Inner Metric

Caesura

All commentators on the deseterac add to the decasyllabic constraint a regularly recurring caesura between the fourth and fifth syllables, yielding two cola of four and six syllables each:

As this example illustrates, no matter what the syntactic form of the line, the word-break will come at precisely the same place in each decasyllable.^[74] In fact, even when a line is hypermetric or hypometric, one or both of the two cola will be preserved, as in the following instances discussed above:

From a practical standpoint, the caesura is never bridged in the deseterac . Caesura placement and colon formation are constant throughout the sample of more than five thousand lines and show even greater stability, as these two lines help to prove, than syllabicity.

Before moving on to describe the nature of each colon or hemistich, let us make two related theoretical points. First, it will be recalled that the Homeric hexameter exhibited three caesuras, a highly regular mid-line break at two possible positions (B1 and B2, 99 percent) and two somewhat less frequent breaks within the half-line, each of which could also occur at either of two

positions (A1 and A2, 90 percent; C1 and C2, 90 percent). Only by allowing two slots for each caesura do we attain such high percentages, but this controlled variation is to be expected in a verse form in which dactylic-spondaic substitution affects metrical shape so strongly. The point is that the hexameter has three movable caesuras and a correspondingly complex assortment of colon-types; the deseterac , in contrast, with its more focused syllabicity and the absolutely regular placement of its single caesura, has only two possible colon-types: the four- and six-syllable increments that together constitute a whole stich. Given this idiosyncratic situation (both traditions exhibit colon formation but the repertoire of types in Serbo-Croatian epic is far less elaborate), it behooves us to consider the patterns within the four- and six-syllable increments, for within the remarkable regularity of syllable count, caesura, and colon formation, the deseterac allows and even promotes a complicated display of traditional word-craft.

At the foundation of the singer's art, from both an evolutionary and a performance-oriented standpoint, lies the Indo-European principle of right justification. Much as in the hexameter, this increasing metrical (and therefore phraseological) conservatism as the line progresses from the beginning of a unit toward the end governs the shape of prosody and diction. But just as the rule took a tradition-dependent form in the hexameter—one resulting, for example, in varying hemistich and colon lengths—so it takes another series of forms in the deseterac . Indeed, right justification emerges as the principle behind the idiosyncratic texture of both cola, each with its own appreciable collection of individual features. We can trace the synchronic designs created by this diachronic pattern in the textual record of the Stolac songs.

Colon 2 and The Shape of The verse

Perhaps the most obvious evidence of right justification is the asymmetry of the decasyllable. As in the hexameter, the second hemistich is longer than the first, leading to a correspondingly greater metrical and phraseological stability in the latter part of the line. As a first approximation, we may recall Jakobson's (1952, 25) demonstration of the "quantitative close" over the last four syllables of the deseterac : "An accented short is avoided in the penult (ninth) syllable, and an accented long practically never occurs in the two antepenults (eighth and seventh syllables)." Schematically, then, the close follows this sequence:

The quantitative close thus governs the placement of words to some extent,

especially by inviting a long syllable in position 9, far the heaviest stress in the deseterac . So strong is this penultimate ictus that the poet composing in performance will often stress a lexically short syllable in the ninth position, in which case metrical ictus momentarily outweighs the rules of accent.^[75] The singer's rhythm and vocal melody emphasize the quantitative close, and the demands of performance override uncontextualized lexical values. The quantitative close and its focus on the ninth-syllable ictus are important features of the deseterac , and they offer one example of the operation of right justification in the prosody and its constraints on verse-making in the decasyllable.

Just as the longer second colon becomes firmer in its distribution of quantities toward the end of the unit, so the shorter first colon also reveals a looser-to-firmer progression of quantities from beginning to end. Although the effect of right justification is, logically enough, less pronounced in the shorter hemistich, we still observe the heaviest performance stress on the third syllable,^[76] followed by a complete lack of ictus on syllable 4. All in all, the close of the first hemistich is to an extent a mirror of line closure, with syllables 3-4 and 9-10 serving as boundaries:

We may now correlate these observations with Petrovic's^[*] figures on coincidence of lexical accent and metrical position, and note that the stress on syllables in positions 3 and 9 stems not necessarily from a trochaic pentameter tendency but from the Indo-European rule of right justification as imaged in the tradition-dependent Serbo-Croatian deseterac . Absolutely consistently in the rhythm and melody of sung performance (Lord 1960, 37-38), and with reasonable regularity in the verbal component regulated by the prosody (see Petrovic^[*] figures above, p. 87), the third and ninth syllables bear the strongest performance stress of any positions in the line, while stress is forbidden in the fourth and tenth syllables. We may thus consider each colon, as well as the entire line, to have a recurrent closing cadence of long-short and stressed-unstressed.^[77]

