hexameter

The hexameter ( Greek ἑξάμετρον , hexámetron , literally "six-measure") is the classic meter of epic poetry . In this use it is therefore often referred to as an epic hexameter in order to distinguish it from its other classic use as the first part of the elegiac distich .

The hexameter consists of six dactyls , the last of which is shortened by one syllable; the verse is structured by a caesura that can occur at various points in the middle of the verse. In the quantifying poems of antiquity, the two short syllables of the first four dactyls could be replaced by a long syllable, an ancient hexameter thus consisted of dactyls and spondes, the last foot could be a trochee or a spondeus. In the accented poems, especially in German poetry, the first four dactyls can be replaced by a trochaeus, which often approaches the spondeus with a heavy syllable; Real spondes are difficult to form in German, but were tried again and again in the context of the hexameter.

The metric representation of the ancient hexameter (there ⁶):

- ◡◡ ˌ— ◡◡ ˌ— ◡◡ ˌ— ◡◡ ˌ — ◡◡ˌ— ◠

The metric representation of the German hexameter:

—◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡ (◡) ˌ — ◡◡ˌ — ◡

The metric form of the hexameter suits its main task, narration, very much. Jakob Minor states: “The hexameter combines with the richest variety and variety an evenly calm and dignified gait, which makes it particularly suitable for epic narration. The variety is based on the difference in verse feet, word feet and caesuras; the uniformity on the same number of bars in the rhythmically precisely delimited verse whole. "Ulrich Hötzer aims more at the effect of the verse:" With constant gesture, this verse, endlessly lined up, puts the world in front of the reader or listener, and the similar, but Rhythm that is never identical always addresses the same level of consciousness: participation from a distance. "Or even more briefly:" The hexameter confronts the listener with the world as a pure, unmixed and unbroken presence. "

The earliest evidence of epic poetry in hexameters is the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer and Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days (8th century BC). A non-Greek origin of the meter is discussed, but cannot be proven. Since Ennius , the hexameter has also been established as an epic verse in Latin literature . It is not only the meter of Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses , but also of the didactic poem De rerum natura by Lucretius , the Sermons of Horace and Virgil's Bucolica and Georgica . With Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's Messiah , written in hexameters , the hexameter became a widely used verse in German poetry from the middle of the 18th century.

Ancient seal

A Greco-Latin hexameter consists of six dactyls (- ◡◡ ), of which the last foot of the verse is incomplete ( catalectic ), namely always two-syllable; the quantity of the final syllable is irrelevant ( elementum anceps ). Each of these dactyls can be realized by a long syllable followed by two short syllables (—◡◡), as well as by two long syllables, i.e. as a spondeus (——). In the fifth foot, the spondeus is rare, however, a hexameter with a spondeus in the fifth foot is therefore specifically referred to as versus spondiacus (Latin) or spondeiazon (Greek). Due to the alternation of dactyls and spondes, the hexameter is a very variable meter, so that it does not appear monotonous even when used in a punctiform manner (not combined with other meters). Purely spondical hexameters (" holospondes ") hardly ever occur, but purely dactylic hexameters ("holodactyls") are also rare. In metric notation , the hexameter has the following scheme :

The hexameter is structured by various possible caesuras and dihereses , fixed incisions in the verse, which sometimes also mark a meaning incision. The earliest caesura is after the third half-foot ( Trithemimeres , A4), further caesuras can be after the fifth ( Penthemimeres , B1) and after the seventh half-foot ( Hephthemimeres , C1). In addition to these "male" caesuras (incisions in the middle of a verse foot), the hexameter also knows the "feminine" caesura, which is present at the end of a word after the third (imaginary) trochaeus (Greek κατὰ τρίτον τροχαῖον , katá tríton trochaíon , B2), d. That is, an elementum breve later than in the case of the penthemimers, i.e. after three quarters of the third foot of the verse. Another possible incision, the bucolic diheresis (C2), lies between the fourth and fifth foot of the verse .

