From willett@suac.ac.jp Sun Feb 10 02:59:39 2002 Received: from mailscan6.cac.washington.edu (mailscan6.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g1AAxbMr046984 for ; Sun, 10 Feb 2002 02:59:37 -0800 Received: FROM mxu2.u.washington.edu BY mailscan6.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Feb 10 02:59:35 2002 -0800 Received: from somail.suac.ac.jp (somail.suac.ac.jp [202.223.132.34]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g1AAxXAZ010682 for ; Sun, 10 Feb 2002 02:59:34 -0800 Received: from sfw ([202.223.132.33]) by somail.suac.ac.jp (8.9.3+3.2W/3.7W) with SMTP id TAA28977 for ; Sun, 10 Feb 2002 19:59:27 +0900 (JST) Received: from c0604 ([172.16.65.182]) by simail2.ist.suac.ac.jp (Mirapoint) with ESMTP id AIP03006 (AUTH k0194002); Sun, 10 Feb 2002 19:59:26 +0900 (JST) Message-Id: <200202101059.AIP03006@simail2.ist.suac.ac.jp> From: "Steven J. Willett" To: X-Mailer: PocoMail 2.6 (1006) - Licensed Version Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 19:39:28 +0900 In-Reply-To: Subject: Re: English Sapphics (was: Re: Isaac Watts?) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, 10 Feb 2002 00:53:09 -0800, David Lupher wrote: >Well, in this instance I guess malim cum Derecco errare quam= cum >Stephano bene sapere---at least, until the latter offers clearer= and >more cogent arguments. My arguments are perfectly cogent and, more importantly, they= explain all the features of both German and English sapphics. Any= attempt to use the Horatian stress pattern for this purpose fails, a point= DL consistently evades. If he thinks the Latin stress pattern or Attridge's scansion works, he should show us and stop spinning= his wheels. >Well, I haven't noticed that you have bothered to offer an * >historical* >argument yet. My suggestion (not by any means mine only, of= course) >is that accentual reading of Horace's Sapphics provides a= plausible >historical explanation for the English Sapphic---which, by the= way, >I take to be a largely 18th-19th cent. phenomenon. (The= Elizabethan >Sapphic, as somewhat variously practiced by Sidney, Greville,= and >Campion, was a very different thing, having been more a more= valiant >attempt to reproduce the rules of classical quantitative meter= in >English. I regret that I don't have access to Attridge's= "Well- >Weighted Syllables," to which you referred earlier, so I am at >a disadvantage here. But since the Elizabethans were not= trying >to write *accentual* Sapphics, and Watts and Cowper *were*,= your >opening gambit in your earlier posting remains irrelevant.) This is nonsense and obfuscation mixed into a nice mess. As I've= already explained, the sapphic stanza entered English through two= routes: Scheinprosodie and accentual templates. Those who wrote= the latter usually knew the basis of the former from their Latin education. The former died quickly, the latter underwent= development for the linguistic and historical reasons I've twice given. = >As for aesthetics, I would like to go on record here as denying >that I have ever claimed that Watts' English Sapphics are great >poetry. >(Few English Sapphics are, for that matter, though the Cowper= cited >by you and the Watkins cited by me aren't too bad.) I never said DL had claimed that Watts' hymn was great poetry. I= merely noted that it was a decent piece of craftsmanship in the looser accentual sapphic with some fine occasional lines. We do= in fact have quite a number of good sapphics, principally in German,= but there is a living tradition that extends to Swinburne and beyond= into comtemporary verse. >> The little experiment suggested by David >>betrays an inability to understand the plain meaning of what I >>wrote. >>Watts cannot be shoe-horned into the strict sapphic meter= because >>he's writing, as I detailed, a variant. > >Very true. He's writing a "variant" that just happens to be >the pattern identified by Attridge in "The Rhythms of English >Poetry" and by me in my earlier posting (though, again, I= hadn't >consulted Attridge before posting). Obstinate claims like this, repeatedly maintained in the face of= decisive counter evidence, becomes tiresome. As I've already demonstrated by extensive metrical scansion, Watts is writing= nothing like Attridge's purported four-stress sapphic. If DL thinks that= he can shoehorn Watts, Cowper, Swinburne, Pound, Klopstock