Re: poetry

lucasso wrote:
>
> next question...
> ^_^'
> what about poetry?
> old poetry in IE langs was based on rhymes or syllabotonism(?)(the
> same structure of stressde or long&short syllabes in one line(i
> don't know the better term and dictionary is too far from my comp
> -_-')) but many languages have rules of stress or of endings that
> makest such poetry not possible, so how may look that poetry?
> i know only japanese 'haiku'... what about poetry in conlangs?
> i know only tolkien's langs poetry (which is syllabotonic and
> with rhymes) ????
I really love the system used in old Finnish and illustrated in
the Kalevala (a series of ancient songs collected by the scholar
Elias Lonnrot -- around 1835, if I remember well): poetry is
mainly based on assonances and for that purpose it is allowed to
alter a word, to use rather unusual derivations or even to insert
meaningless words in the middle of a sentence, in order to get the
perfect sonority and the correct rhymes.

In his essay "A secret vice", Tolkien stated that he was
greatly influenced by Finnish (he even quote a verse from
the Kalevala) but unfortunately he never seemed to envision
a similar system for his own languages. Elvish poetry sounds
well ("laurie lantar..."), but has no grammatical fancy (excepted
free word order).

Though I haven't made my mind yet, I may use such a system
for my conlang Almaqerin. I have tried to define some rules
that would restrict the number of 'weird' derivations and
the insertion of meaningless but pleasant-sounding words,
and would nevertheless leave enough liberty to the poet.
I haven't made anything really satisfying yet, however.

   e.Chadas na chadandas   "the mad men, o the mad men
   Chadandhi aechadelean    Mad they were, these mad men"

   (were -andas and -andhi are meaningless endings).

As an aside note: why should I try limit the number derivation
by imposing rules? Because Finnish is a 'real' language and may
henceforth tolerate an open and completely free system, but for a
constructed language I think that such rules would make the
difference between "real nonsense" and the "illusion of a real
language". If anything was to be accepted for a conlang, then in
some respects poetry would not be distinguishable from gibberish
-- So the problem here is to find a acceptable compromise between
a Finnish-like system and a structured conlang...

Didier.
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