Marina Novikova free verse from the research of an amateur. This is the proud word of free verse

Introduction

This work is devoted to the study of the poetics of French free verse (free verse). It is based on the material of poetic texts by French authors written in free verse, starting with the first free verse librists (late 19th - early 20th centuries) and ending with the poetry of the mid-20th century. The most representative texts of such poets as Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Eluard were taken for the study.

The study attempts to observe the connection between the form of the poem and the genre, to reveal the ideological origin of free verse through the features of the works of French free verse poets. Despite the fact that, starting from late XIX V. and to this day, poems written in free verse make up a significant percentage of the total in France. total number poetic texts, until now French free verse has not become the subject of special study either in the works of French researchers or in the works of foreign scientists. The question of the status of free verse in European literary criticism still remains controversial and its poetics as a whole (and not the poetics of individual authors) have not been studied; when studying free verse as an object of linguistics, they were also limited to the study of individual aspects or features of an individual poetic language. In addition, until now, French free verse has not become the subject of translation analysis. All this determines the novelty and relevance of our work.

The purpose of this work is a comprehensive analysis of the poetics of the works of French free verse poets. Despite its popularity, free verse is still not well studied. It is very important to determine the place of free verse in the history of world literature. For this it would be useful to take general concept free verse, a definition independent of cultural realities. However, studies to identify it have not yet been conducted.

When considering various poetic texts written in free verse, the following tasks were set:

Analyze the poetics of French free verse:

a) analyze the ideological and historical reasons for the emergence of free verse and its widespread distribution throughout the 20th century;

b) determine the place of free verse in the context of French literature XX;

c) trace the historical patterns of development of free verse;

d) determine the connections between form and genre.

Research methods are determined by the nature and purpose of the work. Basically, this work uses the linguostylistic method. When analyzing translations, the method of comparative description of translations was used. Russian translations of texts were used to semantically describe the text through interpretation.

General characteristics of free verse

“A poem is human speech endowed with rhythm so that it can be sung... All poems are intended for this purpose only and there are no exceptions. ...In other words, in order to express everything that is divine and supernatural in him, a person must sing, otherwise he will die. Therefore, poetry is as useful as the air we breathe and like the bread we eat.”

Such thoughts were expressed in “Petit traité de poisie française” by Theodore de Banville. What “classical” qualities must a poem have in order to be, as the French poet put it, “sung”? For example, meter, which is characterized by the number of syllables, rhyme, isosyllabism, regular stanza, isotony. It is not known whether the authors of free verse follow rhythmic conditions and whether it is possible to “sing” free verse (Theodore de Banville did not see the flowering of French free verse, more often called “modern”, in order to clarify such nuances, but he certainly knew about the first experiments of its “liberation”, undertaken even V. Hugo), but it is quite obvious that free verse is free from most of the named characteristics. However, the concept of free verse is still too vague and the historical path to it in its already “classical” form was long, intricate, and complex. Theoretical discussions about free verse have been undertaken many times, but even simple definition There is no free verse that would be generally recognized. The main antagonist of free verse, which helps to reveal and feel its key properties, is prose, arbitrarily chopped into correlated and commensurate segments. A. Zhovtis, in his article “What free verse is not free from,” wrote that free verse remains faithful to verse and is verse, not prose, because it reveals a correspondence of rows graphically highlighted by the author’s focus on verse. In free verse, unlike all “non-free” systems, there are no end-to-end measures of repetition (syllable in syllabic, foot in syllabic-tonic, stress in tonic systems). Free verse is based on the repetition of phonetic entities periodically replacing one another different levels, and the components of repetition in correlated rows in Russian poetry can be a phoneme, syllable, foot, stress, clause, word, group of words and phrase.

“Repetition of phonetic entities of different levels periodically replacing one another” - this can hardly be called meter, because meter is such a sequence of organizing measures of verse that makes the next appearance of each of them predictable.

