Prešeren’s Special Homage Through Versification to Matija Čop?

Abstract

France Prešeren published his elegy “In Memory of Matija Čop”, written in elegiac couplets, in late February of 1846 in two prosodic forms, in the so-called “seemingly quantitative and accentual”; the first appeared in the Slovenian weekly Kmetijske in rokodelske novice, the other in the German weekly Illyrisches Blatt. For his book of poetry Poezije (1847), the poet selected the accentual version, probably more for reasons of principle and pragmatism than aesthetic reasons, since the quantitative version is only slightly less accomplished. – The basis of the poet’s versification in the four versions of the elegy, in a seemingly quantitative prosodic technique, is metric quantity: syllables with stressed vowels, and syllables with unstressed vowels followed by two consonants are measured long, whereas all the other syllables are measured short. Thus the poet does use the basic principle of the syllabic quantity as a starting-point, however, the main element, which is supposed to constitute a long syllable, is the so-called “length by position” and not the natural length of the syllable; furthermore, all the stressed syllables, including the stressed short syllables, or, more precisely, all the syllables that were stressed by the poet, are simply treated as long. Despite this double definition of a long syllable, his metric instruments of course only partially rely on the prosodic rules of classical Greek and Roman metrics. By more or less mechanically revaluing the stressed and unstressed syllables into long and short ones, Prešeren preserved to a great extent the characteristics of the accentual principle. For this reason, the result was an arbitrary, compromising, hybrid versification construct with no historically attested basis. – The analysis of the four versions of the elegy in the quantitative prosodic technique has demonstrated that the poet was very constant and consistent in his use of the communicated metric rules he adopted; with the competence of someone knowledgeable about classical languages he also introduces in the poem the quantitative rule of muta cum liquida. Therefore, it will attract the reader’s attention that the third metron in the hexameter of the central couplet (Pólno si njih znádnost imél, velikán učenósti) is no longer a spondee but a trochee, which according to the metric rules of quantitative versification is not appropriate. It speaks volumes for the incontestable fact that Prešeren, except for this one hexameter, not once deviates from the written versification principle, neither in this poem nor in one of its other versions. – If we exclude the possibility that the inappropriate metron in this hexameter was the result of negligence or even indifference, we may assume that by this conscious, markedly serious transgression against the verse order, Prešeren in a poetically implicit way communicated his views on a relevant issue in Slovenian verse. He estimated that the imitation of the classical type of hexameter and therefore the possible adoption of the constitutive elements of the quantitative system would in no way be creative for Slovenian versification. There is therefore every indication that into the poem’s regular and consistent textus, which can be translated as a texture or textile, with a constantly used pattern, foreign to Slovenian language, the poet deliberately wove a “mistake”, that is, a recognizable element, completely unlike anything else and totally different from the whole. Only in this one metron, therefore, did Prešeren not submit to the adopted rules of classical versification; and he carried this out at the downright overtly evident point of the central couplet of an axially-symmetrically constructed elegy. Because the poem is dedicated to a friend, who was a “giant of learning” (velikan učenosti) and had “full knowledge” (polno znadnost) of everything, not least of metric issues, we may understand this woven mistake at this particular point, glorifying his friend’s knowledge, as a special, aesthetically sensitive versification homage to Matija Čop, as a compliment to his views on the nature and future of the Slovenian verse, views which were also shared by the poet himself.