Prose Rhythm Research Articles

ИЗ НАБЛЮДЕНИЙ НАД РИТМОМ ПРОЗЫ А. Н. ТОЛСТОГО

The article deals with the specifics of the rhythmic organization of A.N.Tolstoy›s prose. The rhythm of prose is defined as a repetitive alternation of elements in a narrative system. Such elements include large blocks: a dynamic depiction of the actions of characters, static descriptions (landscape, portrait, author›s digression), insertion elements (text within the text). A.N.Tolstoy possessed a holistic perception of the space-time continuum of human existence. At the same time, we must take into account the dependence of the tempo of the work on the literary genre chosen by the author, on its stylistic nature. Short stories, novellas and novels by A.N.Tolstoy can be divided into three genre and style categories: 1) manor prose; 2) adventurous and fantasy prose; 3) historical prose. The specificity of these artistic models determined many features of the poetics of these works, including influencing the organization of the narrative rhythm. The rhythm of manor prose tends to slow down. Adventurous prose has a completely different rhythm of plot unfolding. A series of adventures aimed at achieving cherished goals is always characterized by a special rapidity and unpredictability of transitions. The rhythm of historical prose is determined by contrasts in the perception of time, on the one hand, by active reformers, and, on the other hand, by mossy conservatives. In all cases, rhythmic shifts affect both tiers of the story system: 1) the depicted series of events (the scope of the characters› actions); 2) the scope of the events of the story (the subject level). The article deals with the issues of the technique of embodying rhythmic shifts (the role of pauses, the introduction of the same type of syntactic constructions, the discrepancy of different rhythms, deviations from logic).

Kiedy wiersz jest prozą (i na odwrót)? O (prozo)wierszu Zbigniewa Herberta Rovigo

The article concerns the relationship between the transcription of a poem and its tonal realisation, using as an example Zbigniew Herbert’s Rovigo. The key question is the situation in which the verse text corresponds to the rhythm of prose (intonational-structural delimitation). Two forms of verse format are distinguished: ‘classical’, acknowledging punctuation marks, and avant-garde, renouncing punctuation marks and, sometimes, capital letters. Consequently, it is possible to use the category of the prose poem understood both as a rhymed prose record in the sense of sound as well as a term describing a type of work in which rhyme delimitation in the phonological sense (rhythm) co-occurs with particles separated on the basis of intonation and syntax. The terminology introduced makes it also possible to consider Zbigniew Herbert as a representative of aesthetic conservative modernism, which combines both conventions of verse writing and uses both regular verse and various varieties of free verse.

Translating poetry, or the poetry of translating

This research aims to study rhythm as an element – considered essential and indispensable to analyse when examining the poetic verse – which also arises as a concrete concern to those who write and translate prose. More than intuitively approaching the material or worrying about stablishing or reproducing the tones and sounds in a work of art, dealing with rhythm can be a systematic part of the making, another literary element to compose and constitute the textual materiality. Thus, throughout our route, we are reflecting on the matter of rhythm in prose while analysing “carta do tradutor” – or “a translator’s letter” –, an open letter written by Brazilian translator Caetano Waldrigues Galindo to Marcia Copola, who would later proofread his translation of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Our observations are made according to the critical lens of the creative process, a line of reasoning which allows us to see literary translation as a creative and, therefore, continuous act. Furthermore, this study believes that even though it has its materiality, the text is a malleable organism which depends on its readings to stay fixed – or even to keep its moving nature. Therefore, while applying such theoretical principles to our object of study analysis, we reason regarding the translation practice and the possibility of it being traversed by the matter of rhythm and rhythmic patterns.