Zhovtis argues that the measures of repetition in free verse are not constant, as in poems with a stable (syllabic-tonic) or loose (dolnik) meter, but variable. However, as Gasparov comments on this assumption, the need to introduce a “variable repetition measure” suggests, first of all, that none of the traditional “repetition measures” known from classical systems of versification are repeated in free verse with sufficient regularity. “Change of measures” is not meter,” as Gasparov writes, “because it does not allow one to predict alliteration, stress, etc. one step forward." Zhovtis believes that if a verse contains changing measures of repetition (he proposes to define them as follows: to establish whether such and such a verse is connected with the previous one through repeated anacrusis, with the subsequent one - through alliteration, this subsequent one with the subsequent one - through syntactic parallelism, etc. .d.), then we have real free verse; if not, then randomly chopped up prose.

The expansive concept removed the requirement of “freedom from meter” and retained only the requirement of freedom from equilinearity and rhyme. Accordingly, not only unequal line blank verse without meter, but also unequal line blank verse could be considered free verse (Russian translations “ North Sea“Heine) and unequal white iambic (as in “Rustem and Zorab” by Zhukovsky), etc. This concept has not gained popularity, but the important question is whether in the minds of writers and readers the “unequal line white tact” is separated from the “deprived meter of unequal white accent verse" - free verse? To understand this, it is necessary to examine a large number of works of free verse and check how well the authors, consciously or unconsciously, adhere to certain rhythmic boundaries. At the same time, it will be possible to judge whether individual lines in free verse are noticeable, matching the rhythm of, say, iambic tetrameter, and whether they can be considered rhythmic and semantic italics. Even Bryusov wrote in 1919 that it would make sense to distinguish between two types of free verse, those that preserve and those that do not preserve the sense of rhythm of individual lines. However, to date, studies have not yet been conducted to determine whether free verse librarians adhere to certain rhythmic boundaries.

Free verse in the works of Russian poets of the early 20th century

It is generally accepted that Russian free verse is a rare, unique, exceptional phenomenon. There are not so many Russian poets who write exclusively in free verse. In addition, it is generally accepted that free verse gained popularity in Russia relatively recently - at the end of the 20th century. However, the “time of free verse” in Russian literature began much earlier - free verse appeared in Russian poetry back in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Moreover, according to some researchers, during the Silver Age, free verse became so widespread that it not only ceased to be something exceptional, but also became a characteristic phenomenon of that time period. This is exactly what the Soviet critic Yuri Tynyanov wrote about free verse in 1924.

What is free verse?

Free verse is a poem written not according to the rules of classical versification. As a rule, such poems are devoid of rhyme and meter, but retain a number of poetic features, such as breaking the text into lines, writing lines with a capital letter, and others. Free verse in
Russia gained particular popularity during the Silver Age of Russian poetry. Almost all the poets of that time turned to free verse in one way or another - it is much easier to count those poets of the Silver Age who did not write a single free verse than to list those who experimented with free verse. At the same time, such researchers as M. Gasparov and N. Bogomolov note that free verse did not become a mass phenomenon and not a single poet of that period made free verse his main creative form.

Blok's free verse

Alexander Blok

Meticulous researchers have calculated that there are only six free verses in the creative heritage of Alexander Blok. Two of them became not only the most famous free verse of the Russian symbolist, but the most famous free verse of the Silver Age. They were written on February 6, 1908. On that day, which can be called the stellar day of Russian free verse, two guests came to the poet - Elizaveta Pilenko and Natalya Volokhova. Blok dedicated one poem to both girls who were in love with him.

When you stand in my way
So alive, so beautiful,
But so exhausted
Talk about sad things
Thinking about death
Don't love anyone
and you despise your beauty -
What? Will I offend you?
Oh no! Cause I'm not a rapist
Not a deceiver and not a proud man,
Although I know a lot
I think too much since childhood
and too busy with myself.
After all, I am a writer,
The man who calls everything by name
Taking away the aroma from a living flower.
No matter how much you talk about sad things,
No matter how much you think about endings and beginnings,
Still, I dare to think
That you are only fifteen years old.
and that's why I would like
To make you fall in love with a simple man,
Who loves the earth and the sky
More than rhymed and unrhymed speeches about earth and sky.
Really, I'll be happy for you
Because - only a lover
Has the right to the title of a person.

