Replying to no one...
So, I decided to make up some deficits in my education tonight, and work on understanding formal structures or formalisms in poetry is definitely missing.
Here is the hexameter from wiki:
``Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by the god Hermes. Homer's Odyssey also uses the hexameter verse throughout his poem.
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An example in English is Coleridge's self-describing line:
In the hex | ameter | rises the | fountain's | silvery | column. Variations of the sequence from line to line, as well as the use of caesura (logical full stops within the line) are essential in avoiding what may otherwise be a monotonous sing-song effect.
My translation for art majors.
What's going on here is the set up of `rules' which are equivalent to what visual arts call proportion and proportion through the use of submodules. These submodules are where the sense of proportion is designed. The classical art proportion is the so-called golden mean, which can be seen in the Parthenon.
This proportion is done with a half square diagonal.
http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/John_Hagan/golden_mean/mean3.gif
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/high/images/ParthenonGoldenRatio.jpg
But these are not the only modules. Just about any module can be reduced to a ratio and used as a unit to build a printed page or a building or proportioning a figure. A very unfortunate problem with html is the destruction of any lay out using proportion.
The USers use a very boring 1:2 module for many things. Standard building modules are found in 2 x 4s, 4 x 8 ply, etc. which all reduced to 1:2. It has the effect of extradinarily bordom as in repetitious exterior and interior dimensions. The standard drawing pad sizes and canvas sized modules: 18 x 24 reduce to 3:5 which is only slightly better than 1:2.
It's the capitalist moment, since the use of the 1:2 module saves a lot of money on labor and materials. The ISO 216 standard uses the A series paper which is 1:sqrt(2). It produces a slightly more pleasant looking proportion within or about which you can construct other modules. The film 35mm format is the golden section, but it forces either up and tall, or down and landscape, which covers a single figue, say as a dancer up, or a stage full of dancers down or horizontal.
The point to creating asymetrical borders through various ratios and or counts is to avoid the sing-song effect in poetry, Now I lay me down to sleep... the repetition that kills and is the equivalent of the monotonic sequence produced by endlessly centered figures in row on row squares... .
In the deeper moment, the sequences of non-repeating modules creates a sense of changing time, because it is changing time, or the equivalent of motion, movement. (See various theorems on the differential and convergent infinite series)
So with that here's one of my favorite poetic passages. It is from Ovid, The Metamorphosis, Book Fifteen, Pythagoras, beginning with Line 177:
``Full sail, I voyage Over the boundless sea, and I tell you Nothing is permanent in all the world. All things are fluent, every image forms, Wandering through change. Time is itself a river In constant movement, and the hours flow by Like water, wave on wave, pursued, pursuing, Forever fugitive, forever new. That which has been, is not, that which was not, Begins to be, motion and moment always In process of renewal. Look the night, Worn out, aims toward the brightness, and sun's glory Succeeds the dark. The color of the sky Is different at midnight, when tired things Lie all at rest, from what it is at morning When Lucifer rides his snowy horse, before Aurora paints the sky for Phoebus' coming, The shield of the god reddens at early morning, Reddens at evening, but is white at noonday In purer air, farther from the earth's contagion. And the Moon-goddess changes in the nightime, Lesser today than yesterday, if waning, Greater tomorrow than today, when crescent.''
(Rolf Humphries tanslation)
What I love about this Pythagoras section is the steer magesty of the concepts that unfold to creat a world, a universe of changing forms...which echo in the grand scale, the thematic unity of the whole poem Metamorphosis, about Diana turned from huntress to a tree locked in seasons and worn as branches, leaves, the flowing sap, who lives, flourishes, and dies every year.
That's some grand stuff.
Yeah women as hormones, but see my dears, men follow the same cycles, if you know how to look for them.
``The side of the crib, and strenght grew into us, And swiftness; youth and middle age were swiftly Down the long hill toward age, and all our vigor Came to decline, so Milon, the old wrestler, Weeps when he sees his arms whose bulging muscles Were once like Hercules', and Helen weeps To see her wrinkles in the looking glass: Could this old woman ever have been ravished, Taken twice over? Time devours all things With envious Age, together. The slow gnawing Consumes all things, and very, very slowly.''
CG
