>>>>>EDNote: Russian
uses the term "amphibrach" for lines with this rhythm:
-`- -`- -`- -`(-) If
I'm not misremembering, it is mentioned in Fyodor's Chernyshevsky book (in
The Gift) as the "democratic meter" preferred by Nekrasov.
True, most of
Nekrasov's "Moroz, krasnyi nos" (The Red-Nosed Frost,
1863) is written in amphibrachs (the title itself is an amphibrachic line
whith an inner rhyme), but Nekrasov's favorite meter used in most of his
topical poems was anapest. I transcribe from The
Gift:
"Extraordinarily
indicative in respect of all this is Chernyshevski's attempt to prove (The
Contemporary for 1856) that the ternary metre (anapaest, dactyl) is more
natural to Russian than the binary one (iamb, trochee). The first (except when
it is used in the making of the noble, 'sacred' - and therefore hateful -
dactylic hexameter) seems more natural to Chernyshevski, 'more wholesome', in
the way that a bad rider thinks a gallop is 'simpler' than trotting... Confused
by the rhythmic emancipation of Nekrasov's broad-rolling verse and by Koltsov's
elementary anapaests ('Why asleep, muzhichyok?') Chernyshevski scented something
democratic in the ternary metre, something which charmed the heart, something
'free' but also didactic, as opposed to the aristocratic air of the iamb: he
believed that poets wished to convince should use the anapaest." (p. 221 of the
Penguin edition)
Alexey
Sklyarenko