In poetry, a hendecasyllable (sometimes hendecasyllabic ) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical ( Ancient Greek and Latin ) poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry.
41-613: In classical poetry, "hendecasyllable" or "hendecasyllabic" may refer to any of three distinct 11-syllable Aeolic meters, used first in Ancient Greece and later, with little modification, by Roman poets. Aeolic meters are characterized by an Aeolic base × × followed by a choriamb – u u – ; where – = a long syllable, u = a short syllable, and × = an anceps , that is, a syllable either long or short. The three Aeolic hendecasyllables (with base and choriamb in bold) are: ( Latin : hendecasyllabus phalaecius ): This line
82-641: A força humana. Entre gente remota edificaram Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram. Armes, and the Men above the vulgar File, Who from the Western Lusitanian shore Past ev'n beyond the Trapobanian-Isle, Through Seas which never Ship has sayld before; Who (brave in action, patient in long Toyle, Beyond what strength of humane nature bore) 'Mongst Nations, under other Stars, acquir'd A modern Scepter which to Heaven aspir'd. In Portuguese,
123-570: A long list of names for various Aeolic lengths, to which modern scholars have added. For the most part, these names are arbitrary or even misleading, but they are widely used in scholarly writing. The following are the names for units with an unexpanded "choriambic nucleus" (i.e.: – u u – ): u – – x x – u u – u – – ( hipp ) x – u u – u – – (^ hipp ) – u u – u – – u – x x – u u – u – ( gl ) x – u u – u – (^ gl ) – u u – u – – x x – u u – – ( pher ) x – u u – – (^ pher ) – u u – – Comparison, with "choriambic nucleus" emphasized: Because
164-866: A name to resound for ages; Occasionally "hendecasyllable" is used to denote a line of iambic pentameter with a feminine ending , as in the first line of John Keats 's Endymion : "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever". Aeolic verse Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos , Sappho and Alcaeus , who composed in their native Aeolic dialect . These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets. Sappho and Alcaeus' verses differ from most other Greek lyric poetry in their metrical construction: Antoine Meillet and later scholars, by comparison to Vedic meter , have seen in these principles and in other tendencies (the sequence ... – u u – u – ...,
205-494: A pleasant rhythm for effect, tend toward a stricter eleven-syllable format. As a novelty, lines longer than twelve syllables can be created by the use of certain verb forms and affixed enclitic pronouns ( "Ottima è l'acqua; ma le piante abbeverinosene." ). Additional accents beyond the two mandatory ones provide rhythmic variation and allow the poet to express thematic effects. A line in which accents fall consistently on even-numbered syllables ( "Al còr gentìl rempàira sèmpre amóre" )
246-549: A quotation from him," is in the same meter as Book II of Sappho. The other three poems are composed in the Greater Asclepiad meter (like Sappho, Book III). Also in the third century BC, a hymn by Aristonous is composed in glyconic-pherecratean stanzas, and Philodamus' paean to Dionysus is partly analyzable by Aeolic principles. Aeolic forms were included in the general Roman habit of using Greek forms in Latin poetry . Among
287-419: Is a strong tendency for hendecasyllabic lines to end with feminine rhymes (causing the total number of syllables to be eleven, hence the name), but ten-syllable lines ( "Ciò che 'n grembo a Benaco star non può" ) and twelve-syllable lines ( "Ergasto mio, perché solingo e tacito" ) are encountered as well. Lines of ten or twelve syllables are more common in rhymed verse; versi sciolti , which rely more heavily on
328-629: Is also well represented in Alcaeus' work (e.g. Alcaeus frr. 34, 42, 45, 308b, 362). Alcaeus frr. 38a and 141 use the same meter as Book II of Sappho, and Alcaeus frr. 340 – 349 the Greater Asclepiad as in Book III. One notable form is the Alcaic stanza (e.g. Alcaeus frr. 6, 129, 325 – 339), but this too is found in both poets (Sappho frr. 137 – 138). Many of the additional meters found in Sappho and Alcaeus are similar to
369-494: Is called iambic ( giambico ) and may be a greater or lesser hendecasyllable. This line is the simplest, commonest and most musical but may become repetitive, especially in longer works. Lesser hendecasyllables often have an accent on the seventh syllable ( "fàtta di giòco in figùra d'amóre" ). Such a line is called dactylic ( dattilico ) and its less pronounced rhythm is considered particularly appropriate for representing dialogue. Another kind of greater hendecasyllable has an accent on
410-457: Is completely godlike: Ah, that man who's sitting across from you, there, Leaning in and listening to your sweet voice, Charmed by your laughter. The hendecasyllable ( Italian : endecasillabo ) is the principal metre in Italian poetry . Its defining feature is a constant stress on the tenth syllable, so that the number of syllables in the verse may vary, equaling eleven in the usual case where