Corresponding to these dosing cadences, and in accord with the demands of

right justification, we find a looser distribution of quantities at the opening of each colon. These beginnings of units provide for rhythmic (and phraseological) variation, and for this as well as additional reasons to be discussed later in this chapter, the first and fifth syllables are thus the primary sites for stressed monosyllables. We may recall, for instance, that Petrovic's^[*] figures reveal the highest coincidence of word-accent and position at syllables t and 5. For the moment, it is enough to remark that the third and ninth syllables do not usually harbor these monosyllables because to do so would violate the bridges at 3-4 and 9-10.^[78] Schematically, then, we expect the configuration

Likewise, any initially accented word beginning either of the two cola will bear metrical ictus in positions 1 and 5. When we add to these lexical considerations the tendency of the guslar's metrical stress to fall at the onset of units in the deseterac , the following overall pattern emerges:

That is, there exist four primary sites for ictus, both in the prosody and in the phraseology that it helps to determine: positions 1, 3, 5, and 9. Taken as a group, all four sites are important to deseterac prosody and, as we shall see, affect phraseology in significant ways; all four also derive from the fundamental principle of right justification.

Before moving on to examine some specific instances of these general rules and to promote further articulation of the rough sketch that they assist in providing, we should consider what remains after these six positions, four stressed and two unstressed, are described. It may come as no surprise that the second syllable, for instance, shows no strong tendency toward a particular prosodic value. Syllables 6 through 8 reveal a similar ambiguity, as Petrovic^[*] reminded us and as Jakobson in defining his quantitative close in part illustrated. These four positions are not specifically defined in the deseterac ; to put the same matter another way, they allow for variation much more readily than do the six syllabic positions at either end of the two cola.

Perhaps we can now see how the hypothesis of a trochaic pentameter came to be, and also how oblique such a concept is to the true nature of the verse

form. With stress and length tending to fall on syllables 1, 3, 5, and 9, and with off-beats and shortness coinciding absolutely regularly with 4 and 10, metrists were almost able to fit the deseterac into a Greco-Latin quantitative mold. If positions 2, 6, 8, and particularly 7 did not agree with the classical model, the "aberrations" at these points could be explained away by terming the rhythmic pattern a tendency instead of a rule. In fact, the notion of trochaic pentameter obscures the quantitative shape of the decasyllable, designating as it does a line of five stressed-unstressed doublets. The deseterac consists of ten syllables, to be sure, but they are divided asymmetrically into two cola of four and six syllables each, with each colon characterized by stress placement at particular positions. Right justification has provided each hemistich with a closing cadence, and an initial stress has likewise emerged in the relatively loose sequence of quantities that begins each unit. Greco-Roman models aside, the deseterac takes its own tradition-dependent form.

In addition to the closing cadence and initial stress in each hemistich, right justification provides the second colon with two complementary distribution rules. The first entails the sequence of words according to their syllabic length and prescribes that longer words follow shorter ones, the more extensive words characteristically appearing at the ends of cola and lines.^[79] The second and interdependent rule calls for initially accented disyllables, of the shape s^[*] s^[*] , to seek the ninth and tenth positions;^[80] this sorting, which answers both the penultimate ictus and zeugrna requirements, can, but does not necessarily, override the first distribution rule. To illustrate, consider these examples of the shorter-before-longer constraint in colon 2:

As long as the disyllable has an initial short vowel, the first rule is the arbiter of placement in the longer hemistich. When a disyllable with a long stem

vowel is involved, however, the shorter-longer order may be reversed under the influence of the ninth syllable and closing cadence.

It is precisely the firmness of the colon- and line-ending cadence that attracts the initially accented disyllable and causes the 4 + 2 distribution. Both the "normal" shorter-longer order and the reversal as a result of the attraction of ninth-syllable ictus are tradition-dependent realizations of the principle of right justification.

To restate this pair of distribution rules in properly ordered sequence, we can say that in the second hemistich a syllabically longer word will always follow a syllabically shorter word unless the shorter word is an initially accented disyllable, in which case the order may be (but is not always) reversed. Instances of non-reversal do occur:

—so it will prove most accurate to conceive of the ninth-syllable exclusion as a possible rather than certain reversal of the customary order. A corollary to these two rules will further illustrate their interdependence and solve the problem of sequence with syllabically equal words. If two three-syllable words constitute the second colon, leaving nothing to choose between them on the basis of extent alone, then the one with an accented medial syllable will be favored in final position:

The penultimate ictus in the deseterac attracts the medially accented trisyllable,^[81] just as it does the initially stressed disyllable:

This combination of distribution rules, both deriving from right justification in the inner metric of the deseterac , yields for our 5,107-line sample the frequencies of principal metrical types in the second colon shown in table 10.^[82] As a generalization, we can say that shorter-longer sequence is preferred in the second hemistich of the decasyllable, with approximately an equal number of ninth-syllable reversals and symmetrical (3/3) cola. These distributional rules override normal prose word order when the two come into conflict, although in many cases there is no conflict and customary word order is maintained.^[83] The major point is that the inner metric of colon 2 reveals a texture ultimately attributable to right justification but also amounts to a tradition-dependent set of constraints.

