Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters. Эдгар Аллан По
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are not only more prevalent in the heroic hexameter than dactyls, but occur to such an extent as is even unpleasant to modern ears, on account of monotony. What the modern chiefly appreciates and admires in the Greek hexameter is the melody of the abundant vowel sounds. The Latin hexameters really please very few moderns — although so many pretend to fall into ecstasies about them. In the hexameters quoted several pages ago, from Silius Italicus, the preponderance of the spondee is strikingly manifest. Besides the natural spondees of the Greek and Latin, numerous artificial ones arise in the verse of these tongues, on account of the tendency which inflection has to throw full accentuation on terminal syllables, and the preponderance of the spondee is further ensured by the comparative infrequency of the small prepositions which we have to serve us instead of case, and also the absence of the diminutive auxiliary verbs with which we have to eke out the expression of our primary ones. These are the monosyllables whose abundance serves to stamp the poetic genius of a language as tripping or dactylic.
Now paying no attention to these facts, Sir Philip Sidney, Professor Longfellow, and innumerable other persons, more or less modern, have busied themselves in constructing what they supposed to be “English hexameters on the model of the Greek.” The only difficulty was that (even leaving out of question the melodious masses of vowel) these gentlemen never could get their English hexameters to sound Greek. Did they look Greek? — that should have been the query, and the reply might have led to a solution of the riddle. In placing a copy of ancient hexameters side by side with a copy (in similar type) of such hexameters as Professor Longfellow, or Professor Felton or the Frogpondian Professors collectively, are in the shameful practice of composing “on the model of the Greek,” it will be seen that the latter (hexameters, not professors) are about one-third longer to the eye, on an average, than the former. The more abundant dactyls make the difference. And it is the greater number of spondees in the Greek than in the English, in the ancient than in the modern tongue, which has caused it to fall out that while these eminent scholars were groping about in the dark for a Greek hexameter, which is a spondaic rhythm varied now and then by dactyls, they merely stumbled, to the lasting scandal of scholarship, over something which, on account of its long-leggedness, we may as well term a Feltonian hexameter, and which is a dactylic rhythm interrupted rarely by artificial spondees which are no spondees at all, and which are curiously thrown in by the heels at all kinds of improper and impertinent points.
Here is a specimen of the Longfellow hexameter:
Also the / church with / in was a / dorned for / this was the / season /
In which the / young their / parent’s / hope and the / loved ones of / Heaven /
Should at the / foot of the / altar re / new the / vows of their / baptism /
Therefore each / nook and / corner was / swept and / cleaned and the / dust was /
Blown from the / walls and / ceiling and / from the / oil-painted / benches. /
Mr. Longfellow is a man of imagination, but can he imagine that any individual, with a proper understanding of the danger of lockjaw, would make the attempt of twisting his mouth into the shape necessary for the emission of such spondees as “parents,” and “from the,” or such dactyls as “cleaned and the,” and “loved ones of”? “Baptism” is by no means a bad spondee — perhaps because it happens to be a dactyl — of all the rest, however, I am dreadfully ashamed.
But these feet, dactyls and spondees, all together, should thus be put at once into their proper position:
“Also the church within was adorned; for this was the season in which the young, their parents’ hope, and the loved ones of Heaven, should, at the foot of the altar, renew the vows of their baptism. Therefore, each nook and corner was swept and cleaned; and the dust was blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches?
There! — That is respectable prose, and it will incur no danger of ever getting its character ruined by anybody’s mistaking it for verse.
But even when we let these modern hexameters go as Greek, and merely hold them fast in their proper character of Longfellowine, or Feltonian, or Frogpondian, we must still condemn them as having been committed in a radical misconception of the philosophy of verse. The spondee, as I observed, is the theme of the Greek line. Most of the ancient hexameters begin with spondees, for the reason that the spondee is the theme, and the ear is filled with it as with a burden. Now the Feltonian dactylics have, in the same way, dactyl for the theme, and most of them begin with dactyls — which is all very proper if not very Greek — but unhappily, the one point at which they are very Greek is that point, precisely, at which they should be nothing but Feltonian. They always close with what is meant for a spondee. To be consistently silly they should die off in a dactyl.
That a truly Greek hexameter cannot, however, be readily composed in English, is a proposition which I am by no means inclined to admit. I think I could manage the point myself. For example:
Do tell! / when may we / hope to make / men of sense / out of the Pundits
Born and brought / up with their / snouts deep / down in the / mud of the / Frog-pond?
Why ask? / who ever / yet saw / money made / out of a / fat old
Jew, or / downright / upright / nutmegs / out of a / pine-knot?
The proper spondee predominance is here preserved. Some of the dactyls are not so good as I could wish, but, upon the whole the rhythm is very decent — to say nothing of its excellent sense.
1. Verse, from the Latin vertere, to turn, is so called on account of the turning or re-commencement of the series of feet. Thus a verse strictly speaking is a line. In this sense, however, I have preferred using the latter word alone; employing the former in the general acceptation given it in the heading of this paper.
2. A stanza is often vulgarly, and with gross impropriety, called a verse.
The Poetic Principle
In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails — a revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such.
There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity — its totality of effect or impression — we read it (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alteration of excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical prejudgment can force