I just learned that classical Latin poetry doesn't intentionally rhyme. Instead it uses a pattern of short and long syllables to create a musical effect. This is because rhyming words would be too easy in Latin because of the grammatical endings. Too many words have the same ending, -ibus and whatnot. Whenever there is rhyme it's just a coincidence.https://youtu.be/N7ugsQxe-Bw&t=10
>>25508657Sounds Hungarian.
Then it isn’t poetry, just freeverse proseslop with line breaks!
>>25508684Learn to read. Do you have trouble understanding what I said here?>it uses a pattern of short and long syllables to create a musical effectThat's clearly not the same thing as prose with line breaks.Those symbols show long and short syllables.– means a long syllable◡ means a short syllableIn the poem in the OP each line has that pattern shown in picrel.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_(poetry)#DisyllablesLatin and Greek poetry is considered the greatest of all poetry.
>>25508699>In the poem in the OP each line has that pattern shown in picrel.I mean the poem in the picture in the OP. The video clip is another poem, because I didn't find a good recording for the poem in the OP picture. Both are from Horace's Odes though.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odes_(Horace)The OP picture shows the first two lines of the first poem in Odes.>Maecenas atavis edite regibus,>o et praesidium et dulce decus meum,the rest is herehttps://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/carm1.shtmlIt goes on>Maecenas atavis edite regibus,>o et praesidium et dulce decus meum,>sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum>collegisse iuvat metaque fervidis>evitata rotis palmaque nobilis>terrarum dominos evehit ad deos;>hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium>certat tergeminis tollere honoribus;>illum, si proprio condidit horreo>quicquid de Libycis verritur areis.>Gaudentem patrios findere sarculo>agros Attalicis condicionibusEvery single line has the same pattern of long and short syllables. This particular pattern is called "First Asclepiad".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepiad_(poetry)long-long long-short-short-long long-short-short-long short-long/short-shortThe picture in the OP is from this.https://archive.org/details/fully-parsed-horace-odes-translation-pub-co
>>25508735>Every single line has the same pattern of long and short syllables.I think this extremely impressive. Clearly this requires way more skill than having one or two syllables that rhyme for each group of two lines, the way we're used to poetry being. This is a whole other level. Later poetry is total Idiocracy tier compared to this.
English poetry is also primarily defined by meter not by rhyme, the difference being that English meter is "stress"-based rather than on the length of the syllables. Latin poetry in the classical era sometimes can have rhyme (or something like rhyme), and you find lost of stress-based, rhyming poetry in the middle ages like the Catholic sequences (like the Dies Irae) and other hymns.
>>25508657So it's prose poetry
>>25508762stfu
Been writing iambic, anapestic & dactylic all these last few days and my mind is a mush of ba-dums, ba-da-bums and bum-ba-dums.I concocted an elegaic couplet this morning and half an hour went by before a realised the second line went ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum... instead of bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum... I was at a loss for how to fix it so I just put square brackets around the leading [ba-da]s and called it a day.I've confined myself to prose for this evening.
>>25508759>you find lost of stress-based, rhyming poetry in the middle agesyeah, because humanity had declined
>>25508657Yes, end-rhyme is not originally a thing in Indo-European languages, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and Old English poetry didn't originally have it either. It seems to have come to Europe from Arabic.
>>25508699>Latin and Greek poetry is considered the greatest of all poetry.Spoken like someone who cannot read Chinese.
>>25508735The first riddim chune nigga
>>25510052Ah yes, such high art.>Shíshì shī shì shǐ shì, shì shǐ, shī shì, shì shí shí shī. Shī sì shì shī. Shǐ shì shè sì, shì shī shì, shǐ shī shì shí shī shī, shì shí shí, shǐ shí shìshì. Shǐ shǐ shì shì shì shì, shì shī shì. Shì shì shì shì.
>>25508776Or, you know, because Latin lost vowel length some time in late antiquity and you can't base meter on a phonemic feature your language doesn't have. Hungarian poetry, for instance, is still based on length, because Hungarian still has contrastive vowel length.
try to imitate their metres in english and you see how much more advanced it is than e.g. iambic pentameter.>iambic5u - / u - / u - / u - / u ->hendecasyllables such as picrel- - / - u u / - u / - u / - -
>>25510085That's the Chinese equivalent of "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", i.e. a deliberately contrived example to make a point, not composed for the purpose of any literary merit.
>>25510100Nobody calls Buffalo... a poem
>>25510093picrel
>>25510104And the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is hardly a poem in the traditional sense, though it is an impressive linguistic trick. Try reading some actual acclaimed classic Chinese poetry.
>>25508657it's sing-songy by nature because there really wasn't a difference between song and poetry, it all starts with raps-ods rhapto+oidos, someone who binds together songsthat's also the thing, once you get for example some rendition of it in your head, what can appear like a complex scheme can suddenly feel naturalI just figured one out for the asclepian for example that does the trick for me(I'm hardly musically talented)
>I just learned that classical Latin poetry doesn't intentionally rhyme. Instead it uses a pattern of short and long syllables to create a musical effect.So latin poems suck ass. Got it. At this point I'm only studying Latin to read Caesar.
>>25510309https://www.reddit.com/r/classics/comments/r8g3xz/why_is_latin_poetry_so_wellregarded/https://annas-archive.gl/md5/6579b6b1a91f4dd382e572b30db1e56c
>>25508747There's sometimes resolution, whereby a long syllable is replaced by multiple short syllables, but it is still very impressive, as you say.
Yeah, I've never been able to get latin poetry. I can't hear the difference between long and short, so the rhythm is completely lost on me
>>25510419Listen to a good recitation recorded by someone who properly pronounces it.
>>25510419It takes practice. When you get good enough at scansion, you'll be able to recognize verse instantly when it's being quoted in the middle of prose.
>>25510422I have. Still don't get it.>>25510423Scansion is easy. Just apply a simple set of rules. But to me it is completely abstract and has no correlation with sound.
>>25510454>Scansion is easy. Just apply a simple set of rules. But to me it is completely abstract and has no correlation with sound.Scansion is easy to do on a page. When you internalize meters and vowel quantities you can hear and produce them without much thought; you just know when it sounds "right."
>>25510466>Scansion is easy to do on a page. Yup.>When you internalize meters and vowel quantitiesThis is where I fail. I don't see how to do this.
>>25508657This guy's such a lolcow, oh my god
>>25508657no this is how its read for artistic effecthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmttZ-BnwaI&list=RDXmttZ-BnwaI&start_radio=1
>>25510048Doesn't very early Brittonic poetry rhyme? Not sure if that was an original or imported trait.
In case anyone is new to poetry and doesn't know how to read it, the following links are good models. Verse reading is just as much a declining art as writing poetry itself. As Yeats explains, the rhythm should be emphasised to distinguish it from prose. That's how everyone read poetry for hundreds of years, it's only post-WW2 that people started to read poetry like prose. Listen to how the poets read it:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTGkrWFHrLkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d7-yvs8-JEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpFBSO65P4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtyH7LnBwmAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr2creTROAY
>>25510379Why did you post that book?