In general, the caesura after the fourth trochee (Greek κατὰ τέταρτον τροχαῖον , katá tétarton trochaíon ), i.e. between the two abbreviations of the fourth dactyl, is avoided :

- ◡◡ - ◡◡ - ◡◡ —◡⏜◡ — ◡◡— ×

After the caesura, the resulting part is also called the amphibrachian swing . This bridge is called Hermann Bridge after the philologist Gottfried Hermann . Other bridges where the end of a word is seldom or undesirable are the bucolic bridge after the second length with Spondeus in the fourth meter:

- ◡◡ - ◡◡ - ◡◡ ——⏜ — ◡◡— ×

as well as the middle dheresis after the end of the third meter:

- ◡◡ - ◡◡ - ◡◡ ⏜— ◡◡ —◡◡— ×

Like the other ancient meters, the epic hexameter was further developed and refined by the later. The difference as between the hexameters in Homer and those in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius has Wilhelm Meyer worked out and shown in the eponymous Hexametergesetzen, after which a large number of Homeric verses would be wrong if one were to the rules of the sealing philologists of the Hellenistic to the apply the early Homeric period.

German poetry

The Greco-Roman hexameter is quantitative, i.e. That is, the sequence of long and short syllables constitutes the verse. Because of the word accent on the stem syllable that is fixed in Germanic languages and the lesser importance of the length of vowels (see accent language ), the verse form in the German language is emphasized by the sequence of and unstressed syllables realized. In the classical languages, dictating - emphasizing - reading did not appear until late antiquity . An example of the stress is the first line of the Odyssey :

Ándra moi énnepe, Moúsa, polýtropon, hós mala pólla

Earlier attempts at the epic form in the 16th and 17th centuries by Martin Opitz , Andreas Gryphius and others did not yet use hexameters, but rather the Roman meter of the old French Alexander novel , the (heroic) Alexandrian . For the first time, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock oriented himself to the ancient form of the hexametric epic with his successful epic Messiah (1748–1773), which was laid out as a work of equal rank alongside the great epic poems of antiquity such as the Iliad and Odyssey and accordingly also the epic hexameter as a meter used.

As an example of Klopstock's hexameter, here is the first verse of the work, which is strongly based on the pagan models:

Sing, immortal soul, the redemption of sinful men

- —ˌ— ◡◡ˌ— ◡◡ˌ— ◡◡ˌ— ◡◡ˌ — ◡

With the enormous popularity of the work of its time, the dactylic meter became popular and the heroic hexameter became the dominant epic meter for a long time. Klopstock was not the first author of hexameters in German; Johann Christoph Gottsched and Carl Gustav Heraeus had written such before him , and according to Lessing , the earliest example of German hexameters is to be found in Johann Fischart's Rabelais translation - with the claim and scope of the Klopstock's company (the work comprises 19,458 verses in 20 chants), however, these scattered attempts cannot be compared.

On the basis of Klopstock's hexameter, the poets and metrics who followed Klopstock developed the German verse, often in bitter dispute. One of the main points of the dispute was the extent to which it is possible to reproduce the ancient Spondeus in German. Klopstock allowed the dactylus to be replaced by both the spondeus and the trochee; For example, in the Messiah verse presented above, the first foot, "Sing, un-", is a trochee. (Such verses are called mixed-dactylic . Verses that consist only of dactyls are called holodactylic .) At the same time, he clearly opposed efforts or requirements to reproduce the ancient Greek meter true to the original: “A completely Greek hexameter in German is a Absurd. No German poet has ever made or wanted to make such hexameters. "

On the other hand, Johann Heinrich Voss , Homer's translator and the Georgica des Virgil, which was also written in hexameters , took the position that the regular distribution of long and short syllables in the German, actually accentuating hexameter, on which the quantitative ancient hexameter is based, should be reproduced as precisely as possible; the meter in Klopstock's Messiah is therefore not a hexameter, but "a free verse similar to the hexameter". Even more radically than Voss, August Wilhelm Schlegel insisted that the meter, which he almost adored, should by no means be adapted to the German in such a way that its quantitative basis is lost. In his poem The Hexameter he writes:

So Ernst can now rest, now hurry away again,
soon, oh how bold in the swing! the hexameter, always equal to himself,
whether he tirelessly girds himself for the battle of the heroic song,
Or, full of wisdom, impresses
doctrinal slogans on the listener, or pleasantly whispered idylls around sociable shepherds.
Hail to you, Homer's orderly! venerable mouth of the oracles!

