trochee

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The trochaeus ( ancient Greek τροχαῖος trochaios "running", "fast", Latin trochaeus ; plural trochees ) is a verse footer consisting of two verse elements in the quantifying ancient verse , with a longum ( long / heavy ) followed by a breve (short / easy) , noted as —◡. Its metric counterpart is the iambus (◡—).

Trochaeus and Choreus

The trochee was occasionally called choreus ( χορεῖος choreios "belonging to the dance"), for example in Cicero . Choreus or Chorius also appears in Diomedes Grammaticus as a name for the three-syllable Tribrachys (◡◡◡). Conversely, in Cicero's orator Trochäus also appears as a name for the tribrachy. At one point, referring to Aristotle, he mentions that Trochäus and Choreus are of the same length, which is true because —◡ and ◡◡◡ count three moras . The confusion or identification of the two feet could have arisen from the fact that one thought ◡◡◡ as having arisen by dissolving the length into —◡ into a double abbreviation . Further down, Cicero mentions the dichoreus , which consists of two chores and has the form —◡ — ◡, shortly afterwards he says that the choreus consists of three abbreviations. The question of which verse Aristotle , Cicero and others meant when they spoke of Trochäus or Choreus could not be answered satisfactorily in all details until today. The term Choreus as a synonym for Trochäus has been preserved in the name of the Chorjambus (—◡◡—, so Choreus —◡ plus Iambus ◡—).

realization

In ancient poetry, the trochee appears in an ambivalent form with an anceps (×) in the second place:

- ×

It can thus be realized not only as —◡, but also as spondeic as —— and dactylic as —◡◡.

Dipody applies to the trochee , that is, the metron , the basic element as which the trochee appears in ancient metrics, consists of two feet of verse, formed according to the scheme:

—◡— ×

In a meter formed from trochees, the odd-numbered feet are usually formed with an elementum breve (◡) at the end, while the even-numbered feet end ambivalently, i.e. end with elementum anceps . The last element in the meter is mostly indifferent ( ◠ ).

In the accentuating metrics of modern languages ​​such as German, the trochäus lacks ambivalence and is regularly formed according to the scheme -◡ (or x́x in Heusler's notation ), which means that it always consists of two syllables, the first being stressed and the second is unstressed.

The trochaeus is a common word base in German. Examples are “ father ”, “ lo ben” and “ freundlich ” (the accented letters are indicated by underlining the corresponding syllables).

Trochaic meter

Ancient seal

Trochean meter measures are in ancient metrics:

—◡ˌ— ◠
—◡ˌ— × ˌ— ◠
—◡ˌ— × ˌ — ◡ˌ— ◠ , also catalectic (tr 4c) as —◡ˌ— × ˌ — ◡ˌ ◠
The catalectic dimeter is also known as the colon under the name lekythion .
—◡ˌ— × ˌ — ◡ˌ— ◠  ‖ —◡ˌ— × ˌ — ◡ˌ ◠
  • Trochaic octagon (tr 8), also with a caesura after the fourth foot:
—◡ˌ— × ˌ — ◡ˌ— ◠  ‖ —◡ˌ— × ˌ — ◡ˌ— ◠
—◡— × ˌ — ◡— × ˌ — ◡— × ˌ — ◡—

Modern poetry

In the accentuating metric of modern languages ​​such as German, the trochee loses its ambivalence, as already said. The Trochaic meter is therefore regular and can only be determined by the number of elevations. In German, for example, one speaks of trochaic four-lifter , five-lifter , etc.

The formation of trochaic verses in German is relatively easy, as numerous two-syllable words form trochaic word feet, with which trochaic rhythms can easily be formed.

Two-syllable words are therefore mostly trochaic.

Trochaic meter in German

Although many German words are Trochaic by their natural intonation, iambic meter measures are by far the most commonly used in German poetry. One of the reasons is that a prefixed functional word such as the article immediately results in an iambic approach (“ father ” → “the father ”). Nevertheless, trochaic verses are by no means rare in German. Well-known examples of such trochaic meter measures are:

Trochaic three-lifter

In German, the trochaic three-pointer is relatively rare and appears practically only as a colon or as a brachycatalectically shortened verse in an otherwise four-part stanza.

