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Jean Racine - Esther
The "heroic verse," or grand vers in French, is the hexamètre, or vers alexandrin:
the former name being due to the fact that this line consists of two halves or hémistiches of six
syllables each; the latter a name derived from the poet Alexandre de Bernay, who, in the latter half of the
twelfth century, first used this metre in his celebrated epic of "Alexandre."
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E.g., Esth. l. 2.: Que béni soit le ciel || qui te rend à mes voeux!
Lyric poetry may have lines of any number of syllables.
E.g., Esth. l. 1241: Rompez vos fers 4 sylls.
l. 970: Ses criminels attentats 7 "
l. 722: En un moment s'est-il évanoui 10 "
All syllables, mute or otherwise, are counted except, (1) when a 'mute e' is elided before a word
beginning with a vowel or 'mute h,' e.g.,
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l. 1: Est-ce toi, chèr(e) Élis(e)? = 6 sylls.;
(2) at the end of a line, where the 'mute e' is reckoned with the preceding sounded syllable, which is thus
made a "feminine rhyme," e.g.;
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l. 7 . . . || est cher à ma mémoire! = 6 sylls.
It is for this reason that Racine avails himself (ll. 92, 436, 514, 1232) of the license to spell encor
instead of encore, thereby reducing the word by one syllable:
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l. 436 . . . || le voit encor la nuit;
and conversely he writes jusques for jusque before au, to prevent the elision and
keep the word dissyllabic, in
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l. 136 Sion, jusques au ciel: || . . . .
Similarly in l. 426, for the simpler expression
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Tous révèrent à genoux,
he writes,
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Tout révèr(e) à genoux, ||
reducing the seven syllables of the former to a correct hemistich.
CAESURA.
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