Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
English Metres

Blank Verse Technique [3]

It is in order to make it more flexible — to avoid the “drumming decasyllabon” and to introduce other relief of variety than can be provided by differing caesura, enjambement {{0}}etc.[[The question was: “Why is so much irregularity in the rhythm of consecutive lines permissible in blank verse?” — Ed.]] There are four possible principles for the blank verse pentameter.

(1) An entirely regular verse with sparing use of enjambements — here an immense skill is needed in the variation of caesura, use of long and short vowels, closed and open sounds, all the devices of rhythm. Each line must be either sculptured and powerful, a mighty line — as Marlowe tried to write it — or a melodious thing of beauty by itself as in much of Shakespeare’s earlier blank verse.

(2) A regular iambic verse (of course with occasional trochees and rare anapaests) and frequent play of enjambement etc.

(3) A regular basis with a frequent intervention of irregular movements to give the necessary variety and surprise to the ear.

(4) A free irregular blank verse as in some of Shakespeare’s later dramas (Cymbeline if I remember right).

The last two principles, I believe, are coming more and more to be used as the possibilities of the older forms have come to be exhausted — or seem to be — for it is not sure that they are.

24 January 1933