-11_Rhythm in Poetry

 

TODAY I wish to speak to you a few words about rhythm in poetry, or rather demonstrate to you what is this thing called the "swing" or movement of rhythmic utterance. Rhythm, in its essence, is the harmony or melody underlying poetic speech. All I shall do will be to quote you instances, to show in what different ways this music of the spoken word finds expression in poetic speech.

At the very outset I shall speak of Sanskrit, the mother of languages which first gave voice to the Word, and here I shall take as its representative the great poet Kalidasa. You have no doubt heard about his Meghaduta. The whole of this Meghaduta is composed in a wonderful metrical form, and how sweet is the very name given to this metre, mandakranta; the name itself carries in its sound and movement the suggestion of its rhythm. Mandakranta literally means, "one that moves with slow deliberate steps." But this does not imply a simple rolling motion. The steps move with a faster beat at appropriate intervals, purposely in order to accentuate the general slowness. The results have been astonishing. Slow motion in verse implies the use of long vowels or double measures. Now listen to this movement in mandakranta:

 

kascit kanta / -viraha-guruna / svadhikara-pramatta...

 

In this metre, the arrangement is like this: In each line there are 17 syllables, divided into groups of four, six and seven syllables each. There is a pause or caesura at the end 

of the first four, then after the next six, and finally at the end of the line. This may be described as the pattern of its beat, but there is also to consider the sequence of long and short vowels. The first four syllables are long, followed by the rapid movement of five short syllables. A pause comes with the long movement of the sixth. In the last foot of seven syllables, there is a variation permitted in the arrangement of the long and short vowels so as to avoid a monotonous pattern in every line, as in the ghazal of Urdu or Persian or the doha in Hindi. These seven syllables are accordingly arranged in a varying combination of the short and long vowels, such as four-three, five-two, three-four, two-five, the last two vowels being invariably taken as long whatever their actual measure. Another striking feature of this metre is that the very name mandakranta illustrates the arrangement of its first foot. Now listen:

 

kascit kanta /-viraha-guruna / svadhikara-pramattah

sapenastam / - gamita-mahima / varsabhogyena bhartuh

yaksas -cakre / Janaka-tanaya / -snana-punyodakesu

snigdha-cchaya/ tarusu vasatim / rama-giryasramesu

 

Like this it goes on, honey-sweet to the ear:

 

tasminn-adrau katicid-abala-viprayukta sa kami

nitva masan kanaka-valaya-bhramsa-rikta-prakosthah

asadhasya prathama-divase megham-aslista-sanum

vapra- krida-parinata-gaja -preksaniyam-dadarsa

 

Here is an English rendering in prose:

 

"A demi-god found negligent in his work and cursed by his master to a doleful year of separation from his beloved, shorn of all power, took up abode in the cool shades of trees at the Ashrama on Rama's hill whose waters had been made sacred by the touch of Janaka's daughter while bathing there.

"After a few months spent thus on that hill, his wrists now bare of the golden bands for lack of the supporting flesh, that lover now no more in the company of his beloved happened to cast his eyes on the first clouds of the season as they clung to the hilltop as nice to see as a full-grown elephant sporting with mud."¹

 

There is another metrical form, the sloka, which is very familiar to Sanskrit. We may call it the basic form of Sanskrit verse and its backbone as it were. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are composed for the most part in this metre; the Gita (which forms part of the Mahabharata) is almost wholly in this metre, as in the opening lines,

 

dharma-ksetre kuruksetre samaveta  yuyutsavah

mamaka pandavas-caiva kim-akurvata sañjaya.

 

Its construction is: four feet making a double line, each line containing a pair of feet of eight syllables each. Thus,

 

dharma-ksetre kuruksetre          first foot;

samaveta yuyutsavah                second foot.

 

The eight syllables in each foot can be arranged in different ways, like, four plus four: dharma-ksetre kuruksetre samaveta

 

¹ Another version in verse:

 

On Rama's shady peak where hermits roam,

Mid streams by Sita's bathing sanctified,

An erring Yaksha made his hapless home,

Doomed by his master humbly to abide,

Arid spend a long-long year of absence from his bride.

 

Some months were gone; the lonely lover's pain

Had loosed his golden bracelet day by day

Ere he beheld the harbinger of rain

A cloud that charged the peak in mimic fray,

As an elephant attacks a bank of earth in play.

yuyutsavah followed by three plus five: mamakah pandavas caiva, or five plus three: kim-akurvata sañjaya.

There is not much rigidity here about the distribution of long and short vowels. All that is required is that the fifth syllable of the foot must be short and the sixth long; this is enough. This metre is called anustubh by the Sanskrit prosodists.

