However, at times the structures of the different verse forms lead to moments of overly-baroque
hyperbaton, and there are instances where reliance on feminine rhyme produces effects that tend towards the comical at moments of high lyricism.
The structure of this ambling (ambulatory) prose poem is, interestingly, extremely regular and rigid, despite the inverted syntax of the verses that depend heavily on the (neo)baroque trope of the
hyperbaton, as in the poetry of Luis de Gongora or Lezama Lima, for example.
The text's allusions to figures of myth, the violent
hyperbaton of the poetic syntax all must be unraveled in order to comprehend the prosaic scene at hand: there are three bats in the highest reaches of the space shared with the poetic voice.
Stylistically, the Latin poem is noteworthy for its "
hyperbaton and enjambed lines" which "come thick and fast." (48) The word order of the poem plays hopscotch to perverse levels--at least, from an English-speaking perspective.
"antithesis, alliteration, homoeoteleuton,
hyperbaton,
Conrad also deploys forms of amplification,
hyperbaton, the melding of narrative and character voice, and periphrasis (Longinus 19, 33, 38-39).
The syntax admits more than one construction: "The best choose one thing, ever-flowing glory, instead of all mortal things" (with [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in
hyperbaton), or "The best choose one thing instead of all, ever-flowing glory instead of mortal things", as if [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] was implicitly understood between [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].
The first interpretive chapter deals with Edmund Spenser and
hyperbaton, a reordering of the elements of a grammatical sentence in order to preserve meter in Latin and social decorum in English.
In particular, the phrase "si mucho poco mapa le despliega" (l.194), reflects upon the relationship between subject and object of perception, and the effect of
hyperbaton in creating the illusion of space unfolding.
Contrast the elevated language here--the invocation to not one but multiple gods, the superlative clarissima mundi (line 5), the anaphora of co-ordinating conjunctions to garner a sense of immense scale, the
hyperbaton of the main clause verb, cano (line 12), right to the end of the sentence to leave the poet breathless--with the opening of the Ars poetica:
Undoubtedly, the writing deploys challenging and complex figures of thought and devices of patterning (metalepsis,
hyperbaton, and anacoluthon, among others), and we do not have far to look in order to confirm the standard estimation of him as a poet of torturous style, a poet of congeretic webs of description and limitless qualification.