15-year-old Elizaveta Pilenko, to whom this poem was dedicated, was destined to become the poetess Kuzmina-Karavaeva, but the world recognized her as the nun Mother Mary.
She died in 1945 in a gas chamber at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She went to her death voluntarily - instead of one of the selected women. In 1985 memorial center She was awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, and in 2004 she was canonized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Actress Natalya Volokhova, who had a rather stormy romance with the poet - their relationship lasted almost two years - became the heroine of two cycles of poems, “Snow Mask” and “Faina”. And the heroine of one free verse.

She came in from the cold
Flushed,
Filled the room
The aroma of air and perfume,
In a ringing voice
And completely disrespectful to classes
Chatting.
She immediately dropped to the floor
A thick volume of an art magazine,
And now it began to seem
What's in my big room
Very little space.
It was all a little annoying
And quite ridiculous.
However, she wanted
So that I read Macbeth aloud to her.
Having barely reached the bubbles of the earth,
Which I cannot talk about without emotion,
I noticed that she was worried too
And looks carefully out the window.
It turned out that the big motley cat
It is difficult to stick to the edge of the roof,
Lying in wait for kissing doves.
What made me the most angry was
That it was not us who kissed, but the doves,
And that the days of Paolo and Francesca are over.

Blok was one of the first in Russia to grasp the special narrative nature of this genre, which makes it possible to erase the distance between the poet and the reader. By abandoning such conventions as rhyme and meter, the poet managed to create an atmosphere of confidential conversation, in which one can hear merciless self-truth, utmost sincerity, and confessional sadness. You even get the impression that you are not reading a poem, but eavesdropping on the poet’s conversation with his young visitors. At the same time, free verse is very sensitive to any kind of falsehood and artificiality, and by turning to this poetic form, the brilliant Blok was able to make the most of all the possibilities of the genre; his free verse is not poems on the verge of prose, but a concentration of poetry.

Russian futurism

Probably none of the Silver Age poets experimented as actively with creative forms as the adherents of Futurism, a literary movement that arose in 1910. Russian futurism arose on the basis of European futurist movements - mainly on the basis of Italian futurism, the founder of which was Filippo Marinetti. In 1909, Italian futurists presented their “Futurist Manifesto,” in which they called for the abandonment of the outdated art of the past, even to the point of destroying libraries and museums, and praised war and militarism as the only hygiene in the world. Two years later, Marinetti prepared the “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature,” in which he went even further - he argued that syntax, adjectives and adverbs should be abandoned, the verb should be used only in the indefinite mood, and the movements of objects should be conveyed through a chain of analogies of artistic images. Marinetti believed that it was necessary to destroy psychology in literature, to abandon “being understood.” The manifesto ended with a call to spit on the altar of art every day. Many of the ideas of the Italian futurist were picked up in Russia. Russian futurism was represented primarily by the “Gilea” group, which included the Cubo-Futurists or, as they called themselves, the Byudlyans. This word was invented by Khlebnikov, making a free translation of the word futurum into Russian. The Gileya group included the Burliuk brothers, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexey Kruchenykh, Vasily Kamensky, Elena Guro, Vladimir Mayakovsky. The Budutlyans proclaimed freedom of poetic speech, freedom of form from content, rejection of literary traditions - these ideas were expressed in the preface to the scandalous collection “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” which included poems by D. Burliuk, A. Kruchenykh, V. Mayakovsky and, of course, V. Khlebnikov. Proclaiming an anarchic rebellion against poetic norms and traditions in art, the Byutlyans actively turned to free verse. Free verse by Budutlyan is not only a rejection of traditional forms of versification, but also often a rebellion against beauty poetic speech, and logical speech in general.

Dyr bul schyl
Ubeshshchur
skoom
you and boo
r l ez

The author of this widely famous free verse, Alexei Kruchenykh, insisted that there is more national and poetic in his quintuple than in the entire creative heritage of Pushkin. Destroying the word and creating new language, the Budutans sought to embody the concept according to which art does not reflect reality, but deforms it, emphasizing the asymmetry and disharmony of the world. Freeing words from meaning, they denied the coordination of poetry with the world, its relationships and proportions.