Note here the reproduction of spondees about in " Sun can seriously soon ruhn , soon Peek term as the ent ei len". This example clearly shows the difficulty of adequately reproducing spondes in German.

Regarding the question of which verse in German poetry is suitable for epic representation in general and for the translation of Homer in particular, Klopstock defended his form of the hexameter against Gottfried August Bürger , who had postulated that the iambus was “the only, true, real one "natural, heroic meter of our language". He insisted that the form of the hexameter he used, because of its flexibility, was the most appropriate meter for epic poetry in German.

One of Klopstock's well-known successors is above all Goethe , who, inspired by the success of Voss' Luise , an idyllic poem in hexameters, wrote two verses in hexameters, namely Hermann and Dorothea and Reineke Fuchs , and the Achilles , which remained fragmentary . As an example of the Goethean hexameter, the first verses of Reineke Fuchs :

Pfing most, the love Liche festival was ge kom men; it green th and blüh th
field and forest ; on Hü rules and Hö hn in Bu rule and Hec ken
Ov th a fröh royal song the newly He mun failed Vö gel;

Here, too, a relatively frequent replacement of the dactyl by the trochee, e.g. B. at the beginning of the second verse, which gives the poem a certain unheroic exhilaration.

With the epic poems of Goethe and Schiller's philosophical poetry, Klopstock's understanding of the hexameter has essentially prevailed. In the 19th century z. B. Friedrich Hebbel his verse epic Mother and Child (1859) and Jonas Breitenstein his dialect idylls Der Her Ehrli (1863) and S Vreneli us der Bluemmatt (1864) in hexameters. Even modern translations of the great ancient epics usually reproduce the ancient meter. Occasionally, prose poems also approach the hexameter in rhythm (for example in Hölderlin's Hyperion or in Thomas Mann ). Probably unintentionally written hexametrically around 1896, Section 923, Paragraph 1 of the Civil Code .

English poetry

In the English-language literature, the hexameter plays a minor role. George Chapman's Homer translations were Alexandrians ( Iliad , 1611) written and endbetonten iambic Five lifters with pair rhyme , which in English heroic couplet : (literally heroic couplet are called) ( Odyssey , 1614). John Milton's epics Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are written in blank verse . In the 17th and 18th centuries with John Dryden and Alexander Pope, the heroic couplet , which was also used for the translation of ancient epics, became the dominant form of the verse epic . It was not until the 19th century that experiments were started with the hexameter, inspired by the German model ( Coleridge , Tennyson , Swinburne and others). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1847 in pure hexameters and modeled on Hermann and Dorothea the verse story Evangeline , his most famous work during his lifetime. But the English language is less suitable for the hexameter than the German language because of its tendency to alternate rhythm and the rarity of dactylic words in its basic vocabulary. The first four verses of the Evangeline :

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Translated by Frank Siller:

Here is a wonderful jungle. The rustling spruce and fir trees,
moss cloaks, in green robes, in the uncertain twilight,
standing like druids, with voices, deep and prophetic,
standing like harpers, gray, with beards hanging over the chest,

Swedish poetry

In Swedish literature, the hexameter gained importance early on through Georg Stiernhielms Hercules (1658). In Stiernhielm's successor, various Swedish poets wrote works in hexameters, among them Esaias Tegnér , whose Frithiofs saga (1825) was translated by Amalie von Imhoff in an exemplary manner as early as 1826 , the third song from Swedish into German hexameter. (For the underlying saga and other German translations of Tegnér's text, see Frithjofssage .) EsaiasTegnér, Frithiofs saga, III, 35–39:

Tyst full lyssnande lay, och the view of hanging vid gubbens
läppar, som bi't vid sin ros; Men were soaked up on Brage,
när med sitt silfverskägg and with runor på tungan han sitter
under den lumimiga bok och förtäljer en saga vid Mimers
evigt sorlande våg, han själv en levande saga.

Translated by Amalie von Imhoff:

Then the guests listened quietly, and their eyes hung on the old man's
lips, like the bees on the rose, and the
skald then remembered Bragas, the god who sits there with a silver beard,
telling stories under shady books and legends at Mimer's
Eternal Murmuring Born; he himself the living legend.

