meter in "Sir Thaddeus"

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birdeen's call

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O Lithuania, my country, thou
Art like good health; I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee.
These are the opening lines of an English translation of the national epic of Poland, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz (translation by Kenneth R. Mackenzie). I'm trying to learn about English meters, and wanted to find out what meter was it here, but I don't see. Can you help me?

PS: Is it OK to post such questions on the Ask a Teacher forum? People seem to look in on this forum more rarely.
 
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IHIVG

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There's several meters here.

Art like good health -- this is trochaic meter:
'_ _ /'_ _

I never knew till now is iambus:

_ '_ /_ '_ /_ '_ /_

How precious till I lost thee -- trochee:

'_ _ /'_ _ /'_ _ /'_ _

In the first line the beat is irregular. Here's what we get if we break it down:

_ _ /'_ _/ _ _ /'_ _ /'_ _

You can see that it lacks stresses in the 1st and 3d pair of syllables - it's an irregular trochee.


P.S. " ' " is a stressed syllable.
Slashes are just to show that the meters are disyllable.
 

birdeen's call

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Thank you for the insight.
I believe there must be something more than just that here... I mean, I can find out what natural feet are in the verse. But I meant the meter, like iambic pentameter, alexandrine or anything. I'm not good at it and when I see such irregularities I'm hopelessly lost.
 

IHIVG

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Thank you for the insight.
I believe there must be something more than just that here... I mean, I can find out what natural feet are in the verse. But I meant the meter, like iambic pentameter, alexandrine or anything. I'm not good at it and when I see such irregularities I'm hopelessly lost.

Alexandrine is another name for iambic haxameter.
Pentameter, tetrameter, etc., indicate the number of stressed syllables in a line.
So in your case:
Art like good health -- trochaic dimeter (2);
I never knew till now -- iambus trimeter (3);
How precious till I lost thee -- trochaic tetrameter (4).
 
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birdeen's call

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OK, thanks. So it's nothing familiar... I find it a little bit odd. The original is in tridecasyllable with caesuras after the seventh. So it's something regular, although not regarding prosodic feet.
I notice that if I write it another way, it becomes tridecasyllable though

O Lithuania, my country, thou art like good health;
I never knew till now how precious, till I lost thee.

It's a shame I don't have more to see if it follows this patter later on. Anyway if there is a caesura here it isn't on the seventh syllable. It's strange that a translation of a regular poem can be done in such an irregular way...
 
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Raymott

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It's strange that a translation of a regular poem can be done in such an irregular way...
Why is it strange? It would be strange if an English transaltion of Polish turned out to have to have the same meter as the original!
Poems don't have to be in a regular meter. Look up "free verse".
 

birdeen's call

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Actually, I hear there is such a translation of this particular poem. But it's not so important. I only thought that there should be some attempt to convey the feel about the poem. But then I have virtually no knowledge about translating poetry so I'll take your word for it :)
 

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Alexandrine is another name for iambic hExameter.

Pentameter, tetrameter, etc., indicate the number of stressed syllables in a line.
So in your case:
Art like good health -- trochaic dimeter (2);
I never knew till now -- iambus trimeter (3);
How precious till I lost thee -- trochaic tetrameter (4).

You can break up individual bits of lines to describe them more precisely, but it's traditional in literary criticism to describe the overall structure - iambic pentameter in this case. Lines 1 and 2 are pentameters; the third is presumably incomplete.

But as Raymott said, there's no requirement to stick rigidly to one structure; the third line may be intentionally foreshortened by the writer.

b
 

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PS re flexibility in metre. Wordsworth's Daffodils is in iambic tetrameter:

I wan/dered lo/nely as/ a cloud
That floats/ on high/ o'er vales / and hills,
When all/ at once/ I saw/ a crowd,
A host/, of gold/en daff/odils;
Beside/ the lake/, beneath/ the trees,
Fluttering:?:/and dan/cing in/ the breeze.

Each line has four stresses, each foot is iambic (short-long). But something odd happens in the last line. Wordsworth could have written 'They danced/ and flu/ttered in/the breeze'; that would have maintained the pattern. But would it have been an improvement?