451-897: Is less pervasive in Spanish poetry than in Italian or Portuguese, but it is commonly used with Italianate verse forms like sonnets and ottava rima (as found, for example, in Alonso de Ercilla 's epic La Araucana ). Spanish dramatists often use hendecasyllables in tandem with shorter lines like heptasyllables, as can be seen in Rosaura's opening speech from Calderón 's La vida es sueño : Hipogrifo violento, Que corriste parejas con el viento, ¿Dónde, rayo sin liama, Pájaro sin matiz, pez sin escama, Y bruto sin instinto Natural, al confuso laberinto Destas desnudas peñas Te desbocas, arrastras y despeñas? Wild hippogriff swift speeding, Thou that does run,
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#1732852122721492-739: Is named after Phalaecus, a minor poet probably of the 4th century BC, who used it in epigrams; though he did not invent it, since it had earlier been used by Sappho and Anacreon . The Phalaecian hendecasyllable was a favorite of Catullus ; it was also very frequently used by Martial . An example from Catullus is the first poem in his collection (with formal equivalent, substituting English stress for Latin length): Cui dōnō lepidum novum libellum āridā modo pūmic(e) expolītum? Cornēlī, tibi: namque tū solēbās meās ess(e) aliquid putāre nūgās To whom dedicate this, my charming new book, Freshly burnished with pumice stone to fine sheen? To Cornelius! you who always used to Think my gobbledygook was, well,
533-399: Is normally a line of 5+6 syllables with medial caesura , primary stresses on the fourth and tenth syllables, and feminine endings on both half-lines. Although the form can accommodate a fully iambic line, there is no such tendency in practice, word stresses falling variously on any of the initial syllables of each half-line. A popular form of Polish literature that employs the hendecasyllable
574-530: Is not a nuisance, that you should show us where your lair is... Poem 58b is thought by some scholars to be a fragment which was formerly part of this one; although others think it an independent poem. ( Latin : hendecasyllabus alcaicus ): Here the Aeolic base is truncated to a single anceps. This meter typically appears as the first two lines of an Alcaic stanza . (For an English example, see §English , below.) ( Latin : hendecasyllabus sapphicus ): Again,
615-590: Is the Sapphic stanza : 11/11/11/5. The Polish hendecasyllable is often combined with an 8-syllable line: 11a/8b/11a/8b. Such a stanza was used by Mickiewicz in his ballads, as in the following example (with formal equivalent paraphrase): Ktokolwiek będziesz w Nowogródzkiej stronie, Do Płużyn ciemnego boru Wjechawszy, pomnij zatrzymać twe konie, Byś się przypatrzył jezioru. Visitor passing Novogrudok's courses In Płużyn forest's umbration, Once come, remember to rein in your horses: View
656-588: The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's works divided the poems into books mostly based on their meter, an overview of its contents is a convenient starting point for an account of the Lesbian poets' meters. Sappho and Alcaeus' poetic practice had in common, not just the general principles sketched above, but many specific verse forms. For example, the Sapphic stanza, which represents such a large part of Sappho's surviving poetry,
697-506: The Ionic meter of Sappho fr. 134). The versification of Pindar and Bacchylides ' 5th century BC choral poetry can largely be divided into dactylo-epitrite and "aeolic" types of composition. This later style of "aeolic" verse shows fundamental similarities to, but also several important differences from, the practice of the Aeolic poets. In common with Sappho and Alcaeus, in the aeolic odes of Pindar and Bacchylides: These connections justify
738-553: The Sophonisba of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1515) is in blank hendecasyllables. Later examples can be found in the Canti of Giacomo Leopardi , where hendecasyllables are alternated with settenari . The hendecasyllabic metre ( Polish : jedenastozgłoskowiec ) was very popular in Polish poetry, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, owing to strong Italian literary influence. It
779-489: The Aeolic base is truncated. This meter typically appears as the first three lines of a Sapphic stanza , though it was also sometimes used in stichic verse, for example by Seneca and Boethius . Sappho wrote many of the stanzas subsequently named after her, for example (with formal equivalent, substituting English stress for Greek length): φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν ἔμμεν' ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φονεί- σας ὐπακούει He, it seems to me,
820-583: The Noose") have published recent examples. In English, which lacks phonemic length, poets typically substitute stressed syllables for long , and unstressed syllables for short . Tennyson, however, attempted to maintain the quantitative features of the meter (while supporting them with concurrent stress) in his Alcaic stanzas , the first two lines of which are Alcaic hendecasyllables: O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton,
