Ukrainian stress

[Olga Meerson]

The great master in Russian today (well, almost today) is Vysotsky: Chut' pomEdlennee, koni, chut' pomEdlenneE...Do chto-to koni mne popalis' priverEdlivyE. Or even better, the internal secondary rhymes in "Utrenniaia gimnastika", e.g., "Vypolniajte pravil'no dviZHENIIA; proch' vliianiia IZVNE, privykaijte k noVIZNE, vzdox glubokij do INZNE--moZHENIIA"... "da ne bud'te mrachnymi i xmURYMI; esli ochen' vam nejMETSIA, obtirajtes', chem priDETSIA, vodnymi zajmites' PROTSE--DURAMI". In both examples (there are more in the song), the last word rhymes with both the odd and the even lines, being a combination of both rhymes phonetically. Another genius of stress-shifts in songs that may be ascribed to alcoholism by a condescending analyst. (All of these may be ascribed to alcoholism, depending on the analyst's degree of condescension--the genius, the stress-shifts, or the songs produced)  :)

As for stress shifts as a pattern in Russian poetry, it is interesting to check what can be done with, and what actually was done to, stresses to regularize meter in Tiutchev. My favourite one is "Posledniaia liubov'", "amended" by the publisher benevolently and carelessly. The guy (Turgenev by name, I believe?) was sincerely believing that he was doing Tiutchev a favour, as much as Rimsky-Korsakov believed so about Mussorgsky's orchestrations and the Aksakovs, about Gogol's stylistic polishings as he read Dead Souls in their house.

----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere <darancourlaferriere at COMCAST.NET>
Date: Saturday, May 3, 2008 1:49 am
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ukrainian stress

> Dear Paul,
> I don't recall who performed that song, but I can hear it in my 
> head,  
> and I hear a distinct word stress on that last syllable - "garDEN." 
>  
> And when I sing it aloud the stress is there too.
> 
> As I look at your notation, I see that we may have different ideas 
> of  
> what a "foot" is.  Do you perhaps have in mind "measure" instead of 
> 
> "foot?"  In any case, Will Ryan has offered more examples, and the  
> stress shifts there are very deliberate.  But note that they are 
> all  
> at the end of the line.  This is like Russian, where there is a  
> requirement that the final ictus be fulfilled (the "law of the end 
> of  
> the line" - James Bailey).  It seems, then, that in English as in  
> Russian, the law of the end of the line trumps even phonemic stress 
> 
> placement.  But in Russian I have found this happening elsewhere 
> than  
> in the final foot as well (there are many complications).
> 
> Once upon a time I worked out this and related metrical issues in  
> great detail (please see various items on the web site).  I do  
> remember that the 20 native speakers in one study each grew  
> increasingly grumpy as we moved through the 28 poetry selections 
> where  
> in half the cases a pronunciation choice HAD to be made between  
> violating word stress or violating the metrical rhythm.  And it is  
> curious that the three published poets (Sasha Sokolov, Aleksei  
> Tsvetkov, Eduard Limonov) shifted word stress significantly more 
> often  
> than did the rest of the sample (p less than .025 on Mann-Whitney U 
> 
> test).
> 
> All of which illustrates Roman Jakobson's 1923 thesis that poetic 
> form  
> is "organized violence" inflicted upon language.
> 
> Cheers to the list.
> 
> http://Rancour-Laferriere.com
> 
> 
> 
> On May 2, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
> 
> > Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
> >
> >> Colleagues -
> >> It happens in English songs too, e.g. -
> >> "I never promised you a rose garDEN."
> >
> > I've never heard it stressed that way. I've only heard
> > 	.-.-.-.- -.
> > (note that "rose" occupies an entire foot -- either as a long  
> > syllable or as a short one with a following rest).
> >
> > Which performer do you have in mind?
> >
> > -- 
> > War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> > --
> > Paul B. Gallagher
> > pbg translations, inc.
> > "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> > http://pbg-translations.com
> >
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