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Western classics in Esperanto

by Miland, June 14, 2008

Messages: 19

Language: English

Rogir (User's profile) February 9, 2009, 3:57:19 PM

If you do that you deserve a lot of respect, it's rather long and doing it in hexameter is even harder!

jchthys (User's profile) February 9, 2009, 9:53:24 PM

Well, I don't think I'll do it anytime soon, and the whole thing maybe never...

I was thinking recently about the best form of metre for Esperanto, quantity or stress, and I decided that a more stress-based system was better.

Now concerning Esperanto rhyme: isn't it a bit boring, considering that the endings indicate grammatical form?

erinja (User's profile) February 10, 2009, 1:37:46 PM

You could look at a selection of Esperanto poems to find out what meters they generally use. I used an Esperanto poem for a poetry project in high school; it came out to be some weird meter that's almost never used in English poetry.

russ (User's profile) February 11, 2009, 8:37:43 AM

Anyone interested in Esperanto poetry should definitely read the classic book "Parnasa gvidlibro" by Kalocsay and Waringhien. It's a very illuminating book about the history of Esperanto poetry and about the concrete nuts and bolts of crafting poetry.

A lot of older books are floating around the net in pdf form with file names of the form "eo - author - title.pdf" from a now-defunct website elibrejo. Google for
"eo - platono" pdf
and you'll find various links to some by Plato, for instance, or "eo - vallienne" pdf gets you links to some translations of Vallienne.

hiyayaywhopee (User's profile) February 11, 2009, 10:38:58 PM

jchthys:Well, I don't think I'll do it anytime soon, and the whole thing maybe never...

I was thinking recently about the best form of metre for Esperanto, quantity or stress, and I decided that a more stress-based system was better.

Now concerning Esperanto rhyme: isn't it a bit boring, considering that the endings indicate grammatical form?
Rhyme isn't just matching up the sounds of the last syllables of words: the sounds have to match starting at the last accented syllable. So "arbo" and "hundo" or "mother" and "father" don't rhyme; "ŝtono" and "duono", however, do.

jchthys (User's profile) February 11, 2009, 11:53:28 PM

hiyayaywhopee:
jchthys:Well, I don't think I'll do it anytime soon, and the whole thing maybe never...

I was thinking recently about the best form of metre for Esperanto, quantity or stress, and I decided that a more stress-based system was better.

Now concerning Esperanto rhyme: isn't it a bit boring, considering that the endings indicate grammatical form?
Rhyme isn't just matching up the sounds of the last syllables of words: the sounds have to match starting at the last accented syllable. So "arbo" and "hundo" or "mother" and "father" don't rhyme; "ŝtono" and "duono", however, do.
I know, but the rhymed words still are almost always the same part of speech.

russ (User's profile) February 12, 2009, 10:04:49 PM

jchthys:
hiyayaywhopee:Rhyme isn't just matching up the sounds of the last syllables of words: the sounds have to match starting at the last accented syllable. So "arbo" and "hundo" or "mother" and "father" don't rhyme; "ŝtono" and "duono", however, do.
I know, but the rhymed words still are almost always the same part of speech.
Read some of Grabowski's poetry, and I think you'll find it's not boring.

jchthys (User's profile) February 12, 2009, 10:31:46 PM

I found a German site that provides free electronic copies of old Esperanto books: http://www.onb.ac.at/sammlungen/plansprachen/fru..., including poetry by Grabowski.

Frakseno (User's profile) February 13, 2009, 6:25:48 PM

jchthys:I found a German site that provides free electronic copies of old Esperanto books: http://www.onb.ac.at/sammlungen/plansprachen/fru..., including poetry by Grabowski.
Very nice link! Thanks for sharing!!

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