It really belongs to the category of the payar metre of our Bengali. Payar is the basic foundation or backbone of the metrical structure in Bengali. You know its form: it is a couplet (like the Hindi doha), each line counting fourteen letters, simple or conjunct, the letters being normally arranged in groups of eight and six. Bengali prosody does not recognise long or short syllables; this is made good by the rhymes at the end. To take an example:

 

mahabharater katha amrta-saman

kasiramdas kahe sune punyaban

 

The first line has: mahabharater katha – eight syllables, and amrta-saman – six syllables. Similarly, in the second line, we have: kasiramdas kahe – eight syllables, and sune punyaban –six. The rhyming is done by man in saman and ban in punyaban. However, more of this a little later.

Somewhat similar to Bengali is the basic structure of the French metrical scheme, for French too makes no distinction of long and short vowels. In French as in Bengali the foot is based on a syllable-count, the caesura likewise follows the Bengali pattern. The payar in Bengali has an eight-six break, the basic division in French is six-six, making a total of twelve syllables in the line. This is the Alexandrine, corresponding in structure to the Heroic Couplet in English, as in the famous lines of Pope:

 

 We call our fathers fools so wise we grow,

 Our wiser sons no doubt will call us so.

In French, we may take as specimens, in the pathetic voice of the great Racine:

 

Ariane, ma soeur, de quel amour blessée

Vous mourûtes au bord où vous fûtes laissée?

(Ariane, my sister, what love it was that struck you and left you dying on the shores of the sea?)

 

Or, listen to the majestic tones of a poet of equal power, Corneille:

Je suis jeune, il est vrai; aux ames bien-neés

La valeur n'attend point le nombre des années.

(I am young; it is true; but the valour of hero-souls counts little the number of years they have lived.)

 

But there is one thing I should add here. The counting of the syllables nowhere makes poetry. It is the suggestive vibrations of sound produced by the sequence of letters that give us the poetic rhythm. Quite apart from the variations of metrical length or quantity, each letter and every word used in poetry has a peculiar vibration of its own. The poet in his inner hearing depends on that for his word-music. The counting of the syllables may perhaps help in measuring the beat.

Like the payar in Bengali and the anustubh of Sanskrit, English has its iambic pentameter. This term implies that each line should consist of five feet. In place of the variations of length in the vowel sounds as in Sanskrit, it has its own characteristic variation of accent and stress. The iambic has a foot of two syllables each; the first has a light stress being unaccented, the second bears the accent. Take for example, the line:

 

The cur/few tolls/the knell/of part/ing day, 

or the lines from Pope which I have already cited,

 

We call/our fath/ers fools/so wise/we grow,

Our wis/er sons/no doubt/will call/us so.

 

There is also the deep serious Miltonic voice:

 

To reign/is worth/ambi/tion though/in hell,

 

or the supreme tragic note as in Shakespeare's

 

It is/the cause,/it is/the cause,/my soul.

 

Sri Aurobindo makes use of this limpid metrical form in the opening lines of his Savitri:

 

It was the hour before the gods awake.

 

Since I have spoken a little about some of the metres in Sanskrit, I should now say something about Greek and Latin. Just as in Sanskrit the syllables are measured according to their quantity, on which the metres are based and their rhythm, so does Greek or Latin verse depend on the variations of vowel length. But there is a difference. The metrical foot in Greek or Latin prosody is a fixed unit, as in English, and it consists of three syllables long or short in varying combinations. In Sanskrit, as we have seen, mandakranta has feet of varying lengths, of four, six and seven syllables each; the anustubh has four-syllables feet, but various other combinations are possible; for in Sanskrit it is the syllable that forms the basic unit.

The best-known measure in Latin or Greek is the hexameter. In this metre the foot consists of three syllables, one of which is long and the other two are short, though their positions may vary. The characteristic movement of the hexameter depends especially on a particular type of foot,

the dactyl, with its long-short-short arrangement. That is to say, this foot of three syllables has a long first syllable followed by two short ones, exactly as in the English words, "wonderful" or "beautiful" (pronounced won'-der-ful, beau'-ti-ful). There is used in this hexameter another type of foot, the spondee, where the two short syllables of the dactyl are replaced by a long one. The last foot of this metre may end with a short or long syllable for the sake of the word-music or just to provide a variation. Now listen to this hexameter movement:

 

Tytire/ tu patu/laes recu/ bans sub/ tegmine/ fagi...

 

(You Tytirus, lie under your spreading beech's cover)...

