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Metra Ugaritica: pro et contra
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
Amongst the contributions to a recent volume commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Ugaritic studies is a paper devoted to analysis of the problems involved in description of Semitic prosody. While the data adduced there are explicitly limited to Ugaritic and Hebrew verse, the author's method entails consideration of such general matters as the definition of metre and parallelism. Since these are, as is well known, the traditional parameters in virtually every discussion of Biblical poetry, Professor Pardee's study evokes (and is clearly intended so to do) examination of all the categories and terms hitherto employed to describe the several and occasionally disparate phenomena collectively adduced as evidence of poetic composition. Historical surveys of the subject are now abundant, more or less easily accessible and not very often undertaken except as preface to special pleading on behalf of one or other of the criteria so far discerned for distinguishing poetry from prose.
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- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 221 - 234
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- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1983
References
1 Young, G. D. (ed.), Ugarit in retrospect: fifty years of Ugarit and Ugaritic (Proceedings of the Symposium of the same title held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 26 February 1979), Winona Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns, 1981Google Scholar: see Pardee, D., ‘Ugaritic and Hebrew metrics’, 113–30.Google Scholar
2 In addition to those cited in BSOAS, XLV, 1982, 5–6, nn. 1–7Google Scholar, seeParker, S., ‘Parallelism and prosody in Ugaritic narrative verse’, Ugarit-Forschungen (UF), 6, 1974, 283–94;Google ScholarMargalit, B., ‘Studia Ugaritica, I: Introduction to Ugaritic prosody’, UF, 7, 1975, 289–313;Google ScholarLoretz, O., ‘Die Analyse der Ugaritischen und Hebraischen Poesie mittels Stichometrie und Konsonantenzahlung’, UF, 7, 1975, 265–9;Google ScholarStuart, D., Studies in early Hebrew meter, Missoula, Montana, Scholars Press, 1976;Google Scholar and in general, Broadribb, D., ‘A historical review of studies of Hebrew poetry’, Abr-Nahrain, 13, 1972–3, 66–87.Google Scholar
3 Pardee, art. cit., 114–17; cf., e.g., the impact of the trisyllabic foot upon Elizabethan iambic/trochaic metre (Hamer, E., The metres of English poetry, London, 1951, 12–23):Google Scholar metre is of course capable of development; I think Pardee–s objection is to too much flexibility in the course of a single poem.
4 Stuart, op. cit., 51–78; Margalit, art. cit., 298–300; Pardee's strictures may be seen, art. cit., 117–22 and 123–4, respectively.
5 See Revell, E. J., ‘Pausal forms in Biblical Hebrew: their function, origin and significance’, JSS, 25, 1980, 165–79Google Scholar; idem, ‘Pausal forms and the structure of Biblical poetry’, Vetus Testamentum (VT), xxxi, 1981, 186–99.Google Scholar
6 cf. Revell, (VT), 1981, 192–4; Broadribb, art. cit., 81–2; though Ihave not seen the thesis of Horwitz, W. J. (sic), ‘Graphemic representation of word boundary: the small vertical wedge in Ugaritic’ (Yale, 1971), a sample of the method must be available in his paper ‘A study of Ugaritic scribal practices and prosody in CTA 2:4’, UF, 5, 1973, 165–73:Google Scholar I would agree with Pardee, art. cit., p. 123, n. 36, that the argument for a prosodic functionof the vertical wedge is not persuasive, partly, in my view, because Horwitz allows too much to chance in poetic composition (p. 168) and appears to equate word-boundary and word stress (p. 172).
7 Loretz, art. cit., 268–9.
8 e.g. Begrich, J., ‘Der Satzstil im Fiinfer’, Zeitschrifi fur Semitistik, ix, 1933/1934, 169–209Google Scholar, where a syntactic analysis is imposed upon material originally defined according to stress count and selected for its varieties of parallelism.
