Listening to people reading 239former is heard in the light of expectations derived from the latter that metrical
organization makes its peculiar contribution to the effect of verse. To entertain
this notion of an actual performance being set over against a regular pattern
whose reality is purely ‘psychological’ seems to require that readers must be,
in some sense, aware of both, but there are real problems in saying whence
awareness of the latter is derived. Perhaps the most fundamental question
concerns the allegedly ‘abstract’ nature of metrical patterning. The strongest
interpretation of ‘abstract’ in the literature seems to require that what is
perceived by the sensitive reader of poetry must be totally independent of the
spoken realization. This is not necessary. The method exemplified above provides
us with a pattern which is abstract in another, perhaps more relevant, sense:
it can never be identified with physical realization. This must be true if for
no other reason than that the latter must be analysed in terms of at least four
classes of syllable, while the former recognizes only two. Moreover, the only
predictable relationship between the two is that tonic syllables coincide with
‘stresses’: otherwise the two sets of categories map into each other differentially,
and in a way which is wholly determined by their environment.
Another question concerns the special effect which results from the
superimposing of realization upon psychologically informed expectation. The
necessary non-coincidence of the two is amply demonstrated by the fact that,
for instance, a metrical iamb has a maximum of six different realizations
when described in terms of the four kinds of syllable we have postulated. An
anapaest has thirteen. Some much-needed precision might be given to discussions
of the way metrical expectations condition our responses to particular lines
of verse if they were conducted in the light of this kind of differential realization.
For instance, the fact that the second of the three iambic feet in
has maximum difference in weight (0 and 1) while the feet on either side
of it have minimal difference, might be thought to be of some significance
in an examination of how the poem, as a whole, works.
I have admitted to the possibility of differing views about the metrical
organization of either or both of the Yeats and Auden lines. It is necessary to
make clear that I admit to the validity of other readings than those I have
suggested as well. Both components of the analysis are open to negotiation.
This, I take to be inherent in the kind of exercise I am engaged in. Nevertheless,
it is possible—and, as it seems to me, necessary—to suppose that there exists
an ideal reading, even though it may never be realized in practice by any
reader. The task of the responsible reader is to get as near as possible to this;
and the intonation of the performance then provides us with the means both
of constructing the abstract underlying pattern and of exploring the effects of
the differential relationship between that pattern and spoken reality.
It remains to examine the ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ lines. Applying the
same method to the first two lines gives us: