Polynesian Poetry

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 45

Polynesian Poetry Now let us turn from genealogical recital to poetry. In Polynesia as a whole, spoken verse was unknown. Poetry was always chanted or sung. In Eastern Polynesia moreover, purely linguistic devices such as rhyme or assonance were not consciously used to distinguish verse from prose. The metre and the line divisions were determined by musical features, not by linguistic ones, and the prosodics of Polynesian poetry can hardly be studied apart from the musical medium. Stylistically however, the language of poetry differs from that of prose. Extensive use of synonyms, contrastive opposites, and repeated key-words are usual. Archaic words are used, some of which have lost any specific reference, and acquired a religious mystique in poetic diction. Abbreviated, sometimes cryptic utterances, and the use of certain grammatical constructions not found in prose, are also common. The frequent metaphorical extension of word-meanings, and the widespread use of non-obvious symbolism, adds to the difficulty and also to the charm of Polynesian poetic texts. In Marquesan lovesongs for example, lovers are variously symbolised by night-moths, garlands of flowers, pearl-shells, ripe breadfruit, the masts of ships, the trade winds, coconuts, and so on. Perhaps these symbols are not too strange. We may even be able to hazard guesses as to which are male and which female. But who would guess that the happiness of mutual love would be symbolised by rain, and the heat of passion, by cold night winds? Yet such is the case in the hot dry areas of Hawaii, where rain and rain-bearing winds were more valued than sunshine and blue skies, and where ‘the glories of Hanalei are its driving storms’.