Scheme: —◡ˌ — ◡ˌ— (◡)

As an example, the first stanza of the well-known shaking rhyme poem Die Rabenklippen :

On the Ra ben klip pen
lead chen Kna ben rip pen
And the moon seems fins ter through's Ge Wölk .
Ring in Krin gel schnat tern
Schwar ze Rin gel nat tern
And the U hu is coming up with building Oelk .

In the poem, which consists of six six-line stanzas, each stanza consists of paired trochaic triples in the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th verses and catalectic quadruples in the 3rd and 6th verses, which form a normal pair of rhymes.

Another example in which the three-lifter appears as a shortening of the four-lifter is the first stanza of Max Goldt's Could Bees Fly :

Could th Bie nen flows gen
DOMINION te splendor in each of the Gar th
but they saw reindeer train and Crawling gen
dispute on driving translucent au to ma th.

Here, the first verse of the four-line stanza is shortened to a three-lifter compared to the remaining three four-headers.

Trochaic Four Jacks

In German poetry, the trochaic four-pointer is often used to reproduce Romanic meter measures, as von Herder in his adaptation of the Spanish national epic of the cid as a verse of the roman strophe was particularly popular with the Romantics.

Scheme: —◡ˌ — ◡ˌ — ◡ˌ— (◡)

Trochaic five-lifter

Better known as the Serbian trochées after an inconsistent catalectic ten-syllable that is widespread in Serbian folk poetry , and which Herder also introduced in German.

Scheme: —◡ˌ — ◡ˌ — ◡ˌ — ◡ˌ— (◡)

As an example, the first verses of the poem Tristan by August von Platen

Who the Nice uniform to ge looks with Au gen,
is the To de already at home ge ge ben [...]

Longer forms

Longer forms of trochaic verses are extremely rare in German, which may be due to the fact that the frequent coincidence of the word boundary and the verse boundary means that there is a great tendency to split a trochaic six- or eight-pointers into two equally long half-verses . This becomes noticeable in the translations of late antique Trochaic tetrameters, which are usually translated as four-pointers. An example of a catalectic Trochaic six-lifter is the poem Der Krieg I by Georg Heym . Here is the first stanza:

In ge stan to is he, wel cher lan ge asleep ,
to ge stan the un th of Ge LSO ben deep .
In the insulating tion is he, large and un he denied ,
And the moon zer expresses it in the schwar zen hand .

An example of a catalectic Trochaic figure of eight can be found in the sonnet Ewige Freude der Auswehlten by Andreas Gryphius , here the first two verses:

O ! where am i! O what do I see / I wake up! is my dream ? how will I ?
JE su! we lcher Wol pleasurable sea / u over flooded my frö Lich Hertz

Here you can see the pronounced diheresis that de facto splits the eight-lifter into two four-lifter.

Verses of varying lengths

Often in German poems stanzas are built from Trochaic verses of different lengths. As an example, the well-known poem He's by Eduard Mörike :

Early ling can be blue , it band
As the flat tern by the Lüf te;
Sweet SSE probably be can te Düf te
Stripes fen ah -voltage fully the country .
Veil chen Dreamy men already ,
wool len bal de kom men.
- Horch , by far a lei ser Har fen ton !
Early ling, yes , you 're it !
You have I ver nom men!

It has three- and four-point verse and also a five-point verse. The first, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth of these end masculine , i.e. with a stressed syllable. Since in the Trochaic poem ending with a stressed syllable no longer results in a complete last, these verses are also catalectic.

Position of the Trochäus in German

The bar series

x́x | x́x | x́x | x́

in Heusler's spelling, can be both catalectically trochaic

—◡ˌ — ◡ˌ — ◡ˌ — ◡ˌ—

as well as acephalic iambic

—ˌ◡ — ˌ◡ — ˌ◡ — ˌ◡—

interpret. The missing prelude has therefore been identified as a characteristic of the Trochaic meter and accordingly assigned a falling rhythm, which is why, according to a suggestion by Ivo Braak, the Trochäus should better be called Faller in German . Gerhard Storz has criticized this designation as misleading, since “raising and lowering is by no means associated with a change in pitch”. In the Trochean verse, Storz continues to think that he can perceive “a certain exhilaration [...] that is caused by the urge to start”. Heusler saw the basic rhythm of the German language in the trochaeus and Ulrich Pretzel suggested following this line to distinguish only “trochies with and without a prelude”. Even Wolfgang Kayser makes the difference at the opening said: "It is certainly strange but undeniable that the small difference in the actual or missing upbeat, because it practically the difference between the two siblings boils down to is the verse a completely different character." Otto Knörrich considers this to be wrong and points out "that the rhythm of a verse is not only determined by the meter, but above all by factors such as its linguistic realization and the relationship between the feet of words and feet of verse."

