Addendum: On the Counterpoint of Rhythm and Meter: Poetics of Dislocation and Anomalous Versification in Parmenides’ PoemIn the article FRANK, B. B. A. (2024). On the Counterpoint of Rhythm and Meter: Poetics of Dislocation and Anomalous Versification in Parmenides’ Poem. Archai 34, e03408.https://doi.org/10.14195/1984-249X_34_08, additional information was required to strengthen scientific communication between academia and the public. Consequently, the following material should be included:
Interview with Bernardo Berruecos Frank
The interview is available at the link: https://youtu.be/TRroSkruaGQ?si=L5tsDrUy1knlUBb0
Source: Revista Archai
Transcript
Juan Felipe Rivera
Welcome, Professor Bernardo. My name is Juan Felipe Rivera. I am a doctoral student at the University of Brasilia. Let's start with the interview. We would like to know the title of your article and the research question that the article responds to.
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
Well, thank you very much for the invitation. The name of my article is "On the Counterpoint of Rhythm and Meter: Poetics of dislocation and anomalous versification in Parmenides' poem". The research questions that the article tries to answer are whether the in-depth analysis of the forms in which Parmenides constructs his verses—that is, the interaction between meter and rhythm—can tell us something about the content and the meaning of the poem. In other words, what are the relationships between style, the physiognomy of the mind (as Schopenhauer famously called it), and philosophical arguments? If meter and rhythm have something to tell us about the construction, communication, and reception of philosophical reasoning.
Juan Felipe Rivera
And what would be the new thing that this article brings within the field of study?
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
I think that the main novelty of this article is that it offers a description of certain phenomena in the verses of Parmenides that had not received a complete, systematic treatment so far. On the one hand, what I call the "poetics of bridging," which is the tendency that Parmenides has to cancel the central caesura—or the central metric pause—of his verses, and bridge it; that is, move it to a subsequent position that results in an emphasized form. These movements dislocate the traditional expected structure of the verse and, therefore, become keys in the interpretation of the text. That's the first phenomenon.
The other phenomenon I tried to describe is the so-called Hermann's Bridge, which is a law that prescribes having the end of a word in a specific position of the verse. Parmenides tends to violate or attenuate this famous bridge. And well, these two phenomena—the violation of the bridge and the poetics of bridging—are in turn combined with other phenomena, like enjambment ("riding"), the use of non-Homeric vocabulary, a marked syntactic subordination, among others. All these phenomena have not been clearly described in themselves, nor in their complex interaction with the other phenomena.
I think the central finding of the article is that all these stylistic marks occur in verses whose denoted meaning is related to what each of these marks causes in the verse itself. On the one hand, separation through these breaks or pauses, and on the other hand, union through bridging and enjambement. It is precisely there where Parmenides develops the arguments about the continuity of being—the one known as the ontological section of the poem—that the bridging of these pauses becomes an effective procedure to stylistically connote the notion of union and, therefore, the notion of continuity.
On the other hand, it is in the cosmological section of the poem, the Doxa, where these violations of Hermann's Bridge occur, becoming a resource to connote the discontinuity of being that governs cosmological discourses. Finally, another important finding is that all these verse anomalies can be explained as mechanisms to defamiliarize the audience, awakening their rational aptitudes through structures that break with expectations. Defamiliarization, in this sense, forces the audience and readers to try to make an adjustment, to reflect on the meaning that is coded in meter and rhythm.
Juan Felipe Rivera
Thank you for that overview about the article. We would like to know how you treat the issue; what is the approach that is given to those topics?
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
I think it is important to define what is meant by style. I understand style as the adaptation and eventual alteration of certain standards expected within a poetic genre—in Parmenides' case, the epic genre. This can be studied in many ways, such as through the lexicon, vocabulary, or the frequency of certain images and metaphors. But what interests me particularly is to elucidate the ways in which rhythm and meter interact with each other, and how this constitutes a mark of the author's style.