9 Parker, art. cit., esp. p. 287, n. 26, on the contribution of Segert; naturally the poetic line, however denned, is constructed of the same elements in an ‘essential’relationship. I know of no linguistic utterance of which that could not be said. Forthcoming is Pardee's own contribution to this discussion: in the proceedings of the colloquium ‘ First International Symposium on the Antiquities of Palestine’, convened atAleppo on 20–25 September 1981, and entitled ‘ Ugaritic and Hebrew poetry: parallelism’. I am grateful to the author for allowing me to see the typescript of his paper.
10 e.g. Begrich, art. cit., 171–84, and Revell, VT, 1981, 189–92, though employing quite different criteria produce approximate line typologies: line = grammatical sentence/grammatical sentence with extraposition/two grammatical sentences with or without enjambement/two grammatical sentences with or without verb deletion/two grammatical sentences in parallel; and line = simple distich/double distich/unbalanced distich/tristich, respectively.
11 BS0AS, XXXIII, 1970, 1, 265–6Google Scholar (exegetical and rhetorical majāz); Quranic studies, Oxford, 1977, 99–103Google Scholar (Deutungsbedürftigkeit).
12 Pardee, art. cit., 115: in note 6 read Micropaedia, vol. 8, p. 945, but try also Macropaedia, 15, 68–75 (prosody).
13 S.Chatman, ‘Comparing metrical styles’, inSebeok, T. (ed.), Style in language, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, 149–72, esp. 152–3.Google Scholar
14 Margalit, B., ‘Alliteration in Ugaritic poetry: its role in composition and analysis’ (Part II), Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages (JNSL), VIII, 1980, 57–80Google Scholar, and references to his earlier studies in the Appendix; but cf. the remarks on alliteration in Semitic prosody apud O–Connor, M., ‘The rhetoric of the Kilamuwa inscription’, BASOR, 226, 1977, esp. 16–17.Google Scholar
15 References in BSOAS, XLV, 2, 1982, 425–33;Google Scholar Loewenstamm's concept of nuclear expansion has been elaborated by de Moor, J. C. in a series of papers, e.g. ‘The art of versification in Ugarit and Israel’, UF, 10, 1978, 187–217Google Scholar, and UF, 12, 1980, 311–15, though it seems to me that the notion of addition/reduction ‘apparently without impairing the structure of the poem’ (p. 217) entails a very eccentric approach to the analysis of poetry. On the other hand, perception of supralinear boundaries (e.g. strophic) by reference to formulaic evidence is not merely possible but eminently useful.
16 Welch, J. W., ‘Chiasmus in Ugaritic’, UF,6, 1974, 421–36Google Scholar, esp. 425 f.(the A-B-A pattern), 428 f. (the delta structure); Watson's, W. G. E. studies deal predominantly with rhetorica: e.g. ‘Verse-patterns in Ugaritic, Akkadian and Hebrew poetry’, UF, 13, 1981, 181–7;Google Scholar‘REversed wordpairs in Ugaritic poetry’, UF, 13, 1981, 189–92.Google Scholar
17 As, for example, set out by Melamed, E. Z., ‘Break-up of stereotype phrases as an artistic device in Biblical poetry’, Scripta Hierosolymitana, 8, 1961 (ed. C. Rabin), 115–53Google Scholar; but cf. Whitley, C. F., ‘Some aspects of Hebrew poetic diction’, UF 7, 1975, 493–502Google Scholar, esp. 498–9, on the grammatical reductivism of Melamed. For the re-allocation of compound names in Ugaritic parallelism, seeGordon, C., Ugaritic textbook, Rome, 1965, para. 8:61.Google Scholar
18 Above, at nn. 8 and 10.
19 O'lConnor, M., Hebrew verse structure, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1980Google Scholar; cf. BSOAS, XLV, 1, 1982, 5–13.Google Scholar
20 O'Connor, 287–8 and 132.
21 ibid., 314–16.
