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/lit/ - Literature

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19485230 No.19485230 [Reply] [Original]

Is there a spiritual or linguistic reason as to why certain poems are written in certain meters? Why did homer choose dactylic hexameter? Why did shakespeare choose iambic pentameter?

>> No.19485239

>>19485230
Oh you have to figure that out yourself.

>> No.19485254
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19485254

>>19485239
But I don't know how to find that out, how to even seek out such knowledge. I will never learn ancient greek to "truly" understand homer as spoken either. I wish Orpheus was real.

>> No.19485319

>>19485230
the short answer can be found in music theory, whose principles can be found in every artform. certain ratios make you feel certain ways. different intervals, chords, scales, key changes have different feels. i imagine these poets know how a certain meter feels. or they just use the one that was popular at the time. or they follow the meter of the first line they came up with

>> No.19485342

>>19485319
>the short answer can be found in music theory, whose principles can be found in every artform. certain ratios make you feel certain ways.
Not him, but I’ve had certain meters make me feel the opposite of what they’re intended to produce. Not sure if there’s anything objective about them.

>> No.19485428

>>19485230
OP I have no idea but the /lit/ wiki has a section on poetry and books on metre

>> No.19485482

>>19485230
Poetry, for many languages, is meter. That's it. Does it have meter? If yes, then poetry.
The reason why someone would have originally wanted to compose a story in meter is because it helps in memorizing it. For more on this concept, you might want to look into Milman Perry whose life, work, and death are all quite interesting. Another reason why meter is poetic, as someone else pointed out here, is that it sounds nice. It creates a rhythm to the story that can even be embraced or subverted for additional effect.

>> No.19485513

>>19485254
It takes effort. Numbers is a good jump and so is music. Learn them and look for analogies. When you find a good number of analogies find a variable which can explain it.

>> No.19485520

>>19485342
There's something objective about them just it hasn't been formalized

>> No.19485588

>>19485342
i didnt say it made everyone feel the same way, but it does make you feel a certain way. same goes for the taste of food

>> No.19485654

>>19485230
It’s kind of a reductive way to think about it but the feet in iambic pentameter follows the same rhythm as a heartbeat, which is why it’s so common in sonnets (ie, “speaking from the heart”).

>> No.19485680

tl;dr because of the length of words, prosody, intonation, stress patterns, etc.

There's nothing saying that you can't write quantitative dactylic hexameter in English, it will just sound like ass. Likewise, long-form rhymed poetry in inflected languages gets very repetitive VERY fast.

>> No.19485708
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19485708

>>19485230
This board is embarrassing.
>As for the metre, experience has shown the suitability of heroic verse. If one
were to try narrative imitation in one or more of the other metres the
incongruity would be manifest. Heroic verse is the most solemn and stately
metre, while the iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter are metres for
movement—the latter for dancing, and the former for action. * (Hence heroic
verse welcomes foreign words and metaphors, because narrative is an
exceptional form of representation.) It would be even odder to combine these
metres together, as Chairemon did. For this reason, no one has composed a
long structure in any metre other than the heroic; as we have said, the very
nature of the thing teaches people to choose what is most appropriate.

>> No.19485955

>>19485230
Yeah.
Haikus f.e. only make sense in Japanese because of how syllables work in Japanese.
Attempting a haiku in any other language is a grave insult to poetry.

>> No.19486139

>>19485319
Pythagoras stop posting on /lit/

>> No.19486845
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19486845

>>19485955
I thought haikus were cringe in other non jap languages because they fail to encapsulate the nature aspect and (the non asian languages) fail to condense as much information and poetic meaning

>> No.19486850

Because it sounds nice.

>> No.19486864

>>19486850
So the highest form of literature is just a lower form of music.

>> No.19487589

>>19485319
poetry came before music
music theory is based on verse

>> No.19487612

>>19485230
WHAT DOES THE REDDIT FROG HAVE TO DO WITH THAT?

>>19485254
WHAT DOES THE REDDIT FROG HAVE TO DO WITH THAT?

>>19486845
WHAT DOES THE REDDIT FROG HAVE TO DO WITH THAT?

>> No.19487626

>>19487589
Not true. A child can undertand a melody before verse. There are more reasons why I'm right but I won't tell you, study math.
>>19486864
I've heard this opinion before. Poetry is fallen song, prose is falled poetry. There's some truth to it.
>>19485319
Now note that the songs a people compose mimic the rythm and melody of their language. By looking at the structure of pronunciation of a languge, you can see how it affects their music, things like where the emphasis is placed in words, how monosylabic it is, even grammar and syntax affect the compsistion. There's some le science about this is you care, also they can tell what language the parents speak by listening to a babys cry. Remember, language is the house of thought.

>> No.19487646

>>19487626
"melody" comes from verse. oral poetry invented everything you conceptualize as 'music'
read a book pseud

>> No.19487649

>>19487646
False.

>> No.19488629

>>19487612
I look and feel like him

>> No.19488688

>>19488629
based

>> No.19488707

>>19485230
This >>19485239

It has a profound importance, but it goes to the heart of language and you kind of just have to indeterminately appreciate it without exactly understanding it.

>> No.19489032

>>19487626
>I've heard this opinion before. Poetry is fallen song, prose is falled poetry. There's some truth to it.
When I was younger I read some Rothfuss (I know). The MC's father is a travelling musician, and I remember him telling his kid that poetry is for people too clumsy to play music. That poetry is inferior to music, because the former needs to go through your mind before you heart, while the latter goes straight through. It's a bit mean (the major asshole of the book is latter shown playing the medieval version of beat poetry even) but I don't think it's untrue