The Indo-European Question

Any proposal to compare three prosodies from related Indo-European language families—Hellenic, Balto-Slavic, and Germanic—must take account of the extent to which similarities may be due to emergence from a common prototype or prototypes in Indo-European and of the significance that such genetic similarities might have for the present study. To a degree, then, we should address two interlocking problems. First, what does comparative historical metrics have to tell us about the meters involved, and how convincing are the conclusions? Second, does the historical perspective bear importantly on the particular kind of investigation underway in this and subsequent chapters?

The methods of reconstruction originally developed for recovering elements in the Indo-European lexicon were first applied to the study of meter by Antoine Meillet. In his Les Origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs (1923, 76), the great French philologist characterized a prehistoric parent meter deduced from ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit evidence:

Le vers indo-européen, fait pour une langue dont le rhythme était purement quantitatif, était caractérisé par des cadences définies au point de rue de la durée.

Les vers longs, à partir de 11 ou 12 syllabes, avaient de plus une coupe à place légèrement variable, dans la première partie du vers. La partie initiale du vers —dans levers à coupe, presque tout ce qui précédait la coupe—ne comportait pas une répartition fixe de longues et de brèves.^[5]

Testimony from other language families has since been added to Meillet's work: by Roman Jakobson (1952) for Slavic; by Calvert Watkins (1963) for Celtic; by Gregory Nagy (1974, 1975) for ancient Greek and Sanskrit; by Berkley Peabody (1975) for Indic, Iranian, and ancient Greek; by John Vigorita (1976, 1977a,b) for Slavic and Greek; and by M. L. West (1973a,b) for all of these plus Italic, Germanic, and in smaller compass other groups.^[6] The imaginative efforts of these scholars have uncovered much that is valuable and extremely suggestive.

At the same time, it is only fair to report that labors in this incipient field have not been universally accepted without reservation. Jerzy Kurylowicz (1970, 421-22, 429), for example, argues that "the conclusion that the appearance in two Indo-European languages of, e.g., decasyllables or hendecasyllables, with a partially iambic rhythm, catalectic or acatalectic, enlarged or shortened, etc., points to a common origin of such a metrical pattern, is no more justified than the assertion of the common origins of the IE and Semitic plural, genitive, or subjunctive" and further that "as for the question of a common IE origin of Greek and Indic verse, it must remain open." Likewise, in a briefexposition published in 1976, Henry Hoenigswald reminds us (p.275) of methodological problems associated with the extension of comparative reconstruction from the hard linguistic data of lexical roots to meter. The comparative method as originally conceived, he maintains, was "uniformitarian":

In denying that some traits are inherently and characteristically innovative, the comparatists believe that their unreconstructed ancestor language is just another language, different from its descendants to be sure, but, typologically speaking, no more so than descendants may be from each other; whatever structural damage changes in time may cause is sure to be repaired by other changes. It must be admitted that the tenets of historical and prehistorical metrics are non-uniformitarian.^[7]

On balance, however, the pursuit of Indo-European meters has received more support than criticism, and it seems prudent to agree with M. West (1973^b , 161) that "the assumption that Indo-European prototypes underlie the metrical forms at least of Indian, Iranian, Greek, Slavic, and Celtic poetry is now respectable."

Roman Jakobson's work on the deseterac , the Serbo-Croatian epic decasyllable, to take the next chronological step from Meillet's Origines , is thorough and wide-ranging, although his textual sample could be more extensive.^[8] He covers all of the Slavic meters cognate to the deseterac and, after carefully considering the idiosyncrasies of each separate language tradition, derives a Common Slavic prototype antecedent to and generative of the various descendant types. Although the Serbo-Croatian epic line itself is more properly the subject of the latter part of this chapter, we may note in capsule form the congruity that Jakobson demonstrates between Meillet's Indo-European line and the Common Slavic reconstruction. Both have what may be termed regular syllabicity , a consistent number of syllables; anceps , indifferent quantity in the final syllable; right justification , a relative freedom from any pattern of quantities in the earlier part of the line and a correspondingly more regular succession of quantities near the end of the line; and caesura , an obligatory word-break at a constant or slightly variable position within the line. Through discovery and delineation of these regularities, Jakobson (1952, 66) relates the Yugoslav epic line and meters from other Slavic traditions to an ancient precursor, complementing the analysis of Meillet: "The testimony of the third witness to the foundations of the Indo-European verse may now join those of Greek and Vedic."^[9]

