Poem fractal

Sehnsucht

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

28 August 1749 to 22 March 1832 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“One must be something in order to make something; Dante seems great, but he had centuries of culture behind him.”

Original: Man muß etwas sein, um etwas zu machen. Dante erscheint uns groß, aber er hatte eine Kultur von Jahrhunderten hinter sich. — Goethe connects individual achievement with the accumulated culture and formation that make it possible. · Conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann, 20 October 1828 (German)

More remarks (64)

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. Lord Byron · −0.4269 − 0.7781i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Louis Untermeyer · −0.4042 − 0.7531i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · −0.4223 − 0.7344i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Allingham · −0.4310 − 0.7325i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Oscar Wilde · −0.4484 − 0.7376i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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