RHYTHM

 

RHYTHM

 

( Prepared by S. Sreekumar)

ORIGIN AND DEFINITION OF RHYTHM

 

 Rhythm originates from the Greek rhythmos, which means measured flow or movement.  In an article entitled, The Nature of Literature, W. P. Trent endorses the definition of rhythm (provided by the Century Dictionary) as a movement in time characterized by equality of measures and by (the) alternation of tension (stress) and relaxation. (The Sewanee Review, Vol. 6. Johns Hopkins University Press). 

 

Trent says that words in a genuine literary work get rhythmically organized because it is a law of our nature for our emotions to express themselves rhythmically. We can experience the rhythms in nature in the movement of waves and the swaying of leaves. It is also there in the beatings of our hearts. 

 

The succession of emphatic and un-emphatic syllables represents the rhythm in a speech. It delights the ear just as the rhythmical swaying of a blade of grass delights the eye.

 

Further, Trent takes rhythm to a spiritual level. He asserts that the rhythm in human speech unites man with the universal life of nature. We can discover rhythm in all movements (if we only had the proper organs of apprehension) because motion forms the basics of life. 

 

Similarly, Northrop Frye (a proponent of Archetypal /myth criticism) sees rhythm as a recurrent movement deeply founded on the natural cycle. Everything in nature grows out of harmony between an organism and the rhythms of its environment.

 

 

RHYTHM AND METER

 

 

Rhythm in poetry is not the same as Meter. Meter is a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, whereas Rhythm is less formalized, writes Terry Eagleton. Eagleton also sees Rhythm as a primordial poetic feature. [Primordial = elemental, embryonic]. He cites an example for this: "A baby of six months cannot talk, but scientists have established that it can detect subtle variations in the complex rhythmic patterns of Balkan folk-dance tunes." 

 

And it can do so even if it is born in Boston. 

 

Beum and Shapiro say that though the two terms (Meter and Rhythm) are synonymous, it is useful to maintain a difference. For example, we may say that the Meter is iambic, but never the Rhythm is iambic. Rhythm is the product of several elements, not of stress and quantity alone. 

 

• Meter is comparatively a simple matter and we can explain it with great objectivity.  
• Rhythm is complex and is often difficult to describe. 
• Meter is a matter of mechanics. Rhythm is almost unanalyzably organic. 

 

In English, there are relatively few possible meters. But every new combination of words creates a new rhythm.

 

 

No two lines of poetry have the same rhythm though they may have the same meter.

 

[Many poems of Pope and almost all of Shakespeare’s sonnets are in iambic pentameter. But their rhythms are (almost) always different]. 

 

• Even within a Shakespearean sonnet where each of the fourteen lines is iambic pentameter, each line has a rhythm peculiar to itself. In some cases, the difference may be very significant, feel Beum and Shapiro.  

 

Since brass, / nor stone, / nor earth, /nor bound/less sea

But sad /mor ta/ li ty /o’ersways /their power. 

[Stressed words are in bold. Mortality has four syllables]

 

Both these lines (from Sonnet 65) are iambic pentameter—each has ten syllables, the even-numbered ones are stressed. 

• But each line has a rhythm of its own. 
• The first is slow, deliberate, and grave. It gives the effect of several distinct parts moving together.
• The second moves more quickly, and it moves as a whole.

 

There are some reasons for the rhythmical differences in these two lines—

• The first is in a series of units, unlike the second. 
• The first is entirely made up of monosyllables.
• The second shows a pause at the end of the sixth syllable.
• This pause breaks it into two equal parts—

 

[But sad mortality (subject) / o’ersways their power (predicate)]

 

 

Rhythm and Meaning

 

 

Meaning decides rhythm. It is impossible to understand the rhythm of a line until we realize the sense of it. The meaning does not control the sound or quantity of a syllable. But it decides the pause, the rise and fall of the pitch, and the degree of stress on the individual syllable.  

 

 

RISING AND FALLING RHYTHMS IN ENGLISH

 

 

The role of rising and falling rhythms is considerable. It is an area where much confusion prevails. It is generally supposed that of the four types of feet used in English poetry— iambic, anapaestic, trochaic, and dactylic— the first two give a rising rhythm, the second two a falling rhythm. 

 

The rising rhythm is more emphatic, is more suitable for martial and heroic themes; the falling rhythm is gentler, more lyrical. 

 

Rising Rhythm

Encyclopedia Britannica gives the following examples for rising rhythm: 

 

 

 

[The meter is anapaest. Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable]

The rhythm is a rising one, as the stress falls on the last syllable of each foot in a line.

