White verse: definition and examples

The texts in verse, which differ from prose in their form and in their way of expressing ideas, they do not always conform to the idea we have of a poem: they can have a regular meter, they can combine different measures of verses or they can use the verse free. As for the rhyme, it can be present in all the verses, in some or in none. In the same way, it is easy to find texts that, even having a regular metric scheme, do not rhyme. In this lesson from a PROFESSOR we will define we offer you the definition of white verse and we will provide examples from both Spanish literature and world literature.

The musicality of a poem It depends on the metric (number of syllables and stress) and on the rhyme (phonetic coincidence at the end of the verses). Both metrics and rhymes can follow a clear structure, such as not doing it or not existing at all. When there is no specific metric scheme, we will be faced with a text written in Free verse.

On the other hand, there is the white verse. A composition that uses blank verse is one that follows a regular meter, but that

lacks rhyme. If we analyze a poem of hendecasyllable verses with white verse, the metric scheme will be the following: 11-, 11-, 11-, 11 -...

Here we discover the types of verses according to syllables.

Classical Greek and Latin literature did not contain rhyme, as does the sciolto verse Italian. However, it was English literature that made white verse popular in the form of iambic pentameter. This is the most used form in Elizabethan theater.

Here are some verses from Lear, king and beggar, a translation of The Lear King by William Shakespeare in which Nicanor Parra seeks to approximate the original meter.

Blow winds

Until your cheeks explode!

Action! Blow!

Hurricanes sky falls volcaos

Over the steeples and towers

Until not a single weather vane is visible.

Sulfuric rays

At the speed of thought

Safe Precursors of Gotu Kola

That part in two the oak

Scorch my white head!

And you thunder that shakes everything

Flatten the planet!

Break the molds of nature

Kills germs and seeds

So that never again

Beget ungrateful children again!

Boscan was the one introduced the white verse in Spanish literature with his Hero and Leandro. Here are some verses:

Sing with sweet and painful boz,

O Muse!, the pitiful loves,

que'n suave pain they were brought up.

The sad sea also sings in the middle,

and to Sesto, one part, and another, Abido,

and Love here and there, coming and going;

and that diligent lumbrezilla,

faithful witness and sweet message

of two faithful and sweet lovers.

Later it was used by authors like Garcilaso, Lope de Vega and Quevedo, and repudiated by others (essentially culteranos like Góngora).

But none of all can call

more barbarian than me, because against art

I dare to give precepts, and I let myself

lead from the vulgar stream, where

call me ignorant Italy and France;

But what can I do if I have written

with one that I finished this week,

four hundred and eighty-three comedies?

Lope de Vega, New art of making comedies in this time

Over time its use has been consolidating both in Spanish and Latin American literature:

Leave, let me look, dyed with love,
the face reddened by your purple life,
let me look at the deep cry of your insides
where I die and give up living forever.

I want love or death, I want to die at all
I want to be you, your blood, that roaring lava
that watering enclosed beautiful extreme limbs
thus feel the beautiful limits of life.

Vicente Aleixandre

Circus the earth is, like the Roman;
And next to each crib an invisible one
Panoply awaits man, where they shine,
Like a cruel dagger that wounds the one who wields it,
The vices, and what limpid shields
The virtues: life is the wide sand,
And gladiator slave men.
But the people and the king, quietly watch
Of lofty tier, in the deserted shade.

Jose Marti

They crackle in my hands.
Get away from them, son.
I am willing to sink them,
willing to project them
on your light flesh.
I have returned to the tiger.
Move away, or I'll tear you apart.