 

It is in this hexameter that Homer has composed his wonderful epics with their sublime poetry. I do not wish to plague you with too many quotations from the original Greek, but let me recite the opening line of Homer's Iliad:

 

Mênin a/iede, the/a, Pê/lê/iadêo Achi/lêos

 

Many of you are no doubt acquainted with its rendering in English:

 

Sing heavenly Muse, the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son.

 

Perhaps in this connection I may briefly allude to the difference between the rhythmic movements of Greek and Latin verse. The Latin construction is firm, packed and solid; energy is its strong point. The Greek movement on the other hand is an undulating flow characterised by grace. Now here is the Latin –

 

Tytire tu patuloes recubans sub tegmine fagi. 

This gives an impression of hammer blows carving a statue in stone, the beauty of solid powerful form takes shape out of skilled consonantal assonances. But when we listen to the Greek–

  

Mênin aeide, thea, Pêlêiadeô Achilêos

 

the rush of vowels suggests the dance of ripples, a sweep of the painter's brush or the flourish of the bow on violin strings. Latin has no doubt the strength of its consonants, but it has none of their harshness; there is here no immoderate use of the hard aspirates as we find in German. Sri Aurobindo used to say that the main feature of Latin was in its strength, of Greek its beauty, whereas Sanskrit could combine both beauty and strength.

The hexameter moves on its six winged feet, but the music it makes is more heavenly than any murmuring of the bees. Critics in all climes have been charmed and taken captive by its rhythm and surge, its sweetness and opulence. Many attempts have been made in England to shape it in the mould of English verse. For quantity or measure in English prosody is of a very different type from what it is in Greek, Latin or Sanskrit. In these classical tongues, the vowels could be lengthened to a degree without deviating from the norm, whereas in English the long vowels are not so common and accent determines their quantity in large measure. The rhythm or music of English verse follows the pattern of stress. Sri Aurobindo wanted to refashion the hexameter in the style of English prosody, and whatever success has been achieved in this field is Sri Aurobindo's gift. For instance, his poem, Ahana, is written entirely in this metre:

 

Vision de/lightful a/lone on the/hills whom the/

Silences/cover,

Closer yet/lean to mor/tality; /human,/stoop to thy/

                                                                                       Lover.

The whole of his epic, Ilion, again is in this metre. It is in Ilion that the hexameter form has been closely followed; for in Ahana, as in our payar or the heroic couplet, in English, there is throughout rhyming at the end. This is how Ilion begins:

 

Dawn in her/journey e/ternal com/pelling the/labour

                                                                   of/mortals,

Dawn the be/ginner of/things with the/night for their/

                                                          rest or their/ending.

 

I have been speaking of the rhythm and surge, the word music of poetry. From this point of view there is another poem of Sri Aurobindo where the sound and movement claim our particular attention. The Mother of Dreams is no doubt familiar to all of you and some may even know it by heart. The arrangement of pauses in every line, the internal rhymes, the swift flowing movement are all superbly done:

 

Goddess supreme,/Mother of Dream,/by thy ivory doors

                                               when thou standest,

Who are they then/that come down unto men/in thy

     visions that troop,/group upon group,/down the path

                                       of the shadows slanting? /

Dream after dream,/they flash and they gleam/with the

                        flame of the stars still around them;/

Shadows at thy side/in a darkness ride/where the wild

      fires dance,/stars glow and glance/and the random

                                                    meteor glistens...

 

What we get in this musical verse is a sweet felicity naturally pleasing to the ear; there is here a sense of wideness as in a far-flung movement of modulated grace; and the whole is surcharged with a rich opulence. These very qualities bring to mind another poem of his; The Bird of Fire —

Page – 89

Gold-white wings a-throb in the vastness, the bird of

          flame went glimmering over a sunfire curve to

                                               the haze of the west,

Skimming, a messenger sail, the sapphire-summer waste

                      of a soundless wayless burning sea...

 

Here, more explicit; is still another quality, the quality of strength or energy. In this connection, one is reminded of a similar piece, Rose of God, a very embodiment of the Word with its power of calm clear vision:

 

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,

Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven!

Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,

Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

 

On the whole, therefore, it may be said in a general way that what gives its characteristic quality to a metre and its rhythm depends on one of two things, namely, the length of vowels or quantity, or else the stress or accent; these determine whether the movement would be staccato or slow.

 

The metres in languages where the basic unit is the syllable (mainly ending in vowels but secondarily or partially with consonant-endings as well) have a slow flowing movement; ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit follow this line. French has continued in the main this tradition in modern Europe. On our part, in India, Bengali a language formed out of broken Sanskrit, has for the most part adopted this line. The staccato rhythm with its stress on accent has been accepted in Europe, on one hand in the German language, and on the other by its kindred, English (because of its Anglo Saxon structure). Thus, the celebrated German poet says in his well-known line, 

Warum sind denn die Rosen so blass

(Why are then the roses so pale,)

 

and we hear as if an echo in English:

 

The red rose was beaten,

               The white rose had won;

The Queen was in hiding

               With Edward her son.

