HEXAMETRIC SIZES IN THE POETRY OF YEGHISHE CHARENTS

Abstract

Since the 1920s, new metric forms, including hexametric sizes, have entered the poetry of Yeghishe Charents. The hexameter was one of the most widely used metrical forms in ancient poetry. In new languages, it has undergone significant changes due to the disappearance of the differences between long and short syllables and the strengthening of the role of stress in words. As an imitation of the ancient hexameter or as a “pseudo-hexameter”, this size has become widespread in European and Russian poetry since the XVIII century, especially in translations of ancient literary monuments. Six-strike lines in the poetry of Charents appear as early as 1918-1920, but we observe the conscious use of hexameter with dactylic sfeet in half lines especially in the collection “The Book of the Way”. His distichs, a number of quatrains, translations of Goethe’s elegies and Pushkin’s poem “Labor” are written in hexametric size. The monostichs (one-liners) of Charents are also mostly written in hexameter. According to our observation, in the poetry of Charents, hexametric meters carry different cultural layers in their structure: antique-metrical, Russian dolniks, the principles of Mayakovsky’s tonic verse, and only a genius poet could so skillfully combine all these layers.