A number of possible historical derivations for the Homeric hexameter have been offered in the years following Jakobson's (1952, 64-65) championing of Bergk's ([1854] 1886) hypothesis of its development from an Aeolic paroemiac. Prominent among these is Gregory Nagy's account (1974), in which he describes ancient Greek and Indic correlations at some length, taking as a point of departure the cognate Homeric and Vedic formulas and srava^[*] (s) áksitam ("imperishable fame"). In speaking of his two subject meters and their Indo-European parent, he remarks (pp. 30, 36): "The verse is divided into an opening and a closing, which are marked by flexible and rigid rhythms respectively"; accordingly, "the comparative approach, in short, suggests that freedom in the rhythm of the opening is a feature inherited from

the archetypal Indo-European poetic language." He sees the progressive restriction of freedom as a right-to-left process—"the lineal direction is from line-final to line-initial," the same directional movement posited by Jakobson and Meillet which I called "right justification."^[10] Nagy derives the hexameter from an Aeolic pherecratic with dactylic expansion; the pattern that he cites (p. 49) from Alkaios and a generalized schema of the hexameter are as follow:

To accomplish the transformation he stipulates (1) the optional replacement of the dactyl by the spondee, that is, of ; and (2) the replacement of , which in turn is optionally replaced by the dactyl,. One particularly attractive aspect of Nagy's theory is how thoroughly it explains the caesuras and diaeresis, the major word-breaks in the hexameter.^[12]

Berkley Peabody also sifts the evidence from ancient traditions in the Indo-European family, specifically Vedic Sanskrit and Iranian (the Avesta ), and comes up with an alternate derivation for the Homeric line (1975, 47-48):

The hexameter seems to be a hybrid primary combination that resulted from the fusion of dimeter and trimeter verse forms. The fusion of lines into one integrated verse form correlates with the tendencies noted in both the Avestan and Vedic traditions.... The two-against-three structure of the Greek fusion seems to have produced such a tight formal continuum that the verse tended in time to become functionally transformed into a single diploid line form (a single line—not verse—with twice the usual number of parts).

Although the entire demonstration is much too complex to be conveniently summarized here, we may note in passing that, as with Nagy's hypothesis,

Peabody's theory accounts well for the major word-breaks in the line.^[13] What is more, both formulations manifest a deep concern with diachronic roots and with establishing the hexameter as a metrical shape continuously in the process of reshaping itself.

Martin West's synthetic articles (1973a,b) serve as an overview of the subject of Indo-European meter. Following the original tenets of comparative reconstruction, which require evidence from at least three language families for valid triangulation back to Indo-European Ur-forms, he adduces data from the Vedas, the Gathas of the Avesta , and the Aeolic meters of ancient Greek. His simple series of prototypes, generalized and compounded later on, are two:

Acatalectic	Catalectic
	[Full Size]

where x is a syllable of variable or indifferent quantity; 5 is a protasis of five syllables; and (|) is a word-break after the protasis. He conceives of the hexameter as the possible product of "a pherecratean and expanded reizianum, , welded together and regularized in rhythm throughout" (1973b, 169, n. 10), or, in a manner closer to that of Nagy, as an "expanded pherecratean" (1973a, 186).

