Poem fractal

The Sleeper in the Valley

by Arthur Rimbaud

20 October 1854 to 10 November 1891 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I invented the colour of vowels.”

Original: J’inventai la couleur des voyelles! — Rimbaud describes his experiments in linking language, colour and sensory perception. · A Season in Hell, Alchemy of the Word, 1873 (French)

More remarks (94)

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. Stephen Collins Foster · 0.6269 + 0.0440i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Conrad Aiken · 0.6052 + 0.0739i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Thomas More · 0.6618 + 0.0994i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  4. D. H. Lawrence · 0.5869 + 0.0285i · 0.055 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Lear · 0.5909 + 0.1152i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
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