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English and French Metric Author(S): Paul Verrier Source: the Modern Language Review, Vol English and French Metric Author(s): Paul Verrier Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Jul., 1914), pp. 385-388 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3712747 Accessed: 15-02-2016 02:09 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Modern Language Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.15.241.167 on Mon, 15 Feb 2016 02:09:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DISCUSSIONS. ENGLISH AND FRENCH METRIC. See Modern Language Review, vol. vIII, pp. 104-108. In the conclusion of my preceding article, I declared that I did not wish to discuss any further with my reviewer. As he has changed his tone, may I not change my mind ? After debating the question with myself for a long time, I think I may-and ought: principles are at stake, and it is every one's duty to stand and fight for his own as best he can. I therefore salute my adversary with my sword, in acknow- ledgment of the courteous style of his last attack-and I parry. Metric is certainly a science of observation: we metrists neither make the lines we study nor have any right to rebuild them. Must a countryman of Bacon and Locke be reminded that the first principle in a science of observation is merely and simply to observe? This is what I do. When classing and explaining what we have observed, we should of course conform to the laws of logic. This also I try to do. At any rate I have never denied the 'law of causation,' or the fact (not law!) 'that twice two is four,' or the like. When I meet the word 'merrily' in a line, for instance, I always count three syllables,-Professor Rudmose- Brown sometimes three and sometimes two. That is, I profess that 1 + 1 + 1 is always three,-Professor Rudmose-Brown that it may be either three or two, in adjustment 'to a fixed and definite metrical scheme.' When a line is divided in everybody's pronunciation into falling rhythmic groups, I cannot but regard the rhythm as falling, though Professor Rudmose-Brown maintains that it must be now falling and now rising, in accordance with 'what is fundamental in all metrical investigation.' I wonder what 'physicists' and 'mathematicians' would think of his 'science.' My 'polemic' about rising and falling rhythm is said to 'prove nothing.' Why ? Because my division into rhythmic groups, on which it rests, differs from my scansion into bars. Of course it does. And so do musical phrases from musical bars. A bar, i.e. the interval between two beats, is neither falling nor rising (though it rather reminds of the falling scansion, as it begins with the strong syllable). A rhythmic group, i.e. a group consisting of a strong syllable and the weak ones connected with it, can be rising, falling, rising-falling, or, if a compound one, falling-rising. In the following lines the scansion into bars is indicated by the This content downloaded from 130.15.241.167 on Mon, 15 Feb 2016 02:09:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 386 Discussions position of the beats (italics), the division into rhythmic groups by the grouping of the symbols 's' (strong) and 'wt' (weak) as well as by different blanks: To pass his days in peace among his own ws WS WS WS WS Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris sww sw sw sw sw Strong with the strength of the race to command, to obey, to endure s wws wws wws wws wws (w) It is easy to see that both bars and rhythmic groups exist together in the poetical reading of these and any other lines. But the 'feet' and the 'rising' or 'falling' rhythm of traditional metric often exist on paper only, i.e. in mere theoretical 'schemes.' No pouring of the 'phonetical liquid ... into metrical bottles,' as Professor Rudmose-Brown puts it, or any other metrical hocus-pocus whatever, can allow us to chop the last two lines in actual pronunciation into orthodox 'iambs' or 'dactyls': Beauti ful Par is, e vil-heart ed Par is. Strong with the strength of the race to com mand, to o bey, to en dure. Professor Rudmose-Brown appeals to the authority of MM. Rousselot, Passy, de Souza, Landry and Legouis, in order to teach me the position of stress and beat in the French Alexandrine. This, of course, 'part d'un bon naturel,' as La Fontaine has it. But it sounds to me-by his leave-rather amusing: all these gentlemen, except M. de Souza, are personal acquaintances of mine, some of them very intimate ones, and I know that. we fully agree in this respect. I have repeated over and over again, even in my preceding article, what we all think and pro- claim: (1) our stress always rests in 'dictionary pronunciation' on the last full syllable of isolated words, but it often shifts in sentences and even separate word-groups; (2) our normal Alexandrine contains four beats, but the weak syllables, as well as in English and German verse, are not all of them equally weak. This is exactly what my colleague and friend Professor Legouis says and illustrates in the passage quoted against me. I certainly admit his competence, but not a confessed misrepresentation of a very clear statement of his. None of us either pronounces or scans Le soleil le revgt d'4clatantes couleurs. I assure Professor Rudmose-Brown that no 'French ear is satisfied with the adjustment.' He urges, as a sort of proof,that I myself scan a French Alexandrine -quite a different one !-'iambically': Le grand I feuilla I ge vert I autour I de moi I chantait. This content downloaded from 130.15.241.167 on Mon, 15 Feb 2016 02:09:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Discussions 387 The 'iambic scansion,' though adduced in my book by way of com- parison, is not mine. This appears from the accompanying foot-note: 'Je divise en pieds d'apres le proc6d6 qu'on applique aux vers anglais et j'imprime en gras les syllabes accentu6es' (Vol. I, p. iv). Any reader of my Metrique knows that I neither approve of the traditional scansion of English verse nor identify 'beat' with'stress.' Mly scansion is the following (the durations are indicated by figures, 1 = a quaver, and the beat by italics): Le grand feuillage vert autour de mnoichantait. x 2 j i 2 2 2 x Neither do I admit that the scansion of French lines can be deduced from that of English lines, or conversely. Here, though charged by him with suggesting the contrary, I fully agree with Professor Saints- bury. I certainly applied the traditional English scansion to a few French lines, but only in order to show its want of logic. I might as well have chosen, say, a row of houses. A Frenchman's first impression of English verse illustrates the difference between our rhythms, especially with regard to our respective Alexandrines. Even though an English regular 'tumbling verse' or 'anapaestic dimeter' at once sounds to French ears like verse, by reason of its four beats and twelve syllables, both of which remind of our Alexandrine, the two metres differ greatly. Not only is the beat much stronger in the English than in the French verse-and this constitutes an essential, characteristic feature-but the time is on the whole triple in the former and duple in the latter: The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold1. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 . 1 1 3 Le solefl le revgt d'6clatantes couleurs. 1 1 2 12 1 1 2 1 12 Discussion is not always palatable. But it is a real pleasure, a real profit too, when you meet solid reasons, founded on facts. One of the best English metrists has raised an objection of this sort, in our private correspondence, against applying the same scansion to 'iambic' and 'trochaic' verse, i.e. against regarding every initial weak syllable as an anacrusis: 'Find me in Shakespeare's sonnets, in Paradise Lost, in the Idylls of the King, a line which distinctly contains only nine syllables, and I will reconsider the question.' I answered, thinking of the only verse he mentioned: 'Why should the anacrusis be suppressed without syllabic compensation of some sort any more than any other weak syllable ?' He replied: 'The singular thing is that it is habitually so sup- pressed in octosyllabic verse, but not in decasyllabic, and I have never seen any satisfactory reason assigned for this difference.' 1 I need hardlyremark that the quavers(1) are not exactlyequal in practice,which is also the case in song. Whenthe variationsare prettyconstant, we had betternote them. In the presentinstance Mr William Thomsonreads thus: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,1 , , j, 14, i, i, 3. According to him two lines only in the poem are purely 'triple,' viz.: The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown,-And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal.
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