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The Folk Meter of Lermontov's Poem "Pesnja pro kupca Kalasnikova ... "
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The Folk Meter of Lermontov's Poem "Pesnja pro kupca Kalasnikova..." James Bailey Abstract. This article attempts to show that Lermontov's poem is derived from two-stress accentual folk verse and not from epic verse. Toward the end of the eighteenth century and during the first part of the nineteenth century, Russian literary poets often wrote poems in the style of folk songs and imitated the rhythms of folk verse. Puskin's "Pesni zapadnyx slavjan" (1834) and Lermontov's "Pesnja pro kupca Kalasnikova... " (1837) represent two of the most well-known efforts of literary poets to duplicate folk verse in this periodl Although the rhythm of Puskin's songs has been studied extensively, that of Lermontov's poem has attracted less attention. Puskin's songs tend to contain ten syllables in the lines, have an unrhymed one-syllable or feminine ending, and basically consist of three-stress lines which often correspond to anapest trimeter or trochaic pentameter2 The rhythm of Lermontov's poem has been explained in various ways. Zirmunskij (1975: 221-23) considers that the work, which has an unrhymed two-syllable or dactylic ending, is composed in three-stress accentual verse derived from epic verse (bylil1l1yj stix). Such an interpretation reflects the close association of Lermontov's poem with the language, motifs, and themes of Russian epics. However, Stokmar (1941: 327, 343) points out that both two- and three-stress lines occur and concludes that no prototype exists for the rhythm in Lermontov's work. Ar~uskov (1929: 48) and Kvjatkovskij (1963: 70) consider that the poem is written in two-stress accentual verse3 1 For surveys of literary poems imitating the style and verse of folk songs in this period, and for the folklore sources of Lermontov's "Pesnja," see Cicerov (1959), Davidovskij (1931), Mendel'son (1914), Stokmar (1941), and Vacuro (1976). 2 For studies of the rhythm in Puskin's songs, see Bobrov (1964, 1968), Gasparov (1997: 115-18), Kolmogorov (1966), Tomasevskij (1929), and Trubeckoj (1987). 3 See also Bobrov (1968: 71-75) and Gasparov (1997: 118- 20). Robert Rothstein, Ernest Scatton, and Charles E. Townsend, eds. Studia Caroliensia: Papers in Linguistics and Folkore in Honor of Charles f. CribbIe. Bloomington, IN: Siavica, 2006, 27-39 . 28 JAMES BAILEY Vostokov (1817: 108-67) first perceived that narrative folk verse consists of three "main stresses" per line and that lyric folk verse contains two "main stresses" per line. So as to demonstrate how intonation plays a dominant organizing role in the rhythm of folk verse, Vostokov (1817: 94-108) distinguished phrase groups or "prosodic periods," each of which has a single "main stress." Later scholars have used terms such as "syntagma," "syntagmatic stress," or "phrase stress" to describe such intonational features. While Vostokov also refers to "weaker word stress," later investigators of folk verse, such as Stokmar (1952: 239-57), have considered that word stress performs no rhythmical function in folk songs. According to this interpretation, a single "main stress," for instance, falls on a middle syllable in the traditional adjective-noun combination mlad jasJn sokol, and the words mlad and sokol become clitics. Most scholars' writing about folk versification have accepted this definition of the prosodic features in folk verse.4 In the present article we reexamine the verse in Lermontov's poem on the basis of the rhythmical features that we have delineated in several lyric folk meters. We will attempt to show that the rhythm of his song has been derived from one type of two-stress lyric accentual verse (Bailey 1993: 210-33) rather than from three-stress epic accentual verse. Before presenting rhythmical analysis of Lermontov's song, we will devote attention to accentuation and to several characteristics of folk verse. We will analyze two lyrics to provide a context for understanding the folk meter that Lermontov may have imitated. In regard to rhythmical analysis, the following points should be kept in mind: in the interaction between the abstract meter and the concrete linguistic rhythm, stresses may be metrical (they correspond to an ictus or the position for a metrical stress), or stresses may be non-metrical (they correspond to other positions). Depending on the specific rhythmical context, the stress of a word may be metrical in one line or non-metrical in another line. Even though most accentuation in folk songs is the same as accentuation in contemporary standard Russian (CSR), in many instances it diverges from CSR and may be substandard, archaic, or dialectal in origin. In addition, the...