Quatrain

Metric combinations

Isometric quatrains (only one type of worms)

Alexandrines (worms of 12 syllables):

“The evening fell, one evening ambiguity of autumn:

Beautiful, the hanging itself rêveuses ones with our arms,

Said then so specious words, low,

That our heart, since this time, trembles and is astonished. ” ingenuous the - Verlaine, gallant festivals

Decasyllables (worms of 10 syllables):

“Your heart is a selected landscape

What goes charming masks and bergamasks

Playing of the lute and dancing and quasi

Sad under their odd disguises. ” Moonlight - Verlaine, gallant festivals

Octosyllabic (worms of 8 syllables):

“A monkey in jacket of brocart

Trotte and gambade in front of it

Who ruffled a lace handkerchief

In its hand gantée with art,” - Procession - Verlaine, gallant festivals

Heptasyllabes (worms odd of 7 syllables):

“And when, solemn, the evening

Black oaks will fall,

Voice of our despair,

The nightingale will sing. ” Out of silencing device - Verlaine, gallant festivals

Pentasyllabic (worms odd of 5 syllables):

“It is found.

What? - Eternity.

It is the gone sea

With the sun. ” eternity (Rimbaud)

and others still, pars or odd : 4 syllables ( Charleroi - Verlaine, Lovesongs without words )/9 syllables ( poetic Art Verlaine, Formerly and at one time ) .....

Quatrains heterometric

The combinations are extremely varied, here are some.

8/8/12 /8 syllables :

“There! I commit suicide with your knees!

Because my distress is infinite,

And the terrible tiger-cat of Hyrcanie

Is an ewe-lamb at the price of you. ” In the cave - Verlaine, gallant festivals

6/6/6 /4 syllables :

“Since your voice, strange

Vision which disturbs

And disorder the horizon

Of my reason. ” has Clymène - Verlaine, the gallant festivals

12 /12/12/6 syllables :

Does “one evening, remember you it? we sailed in silence,

One did not hear with far, on the wave and under the skies,

That noise of the oarsmen who struck in rate

Your harmonious floods. ” the lake (Lamartine)

6/12/12 /6 syllables :

" O time, suspend your flight! and you, favourable hours

Suspend your course!

Let enjoy the rapids delights to us

More beautiful nowadays! ” the lake (Lamartine).

6/6/2 /6 syllables :

It was, in the brown night,

On the yellowed bell-tower,

The moon

Like a point on an I. ” Ballade with the moon (Musset)

12/3 syllables :

“And, perhaps, in your ground where the hope shines,

Pure torch,

For price of my exile, you will grant to me, France,

A tomb. ” At the time to return to France (Hugo, the Punishments )

free verse :

“I made a fire, the azure having given up me,

A fire to be his/her friend,

A fire to introduce me into the night of winter,

A fire to better live. ” to live here (Eluard)

and others still …

Combinations of the rhymes

Kind of the rhymes

traditional alternation masculine rhyme/feminine rhyme :

“An old terra cotta fauna

Laughs in the center of the boulingrins,

Undoubtedly predicting a continuation

Bad at these serene moments”: fauna (Verlaine, gallant festivals )

male single rhyme :

“Calm in the half-light

That the high branches make,

Let us penetrate our love well

Of this major silence. ” Out of silencing device (Verlaine, gallant festivals )

female single rhyme :

“Donors of serenades

And the beautiful skittish ones

Exchange insipid remarks

Under the foliages singers. ” Mandoline (Verlaine, gallant festivals )

single rhyme with strophic alternation :

“The wind of the other night threw the Love low

Who, in the most mysterious corner of the park,

Smiled by bandaging malignement its arc,

And whose aspect made us so much think a whole day!

The wind of the other night threw it low! Marble

With the breath of the morning whirls, scattered. It is sad

To see the pedestal, where the name of the artist

Is read painfully among the shade of a tree. ” (…) love by ground (Verlaine, gallant festivals ) (male stanza 1/female stanza 2)

Provision of the rhymes

rhymes punts (A/A masc. - Female B/B):

“Mystical barcarolles,

Lovesongs without words,

Expensive, since your eyes,

Color of the skies,” has Clymène (Verlaine, gallant festivals )

alternated rhymes : (Masc. /B fém has. /A/B):

“Your heart is a selected landscape

What goes charming masks and bergamasks

Playing of the lute and dancing and quasi

Sad under their odd disguises. ” Moonlight (Verlaine, gallant festivals )

introverted rhymes (has masc. /B fém. /B/A):

“The high heels fought with the long skirts,

So that, according to the ground and the wind,

Sometimes shone of bottoms of legs, too often

Intercepted! - and we liked this set of easily deceived. ” Ingenuous the (Verlaine, gallant festivals )

Use in various types of poem

Isolated quatrain

the quatrain can be used only : it constitutes a small complete poem then as many examples illustrate it since the Middle Ages. Here are some.

