Does any one know of a good prosodical study of German freie Rhythmen? Better yet, anything that generalizes about this sort of quasi-meter across languages? Though no poet in English has used them with the sophistication of e.g. Holderlin, I'm sure there's often something similar going on in the "free" verse of Lawrence, Jeffers, and sporadically in many others. My impression, though, is that only the Germans (who else?) have done anything towards systematizing it.
Loosely, I would define this "meter" as one with a markedly isochronous "beat," falling into runs of larger groupings (twos, or more rarely, threes).Put this broadly, it would include things as diverse as ballad meter and OE alliterative verse, though I'm thinking here of "free" forms, without structural rhyme or alliteration, and often with a constantly shifting "measure" (larger grouping of beats). For example:
A snake came | to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day,| and I in pajamas for the heat,
To drink there.
where you have three two-beat units, followed by units of three and one (these could also be viewed as two further two-beat units, with "enjambement" between them). In the next stanza, however
In the deep, strange-scented shade | of the great dark
carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, | must stand and wait, | for there he was
at the trough before me.
you start with three very clear 3-beat units, followed by one ambiguous unit (1 or 2) and three 2-beat units.
Now, someone might say that this kind of analysis could be applied to any text, verse or prose. But I don't think so. A random text would generally have many more "ambiguous" units, and such things as the perfect accentual and grammatical rhyme between "in the deep strange-scented shade" and "of the great dark carob-tree" seem clearly designed to clarify the rhythm, and make the units sound more isochronous.
At any rate, this sort of thing is probably only possible in languages, like English and German, that have a considerable degree of "stress-timing." Even Russian, despite its strong stress, is probably too "syllable-timed" to allow it.
Is this of interest to anyone? Or are you all too busy waiting for the comet?
Alan Shaw
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