22 See BSOAS, XLV, 1, 1982, 9–11, ad 2 Sam. 1: 18–27.Google Scholar
23 O'Connor, 132; it is certainly true that stress, syllable, accent, pause, word-divider cannot, in the present state of Ugaritic studies, provide reliable data pertinentto line-length. In addition to the attempts of Begrich and Revell for Hebrew (above n. 10), itmay just be worth recording that both Kosmala, ‘Form and structure in ancient Hebrew poetry’, VT, XIV, 1964, 423–45, and XVI, 1966, 152–80, and Margalit, art. cit. (above n. 2), esp. 298–300, tend towards a syntactic definition of the poetic line, but without a syntactic description of its components.
24 See BS0A8, XLV, 1, 1982, 13Google Scholar, and the references there to F., Andersen, The Hebrew verbless clause in the Pentateuch, Nashville and New York, 1970;Google Scholar and idem, The sentence in Biblical Hebrew, The Hague, 1974.
25 e.g. the ‘schemes’ of Chatman (above n. 13); cf. also Hrushovski, B., ‘On free rhythms inmodern poetry’, in T. Sebeok's Style in language, 173–90Google Scholar, esp. 178–83, on the concrete ways in which rhythm can be manifested/perceived. Some of the same material can, of course, serve to characterize metre, e.g. the blurring of word boundaries: seeKurylowicz, J., Studies in Semitic grammar and metrics, London, 1973, 158–87.Google Scholar
26 GTA 14: i: 26–43; Stuart, op. cit., 55; Pardee, art. cit., 118–19;were it possible to reconstruct Ugaritic syllabication, the result might reveal very little ofcompositional procedure, but could provide an additional means of measuring line-length.
27 Virolleaud, C., La legende de Keret, Paris, 1936, 34–6, and PI. I;Google ScholarGibson, J., Canaanite myths and legends (second edition), Edinburgh, 1978, 83; cf.Google Scholar Parker, art. cit., 291–2, for an analytic count of the parallelism.
28 I am unable to see how the slight and irregular variations attested by Margalit, art. cit. (above n. 2), 300–10, can, unless thematically marked, signal a strophic pattern. Cf. Pardee, art. cit., 124; and idem, ‘A philological and prosodic analysis of theUgaritic Serpent incantation UT 607’, JANES, x (Columbia), 1978, 103–4.
29 A view stated with some vigour over thirty years ago by Young, G. D.,‘Ugaritic prosody’, JNES, X, 1950, 124–33.Google Scholar
30 CTA 3: iii: 10–28; apud Virolleaud, La déesse Anat, Paris, 1938, 31–6, and Pis. III;Google Scholar Gibson, op. cit., 49 and 51, but also 130, for further fragmentary evidence (= Virolleaud, 59, 94, and PI. IX); see Young, art. cit., 125–6, 128–-9, for a discussion of these parallels. And note the scribal demarcation following line 28.
31 Consider, for example, the studies of Kurylowicz (above n. 25) and Stuart (above n. 2). Even for quantitative prosody a thematic criterion may be thought to be operative: see Bateson, M. C., Structural continuity in poetry, Paris, 1970, 117–29, on ‘the span of pattern’.Google Scholar
32 See BSOAS, XLV, 1, 1982, esp. 7, 11, 13: the decision as to what constitutes poetry, as distinct, for example, from Kunstprosa, is n o t always simple, and Young's (above n. 29) strictures deserve close attention. While obviously impressed by the methodological value of O‘Connor’s work, I have here not always followed his definitions of clause a n d constituent: once articulated, after all, his proposals may require, even deserve, modification.
33 GTA 17: i: 26–34; apud Virolleaud, La legende phenicienne de Dand, Paris, 1936, 189, 192–4, and PI. XII–XVII; Gibson, op. cit., 104–6: stichometry as Virolleaud, save for lines 31–2.Google Scholar
34 Pardee, art. cit., 127–8, n. 47, adduces the results of just such an analysis based on the coefficient of variation and with reference to line-length. The result is interesting but not unexpected, being derived from the already parsed lines of Keret (GTA 14: i: 26–43). Allusion to R. E.Bee's statistical analysis of stress patterns in Hebrew poetry may now be amplified by Weitzman, M., ‘Verb frequency and source criticism’, VT, XXXI, 1981, 451–71Google Scholar(though dealing with a different analysis).