Context: I’ve been working on scanning hexameters. My recent scanning, say the last 150 lines is going pretty well, so far as mechanical application of rules is concerned. I can mark off the feet with fair accuracy.
But I can’t perform an “unseen” line correctly, while automatically detecting the poetic feet and speaking the Latin in correct meter. Each line is like a grade-school math problem in say long division.
I can imagine the Romans themselves read unseen verses correctly, the way one can pick up an unseen poem of Longfellow and pretty quickly see how to read it. By the time you’ve scanned “By the shores of Gitchee Goomee, by the shining Big Sea Water. . . .”, like Old Man River, the poem “just keeps rolling along”. But in Latin verse, I’m far from such fluency.
What are appropriate intermediate goals for scanning, short of the spontaneous correct reading?
Maybe my question is not so clear. I can see the utility of scanning for making choices about grammar. For example, the quantity of the nominative singular and ablative singular of first declension nouns. I can also see how to use the marked line to attempt to read the line in the correct meter. I agree entirely that one cannot read verse properly while treating it as prose.
Right now it takes me about five minutes to mark a line, because I must do dictionary work to find the long-by-nature vowels. That means that to advance twelve lines requires an hour for scansion alone, separately from the grammar and dictionary work needed to find the literal meaning of the line. To me this seems a little slow, but I have no idea how well students do working in class under a good teacher.
Usually I work more superficially. Read; check a translation if frustrated. Review the word meanings and grammar issues.
If you are doing dactylic hexameter, initially it is easiest to start from the back. You know foot 5 is a dactyl and foot 6 is a spondee. Often the rest can then be deduced relatively easily, e.g if there are only 8 remaining syllables then they must all be spondees. Conversely if there are 12 then they must all be dactyls.
I would also recommend first identifying all the syllables that are obviously long, i.e. the ones with diphthongs and vowels that must be long such as an ending -i or -o, and the ones long by position. Frequently doing this also makes it possible to deduce the scansion. It is then much less necessary to consult a dictionary to find any long by nature vowels. I hope this helps, unfortunately I have no advice for the other meters, although for the most part these ideas should also work with elegiac couplets.
I do start by trial-marking the last two feet. And yes, the long-by position vowels often do enable deduction of the rest. The biggest problem I’m having now is with all those Greek names in Virgil and Ovid. I’m probably getting the lines correct 80-90% of the time. If it’s nearly all pure Latin, as in many of Horace’s verses, I do a little better.
Concerning the other meters, Hylander gave helpful advice some time ago, to the effect that the rules are more strict in them than in hexameters. You don’t have to worry about whether to read the next foot as spondee or as dactyl. It will be what the form requires. Apologies to Hylander in case I have oversimplified his always helpful advice.
Here’s my main concern. If I achieved total mastery of hexameters in Latin, I assume it would be somewhat like reading Longfellow in English. I would learn how to read the line in a smooth flow, reading most lines fluently, without stopping to analyze consciously. But I am way short of that. Maybe this is just not a realistic goal for me. Or maybe it’s more like playing a Beethoven string quartet: even the best musicians need to review the music consciously.
If that assumed goal is unrealistic, what would be an appropriate goal short of it?
Longfellow actually wrote at least one long poem in dactylic hexameter (with stress accents, of course), namely, 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.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
You might try reading Evangeline, or at least parts of it, aloud to internalize a feeling for the meter. This might help you with Latin, although of course you must resist the temptation to impose stress on long syllables where it doesn’t belong.
Thanks to Hylander and Dante for their support. I’ll scan some more at Hexameter.co and try to perform the lines I read. Maybe it’s like riding a bicycle–after a lot of falls, one day I could just do it.
Just for a quick report. On hexameter.co, I’m trying more aggressively to deduce the needed syllables from the ones already known, and doing less dictionary work. That helps especially in reducing the anxiety about failure. Maybe it really is like riding a bicycle. LOL.
Scanning syllable by syllable is a laborious process, as you’ve found, and you’ll never achieve reading fluency that way. Getting into the swing of the meter is crucial. You need to get the rhythm of the line implanted in your head. You can do that either by reciting Longfellow’s ersatz hexameters, or—better, I think—by (i) reciting some twenty or more continuous lines of Latin hexameters after you’ve figured out their scansion, and (ii) repeating until it seems natural—like riding a bicycle.
Remember the lines are not merely a succession of six feet. Nearly all of them have a caesura within the 3rd foot (occasionally in the 4th, but never at the end of the 3rd), and you should aim for that caesura. The caesura-point—the not-quite-halfway point—should be your target. DUM-di-i DUM-di-i DUM (Arma virumque cano), or DUM-di-i DUM-di-i DUM-di, followed by word-break (the caesura). You’ll stumble more than a few times at first, mainly because spondees often substitute for dactyls and you won’t be sure of some of the quantities, but shoot for that third DUM (the long syllable that begins the foot) or DUM-di followed by word-break (the caesura). You shouldn’t need to look anything up: just make it fit, which it will. Don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be.
The rest of the line will then start either di-i-DUM or di-DUM (according to whether the 3rd-foot caesura was “masculine” or “feminine”), and then you’re within reach of the closing cadence.
I’m fairly sure reading metrically is a realistic goal for you, and you’re already more than halfway there. As for an intermediate goal, if you must have one, let it be the ability to reach the 3rd-foot caesura without too much difficulty. If your main problem is scanning Greek names, you have little to worry about!
Thanks to mwh for the instruction. I think I understand it, but it will take some re-reading and thinking. I get the idea of marking a passage of ten or twelve lines and performing it until the thing begins to become second nature.
I pronounce dactyls as “dum diddy”, or as (like Morse code) “dah di di”. In this arrangement the line ends “dah di di dah dah”, so that’s two of the six feet, and since I know to expect them, I can usually perform the end of the line almost intuitively. If I work on the segmentation of the line by the caesura, I ought to be able to make that work out. Part of my problem in tackling hexameter lines is that I have lacked a divide-and-conquer strategy.
My guess is that students in classes try to perform the lines with immediate correction by teacher, so that they may need no explicit strategy. They fall down, and they fall down, and then one day they can ride the bicycle for quite a while before they fall down.
I have been working along marking the lines, trying to get that bit right, but I could see no route to performing the line correctly without first laboriously marking it. This is not a appetizing prospect, and poetry is supposed to be fun, dammit. But I think I begin to see some landmarks in the mist ahead.
My plan is just to lower the intensity, and fiddle around with this in a more relaxed way, and see what happens.
A remark that helped me a lot was: “The trick to reciting Latin Poetry is actually to pronounce Latin exactly as you normally would (e.g. accent, and syllable length) just without stopping after each word. The challenge is being aware of when vowels drop between words.” (Lance Piantaggini in his Latin poetry novella “Pīsō Ille Poētulus” for year 1/2 (!) students).
It helps if you are already used to reading Latin aloud from day one, preferably using texts showing macrons.