Stanza

Initially, in classical tragedy , the stanza was the song of the choir, which was performed as it moved from left to right until the U-turn (hence the name); subsequently a system of two or more lines of a poetic text (“poems”), in which poems are arranged in a given sequence; each repetition of such a sequence is a new stanza.

The role of the stanza in the rhythmic structure of the text is similar to the role of the sentence in the syntactic structure of the text; dividing the text into stanzas involves logical pauses, so the stanza and syntactic division of the text usually coincide. However, although a stanza tends toward syntactic completeness, the decomposition of a phrase into different stanzas often has a particular expressive power; e.g. Informis hiemes reducit // Juppiter, idem /// summovet (Horatius, Carmina II 10, 15-17), where Juppiter, idem and summovet are separated, and so on. are emphasized (in modern versification the phenomenon has received the name "stanza anjambeman ").

In rhymed versification, the simplest and most common way to combine verses into a stanza is to combine them with a rhyme , which, with its harmonies, organizes verses into stanza groups. Therefore, elementary rhyming patterns are simultaneously the simplest types of stanza. So, pair rhyming (AA BB CC, etc.) gives the shortest possible stanza - couplet . Coupled with the correct alternation of female and male rhymes can turn into quatrains. Crosshairs (ABAB CDCD, etc.) and herpes zoster (ABBA CDDC, etc.) are the two main types of quatrains.

Combining the simplest types of stanzas in various combinations provides many complex stanzas. For example, the combination of a couplet with a quatrain makes a stanza of six verses: CC ABAB or ABAB CC, or CC ABBA or ABBA CC. From the compounds of two quatrains of various types, an eight-octave is obtained, etc.

Combining poetry through rhymes is the most common, but far from the only way to build a stanza. In a white (non-rhymed) verse, a stanza is created by combining verses in a certain order with various clauses (endings) - most often female and male. Strophic species can also be obtained by introducing short and long verses into a stanza. The principles of stanza construction can be combined with each other; many stanzas, for example, allow doubling by adding stanzas with the inverse (“mirror”) rhyme structure.

In the genres of song (mainly folk) lyrics, the construction of the stanza, in the absence of any other external structural features, is sometimes created only through syntactic parallelism . This construction of the stanza is all the more remarkable because, as a rule, in “literary” poetic forms, the syntax of the stanza is to some extent independent (there is a discrepancy between the boundaries of the stanza and the syntactic division of the text, that is, the stanza anjambeman ).

World poetry has accumulated a huge number of solid stanza forms. The richest source of stanza forms, which were later constantly developed in the lyrics of European peoples, is ancient poetry. Hence the names of the stanzas of ancient poetry associated with the names of the poets who first applied them (for example, Alkeeva stanza , Sapphic stanza , Asklepiadov stanza ), or by the name of the verses from which the stanza consists (for example, Ionic stanza, iambelastic stanza).

The stanza forms include monostichs , Dante tertsins , Verlaine quatrains (Fêtes galantes), Petrarch sextins , the bar form of the Meisterzinger and Lutheran chorales , the Nibelungen stanza, as well as many other stable and varied (medieval Latin hymns and sequences , ancient French chansalong , Italian XVI century, sonnet , etc.) forms of European poetry. For a list of selected stanza forms (ancient and European), see German Wikipedia .

The ancient stanza was repeatedly reproduced in Russian versification (due to the fundamental difference between antique quantitative versification and Russian syllabonic tonic , it is often inaccurate). Oriental poetry played a smaller role in Russian poetry, from which, relatively recently, attempts have been made to borrow some forms (for example, the Persian quatrain, the so-called rubyi ). Of the rich stanzaic heritage of the Romanesque peoples, the Russian reader is more familiar with such solid forms as tertsina , triolet , sextina , octave , sonnet , rondo , etc.

• Of the number of stanzas perceived by Russian versification, the so-called. Alexandrian verse : a couplet borrowed from the French, which in 18th-century Russian poetry became an obligatory form of classical tragedy and a heroic poem. Other types of couplets were used most often in the genre of romance , as well as in epigrams , inscriptions, etc.
• Three verses of the simplest form (with one rhyme passing through all three verses) are rare in Russian versification. Tertsin turned out to be much more popular, due to numerous translations from Dante 's Divine Comedy.
• The quatrain is the most common of all stanzas in Russian versification. In the texts of most Russian poets, such a stanza numerically almost prevails over all others. In addition to the quatrains constructed according to the basic rhyming patterns, the quatrains with single (non-rhymed) odd verses and even rhymed even ones became widespread. It should be noted the so-called. "Ballad" stanza, which has become popular since the time of Zhukovsky .
• The pentameter in Russian versification is usually found in the form of limerick .
• The stanza of six verses, in addition to sextine , has several popular patterns representing various combinations of three rhymes. Among them is the simplest type of a six-key with a pair of rhymes (for example, “ Three Palms ” by Lermontov ) and a six-piece with the type AAB CCB (for example, Pushkin's “ Mustache ”).
• The seven verses , like most other stanzas consisting of an odd number of verses, are rarely used in Russian versification. A sample of type AAB CCCB, used by M. Yu. Lermontov in the poem Borodino .
• Eight-poem in Russian versification is common. Usually it represents a particular combination of two quatrains. To the so-called. "Solid forms" of Italian origin belong to the Sicilian and the widely spread octave , which wrote such works as " Liberated Jerusalem " by Tasso , " Lusiada " Camoens , "Don-Juan" Byron . In the Russian versification, the use of the octave was greatly facilitated by Stepan Shevyrev , and the stanza was universally recognized after the poem by A. Pushkin " The House in Kolomna " appeared.
• One of the variations of the nine hundredth is the so-called. "Spenserian stanza" introduced by the English poet Edmund Spencer . It consists of eight verses of five-foot and one six-foot iamba with three rhymes arranged according to the ABAB BCBCC scheme. Significant distribution, as well as other forms of the nineties, Spencer's stanza did not have.
• Among the stanzas consisting of ten verses, the ten-tenth classic ode, popular in the 18th century, deserves mention. It was written in four-foot iambic rhyme according to the ABAB CCD CCD scheme (examples are found in odes of Mikhail Lomonosov ).
• Stanzas exceeding ten verses are rare in Russian versification. Of particular importance in Russian poetry was the 14-verse stanza used by Pushkin in the poem novel “ Eugene Onegin ” and called the “ Onegin stanza ”: it is constructed according to the AbAb CCdd EffE gg scheme (female rhymes are indicated in capital letters).

Larger stanzas are of little use and, as a rule, are not consistently passed through the entire work. Therefore, they should be considered as free structural units, approaching in their significance to the role of chapters or songs in the composition of large poetic forms.

• Gasparov M.L. Strofa // Big Russian Encyclopedia . Volume 31. M /, 2016, p. 333.
• M. Sh. [ Shtokmar M.P. ]. Stanza // Literary Encyclopedia : in 11 vol.: Vol. 11 / Ch. ed. Lunacharsky A.V .; Scientific Secretary Mikhailova E. N. - M .: Khudozh. lit., 1939. - St. 91-94. - 824 stb. : ill.