Hexameter dactylic

The dactylic hexameter is a meter especially used in Greek old and Latin. Poets tested themselves there in German, Italian, Russian and, seldom, in English. The Renaissance knew a very important flowering of worms measured “with the French antique”, who of course produced many hexameters. Thereafter, and until these last years, of the attempts were made to approach some in French translations Catulle, Hésiode, Homère and the Batrachomyomachie in particular. It is the meter par excellence of the epopee and the physicists (Parménide and Empédocle).

Note: in this article, in accordance with the traditional notation, U represents the syllabic positions short (or, better, light) and _ the long ones (or, better, doors). The foot S are separated by the right bar, the Césure by two oblique bars. To consult Scansion for more détails.

History

Measure initially Greek and old in this language, since it is that in which the Iliade and the Odyssée were made up without any written support, it was introduced in Latin by Ennius (239-169 before the Christian era). They is in hexameters dactylic that Lucrèce (Ier century before the Christian era) written. At that time, it is not very regular yet. Virgile (70-19 before the Christian era) and Ovide stabilizes its rules in a deep respect for this brilliant work which takes again and amplifies the work of the Greek physicists.

Metric diagram (model)

As its name indicates it, it is composed of six measurements or meters (in Greek: ἕξ, héx “six” + μέτρον métron , “measurement”) including/understanding each one a foot dactylic (- U U).

Under the terms of the rule of contraction (cf Scansion ), each dactyl can be replaced in any place by a Spondée (- -). The last but one foot remains however in the vast majority of the cases a dactyl. The last foot one is spondée or a Trochée (- U), the last syllabic position being able to be regarded as indifferent ( Anceps ; noted U, i.e. “short or long”).

The ideal model is thus the following:

- U U | - U U | - U U | - U U | - U U | - U

By considering all the possible contractions, it is the equivalent of:

- - | - - | - - | - - | - - | - U

It is thus possible to bring back the hexameter dactylic to the following diagram:

- UU | - UU | - UU | - UU | - UU | - U

Caesuras

Let us recall that in the metric graeco-latin one, the Césure cannot cut a mot.

The caesura is generally:

trochaïque (especially in the Greek Poetry): it is placed in the third foot, which must be a dactyl, after the first short (what gives a Trochée)
→ - U U | - U U | - U' // U | - UU | - UU | - U;

penthémimère: after the fifth half-foot (a half-foot corresponds here to - or UU)
→ - UU | - UU | - // UU | - UU | - UU | - U;

hepthémimère: after the seventh half-foot
→ - UU | - UU | - UU | - // UU | - UU | - U;

double caesura trihémimère and hepthémimère:
→ - UU | - // UU | - UU | - // UU | - UU | - U.

In the worms epic Greek of Homère, it is the trochaïque caesura which one generally meets. Follows, in the order of the frequencies, the penthémimère then, much more rarely (1% for Iliade and 0,5% for the Odyssey ), the hepthémimère.
In Latin poetry, it is the penthémimère which one uses more, then the combination trihémimère - hepthémimère (caesura after the 3^e and the 7^e half-foot). Same worms can comprise several possible caesuras. Thus, in the two first towards Maze and Icare of Ovide, one finds the two principal cases of caesura of the Latin hexameter:

The fifth foot

It is generally a dactyl. In Homeric poetry, less than 25% of the worms spondée one in this place (they are named spondaic worms ). Among Romans, the spondaic one is much rarer. For example, one finds only one about thirty spondaic at Virgile (and still 25 of them fall on Greek words).

In the training of the Latin Scansion, it is recommended to leave the principle that the fifth foot of a hexameter dactylic is almost always a dactyl.

Examples

These examples do not show how one proceeds to stress a hexameter correctly dactylic. One will refer to this method, or the article Scansion to learn how to do it.

In Greek

Pour of the technical reasons, the accents and the spirits must be removed if one wants to note the quantités.

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

Πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροΐης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·

Πολλῶν δ' ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω.

Homère, the Odyssey , first song, towards 1-3.

caesura in preparation

Ten first towards the Odyssey , read in old Greek, by three aèdes on the Workshop of metric Greek and Latin .

In Latin

Hǣrĕt, ŭt | ē Părĭ|ō // fōr|mātūm | mārmŏrĕ sīgnũm .