Velimir Khlebnikov

Velimir Khlebnikov, the leader of the Byudulians, was able to reveal the possibilities of free verse most fully. Khlebnikov's free verses are distinguished by their special syntax, intonation, and verse rhythm. Khlebnikov’s free verse “The Spell of Laughter” (Oh, laugh, laughers!) is considered a textbook example. Khlebnikov, like other futurists, tried to create a new, “original” language; he separated the sound of a word from its semantic content. Later, the poet’s utopian dreams of a united humanity prompted him to create a universal world “star language” - this turned out to be an ethereal experiment. Khlebnikov’s experiments with poetic forms turned out to be much more effective. Free verses written by him in last years Life is distinguished by a rare organicness, simplicity, and transparency. The poet moved away from anarchic attitudes and senseless rebellion. It is quite possible that if Velimir Khlebnikov had not died in 1922 at the age of 36, the history of free verse in Russian literature would have developed differently.

Poetry of the Oberiuts

The Oberiuts are a group of amazing and tragic poets who became the last outstanding poetic school of the Silver Age. The poets of this association managed to anticipate the emergence of the European theater of the absurd by almost 40 years and had an undoubted influence on the development of the Russian avant-garde in the 20th century. This association arose on January 24, 1928 in the Leningrad Press House at the “Three Left Hours” evening. The name of the group – OBERIU – is an abbreviation for “Association Real Art" The letter U was added to the abbreviation just for fun. A similar approach - demonstratively frivolous - was characteristic of the poets of this group. From 1927 until the early 1930s, when OBERIU ceased to exist, the association included Konstantin Vaginov, Igor Bakhterev, Boris Levin, Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms and Nikolai Zabolotsky.

Daniil Kharms
The Oberiuts were in many ways students and successors of the ideas of the Futurists, just like the followers of Marinetti, they rebelled against literary traditions, actively experimented with artistic forms, and adopted the “abstruse language” created by the Byutlyans. However, unlike the futurists, the Oberiuts went further. They did not play with the phonetic outline of the word, like, for example, Khlebnikov, but they changed the meaning and pragmatics of the poetic language. The fight against “realism”, the search for the true meaning of words, the denial of philistine common sense, the world is topsy-turvy – the main features characteristic of the Oberiuts’ creativity. But at the same time, the poetry of the Oberiuts is by no means a game of nonsense. Behind the seemingly humorous or incoherent texts are hidden deep philosophical and religious images and attitudes.

One of the most prominent representatives group was Daniil Kharms. An opponent of officialdom and literary smoothness, he argued that he was only interested in nonsense, only in what had no practical meaning. Kharms’s world is a combination of the incongruous, illogicality, laughter at the absurdity surrounding reality. All this was reflected in his poems. Free verse was the poet's favorite creative form. Kharms' free verses are often eccentric, paradoxical, and smile-inducing. Sometimes they soar to the heights of tragedy.

This is how hunger begins:
in the morning you wake up cheerful,
then weakness begins,
then boredom sets in
then comes the loss
quick mind power,
then calm comes.
And then the horror begins.

Unfortunately, the creative heritage of Kharms, like other Oberiuts, was erased from Russian literature for almost 50 years. His return to the reader began only in the 80s of the 20th century.

Free verse by Gumilyov, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova

Nikolay Gumilyov
To one degree or another, almost all poets of the Silver Age turned to free verse, but they did not do so often. For many authors, turning to free verse was just an experiment, an unexpected beautiful gesture, but at the same time a rather strong, bright and expressive gesture. Thus, Nikolai Gumilyov argued that although free verse has a right to exist, this form can only be used in exceptional cases. The poet, who was always attentive, almost reverent, to the choice of poetic forms, turning to free verse, did not dare to be completely free, therefore Gumilyov’s free verse is rather archaic, simple and executed on the verge of poetic speech and prose. It’s interesting that considering free verse “ simplest form", it was to her that Gumilev addressed in the poem "My Readers", which became the final, almost last poem of the poet, as if paying tribute to all the poetic forms of the early 20th century, the poet completed his verification search with free verse.

