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AN ANSWER TO A CRITICISM* Milford accepts the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind that is an absurdity. I shall go on pronouncing the y of frosty as short whether it has two consonants after it or only one or none; it remains frosty whether it is a frosty scalp or forsly top or a frosty anything. In no case have I pronounced it or could I consent to pronounce it as frostee. My hexameters are intended to be read naturally as one would read any English sentence. But if you admit a short syllable to be long whenever there are two consonants after it, then Bridges’ scansions are perfectly justified. Milford does not accept that conclusion ; he says Bridges’ scansions are an absurdity. But he bases this on his idea that quantitative length does not count in English verse. It is intonation that makes the metre, he says, high tones or low tones—not longs and shorts, and stress is there of the greatest importance. On that ground he refuses to discuss my idea of weight or dwelling of the voice or admit quantity or anything else but tone as determinative of the metre and declares that there is no such thing as metrical length. Perhaps also that is the reason why he counts frosty as a spondee before scalp ; he thinks that it causes it to be intoned in a different way. I don’t see how it does that ; for my part, I intone it just the same before top as before scalp. The ordinary theory is, I believe, that the sc of scalp acts as a sort of stile (because of the two consonants) which you take time to cross, so that ty must be considered as long because of this delay of the voice, while the t of top is merely a line across the path which gives no trouble. I don’t see it like that ; at most, scalp is a slightly longer word than top and that affects perhaps the rhythm of the line but not the metre ; it cannot lengthen the preceding syllable so as to turn a trochee into a spondee. Sanskrit quantization is irrelevant here (it is the same as Latin or Greek in this respect), for both Milford and
* Apropos Sri Aurobindo’s
Ahana, a poem in rhymed hexameters , an English critic made some
comments on the poet’s system of "true English Quantity". Sri Aurobindo examined
them in this letter replying to a disciple’s queries. Page-176 I agree that the classical quantitative conventions are not reproducible in English : we both spew out Bridges’ eccentric rhythms. This answers also your question as to what Milford means by ‘fundamental confusion’ regarding aridity. He refuses to accept the idea of metrical length. But I am concerned with metrical as well as natural vowel quantities. My theory is that natural length in English depends, or can depend, on the dwelling of the voice giving metrical value or weight to the syllable ; in quantitative verse one has to take account of all such dwelling or weight of the voice, both weight by ictus (stress) and weight by prolongation of the voice (ordinary syllabic length) ; the two are different, but for metrical purposes in a quantitative verse can rank as of equal value. I do not say that stress turns a short vowel into a long one. Milford does not take the trouble to understand my theory—he ignores the importance I give to modulations and treats critics and antibacchii and molossi as if they were dactyls ; he ignores my objection to stressing short insignificant words like and, with, but, the—and thinks that I do that everywhere, which would be to ignore my theory. In fact I have scrupulously applied my theory in every detail of my practice. Take, for instance (Ahana, p. 141*), Art thou not heaven-bound even as I with the earth? Hast thou ended.. . Here art is long by natural quantity though unstressed, which disproves Milford’s criticism that in practice I never put an unstressed long as the first syllable of a dactylic foot or spondee, as I should do by my theory. I don’t do it often because normally in English rhythm stress bears the foot —a fact to which I have given full emphasis in my theory. That is the reason why I condemn the Bridge Sean disregard of stress in the rhythm, —still I do it occasionally whenever it can come in quite naturally.1 My
* The page-numbers refer to Collected Poems and Plays,
1 E.g.
Opening tribrachs are very frequent in my hexameter. Cf,
Ahana, p, 142: In the hard | reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at even, or p. 154 (two anapaest) : Yet survives | bliss in the rhythm of our heart-beats, yet is ‘there | wonder, or again p. 157 :
And we go | stumbling, maddened and thrilled to his dreadful embraces, or in my poem
Ilion: Page-177 quantitative system, as I have shown at great length, is based on the natural movement of the English tongue, the same in prose and poetry, not on any artificial theory. 24-12-1942
And the first | Argive fell slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches. There are even opening amphibrach here and there. Cf. Ahana, Illuminations, trance-seeds of silence, flowers of musing. Page-178 |