Lecture
The concept of versification (otherwise versification theory) is used in two senses:
the study of the principles of the poetic organization of speech — the theory of verse; that is, as a way of organizing the sound structure of speech, in which speech is divided into verse and prose.
in a more precise sense, the specific set of features of the organization of poetic speech, the elements underlying a particular verse system.
Syllabic versification. Syllabic verse is a tonic verse in which the number of syllables in a line and the position of certain stresses (at the end and in the middle of the line) is fixed. The remaining stresses (at the beginning of each hemistich) are not fixed and may fall on various syllables. Because of this, the versification of languages with stress fixed at a particular position (on the last syllable of a word in French verse, on the penultimate syllable in Polish, etc.) tends toward syllabic verse, whose fixed stresses at the endings of hemistichs coincide with the fixed word stresses of those languages.
The scheme of syllabic verse will therefore differ from the scheme of tonic verse in that a construction of the type «×′ ×′» at the beginning of a hemistich or line will conclude with a stress already on a fixed syllable, for example in the Alexandrine — on the 6th and 12th syllables. The limited number of combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables preceding the fixed final syllable results in syllabic verse creating more or less stable configurations of stressed and unstressed syllables, giving the line a particular rhythmic character. (In the Alexandrine there are 36 such basic configurations in terms of the relation of stressed to unstressed syllables; in the Russian 13-syllable line — 12 in the first hemistich, 5 in the second.) The alternation of such commensurate yet at the same time varied lines is what creates the rhythmic expressiveness of syllabic verse.
Song-tonic verse. A distinctive feature of versification is the song-tonic system, which arose in oral folk art (such verses have no rhyme; they are "blank" or "white" verse). Here the vocal melody dominates, seemingly disregarding the word stresses of speech and imposing on it its own accents, unusual for it. From this follow two properties of song-tonic verses: first, in performance, ordinary word stresses are not placed on certain independently meaningful words if they do not coincide with the accents of the vocal melody itself; second, at the end of a line, the constant accent (the stronger rhythmic stress that arises on the last word of each verse, followed by a rhythmic pause) always falls on the last syllable of the verse, which often has no speech, no word stress. Musical rhythm also reflects a second property of song-tonic verses — the last syllable is always lengthened and rhythmically accented, regardless of its position in the bar. Thus, in the last words of a verse two accents result — on the penultimate syllable (word stress) and on the last syllable. The variable meter of the chorus is due not only to the tradition of folk music but also to the complex verse form called DOLNIKI, in which two- and three-syllable meters are combined.
Versification (Gr. stichos — row, line), or versification theory (Lat. versus — verse, versicle), could hardly be defined simply as the composing of verse lines, the assembling of a poetic text, in particular a strophic one, out of them. A more pressing question is different: not to compose the text out of lines (verses), but to compose the verse line — out of what? Here the very word slozhit'-slozhenie (to compose-composition) — with the root slog/slozh — seems to suggest: out of syllables. Verse by its very nature, as a rule, is not indifferent to the syllable; it prescribes for it one or another form of "behavior" within the line. If a prose writer shows a lack of indifference to the syllable — that means he resembles a versifier in some essential respect. And conversely: if a poet is indifferent or almost indifferent to the syllable — that means he has not moved too far from a prose writer. In both cases the opposition verse/prose weakens.
Syllabo-tonic verse, in which a certain order is prescribed in the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables — with certain permissible deviations from this order. If poetry were exhausted by syllabics, syllabo-tonics, and tonics, we would be entitled to insist that it — unlike prose — is a kind of "flight together" (a play on the etymological sense of composition as things "flying together" into unity).
The syllabo-tonic system of versification is a system of syllable-stress versification. It includes two rhythm-forming factors — the syllable and the stress — and presupposes a regular alternation of fragments of text with an equal number of syllables, among which stressed syllables alternate with unstressed ones in a certain regular manner. It is within this system that the greater part of Russian verse is written.
Such an understanding is in no way contradicted by an appeal to the experience of ancient versification, where the so-called "quantitative" system of versification prevailed. There, syllables were opposed not by stressed/unstressed, as in Russian verse, but by long/short. Long and short syllables alternated in a certain order. Greater or lesser length is called the "quantity of the syllable" (not to be confused with the "number of syllables" in a verse — these are entirely different things!). Be that as it may, ancient Greek and ancient Roman poets worked with the syllable, organizing the verse line in strict accordance with its features suited to that purpose. That is, this too is "syllable-writing," as is everything connected with the reckoning of syllables in versification, where "strong" and "weak" syllables, stressed and unstressed, syllables higher and lower in tone, longer and shorter, and so on, interact in an orderly way.
Tonic versification. The simplest form of the accentual system is tonic verse, in which the commensurability of lines (rhythmic units) is based on a more or less constant preservation in each line of a certain number of stresses with a variable number of unstressed syllables (both in the line as a whole and between stressed syllables). An equal number of stresses in each line may not be observed in practice, but this does not change the rhythmic pattern. In its simplest form, tonic verse can be represented by the scheme: «×′ ×′ ×′», where «′» is a stressed syllable and «×» is a variable number of unstressed syllables. The rhythm of the line is determined by the number of stresses in it: three-stress, four-stress, and so on. Tonic verse is very widespread in the versification of the ancient Germanic languages (Old Germanic alliterative verse).
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