Anaclasis (poetry)

Ancient metricians used the term principally of the Greek galliambic rhythm | u u – u | – u – – |, which they believed was derived from a regular ionic dimeter | u u – – | u u – – | by a reversal of syllables 4 and 5, creating metra of unequal length | u u – u | and | – – u – |.

Although the original meaning of the term anaclasis referred to situations when the substitution of u – for – u occurred across the boundary between two metra, in modern times scholars have extended the term to any situation where the sequence x – (anceps + long) responds to – x (long + anceps) in a parallel part of a verse or poem.

[4] A similar phenomenon has also been observed in classical Persian poetry, for example in the metre of the ruba'i (quatrain), in which the iambic | u – u – | and choriambic | – u u – | rhythms can be used as alternatives in the same poem.

[5] The metrician Paul Kiparsky has argued that anaclasis (or "syncopation") is a common feature of Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian metres and believes that is inherited from Indo-European poetry.

[6] In English a feature similar to anaclasis can be found in inversion in the iambic pentameter, when stressed and unstressed elements are reversed, especially at the beginning of a line.

[8] In its metrical sense the noun anaclasis is in fact used by only one ancient writer, Marius Victorinus, but the related present participle ἀνακλώμενος (anaklṓmenos) "being bent back, being reflected" is used by several metrical writers, namely by Victorinus himself, Hephaestion, Atilius Fortunatianus, and Choeroboscus, mostly with reference to the galliambic metre.

The author of On the Sublime (attributed to "Longinus", 1st century AD) uses the perfect participle ἀνακεκλασμένος (anakeklasménos) "broken up" in a similar context, in the phrase ῥυθμὸς ἀνακεκλασμένος λόγων καὶ σεσοβημένος (rhuthmòs anakeklasménos lógōn kaì sesobēménos) "a speech rhythm which is broken up and agitated".

[13] Another 4th-century metrician Atilius Fortunatianus also uses the term anaclomenon, although the poetic example he gives is not completely galliambic but in a metre which consists of two anacreontics without catalexis.

[15] The idea that anaclasis means "bending backwards" explains the poet Martial's use of the adjective supīnus "lying on its back" to describe the galliambic when he gives his reasons for refusing to write either in the galliambic or in the sotadean metre: The second line refers to the fact that certain dactylic hexameter lines, if the words are arranged in the reverse order, turn into sotadeans.

"[23] The metre most closely associated with the term "anaclasis" is the galliambic, the music sung by the eunuch devotees of the goddess Cybele.

Paul Kiparsky, however, argues that it is likely that the eight-syllable glyconic originated in a simple iambic dimeter by anaclasis:[27] Similarly Kiparsky argues that the minor asclepiad and the phalaecian hendecasyllable can be seen as developments of the iambic trimeter: An example of the hendecasyllable is the following from Catullus: The glyconic metre also sometimes itself undergoes anaclasis.

[5] In fact some of the very earliest poems recorded in modern Persian of the Islamic period, dating from the 9th century AD, were in the ionic metre.

[35] Another metre with anaclasis of the same type is the following by Saadi (13th century), which is very similar to the anacreontic of Greek poetry: As in the previous example, the underlined syllables are "overlong".

[37] The Vedic meters anuṣṭubh (4 × 8 syllables), gāyatrī (3 × 8), and two main types of trimeters, jagatī (4 × 12) and its catalectic form triṣṭubh (4 × 11) are very largely iambic, usually with the rhythm x – x – | u – u x (where x = anceps).

An example is the opening stanza of the Bhagavadgita: An analogous process to anaclasis can be seen in English pentameter poetry, where it is known as "inversion" or substitution.