The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (13 page)

Craig, Graham, et al.:
The Heritage of World Civilizations

The
new
tech
no
logy in
tex
tile manu
fac
ture |
vast
ly in
creased cot
ton pro
duc
tion | and revo
lu
tionized a
ma
jor con
su
mer
in
dustry. || But the in
ven
tion
that,
|
more
than
an
y
oth
er, | per
mit
ted in
dus
triali
za
tion | to
grow
on it
self
| and to ex
pand
into
one a
rea of pro
duc
tion after an
oth
er | was the
steam en
gine. ||
This
ma
chine
pro
vi
ded | for the
first time
in
hu
†man history a steady and essentially unlimited source of inanimate power.

Sentences: 3

Bars: 10

Words: 52.5

Words of one syllable: 25

of two syllables: 14.5

of three syllables: 9

of four syllables: 2

of five syllables: 1

of seven syllables: 1

There are seven series of 3 unstressed syllables, one divided by a bar line, and two series of 4 unstressed syllables.

There are no series of over 2 stresses.

Stresses: 33

Jane Austen:
Pride and Prejudice

It was
gen
erally
ev
ident when
ev
er they
met
, | that he
did
ad
mi
re her; | and to
her
it was
e
qually
ev
ident | that
Jane
was
yield
ing to the
pref
erence | which
she
had be
gun
to enter
tain
for
him
| from the
first
, || and
was
in a
way
to be
ver
y
much
in
love
; ||
but
she con
sid
ered with
pleas
ure | that it was
not like
ly to be dis
cov
ered | by the
world
in
gen
eral, || since
Jane
u
ni
ted
with
great strength
† of feeling, a composure of temper and a uniform cheerfulness of manner, which would guard her from the suspicions of the impertinent.

Sentences: 1

Bars: 10

Words: 72

Words of one syllable: 55

of two syllables: 9

of three syllables: 9 (I count “generally” as three syllables, “general” as two, “preference” as two; this may be quite wrong for the way Austen would have said the words.)

There are six series of 3 unstressed syllables, one broken by a bar line, and one series of 4 unstressed syllables.

There are no series of more than 2 stresses.

(Note the assonance of the first four stressed syllables. Prose can get this close to rhyme without its being noticeable as anything more than a pleasantly musical quality.)

Stresses: 34

Charles Darwin:
The Voyage of the Beagle

I
hired
a
Gau
cho to ac
com
pany me | on my
ride
to
Bue
nos
Ai
res, |
though
with
some dif
ficulty, | as the
fa
ther of
one man
| was a
fraid
to
let
him
go
, | and a
no
ther, | who
seemed will
ing, | was de
scri
bed to me as so
fear
ful, | that
I
was a
fraid
to
take
him, | for
I
was
told
| that
e
ven if he
saw
an
os
trich at a
dis
tance, | he would mis
take
it for an
In
dian, | and would
fly
like the
wind
a
way
. || The † distance to Buenos Aires . . .

Sentences: 1

Bars: 13

Words: 77

Words of one syllable: 58

of two syllables: 15

of three syllables: 1

of four syllables: 2

There are four series of 3 unstressed syllables, three series of 4 unstressed syllables (one broken by a bar line [comma]), and one series of 5 unstressed syllables, broken by a bar line (comma).

There are no series of more than 2 stresses.

(The delicate, humorous metricality of the final phrase “fly like the wind away,” is certainly deliberate, involving also a poetic inversion and alliteration.)

Stresses: 35

Gertrude Stein: “My Wife Has a Cow”

Have
it as
hav
ing
hav
ing it as
hap
pening, |
hap
pening to
have
it as
hap
pening, |
hav
ing to
have
it as
hap
pening. ||
Hap
pening and
have
it as
hap
pening | and
hav
ing to
have
it
hap
pen as
hap
pening, | and my
wife
has a
cow
as
now
, | my
wife hav
ing a
cow
as
now
, | my
wife hav
ing a
cow
as
now
| and
hav
ing a
cow
as
now
| and
hav
ing a
cow
and
hav
ing a
cow now
, | my
wife
has a
cow
† and now.

Sentences: 2

Bars: 10

Words: 76

Words of one syllable: 59

of two syllables: 10

of three syllables: 7 (all the same word, “happening”)

There are five series of 3 unstressed syllables and one series of 4, broken by a bar line (comma).

There are no series of more than 2 stresses, and only two series of 2.

That the stresses almost all occur singly gives the sentences a peculiar, rocking gait. A fairly consistent three-foot metric beat based on “
hap
pening” continues with “
wife
has a” and is then replaced by a different beat beginning with the double stress “
wife hav
ing.” Given these semiregular beats, the repetition of words, the repeated rhyme “cow /now,” and the alliteration on “h,” this passage is probably best regarded as possibly a poem, anyhow not exactly prose. But the stress count is much the same as in my other, narrative samples.

Stresses: 38

Judson Jerome, in
Poetry: Premeditated Art
, a useful and interesting book, says that poetry averages 40 to 60 stresses per 100 syllables, while prose averages about 20 to 40. My samples of prose run higher than that. He says that the maximum number of nonstressed syllables between stresses in poetry, on average, is 0 to 2, while in prose it’s 2 to 4, while the maximum possible number of unstressed syllables in a row is 6 to 7. I’ve seldom found even four unstressed syllables in a row occurring in good prose.

Here’s my count of how our prose samples vary in the number of stressed syllables, and some other counts and comparisons, which I find fascinating and you may wish to sink deep in the Sea of Unread Statistics.

Per 100-syllable sample:

Number of stresses, most to fewest:

“Three Bears,” Woolf: 48

Tolkien: 47

Twain: 44

Stein: 38

Darwin: 35

Austen: 33

Craig: 32

Number of words, most to fewest:

Twain: 85.5

“Three Bears:” 79

Darwin: 77

Stein: 76

Woolf: 75

Austen, Tolkien: 72

Craig: 52.5

Number of sentences, most to fewest:

Woolf: 6

Twain, Tolkien: 4

“Three Bears,” Craig: 3

Stein: 2

Darwin: 1

Austen: 1

Number of bars, most to fewest:

Woolf: 24

Twain: 19

Tolkien: 15

“Three Bears,” Darwin: 13

Craig, Austen, Stein: 10

Number of one-syllable words, most to fewest:

Twain: 72

“Three Bears”:62

Stein: 59

Darwin: 58

Austen: 55

Woolf: 53

Tolkien: 45

Craig: 25

Two-syllable words, most to fewest:

Tolkien: 24

Woolf: 19

Darwin, “Three Bears,” Craig: 15

Twain, Stein: 10

Austen: 7

Three-syllable words, most to fewest:

Austen: 10

Craig: 9

Stein: 7

Woolf, Twain, “Three Bears”: 3

Tolkien: 2

Darwin: 1

Words over three syllables:

“Three Bears,” Austen, Stein, Woolf, Twain, Tolkien: 0

Darwin: 1 of four syllables

Craig: 4, 2 of four syllables, 1 of five, 1 of seven.

Various interesting factoids emerge:

• that Virginia Woolf and “The Three Bears” have the same stress-count;
  
• that Mark Twain uses more one-syllable words than a folktale;
  
• that in even a readable textbook more than half the words are polysyllables;
  
• that Woolf writes the shortest sentences of the lot and Austen the longest;
  
• and so on.
  
 

The samples are far too small and the method of counting stresses too subjective for any conclusions at all to be drawn. That Jane
Austen’s stress-count is almost the same as that of the textbook is, however, a good indication that merely counting stresses is not going to give us any solid indications of the quality—in all senses—of the prose.

None the less I found it an interesting and worthwhile exercise, the simple doing of which intensified and refined my awareness of the rhythms of prose.
¹

B
EYOND
S
TRESS