(of a variable number, but generally five or six), which are all equal: each stanza must have the same number of lines (usually
hendecasyllables and 'settenari,' or just
hendecasyllables) and the same types of line must follow each other in the same order and with the same rhyme scheme." (20) The
hendecasyllable is often treated as the Italian equivalent of iambic pentameter, and it might be suggested that the settenario translates to a line of iambic dimeter or trimeter.
I also attempted to use the more classic Spanish meter of the
hendecasyllable as a fit for iambic pentameter, but the fact that Spanish words tend to be longer than English words meant that too much was lost by restricting syllable count.
(Note, by the way, the English line here also happens to be an
hendecasyllable.) Discussing the government in Hell allows Nardo to transition into the subject of heroism in the epic, enabling the reader to consider Satan not as a hero but as a government tyrant.
Dalessandro uses a highly rhythmic line, often an
hendecasyllable or one slightly longer (twelve syllables or at times ten syllables, etc.): "Tu d'inverno te ne stai dietro fredde / finestre ben chiuse la mente confusa" (5) Cummings' visual meditation on winter and death is transformed rote a piece on motion and the birth era poem, which coincides with the arrival of the subway train: "Poi vestita di un fresco sorriso ecco lei / arriva." Dalessandro's closing poem repeats but reverts this situation.
It seems unlikely that Borges presented "Los compadritos muertos" to Piazzolla since it features
hendecasyllable verses, not the characteristic octosyllable versification of these tangos and milongas.
The discussion is .awed, however, by failure to take account of the structure of the English iambic pentameter, a line which, given the relative brevity of English words, with its ten syllables is distinctly longer than Dante's
hendecasyllable, so that a certain amount of metrical 'padding' is often unavoidable.
And although the
hendecasyllable also takes us back to the first line, it is now trimetric rather than tetrametric, and is like an 'emboitage' of lines 4 and 5, light and water.
Their innovations, as Joseph Cary points out in Three Modern Italian Poets: Saba, Ungaretti, Montale, "were the dragooning of so-called `free-verse' as a counterblow to the traditional
hendecasyllable, eccentric suspensions of normal syntax and punctuation, a plethora of short-lived onomatopoetic coinages, the cultivation ...
Catalan poet who wrote exclusively in Castilian and adapted the Italian
hendecasyllable (11-syllable line) to that language.
By altering its prosody slightly, I can speed up the Spanish
hendecasyllable. I can, in fine, devote myself utterly to ancestor worship or to that other worship that illumines my sunset years: the Teutonism of England and Iceland.