Poem fractal

Clair De Lune

by Paul Verlaine

30 March 1844 to 8 January 1896 (~52)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I beg you, do not tell anyone that I write to you, to anyone, so that nothing is known of me. Tear up my letter.”

Original: Je t’en supplie, ne dis à personne que je t’écris, à personne! de façon à ce qu’on ne sache rien de moi. Déchire ma lettre. — Shows his desire for erasure and secrecy during imprisonment. · Letter from Mons prison to Edmond Lepelletier, 1873 (French)

More remarks (4)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Rose Milligan · 0.4052 − 0.2101i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Symons · 0.3972 − 0.1889i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Clarence Mangan · 0.3937 − 0.1701i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Herbert · 0.4595 − 0.2255i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Oldys · 0.3786 − 0.2190i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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