 

It is precisely because of this stress on accent that the scansion of English verse is not based rigidly on the number of syllables. Thus there can be a varying number of syllables to a foot provided their "quantity" or "measure" as judged by the distribution of accent remains the same. This imparts a characteristic quality to English metres known as the sprung-rhythm. This feature has been particularly brought out by the poet Hopkins, as in

 

The heart rears wings bold and bolder.

 

Here, a single strongly accented word, "rears" or "wings", does duty for a whole foot. Or, as in the line,

 

Glory be to God for dappled things,

 

a long accented vowel combines with three short unstressed ones to form a single foot.

But the English metrical scheme has been influenced a great deal by the French language with its Latin tradition. Indeed, the Norman-French influence has been powerfully dominating the English language for several centuries. This has considerably helped English prosody gain in variety and richness, for here there is room for both the main lines of rhythmic expression.      

   Metrical forms where the element of stress is predominant 

and the movement follows the staccato pattern have found their richest scope more in the languages of southern Europe than in the north. Both in Spanish and Italian, the long flowing movement of the original Latin has been broken into staccato. These languages formed out of vulgar Latin have in, their turn been modified by their contact with German speaking peoples (like the Visigoths in Spain and the Lombards in Italy). Whereas French has been able to preserve much of the fixed tradition of its parent Latin, in the Italian language, stress or accent determines almost entirely the movement of its rhythm. I will illustrate by and by.

Bengali verse too has a considerable element of stress which has brought out a peculiar beauty of its own. This has its origin and main support in the folk-songs, the popular epigrammatic verse and in folk-literature generally. Here I am referring to metrical forms where the consonants predominate. We are all familiar with

or, Satyen Dutt's

 

But whether it be in Bengali or any other Indian tongue, as in Hindi for example, wherever this element of stress has been introduced, it has left a peculiar mark of its own. It is this that all the sounds are pronounced distinctly no matter where the stress falls. On the other hand, in the staccato rhythms of the European languages, an exclusive prominence is given to the stressed sounds, the others remain partially or almost wholly unpronounced. In Italian or Spanish; for example, it is only the high-pitched accents that are, wherever possible, given all the prominence; the rest are pushed to the

background. Thus,

 

Nel mezzo del commin di nostra vita

Mi vitrovai par una selva oscura,

Cke la diritta via era smarrita.

 

Per me si va nella citta dolente,

Per me si va nell' eterna dolore

Per me si va tra la perduta gente.¹

 

Word-music in Bengali poetry means Rabindranath. To adapt a well-known English phrase, one may say that Rabindranath is poetry and poetry Rabindranath; there is no need to bring in any other artist. We get this in Rabindranath's early work:

 

The measures flow in a firmer, more close-knit order in

 

¹  In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

Gone from the path direct:

 

Through me you pass into the city of woe:

Through me you pass into eternal pain:

Through me among the people lost for aye. 

 

 

In sheer charm of style Rabindranath stands without a peer. Not mere grace or charm but the sweetness, the honeyed essence that he has lavished in unstinted measure has no parallel in literature.

It is this quality of sweetness that has made the fame of Bengali language and literature, from Vidyapati and Chandidas right down to Rabindranath. But the possibilities of this language and literature, not only for sweetness or grace but also for strength and nobility have been brought out by Madhusudan. He has not the power and depth of thought, but there is in his style and manner something reminiscent of that "stepping of the goddess" in Virgil. One hears as if the rumbling of the clouds in the opening lines of Meghnadbadh:

 

 

Ezra Pound has made an astonishing remark on this question of poetic rhythm. He says that the rhythm or music of poetry is beyond the realm of words and their meaning; it has an existence quite apart and almost independent of them. Poetry in a foreign language, a language that we do not understand by the intellect, has simply to be heard: When we do not grasp the meaning of the words or recognise the form of sentences – when in the words of the Bengali poet, "the form has not been seen, the qualities not heard about" (  ), then and then alone do we get the pure music of the words and can catch its rhythm in our inner hearing. For some time past there has come into vogue in the world of art, especially the art of painting, a phrase called "pure art". This implies an arrangement of form and line free from the burden of subject-matter, a play with pure geometrical lines. This alone is supposed to bring out the true and ultimate beauty of art, its pure harmony. The reason why I have taken my illustrations from so many foreign languages may have been something similar at the back of my mind. In any case, here is an excuse I can offer.