WHAT IS ASSONANCE?
Sir,-A review in your issue of March 3 of a book of verse called Sailing or Drowning, suggests that the author experiments with assonance. I can find virtually no assonantal rhyme in the book. Assonance is an exact enough term-‘"the correspondence or rhyming of one word with another in the accented syllable.and those which follow it, but not in the consonants." "Famous," "sailor," "neighbour," make assonantal rhyme. A classic in English (the pleasure of quoting which is my chief excuse for writing) contains this; Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness, Lithe as panther forest-roaming, Long-armed naiad, when she dances, On a stream of ether floatin Bright, O Bright Fedalma! From all curves like softness drifted, Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling, Far-off music slowly winged Gently rising, gently sinkingBright, O bright Fedalmal A classic of another kind begins:-Rock-abye baby, on the tree-TOP When the wind blows, the cradle will ROCK For the kind of correspondence or diaphony that Mr, Curnow employs"streams," "rains"; "Egyptian," "corruption"; "hatches," "beaches"; "ocean," "collision"-imitated, possibly from an English writer or two who enjoyed a certain vogue a few years ago, there may be a technical term; but it is certainly not assonance. I think I know what Edmund Gosse would have called it, but my concern is not criticism, but the correct use of literary terms.-SUB-SCRIBER (Wellington). ’ Our reviewer says in reply: (1) I do not much like my own use of the word "assonance," and freely admit that that use is inexact. But I, also, took the precaution of looking up the dictionary, and the Shorter Oxford gives the alternative definition "rough correspondence" on which I relied. (2) I do not know why "Subscriber" should derive such pleasure from quoting the bright Fedalma, unless part of his pleasure is derived from giving pain to others, (3) The crack about "the English writer or. two" seems to me to be irrelevant, (4) I am really not very much interested in the hypothetical reactions of the late Sir Edm Gosse to verse expenment in New
Zealand in the 1940’s.-
J.
C.
BEAGLEHOLE:
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 256, 19 May 1944, Page 5
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345WHAT IS ASSONANCE? New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 256, 19 May 1944, Page 5
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