Poem fractal

Wanderer's Nightsong

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

28 August 1749 to 22 March 1832 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The life of man is his character.”

Original: Die Geschichte des Menschen ist sein Character. — A person's life is understood as the unfolding expression of character through time. · Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (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. Adelaide Crapsey · −0.1778 − 1.3172i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alice Corbin · −0.1528 − 1.2608i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward FitzGerald · −0.2048 − 1.2347i · 0.063 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Browning · −0.1489 − 1.2491i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.1124 − 1.3004i · 0.081 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content