that cannot become verse. I have scanned in that way your prose.1
Nirodbaran
Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
Second Series
2. Art and Literature
Iambics, Anapaests, Trochees
One more poem. Amal was not available. I have tried to stick to the normal form, unless my scansion is wrong. I have put the scansion. I find that in the foregoing ones my scansion was wrong. For instance, I scanned:
A wide | inexpres|sible Peace | seizes | my soul,
Pervad|ing the spa|ces a |profound | Presence | I feel
Inscru|table, vas|ter than | the sea, | sky-still.
That, except in the second line, is the orthodox method of scansion, but even so the two lines are not iambic pentameters. The first is anapaestic-trochaic with an iamb at the beginning and another at the end. In the second line the orthodox scansion would make it a line of six feet.
I scan:
Illu|mined by | thousand | resplen|dent suns
That is a mathematical scansion, not rhythmic. If you scan like that, there is no prose that cannot become verse. I have scanned in that way your prose.1
The stress in “thousand” is on the first syllable, not the second. The natural stresses are “illu|mined by thou|sănd resplen|dent suns.” If you stress the unstressed “by” and the unstressed “and” and destress the strongly stressed “thou” in “thousand”, then no law of accent remains, you land yourself in pure license and there is no reason why you should not scan “Illu|mined by | thousănd | resplĕn|dent suns” | and make a trochaic line of it. You cannot ignore stresses in the English language.
I really cannot see how you find iambic rhythm in “Pervading the spaces a profound Presence I feel”. If there is any rhythm, it is the rhythm of free verse, not of any fixed metre.
You have to train your ear to recognise (1) the difference between the various basic rhythms iambic, trochaic, anapaestic and the various lengths pentameter etc. (2) the extent to which other feet can be admitted without upsetting the basic rhythm. These two things are indispensable.
16.02.1936
1 Ŏne more | poĕm | Ămal | wăs not || ăvail | ăble. – I hăve tried | tŏ stick | tŏ thĕ nor|măl form, || ŭnless | mў scan|siŏn ĭs wrong |...