Blog

SYLLABLES GET REPEATED: SOMETHING COMICS HAVE

No. Not about the sound. Or The words. About the image. The syllable; consonant + vowel, vowel + consonant, consonant + vowel + consonant, gets repeated and repetition is SYMMETRY.

WHAT ABOUT SYMMETRY?

Symmetry is when we repeat an image based the repetition in an imaginary axis from where we: reflect, rotate, transfer or scale. Whenever we use the same syllable in a different line, that is totally like symmetry; particularly the one of transferring or movement.

Voilà, comics and poems are alike because symmetry! (Without regard to poem’s symmetry being called rhyme).

That, given the comic uses symmetry to repeat elements in order to communicate like in the manga I have been using as an example. Haru no noroi by Asuka Konishi , adapted into live action.  

In these covers, what you can take as a partial almost mirror symmetry is a trick to create movement and express the character’s emotional situation. When opposed to each other, they can’t be further away and when facing each other, it means the attraction building up. Thus we can talk not only of symmetry but of symbolism. Something poems do: metaphor. But I’m not talking metaphor. And I’m using these covers as example only because I liked the manga.

Am I genial or am I? Truthfully… I AM NOT. Nonetheless, this was just a clumsy attempt to make my hypothesis falsifiable in the same way I do everything. WRITING NONSENSE. What else is fiction but acceptable nonsense?

Don’t! Your likes, comments or curses won’t stop me from writing. I only hope you will read and think how to use symmetry in your next fiction. Pasto kalo.

SOUNDS AND PREFIXES

According to the number of syllables in a verse, we will add prefixes to refer to diverse existing numeral giving names to verses:

bi-tri-tetra-penta-hexa-hepta-octo-enea-deca- endeca-dodeca-trideca-tetra deca[1] syllabic/meter.

And here is when things GET A LOT DIFFERENT THAN IN SPANISH.

Whilst Spanish counts syllables and gives the poem a name based upon the number of syllables in a line[2] (verse); English counts the stressed[3] and unstressed and takes the order of them into account to call it a foot. English names verses after the foot.

<<In accentual-syllabic prosody the basic unit of poetry is the line, clearly visible on the page, which may be defined as ‘a single sequence of characters read from left to right’. Lines are analysed by breaking the metre, the rhythmic pattern, down into the repetition of a basic unit, a foot, and saying how many feet make up a line.>>

The poem handbook John Lennard. Oxford University Press, second edition 1996, 2005.

SYLLABLES OR NOT SYLLABLES

<<Poetry was spoken before it was written, and rhyme, the coincidence of sounds, has prehistoric origins in ritual, celebration, and memory training. Most Westerners learn nursery rhymes or children’s chants, and know a fair number of simple rhymes giving information (red sky at night, shepherd’s delight) or advice (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em). […].  Vision is now our primary sense, and for many to hear clearly how rhyme works in a poem means seeing a rhyme-scheme. >>

The poem handbook John Lennard. Oxford University Press, second edition 1996, 2005.

Whatever. It doesn’t really matter at the moment. Iambic, pentameter or pentasyllabic, Alexandrian, or minor art verse, verses share a quality: they either rhyme or not and here is where light starts to shine upon the damned topic because rhyme is not just a sound thing. Or it is a sound thing but it is also something that CAN BE SEEN.

TO BE CONTINUED

---

[1] Called Alejandrinos, the quantum may care why.

[2] As usual, the verses can be popular or intellectual. A verse minor to 8 syllables is a minor art verse and a longer one a major art verse. In the end, one wonders why the heck musicians are to receive a Nobel in literature but such is Spanish; not English.

[3] Any need to complícate it even more? They’re called ictus.