In fact, an all too regular and all too predictable correspondence between the feet of words and verses creates an effect that Heinrich Heine described as “rattling”. In a letter to Immermann he wrote that it was undesirable "that the words and the feet of the verse always collapse, which is always unbearable with four-footed troches, namely if the meter is not supposed to parody itself". You can see the effect clearly when you read the first verse of Goethe's Sorcerer 's Apprentice

Has the al te Hex en masters ter ... (-◡-◡-◡-◡, trochaic four Heber})

with the first verse of Heine's Night Thoughts

Thinking I at German country in the night ... (◡-◡-◡-◡-, iambic Four Jacks)

compares. The difference here is not in a rhythmic magic effect of the prelude, but in the fact that in Goethe's pseudonaive verse the rhythm is clear after the first four syllables and remains clear, while with Heine it is not clear after the first three syllables which rhythm will be established will, since z. B. the relative weight of "think" and "I" is roughly the same. It could also go on quite differently:

Thought I to Glau be and Hoff planning and Lie be ... (-◡◡-◡◡-◡◡-◡)

Or:

Thought I to the al th sack ... (-◡-◡-◡-)

In any case, the iambic verse is by far the most common verse form compared to the trochaic in German and the domains of the trochaic verse are the harmless satire and humorous poetry and the naive tone in folk song-like.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diomedes Grammaticus ars grammatica 465.20 or 479.2
  2. ↑ Cicero Orator 193: Trochaeum autem, qui est eodem spatio quo choreus, cordacem appellat, quia contractio et brevitas dignitatem non habeat. See also 191.
  3. ↑ Cicero Orator 212f. u. 217
  4. ^ David Mankin: Cicero. De Oratore III. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-59657-2 , p. 274.
  5. ↑ Anonymous poem, written before 1905, occasionally attributed to Heinrich Seidel . Quoted from: Robert Gernhardt , Klaus Cäsar Zehrer (Ed.): Hell und Schnell . 555 comical poems from 5 centuries. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2004, ISBN 3-10-025505-4 , p. 404.
  6. ↑ Gernhardt, Zehrer (ed.): Bright and fast. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, p. 457.
  7. ↑ Herder: The Cid . Sung about from Spanish romances. In: Adrastea. Vol. 5, 9th piece. Hartknoch, Leipzig 1803f., Online .
  8. ↑ August Graf von Platen: Works in two volumes. Volume 1: Poetry . Munich 1982, p. 69, online .
  9. ↑ Georg Heym: Seals. Reclam, Stuttgart 1969, pp. 11-13, online .
  10. ↑ Gryphius: XLIX. Eternal joy of the chosen . In: Freuden vnd Grief-Spiele also odes vnd Sonnette sampt Mr. Peter Squentz Schimpff-Spiel. Sonnets. The other book. Breslau 1658, p. 55f.
  11. ↑ Eduard Mörike: Complete works in two volumes. Vol. 1, Munich 1967, p. 684, online .
  12. ^ Ivo Braak: Poetics in Key Words. 8th edition Stuttgart 2001, p. 82.
  13. ^ Gerhard Storz: The verse in modern German poetry. Reclam, Stuttgart 1970, p. 45 u. 47.
  14. ↑ Ulrich Pretzel: Interpretations of Goethescher Verskunst. In: Publications of the Institute for German Language and Literature . Vol. 11. Berlin 1958, p. 226.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Kayser: Small German Verslehre. Francke, Bern 1946, p. 26.
  16. ↑ Otto Knörrich: Lexicon of lyrical forms (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 479). 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-47902-8 , pp. 242f.
  17. ^ Letter to Immermann, February 3, 1830, in connection with Heine's proposed changes to Immermann's little tulip coat .