Responsion and the iambic trimeter

Greek Learning Greek
1

James Morwood’s A Little Greek Reader has a description of the iambic trimeter, images of which are attached below. In the footnote he writes:

Contemporary scholarship largely rejects the divison of the trimeter into six feet, preferring to concentrate on the three > metra. > We believe that those just beginning their study of meter will find the traditional analysis a more helpful introduction.

Morwood presents the same material, more or less, as Sidgwick’s Verse composition, and I imagine that there are similar presentations in other places.

In addition to making me a better reader of the trimeter, I find this sort of vocabulary well-suited to talking about it. In Maas, for example, there are statements like “the caesura comes after the 5th or 7th element,” which I think most people would find difficult to visualize without a diagram.

In using the traditional terminology though, I’m aware that I’m missing something called “responsion.” Maas mentions it frequently, and I believe that he invented the theory (he published Responsionsfreiheiten in 1921). But to be honest, I couldn’t give a clear or scientific definition of it. Maas doesn’t seem to distinguish it from “repetition” (see 28). Nor am I able to glean the main predictions of responsion theory, or how precisely these differ from those of the preceding theories. Or why the traditional terminology is so unsuited to talking about it. I would love for someone to correct my ignorance here.

2

Are you confusing “responsion” with “resolution”? All iambic trimeters are in metrical responsion with one another. The term is usually applied to lyric meters (e.g. strophe and antistrophe), where textual corruption makes the limits of responsional freedom hard to determine. Resolution is when a long is “resolved” into two shorts; e.g. με πολυ is just an iambic foot with resolved long, u— > u uu. (Note that the two shorts substituting for the long belong to the same word.) It’s potentially misleading to call it a “tribrach.”

For those “just beginning,” as Morwood puts it, the six-foot analysis can be helpful. But a trimeter consists of three metra, and the iambic metron is basically x—u— (where x is “anceps,” i.e. free to be short or long). So the penult of each metron (and only the penult) has to be a single short. This applies to comedy too, though the comic trimeter is subject to fewer constraints than the tragic. The sooner you get into the habit of thinking in terms of metra rather than individual feet, the better.

3

There are three accentuation errors in those three lines, which is unfortunate for beginners. Hopefully this is not a larger trend in Morwood.

Think of responsion in the way that something responds to something other. In Martin West’s wording: “The metrical agreement between strophes is known as responsion.”

Maas is a classic, but shouldn’t you still be using West? Start with his Introduction to Greek Metre (1987) and after that go on to Greek Metre (1982). You can also read more general sections in West and thereafter read discussions of particular metres as you meet them, in order to alleviate potential gripes.

4

I was actually getting ready to send Morwood an email about the accentuation errors. They aren’t normal. λόγοῦ and πρώτον and Ἑλενος are so obvious that they must be printer’s errors, I would think. This is from an appendix to the text.

Maas calls the metrical agreement between strophes “external responsion” in passing, but is actually most interested in the “internal responsion,” and this is the basis of his theory. For Maas, resolution is where an anceps or breve “responds” to two short syllables. I believe that Maas was the first one to develop the metra scheme, working from his ideas of internal responsion. Snell and West both took up Maas’s work and extended it, perhaps dropping the responsion basis, though I don’t know much about that. I only have the fuzziest idea of the history of the idea, if someone who knows better wants to correct me.

I’m more than willing to ditch feet and go with metra, as mwh requests, but I’ll have to hear what metra explains better first. There were some of Maas’s arguments that I am deeply skeptical of. He describes anceps as a long “responding” to a short. That’s obviously a description for people talking about dots and dashes on paper. A long never responds to a short to the ear, and that it appears to is a notational fiction (it’s the surrounding responsion that is recognized by the ear, and the anceps is anceps because it’s in a position that does not interfere – the opposite of responding).

5

I don’t see any errors?

6

What Maas referred to as “responsion” of short and long in anceps is not a theory but an observed fact. The variation does not compromise the metrical equivalence. Like you, I’d assume that a long anceps sounded long and short anceps short, but if so, that variability in the first syllable of the iambic metron was evidently acceptable throughout the history of line-by-line iambic verse. Same goes for trochaic, mutato mutando. If you don’t like the term “responsion” for the phenomenon, come up with something better. But I think you’re missing the point. Iambic trimeters are iambic trimeters.

