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> LET US PAUSE: THE CAESURA, EDUCATIONAL THREAD
AMETHYST
post Mar 27 06, 21:22
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Referred By:Lori Kanter



LET US PAUSE: The Caesura


This Guide is posted with permission from the author, Howard Miller, who has put his efforts into providing us with an easy to understand reference and learning tool on 'The Caesura'


Let Us Pause: The Caesura



When lines reach a length of nine or ten syllables, one of the things which occurs
is a slight pause somewhere within the line (this pause is normal in everyday speech
in most sentences). This pause is called the caesura (say ZYUR ah), and it is
an important element in poetic rhythm. Most often, it occurs around the middle of a line,
usually at the end of a phrase, and may be indicated by a comma, although not necessarily
(caesura indicated by #):

"Men would be angels, # angels would be gods."

"Hope springs eternal # in the human breast:
Man never is, # but always to be blest."


One can move the caesura around in order to emphasize certain words or phrases:

"'Tis with our judgements as our watches, # none
Go just alike,# yet each believes his own."

Here, in the first line, Alexander Pope emphasizes "none" not only by placing it in the
rhyming position but also by preceding it with the caesura. Similarly, in the second line,
he emphasizes the contrast by preceding it with the caesura. Milton achieves the same
effect in the following passage which describes how and why Adam chooses to eat the
forbidden fruit even though he fully understands the meaning of this act:

". . . he scrupled not to eat.
Against his better knowledge,# not deceived,
But fondly overcome # with female charm."

The caesuras underscore that Adam, unlike Eve, is "not deceived" but that he makes his choice
because he foolishly ("fondly") allows himself to be attracted more strongly to Eve's "female charm"
than to God. Likewise, Milton reveals through caesuras Eve's sense of guilt for causing Adam's fall
in this passage in which she says she will ask God to place all the blame on her and to punish
her alone:

"The sentence, # from thy head removed, # may light
On me, # sole cause to thee of all this woe,
Me, # me only, # just object of His ire."

Here, in the second and third lines, the caesuras fall after the repeated pronoun "me," clearly showing
her feelings of guilt.

Also, what we see here is that lines may contain more than a single caesura, although one has to be
very careful not to break the rhythmical flow of the line up too much with too many unnecessary pauses.
A line with multiple caesuras often conveys a sense of broken or chaotic thought or feeling, as in this
line from Shakespeare, in which King Lear, emotionally and mentally broken by the death of his daughter,
refuses to accept her death as fact:

"Never, # never, # never, # never, # never."

In this line, Milton captures the chaotic nature of Hell where Satan and his followers are imprisoned:

"Rocks, # caves, # lakes, # fens, # bogs, # dens, # and shades of death."

Lines such as these are, however, enormously difficult to achieve.

Occasionally, there are lines without caesuras, as well:

"And ten low words oft creep in one dull line."


Further, not all caesural pauses are equally "stressed"; some pauses are very slight, others much more
strongly pronounced. Those caesuras marked by full stops within lines (semicolons and periods) tend
to be stronger than those marked by commas or unmarked by punctuation, as in these lines from
Milton in which Satan rejects the possibility of asking God for forgiveness :

"Farewell remorse! # All good to me is lost;
Evil, # be thou my good: # by thee at least
Divided empire # with Heaven's king I hold."

Here, the caesuras after "remorse" and "my good" occur after full stops and are markedly stronger
than those after "Evil" and "empire."

(The following has been edited by Andrea)

And now for an example of how not to place a caesura. The excerpt comes from one of my rough drafts (currently titled "lullaby"). The lines were:

them east to greet the sun. They need their rest
now. Close your eyes and slow your breath so you

Here's Howard's response:

now. # CLOSE / your EYES / and SLOW / your BREATH / so YOU

YIKES! THUD!! Darn near broke my neck on that one, tripping over the "now" immediately followed by the very strong caesura indicated by the period.

heh. And so he contined, introducing enjambment and end stopped lines:

Quote:

Okay--enjambment.

Lines end in one of two ways:
End-stopped lines are lines in which the end of the line corresponds to the end of a complete grammatical unit, a phrase or a clause. When that occurs (because it's what we do in normal speech at the end of a phrase or clause), we pause slightly before beginning the next line. In these lines by Shakespeare, each is a complete unit, so there's a pause (mared #) before beginning the next line:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,#
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,#
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,#
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood. #

Enjambed lines, on the other hand, are lines in which the line-end does not correspond to the end of a grammatical unit. In that case, we read on into the next line without a pause so as not to lose the sentence of the syntax. Here are some examples from Pope:

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

Here, the last word of L. 1 is the subject of the clause which continues into L. 2; to pause after "none" would disrupt the sense of the sentence.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, #
Nourished two locks which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth ivory neck. #

The first line is end-stopped but the second and third aren't. Often end-stopping is indicated by punctuation of some sort but it doesn't have to be, as in these lines by John Betjeman:

From out the Queen's Highcliffe for weeks at a stretch #
I watched how the mower evaded the vetch. #

The first line is an introductory phrase preceding the main clause, and we get a sense that it has ended from its grammatical structure rather than punctuation, so we quite correctly pause slightly.

Now let's look at the lines where you had a problem:

. . . They need their rest
now. Close your eyes . . . .

What happens here is that the first line appears to end a complete clause "they need their rest"; the result is that we pause somewhat before starting the next line. However, when we get to the next line, we discover that the clause had not ended because we have the "now" which is the actual last word; compounding the problem is that fact that "now" is immediately followed by a period which always creates a strong caesura. What we have rhythmically then is

"They need their rest (pause) now (pause). Close . . . ."

You'd never say that sentence that way in ordinary speech, isolating "now" by pauses before and after (except in very unusual circumstances which don't apply here). That's why there's a "thud." What you have here is a very bad enjambment, one which creates a rhythm that isn't natural and which works against the meaning of the syntax.


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