Besides the Aeolic meters and ultimately the hexameter, West also tests his prototypes against meters in Slavic (Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Polish, and Russian), Celtic (Old Irish), Italic (Latin), Germanic (Old English and Old Norse), Hittite, Lydian, and Tocharian, with various results. In reference to those meters under consideration in the present study, I find his comments on the deseterac , parallel to those of Jakobson, especially suggestive. He explains the decasyllable as a four-syllable protasis of variable quantities followed by the same version of the Indo-European prototype that also generates the Greek reizianum and Vedic colon of the tristubh line. In addition, he sees the quantitative regulation of the second portion of the line only, a phenomenon I have termed "right justification," as an argument for the extreme archaism of the Serbo-Croatian decasyllable. West's comments on the Germanic "standard line" are necessarily sketchier and more hypothetical, given the modulation from a quantitative Indo-European line to the stress-

based Germanic vernacular meters that were its eventual descendants. Nonetheless, he offers a plausible explanation of the very developments that obscure the genetic picture.^[14]

To sum up, most Indo-European metrists agree on an Ur-meter that was (1) quantitative, (2) of consistent syllabic definition, (3) relatively free in the distribution of quantities early in the line while relatively rigid in the pattern of quantities later in the line (that is, "right-justified"), and (4) marked by a regularly placed caesura, or word-break, within the line. Through combination and recombination of prototypical metrical forms, through linguistic adaptations resulting from the development of language families and of individual languages within those families, and through the myriad interactions between phraseology and meter, singular verse forms became differentiated and gained identities of their own. It is essential to keep in mind, especially as we continue the discussion by consulting each language tradition separately, that available evidence indicates that the various meters which have emerged and now stand as entities in the extant texts both stem ultimately from one or a series of Indo-European prototypes of unitary and extremely ancient provenance and also exist as integral and dynamic instruments of individual poetries. In linguistic terminology, then, these meters thus have both a diachronic history and a synchronic identity or definition.

It is time now to consider the place and importance of the Indo-European question in these studies as a whole; in doing so it will be convenient to examine each meter separately and then conclude with some more general remarks. First, the hexameter's relation to Indo-European prototypes is far from absolutely clear. Scholars seem to be able to agree on the rough outlines of the Homeric line's prehistory, so that we can avoid having to posit with Meillet (1923, 62-63) an external "Aegean" origin for the hexameter, but there is no consensus on the particulars of that history. More immediately, one can in the light of competing hypotheses about its evolution easily lose sight of the fact that the hexameter in its present form has to have been a

relatively late development. Peabody (1975, 65) makes this case, buttressed with both historical and synchronic arguments:

While the hexameter is a pattern universal in the epos, it seems not to have been a static, rigid form. Its shape was in slow but constant redefinition. At the same time that it became crystallized forever (apparently through writing and the analytic establishment of canonic norms), it seems to have been emerging from a period of relatively active change.^[15]

As far as the Homeric line as a structure in itself is concerned, then, we must temper the virtual certainty of an Indo-European ancestry with an admission of uncertainty about the particulars of the lineage and with a general conception of the line's evolution as an ongoing process that culminated rather late in the line of Homer and Hesiod. If genetic survivals are to enter the picture, they must enter subject to these conditions.^[16]

The Serbo-Croatian epic decasyllable, according to all commentators, is surprisingly archaic in structure given that it is still the verse form of the heroic songs sung by guslari in this century. Jakobson (1952, 64-66) posits a "gnomic-epic decasyllable" as the Indo-European prototype, finding parallels to the Slavic in Greek, Vedic, Iranian, and Lithuanian (see note 9 above). M. West (1973^b , 171-72), arguing that the Slavic situation is "parallel with the Vedic rather than the Greek situation,"^[17] proposes another derivation: he compares the opening four-syllable colon of the deseterac to the Indo-European protasis of variable quantities, and the second colon of six syllables to the prototype that also resulted in the Greek Aeolic reizianum:

What presents itself again, in short, is uncertainty in the particulars of derivation, although the existence of some relationship between the decasyllable and an Indo-European precursor is almost beyond question. And while the apparent archaism of the meter seems to relieve us of the problem of late structural fixation that obscures the evolution of the ancient Greek hexameter, we have still to consider the varying assignment of pitch and stress in the various Slavic vernaculars. In sum, the situation as a whole is similar to that of the hexameter: uncertainty about particulars demands caution in composing the prehistory of the deseterac (cf. Petrovic^[*] 1969, 1974). Nevertheless, it is a verse form that can be well studied analytically in the extant texts, particularly since the textual record is so much more extensive than those of the dead-language traditions.

