2024 Vol. 15 №4

The origins of metric typology: from ‘metrotonics’ to ‘tactometrics’

DOI

10.5922/2225-5346-2024-4-12

Pages

169-183

Abstract

One of the first Russian-language works aimed at creating a general theory of verse was Mikhail Malishevskii’s short book “Metrotonics” (1925), which offered a common theoretical frame for the whole structure of metrics. Later, some of Malishevskii’s ideas were developed by Aleksei Kviatkovskii, who proposed a unified treatment of classical and non-classical verse. Theoretics of the ‘Russian method’ in the theory of verse considered these theories unverifia­ble, although a closer analysis of them allows us to show that they were precursors of modern metric typology. The present article explores Malishevskii’s theoretical views both in the con­text of theory of verse of the Russian 1920s and in the broader context of ‘tactometric’ theory, which before Malishevskii was represented primarily by the works of Aleksei Kubarev. It shows the development of ‘tactometric’ theory from Kubarev to Malishevskii and how it fits into metric typology, a subdiscipline that developed later and whose program was first pro­posed in the works of Roman Jakobson and John Lotz. The article concludes with a formal analysis of the poetic legacy of Malishevskii, who was active not only as a theorist but also as a poet. His oeuvres in poetry are examined against the background of his views on metrics, which, in fact, are hardly applicable to the structures of his own poems, which are much more traditional than his theoretical frame.

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