French Lyrics | Page 7

syllables ending in a rhyme which binds it to one or more other lines. The lines found in lyric verse vary in length from one to thirteen syllables; but lines with an even number of syllables are much more used than those with an odd number.
In determining the number of syllables the general rules of syllabic division are followed, and each vowel or diphthong involves a syllable. But the following points are to be noted:
1. Mute e_ final or followed by _s_ or _nt is not counted at the end of the line.
2. Final mute _e_ in the body of the line is not counted as a syllable before a word beginning with a vowel or mute _h_ (elision).
3. Mute _e_ in the termination of the third person plural, imperfect and conditional, of verbs is not counted; nor is it counted in the future and conditional of verbs of the first conjugation whose stem ends in a vowel (oublieront_, also written in verse oubl?ront_; see
4. 130, l. 14).
5. When two or more vowel sounds other than mute _e_ come together within a word they are sometimes treated as a diphthong and make but one syllable, sometimes separated and counted as two. Usage is not altogether consistent in this particular; the same combination is in some words pronounced as two syllables (_ni-ais, li-en, pri-ère, pri-ons, jou-et_), in others as one (_biais, rien, bar-rière, ai-mions, fou-et_); and even the same word is sometimes variable (ancien, hier, duel). In general such combinations are monosyllabic if they have developed from a single vowel in the Latin parent word.
6. Certain words allow a different spelling according to the demands of the verse (encore_ or _encor_, _Charles_ or _Charle).
Since the sixteenth century, hiatus has been forbidden by the rules of French versification. But, as we have just seen (under 4 above), two vowels are allowed to come together in the interior of a word. What the rule against hiatus does proscribe then is the use of a word ending in a vowel (except mute _e_, which is elided; cf. 2 above) before a word beginning with a vowel or mute _h_, and the use of words in which mute _e_ not final follows a vowel in the interior of the word; e.g. _tu as, et ont, livrée jolie; louent, allées_. But hiatus is not regarded as existing when two vowels are brought together by the elision of a mute e_; e.g. in Hugo's lines, the _vie a in
L'ouragan de leur vie a pris toutes les pages (p. 108, l. 20), and the joie et in?Sois ma force et ma joie et mon pilier d'airain (p. 130, l. 8).
Cf. also 1 and 3 above.
The rhythm of the line comes from the relation of its stressed to its unstressed syllables. All lines have a stress (_lève_) on the rhyme syllable, and if they have more than four syllables they have one or more other stresses. Lines that consist of more than eight syllables are usually broken by a caesural pause, which must follow a stressed syllable. In lines of ten syllables the pause comes generally after the fourth syllable, sometimes after the fifth; in lines of twelve syllables, after the sixth.
The line of twelve syllables is the most important and widely used of all and is known as the Alexandrine, from a poem of the twelfth century celebrating the exploits of Alexander the Great, which is one of the earliest examples of its use. It is almost without exception the measure of serious and dignified dramatic and narrative poetry, and even in lyric verse it is used more frequently than any other. From MALHERBE to VICTOR HUGO the accepted rule demanded a caesura after the sixth syllable and a pause at the end of the line; this divided the line into two equal portions and separated each line from its neighbors, preventing the overflow (enjambement) of one line into the next. The line thus constructed had two fixed stresses, one on the sixth syllable, before the caesura, which therefore had to be the final syllable of a word and could not have mute _e_ for its vowel, and another on the final (twelfth) syllable. There are indeed in the poets of that period examples of lines in which, when naturally read, the most considerable pause falls in some other position; but the line always offers in the sixth place a syllable capable of a principal stress. There was also regularly one other stressed syllable in each half-line; it might be any one of the first five syllables, but is most frequently the third, second, or fourth, rarely the first or fifth; but the secondary stress might be wanting altogether; a third stressed syllable in the half-line sometimes occurs. The Romanticists introduced a somewhat greater flexibility into the Alexandrine line by permitting the displacement or