More categorical was Marina Tsvetaeva, who considered free verse a frivolous genre. However, this did not stop her from leaving several magnificent free verses, including a cycle of poems from 1916 - “Silver Doves Soar”, “A Terrible Illness Happened to Him”, “On the Curls of Eyelashes”. But her free verse from 1916 is better known - “I would like to live with you.” Tsvetaeva's free verses are defenseless, bright, and sensual. The emotional beginning in the poetess’s free verse determines their rhythm and composition.

Anna Akhmatova,
The queen of Russian poetry, whose creative heritage includes all classical poetic forms, has repeatedly turned to free verse. It was in free verse that the chapter from her “Requiem” was written - a terrible, difficult, bitter poem about the years of Yezhovism, which the poetess spent in prison lines. In the preface to the poem, Akhmatova recalls how, in a prison line in Leningrad, someone recognized her as a poetess and then one of the women standing behind her asked her in a whisper:
-can you describe this?
Akhmatova replied that she could. And she described it in ten chapters of the poem. The use of free verse is not accidental - free verse, devoid of rhyme and meter, conveys the terrible simplicity of those events as much as possible.

In the beginning there was... free verse

The most popular book in the history of mankind was written in this poetic style. It's about about the Bible. Here is the brightest and ancient example free verse

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

There is a later example, familiar to everyone from school. “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is an example of classic free verse. In this case, white. At the time of the creation of “The Word...” there was already rhymed poetry in Rus'. It was considered the lot of buffoons who entertained the crowd. A special way of storytelling was used to express noble feelings and experiences.

This means that the poetic form itself existed from time immemorial, but remained nameless until 1886. Gustave Kahn - founder of the French literary magazine La Vogue was the first to introduce the concept of Vers libre. Literally translated into Russian, it means free verse. Free from what? From rhyme and rhythm? The fact of the matter is that free verse is so free that it does not obey any rules. It may have absolutely no rhyme, like Tsvetaeva’s.

...I would like to live with you
In a small town,
Where is the eternal twilight
And eternal bells.
And in a small village hotel -
Subtle ringing
Antique watches are like drops of time.

Some lines may rhyme

At the frosty dawn
Under the sixth birch
Around the corner from the church
Wait, Don Juan!

But, alas, I swear to you
Groom and life,
What's in my homeland
No place to kiss!

Free verse - what is it?

Writers and critics of all stripes tried to formulate a clear definition of the poetic genre. M. Tsvetaeva considered it “frivolous poetry.” Brodsky, on the contrary, was sure that only free verse was the next level of mastery. Only a true genius of classical versification can rise to it. Gumilyov argued that it is worth turning to free verse occasionally.

The remarkable Russian poet and verse critic V. Burich, in his article “What is free verse free from,” suggested generally “not assigning any genre features to free verse.” The controversy continues. Maybe someday they will “give birth to the truth,” but for now let’s formulate a generalized definition, based on the great variety of its interpretations.

Vers libre- this is a verse partially or completely devoid of structure: stanzas, rhymes, rhythm. However, it contains the characteristics of the poem:

phrases are divided into lines;
each begins with a capital letter;
sound repetitions can be traced.
Varieties of free verse

A conditional division of the concept into 3 types is accepted.

1. Blank verse. Suffice it to recall the drama “Boris Godunov” by Pushkin. There is no rhyme, but the lines sound melodious. This effect is achieved by using iambic pentameter. It regulates the sound structure of the line, i.e. its rhythm. Pushkin complained about the small number of rhymes in the Russian language. With his vocabulary at 21,000 he sometimes faced selection problems.

2. Accent verse. Based on their name, we expect the creation of rhythm by the placement of accents. In each line the quantity stressed syllables the same, but the number of unstressed ones is different. V.V. loved this form. Mayakovsky. Take the first stanza of the verse “To Comrade Nette, the Steamship and the Man.” The rhyme is very free, and the main stressed word Nette is the only one in the last line. It must be highlighted with intonation.

