Richard Vallance

Vallance Review 45. May 2005 Historical Evolution of the Sonnet: 3B. Stylistics [1] SONNET FORMS (Evolution) PART 2 3.4.2 The “Envelope Sonnet” There’s a curious little blend of the Petrarchan and English Sonnet forms, the "envelope sonnet". An “envelope sonnet” is one in which the rhyme scheme is: abbacddcefgegf. It sports the usual 7-point rhyme scheme of the English Sonnet, while maintaining the integrity of the Petrarchan Octave, with 2 quatrains and Sestet, with 2 tercets. There is a curious cyclical quality about this method of rhyming, especially in the Octave, where the first and second quatrains are entirely self-contained. Nice little twist. The great German sonneteer, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was adept at composing brilliantly rhymed envelope sonnets in his exquisite Sonnets to Orpheus [11]. The envelope sonnet admits of variations in the rhyme schemes of the tercets in the Sestet. 3.4.3 Variety is the Spice of Life! Naturally, it was inevitable, with the passage of time and the outpouring of thousands and thousands of sonnets over the centuries, that even the rhyme schemes and sonnet forms we have already discussed would be further mixed and matched, in all sorts of permutations and combinations. And, of course, that is precisely what has happened historically. It would be superfluous to trouble ourselves with mentioning all these variants of the Petrarchan and English Sonnet forms, or any bastardized admixture of the two, but suffice it to say that, wherever there are sonneteers, they are bound to play around with the sonnet’s structure; and so they do. 3.4.4 Gerard Manley Hopkins and The Curtal Sonnet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Gerard Manley Hopkins stands almost utterly alone in the history of the sonnet as a man of his own. He was never one to espouse convention in any form whatsoever. His sonnets were characteristic for their unusual “sprung” or “tripped” rhythms, for their rather peculiar structure, and for their equally challenging thematic content, in some ways reminiscent of the sonnets of John Donne, who was also a highly religious, spiritual man. While many of Hopkin’s sonnets more or less retain the standard of 14 lines, some are caudated, and others “Curtal” [12]. The latter are, of course, curtailed, or cut short. The Curtal Sonnet is comprised of an “Octave”, which is actually a Sestet, of 6 lines, followed by the volta, and concluding with 4 1/2 lines in place of the Sestet, making for an odd-ball total of 10 1/2 lines. Needless to say, this sort of sonnet style has never caught on since, and has fallen into disuse. In fact, one is clearly given to wonder whether the whole thing was merely an experiment of sorts on Hopkin's part. This point of view may be substantiated by the fact that the poet composed two versions of the same sonnet, Pied Beauty, one of which is a relatively standard 14 liner (with sprung rhythm of course), the other of which is a curtal sonnet [17]. 3.4.5 Hopkins’ “Other” Sonnets However, you may be relieved to know that, for the most part, Gerard Manley Hopkins conformed to a variant of the Italian Sonnet, generally using the Petrarchan Octave = abbaabba, followed by a Sicilian Tercet rhyming, cdcdcd. In spite of this, his metrics were uniquely his own; few sonneteers since have attempted to emulate his sprung rhythms, which are more akin to musical counterpoint reminiscent of the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, and to the metrical stress analysis of ancient Greek and Latin poetry than they are to the “semi-natural” rhythms invoked by means of iambic pentameter. Several characteristics stand out: 1. Hopkins modelled his rhythms on the sounds of Welsh poetry or cynghaneed [13, pg. xxxii]; 2. for Hopkins, the “sound texture” of the words and phrases comprising his verses was essential to the rhythm of his poetry [13]; 3. “Hopkins made greater use than any other English poet of alliteration, assonance, internal full- and half-rhyme and… subtle vocalic scales…” [13, pp. xxxi & xxxii, italics mine]; 4. Like the ancient Greek and Roman lyricists, such as Alcman, Alcaeus and Horace, Hopkins resorted to stressing syllables metrically by length. And, like them, he would either stress syllables by nature or by position. Any true understanding of stressed metrification requires a knowledge of the use of metrics by ancient Greek and Latin poets, and is not covered in this study. 5. Hopkins’ poetic style, to use the words of W. H. Gardner, in his Introduction, is extremely “condensed and elliptical” [13, pg. xxxiv], far more so than even William Shakespeare’s in the wittiest and cleverest of his sonnets. 6. Hopkins took many liberties with English rhythms, syntax and diction, and was instrumental in modernizing the vocabulary of the sonnet, to reflect the everyday language of his day and age. This last trait is important, since so many sonneteers, even as late as the Twentieth Century, including such excellent poets as Robert Silliman Hillyer (1985-1961) [14] and George Santayana (1863-1952) [15], even though they were American poets, would have recourse to archaisms and anachronistic language in their "modern" sonnets. We shall return to this question in the next Section. 4. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose! (The more things change, the more they stay the same). 