Pleasant and disillusioned at François Villon:

“I am Francois, of which it me poise

Born from Paris emprès Pontoise

And of the cord of a measuring apparatus

My collar will know that my bottom poise”

at Nostradamus in its Centuries :

“Lyon ieune the old man will surmount,

In field bellic by singular duelle:

In gold cage the eyes luy will creuera,

Two classes vne, then to die, cruel death. ” (I, 35)

In form of epigram at Voltaire:

“The other day at the bottom of a small valley,

A snake pricked Jean Fréron;

What do you believe that it arrived?

It was the snake which burst. ”

Poem of circumstance as at Mallarmé: dedication with Hérédia

“Reason has that its flute slips by

Happy Fauna dedicated it

On Dutch cheese with the bibliophile

And high Hérédia rhymester. ”

In Contrerime, formalized and baptized by Paul-Jean Toulet: quatrain combining introverted rhymes (ABBA) and cross structure metric (generally 8-6-8-6), which gives to the poem a systematic impression of imbalance. The poems of the collection comprise 2,3 or 4 stanzas; only once the quatrain is autonomous (Contrerime LXII):

“You, Basque shore will return to Me, With the flown away hor

And your dances in the salted air, Two eyes, lights under the mask. ”

suggestive at Prévert:

“A horse collapses in the middle of an alley

The sheets fall on him

Our love shivers

And sun also” (`' Words'' - `' the autumn'')…

In short poems

It is very much used in rather short poems, from 8 to 20 worms, with a certain preference for the poem of 4 quatrains (near visually to the sonnet without its constraints) like `' the albatross'' of Baudelaire or “It was exposed” of Hugo (`' contemplations'').

In long poems

the quatrain often presents in long poems isostrophic (only of the quatrains)

examples: `' deadened Booz'' - Victor Hugo (`' the legend of the centuries'')

“Booz had lain down of tiredness overpowered;

It had all the day worked in its surface;

Then had made its bed in its ordinary place;

Booz slept near the bushels full of corn. ”

Other famous examples:

- the drunk boat - Rimbaud

- Freedom - Eluard

- I greet you my France - Louis Aragon…

Note:: one finds sometimes the association of isometric and heterometric quatrains .

Examples: has Villequier (Hugo - contemplations )/ the lake (Lamartine - poetic Méditations ).

One more rarely finds it in long poems heterostrophic . For example, association quatrain and Quintil at Péguy in Presentation of Beauce to Our lady of Chartres :

“Turn of David, here your turn beauceronne.

It is the hardest ear which is ever assembled

Towards a sky of leniency and serenity,

And the most beautiful floret inside your crown.

A man of on our premises made here spout out,

Since the short-nap cloth of the ground to the foot of the cross

Higher than all the saints,

higher than all the kings,

The irreproachable arrow and which cannot fail…”

Use in fixed-form poems

in the rondo (first stanza):

“Time left its coat

Of wind, of coldness and rain,

And is vêtu embroideries,

Of sun shining, clearly and beautiful. ” Charles of Orleans

like Sending of small the Ballade into octosyllabic:

“Prince, will not enquerrez of week

Where they are, nor of this year,

That this refrain you remaine:

But where are snows of antan? ” (Villon - Ballade of the ladies of time formerly )

like regular stanza in the Pantoum :

“Here to come times when vibrating on its stem

Each flower evaporates as well as a censer;

The sounds and the perfumes turn in the air of the evening,

Waltz melancholic person and languorous giddiness! ” ( Harmony of the evening - Charles Baudelaire)

in the Sonnet (the first two stanzas which a sizain supplements - or two Tercet S):

“Happy which, like Ulysses, went on a beautiful journey,

Or as cestuy-là which conquered the fleece,

And then is turned over, full with use and reason,

To live between his/her parents the remainder of his age!

When I re-examine, alas, of my small village

To smoke the chimney, and in which season

I will re-examine the field of my poor house,

Who is to me a province, and much more? ” ( Heureux which like Ulysses - Of Bellay the Regrets , sonnet 31)

Conclusion

The quatrain appears of an employment extremely varied throughout the literary history in spite of its apparent simplicity, which makes of him the basic stanza of French poetry.

External bonds

http://www.anthologie.free.fr/traite/traite03.htm
http://www.accents-poetiques.com/article.php3?id_article=18
http://www.lapassiondespoemes.com/?action=viewpost&ID=4&cat=22

Random links:

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