Technically, hendiadys is a rhetorical term, so it's not strictly something about the sonnet, poetry, or the blog medium, which are the usual topics I discuss here. But it is a consideration that comes up frequently in my experience of writing the sonnets for this blog, so I feel a small discussion of it is not out of place.
For me most frequently hendiadys comes up not in its pure sense (choosing between a noun and an adjective) but in a slight variation: choosing between an adjective and an adverb. This is because, to use Wikipedia's example, "The Sound and the Fury" becoming "The Furious Sound" changes both the emphases and the syllables of the phrase, while by contrast turning say "dully flat" into "dull and flat" does not. This means the choice occurs more often in the latter situation, since the meter does not demand either and it is a true choice.
I find that the adverbial construction unsurprisingly tends to emphasize the adjective, while the parallel construction emphasizes both - which is a greater relative emphasis on the (now ex-) adverb. But I also find often that the adverb flows more strongly, while the adjective causes a pause, or at least permits one, and that the parallel feels odd in some way. So I tend to default to trying to use the adverb, not that I always do. But the distinct tonal shift I hear between them - the one that makes the doubled adjective in parallel sound so strange - may be only an aural tic of my own.
Of course the elephant in this room would be "dull, flat" with the parallel, non-conjunctive form. But that, while it is probably the neutral spot between these two, also affects the meter differently, so I can't use it as easily to arbitrate. Still, it cannot be forgotten, and probably means that all this discussion is about a small percentage of all constructions. But it's still worth thinking about: what do these small changes mean?
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