inversions in poetry

[abu nuwas]

He's on your side abu. I thought anastrophe was a rhetorical device, not a poetic one.

Shouldn't that be "this prick who is"?

Dale, old fruit, no-one is on my side, ever. I am unique, others may limp in base imitation after me, but cannot be on my side. I may not be on the same side to-morrow.

You have, or your hateful doppelganger has, caused me a good deal of difficulty. Not to do with this rather open-and-shut case, but because of a remark or two you made earlier, regarding English poets trying to impress after the Conquest, to appear like their French counterparts.

This has involved me first in turning over little bits of French poetry in my head, without much luck, then a Spanish poem or two, of the Renaissance, then early French verse, in the form of Marie de France, who is thought to have been in England, then Caedmon, in Anglo-Saxon, then Mediaeval Latin poetry.

I find that the Romance languages have no strong tradition of anastrophe, although it does depend very much on how one defines it. In many cases it would be absurd. Lope de Vega has a line in 'Fuenteovejuna' like this

'Sacad esa blanca espada que habéis de hacer, peleando, tan roja como la cruz' which is, word for word:

'Take this white sword which you have to make (by) killing, as red as the Cross' You could change it round to go ' This white sword take it, and then alter the rest.

One can find a possible thread in the later Latin which is far removed from the elegance and style and grammatical convention of Cicero and Catullus, as can be imagined, in works such as the 'Planctus' for the late Charlemagne. This is said to be accented, (and as I read it, I kept getting the 'Ode to Joy' running through my head). Obviously, Latin retained its ability to stick the verb at the end, and to some people, it must have seemed v natural --Germans! Yes, surely you have it the wrong way about. Modern German has verbs at the end of a clause, willy-nilly, and so did Anglo-Saxon (see very first lines of 'Beowulf') The Anglo--Norman poets of the day may well have got extra bags of sweeties for producing this sort of thing, but it is wrong to think of the Normans as French; they weren't. In fact, in those early days, even the French weren't v French. Their Frankish origins took a long time to fade, and the language is still full of Germanic words. But Marie de France perhaps gives an idea of the times herself: her 'Lais' were quickly put into Icelandic. So you see, whichever way you look at it, you are wrong.

But, I hear Erthona expostulating, what has this to do with now? Well, not much, perhaps -- and perhaps everything. How so, say you.

Our language was not created yesterday. It is full of references and expressions which come from our ancestors, from Shakespeare and his chums, from the KJV, nursery-rhymes, from proverbs and other sayings, all without reading a line. It is there in oral speech. Uneducated folk for whom English is a first language do not find inversion to be some kind of snobbish trick foisted upon them, they find it somehow appealing, soothing, and -however dire you may think their efforts -- when there is some tragedy, and the unlettered decide to write this is what they do, and what they expect. There is, it seems, a deeper tradition which is not easily stifled by the curious interests of English Professors and literati. Milo is right to ponder the why of it all. Yes, it is taste, in the way I like, but cannot justify, a decent bit of cheese-cake. Nothing to do with nutrition or survival -I just like it. But why write it, thinks Milo, good fellow that he is, like one of those Japanese soldiers sticking to his post to the last. I ran across this:

''In the end, Houston points to "the effort to make language more memorable by deviation from spoken habits."3 This is the essence of poetry: a heightening of language (even colloquial) above that of prose, a heightening that produces an idealized, imaginative conception of the subject.'' You will all agree, I know, that this applies as much to rhyme, and other dodges, as it does to anastrophe.

Now, if you, or Milo or Leanne or Chris or Ella (girl comes last) care to tell me to STFU, I shall. It comes naturally. Billy even. Can you tell Milo? I'm a bit frightened of him; he's even worse than Leanne. I didn't like to tell him that the expression is 'non sequitur'. So... I've left a few things to find...