Russian poetry

The hexameter was introduced into Russian literature by Wassili Kirillowitsch Trediakowski , who used the verse in his heroic epic Tilemachida (1766), but received little attention. The translation of the Iliad (1829) by Nikolaj Ivanowitsch Gneditsch was generally considered a success; Wassili Andrejewitsch Schukowski translated the prose story Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué into hexameters.

Lithuanian poetry

The article on Kristijonas Donelaitis provides information on Metai , an early hexameter poem in the Lithuanian language .

Other seals

In French and Spanish poetry, the hexameter is not used because the words in French and Spanish are end-stressed and so dactyls are difficult to form.

For the history and meaning of dactylic verses in medieval and modern poetry, see also under Dactylus .

literature

• Sandro Boldrini : Prosody and Metrics of the Romans. Teubner, Stuttgart & Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-519-07443-5 , pp. 91-97.
• Hans Drexler: Hexameter studies. 6 parts in 4 volumes. Salamanca 1951-1956.
• Otto Knörrich: Lexicon of lyrical forms (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 479). 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-47902-8 , pp. 92-94.
• Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender, Burkhard Moennighoff (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon literature. Terms and definitions. 3rd edition Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-01612-6 , p. 315f.
• Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 231). 8th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-23108-5 , pp. 240f.

Web links

Wiktionary: Hexameter  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Description of the hexameter at the University of Essen
• Animation of the procedure for determining the exact shape of the hexameter in Latin using the example of Ovid: Metamorphoses 1 verses 1-4

Text examples

• Goethe's Reinecke Fuchs in the Gutenberg project
• Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea in the Gutenberg project
• Mörike's fairy tale about the safe man in the Gutenberg project
• Wild goose ' Kirbisch ' in the Gutenberg project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jakob Minor: Neuhochdeutsche Metrik, 2nd edition, Trübner, Strasbourg 1902
2. ↑ Ulrich Hötzer: Mörike's secret modernity. Edited by Eva Bannmüller, Niemeyer, Tübingen, 1998, p. 75 / p. 76
3. ↑ namely the "Wilhelm-Meyer-aus-Speyerschen" hexameter laws
4. ↑ Klopstock: The Messiah. Vol. 1. Hall 1751, p. 3, digitized .
5. ↑ Carl Gustav Heraeus: “Attempt of a new German type of rhyme based on the metro of the so-called Latin Hexametri and Pentametri, in a congratulations to ... Caroli VI. Welterfreulichem Birthdays, anno 1713 ”, a poem in elegiac distiches, in which every hexameter rhymes with the following hexameter and each pentameter with the following pentameter. See Wilhelm Creizenach: Heraeus, Karl Gustav , in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie , Volume 12 (1880), pp. 15-16 Online .
6. ↑ François Rabelais, Johann Fischart: Monkey Heurliche, Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung. Of the deeds and courtesies of the short, long and sometimes full-wool-gray heroes and lords: Grandgoschier, Gorgellantua and the Eyteldürstlichen, thirsty prince Pantagruel of thirsty worlds ... Strasbourg 1617.
7. ^ Lessing: Letters concerning the latest literature. In: (ders.): Works. Hanser, Munich 1970ff. Vol. 5, p. 74.
8. ^ Klopstock: From the German hexameter. In: About language and poetry. Hamburg 1779, p. 8, online .
9. ^ Johann Heinrich Voss: Time measurement of the German language. 2nd edition Königsberg 1831, p. 253, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D_VRKAQAAIAAJ~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA253~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D
10. ^ August Wilhelm von Schlegel: The hexameter. v. 13-19. Complete Works. Leipzig 1846, vol. 2, p. 32f., Online .
11. ^ Citizen: To a friend about his German Iliad. In: Der Teutsche Merkur 1776, IV. Vj., P. 52f., Digitized .
12. ^ Johann Heinrich Voss: Luise. A rural poem in three idylls. Nicolovius, Königsberg 1795, online .
13. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Berlin edition. Poetic works. Berlin 1960 ff, vol. 3, p. 442, online .
14. ↑ Evangeline. Translated into German by Frank Siller. Ernst Keil, Leipzig 1879.