861-455: The Phalaecian hendecasyllable as given above in 41 poems. In addition, in two of his poems (55 and 58b) Catullus uses a variation of the metre, in which the 4th and 5th syllables can sometimes be contracted into a single long syllable. In poem 55 there are twelve decasyllables and ten normal lines: Ōrāmus, sī forte non molestum (e)st, dēmōnstrēs ubi sint tuae tenebrae... We beg, if perhaps it
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#1732852122721902-554: The addition of other types) for their choral odes, with additional metrical freedoms and innovations. Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides each went his own way in developing Aeolics. Theocritus provides an example of the Hellenistic adaptation of Aeolic poetry in his Idylls 28 – 31, which also imitate the Archaic Aeolic dialect. Idyll 29, a pederastic love poem, "which is presumably an imitation of Alcaeus and opens with
943-411: The alternation of blunt and pendant verses conserved traces of Proto-Indo-European poetic practices. In Sappho and Alcaeus, the three basic metrical groups – u u – u – (dodrans or choriambo-cretic), – u u – ( choriamb ) and – u – ( cretic ) figure importantly, and groups are sometimes joined (in what is probably a Greek innovation) by a link anceps. Aeolic poems may be stichic (with all lines having
984-411: The caesura until after the sixth syllable, is not considered a valid hendecasyllable. Most classical Italian poems are composed in hendecasyllables, including the major works of Dante , Francesco Petrarca , Ludovico Ariosto , and Torquato Tasso . The rhyme systems used include terza rima , ottava , sonnet and canzone , and some verse forms use a mixture of hendecasyllables and shorter lines. From
1025-1037: The early 16th century onward, hendecasyllables are often used without a strict system, with few or no rhymes, both in poetry and in drama. This is known as verso sciolto . An early example is Le Api ("the bees") by Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai , written around 1517 and published in 1525 (with formal equivalent paraphrase which mirrors the original's syllabic counts, varied caesurae, and line- and hemistich-final stress profiles): Mentr'era per cantare i vostri doni Con alte rime, o Verginette caste, Vaghe Angelette delle erbose rive, Preso dal sonno, in sul spuntar dell'Alba M'apparve un coro della vostra gente, E dalla lingua, onde s'accoglie il mele, Sciolsono in chiara voce este parole: O spirto amico, che dopo mill'anni, E cinque cento, rinovar ti piace E le nostre fatiche, e i nostri studi, Fuggi le rime, e'l rimbombar sonoro. While your delightful gifts | I aimed at singing In lofty rime | O little vestal virgins, Sweet little seraphim | of grassy margins, Sleep ravished me | in
1066-419: The final word is stressed on the penultimate syllable. The verse also has a stress preceding the caesura , on either the fourth or sixth syllable. The first case is called endecasillabo a minore , or lesser hendecasyllable, and has the first hemistich equivalent to a quinario ; the second is called endecasillabo a maiore , or greater hendecasyllable, and has a settenario as the first hemistich. There
1107-418: The first light of morning, And I beheld a chorus | of your people, Who, with their tongues | which lately sipped at honey, Buzzed forth in the clear air | this earnest message: "O friendly soul who | (after thousand summers And more five hundred) | beguiles us with singing Our industrious toil | our balmy study… Abandon rime | and its rebounding echo!" Like other early Italian-language tragedies ,
1148-463: The hendecasyllable meter is often called "decasyllable" ( decassílabo ), even when the work in question uses overwhelmingly feminine rhymes (as is the case with the Lusiads ). This is due to Portuguese prosody considering verses to end at the last stressed syllable, thus the aforementioned verses are effectively decasyllabic according to Portuguese scansion. The hendecasyllable ( Spanish : endecasílabo )
1189-788: The influence of Horace, Aeolic forms have sometimes been employed in post-Classical poetry. For example, Asclepiads have been used by Sidney and W.H. Auden . Poets in English such as Isaac Watts , William Cowper , Algernon Charles Swinburne , Allen Ginsberg , and James Wright have used the Sapphic stanza. In German, Friedrich Hölderlin excelled in Alcaic and Asclepiadic odes. Hungarian poets such as Dániel Berzsenyi and Mihály Babits have also written in Alcaics. Verso sciolto In Italian poetry , verso sciolto (plural versi sciolti ) refers to poetry written in hendecasyllables and lacking rhyme. It
1230-510: The lake in admiration. The hendecasyllable ( Portuguese : hendecassílabo ) is a common meter in Portuguese poetry. The best-known Portuguese poem composed in hendecasyllables is Luís de Camões ' Lusiads , which begins as follows: As armas, & os barões assinalados, Que da Occidental praya Lusitana, Por mares, nunca de antes navegados, Passaram, ainda alem da Taprobana, Em perigos, & guerras esforçados, Mais do que prometia
