Many thanks for these interesting and helpful comments. My own
favourite from Shakespeare is "Much as the waves march towards the
pebbled shore" where the shooshing sound runs in a wonderful
counterpoint with the stresses of the pentameter.
What you have described also reminds me of polyrhythmic music from
Africa (or Steve Reich) and elsewhere. Trouble is I am sort of stuck
with my school Latin. I don't think there is much I can do about that,
but it was terribly pedestrian and dead with its BBC/Oxford accent.
Perhaps I realised this when I lived in Italy and heard the wonderful
liquid fluidity of Italian speakers many of whom, of course, will
pronounce Latin in a similar way, though I appreciate this is likely
to be no nearer Roman that English is to Anglo-Saxon.
Apropos of all this, I remember one of my Latin masters used to wax
lyrical over Virgil's phrase 'Nox ruit' from the Aeneid. The fact
that I remember this after 50 years is a testament to his teaching
ability, but I still do not understand why he found it so fascinating
and powerful. Can anyone enlighten me ('nox deruit' as one might
say?)
Patrick Roper
> From: Robert Dyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Also, I believe, L.P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry (although I
> cannot find a copy), who promoted the view that you must read both
> rhythms, the hexameter pattern plus the normal prose word
> stress, for
> the flow of the verse depends on whether the two rhythms
> coincide (as
> pretty well always in the last two feet) or conflict,
> giving a sense of
> difficulty and slowness. The editor, R.D. Williams, made a
> tape of the
> entire Aeneid, some decades ago, at the Australian National
> University,
> and this convinced me that this is correct way to read the
> Aeneid. You
> arrive at it by marking both rhythms on the text and
> watching where the
> two rhythms coincide and where they conflict. In reading you must
> observe BOTH STRESSES. Thus in some verses you get a sequence of
> stresses of one sort or the other, and this audibly slows down the
> reading. I always began teaching it by pointing out the
> correct way of
> reading
>
> To be or not to be, that is the question.
>
> This line loses all sense if you read it with its basic
> iambic rhythm.
> The sense depends entirely on the violent contrast created by the
> reversal of the metrical rhythm in the fourth iamb: THAT
> is, instead of
> that IS. The effect of conflict in Vergil is much the same.
>
> Rob Dyer
> Paris
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