A ''shairi'' ( ka, შაირი, ), also known as Rustavelian quatrain, is the name of a particular poetic form, or a
monorhymed quatrain. It was used by the Georgian poet
Shota Rustaveli
Shota Rustaveli ( ka, შოთა რუსთაველი, c. 1160 – after c. 1220), mononymously known simply as Rustaveli, was a medieval Georgian poet. He is considered to be the pre-eminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age and one of ...
in ''
The Knight in the Panther's Skin
''The Knight in the Panther's Skin'' ( ka, ვეფხისტყაოსანი, tr literally "the one with the skin of a tiger") is a Georgian medieval epic poem, written in the 12th or 13th century by Georgia's national poet Shota Rusta ...
''.
It consists of four 16-syllable lines, with a
caesura
300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation
A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for " cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begin ...
between syllables eight and nine. While there are
stanzas with as many as five syllables rhyming, generally shairi uses either
feminine or
dactylic rhyme. It is worth noticing that despite the feminine and dactylic forms of rhyme, Georgian ''shairi''’s stress is very weak due to the nature of the
Georgian language, which is characterized by dynamic and very weak stress placed on
antepenult
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
Ul ...
imate syllable in words longer than two syllables and on
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
imate in two-syllable words.
The Georgian word ''shairi'' derives from Arabo-Persian ''shi‘r''.
Types
Two distinct forms of ''shairi'' exist: maghali (high) ''shairi'' and dabali (low) ''shairi''. Rustaveli used both types in his poem.
Maghali shairi
In maghali ''shairi'' ("high ''shairi''"), lines are broken into four sections of four syllables, with a caesura after the second section: xxxx xxxx//xxxx xxxx.
Dabali shairi
In dabali ''shairi'' ("low ''shairi''"), each line is broken into four segments of five and three syllables: xxxxx xxx//xxxxx xxx.
References
Sources
*
External links
A very brief summary of shairi Poetry Base / Poetry Gnosis, A Resource for Learning and Teaching Poetry.
Stanzaic form
Middle Georgian literature
Georgian words and phrases
Poetic forms
{{Georgia-stub