3. Free verse. It is often called fable. There is no foot adjustment. Remember “Swan, Pike and Cancer” by Krylov. The rhyme can be traced, but the size of the stressed syllables in the lines is different.

Free verse - music in words

I would like to say that this poetic genre, in the opinion of most literary critics, is concentrated poetry. You can study the science of composing poetry, have a huge vocabulary, but never become a poet. The “liberal” genre allows the author to express himself as he pleases. Anyone? To the reader. If the latter reads the unrhymed lines and admires it, then the free verse is composed with talent. Here are a few autobiographical lines of free verse by Anna Akhmatova as a farewell

He loved three things in the world:
Behind the evening singing, white peacocks
And erased maps of America.
I didn't like it when children cried
Didn't like raspberry tea
And female hysteria
...And I was his wife.

What is RELIBRE?

Free verse is usually defined by the following characteristics: it has neither meter nor rhyme, and its lines are not ordered in any way by length. But in order to make a more precise determination, first of all it is necessary to separate such concepts that are often lumped together: free verse, blank verse, prose poetry, chopped prose.

For some reason, it is believed that it is enough to arrange a prosaic miniature text in the form of fragmentary lines - and the result should seem to be free verse. Formally, this is so. But the following is extremely important here: the same piece of prose can be divided into lines in different ways. This kind of “chopped prose” is most often called free verse. Such a text may be quite melodic, but it is NOT free verse, because the process of breaking does not create a poetic line.
And free verse is still poetry, albeit without rhyme

Next - rhymeless verses in prose - practically the same chopped prose, only more lyrical, rich in melodious intonations, there are elements of rhythm and consonance. Poems in prose are also formatted without breaking into lines, stanzas are continuous text. Quite beautiful, but rather outdated poetic device. Modern amateur poets (let's not use the word "graphomaniacs") often use prose poetry to hide flaws - semantic or technical, or inability to work with rhythm and rhyme. Although, such creativity has a right to exist.

The next type of rhymeless versification is blank verse. Blank verse must have a meter and rhythm that is the same across the lines, as it should be in classical versification. Formatting text into stanzas. The only assumption is the absence of rhyme. This is a fairly simple technique in technical execution, but it is still poetry, which means “sublimated meaning.” All ancient poetry was written in blank verse, because... At that time, the tradition of rhymed poetry had not yet developed. Nowadays, most often blank verse is a stylization of folk epic, deliberately ignoring rhyme.

Well, now about free verse -

Free verse (French vers libre - free verse) is a term of Western poetics. Initially, free verse, or free verse, in Russia was the name given to the poems of French Symbolist poets translated into Russian, metrical, but not equal-footed.
Modern free verse - if we take it from the outside, technical side, is a poem that does not obey the rules of classical versification and consists of lines, each of which is qualitatively independent of the previous one. Those. each line can contain different quantity syllables, different order alternating melodic (percussive) structures.
In the lines of free verse there is an arbitrary number of stresses and unstressed syllables; not necessarily the same number of accents, repetition of feet; There may be no rhyme, or rhymes occur periodically.

But free verse is a system of versification characterized by an unregulated (unpredictable) change in repetition measures. Please note: change, even unpredictable, but REPEAT measures! Not prose in short lines... parts in different rhythms, different sizes, but they are there, and they are repeated periodically
Rhythms change, mix in one work... But still there is a homogeneous organization of rhythms that determines the intonation in which each of the poetic lines - free verse phrases - is pronounced. This repeated intonation, expressed in the construction of the phrase, determines the unique rhythm of the poem.

Difficult? Yes - this is the problem of defining free verse as a separate system of versification.
Many people consider free verse not poetry at all - but prose. But free verse remains faithful to verse and is verse, not prose, because it reveals a correspondence of series, graphically highlighted by the author’s focus on verse. In free verse, unlike all “non-free” systems, there are no end-to-end measures of repetition (syllable in syllabic, foot in syllabic-tonic, stress in tonic systems). Free verse is based on the repetition of different phonetic structures that periodically replace one another.