Ein ungebildeter Bischof oder ein unterschätzter Gelehrter? Prämissen, Probleme und Perspektiven einer neuen Edition der Historien des Gregor von Tours

Abstract The Histories of Gregory of Tours are among the most important literary testimonies for the transition period from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. The verdict on the Latin literature and language of the first centuries of the Frankish Empire has often been very negative. Krusch and Levison, who published today’s still authoritative critical edition of the Histories, also assumed that Gregory’s original text could only have been written in poor Merovingian Latin. This paper presents arguments for a new edition of the Histories from different perspectives. Gregory’s testimonies in which he addresses his own linguistic and grammatical deficiencies or the necessity of writing in a simple language, have to be viewed and evaluated within the larger tradition of statements of this kind in (Late) Antiquity. They should, thus, not be read as evidence for the argument that Gregory’s Histories were written in poor and incorrect Latin. An assumption of this kind, however, has influenced Krusch’s and Levison’s evaluation of the manuscripts of Gregory’s Histories and is thus reflected in their reconstructed text, even though quite a few manuscripts offer a much better text. This approach has repeatedly been criticised by different scholars; my paper joins this criticism. In assessing the various manuscripts of Gregory’s Histories, the editors have to make a decision regarding the presumed quality and state of Gregory’s Latin. My paper, therefore, also offers a case-study of Gregory’s stylistic and rhythmic arrangement of his text. The analysis of the so-called prose rhythm provides important evidence in favour of a positive assessment of Gregory’s level of education and thus of his linguistic and grammatical proficiency. This can also be viewed as an argument for a new and appropriate edition.

Free Verse and Prose Rhythm

AbstractFree verse and prose rhythms, by definition, do not have metrical organizing schemes, but does this mean that rhythm in free verse or prose poems is like speech or prose rhythm? Taking up these questions debated since the advent of modernist free verse more than one hundred years ago, this essay draws on recent critical literary and linguistic findings to formulate a new method for scanning and comparing rhythm in English-language free verse and prose genres. The comparison of six texts suggests that in poetic free verse or prose texts rhythm constructs information-rich, multilevel, context-specific semantic systems in a way that does not occur in the nonpoetic texts. These results contest persisting prosodic theories that free verse and prose poetry are largely written in prose, and suggest that rhythm is a more important generic marker of the poetic function than lineation is.

Stylistic Factors of “Ornamental Prose” in Work of I. A. Goncharov

Literature of the “golden age” of Russian literature, as a rule, was not considered in terms of ornamentality, with the exception of some works by A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, A. P. Chekhov. The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that “ornamentality” makes it possible to identify the features of poetics throughout the entire career of I. A. Goncharov. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the author refers to a little-studied problem in pottery - “ornamental prose”, the study of which allows touching on the unidentified issues of rhythm. Some ornamental means mainly on the material of the “small” prose of I. A. Goncharov analyzed in the article. The author of the article concludes that the writer uses various figures of repetition, based on semantic redundancy, and ornamental means, focused on symmetry. The concept of polyrhythm is introduced in relation to the rhythmic structure of works by I. A. Goncharov. Thus, a rhythm is created based on the semantic “braiding”, and the principle of symmetry created by the artistic techniques of “ornamental prose” and “rhythmic prose” is observed. All this makes it possible to structure the text and overcome its formal content entropy, which determines the uniqueness of I. A. Goncharov’s “ornamentality”.

„Jak zachwyca, kiedy nie zachwyca?”

“HOW IS IT DELIGHTFUL WHEN IT IS NOT?”: ON THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE 55TH SURA OF THE KORAN AR-RAḤMĀN – THE MERCIFUL The Koran is not only the holy book of Islam, but also one of the most important literary works of classical Arabic literature. Muslims and people who know Arabic emphasize the extraordinary beauty of this text, written in rhymed and rhythmic prose. 55 sura of the Koran, Ar-Raḥmān (The Merciful) is widely regarded, both in Muslim and Orientalist circles, as one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, sura of the Koran from the artistic point of view. This is mainly due to the presence of a kind of “refrain” in this sura, which, of course, also has a semantic role in the context of the content of this fragment of the holy book of Muslims. The subject of the article is, first of all, a comparative analysis of the translation of this sura, and first of all of the refrain, in selected translations of the Koran into Polish, German, French and Russian. The analysis focuses not on the way of presenting the content, but on whether the authors of the translations tried to reflect the undoubted beauty of the sound of the Koranic text, which is supposed to delight not only with its content, but also its form, and translators usually have huge problems with this. The conclusions resulting from this analysis have a broader meaning, because analogous problems also arise in the case of ancient Arabic poetry and some other literary genres, primarily maqāma.