Emphatically not! The 'improved' version strikes me as banal. For me, the disruption to the expected metre in Wordsworth's version evokes a picture of the daffodils 'fluttering'. This is what poets do - even when they're not writing 'free verse'; they paint pictures with sounds, and they don't always stick to the rules.

b
 

birdeen's call

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You can break up individual bits of lines to describe them more precisely, but it's traditional in literary criticism to describe the overall structure - iambic pentameter in this case. Lines 1 and 2 are pentameters; the third is presumably incomplete.

Could you please explain why it's iambic pentameter there? I can't read it in that drum-like way...
 

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Could you please explain why it's iambic pentameter there? I can't read it in that drum-like way...

O Li/thuan/ia/, my coun/try, thou
Art like/ good health/; I ne/ver knew/ till now
How pre/cious, till/ I lost/ thee.[missing* syllables: 'strong/ weak-strong']

*Of course, it might be intentional. The reader/listener's expectation of more syllables accentuates the loss: the reader/listener thinks 'there's something wrong... something's missing', and that's what the poet feels - about his country rather than the metre.

b
 

birdeen's call

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Thanks! I'd never have guessed that Lithuania has five syllables in it!

PS Seeing this anew I think the translator did a tremendous job translating it! What you say about the last line is a great example. The Polish original also has that feeling of something missing in that place, on grammatical (rather then metrical) grounds though.

PPS OK, it's my turn to provide some trivia. These lines are an absolute must in Polish schools. Every child must learn them by heart at some stage. It might seem strange that every single Pole must at least once in their life say that their fatherland is Lithuania, but we don't choose our national epics as they say! ;-)
 
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IHIVG

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O Li/thuan/ia/, my coun/try, thou
Art like/ good health/; I ne/ver knew/ till now
How pre/cious, till/ I lost/ thee.[missing* syllables: 'strong/ weak-strong']
Sorry Bob, but I can't understand how you broke up 'Lithuania' into 3 stressed syllables at all. :-? Especially the 3d 'a'.
Is this how you would pronounce it in life - 'LITH-uh-WAY-niA'? 'I've only heard people stressing the first 'a' - 'LithuAnia.' 'O Lithuania my country thou' --that's how I read this line.
Art like/ good health/? Sorry, I don't understand this either. It seems so obvious to me that the stress should fall on 'Art' and 'good'.
 

IHIVG

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You can break up individual bits of lines to describe them more precisely, but it's traditional in literary criticism to describe the overall structure - iambic pentameter in this case. Lines 1 and 2 are pentameters; the third is presumably incomplete.
I beg to differ -- I can't see how the lines 1 and 2 are iambic pentameters. The 2nd is half iambus, half trochee for me.
I agree that we usually can identify the overall structure in a verse but
I think that it's hard to do in this case. The verse is too short and the beat is irregular. Maybe if we had the whole piece, it would be clearer.
 

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Sorry Bob, but I can't understand how you broke up 'Lithuania' into 3 stressed syllables at all. :-? Especially the 3d 'a'.
Is this how you would pronounce it in life - 'LITH-uh-WAY-niA'? 'I've only heard people stressing the first 'a' - 'LithuAnia.' 'O Lithuania my country thou' --that's how I read this line.
Art like/ good health/? Sorry, I don't understand this either. It seems so obvious to me that the stress should fall on 'Art' and 'good'.

I'm not talking about how I (or anyone else) might say it, I'm saying how the poetical metre works. I have studied English literature for many years, and it's not rocket science. Just believe it.

Re your second post: I agree that the sample is small. But we know it's an excerpt from an epic, and I know that epic poetry in English is often in iambic pentameter. (Even if the original Polish may not follow this metre the English does. Breaking it up into little bits with different specific descriptions may give you intellectual satisfaction, but remember the words of Wordsworth:
...Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things -
We murder to dissect.
)

b
 
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IHIVG

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Thank you very much for your reply Bob!
Now I have a question for you:

Poetical meters (the way we identify them by breaking up lines into stressed/unstressed syllables) work in accordance with how we would say these words in speech. Otherwise the poem would sound awkward and unnatural. This is the case with Russian poetry. I suspected that it might be the same with English -- that’s why I asked you how you would pronounce ‘Lithuania’.
Is it different in English? I mean, is it common to pronounce words/expressions in English poetry not the same way you would do them in life?
 

