Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
English Metres

The Caesura

Voltaire’s dictum is quite {{0}}baffling,[[The “dictum” of Voltaire that the correspondent sent to Sri Aurobindo was the following: “la césure ... rompt le vers ... partout où elle coupe la phrase.”]] unless he means by caesura any pause or break in the line; then of course a comma does create such a break or pause. But ordinarily caesura is a technical term meaning a rhythmical (not necessarily a metrical) division of a line in two parts equal or unequal, in the middle or near the middle, that is, just a little before or just a little after. I think in my account of my Alexandrines I myself used the word caesura in the sense of a pause anywhere which breaks the line in two equal or unequal parts, but usually such a break very near the beginning or end of a line would not be counted as an orthodox caesura. In French there are two metres which insist on a caesura — the Alexandrine and the pentameter. The Alexandrine always takes the caesura in the middle of the line, that is after the sixth sonant syllable, the pentameter always after the fourth, there is no need for any comma there, e.g.

Ce que dit l’aube || et la flamme à la flamme.

This is the position and all the Voltaires in the world cannot make it otherwise. I don’t know about the modernists however, perhaps they have broken this rule like every other.

As for caesura in English I don’t know much about it in theory, only in the practice of the pentameter decasyllabic and hexameter verses. In the blank verse decasyllabic I would count it as a rule for variability of rhythm to make the caesura at the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh syllable, e.g. from Milton:

(1) for who would lose

Though full of pain, | this intellectual being, (4th)

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, | swallowed up and lost? (5th)

(2) Here we may reign secure, |and in my choice (6th)

To reign is worth ambition | though in hell: (7th)

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

Or from Shakespeare:

(1) Sees Helen’s beauty | in a brow of Egypt (5th)

(2) To be or not to be, | that is the question (6th)

But I don’t know whether your prosodist would agree to all that. As for the hexameter, the Latin classical rule is to make the caesura either at the middle of the third or the middle of the fourth foot, e.g. (you need not bother about the Latin words but follow the scansion only):

(1) Quadrupe|dante pu|trem || cur|su quatit | ungula | campum.

(Virgil)

Horse-hooves | trampled the | crumbling | plain || with a | four-footed | gallop.

(2) O pass|i gravi|ora, || dab|it deus | his quoque | finem. (Virgil)

Fiercer | griefs you have | suffered; || to | these too | God will give | ending.

(3) Nec fa|cundia | deseret | hunc || nec | lucidus | ordo

(Horace)

Him shall not | copious | eloquence | leave || nor | clearness and | order.

In the first example, the caesura comes at the third foot; in the second example, it comes at the third foot but note that it is a trochaic caesura; in the third example the caesura comes at the fourth foot. In the English hexameter you can follow that or you may take greater liberties. I have myself cut the hexameter sometimes at the end of the third foot and not in the middle, e.g.

(1) Opaline | rhythm of | towers, || notes of the | lyre of the | Sun God ...

(2) Even the | ramparts | felt her, || stones that the | Gods had e|rected ...

and there are other combinations possible which can give a great variety to the run of the line as if standing balanced between one place of caesura and another.