Four Novels of 1939: Ambition and Redemption; Ethnicity and Race

Four Novels of 1939: Ambition and Redemption; Ethnicity and Race

The wind of freedom. Ksenia Buksha

The article discusses the work of the St. Petersburg-based writer K. Buksha. The author proposes a careful analysis and critical reception of her prose, starting from the very first novel, published under the penname of a seventy-five-year-old Krzysztof Bakush, to her latest book Advent, an experiment with rhythmic prose. In her analysis of the writer’s work, E. Minaeva focuses on the novels The Freedom Factory [Zavod ‘Svoboda’], Opens Out [Otkryvaetsya vnutr ], and Churov and Churbanov [Churov i Churbanov], each of them featuring typical Bukshaesque characters — humble and odd, they suffer their own personal spiritual tragedy. According to the critic, Buksha strives to let the reader see the characters’ world and the changes their lives undergo over time. Along with the attention given to the fate of the characters and the twists and turns of Buksha’s recurrent plots, the article is characterised by a detailed dialogue with critics who have reviewed Buksha’s works (including judges of the National Bestseller Prize, whose shortlists featured Buksha’s novels more than once) and an invitation to form your own opinion based on the proposed critical summary.

(Ne)dovršena priča o stilu F. M. Dostojevskog / The (un)finished story of F. M. Dostoevsky’s style

The paper explores F. M. Dostoevsky’s style from the contemporary semantic-stylistic research perspective. Based on canonical work of M. Bakhtin on Dostoevsky and recent corpus-semantic explorations of Dostoevsky’s language, the paper aims to show how microelements at different language levels can be regarded as stylemes and build the unique style, harmonized with the main idea of Dostoevsky’s works. The paper focuses on the stylistic effects of intensifiers and their unusual collocations, and specific usage of particles. From the critical stylistics perspective, transitivity is explored, primarily passivisation – the removal of the agent / actor as an important styleme in Dostoevsky’s novels. The intensified expressiveness of the writer’s style, its “theatricality”, as well as the accelerated, sometimes broken prose rhythm, which also contributes to the speech characterization of his heroes, is also analysed. It can be concluded that criticism of Dostoevsky’s style is not justified, because that style is completely in compliance with the emotional states of his characters and with the key ideas of his works.

Latin Accentual Clausula as Exemplified in 14th-Century Prose Texts by Dante and Boccaccio

This paper studies 14th-century Latin prose rhythm as exemplified by Dante and Boccaccio. The texts observed in this analysis are samples from De Monarchia, De vulgari eloquentia, Quaestio de aqua et terra and Epistole by Dante and De mulieribus claris and De casibus virorum illustrium by Boccaccio. In ancient rhetoric, rhythmical units were used at the ends of sentences and clauses in prose texts. These units were called clausulae, and the rhythm of classical prose was based on the quantity of syllables. Medieval Latin prose rhythm, however, was based on word stress and was called cursus. The aim of this paper is to study what kinds of cursus occur in the given text samples and their frequency. The research method used in this paper is comparative-statistical analysis. The distribution of cursus in these samples is also analysed by chapters and different types of cursus are distinguished.

“I Sort Rather with Those who Do Not Read”