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Thank you very much for your reply Bob!
Now I have a question for you:

Poetical meters (the way we identify them by breaking up lines into stressed/unstressed syllables) work in accordance with how we would say these words in speech. Otherwise the poem would sound awkward and unnatural. This is the case with Russian poetry. I suspected that it might be the same with English -- that’s why I asked you how you would pronounce ‘Lithuania’.
Is it different in English? I mean, is it common to pronounce words/expressions in English poetry not the same way you would do them in life?

No, it's not. But there was a simple question and a simple answer; I didn't think it was helpful to say "Well, it's complicated. There's a trochee here and a dactyl there and either a spondee or a sesquipes, it's hard to say...' when the answer was 'Like most English epic poetry, it's in iambic pentameter with occasional flexibility of metre.' (I do pronounce 'Lithuania' with five syllables, but with a single stress. The poetical metre is a structure, and the words don't have to fit it precisely for the overall structure to be discernible.)

As Iambic pentameter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says,
Iambic rhythms come relatively naturally in English. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms...

b
 

IHIVG

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Thanks again for the reply! :)
But I'm really confused now.
No, it's not.
I take this to mean that if we pronounce the word as X, than that’s the way it should be said in a poem. ‘Lithuania’ has a single stress. Then how come it’s Li/thuan/ia/ in an epic? The same with Art like/ good health/. (?)
The problem that I have now is that I don’t understand how you see it as iambic pentameter, because if it’s ‘LithuAnia’ (by your own admission) and ‘Art like good health’ (you didn’t confirm this I know, but you didn’t correct me either), then the diagram for line 1 and 2 would make it trochee and half trochee half iambus respectively.

As Iambic pentameter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says,
Iambic rhythms come relatively naturally in English. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms...
Thanks for the reference.
Am I correct in inferring that you say that this epic is in iambic pentameter because that’s the most common meter in English poetry? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

(I don’t mean to make things complicated, but I hope you can see where my confusion comes from.)
 

birdeen's call

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Art like good health’
I think it isn't so obvious, as I first read it yet otherwise,
Art like good health.

But now, after BobK's explanation I read it as he said and it sounds good to me. I understand your question though, and I'm also waiting for the response.
 

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Thanks again for the reply! :)
But I'm really confused now.

I take this to mean that if we pronounce the word as X, than that’s the way it should be said in a poem. ‘Lithuania’ has a single stress. Then how come it’s Li/thuan/ia/ in an epic? The same with Art like/ good health/. (?)
The problem that I have now is that I don’t understand how you see it as iambic pentameter, because if it’s ‘LithuAnia’ (by your own admission) and ‘Art like good health’ (you didn’t confirm this I know, but you didn’t correct me either), then the diagram for line 1 and 2 would make it trochee and half trochee half iambus respectively.


Thanks for the reference.
Am I correct in inferring that you say that this epic is in iambic pentameter because that’s the most common meter in English poetry? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

(I don’t mean to make things complicated, but I hope you can see where my confusion comes from.)

Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. :oops: I should have corrected what you said about 'Art like good health'. If you stress it as you suggest it implies that 'art' is a noun and that 'good' has contrastive stress: 'Art, like good health, is hard to come by. Bad health, however, is easily acquired, and if you have that then you have no need for art.' (This would make a kind of sense if you substituted 'eye-sight' for 'health';-)

But 'art' here is a verb - 'thou art'. The stress of 'Art like good health' is iambic, with the stresses on 'like' and 'health'.

Returning to 'Lithuania', it has one stress in speech; but in the first foot of that poem 'In Li-' it is relatively more stressed than 'In'.

b
 
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