 

[The meter is iambic. An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable]

 

Falling Rhythm

 

The falling rhythm is the reverse of the rising rhythm. Dryden’s line is

an example of a falling rhythm

 

 The meter is trochee – stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one]. 

 

One more un/ fortunate –– [stressed, unstressed, unstressed]

For tu nate has 3 syllables

[The meter is dactyl –stressed, unstressed, unstressed]

 

[Please note the standard notation for stressed and unstressed syllables given above]

 

SPRUNG RHYTHM

 



In the English language, stress plays a dominant role. It was the basis of Old English verse. Only accented syllables count in Old English verse. Beowulf, the works of Langland, and other Middle English poets bear testimony to that. However, during the Norman-French rule (11th century), the classical prosody of Latin and Greek (with their long and short syllables) became dominant. It got wide recognition when Chaucer used it. From Chaucer, it passed on to the Elizabethans and then to Milton. By the sixteenth century, the older and more natural prosody based on stresses became practically extinct. The present method of counting both the accented and the unaccented syllables became the accepted standard (though it was against the natural bent of English). We have to wait till the nineteenth century to see a poet reinventing the native rhythm of English. It was Gerald Manly Hopkins who retrieved the lost rhythm of the language. This rhythm is called the Sprung Rhythm. 

 

Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the following description for Sprung Rhythm:

Sprung rhythm is an irregular system of prosody developed by the 19th-century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is based on the number of stressed syllables in a line and permits an indeterminate number of unstressed syllables. In sprung rhythm, a foot may be composed of from one to four syllables. Because stressed syllables often occur sequentially in this patterning rather than in alternation with unstressed syllables, the rhythm is said to be “sprung.”

Hopkins claimed to be only the theoretician, not the inventor, of sprung rhythm. He saw it as the rhythm of English speech and the basis of such early English poems as Piers Plowman and nursery rhymes such as:

The first two lines of Hopkins’s “Spring and Fall” provide an example of his use of sprung rhythm:

Identifying the stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry using sprung rhythm sometimes differs from reader to reader, and Hopkins’s poetry can diverge from the principles he developed. Sprung rhythm’s partly indeterminate structure makes it a bridge between the regular meter and free verse.

FREE VERSE or ‘VERS LIBRE’

 

The movement originated in France. Walt Whitman popularized it in America. From America, it reached England. It was Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, both American-born, who popularized it in England. ‘Free Verse’ was born from a deep conviction that orderly meter and rhythm were inappropriate to denote the chaos and despair manifest in war-ravaged Britain. England appeared a decadent society, fragmented to the core and at war with itself. A stable pattern of poetry was unsuitable for the unsettled conditions of society. Amy Lowell (one of the staunchest advocates of the Free-verse) defends it thus: “Free Verse within its law of cadence has no absolute rules: it would not be free if it had. She further adds that it depends on organic rhythm. Organic rhythm is the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing.

 

As an example, let us quote some lines from Eliot’s The Waste Land:

The river sweats / Oil and tar                                                                                                                              

The badges drift / With the turning tide

Red sails   /   Wide

To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

The lines are randomly cut to suit the mood of the poet. It is difficult for the reader to find the rationale behind the cuts. 

 

Regularity and Rhythm

 

Beum and Shapiro comment that we identify rhythm with regularity. But this seems to him an oversimplification. Some lines with ‘impressive’ rhythm are irregular. Beum and Shapiro quote, for example, a line from Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi: 

 

Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young

 

Though the meter is not regular, the line is ‘impressive, moving’ because of the rhythm.

Rhythm is a complex amalgam of several features. Several prosodists point out the complications of analyzing rhythm with any certainty. 

 

Beum and Shapiro call such attempts to define rhythm the pursuit of the chimaera (kī-ˈmir-ə= an illusion or fabrication of the mind, an unrealizable dream)

 

Let us conclude with a quote from Beum and Shapiro:

 

We might compare rhythm to a river; its tributaries are such things as stress, duration of syllables, pauses, phrasing or syntax, and overall meaning. And like a river, any rhythm is full of intricate, almost unanalysable currents, and is constantly changing its pace and mood. 

 

 S. SREE KUMAR

This material prepared by Dr S. Sreekumar is for undergraduate students of Indian Universities.

These lectures on poetry contain seven topics:

i.                Metrics,

ii.              Persona and tone,

iii.             Rhythm,

iv.             Sonnet,

v.              Stanza,

vi.            How to read poetry, and

vii.           Appreciation of poetry.