Iambe, trochée, amphimacre, anapeste, Prenez votre essor radieux à travers The heavy, mournful cadence of the metre is less suitable to the subject in this case 1: La harpe du printemps résonne dans les cíeux. On the other hand, the metre is most appropriate in this strophe from the poem entitled Cloche du Soir 2: Cloche du soír, musique si douce, Seul au milieu du calme des bois, Or again in the translation of Goethe's Erlkönig3 : Qui chevauche ainsí par la nuit et le vent? Qui chevauche ainsí par la plaine? C'est le père ayant dans ses bras son enfant The general objection to accentual verse in French is that the stress-accent is not sufficiently marked to sustain the cadence, being not only much less intense than in the Germanic languages, but even less so than in the other Romance languages. Moreover the French ear, being accustomed to freer and more varied rhythmical groups, finds a succession of lines on the same rhythm intolerably monotonous, however effective they may sound in a short poem; so that, while the accentual verses are not absolutely ridiculous, like the quantitative verses written in French, yet they entail certain conditions and requirements that are not compatible with the genius of the French language. It is for that reason that they have been rejected, although the bold experiment of Van Hasselt subsequently called forth a few emulators. In 1856 a certain Ducondut published an Essai de rhythmique 1 Études rhythmiques, P. 4. 2 See p. 119 of Etudes rhythmiques. Ibid. p. 55. française, in which he recommended the adoption of the Germanic metrical system, and added poems by himself in illustration : Quittez la ville, ô belles! Doux mai, saison d'amour 1! It is difficult to discover any cadence in the above extract; still more so in the following 2: Tous, travaillons! c'est la régle commune. Puisque chaque homme est doué de deux mains: Ducondut has been followed by Louis Dumur3 in the collections of poems entitled Lassitudes and La Néva, but Dumur differs from his predecessors in that he counts the secondary accent as well as the principal accent, as in the following specimen : Puissante, magnifique, illustre, grave, noble Reine, which is obviously modelled on Surrey's : (La Néva *.) I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear. But the principal accent in French not being sufficiently intense to bear the rhythm, it follows that the secondary accent is still less capable of fulfilling that part. So that, if 1 Essai de rhythmique française, p. 140. 2 Ibid. p. 210. 3 M. Louis Dumur is of Swiss origin, so that his experiment can also be explained ethnologically. He expounds his system in the preface to Lassitudes, where he says inter alia: La cadence par l'accent tonique adoptée, je m'en sers pour former des pieds - à l'exemple de l'anglais, de l'allemand, du russe — et en particulier des pieds iambiques et anapestiques, les plus appropriés en français. Compare also Charles Morice, La littérature de tout à l'heure, pp. 316-318. * Quoted by Clair Tisseur, p. 34. the principal accents alone are taken into consideration, the lines quoted above no longer have seven beats each, but become ordinary French verses of fourteen syllables: Puissante, magnifique, illustre, grave, noble Reine, O Tsaritza de glaces et de fastes! Souveraine, &c. Some of Dumur's accentual verses resemble more closely Germanic versification in that they show an equal number of accents, but not necessarily an equal number of syllables : Ah! Saint-Pétersbourg a prís des finesses charmantes, La couvrait des baisers qu'épandraient les amants aux amantes 1. But they are all the worse for that. The most recent writer of French accentual verse is F. Sabatier, who in 1893 translated Goethe's Faust into the metre of the original 2. 1 Clair Tisseur, p. 34. "The exact title is: F. Sabatier, Le Faust de Goethe traduit en français dans le mètre de l'original et suivant les règles de la versification allemande (1893). CHAPTER XII RIMELESS POETRY ALTHOUGH it is a mistaken conception to believe, as De Banville and some of the Romanticists did, that the rhythm of French poetry depends solely on rime, nevertheless rime is of such importance as a fundamental principle of French versification that all attempts to write rimeless verse in that language, rare as they have been, were bound to end in failure. In order to convince oneself of the truth of this assertion it suffices to repeat the experiment made with a few lines of Racine by Voltaire in the Preface (1729) of his Edipe: Tout le monde connaît ces vers: Où me cacher? Fuyons dans la nuit infernale; Mettez à la place: Où me cacher? Fuyons dans la nuit infernale; Quelque poétique que soit ce morceau, fera-t-il le même plaisir, dépouillé de la rime? It has already been noticed that the first French poets of the sixteenth century who composed verses on the model of classical metres renounced rime. In the same century 1 certain poets, independently of quantitative versification, attempted to write rimeless verse, or vers blancs as the French call it, in imitation of the Italian versi sciolti, which owing to the success of such poems as Trissino's Sofonisba (1515), Ariosto's Comedie, Rucellai's Api, and Alemanni's Coltivazione 1 Vers blancs proper are unknown in O.F. poetry. Certain chansons de geste, however, present a rimeless line, shorter than the preceding lines, at the end of the laisse or section-probably an artifice intended to bring home to the audience the termination of each laisse. The same peculiarity occurs in the lyrical parts of the chantefable of Aucassin et Nicolette, and also in a few medieval religious poems. (1546), became subsequently usual in that language for certain kinds of poetry. Of these French poets of the sixteenth century, Bonaventure des Periers (d. 1543 c.) seems to have been the first to use vers blancs, in his translation of one of Horace's Odes. Neither Du Bellay nor Ronsard was averse to blank verse, and they have each left a few pieces of that kind. The former expresses himself as follows in the literary manifesto of the Pléiade: Autrement, qui ne voudroit reigler sa Rythme comme j'ay dit, il vaudroit beaucoup mieux ne rymer point: mais faire des vers libres, comme a fait Petrarque en quelque endroit et de nostre tens le Seigneur Loys Aleman, en sa non moins docte, que plaisante Agriculture1. Mais tout ainsi que les Peintres, et Statuaires mettent plus grand'industrie à faire beaux, et bien proportionnez les corps qui sont nuds, que les autres, aussi faudroit il bien que ces Vers non rymez, feussent bien charnuz, et nerveux: afin de compenser par ce moyen le default de la Rythme. But, although Ronsard and Du Bellay were not absolutely hostile to such verse, it is significant that they did not persist in their first experiment, and that their example seems to have acted as a deterrent upon their followers. The only considerable collection of vers blancs in the sixteenth century is due to Blaise de Vigénère, who in 1558 translated the Psalms in vers libres or prose mesurée, as he calls it. Vigénère's artless explanation of the reasons that induced him to choose blank verse for his translation of the Psalms is instructive, and applicable to writers of all such verse in French: Bien est-il vrai, he says in his Preface to the King, qu'il est mal aisé et quant et quant un peu chatouilleux, pour la contrainte des omoiotelestes ou rimes es 1 i. e. Alemanni's Coltivazione. 2 Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, p. 132. On the other hand all early French theorists before and after Du Bellay are unanimously hostile to rimeless verses. Already in the fifteenth century Molinet, alias Henry de Croy (cf. Reprint of 1832, b. 1), expresses his opinion in no uncertain manner: Baguenaudes sont couplets faits a voulente contenant certaines quantités de sillabes sans rime et sans raison pou recommandée ymo repulsée de bons ouvriers. Sibilet (p. 144) says that such verses demeurent autant froids, comme un corps sans sang, et sans ame. Tabourot's opinion (Bigarrures, p. 149) is no more favourable, and Deimier (p. 312), after mentioning the blank verse of Ronsard and Vigénère, adds the amusing remark: Ils ont aussi peu d'harmonie et de douceur pour l'ouye, qu'un fruict par trop vert et une rave gelée de goust et de saveur pour la bouche. |