As for analysis in terms of metra, well, it’s the metron (x—u—, in iambics, —u—x in trochaics), not the foot, that’s the repeated metrical unit. (Not so in Latin.) That too is an observed fact. So you don’t have to learn that spondees and “dactyls” and “tribrachs” are “allowed” in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th feet, for instance, you can simply recognize that the anceps is (by definition) free to be either short or long and that a long is sometimes “resolved.” That way you’ll develop a less fragmented and more organic sense of the meter, at least of its “outer metric.” The inner metric (a matter of lexical articulation, caesura included) is no less important.

But I make no “request” of you. You can do whatever you like. And I’m not suggesting you ditch feet altogether.

For those with access to jstor, there’s a review of West’s Greek Metre at http://www.jstor.org/stable/269884

Dante, see jeidsath’s post for identification of the errors.

7

If anything, repeated unit is —u—. The x is what is not repeated (or not always repeated). However, to the ear, —u— is not perspicuous, though it is to the eye on paper.

My own impression is that there are two levels of repetition in the trimeter that are apparent to the ear, the di-dah of the individual feet, and the di-dah di-dah of the individual metra. Just as in music, whenever you have multiple elements of structure, you are able to vary one without destroying the overall structure.

The fact of metra repetition is what leads to the limitation of the spondee to the odd feet, written succinctly as “x” in this notation. Metra repetition, however, does not on its own explain why tribrachs are allowed in the first four feet, or to say it equivalently, why “each longae of the first two metra can be resolved,” nor why these tribrachs cannot be divided by a caesura at the second element u u | u. It’s foot-level repetition that explains this. di di-di is equivalent to di dah as di-di di is not, and more perfection is required in the final metron.

Notice especially that this di di-di interpretation of the tribrach implies that u — u — is the preferred version of the metra (this is also implied by the limitations on dactyls and anapests), and that — — u — is a variation. The notation x — u — would not lead one to suppose this on its own.

The rule of the final cretic is also important. We can never have — — | u — in the final metron, though u — | u — and — — u — are allowed. What trips up the ear here? To my ear, a line like x — u — x | — u — — —, sounds finished, and adding another iamb to the end feels tacked on. A spondee in the fifth foot completes the foot-level repetition too well, even though it doesn’t interfere with the metra-level repetition, and therefore — — | u — is impermissible in the final metron.

On the other hand, I think that the main caesura of the line is clearly a metra-level phenomenon, as you can find by comparing the woodenness of

di-dah di-dah di-dah di-dah di-dah di-dah

with the liveliness of

di-dah di-dah di dah di-dah di-dah di-dah

8

Oh dear. We seem to be talking past each other. But I’ll have one more go, ignoring the various factual errors in what you write. Put all that out of your head and try looking at it like this.

The abstract scheme (σχῆμα) of the iambic trimeter (as the Greeks themselves called it) is three successive iambic metra, i.e. x—u— twice repeated. When poets composed trimeters they did so in accordance with this scheme; it served as a template. The longs could be resolved (i.e. represented by a pair of shorts—a phrase best not used in conjunction with “contraction,” see West’s preface). That simple principle accounts for nearly all the scheme’s variant forms. Comedy had more laxity than tragedy (you fail to recognize this in your post) but not in the essentials.

The verses are not identical to one another in metrical form (Morwood’s three examples do not scan the same), but they’re all iambic trimeters (i.e. they are all in mutual “responsion”).

The dynamics of the line, more controlled in tragedy than in comedy, are a matter of internal articulation—caesura, “law of the final cretic,” etc.

Much more to be said, but I’ll leave it at that.

9

why is “proton” marked as a spondee a mistake?

10

I did talk about accents.

11

ok i thought it was about the meter

12

I appreciate the time that you are taking to reply to me. I feel that I’m being annoying to keep up the argument, and that I should really be paying tuition.

13

You couldn’t afford my fees. Anyway it’s not tuition you should be paying but attention.