and Hoelty--to take a wide range--into the four-stress "sapphic," he= should demonstrate it. >>The issue under discussion was the derivation of the meter. David's >>account is simply wrong. > >But yours, so far, is simply nonexistent. I took considerable time to sketch the historical background. DL= needs to do some reading, particularly in the German history of= the sapphic, which goes back centuries before English. E. Brooks,= _Die sapphische Strophe u. ihr Fortleben_, H. Ruediger, _Das= sapphische Versmass in der dt. Literatur_, P. Derks, _Die sapphischen Ode in= der Dichtung des 17 Jh_ for starters. >>My terminology is precise. (a) In German the bisyllabic heart= of >>the >>choriamb is called a Doppelsenkung. > >Impressive. I'd tend to call it two short syllables (in quantitative >verse) or two unaccented syllables (in accentual verse). What= is >gained, excactly, by intoning the phrase "bisyllabic heart"? I didn't use the phrase "bisyllabic heart," I used "bisyllabic interval" as other prosodists in default of the German word. In= discussions of versification, especially dolniks, it is a more efficient and less wordy phrase than the above samples. >Well, I wish you would. Would you please comment on the= interesting >fact that Horace's word accents in the hendecasyllables of his >Sapphics >tend to fall on syllables 1, 4, 6 and 10 and that that just= happens >to >be the pattern identified by me, Attridge, and just about= everybody >else >(as far as I know) as the accentual pattern of 18-19th cent.= English >Sapphics? This has been all along the crux of my contention,= and all >your fancy-footwork continues to dance well shy of it. The Horatian model can't have provided the stress pattern for the= accentual sapphic for the historical reason that the strict= accentual template with its variations was derived from the quantitative= rules, not the Latin tonic stress, and for the prosodic reason that it completely fails (in any four-stress incarnation) to account for= the whole history of accentual sapphics. >All right, I won't fall back on Attridge for the derivation= from >Horace, for in the only (and very brief) discussion of the= English >Sapphic by him upon which I can lay hands at the moment he= doesn't >mention Horace. I was appealing to him as someone who has= enough >ear to distinguish what the accentual English Sapphic rhythm actually >*is*. I do admit that the fact that you had cited him= approvingly >in your posting encouraged me to so cite him. But even apart= from >that I must say that he strikes me as a metrician with at least >as good an ear as you or I. On this issue I never cited Derek, who is a good friend despite= our disagreements, because his four-beat theory leads to impossible phonological results. I'm not even sure he would support his= sapphic analysis today, but I'll write him about it just to check. I= have never seen the slightest evidence, in this thread or in any other= on the list, that DL possess a good understanding of versification,= because he has never supplied a detailed prosodic analysis of a= poem. He always argues in the abstract and has, as I suspect, a tin= ear. If his ear is so acute, he will expansively demonstrate why my analysis of Klopstock and Watts is inferior to one based on a four-stress model. >He may be, but I doubt it. Steele's point about Horace is not >derived from anything by Attridge that I have to hand, and yet >his point is by no means new to me. Let me reiterate that the >notion of a Horatian origin of the English Sapphics is not *my* >idea. Steele's analysis, as I showed in my previous post, cannot apply= to Watts nor anyone else working in variants of the strict accentual= template. Instead of banging away on the same tin pan, DL ought= to consider my scansions more carefully, which he hasn't, and then respond to the concrete facts. I will happily stipulate that he= wants the accentual sapphic to come from the tonic stress in= Horace. So prove the premise by showing that it has greater aesthetic, phonological and explanatory power than the traditional one I've= outlined. ------------------------------------------------------- Steven J. Willett Shizuoka University of Art and Culture 1794-1 Noguchi-cho, Shizuoka Prefecture Hamamatsu City, Japan 430-8533 Japan email: willett@suac.ac.jp US email: sjwillett@earthlink.net .