In a very simple, primitive and schematic way, the technique of constructing free verse can be described as follows:

The poetic text is divided into separate lines,
- in each line, maintaining a certain rhythm is still desirable,
- but in adjacent lines the repetition of the same rhythm is not necessary and rhyme is also not required,
- consonances within lines and between lines are required, or very desirable, otherwise poetic musicality does not work
- such diverse lines form a structure, like the familiar stanza, which is periodically repeated throughout the text;
and inside the “stanza” there is apparent chaos.
But such repetitions are not a strict condition. There may be a combination of stanza-constructions of different shapes in one text. This free verse is so strange.

And in this freely alternating chaos an amazing intonation rhythm appears - as if sound waves, repeated from line to line, similar to rocking in sea waves:
from the ridge - down, and up again...
from the ridge - down, and again...
a certain melody that sets the rhythm of the poem.
This is what distinguishes free verse from prose. This is the poetry of melodies, consonances and intonations, and not necessarily lyrical ones.
Hearing this poetic melody is no problem when there is rhyme and classical rhythm, alternation of syllables: stressed and unstressed. But in unrhymed free verse, this must be felt and heard.
This is why it is so difficult to write good free verse. And it's not easy to read. Special preparedness is required - the emotional mood of the author and reader.

So smoothly we approached another important component of free verse - the emotional one.
Although conditions were never set, the basis in free verse is still self-reflection, that very “stream of consciousness” so cruelly ridiculed by some poetic critics. Extremely intense emotionality. Narration and a coherent plot are not for free verse.
Sublimated feeling, maximum heightened emotion, concentration of words to express thoughts, highest dynamism, tension of the text. Although, of course, it could be different. It is up to the author of free verse to decide. Experiments are possible in any genre.

David Samoilov in his “Book of Russian Rhyme” (1969-1979) wrote the following:
“So, we live in a period of rhyme stabilization. The beginning of a new search can be expected only at the very end of our century, and its apogee - at the beginning of the next.
Nothing promises us quick rhyming cataclysms. Rhyme faces only one surprise - a massive transition to free verse. But there is no reason to worry yet. Russian verse develops as a rhyming one, even in acute periods of searching.
Free verse is still at a distant approach to poetry and still exists against the background of rhymed verse as its peripheral structure."

We must always remember that free verse is not a toy in the hands of an inept poet. Free verse is difficult and requires a high poetic level or extraordinary emotional intuition. Good free verse is a rarity these days. The method of writing poetry has been undeservedly relegated to the margins of literature.
Who knows, maybe now its time has come - the time of amazing, complex, mysterious and beautiful free verse? Take heart, poets!

Afterword -

The author hopes that in the proposed note it was possible to at least draw a little portrait of free verse - this strange poetic “pacer”. If this helps authors-poets, interests beginners, and somehow streamlines the concept of “free verse” in debates, then the work has not been done in vain.
At Samizdat, the “free verse” nomination appeared for the first time in the prose competition “Russian Troika”. Maybe the organizers of poetry competitions will be interested in free verse?
In the meantime, the author hopes that the comments will express opinions about this genre, provide examples of good free verse librarians, and name modern free verse librists. It is possible that the most interesting sayings, free verse poems, links on the Web to free verse authors will complement this article.
With hope for an interesting conversation and with wishes creative success for all of us.

***
Sources of information about free verse used by the author:

Kvyatkovsky - poetic dictionary 1966
-Zhovtis A. “What free verse is not free from”: 1968
-Samoilov D. "Book about Russian rhyme" 1969-1979
-Ovcharenko O. "Russian free verse". 1984
-Dictionary of literary terms from the Maxim Moshkov library
-Program article international competition"Golden Stanza" (quotes courtesy of Aorist)
-Authors of "Samizdat" - Mila Slavskaya, K. Varb, Aorist and other jury members and participants of the "Russian Troika" competition
-other network resources

Thomas Eliot argued that the writer of free verse is in principle free from everything except the need to write good poetry. Later, the Soviet free verse poet and literary critic Vladimir Burich, in his famous article “What is free verse free from,” seriously analyzed this issue, trying to highlight those main features that are characteristic of this particular poetic form. To date, this study by Burich is the most complete and authoritative material on Russian free verse. Considering that more than 40 years have passed since the publication of this article in the journal Questions of Literature in 1972, one can imagine how outdated it is. However, more interesting, complete, in-depth studies of free verse have not appeared in Russia.