Wanne Mendonck, “‘I Sort Rather with Those who Do Not Read’: Edward Carpenter, the Religion of Socialism, and the Prophetic Agitation of Literary Form” (pp. 56–90) Edward Carpenter’s prose poem Towards Democracy (1883) constructs “new forms” to frame a radical voice that helped shape the British “socialist revival” of the 1880s and 1890s. Formal questions, however, have often been skirted in relation to Carpenter, or referred to his reputation as a disciple of Walt Whitman. This article argues, by contrast, that they can be productively asked in relation to a prophetic understanding of individual political and artistic agency, Carpenter’s working out of which is illustrated via his early play Moses (1875). Carpenter’s hybrid lyrical-narrative poetry is shaped by a deeply anxious self-consciousness about its political-spiritual duties, which expresses itself in a form that attempts to cancel out its own formalism. Its prose rhythms and hyperquotidian diction strain toward an immediacy that ultimately chafes against its own textuality. Only thus can Carpenter attain to the spontaneity and “inescapability” that support an understanding of pioneering, prophetic authorial agency that is at the basis of his conceptualization of politics, evolution, and queer sexuality. His poetry desires to intervene in the extratextual but is intratextually “agitated” by anxiety about the political viability of its own (counter)cultural authority and texture. This reading opens newly expansive ways of understanding Victorian literary form in its dialogic relationship with the political, arguing for a dynamic understanding that regards even the most experimental of late-nineteenth-century socialist poetry as responding to, and resisting, dilemmas of discursive authority and intelligibility implied by an embedded authorial model.

«Vicious» or «selected»? The linguosemantics of dispondee ending in Cicero's In Catilinam

This article is devoted to the study of "heavy" clauses, i.e. the rhythmics of dyspondee [– – – x], molossus and spondee [– – – – x] and creticus and molossus [– ᴗ – – – x ] at the end of the period in classical Latin prose on the material of Cicero's speeches "Against Catilina". The first paragraph, containing a brief outline of the history of the study of metric clauses, is generally devoted to two different approaches to the study of such rhythmic structures, namely the method of A. Bornecque, who called such clauses "vicious" and subjected some of them to conjuncture, and the teaching of Th. Zielinski, who distinguished them into a special class of "selected". As a result, the question of an alternative approach to the study of clauses is raised. В The second paragraph contains an analysis of the dyspondean clauses in Cicero's speeches "Against Catilina" regarding the frequency and place of their use in pericopes; the analysis uses a new methodology for studying the rhythm of prose developed by the author of the article. The relatively high frequency of heavy clauses indicates their essential role in the rhythmic organization of the text, and Cicero's desire to avoid such clauses at the end of super-phrasal units indicates their associative connection with the continuation of thought. Based on the data obtained, conclusions are drawn about the specific role of "heavy" clauses in the logical division of the text, which indicates the truth of Zielinski's theory.

Une approche automatisée pour la recherche des figures de style de répétition

Stylistic figures have seen a renewed academic interest in the context of automated analysis pertaining to the fields of computational linguistics and philological analysis of the text and resulting as such from an interdisciplinary approach. The paper examines the problem of classifying and searching stylistic figures of repetition which belong to the basic means of rhythm creation in a fictional text. The aim of the research is thus seen in differentiating between rhythm figures as well as in identifying the peculiarities of their functioning in the French prose of the 20th century.A challenging area in this field is an absence of unified definition of the stylistic figures of repetition in different languages (English, French and Russian). It entails the need for their distinction to provide for the analysis of rhythm based on the repetition of certain units in different positions in the framework of comparative studies. Rhythm in prose received a lot of attention in the past decade, however current research has proved it an increasingly topical subject since it allows for implementing automated methods to its analysis. The authors propose a new approach to find and analyze stylistic figures of repetition in a text. The PRD (ProseRhythmDetector) tool searches and counts such stylistic devices as anaphora, epiphora, simploce, epanalepsis, epizeuxis, anadiplosis and diacope. The paper evaluates the results of their search in a number of 20th century French texts with a quantitative analysis of the data presented in tables and charts as well as the characteristics of idiolects of three French authors (Colette, A. de Saint-Exupéry and A. Camus).