The situation in Old English is at once more complicated conceptually and simpler from a methodological point of view. Since the emergence of stress as the primary metrical determinant has obscured the quantitative roots of Germanic cola, the possibility of confident theorizing about the genetic prehistory of the alliterative line does not present itself. In this case our problem is not an embarrassment of riches but rather an impoverishment of clear, plausible hypotheses. If we suppose the Old English half-line to have been the earlier verse-unit, one that at some later time was doubled and then knit together by alliteration, and if we further understand the stress-accent typical of the Germanic vernaculars to have replaced the long-short quantitative sequence as the distinctive metrical feature of the verse, we can see with West and Lehmann how the relative number of short unstressed syllables in the line could increase. With the modulation from quantity to stress prominence would come a corresponding modulation from dependence on to relative independence of syllabic count. This tendency toward a larger proportion of unstressed syllables must, however, have been offset to a degree in Old English by the maintenance of traditional patterns of phraseology from earlier Germanic tradition.^[18] At any rate, by the time of the first recorded Old English texts, the modulation to a stress-based meter was complete, and the genetic prehistory of the line—not to mention the relative chronology of fixation of the line in its present form—was largely lost in the transition. For this reason,

and also because our surviving sample of texts from the period is so small,^[19] I advocate special attention to a descriptive account of the meter of Beowulf .

To these specific reasons for concentrating on a descriptive comparison of the three meters may be added some more general considerations. First, the idea of tradition-dependence, developed in theory in the first two chapters, would seem to demand attention at the level both of prosody and of the formula and more complex levels of tradition. As languages and meters evolve away from their common Indo-European prototypes and continuous, variable interaction takes place between phraseology and meter, tradition-dependent systems come more and more to deserve characterization as entities in themselves. Geography, chronology, and the myriad other factors that contribute to their separate developments also generate increasing numbers of peculiarities, such that by the time the ancient and medieval traditions are committed to manuscript, the group of originally similar members has, as we have seen, grown quite dissimilar. The traditions that preserve and evolve phraseology and meter are most certainly of great age and persistence, as Lord, Georges Dumézil, and others have shown,^[20] but this prehistory should not obscure the fact that at a later date different traditions take very different forms, evolve in various ways, preserve and discard elements at all levels, and in general behave idiosyncratically. And we should be aware that the fundamental level of prosody—which must be more immediately reactive to linguistic changes than must narrative units such as typical scenes and story-patterns^[21] —is perhaps the most tradition-dependent of all structures.

A second observation on the Indo-European question and its pertinence to this comparative inquiry has to do with the real nature of a descriptive account of the three meters. In focusing primarily on the verse structure of the texts as we find them, are we condemned to the thinnest synchronic slice of the tradition? Will we, in other words, ignore important diachronic roots and settle for a superficial view of the subject? Part of the problem, I believe, lies in the very form of such questions, for the history of the hexameter is in a real sense the hexameter itself: if we pay careful attention to its synchronic structure, noting its rules and tendencies and tracking its tangible variants in pursuit of useful generalizations, we are at the same time studying at least

part of the story of how it came to be. By combining what we know about Indo-European metrics with what is ascertainable from a synchronic study, we can read the history and present reality of a metrical form—for the structures confronted in the frozen moment of the text are nothing less than the products of a diachronic process, a process that has left telltale vestiges of earlier stages in verse evolution. In this way our descriptive accounts of the hexameter, deseterac , and alliterative line can mesh with what has been said about Indo-European prosody and reach beyond the synchronic surface of the texts to their diachronic roots.