeys the rules of the usual three-syllable meters, while stressed syllables can be replaced by unstressed ones, and vice versa. It usually has the following pattern:

_UU|_UU|_UU||_UU|_UU|_U, where || is the designation of caesura.

Became the first in Russian versification in the size of fractions of a hexameter. Poems written according to this scheme first appeared in the Grammar by M. Smotrytsky in 1619. However, these were still only outlines, since long and short syllables were set arbitrarily, and outwardly the verse resembled the alternation of dactyls with spondees. The first stable example of a hexameter is the work of the Swede Sparvenfeld, written in 1704.

Trediakovsky

However, only Trediakovsky was the first to approve the norm for hexameter - thirteen syllables. He expressed this idea in his work "A new and short way to compose Russian verse". The poet gave the first examples of the new size in the collection “Argenida”: “The first Phoebus, they say, fornication with the Venus of Mars / I could see: this god sees everything that happens, the first…”.

Hexameter, examples of which can be found in other works of Trediakovsky, of this kindbecame a classic for Russian literature.

But the work on the size did not stop there, it was continued by Lomonosov. He did not change anything, but he gave a theoretical justification for Trediakovsky's work. It is also significant that these studies helped Lomonosov in his work on the syllabo-tonic system, which became the main one for Russian poetry.

Translations of Homer

Hexameter is not the most popular system in Russian poetry. The only really significant and great example of it is the translation of Homer's poems, which was done by N. Gnedich and V. Zhukovsky.

Gnedich worked most diligently on the translation of the Iliad - 2 times he expounded a sample of ancient Greek classics in prose and 1 time in verse. The last attempt (1787) is the most significant, since for it the poet had to continue a lot of work to transform the hexameter and adapt it to the Russian language. Although he initially tried to translate in Alexandrian verse, which he spent 6 years on, he was disappointed with the result, destroyed all his works and started again, already using only hexameter.

Thanks to such efforts, Gnedich managed to create the best translation of Homer's poem, which is considered unsurpassed to this day. Here is a small excerpt from it: “Having finished the Word, Thestorides sat down; and from the host arose / A powerful hero, the spacious and powerful king Agamemnon … . Written in hexameter in the original, the Iliad was thus recreated in the same rhythm in Russian.

It's hard to believe, but the first examples of translation were metreaders negatively, and Gnedich had to defend the chosen meter.

19th century

Zhukovsky continued to work on translations of Homer, presenting the Odyssey to the Russian reader. He also owns an excellent adaptation of The War of Mice and Frogs, in which hexameter was also taken as a poetic basis. Examples from the works: “Muse, tell me about that highly experienced husband who / Wandering for a long time from the day when Saint Ilion was destroyed by him …” (“Odyssey”); “Listen: I will tell you, friends, about mice and frogs. / The tale is a lie, but the song is true, they tell us; but in this…” (“War”).

Also, Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet and many other poets of the 19th century used the hexameter. However, interest in him is gradually fading. In the 20th century, this poetic meter is again revived in the works of Vyach. Ivanov, Balmont, Shengeli, Nabokov.