The Lyric Expression: Genres, Versification and Poetic Feeling
The Lyric Expression
The lyric is one of the main literary genres, along with narrative, dramatic and didactic works. In it, the author expresses their own feelings and attitudes. Lyric poetry can manifest itself through literature, music, painting and other arts, but in literature it is conveyed mainly through verse. Two important concepts must be kept in mind: not to confuse the subgenres of versification with the classical lyric subgenres.
Versification Procedures
In a lyrical poem, the basic unit is the verse, a line of text with a certain rhythm. A verse is not cut off at the end of a line; it is the rhythm and the sequence of stressed syllables that determine its structure. The following elements are considered:
- Number of syllables: the metrical count of the verse.
- Stress patterns: the syllables that carry intensity.
- Rhyme and pairing: the coincidence of sounds at the end of verses, which can be consonant or assonant.
The count of syllables may be altered by the following poetic resources:
- Synalepha: the joining of the last vowel of one word with the first vowel of the next.
- Diaeresis: the separation of a diphthong into two syllables.
- Synaeresis: the joining of two vowels that belong to separate syllables into one syllable.
- Acute ending: a word stressed on the last syllable, which adds one syllable to the count.
- Esdrújula ending: a word stressed on the antepenultimate syllable, which subtracts one syllable from the count.
Rhyme occurs when the sounds at the end of verses coincide. It can be:
- Consonant rhyme: all sounds are identical from the last stressed vowel onward.
- Assonant rhyme: only the vowels coincide from the last stressed vowel onward.
Verses may also be paired or grouped into stanzas, a structure widely used in Spanish poetry.
Lyric Subgenres
Traditionally, lyric subgenres include the ode (a solemn composition on diverse themes), the elegy (a lament on loss or death), the idyll (a poem on love and pastoral themes), the hymn (praise of a hero, god or thing), the dirge (a song of pain), satire (didactic and critical), the eclogue (a poem about shepherds and nature), and the epithalamium (a wedding song). Whatever the subgenre, feelings such as love are what give the lyric its character: love can be sung in an ode, a song, and so on.
The Language of Great Lyric Feeling
The feelings we express in lyric poetry are often the most intense and the most frequently addressed by writers, and love is the most prominent among them. Yet love is difficult to define precisely, and no word fully captures its limits. For this reason, writers often resort to accumulations of comparisons, metaphors and expressions.
To the reader, love often evokes contradictory sensations. The figure most used to express this is antithesis, which places opposing terms side by side to suggest opposing forces within a single feeling.
Metaphors for great love are often identified with fire. When love is not reciprocated, it may disappear or become ice. Within this set of contradictions, fire and ice are recurring concepts, or, in other words, light, coals, the sun and heat stand in opposition to water, snow, marble and ashes.