Free verse is the cornerstone of modern poetry, unfairly rejected in Russia. Having become one of the most widespread poetic forms of Western literature, free verse still remains a very controversial creative method in our country. There are few Russian free verse librarians, and poems devoid of rhyme are still perceived by the Russian reader as something exceptional and generally not having any special right to exist. It is not clear what it is - verse without rhyme, how it differs from prose, how to read it, what is its beauty, and in general - why write this? Do you want something salty? Let's try to figure it out.

Where did free verse come from?

First of all, let's define the concept - what is free verse? Free verse is a poetic form

Free from rhyme, rhythm, and meter to varying degrees. Free verse has versification sources in folklore, for example, conspiracies, thoughts, tales and other forms of unrhymed or partially rhymed poetry. The word verse libre (vers libre) itself comes from French and literally translated means free verse. Thus, free verse is free verse. It is believed that the term free verse was first used French writer G. Kon in the preface to the book “First Poems” (ed. 1884). Later, in 1915, the term was coined by Richard Aldington in the preface to an anthology of Imagism. There are many interpretations of the concept of free verse. Thus, different literary scholars gave different definitions of free verse. In particular, it was proposed to consider poems without meter and with such features of verse as stanzas to be considered free verse. Other researchers called free verse poems with an unequal number of stresses (free) and without rhymes, while any unrhymed free and accented verse, as well as blank verse, are considered free verse. The most complete definition can be considered by A. Zhovnis, who considered free verse a poem that has such signs of verse as correspondence of rows, graphically highlighted by the author’s attitude to the verse, but at the same time free from end-to-end measures of repetition. According to Zhovnis, free verse is based on “the repetition of phonetic entities of different levels periodically replacing one another, and the components of repetition in correlated series in Russian poetry can be a phoneme, a syllable, a foot, an accent, a clause, a word, a group of words and a phrase.”

Thus, free verse is a poem that does not have rhyme, rhythm, or meter, which structurally brings it closer to prose. However, it may have a number of secondary signs poems. Also, free verse can be rhythmic or partially rhythmic, as well as partially rhymed and even have a meter (blank verse).

About the freedom of free verse

One gets the impression that the modern free verse librarian is free from everything, including the need to write good poetry. At first glance, this is how it seems - writing free verse is easy, you don’t need to rack your brains over rhyme, struggle with rhythm, or adjust lines to fit. You can just take prose, break it down into lines - and here you have a poem, right? No. There is one, quite accurate, although not classical, definition of free verse, which was given by Sonya Shatalova, an autistic girl from Moscow: free verse is a verse that may not obey the laws of versification and will not become worse for it. It can be added that not only will it not become worse, but it will also acquire special qualities that a traditional rhymed poem lacks. Burich, in his famous study, argued that free verse is free not so much from rhyme and meter, but from the qualities that meter and rhyme endow the work with. In particular, from rhyming expectation, when, having heard the first word of a rhyme pair, the reader or listener already subconsciously guesses the continuation of the poem. From the memorability of a poem, which, stuck in memory, arises at the right time and inopportunely, it becomes confused, psychologically ages, loses its novelty and sharpness. From the phonic properties of rhyming words, which are the most rapidly aging element of conventional verse, because they accurately indicate time, artistic direction and social environment in which the work was created. In some cases, rhyme can even indicate the author. It was these features that led to the emergence of the “theory of banal rhyme,” designed to save rhyme from devaluation. Free verse is also free from the constraining influence of meter, on which in a metrical poem the lexical choice and order of words in a line depend. From the unnaturalness of intonations that this or that meter can impose. From the limited use of certain sizes, which can be assigned to specific genres, which unusually reduces the scope of their application.