A ''shairi'' ( ka, შაირი, ), also known as Rustavelian quatrain, is the name of a particular poetic form, or a
monorhymed quatrain
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.
Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greec ...
. It was used by the Georgian poet
Shota Rustaveli in ''
The Knight in the Panther's Skin''.
It consists of four 16-syllable lines, with a
caesura between syllables eight and nine. While there are
stanza
In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...
s with as many as five syllables rhyming, generally shairi uses either
feminine
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered fe ...
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
Georgian (, , ) is the most widely-spoken Kartvelian language, and serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related languages. It is the official language of Georgia and the native or primary language of 87.6% of its p ...
, which is characterized by dynamic and very weak stress placed on
antepenultimate syllable in words longer than two syllables and on
penultimate 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