Christendom and Anti-Hellenism: Walter Shewring's Sallies

Christendom and Anti-Hellenism:Walter Shewring's Sallies David Ricks (bio) Walter Shewring (1906–1990) is a classic case of "the translator's invisibility." His prose translation of the Odyssey (1980) has been widely used and intermittently praised, but few readers can have given a thought to this translator, or even to his idiosyncratic discussion of Homeric translation modestly placed at the back of the book.1 Yet the back story to this late-life enterprise in Englishing Homer (Ronald Knox's downright verb still possesses utility) is not without interest, for Shewring's stance when it came to the place of the classics was avowedly off-center, indeed counter-cultural. And at a time when tenured classical scholars assail their own field for its failings, to the point even of denying its legitimacy, a glance back at some earlier debates (relating to, among other things, the rival claims of Greek and Latin; the place of modern languages and especially of Italian; and the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns) may be of interest. At the same time, Shewring's presence has always been a somewhat occluded one: everyone knows the Perpetua font created by Eric Gill, few that it was created for Shewring's 1929 edition of the Passion of SS. Perpetua and Felicity. Attention, then, to Shewring's skirmishes—and to his silences—may, then, have some value. Shewring was and was not part of the classical establishment. A son of the manse and of the provinces, he (like the present writer) attended Bristol Grammar School, where he won the poetry prize three times and dared to correspond with Housman. In 1924 he proceeded Scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he won two University prizes; nor was it dishonor to be honorably mentioned for a further prize won by a Mr. Syme of Magdalen. I think it likely, from the fact that Shewring co-authored the article on prose rhythm in the 1949 Oxford Classical Dictionary with J.D. Denniston, that he had gone [End Page 71] to the latter for composition; and a pair of articles on Greek prose rhythm published in Classical Quarterly in 1930–1 are still cited by Dover in the current OCD. (A further one appeared in the Journal of Theological Studies.) A volume of Greek and Latin versions appeared in 1938. So far, so conventional. But in the meantime life-changing events occurred. At the avant-garde bookshop in Bristol owned by Douglas Cleverdon (later an influential producer for the BBC's Third Programme and a colleague of D.S. Carne-Ross) Shewring was swept off his feet by Eric Gill, whose lifelong disciple he became. He was also taken up by the influential theorist of homosexuality, André Raffalovich, and his companion, the strikingly original Nineties poet John—by now Canon John—Gray; and in 1926 he made his submission to Rome. Around that time, he was rebuffed in his courtship of a young woman who (it would seem) appears in the Latin dedication to his Odyssey more than half a century later and who is mentioned in a late poem.2 (Shewring's first poems had appeared as early as 1927 and then—with illustrations by David Jones—in 1930.) "On the rebound" scarcely describes the journey north to Ampleforth Abbey, where (with a break as a conscientious objector working the land during the Second World War) Shewring lived out his days as a schoolmaster. The entirety of a report on one boy—"Ignorant, indolent, insolent"—lives in legend. But from his marginal position Shewring exercised a Joycean exile and cunning. Contributions, if they did not exactly flow from his pen, were shot from it periodically, on more subjects than most people could hope to have an opinion on, or than I can mention here. I shall concentrate on certain positions—I would call them positions rather than simply postures—which Shewring took in a slim and elegant volume of essays called Topics (1940) and, concurrently, in an unfinished book, the ruins of which exist in a handful of copies deposited in British libraries.3 Both volumes are well worth reading, and re-reading: here I can...

Cicero’s rationale for his use of prose rhythm in argumentation

ABSTRACT Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43BCE) is widely regarded, both in theory and practice, as a preeminent figure in the history of rhetoric, especially for his mastery of argumentation. Yet, Cicero was heavily criticized by his contemporaries for his rhetorical style, particularly his use of prose rhythm. In response, Cicero credited (and justified) his use of prose rhythm to Hellenic sources. Cicero’s rationale for his prose rhythm is best understood by examining the full range of his rhetorical treatises (i.e. his Rhetorica) and his practice, taking into account the social exigences and constraints that influenced his choice of style generally, and prose rhythm specifically, in rhetorical situations involving argumentation.