This characteristic texture becomes ever more apparent as we examine the distribution of elements in colon 2 more finely. Proclitics, such as prepositions, the conjunctions i (and), a (and, but), and ni (neither, nor), and the negative particle ne , are unaccented and cannot be treated metrically or grammatically as single words. From a prosodic viewpoint, a proclitic joins with the word that follows to form an accented unit within the colon and line. Thus the following examples of two-element second hemistichs:

In the syllabically more spacious second colon this proclitic binding , as I shall call it, participates most often in noun doublets, noun-adjective pairs, longer (often prefixed) verbs, and prepositional phrases. Since the two-word units formed by this process of amalgamation are metrically equivalent to one-

element units of the same syllabic extent, we may include the proclitic (p ) groups with their single-word counterparts in the order shown in table II.^[84] It is worth noting that the proclitic pattern plays a particularly significant role in both the 4 + 2 and the 3 + 3 configurations, accounting in each case for up to half of the examples located, and further that these three sequences taken together make up approximately 80 percent of all second hemistichs in the 5,107-line sample.^[85]

After these major colon-patterns are recognized, the remainder of our sample breaks down into sparsely populated and for the most part statistically unimportant categories. The only category worth tabulating here is that involving three two-syllable words (2/2/2), a sequence that follows the expectable rule of initially accented disyllables in final position and in which the pattern distribution is reasonably consistent.^[86]

Likewise, enclitic binding , by which an unaccented word "inclines" on a preceding accented word to form a grammatical and prosodic group, proves statistically insignificant, not sufficiently affecting any one pattern to merit categorical analysis. Of descriptive importance, however, arc the facts that these accentless elements (1) usually follow the word order of the spoken language, (2) almost never occupy the fifth position (at the beginning of the second hemistich), since this placement would amount to a bridged caesura, and (3) are much rarer in the second than in the first colon.^[87] Whereas the

process of proclitic binding, the joining of an unaccented word to what follows it, plays a relatively important role in pattern distribution throughout the line, that of enclitic binding is primarily confined to the first hemistich.

Colon 1

In general, the role played by proclitic and enclitic binding reflects the relative lack of prosodic and phraseological fixity of the first as opposed to the second colon. Partly because its brevity precludes setting up regular sequences of nouns and noun-adjective combinations, the opening hemistich reveals a much higher degree of pliability, both in its accommodation of unaccented words and in the large number of lightly populated categories or sequences of elements. This flexibility is a typical manifestation of fight justification in the line as a whole, the first hemistich being more loosely organized than the second. At the level of the colon, we may expect the first four-syllable unit to manifest some evidence of greater firmness or regularity toward its end, much as the six-syllable segment showed above. And in fact, the prominence of the first- and third-syllable ictus is, as mentioned earlier, a sign of right justification.

As an initial approximation of the most important patterns, consider the distribution of the three most frequently occurring (table 12).^[88]

The most common pattern is a balanced one of two disyllables which follows the penultimate ictus rule in its internal arrangement (svlaci ), while the second and third both consist of what Maretic^[*] calls neprave cetvorosloznice , "facsimile tetrasyllables," formed by two words, one of which is unaccented. Neither of these accentual groups owes its formation to right justification, either by the shorter-before-longer or the penultimate ictus constraints that proved so important in the second hemistich. On the basis of these most heavily represented categories, then, we derive very little evidence of right justification apart from the tendency toward penultimate ictus and the very variability of inner metric patterns.

It is important to notice from the start that this flexibility promotes two different but complementary trends in colon formation. The more obvious one will amount to a synchronic freedom for the composing poet, affording him a section of the line that will remain open, for example, to syntactic adjustments.^[89] This is not to say that formulaic structure will weaken or lapse at line-beginning, but, in terms widely used in current scholarship, that verbal repetition is likely to be more systemic than verbatim. The less obvious result of first-colon variability, a corollary to the former trend, will be greater differences in prosodic structures from one text to another and from one singer to another. If this initial section of the line is more open to individual or idiolectal habits of composition, in opposition to the greater regularity of the second-colon inner metric as imaged in its dependence on a few well-represented patterns, then the first hemistich must also prove the site for a degree of prosodic chauvinism. We see some evidence of this latter trend toward individual habits of composition in the figure for the 2/2 balanced pattern over the four texts.^[90] With the first colon revealing a greater degree of flexibility, we expect and indeed find a correspondingly greater degree of individuality in prosodic structures. As an example of this individuality, consider table 13, which displays word-types that begin the first hemistich. Some of the percentages most divergent from the averages, notably occurring only in texts C and D, are italicized.