Very interesting. By the way, there is a fascinating book on the history of
English-language prosodies by Donald Wesling. I read around in this some
years back, but now I can't remember the name of the book. Anyone know?
Something now seems to say that he discusses therein this freie
Rhythmen...(?)
Kent
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: freie Rhythmen
>Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 13:38:02 EST
>
>Kent,
>
>Actually the attempt to mirror classical quantitative meters is very much
>apposite to freie Rhythmen, which were more or less invented by Klopstock
>in the 18th c. to do just that, and were later taken up by Holderlin, whose
>intoxication with all things Helenic is well known (He used them in
>translations from Sophocles and Pindar, as well as in his own poems). The
>crucial point here is that languages like English or German, in which
>syllables have no <<inherent>> length, can nevertheless approximate the
>classical "long" and "short" syllables by a careful use of stress timing. A
>fairly crude example:
>
>Booth led boldly with his big bass drum
>
>where two shorts obviously equal two longs, in terms of timing. This, with
>infinitely more subtlety, is the sort of thing Holderlin does, and poets in
>English, from Campion to Tennyson to Dylan Thomas, have probably also
>attempted, with varying degrees of consciousness and consistency.
>
>Alan
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