I understand "metric phenomena" as everything that contributes to the design of a verse and the audience's expectations to find widespread characteristics in the tradition, which can even be called mandatory. For example, the principles of alternation in syllable quantity (short and long syllables), the default places where a word ending is expected, or where word endings are prohibited (caesuras and bridges). On the contrary, "rhythmic phenomena," unlike metric phenomena, are rather contingent, not mandatory, and are manifested through the analysis of specific places inside the verse where long syllables are substituted by short ones, or vice versa. They also manifest through the various syntactic pauses that these substitutions generate.
To collect, analyze, and weigh all this data extracted from the fragments, it was necessary to devise a model of representation and notation that marks not only the rhythmic dimension of each verse but also the metric design—that is to say, the mandatory cuts that occur. The combination of these two variables showed relevant and significant results in our database, which I have elaborated with another Mexican scholar, Santiago Reza, who is currently doing his PhD on Greek metrics.
Juan Felipe Rivera
Thank you, Professor. Now we would like to know what led you to be interested in this particular topic of the poems of Parmenides.
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
Well, since the first time I learned to measure a Greek hexameter verse—which are the verses of Parmenides—with its regular alternation of long and short syllables, I was really fascinated. I witnessed how what at first glance seemed like an inert and lifeless text suddenly emerged a whole new dimension of sound that allowed you to feel the rhythm of words articulated in each verse. This is how I generated the habit of reading the Iliad and the Odyssey out loud every day so I could get involved rhythmically with the verses.
On the other hand, my interest in ancient philosophy took me to that peculiar group of texts we call the fragments of the pre-Socratics. Particularly, the remains we preserve of Parmenides' poem. These are written precisely in the same type of verse and poetic structure as the Iliad and the Odyssey. So, in a long process of rhythmic and intellectual involvement with these fragments, I perceived a very particular cadence in some particular cases of Parmenides' poem; something wasn't just settling in. The rhythm seemed to deviate from the expectations generated by Homer's verses. Added to this, a good number of ancient and modern authors had dedicated very negative comments to Parmenides' versification and poetry. To the ears and judgments of many scholars, the verse of Parmenides was strange. So, what drove me to write the article was asking myself what that strangeness really consisted of.
Juan Felipe Rivera
Now we would like to know what other areas or disciplines can dialogue with the topics of this article.
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
This article tries to establish a dialogue between the studies of Ancient Greek poetry, in particular about ancient Greek metrics, and studies on ancient philosophy, specifically pre-Socratic studies. The article also seeks to offer some tools that can, and must, be perfected for the analysis of these phenomena of poetic composition in ancient Greek.
Juan Felipe Rivera
We would also like to know what the next steps are in your research now moving forward.
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
This article is part of a much more extensive work that I have been doing for several years, which is a critical edition with a Spanish translation and commentary on the fragments and testimonies of Parmenides. The central goal I hope to achieve is to offer a deeply revised text of the fragments, thanks to the inspection of the main manuscripts in which they were transmitted, and to rehearse a coherent and substantiated interpretation that dialogues with leading scholars and new ways of understanding this complex philosophical poem.
Juan Felipe Rivera
To close, we would like to know what essential, seminal readings you recommend on this topic.
Bernardo Berruecos Frank
Obviously, my study owes a lot to all previous analyses that directed research towards these topics. I have to mention, in the first place, the classic study by Alexander Mourelatos from 1970, The Route of Parmenides, which is a masterful work that has an appendix dedicated precisely to the versification Parmenides uses. Another very important work for my research is by Marlene Van Raalte from 1986, titled Rhythm and Meter, which is a systematic description of the Greek hexameter verse.
Among more recent studies is the work of Xavier Gheerbrant from 2017 on Empedocles, which provides very useful tools and analysis regarding all these phenomena. Even more recently, in 2021, the book by Mackenzie entitled Poetry and Poetics in the Presocratic Philosophers provides very important considerations, in particular on the concept of defamiliarization and its importance in the pre-Socratics. More technically, the monumental work by Carolyn Higbie from 1990, Measure and Music, which studies the phenomenon of enjambment in the Iliad, is very important for my approach.