1271-621: The lyric poets, Catullus used glyconic-pherecratean stanzas (Catullus 34, 61), the Phalaecian hendecasyllable (many compositions), the Greater Asclepiad (Catullus 30) and the Sapphic stanza (Catullus 11 and 51 , an adaptation of Sappho fr. 31 ). Horace extended and standardized the use of Aeolics in Latin, also using the Alcaic stanza, the Lesser Asclepiad, and hipponacteans. In the summing-up poem " Exegi monumentum " ( Odes 3.30), Horace makes
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1312-428: The name "Aeolic" and clearly distinguish the mode from dactylo-epitrite (which does not use consecutive anceps syllables, and which combines double-short and single-short in a single verse, but not in a single metrical group). But there are several important innovations in the "aeolic" practice of Pindar and Bacchylides: The tragic poets of Classical Athens continued the use of Aeolic verse (and dactylo-epitrite, with
1353-525: The ones discussed above, and similarly analyzable. For example, Sappho frr. 130 – 131 (and the final lines of fr. 94 's stanzas) are composed in a shortened version ( gl ) of the meter used in Book II of her poetry. However, the surviving poetry also abounds in fragments in other meters, both stanzaic and stichic, some of them more complicated or uncertain in their metrical construction. Some fragments use meters from non-Aeolic traditions (e.g. dactylic hexameter, or
1394-445: The poems collected in Book II. In this analysis, a wide variety of Aeolic verses (whether in Sappho and Alcaeus, or in later choral poetry) are analyzed as a choriambic nucleus (sometimes expanded, as just mentioned), usually preceded by anceps syllables and followed by various single-short sequences (e.g. u – , u – u – , and, by the principle of brevis in longo , u – u – – , u – – , – ), with various additional allowances to accommodate
1435-426: The practice of the later poets. By also taking the cretic unit, mentioned above, into account, this analysis can also, for example, understand the third line of the Alcaic stanza —and other stanza lines as in Sappho frr. 96, 98, 99—as Aeolic in nature, and appreciate how the initial three syllables of the Sapphic hendecasyllable were not variable in Sappho's practice. Ancient metricians such as Hephaestion give us
1476-439: The same metrical form), or composed in more elaborate stanzas or strophes . One analysis of Aeolic verses' various forms identifies a choriambic nucleus ( – u u – ), which is sometimes subject to: For example, an Asclepiad may be analyzed as a glyconic with choriambic expansion ( gl , gl ), and a glyconic with dactylic expansion produces the stichic length (x x – u u – u u – u u – u – , or gl ) in which Sappho composed
1517-459: The somewhat exaggerated claim: princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos deduxisse modos I was able to be the first to bring Aeolian song to Italian measures. In later Greek poetry, the phalaecian was widely used by poets including writers of epigram . The ode to Rome ( Supplementum Hellenisticum 541) in Sapphic stanzas by "Melinno" (probably writing during the reign of Hadrian ) "is an isolated piece of antiquarianism." Especially through
1558-425: The third syllable ( "Se Mercé fosse amìca a' miei disìri" ) and is known as anapestic ( anapestico ). This sort of line has a crescendo effect and gives the poem a sense of speed and fluidity. It is considered improper for the lesser hendecasyllable to use a word accented on its antepenultimate syllable ( parola sdrucciola ) for its mid-line stress. A line like "Più non sfavìllano quegli òcchi néri" , which delays
1599-569: The wingèd winds exceeding, Bolt which no flash illumes, Fish without scales, bird without shifting plumes, And brute awhile bereft Of natural instinct, why to this wild cleft, The labyrinth of naked rocks, dost sweep Unreined, uncurbed, to plunge thee down the steep? The term "hendecasyllable" most often refers to an imitation of Greek or Latin metrical lines, notably by Alfred Tennyson , Swinburne , and Robert Frost ("For Once Then Something"). Contemporary American poets Annie Finch ("Lucid Waking") and Patricia Smith ("The Reemergence of
1640-462: Was something. The aeolic base (i.e., the first two syllables of the line) with – – is by far the most common in Catullus, and in later poets such as Statius and Martial was the only one used, but occasionally Catullus uses u – or – u as in lines 2 and 4 above. There is usually a caesura in the line after the 5th or 6th syllable. In the first part of his poetry collection, Catullus uses
1681-401: Was used by Jan Kochanowski , Piotr Kochanowski (who translated Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso ), Sebastian Grabowiecki , Wespazjan Kochowski and Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski . The greatest Polish Romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz , set his poem Grażyna in this measure. The Polish hendecasyllable is widely used when translating English blank verse . The eleven-syllable line