3.4.6 A Funny Little Twist: Rupert Brooke In the early Twentieth Century, a few sonneteers, most notably Rupert Brooke, whose sonnets also flirted with the frontier of thematics, by introducing such ghastly subjects as the horrors of all out World War [16], experimented further with the sonnet form, with deliberate comic results. Brooke even composed a few reversed sonnets, in which the rhyming couplet starts the poem and the rest follows, exactly backwards! Of course, he was just fooling around. The result is both entertaining and amusing. You may read his light-hearted sonnet, “Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights” here, Minstrels [589] Sonnet Reversed. Actually, as far as I am concerned, the Reverse Sonnet sounds like great fun; I should like to try my own hand at it someday. 3.4.7 The Acrostic Sonnet Historically, there have been a few attempts at a real novelty, the Acrostic Sonnet, in which the first letter of each verse of the sonnet adds up through the 14 lines to form a complete word, as you read down the left hand side of the sonnet. An Acrostic Sonnet can be cast in a traditional format, such as the Petrarchan or Shakespearian, or any other variant thereof. 3.4.8 The Macaronic-Acrostic Sonnet Now, things are getting downright challenging! Macaronic verse is poetry composed in more than one language. Hence, a macaronic-acrostic sonnet is an acrostic sonnet written, for instance, in both English and French. For an example of a macaronic-acrostic sonnet, please refer to Richard Vallance’s C-A-N-A-D-I-A-N-S-O-N-N-E-T, the fifth sonnet in Chapter 2, Sunlit Portages of his book, Canadian Spirit Voices (ISBN 1-878431-44-7). In this sonnet, the lines alternate in English and French. This sonnet is republished in the Resident Poets section of the curreent issue of Poetry Life & Times (May, 2005). 3.4.9 Twenty-First Century Developments: The Vanishing and the Expanding Sonnet Vanishing Sonnet: Yet another experiment in the sonnet at the outset of the Third Millennium is the Vanishing Sonnet, in which the first verse has fourteen syllables, and each successive verse has one less syllable than the preceding, such that by the time we reach the 14th. verse, there is only one syllable. The trick to composing such a sonnet is to try and maintain a quasi-iambic metre throughout, although lines with odd numbers of syllables will either be catalectic, in which the final foot is apocopated (i.e. a half foot), or hypercatalectic, in which the final foot has one syllable extra. John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) "Echo and Narcissus" (1903) Example of a Vanishing Sonnet Narcissus Narcissus was and a dream is still a strange reflection Éperdu *, where’s rehearsal? Who’s found his own splendour So entrancing he, more elegantly than she, His sister or his mistress ever was, wore A strange confession in his wherefore eyes Reflected in some pond where he’s dreamt Of nothing but the Self, no-one Else, else he lose his intent To quite surpass the Sun, As he might well have Done, had he not Forgotten Who was This? * “Éperdu” is French for “lost”, by which we mean, “mentally lost”, “distracted”, “bewildered, or “at loose ends” © Richard Vallance, 2001 Expanding Sonnet: The diametric opposite of the Vanishing Sonnet is the Expanding Sonnet, in which the first verse has one syllable, the second verse is a monometer or single foot, and the sonnet progresses through the remaining 12 verses to end with 14 syllables in the final verse. Now, it is conceivable that a skilled sonneteer could compose first a vanishing, followed by a mirror-image, gemini or Janus-like expanding sonnet, or vice versa. Such writing would require great skill and inspiration on the part of the sonneteer. Personally, I have never tried mirror-imaging sonnets, though someday I probably shall. For an example of an Expanding Sonnet, see "May Day! May Day!" Canadian Spirit Voices. As I have never tried my hand at mirror-imaging, these two particular sonnets are not complimentary. This sonnet is also republished in the Resident Poets section of the current issue of Poetry Life & Times (May, 2005). 3.5 Conclusion: So What Are Stylistics? A sonnet’s stylistics is comprised of the following elements: 1. its form, Petrarchan, English, or any variant thereof, or any other sonnet form the sonneteer chooses to espouse; 2. its rhyme scheme, which is generally a corollary of 1. above; or alternatively, its lack of rhyme. The Twentieth Century Nobel Prize winning Spanish sonneteer, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), did not rhyme his sonnets in his passionate blank verse collection, 100 Love Sonnets = Cien Sonetos de amor [bibliography, B62]. They are not less inspired or brilliant for that. 3. the use of internal rhyme, assonance and alliteration, which some of the more stylized Renaissance, Cavalier and Romantic poets lean towards, along with Gerard Manley Hopkins; 4. its metre, whether Italian, Alexandrine, (iambic) pentameter, tetrameter (for more dramatic effect) or even hexameter (which Edmund Spenser often used), “sprung rhythm” in the manner of Gerard Manley Hopkins, or variations on rhythm based on trochees (stressed, unstressed beat per foot= reversed iamb), anapests (two unstressed, one stressed beat per foot) or spondee (two successive accented syllables = one foot); 5. Innovation, however minor (or major) is introduced into the sonnet’s structure, as each historical era imperceptively merges into the next. Thus, there are subtle, yet important structural differences between Italian, French and early English Petrarchan sonnets; between the Spenserian and Shakespearian versions of the English Sonnet; between the High Renaissance English Sonnets of William Shakespeare, Michael Drayton and Samuel Daniel, and those of the metaphysical poets such as John Donne and John Milton; between the metaphysical sonneteers and their Cavalier opponent camp; between the Romantics and Victorians, and so on. 6. A sonnet’s thematic content cannot be properly separated from its form, without doing harm to both. Consider this: the structural integrity of the Italianate and High Renaissance French and English Sonnet all depend on its thematic integrity and vice versa. You cannot have one without the other. Francesco Petrarch’s, Joachim du Bellay’s, Pierre de Ronsard’s, Wyatt’s, Spenser’s and William Shakespeare’s sonnets all depend on the frequent iteration of ancient mythological allegories and imagery, on courtly conceits and on the Renaissance code of love to bolster their structural integrity, which in turn is buttressed by the elegance of the Petrarchan or English Sonnet form itself. We shall return to this issue one last time in Section 5. Thematics and Athematics. Coming next month, June, 2005, Vallance Review 46 Historical Evolution of the Sonnet: 4A. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Tradition Persists In Vallance Review 46 (June 2005), we'll take a nice welcome break from all these intensive research reviews of the sonnet. Some of you may already be thinking, “This historical review is getting a little too serious for my taste.” I am very much inclined to agree, so next month why don’t we sit back in our easy chairs, arm chairs, sofas, lawn chairs, patio chairs, pillows, bolsters, at the picnic table or on the beach, or what have you, and just — well, simply read a few of the world’s finely crafted sonnets! That’s not such a bad idea, I expect you’ll agree. © by Richard Vallance 2003 & April 25 2005 REFERENCES & NOTES: [1]  This review is the second of two parts (3A, April 2005 and 3B, May 2005) and is a reprint, with some minor revisions and updating, of Chapter 12, Part 3a (htm rv12-3a), "The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet: Part 3, Stylistics" in: Vallance, Richard.  Canadian Spirit Voices.  Las Vegas, NV.: Kedco Studios, © 2003.  ISBN 1-878431-44-7 The rest of the REFERENCES & NOTES in Vallance Review 45, May 2005, are a continuation of the REFERENCES & NOTES from Vallance Review 44, April 2005, beginning with [11]. [11] The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Hunter ©. The English translations of Rilke’s sonnets adhere to Rilke’s use of interlaced rhymes in his envelope sonnets. Consider, for instance, Hunter’s translation of Rilke’s Sonnet 2, “Something akin to a maiden strayed”, at this WEB Site. [12] Dictionary.com. "Curtal" Dictionary.com defines “curtal” as “(something) cut short or docked”. The adjective is obsolete, and derives from Old French, courtault for modern French, court. [13] For an indepth analysis of the rhythmic and metrical structure of Gerard Manley Hopkin’s verse and of his sonnets, see Bibliography [B27], Hopkins, Gerard Manley.   Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Introduction. IV. pp. xxxi-xxxvi. This is a brilliantly insightful essay into Hopkin’s astonishing metrical skills. [14] The Sonnet Board. Robert Silliman Hillyer [15] The Sonnet Board. George Santayana [16] Prior to Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and the other "War Poets" of the early Twentieth Century, only a few sonneteers had dared broach the subject, notably John Milton and a few of the Romantics, such as John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. We shall discuss this further in Section 5. Thematics and Athematics. [17] You may view both of the versions of Hopkin's sonnet, "Pied Beauty", at these sites: 17.1 For the "regular" sonnet, go to the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online. Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Pied Beauty" 17.2 For the curtal sonnet version, please refer to the following article by James Fenton, in the Guardian (September 28th., 2002), The patriarch of Petrarchan sonnets.  (Hopkin’s curtal sonnet version of this poem is near the end of the review. The reviewer apparently shares some of my reservations about this unusual sonnet form.) Richard Vallance is the author of: Canadian Federation of Poets: Poetry Lessons: Lesson & Exercise - Week 18 SONNETS in The Canadian Federation of Poets weekly Poetry Progress Lessons & Exercises series The Vallance Review is frequently cited in our Canadian sonnet journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1706-4524. SONNETTO POESIA is published quarterly & is advertised on the front page of the current issue of Poetry Life and Times. If you wish to subscribe to SONNETTO POESIA, you may contact the editor, Richard Vallance. To read the earlier e-zine back issues, you may visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here: SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4524

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