Poems are the best gift received by living generations from distant ancestors. Over the centuries-old history of mankind, real masterpieces have been created: epics and ballads, poems and novels. According to individual scholars, any literature begins with poetry, for verse is the first thing that towered from everyday speech.
Two types of art speech
Poetry and prose are not distinguished by any one sign - rhythm, sound or graphic appearance ... It is a special system of organizing letters and words. Researchers pose many questions: what kind of speech arose earlier - poetic or prosaic? Which is more correct and perfect? Why does humanity need poetry? These problems are always relevant , and they cannot be given unambiguous answers. Starting their poetic career, not all young geniuses know what a two-syllable and three-syllable size of a verse is, how to properly stress and pause. But as soon as, not without the help of the muse, the lines begin to appear, a pronounced rhythm can be noticed in them, and subsequently a favorite way of organizing speech can be traced throughout the writer's creative career.
The history of the development of Russian versification
The origin of any term is usually associated with antiquity, because it is not without reason that all objects and phenomena in the distant past are given certain names. Translated from Greek, the word "verse" means "row." A special organization is inherent in poetic speech, thanks to which it is easy to remember works. The poetic text is interesting in that it is divided into certain parts, which are confirmed by the graphics. Within the poetic line, we find a repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables that form the foot. In literary studies, there are two-syllable and three-syllable sizes of a verse: iambic and trochee, amphibrach, anapaest and dactyl.

In antiquity, there were about 30 types of feet. Russian versification developed from the tonic through the syllabic to the syllabonic-tonic. The second system is based on a special principle - in each line the stress should fall on the penultimate syllable. The mismatch between the phonetics of the Russian language and others led to the emergence of a new method of addition, and reforms in this direction were carried out by V. Tretyakovsky, M. Lomonosov, and A. Vostokov. The basis of syllabo-tonic is the repetition of the same feet.
The bilingual verse size
The average length of a Russian word is approximately 3 syllables. In two-syllable poetic sizes, unstressed two-syllable feet appear in the rhythmic pattern. The rhythmic organization of the work depends on the length of the string. In chorea, emphasis falls on the second syllable, in iamba - on the first. Depending on the number of syllables, they can be two-, three-, four-, five-, six-foot or free. In the works of Russian writers there are all sizes of verse.
Examples of chorea can be found in A. Pushkin in "Winter Evening": "... Storm / dark / sky / cover ...". To write the famous novel in verses “Eugene Onegin”, the poet chose the four-legged iambic: “... my uncle / the most / honest / correct ...”. Often, to regulate the rhythm, stress is skipped or, conversely, occurs at the junction of words.
Three Sophisticated Verse Size
In addition to iamba and chorea, dactyl, anapaest and amphibrachium are also included in the syllabo-tonic. Poems written in this way are closer to colloquial speech. As a rule, stress in them is rarely skipped, much more often you can find a repetition of stressed syllables. According to K. Vishnevsky, it is possible to reveal that amphibrach and anapaest became widespread only in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the heyday of the works of M. Lermontov.
Dactyl is a three-syllable verse in which the stress falls on the first syllable. The Russian poet N. Nekrasov often chose such a rhythm so that his works turned out to be intonationally flexible: “CLEAR / Autumn! HEALTH / RIGHT, ME / OTHER / AIR / OLD / FORCE BO / DRIT ”.
Amphibrachius was often used to write their masterpieces by symbolist poets such as A. Blok, V. Bryusov, Z. Gippius. C. Balmont wrote that without three complex dimensions, life would be monotonous, and even dedicated a poem to this issue: “chorus / and Yamba /, with their sound / short /, I heard / in murmur / stream”.
In anapaest, the stress falls on the last syllable. Among Russian poets, this three-fold poetic size was first used by A. Sumarokov in his ode to “Against the villains”: “On the sea / shore / I / I’m not in a wide mO / look.” Soon he fell in love with many other masters of the pen, and works written by anapaest appeared more and more often.
Determine the poetic size correctly
Yamb, trochee or amphibrach ... It would seem that to identify the difference between them is not difficult. It is enough to calculate the number of syllables and correctly place the stress, and the size will immediately become known. Today, the analysis of a poetic work is done by schoolchildren and students of the philological faculty. This type of analysis is very common, and it is important to do it without errors, so that the teacher appreciates the work. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine the size of a verse, so every budding philologist should always have a compact table with the numbering of the feet corresponding to the features of iamba, dactyl or amphibrachia.

The first and main point of analysis is the stress arrangement. It is worth considering that to regulate the rhythm, the author uses a trick when instead of the usual vowel, he selects another syllable. For example: start / in the shower / clear depth / bin / stand / and go / go / on. In his famous poem Silentium! F. Tyutchev chose not only the original way of emphasizing the word “stop by,” but also the pierced stops when the stress is missed.
The second point is to calculate which vowels are emitted by the power of the voice. Figures with stressed syllables will correspond to the following poetic sizes:
Verse size | Stressed syllables |
Iamb | 2, 4, 6, 8 ... |
Trochee | 1, 3, 5, 7 ... |
Dactyl | 1, 4, 7, 10 ... |
Amphibrachium | 2, 5, 8, 11 ... |
Anapaest | 3, 6, 9, 12 ... |
With proper stress, you can immediately identify which vowels are in a strong position. From the table it will be easy to determine if the work is written by anapaest, dactyl or solemn iamba.
Traditions of Russian writers: the size of poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok

Often, great poets in their work try to use all the tricks, but it's hard not to notice that each of them prefers a certain rhythm. Almost all of A. Pushkin’s early poems, including his first major poem, Ruslan and Lyudmila, are written in two-syllable iambic. The three-syllable size of the verse sounds less energetic and solemn, but even he found sympathy with many great poets. Examples of dactyl can be found in M. Lermontov. The tradition of writing in three complex dimensions develops at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and is continued by Symbolist writers. Sometimes A. Blok, Z. Gippius, A. Akhmatova and others departed from the syllabonic and wrote their works with the so-called "folk" rhythms, the organization of which is based on the principle of commensurability of stressed syllables in the lines. The two-syllable and three-syllable sizes are adapted for the Russian language, therefore this method of composing poems is now most in demand, and even with time it will not lose its relevance.