Արձակ ստեղծագործության ռիթմի պահպանումը թարգմանվածքում / On the preservation of rhythm in the translation of prose

The paper aims at studying the role and function of rhythm in prose and the ways of preserving it in translation. The analysis is based on the material of “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury and its Armenian translation by Z.Boyajyan. Bradbury’s prose stands out with vivid imagery built through various lexical stylistic devices, colour words and onomatopiic words, and rhythm created by syntactical and phonetic stylistic devices. On the whole, the translator succeeded in preserving both the imagery and the rhythm of the source text, the main challenges being the translation of alliteration, polysyndeton and absolute participial constructions. His strategy of empolying poetic and bookish words enables him not only to provide the preservation of the imagery, but also to compensate for the loss of rhythm in some parts of the translation, for it is impossibe to achieve rhythmical equivalence due to the structural differences between English and Armenian.

Aḥmad al-Kardūdī i jego podróż do Hiszpanii (1885). Konteksty polityczne i kulturowe

The article is devoted to Aḥmad al-Kardūdī, a Moroccan official in the second half of the nineteenth century, and his state and diplomatic activities, with particular emphasis on the account he wrote for Sultan Al-Ḥasan I (ruled 1873–1894) from the 1885 expedition to Spain, which had been published for the first time in 1963 under the title At-Tuḥfa as-saniyya li-al-Ḥaḍra al- Ḥasaniyya bi-al-Mamlaka al-Iṣbanyūliyya [Shining Gift for His Majesty Al- Ḥasan about the Kingdom of Spain]. This report often is included into Arab travel literature. It is not only a report on the tasks that the ruler set before the diplomatic mission of which Al-Kardūdī was a member, but also an image of the social and political consciousness of Moroccan elites associated with power of the West in times of active attempt at reforms undertaken by the ruler. Unfortunately, these attempts had little effect. The delegation was received in audience by Regent Maria Krystyna, also visited the capital of Spain and the most important Andalusian cities, but the author himself, probably on the orders of the Sultan, was also very interested in the military achievements of the Spaniards. The Gift, written in rhyming and rhythmic prose, can be treated as a literary work (although the author probably did not intend to), and simultaneously an example of an original, official, court document in the shape of a diplomatic report addressed to the ruler.

About one of the possible source of The Tale of Tsarevich Svetomir by Viacheslav Ivanov

The Tale of Tsarevich Svetomir by Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov nowadays looks like a thoroughly researched work. Many of the pretexts of this long poem have been studied, various reminiscences and allusive layers have been revealed, and mythopoetic motives have been analyzed. Readers and researchers have shown great interest in the poem’s unusual discursive structure and the orientation of its language towards the Church Slavonic Bible and Old Russian literature, as well as the form of rhythmic prose chosen by the author, reminiscent of old French verses. However, the pattern of such prose can be found closer, in Russian literature of the 19th century. In a similar way, the narration is organized in one of the works of a writer close to the Slavophiles, Kokhanovskaya (Nadezhda S. Sokhanskaya, 1823–1884). Upon careful reading, her story “Roy-Theodosii Savvich during His Retirement” (1864) turns out, to be close to Vyacheslav Ivanov’s legend, not only rhythmically and phonetically, but also in terms of the system of images performing similar functions in both works. The coincidence of these two factors allows one to consider this half-forgotten work as one of the possible sources of the symbolist writer’s poem.

The Role of Rhythm and Metre in the Style and Genre Formation in B. Rachmanin’s Prose

The issues of rhythm and metre in prose of 1960-1970s reflect the experiments of young writers not only within the form. The search for new genres and ways of expressing new content are diverse. The article deals with literary works by Boris Leonidovich Rachmanin, the author of poetry collections, stories, screenwriter, who boldly created a new internal form of his works using both possibilities of meter and rhythm in his prose, which was different from the works of his predecessors in the Silver Age or those who worked in the Russian diaspora. The analysis of works A Letter, The Action Takes Place on the Other Planet and others shows the functional potential of special rhythm and melody of prose in the individual style of the writer and also outlines semasiological approaches in the analysis of a literary work in general. Comparison of literary works by B. Rachmanin with the works by A. Bely or I.A. Bunin as his predecessors and Yustinas Martsinkevichus as his contemporary author gives an idea of the tradition Rachmanin inherited and the cultural style of the epoch in which the writer worked.