Ovide, Metamorphoses , delivers III, “Narcisse”

Écouter (the reading tries to respect the Latin pronunciation restored; to note in this respect light the Nasalisation vowels before a /m/ final as well as the reading of the Digraph gn in/ŋn/.

In English

The English hexameter is accented and nonfounded on the opposition between short or long syllables (cf Towards : it is considered that the syllable accentuated is equivalent to long, the dull ones with short). The difficulty is to make necessarily begin each foot by a stressed syllable, which is not very natural in English. The poets, to arrive to their ends consider that in fact of stressed syllable one can use the primary education accent as much that the secondary accent (accent of lower intensity).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is famous for its English imitations of graeco-latin hexameters dactylic in its poem Hexameters . One announces the stressed syllable by the boldfacing and the secondary accent by the underlining:

It is noticed that alternation dactyl/spondée is rare (only spondées are the last feet…). The English language yields indeed badly with this meter. He will prefer for example the iambic Pentamètre.

In French

The French hexameter has an old story and recent. Some Mousset, according to Clutched of Aubigné, would have translated all the Iliade of Homère into hexameters “measured with the antique”. Unfortunately, this translation is lost. Whereas various poets like Jodelle, Marc-Claude Buttet, Aubigné, Rapin proposed poems in measured worms, it is incontestably Jean Antoine de Baïf which pushed the step with its more high degree of completion.

The ditty opposite is made up in elegiac distiches (a hexameter dactylic followed by a pentameter dactylic). The personal C-W communication of Baïf, aiming facilitating the Scansion and, incidentally, at revealing the pronunciation, can be transcribed in the following way:

Vienna beautiful Narcis which never did not like other if not oneself,

And that it looks at your eyes, And, which it takes care not to like.

Vienna the Greek so much caut, which forces it of Troy destroyed,

And that it looks at this hair, And which it takes care not to like.

Vienna the Orphé' cantor who his Eurydice still sought

And whom it looks at your hand, and which he takes care not to like.

Vienna the love itself, and davant its sight removes the stringcourse,

And that it looks at your mouth, and that it takes care not to like.

Of its kind among all the attempts to only import the metric graeco-latin one in Europe of the Rebirth, the system of Baïf rests on an analysis exhaustive and reasoned of the prosody of French, partly founded on real oppositions of quantity which are extremely well attested in the French language of this period. One is thus in the presence of worms authentically quantitative which can, with the full direction of the term, being called hexameters (or pentameters) dactylic.

By comparison, which proposes nowadays André Markowicz seems a dactylic evocation of the hexameter, carried out with the tools of rhythmic accented of French, and not like a full importation of the graeco-latin system in this language. These hexameters are thus rather accented that quantitative. In the book of Catulle , ED. The Old one of Man 1985, it thus translates the beginning of the complaints of ARIANE (poem 63):

One will read same manner these hexameters due to Philippe Brunet, Theater Démodocos, which translated all the Iliade and makes it recite by aèdes:

By these cries , they in ci' taient' Ar' giens' with com' bat' tre.

COM me goes tom' bant' the flo' cons' of the nei Ge hiver' na' it,

in nom' bra' corns flo' cons' , when Zeus is put , god of Ru ,

with the ver' ser' , révé lant with the hom the my flè ches his born:

in sommeil' lant' the winds , it worm , for that el the re' cou' vre

the som' mets' of the gran of the mon' ta' gnes, high promon' toi' LMBO,

the prai' ries' of sa' fran' and fatty pâtu' ra' ges of the hom my,

it is ver' sée' on the floods grison' nants' , on the ports and the Co your,

seu it goes ford which goes the re' pou' ; but all LMBO you

in is in velop' EP , when the nei' Ge of Zeus amon' cel' it.

(song 12,277-286)

External bonds

Jean Antoine de Baïf, Online edition of the measured worms , http://virga.org/baif/

Workshop of metric Greek and Latin , http://www.homeros.fr

In German

At the time when, after Kolpstock, Goethe and Schiller wrote their poems of traditional invoice, Johan-Heinrich Voss translated Iliade and the Odyssey, according to the same metric procedures, while being pressed on the intensive accent of the words:

Monkey den Zorn, O Göttin, of Peleiaden Achilleus,

Ihn, DER entbrannt den Achaiern unnennbaren Jammer erregte,

Und viel tapfere Seelen der Heldensöhne zum Board

Sendete, river mouth sy selbst zum Raub darstellte den Hunden,

Und dem Gevögel umher. So ward Zeus Wille vollendet…

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